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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

#41

Post by lifthrasiir »

zzo38computer wrote: post #5

Both types of romanization are meaningful in different contexts. For English pronouncing the words such as "Shinjuku", "Fukushima", "Chichibu" are better, and are better for writing Japanese names in English text in general. However, the other system, with "Sinzyuku", "Hukusima", etc is directly according to the kana by the grid order, so its use is if you need to directly correspond to such a thing.

Korean Revised Romanization [1] also went forward with a similar logic two decades ago. It slightly prefers simpler rules for native speakers over the phonological accuracy, and it was a reasonable choice in my opinion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Romanization_of_Korean

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

#42

Post by resolutebat »

swatson741 wrote: post #30

The switch to Hepburn rules is reasonable since it's the de facto style of romanization but, if they were going to go thru this sort of effort to revise their written language it seems disappointing that they wouldn't add stress marks / accent marks to their romanization. It especially makes sense in Japanese to remove ambiguity like, 港南. Konan, naively in Hepburn. But is it Kon-an or Ko-nan? Kònan removes ambiguity.

There's no ambiguity: in Hepburn, Konan is always "Ko-nan", you'd need to write it Kon'an if you wanted "Kon-an". Which is also unlikely in Japanese, unless you're writing about root vegetable safety 根案 or something.

If anything, using stress marks would be worse, because Japanese is (slightly) tonal and accents are on rare occasion used to mark them: háshi vs hashí.

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

#43

Post by timr »

Hamuko wrote: post #36
swatson741 wrote: post #30

The switch to Hepburn rules is reasonable since it's the de facto style of romanization but, if they were going to go thru this sort of effort to revise their written language it seems disappointing that they wouldn't add stress marks / accent marks to their romanization. It especially makes sense in Japanese to remove ambiguity like, 港南. Konan, naively in Hepburn. But is it Kon-an or Ko-nan? Kònan removes ambiguity.

Aren't you supposed to write out こんあん as "kon'an" and not "konan" with Hepburn? きんいろ => kin'iro きにろ => kiniro

It's こうなん, not こんあん, but apparently the hepburn romanization of こう (and other long vowels within the same morphene) is "supposed" to be represented by the accent macron (like "kō"), according to wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization

Sounds like there's variation here, however -- see the picture of the railroad sign in the wikipedia article, which is a mishmash of different approaches.

I don't tend to dwell on romanization of words, because I just go to hiragana when there's doubt (which was my point).

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

#44

Post by TulliusCicero »

speak_plainly wrote: post #37

I think this makes sense given the prominence and place English holds in the world. Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English. There are many other transliteration systems out there that people are using with their local languages as well. If you want to see the opposite approach, look at China and Pinyin. It’s made pronunciation of Chinese in English…

I mean it probably helps that few, if any Japanese sounds are alien to English speakers. I've studied some Japanese, been several times, can't remember any sounds that were particularly difficult (whereas Japanese speakers definitely struggle with some English sounds, like "th" and "l").

There are intonation aspects that are hard for (native) English speakers, and the syllable speed is higher than English, but the basic sounds are straightforward to grasp.

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

#45

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

speak_plainly wrote: post #37

I think this makes sense given the prominence and place English holds in the world. Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English. There are many other transliteration systems out there that people are using with their local languages as well. If you want to see the opposite approach, look at China and Pinyin. It’s made pronunciation of Chinese in English…

Surely the fact that "Chinese" (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc) is tonal while Japanese is not is also a factor.

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

#46

Post by brettgo1 »

swatson741 wrote: post #30

The switch to Hepburn rules is reasonable since it's the de facto style of romanization but, if they were going to go thru this sort of effort to revise their written language it seems disappointing that they wouldn't add stress marks / accent marks to their romanization. It especially makes sense in Japanese to remove ambiguity like, 港南. Konan, naively in Hepburn. But is it Kon-an or Ko-nan? Kònan removes ambiguity.

Well that depends. Are you romanizing the word while living in Tokyo or Osaka? :P

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

#47

Post by swatson741 »

Hamuko wrote: post #36
swatson741 wrote: post #30

The switch to Hepburn rules is reasonable since it's the de facto style of romanization but, if they were going to go thru this sort of effort to revise their written language it seems disappointing that they wouldn't add stress marks / accent marks to their romanization. It especially makes sense in Japanese to remove ambiguity like, 港南. Konan, naively in Hepburn. But is it Kon-an or Ko-nan? Kònan removes ambiguity.

Aren't you supposed to write out こんあん as "kon'an" and not "konan" with Hepburn? きんいろ => kin'iro きにろ => kiniro

Hepburn doesn't use the apostrophe for that. The apostrophe is for words with a glottal stop like ze'tai. Or without an apostrophe as zettai is possible too.

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

#48

Post by lifthrasiir »

speak_plainly wrote: post #37

I think this makes sense given the prominence and place English holds in the world. Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English. There are many other transliteration systems out there that people are using with their local languages as well. If you want to see the opposite approach, look at China and Pinyin. It’s made pronunciation of Chinese in English…

That sounds backwards to me. Hepburn is widespread because Japan once had a very widespread reach over the world, so much that a system tuned for westerners is inevitably going to appear. Chinese Pinyin is a much later development and widely known Chinese names are indeed written in Pinyin with minor variantions. For example, the name "Beijing" is an unaccented version of Pinyin "Běijīng", and it swiftly replaced a previous spelling "Peking" which was in use for over 4 centuries.

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

#49

Post by Hamuko »

swatson741 wrote: post #47
Hamuko wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you supposed to write out こんあん as "kon'an" and not "konan" with Hepburn? きんいろ => kin'iro きにろ => kiniro

Hepburn doesn't use the apostrophe for that. The apostrophe is for words with a glottal stop like ze'tai. Or without an apostrophe as zettai is possible too.

>When ん comes before a vowel or y in the same word, put an apostrophe after the n

>ほんい hon’i

>ほんやく hon’yaku

http://park.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eigo/UT-Komaba-Romanization-of...

Also, where the hell did you learn your Hepburn?

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

#50

Post by lmm »

speak_plainly wrote: post #37

I think this makes sense given the prominence and place English holds in the world. Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English. There are many other transliteration systems out there that people are using with their local languages as well. If you want to see the opposite approach, look at China and Pinyin. It’s made pronunciation of Chinese in English…

> Hepburn has made Japanese more accessible universally given its phonetic nature and relationship to English.

It's made Japanese more accessible to English-speakers, at the cost of making it less accessible to those from other languages, and making romanised Japanese harder for Japanese people to write, and perhaps even indirectly impeding Japanese learning of English (which is notoriously terrible) as well. This is perhaps a good tradeoff for tourist-oriented materials, but I'm sad to see it becoming the standard.

> As a result, many Chinese people take on Westernized names to avoid the inevitable butchering, which is a bit of a shame.

Plenty of Japanese names are also butchered, whichever romanisation system you use. E.g. "Abe" is romanized that way in either system; "Mazda" and "Ohtani" are deliberately romanized "wrong" (again under either system) for English speakers to mangle them less. IMO taking up a name that's natural in the culture you're operating ends up better for everyone. (I very happily use a Japanese name in Japan rather than trying to get Japanese people to pronounce my birth name).

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