Japanese is normally written in a combination oflogographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) andsyllabic scripts (kana) that also ultimately derive from Chinese characters.
Romanized Japanese may be used in any context where Japanese text is targeted at non-Japanese speakers who cannot read kanji or kana, such as for names on street signs and passports and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language. It is also used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English (or other languages that use the Latin script) on topics related to Japan, such as linguistics, literature, history, and culture.
All Japanese who have attended elementary school sinceWorld War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. Therefore, almost all Japanese can read and write Japanese by usingrōmaji. However, it is extremely rare in Japan to use it to write Japanese (except as an input tool on a computer or for special purposes such as logo design), and most Japanese are more comfortable in reading kanji and kana.
The earliest Japanese romanization system was based onPortuguese orthography. It was developedc. 1548 by a Japanese Catholic namedAnjirō.[2][citation needed]Jesuit priests used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography. The most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was theNippo Jisho, a Japanese–Portuguese dictionary written in 1603. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment ofvowels. Someconsonants were transliterated differently: for instance, the/k/ consonant was rendered, depending on context, as eitherc orq, and the/ɸ/ consonant (now pronounced/h/, except beforeu) asf; and soNihon no kotoba ("The language of Japan") was spelledNifon no cotoba. The Jesuits also printed some secular books in romanized Japanese, including the first printed edition of the Japanese classicThe Tale of the Heike, romanized asFeiqe no monogatari, and a collection ofAesop's Fables (romanized asEsopo no fabulas). The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression ofChristianity in Japan (Chibbett, 1977).
From the mid-19th century onward, several systems were developed, culminating in theHepburn system, named afterJames Curtis Hepburn who used it in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The Hepburn system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. For example,Lafcadio Hearn's bookKwaidan shows the olderkw- pronunciation; in modern Hepburn romanization, this would be writtenKaidan (lit.'ghost tales').[citation needed]
In theMeiji era (1868–1912), some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing theJapanese writing system entirely and usingrōmaji instead. The Nihon-shiki romanization was an outgrowth of that movement. Several Japanese texts were published entirely inrōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. Later, in the early 20th century, some scholars devised syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin (rather like theCherokee syllabary) that were even less popular since they were not based on any historical use of the Latin script.
Old sign from theJNR era atToyooka Station shows inconsistent romanization. Although in principle Hepburn is used,Kokuhu is thekunrei-shiki form (which would beKokufu in Hepburn).
Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology withRomance vowels. It is an intuitive method of showingAnglophones the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the United States asAmerican National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn), but that status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world.
TheRevised Hepburn system of romanization uses amacron to indicate somelong vowels and anapostrophe to note the separation of easily confusedphonemes (usually, syllabicnん from a following naked vowel or semivowel). For example, the nameじゅんいちろう is written with the kana charactersju-n-i-chi-ro-u, and romanized asJun'ichirō in Revised Hepburn. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrectju-ni-chi-ro-u (じゅにちろう). This system is widely used in Japan and among foreign students and academics.
Nihon-shiki romanization was originally invented as a method for Japanese to write their own language in Latin characters, rather than to transcribe it for Westerners as Hepburn was. It strictly follows the Japanese syllabary, with no adjustments for changes in pronunciation. It has also been standardized asISO 3602 Strict. Also known asNippon-shiki, rendered in the Nihon-shiki style of romanization the name is eitherNihon-siki orNippon-siki.
Kunrei-shiki romanization is a slightly modified version of Nihon-shiki which eliminates differences between the kana syllabary and modern pronunciation. For example, the charactersづ andず arepronounced identically in modern Japanese, and thus Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn ignore the difference in kana and represent the sound in the same way (zu). Nihon-shiki, on the other hand, will romanizeづ asdu, butず aszu. Similarly for the pairじ andぢ, they are bothzi in Kunrei-shiki andji in Hepburn, but arezi anddi respectively in Nihon-shiki. See the table below for full details.
It is possible to elaborate these romanizations to enable non-native speakers to pronounce Japanese words more correctly. Typical additions includetone marks to note theJapanese pitch accent anddiacritic marks to distinguish phonological changes, such as the assimilation of the moraic nasal/ɴ/ (seeJapanese phonology).
JSL is a romanization system based on Japanese phonology, designed using the linguistic principles used by linguists in designing writing systems for languages that do not have any. It is a purelyphonemic system, using exactly one symbol for each phoneme, and markingthe pitch accent usingdiacritics. It was created forEleanor Harz Jorden's system of Japanese language teaching. Its principle is that such a system enables students to internalize the phonology of Japanese better. Since it does not have any of the other systems' advantages for non-native speakers, and the Japanese already have a writing system for their language, JSL is not widely used outside the educational environment.
In addition to the standardized systems above, there are many variations in romanization, used either for simplification, in error or confusion between different systems, or for deliberate stylistic reasons.
Notably, the various mappings thatJapanese input methods use to convert keystrokes on a Roman keyboard to kana often combine features of all of the systems; when used as plain text rather than being converted, these are usually known aswāpuro rōmaji. (Wāpuro is ablend ofwādopurosessāword processor.) Unlike the standard systems,wāpuro rōmaji requires no characters from outside theASCII character set.
While there may be arguments in favour of some of these variant romanizations in specific contexts, their use, especially if mixed, leads to confusion when romanized Japanese words are indexed. This confusion never occurs when inputting Japanese characters with a word processor, because input Latin letters are transliterated into Japanese kana as soon as theIME processes what character is input.
A common practice is to romanize づ asdzu, allowing to distinguish it from both ドゥdu and ずzu.[citation needed] For example, it can be seen in the style of romanizationGoogle Translate adheres to. It is not to be conflated with the older form of Hepburn romanization, which useddzu for both ず and づ.[5]
In addition, the following three "non-Hepburnrōmaji" (非ヘボン式ローマ字,hi-Hebon-shiki rōmaji) methods of representing long vowels are authorized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry for use in passports.[6]
oh forおお orおう (Hepburnō).
oo forおお orおう. This is valid JSL romanization. For Hepburn romanization, it is not a valid romanization if the long vowel belongs within a single word.
This chart shows the significant differences among them. Despite theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the /j/ sound inや,ゆ, andよ are never romanized with the letterJ.
Japanese is written without spaces between words, and in some cases, such as compounds, it may not be completely clear where word boundaries should lie, resulting in varying romanization styles. For example,結婚する, meaning "to marry", and composed of the noun結婚 (kekkon, "marriage") combined withする (suru, "to do"), is romanized as one wordkekkonsuru by some authors but two wordskekkon suru by others.Particles, like the possessive particleの in君の犬 ("your dog"), are sometimes joined with the preceding term (kimino inu), or written as separate words (kimi no inu).
There is no universally accepted style of romanization for the smaller versions of the vowels andy-row kana when used outside the normal combinations (きゃ,きょ,ファ etc.), nor for thesokuon or smalltsu kanaっ/ッ when it is not directly followed by a consonant. Although these are usually regarded as merely phonetic marks or diacritics, they do sometimes appear on their own, such as at the end of sentences, in exclamations, or in some names. The detached sokuon, representing a final glottal stop in exclamations, is sometimes represented as an apostrophe or ast; for example,あっ! might be written asa'! orat!.[citation needed]
The list below shows the Japanese readings of letters in Katakana, for spelling out words, or in acronyms. For example,NHK is readenu-eichi-kē (エヌ・エイチ・ケー). These are the standard names, based on the British English letter names (so Z is fromzed, notzee), but in specialized circumstances, names from other languages may also be used. For example, musical keys are often referred to by the German names, so that B♭ is calledbē (べー) from GermanB (German:[beː]).
Chibbett, David (1977).The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration. Kodansha International Ltd.ISBN0-87011-288-0.
Jun'ichirō Kida (紀田順一郎,Kida Jun'ichirō) (1994).Nihongo Daihakubutsukan (日本語大博物館) (in Japanese). Just System (ジャストシステム,Jasuto Shisutem).ISBN4-88309-046-9.
Tadao Doi (土井忠生) (1980).Hōyaku Nippo Jisho (邦訳日葡辞書) (in Japanese). Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店).
Tadao Doi (土井忠生) (1955).Nihon Daibunten (日本大文典) (in Japanese). Sanseido (三省堂).
"Rōmaji sōdan shitsu"ローマ字相談室 (in Japanese).Archived from the original on 2018-03-06. An extensive collection of materials relating to rōmaji, including standards documents and HTML versions of Hepburn's original dictionaries.
The rōmaji conundrum by Andrew Horvat contains a discussion of the problems caused by the variety of confusing romanization systems in use in Japan today.
