I never liked the current romanization because of irregular things like shi, chi, tsu, fu, and found their Nihon-siki versions better. Some people argue that “it actually sounds this way”, but that’s wrong. It only sounds this way to ENGLISH SPEAKERS. The rest of the world knows that when you’re learning a new language, you learn how its alphabet operates differently from your own home alphabet. So it should be made clear that Romanization and Anglicization are different things. Anglicization within Anglo-contexts is fine, but not really so in Japan or the rest of the world.
And then I got into learning Chinese and Korean. I really love the Pinyin system because it’s very regular. It understands that Romanization and Anglicization are different things. Stuff like Xi, Qi, Lü, Ri use the Latin alphabet regardless of whether or not Anglophones pronounce them correctly. It makes sense because it’s Chinese, not English.
And it turns out South Korea invented a new Romanization system in 2000, which got me thinking why Japan doesn’t do it. Especially considering identical cases between the two languages.
사(sa),수(su),세(se),시(si),샤(sya),슈(syu),쇼(syo) are identical in sound to Japanese さ(sa),す(su),せ(se),し(shi),しゃ(sha),しゅ(shu),しょ(sho), but only Japanese has to “make it similar to English”, whereas Korean keeps true to its native rules.
Likewise, 하(ha),헤(he),후(hu) keep the Korean letters consistent despite allophone variation, whereas the exact same phonological process in Japanese is transcribed as は(ha),へ(he),ふ(fu) instead.
히(hi) and ひ(hi) are also different phonologically from the previous cases despite no letter change, but where the Korean version is explained by consistency with the rest, the Japanese version is specifically explained by having no way to make the sound change apparent with English letters.
The Korean Romanization isn’t perfect, of course. I would’ve preferred if they hadn’t changed ŏ and ŭ for eo and eu and maybe used q instead of ch for consistency’s sake. But otherwise, who cares if you pronounce si as see instead of she? Not a problem for Koreans, but is one for the Japanese.
by AlenHS