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Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#11

Post by charcircuit »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #8
laborcontract wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not parent. This article is either terribly written or horribly translated. The captions in the photos don’t match what said in the text and aren’t logically consistent across the article.

I completely misread the article too (and the 'Additional context' article posted here), I think because it words things strangely but also the whole message is about change and all the examples seem to be of places where the well known spelling is already the Hepburn spelling. So the change is to official spellings that aren't used?

>So the change is to official spellings that aren't used?

Yes, the whole point is that kunreishiki is not practically used so it doesn't make sense for it to continue to be the official way to romanize things and for it to continue to be taught in school when no one is using it.

Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#12

Post by yorwba »

laborcontract wrote: post #7
SllX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards. Shinjuku is sticking around as the official spelling, or rather becoming the official spelling by adopting Hepburn romanization. The pronunciation wouldn't be any different in either case.

It’s not parent. This article is either terribly written or horribly translated. The captions in the photos don’t match what said in the text and aren’t logically consistent across the article.

It is perfectly logically consistent.

Picture of Shibuya Station's glowing sign. Caption: "the famous Tokyo shopping district known worldwide as Shibuya will be changed in its official presentation from Sibuya"

Currently, Shibuya is officially supposed to be romanized as Sibuya, but in common usage including signage it is written Shibuya.

"Amid concern the divide between official rules and common usage is causing confusion, a subcommittee of the Council for Cultural Affairs deemed it necessary to consider the revision to improve communication."

Since they want to adapt the law to match what everyone is already doing anyways, no change is to be expected.

Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#14

Post by lmm »

Sign of the worldwide dominance of English, sadly. Hepburn is utter nonsense if your native language is e.g. German or Irish - but it's popular with English monoglots who believe that their peculiar use of the Latin alphabet is somehow objectively correct, and they seem to be in ascendence these days.

Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#16

Post by Hamuko »

laborcontract wrote: post #7
SllX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards. Shinjuku is sticking around as the official spelling, or rather becoming the official spelling by adopting Hepburn romanization. The pronunciation wouldn't be any different in either case.

It’s not parent. This article is either terribly written or horribly translated. The captions in the photos don’t match what said in the text and aren’t logically consistent across the article.

I imagine they assume a reader knows what the Hepburn and Kunrei-siki are.

Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#19

Post by philsnow »

laborcontract wrote: post #7
SllX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it backwards. Shinjuku is sticking around as the official spelling, or rather becoming the official spelling by adopting Hepburn romanization. The pronunciation wouldn't be any different in either case.

It’s not parent. This article is either terribly written or horribly translated. The captions in the photos don’t match what said in the text and aren’t logically consistent across the article.

Came here to say exactly this, the article is written maddeningly.

English readers will more naturally expect the "before" to come first in a sentence, and then the "after", but in the article the "before" consistently comes at the end of sentences.

The government officially used the Kunrei-shiki romanization rules for decades (apparently, though this is the first time I've ever heard of it), but is soon changing to using the Hepburn romanization rules [which correspond to nearly 100% of romanized Japanese terms that anybody would ever have seen in the wild].

The "diagram" in the article doesn't help English-speaking audiences at all, so it's out of place in this article. It seems to have been lifted directly from some other source, and what's more it's kind of a badly-designed diagram to begin with: the header reads something like "change in romanization system", each of the green background terms are names, and under it on the left is that name romanized under the old system and on the right is under the new system... but the names of the systems are in the first data row instead of in the header row / a second header row. Just.. so confusing.

Re: Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years

#20

Post by zaik »

lmm wrote: post #14

Sign of the worldwide dominance of English, sadly. Hepburn is utter nonsense if your native language is e.g. German or Irish - but it's popular with English monoglots who believe that their peculiar use of the Latin alphabet is somehow objectively correct, and they seem to be in ascendence these days.

My native language is German and Hepburn is much closer to the correct pronunciation than Kunreishiki.
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