 |
|
| |
|
||||
Rōmaji (ローマ字 "characters of Rome", frequently misspelled romanji in English), is a Japanese term for the Latin alphabet. Rōmaji are often used in Japanese text for abbreviations, metric measurements, and to clarify the spelling of foreign names. In English usage, rōmaji usually refers to the romanization of Japanese words that would usually be written in kanji or kana. Japanese may be written in rōmaji for many reasons: street signs for visiting foreigners; transcription of personal, company, or place names to be used in another language context; dictionaries and textbooks for learners of the language; or even simply for typographic emphasis. There are a number of different romanization systems in use: the three main ones are Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki (ISO 3602), and Nihon-shiki (ISO 3602 Strict). Hepburn (long-vowel omitted) is the most widely used. Modified Hepburn, which uses a macron to indicate some long vowels and an apostrophe to note the separation of easily confused phonemes (for example, the name じゅんいちろう is written with the characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, and romanized as Jun'ichirō in Modified Hepburn) is widely used in Japan and among foreign students and academics.
Development of rōmajiThe earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the Portuguese language and its alphabet. It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit presses used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels. Some consonants were transliterated differently: for instance, the /k/ consonant was rendered as "c," and the /h/ consonant as "f," so Nihon no kotoba ("The language of Japan") was spelled "Nifon no cotoba." Following the expulsion of Christians from Japan in the early 1600s, rōmaji fell out of use, and were only used sporadically in foreign texts until the mid-1800s, when Japan opened up again. The systems used today all developed in the latter half of the 19th century. In the Meiji era, some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system entirely and using rōmaji in its stead. Several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but failed to catch on because of the large number of homonyms in Japanese, which are pronounced similarly but written in different characters. Later, in the early 20th century, some scholars devised syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin: these were even less popular because they were not based on any historical use of the Latin alphabet. Modern systems
It is possible to elaborate these romanizations to enable non-native students to pronounce Japanese words more correctly. Typical additions include tone marks to note the Japanese pitch accent and diacritic marks to distinguish phonological changes, eg. the assimilation of the moraic nasal /n/ (see Japanese language#Phonology). Non-standard romanizationIn addition to the standardized systems above, one can see many other romanizations. These are used by many people, either because they do not fully understand the particular system they are attempting to use, or for deliberate stylistic reasons. Macrons and other diacritical symbols are often omitted or substituted for, because of carelessness, difficulty in remembering or inputting them, or simply unavailability in one's character set (although this last reason is becoming less frequent with the widespread introduction of Unicode). Some romanization systems (Nippon-Shiki, Hepburn) use the macron diacritic to indicate long vowels (thus, for instance, Tokyo may actually be rendered Tōkyō). Most typewriters, and many word processors and other computerized systems cannot handle this diacritic, or make it difficult to input it. For this reason, the macron is often replaced by a circumflex accent (thus, Tôkyô) – all of â, î, û, ê, and ô are in the ISO-8859-1 character set, and may be easily input on a variety of systems. Also commonly seen are wāpuro rōmaji, referring to the various methods that IMEs use for converting keystrokes on a roman keyboard to kana. (Wāpuro derives from wādo purosessā [word processor].) Unlike the standard systems, wāpuro rōmaji requires no characters from outside the ASCII character set. Romanizations that one is likely to come across "in the wild" include:
While there may be arguments in favour of these romanizations in specific contexts, their use (especially if mixed) generally leads to even greater confusion, especially when Japanese words are romanized for indexing in a database. Personal names can be subject to even more variation, with spellings depending on the individual's preference. For example, the manga artist Yasuhiro Nightow's family name would be more conventionally written in Hepburn as Naitō. In addition, Japanese words and names that have established English spellings, such as kudzu and jiu jitsu, are sometimes written as they are in English, without regard for the rules of romanization. Example words written in each romanization system
Chart of romanizations
See alsoExternal links
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 WordIQ.com - Privacy Policy
::
Terms of Use
:: Contact Us
:: About Us This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Romaji". |