Romanization of Japanese

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Romanization of Japanese

The romanization of Japanese or is the use of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
to write the Japanese language

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
. Japanese is normally written in logographic characters

Logogram

A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonogram , which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantics....
borrowed from Chinese (kanji

Kanji

are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet....
) and syllabic

Syllabary

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound....
scripts (kana

Kana

Kana are the Syllabary Japanese language scripts, as opposed to the Logogram Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as romaji....
). The romanization of Japanese is done in any context where Japanese text is targeted at those who do not know the language, such as for names on street signs and passports, and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language.

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Encyclopedia

The romanization of Japanese or is the use of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

Japanese language

Logogram

Kanji

are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet....
) and syllabic

Syllabary

Kana

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
as romanji or romanji.

There are several different romanization

Romanization

In linguistics, romanization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Latin alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system ....
systems. The three main ones are Hepburn romanization

Hepburn romanization

The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese?English dictionary, published in 1887....
, Kunrei-shiki Romaji (ISO 3602), and Nihon-shiki Romaji (ISO 3602 Strict). Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used.

All Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. Romanization is also the most common way to input Japanese into word processors and computers. Therefore, almost all Japanese are able to read and write Japanese using romaji. The primary usage of romaji is on computers and other electronic devices that do not support the display or input of Japanese characters, in educational materials for foreigners, and in academic papers in English (or other Western languages) written on Japanese linguistics, literature, history, and culture.

History

The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the orthography of Portuguese. It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese

Japanese people

The are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan....
Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Roman Catholic religious order of clerks regular whose members are called Jesuits, Soldiers of Jesus Christ, and Foot soldiers of the Pope, because the founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, was a knight before becoming a Holy Orders....
presses used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries

Missionary

A 'missionary' is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith; someone who Proselytism. The word "mission" is derived from the Latin missioninimus...
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 the Nippo jisho
Nippo Jisho

The Nippo Jisho or Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam was a Japanese language to Portuguese language dictionary published in Nagasaki, Nagasaki, Japan in 1603....
, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a book of Alphabetical order listed words in a specific language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of alphabetically listed words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon....
written in 1603. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
s. Some consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx....
s were transliterated differently: for instance, the /k/ consonant was rendered, depending on context, as either c or q, and the consonant (now pronounced /h/) as f, so Nihon no kotoba ("The language of Japan") was spelled Nifon no cotoba. The Jesuits also printed some secular books in romanized Japanese, including the first printed edition of the Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike
The Tale of the Heike

is an Epic poetry account of the struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the Genpei War ....
, romanized as Feiqe no monogatari, and a collection of Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fables or Aesopica refers to a collection of fables credited to Aesop , a Slavery and story-teller who lived in Ancient Greece. Aesop's Fables have become a blanket term for collections of brief fables, especially beast fables involving Anthropomorphism animals....
(romanized as Esopo no fabulas). The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a Monotheistic religion #Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus as New Testament view on Jesus' life....
in Japan (Chibbett, 1977).

Following the expulsion of Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
s from Japan in the late 1590s and early 1600s, romaji fell out of use, and were only used sporadically in foreign texts until the mid-19th century, when Japan opened up again. The systems used today all developed in the latter half of the 19th century.

The first system to be developed was the Hepburn system, developed by James Curtis Hepburn

James Curtis Hepburn

James Curtis Hepburn was born in Milton, Pennsylvania. He attended Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania universities and became a Physician....
for his dictionary of Japanese words and intended for foreigners to use. Hepburn's system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. For example, Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , also known as after gaining Japanese citizenship, was an author, best known for his books about Japan. He is especially well-known for his collections of Japanese legends and kwaidan, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things....
's book Kwaidan
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is a book by Lafcadio Hearn that features several kaidan and a brief study on insects. It was later used as the basis for a movie called Kwaidan by Masaki Kobayashi in 1965....
shows the older kw- pronunciation; in modern Hepburn romanization, this would be written Kaidan (lit., ghost tales.)

As a replacement for Japanese writing system

In the Meiji era, some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system

Japanese writing system

The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, ideographs from Chinese character,*Hiragana, a set of symbols that approximate syllables that make up words, and...
entirely and using romaji (lit., Roman letters) instead. The Nihon shiki romanization was an outgrowth of this movement. Several Japanese texts were published entirely in romaji 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 the Cherokee syllabary

Cherokee syllabary

The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in 1819. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script....
); these were even less popular, because they were not based on any historical use of the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

Oomoto

Oomoto , also known as Oomoto-kyo , is a Religion in Japan, often categorised as a Shinshukyo originated from Shinto. Deguchi Nao was its kaiso in 1892....
and some independent organizations.

Modern systems

Hepburn

The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron

Macron

A macron, from Greek language meaning "long", is a diacritic ? placed over or under a vowel which was originally used to mark a Long syllable#Syllable weight in classical poetry in Meter #Greek and Latin, but has now been taken also to indicate that the vowel is long vowel....
to indicate some long vowels, and an apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English it has two main functions: it marks omissions, and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns....
to note the separation of easily-confused phoneme

Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s (usually, syllabic n ? from a following naked vowel or semivowel). For example, the name ???????, is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, and romanized as Jun'ichiro in Revised Hepburn. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u. This system is widely used in Japan and among foreign students and academics.

Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology with Romance

Romance languages

The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages comprising all the languages that descend from Latin language, the language of ancient Rome....
vowels, and is an intuitive method of showing Anglophone

Anglophone

An Anglophone is someone who speaks the English language. As an adjective, it refers to belonging to an English-speaking population especially in a country where two or more languages are spoken....
s the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the USA as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn), but this status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world.

Nihon-shiki

Nihon-shiki is probably the least used of the three main systems. It was originally invented as a method for the Japanese to write their own language. It follows Japanese phonology and the syllabary order very strictly and is hence the only major system of romanization that allows lossless mapping to and from kana. It has also been standardized as ISO 3602 strict form.

Kunrei-shiki

Kunrei-shiki is a slightly modified version of Nihon-shiki which eliminates differences between the kana syllabary and modern pronunciation. For example, when the words kana ?? and tsukai ??? are combined, the result is written in kana as ????? with a dakuten
Dakuten

, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese language kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced consonant....
(voicing sign) ?on the ? (tsu) kana to indicate that the tsu ? is now voiced. The ? kana is pronounced in the same way as a different kana, ? (su), with dakuten, ?. Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn ignore the difference in kana and represent the sound in the same way, as kanazukai, using the same letters "zu" as are used to romanize ?. Nihon-shiki retains the difference, and romanizes the word as kanadukai, differentiating the ? kana from the ? kana, which is romanized as zu, even though they are pronounced identically. Similarly for the pair ? and ?, which are both zi in Kunrei-shiki and both ji in Hepburn romanization, but are zi and di respectively in Nihon-shiki. See the table below for full details.

Kunrei-shiki has been standardized by the Japanese Government and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO 3602). Kunrei-shiki is taught to Japanese elementary school students in their fourth year of education.

Other variants

It is possible to elaborate these romanizations to enable non-native speakers to pronounce Japanese words more correctly. Typical additions include tone

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning?that is, to distinguish or inflection words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distingu...
marks to note the Japanese pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent

Japanese pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language. It distinguishes words in most Japanese dialects, though the nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects....
and diacritic marks to distinguish phonological changes, such as the assimilation of the moraic nasal /n/ (see Japanese phonology

Japanese phonology

This article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language....
).

JSL

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 purely phonemic

Phoneme

Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s. It was created for Eleanor Harz Jorden

Eleanor Jorden

Eleanor Harz Jorden was an American linguistics scholar and an influential Japanese language educator and expert. Born Eleanor Harz, she married William Jorden, reporter and diplomat; the marriage ended in divorce....
's system of Japanese language teaching. Its principle is that such a system enables students to better internalize the phonology of Japanese. Since it does not have any of the advantages for non-native speakers that the other romaji systems have, and the Japanese already have a writing system for their language, JSL is not widely used outside the educational environment.

Non-standard romanization

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 that Japanese input methods

Japanese input methods

Japanese input methods are the methods used to input Japanese language characters on a computer.There are two main methods of inputting Japanese on computers....
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 as wapuro romaji
Wapuro romaji

, or kana spelling, is a style of romanization of Japanese originally devised for Japanese input methods Japanese language into word processors while using a Western QWERTY keyboard....
. (Wapuro is a blend

Blend

In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.Linguistics...
of wado purosessa word processor
Word processor

A word processor is a computer Application software used for the production of any sort of printable material.Word processor may also refer to an obsolete type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated computer for th...
.) Unlike the standard systems, wapuro romaji requires no characters from outside the ASCII
ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
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. Note that this confusion never occurs when inputting Japanese characters with word processor, because inputted roman alphabets are transcribed into Japanese kana characters as soon as IME
Input method editor

An input method is an operating system component or program that allows users to enter characters and symbols not found on their input device. For instance, on the computer, this allows the user of Keyboard layout to input Chinese character, Japanese writing system, Hangul and Indic script characters....
decides what character is input.

The following variant romanizations are common:

Japanese words and names that have established English spellings, such as kudzu
Kudzu

, Pueraria lobata , is one of about 20 species in the genus Pueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is native to southern Japan and southeast China in eastern Asia....
and jiu jitsu
Jujutsu

, literally meaning the "jutsu of :wikt:?", or "way of yielding" is a collective name for Japanese Japanese martial art styles including unarmed and armed techniques....
, or loanwords such as kyatto for "cat", are sometimes written as they are in English, without regard for the rules of romanization.
Jya for ??, which is ja in Hepburn and zya in Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki, and similarly jyu for ?? and jyo for ??. The extraneous y seems to be the result of confusion between the romanization systems.
Cchi for ?? (Hepburn tchi) and so on. This is wapuro romaji, but is often used for stylistic reasons when rendering nicknames (for example, ??? Akiko becoming ????? Acchan rather than Atchan).
La for ? (Hepburn ra) and so on. The Japanese consonant has a sound (IPA ) that is near, but not identical to, both of English "r" and "l". "R" and "l" are both transcribed into Japanese using the Japanese . Examples of "l" in romanized Japanese include Japanese children's doll ??, romanized as Licca.
Na for ?? (Hepburn n'a) and so on. This form of romanized Japanese is used in public information such as road and railway signs in Japan.
Nn for ? (Hepburn n). This is also an example of wapuro romaji (although many Japanese input methods also accept the Hepburn n'). This leads to ambiguity with the more widespread Hepburn system. For example, the cluster nna, which is ?? in Hepburn, represents ?? in this system. The double n is sometimes seen in names.

Long vowels

The most common variant romanization is to omit the macrons or circumflexes used to indicate a long vowel. This is extremely common in the romanized version of Japanese words used in English. For example the capital city of Japan, correctly written Tokyo in romanized Japanese, is universally written as Tokyo. In Japan, since romanized Japanese is seen mostly as a convenience for foreigners to be able to read signs easily, macrons and circumflexes are usually omitted for simplification.

Many typewriter
Typewriter

A typewriter is a Machine or electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause Typeface to be printed on a medium, usually paper....
s, word processor
Word processor

A word processor is a computer Application software used for the production of any sort of printable material.Word processor may also refer to an obsolete type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated computer for th...
s, and computerized systems cannot easily deal with the macron used in Hepburn romanization. Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki use a circumflex
Circumflex

The circumflex is a diacritic mark used in written Serbian language, Croatian language, Esperanto, French language, West Frisian language, Norwegian language, Romanian language, Slovak language, Vietnamese language, Romaji, Romanization of Persian, Welsh language, Portuguese language, Italian language, Afrikaans language, Turkish language...
accent (thus, Tôkyô). This may allow for easier input, since 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.

In addition, the following three methods of representing long vowels are authorized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry for use in passports.
Oh for ?? or ?? (Hepburn o).
Oo for ?? or ??. This is valid JSL and modified Hepburn.
Ou for ??. This is also an example of wapuro romaji.

Archaic variants

In older texts, other variant romanizations which are now no longer used are sometimes seen. Some of them have survived to the present day, although few of them are still actively used. Examples include:
The vowel i plus o was sometimes used to represent the Japanese yoon
Yoon

is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added palatal approximant sound.Yoon are represented in hiragana using a kana ending in i, such as ? , plus a smaller-than-usual version of one of the three y kana, ya, yu or yo....
sound: hence Tokyo becomes "Tokio" and Kyoto
Kyoto

Sorry, no overview for this topic
becomes "Kioto". This romanization can still be seen in the species name "mioga" of the Japanese vegetable myoga
Myoga

Myoga or myoga ginger is an herbaceous, deciduous, Perennial plant native to Japan that is grown for its edible flower buds and flavorful shoots....
.
The kana ? was rendered as ye. The actual pronunciation of this kana was once we, but the w had already been lost by the time that (e.g.) ?? "Wedo
Edo

, literally: Headlands and bays-door, "estuary", ), also Romanization of Japanese as Yedo or Yeddo, is the Geographical renaming of the Capital of Japan Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868....
" was first romanized as Yedo.
The kana ? (Nihon-shiki du) was romanized as dzu, as seen in the plant names adzuki and kudzu. This enjoys some currency even today as Hepburn-like wapuro romaji, and has a phonetic value distinct from zu in many dialects of Japanese.
"e" has sometimes been rendered "ye"—e.g. "Iyeyasu" instead of "Ieyasu", "Inouye" instead of "Inoue", and "yen" instead of "en." This usage, like ye for the kana ? (we), reflects the older pronunciation of e as ye. This pronunciation was lost sometime in the late 19th to early 20th centuries.

Romanization of Japanese names

Names can be subject to even more variation, with spellings depending on the individual's preference. For example, the manga
Manga

, , are comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century. In their modern form, manga date from shortly after World War II, but they have a long, complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art....
artist Yasuhiro Nightow
Yasuhiro Nightow

Yasuhiro Nightow is a Japanese mangaka and game creator who created the anime and manga Trigun. Nightow was born on April 8, 1967 in Yokohama, Japan....
's family name would be more conventionally written in Hepburn romanization as Naito.

Other variations seen in names include the substitution of K with C, as in the name of television celebrity Ricaco or the snack food Jagarico.

Example words written in each romanization system

English Japanese Kana spelling Romanization
Revised Hepburn Kunrei-shiki Nihon-shiki
Roman characters ???? ???? romaji rômazi rômazi
Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji

is the highest mountain in Japan at . Along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku, it is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" . An active volcano that last erupted in 1707?08, Mount Fuji straddles the boundary of Shizuoka Prefecture and Yamanashi Prefecture Prefectures of Japan just west of Tokyo, from which it can be seen on a clear day....
??? ???? Fujisan Huzisan Huzisan
tea
Tea

Tea refers to the agricultural products of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods....
?? ??? ocha otya otya
governor
Governor

A governor is a governing official, usually the Executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state. In federations, a governor may be the title of each appointed or elected politician who governs a constitutive state....
?? ?? chiji tizi tizi
to shrink ?? ??? chijimu tizimu tidimu
to continue ?? ??? tsuzuku tuzuku tuduku

Chart of romanizations

This chart shows the significant differences between the major romanization systems.

Kana Revised Hepburn Kunrei-shiki Nihon-shiki
?? u û
??, ?? o ô
? shi si
?? sha sya
?? shu syu
?? sho syo
? ji zi
?? ja zya
?? ju zyu
?? jo zyo
? chi ti
? tsu tu
?? cha tya
?? chu tyu
?? cho tyo
? ji zi di
? zu zu du
?? ja zya dya
?? ju zyu dyu
?? jo zyo dyo
? fu hu

Historical romanizations

1603: Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam
Nippo Jisho

The Nippo Jisho or Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam was a Japanese language to Portuguese language dictionary published in Nagasaki, Nagasaki, Japan in 1603....
(1603)

1604: Arte da Lingoa de Iapam (1604–1608)

1620: Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa (1620)

? ? ? ? ?
1603 a i, j, y v, u ye vo, uo
1604 i v vo
1620 y
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 ca qi, qui cu, qu qe,que co qia qio, qeo qua
1604 qui que quia quio
1620 ca, ka ki cu, ku ke kia kio
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ?? ??
1603 ga gui gu, gv gue go guia guiu guio gua
1604 gu
1620 ga, gha ghi gu, ghu ghe go, gho ghia ghiu ghio
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 sa xi su xe so xa xu xo
1604
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 za ii, ji zu ie, ye zo ia, ja iu, ju io, jo
1604 ji ia ju jo
1620 ie iu io
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 ta chi tçu te to cha chu cho
1604
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 da gi zzu de do gia giu gio
1604 dzu
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 na ni nu ne no nha nhu, niu nho, neo
1604 nha nhu nho
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 fa fi fu fe fo fia fiu fio, feo
1604 fio
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 ba bi bu be bo bia biu bio, beo
1604
1620 bia biu
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 pa pi pu pe po pia pio
1604
1620 pia
? ? ? ? ? ?? ??
1603 ma mi mu me mo mia, mea mio, meo
1604
1620 mio
? ? ?
1603 ya yu yo
1604
1620
? ? ? ? ? ?? ?? ??
1603 ra ri ru re ro ria, rea riu rio, reo
1604 rio
1620 riu
? ? ? ?
1603 va, ua vo, uo
1604 va y ye vo
1620
?
1603 n, m, ~ (tilde)
1604 n
1620 n, m
?
1603 -t, -cc-, -cch-, -cq-, -dd-, -pp-, -ss-, -tt, -xx-, -zz-
1604 -t, -cc-, -cch-, -pp-, -cq-, -ss-, -tt-, xx-
1620 -t, -cc-, -cch-, -pp-, -ck-, -cq-, -ss-, -tt-, -xx-

Alphabet letter names in Japanese

The list below shows how to spell Latin character words or acronyms in Japanese. For example, NHK
NHK

, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation, is Japan's public broadcaster. The NHK is financed by a television licence. This Japanese public corporation has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, NHK....
is spelled enu-eichi-kei, (???????). The following pronunciations are based on English letter names; otherwise, for example, A would likely be called a in Japanese.

A; e or ei (?? or ??)
B; bi (??, alternative pronunciation be, ??)
C; shi (?? or ???, sometimes pronounced si, ???)
D; di (???, alternative pronunciation de, ??)
E; i
F; efu
G; ji
H; eichi or etchi (??? or ???)
I; ai
J; je or jei (??? or ???)
K; ke or kei (?? or ??)
L; eru
M; emu
N; enu
O; o
P; pi (??, alternative pronunciation pe, ??)
Q; kyu
R; aru
S; esu
T; ti (???, though sometimes pronounced chi, ??, and alternatively pronounced te, ??)
U; yu
V; vi (??, though often pronounced bui, ??)
W; daburyu (?????, often pronounced daburu, ???)
X; ekkusu
Y; wai
Z; zetto, zeddo, or zi (???, ???, or ???, though sometimes pronounced ji, ??)

Kana without romanized forms

There is no generally accepted form of romanization for some forms of kana. In particular there is no form of romanization for full-sized kana combined with smaller versions of the vowel kana, "?", "?", "?", "?" and "?", the smaller versions of the y kana, "?", "?", and "?", and the sokuon
Sokuon

The is a Japanese typographic symbols consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less academic language it is called or , meaning "little tsu"....
or small tsu kana "?". Although these are usually regarded as merely phonetic marks or diacritics, they do appear on their own, such as at the end of sentences or in some names.

There is also no commonly accepted way of romanizing common combinations such as "??" of katakana to and small u, used to represent sounds as in the English word "too". Some people write this pair as tu, but this is likely to be confused with the tu Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanizations of the kana ?, romanized as tsu in Hepburn romanization.

On a computer or word processor, these smaller kana may be produced in various ways. For example, an "x" or an "l" preceding the romanization of the full-sized kana produces a small version on some systems, thus xtu gives "?" on Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
. However this is not standardized, and these forms are restricted to use in input systems; they are not used to represent the smaller kana in romanized Japanese.

External links

is an open source software written in C and can convert Japanese text into romaji, furigana, hiragana or katakana.
based on KAKASI.
(in Japanese) contains an extremely extensive and accurate collection of materials relating to romaji, including standards documents and even HTML versions of Hepburn's original dictionaries.
from Andrew Horvat's contains a discussion of the problems caused by the variety of confusing romanization systems in use in Japan today.
, Converts Japanese web pages or text into one of three formats for easier reading: furigana, kana or romaji
Multi-language phonetic reading site that can add phonetic reading to any Japanese site or texts in five different alphabets, Hiragara, Roman, Hangul, Devanagari and Cyrillic letters for easier reading

Romanization of Japanese

History

As a replacement for Japanese writing system

Modern systems

Hepburn

Nihon-shiki

Kunrei-shiki

Other variants

JSL

Non-standard romanization

Long vowels

Archaic variants

Romanization of Japanese names

Example words written in each romanization system

Chart of romanizations

Historical romanizations

Alphabet letter names in Japanese

Kana without romanized forms

See also

External links