The Romaji reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Romaji

In Japanese, rōmaji (ローマ字 "Roman characters") broadly refers to the Roman alphabet.

In English, the word refers specifically to the writing of the Japanese language in Roman characters as opposed to the usual mix of kanji and kana.

Japanese may be written in rōmaji for many reasons: street signs for visiting foreigners; transcription of personal, company, or place names to be used in another language context; dictionaries and textbooks for learners of the language; or even simply for typographic emphasis.

There are a number of different romanization systems in use: the four main ones are Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki (Cabinet order or ISO 3602), Nihon-shiki (ISO 3602 Strict) and JSL. Hepburn (long-vowel omitted) is the most widely used. Modified Hepburn, which uses a macron to indicate some long vowels and an apostrophe to note the separation of easily confused syllables (for example, the name じゅんいちろう is written with the syllables jun-ichi-ro and u, and is romanized as Jun'ichirō in Modified Hepburn) is widely used in Eastern Japan and among foreign students and academics.

Table of contents

1 Differences between the systems 2 Non standard Romanization 3 Example words written in each romanization system 4 Chart of romanizations

Differences between the systems

• Hepburn follows English phonology and so gives the best indication to people familiar with English of how a word is pronounced in Japanese. It was standardized as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn), but this status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is used by Wikipedia and is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. Hepburn is also taught to Japanese students beginning in the first grade of junior high school, equivalent to the seventh grade.

• Nihon-shiki The sole difference between Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki is a relic of the differences between the kana syllabary and pronunciation. For example, if the words kana かな and tsukai つかい are combined, in kana the result is written かなづかい with a dakuten (voicing sign) ゛ atop to indicate that the tsu つ is now voiced. Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki ignore the underlying kana and represent the sounds as they are pronounced ("kanazukai"), but Nihon-shiki retains the difference and romanizes the word as "kanadukai". This makes Nihon-shiki the only system of romanization that allows lossless mapping to and from kana. It has also been known as ISO 3602 Strict form.

• Kunrei-shiki is a modified Nihon-shiki with a touch of Hepburn; it has been standardized as ISO 3602. Kunrei-shiki used to be taught to all Japanese elementary school students, but this practice appears to be dying out. Japanese school children now learn Hepburn when they first begin to learn the English alphabet in junior high school.

• JSL, which is targeted at foreign students of Japanese, is also based on Nihon-shiki. It has a system of indicating pitch.

Non standard Romanization

In addition to the standardized systems above, one can see many other romanizations. These are used by many people, either because they do not fully understand the particular system they are attempting to use, or for deliberate stylistic reasons. Macrons and other diacritical symbols are often omitted or substituted for, both because of carelessness and difficulty in remembering or inputting them. Wāpuro (word processor) rōmaji refers to the various methods that input method editors use for converting keystrokes on a roman keyboard to kana. Unlike the standard systems, wāpuro rōmaji requires no characters from outside the ASCII character set.

Romanizations that one is likely to come across "in the wild" include:

• oh for おお or おう (Hepburn ō).
• ou for おう (also Hepburn ō). This an example of wāpuro rōmaji.
• jya for じゃ (Hepburn ja) and so on. This seems to be the result of confusion between the Hepburn and the other romanization systems.
• dzu for づ (Hepburn zu). Another combination between multiple systems, in this case Hepburn and Nihon-shiki.
• la for ら (Hepburn ra) and so on. Since the Japanese consonant /r/ has a sound (IPA ɽ) that is somewhat between an English "r" and an "l" (and to some listeners sounds somewhat like a English "d"), this is unsurprising.
• a for ああ (Hepburn ā) and so on. In other words, merely failing to mark long vowels at all.
• na for んあ (Hepburn n'a) and so on.

While there may be arguments in favour of these romanizations, their use generally leads to even greater confusion, especially when Japanese words are romanized for indexing in a database.

Personal names can be subject to even more variation, with spellings depending on the individual's preference. For example, the manga artist Yasuhiro Nightow's family name would be more conventionally written in Hepburn as Naitō.

In addition, words and names that have established English spellings, such as Tokyo, Kyoto, and Kanto, are normally written as they are in English, without regard for the rules of romanization.

Example words written in each romanization system

English	Japanese	Kana spelling	Modified Hepburn	Kunrei-shiki	Nihon-shiki	JSL
Roman characters	ローマ字	ローマじ	rōmaji	rômazi	rōmazi	roomazi
Mount Fuji	富士山	ふじさん	Fujisan	Huzisan	Huzisan	Huzisan
tea	お茶	おちゃ	ocha	otya	otya	otya
governor	知事	ちじ	chiji	tizi	tizi	tizi
shrink	縮む	ちぢむ	chijimu	tizimu	tidimu	tizimu

(TODO: The JSL column needs pitch indicators.)

Chart of romanizations

Kana	Modified Hepburn	Kunrei-shiki	Nihon-shiki	JSL
うう	ū	û	ū	uu
おう, おお	ō	ô	ō	oo
し	shi	si	si	si
しゃ	sha	sya	sya	sya
しゅ	shu	syu	syu	syu
しょ	sho	syo	syo	syo
じ	ji	zi	zi	zi
じゃ	ja	zya	zya	zya
じゅ	ju	zyu	zyu	zyu
じょ	jo	zyo	zyo	zyo
ち	chi	ti	ti	ti
つ	tsu	tu	tu	tu
ちゃ	cha	tya	tya	tya
ちゅ	chu	tyu	tyu	tyu
ちょ	cho	tyo	tyo	tyo
ぢ	ji	zi	di	zi
づ	zu	zu	du	zu
ぢゃ	ja	zya	dya	zya
ぢゅ	ju	zyu	dyu	zyu
ぢょ	jo	zyo	dyo	zyo
ふ	fu	hu	hu	hu

See also: Cyrillization of Japanese Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles

This is the "Romaji" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.