Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years

Posted by rgovostes 12 hours ago

Counter37Comment15OpenOriginal

Comments

Comment by kazinator 7 minutes ago

[delayed]

Comment by rfarley04 11 hours ago

I live in Thailand and I cannot get over the fact that romanization is (seemingly?) completely unstandardized. Even government signage uses different English spelling of Thai words.

Comment by kazinator 8 minutes ago

[delayed]

Comment by Theofrastus 11 hours ago

I'm honestly surprised Hepburn wasn't the official standard yet. It sounds way closer to the spoken sounds, at least to my western ears.

> The council’s recommendation also adopts Hepburn spellings for し, じ and つ as shi, ji, and tsu, compared to the Kunrei spellings of si, zi and tu.

I could imagine si, zi and tu sound closer to the spoken sounds to Mandarin speakers.

Comment by usrnm 16 minutes ago

The popularity of Hepburn has a lot more to do with the English language than the Japanese language

Comment by wyan 11 hours ago

Not closer to the spoken sounds, closer to English orthography.

Comment by mono442 9 hours ago

It works better with other European languages' orthography too.

Comment by Theofrastus 11 hours ago

Native German speaker here. It fits very well here, too

Comment by ranger_danger 41 minutes ago

> It sounds way closer to the spoken sounds, at least to my western ears.

That's the thing... to some other non-English language speakers, the existing/old romanization method actually is more accurate regarding how the letters would be pronounced to them, especially coming from languages that don't have the same e.g. [ch] or [ts] sounds as written with Hepburn.

The one technical downside I would say to this change is, 1:1 machine transliteration is no longer possible with Hepburn.

Comment by mytailorisrich 11 hours ago

I don't know the details history of the system's development, however I notice that with Kunrei everything spelling is neatly 2 characters while with Hepburn it may be 2 or 3 characters:

Kunrei: ki si ti ni hi mi

Hepburn: ki shi chi ni hi mi

The politics of the issue is obviously that Hepburn is older and an American system while Nihon and Kunrei are very purposely domestic (Nihon "is much more regular than Hepburn romanization, and unlike Hepburn's system, it makes no effort to make itself easier to pronounce for English-speakers" [1]). Apparently, Hepburn was later imposed by US occupying forces in 1945.

Perhaps 80 years is long enough and suitable to effect the change officially with no loss of face.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki

Comment by jinushaun 34 minutes ago

Politics aside, Hepburn is better. You can’t seriously say you prefer “konniti-ha” and “susi-wo tabemasu”

Comment by xigoi 24 minutes ago

Should we also change other languages’ orthographies to make them easier to pronounce for English speakers? “Bonzhoor” instead of “Bonjour”?

Comment by wewtyflakes 10 minutes ago

English is the top language spoken in all the world; it would be lovely to facilitate better communication with that population.

Comment by QuercusMax 23 minutes ago

If French didn't use the Roman alphabet natively, you might have a point.

At some point you might as well use Roman characters the way the Cherokee alphabet does - which is to say, uses some of the shapes without paying attention to what sounds they made in English.

Comment by Theofrastus 11 hours ago

The political aspect might be a big part of why and how the systems are chosen. Didn't know about that!

Comment by ChrisArchitect 4 hours ago

Previously in 2024 (?):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39624972

Comment by dang 57 minutes ago

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

English-friendly Romanization system proposed for Japanese language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42606969 - Jan 2025 (23 comments)

Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39624972 - March 2024 (97 comments)