Japan is planning to revise its romanization rules for the first time in about 70 years to bring the official language transliteration system in line with everyday usage, according to government officials.
The country will switch to the Hepburn rules from the current Kunrei-shiki rules, meaning, for example, the official spelling of the central Japan prefecture of Aichi will replace Aiti. Similarly, the famous Tokyo shopping district known worldwide as Shibuya will be changed in its official presentation from Sibuya.
by Runnr231
12 comments
well i mean hepburn is already the de facto so this change basically makes it official on papers rather than actually changing how we view nihongo
I’m very new and can’t exactly understand WHAT is changing here. Is it the romaji spelling of characters they are speaking of? For me just starting out, is this something I need to look into before going further?
To everyone saying romaji is “useless,” Japanese people use romaji to type on computers, as do I, so it’s not totally useless.
I don*t remember seing non Hebpurn anywhere in Japan, so I guess it doesn*t change that much lol
If I’d read “Hukusima” I wouldn’t know what the heck that meant.
That’s how Roman Letters work. Never understood why english took over Latin. Next step “Si” will become “Sci” that is the correct way to romanize “Shi”
リーゾナーブルです。
While I don’t think it’s necessary to know the specifics of both rules, I think it’s a good idea to know that there *exists* different types of romanization.
To those who don’t know about them, Kunrei-shiki is a more systematic way of romanization and probably easier to learn from someone with no English/Alphabet knowledge. Hepburn is more similar to English and people with English background will probably understand this better.
Some example:
||Kunrei-shiki|Hepburn|
|:-|:-|:-|
|さしすせそ|Sa **Si** Su Se So|Sa **Shi** Su Se So|
|たちつてと|Ta **Ti Tu** Te To|Ta **Chi** **Tsu** Te To|
|はひふへほ|Ha Hi **Hu** He Ho|Ha Hi **Fu** He Ho|
Kunrei-shiki is easier to understand if you look at the Kana Chart. You’ll see that each column of the Kana Chart, the way it’s written is the same. (“S” + “a/i/u/e/o”, etc.)
Why I think it’s important to know that Kunrei-shiki exists is that: This is very specific but typing ぢ is impossible for Hepburn. (it’s pronounced ‘ji’ same as じ) If you know about Kunrei-shiki, you’ll know it’s in the same column as だ(da), which means ぢ can be typed out with ‘di’.
Honestly, as someone who first started learning Japanese from a book using the Kunrei-siki (shiki) romanization (written in the 1970s or 80s), this is probably a good thing.
It’s confusing, out of date and ultimately useless. “Titi-san” Ti? It’s chi, everyone knows it. That vowel hasn’t been pronounced as “ti” in Japan for over 1600 years….
Syachou-san… Shachou-san… Tyawan… a country? No. Chawan, a tea bowl.
Either way, learners past a certain level no longer need romanization, but beginners do. And the last thing they need is more bad romanizations.
I wonder if they’ll touch on the Romanization of names as well. Currently, the official method is to switch up the names so that a Japanese FaminlyName GivenName becomes GivenName FamilyName once romanized. So 山田たろう becomes Tarou Yamada. But I’ve heard that there are some pushing for order to be maintained even through romanization, so he’ll become Yamada Tarou
99% of Kunrei-shiki that I’ve seen was from students when I was teaching in JET. When they didn’t know an English translation or there wasn’t one, they’d just romanize the Japanese word, so I’d end up reading sentences like “I like to play syakuhati”. Teaching Hepburn is going to help them be understood better, so I’m really happy to see this change.
My heart dropped for a second thinking that they were going to mandate Kunrei-shiki on the train signs…