There are at least four different ways of
romanizing
Japanese words (that is, writing them using the
Roman alphabet instead of the
Japanese alphabets), and the fact that different
textbooks and
dictionaries use different methods of
romanization, and sometimes even invent their own systems, causes some
confusion as to how
Japanese is actually
pronounced. The
Japanese themselves tend to
mix different systems, even with words in the same sentence. This can be very confusing.
There seem to be two different types of romanization systems: those that try to approximate the pronunciation and those that try to imitate the Japanese phonetic syllabaries (kana) for consistency and ease of conjugation.
The systems most frequently encountered are JSL, Shin-kunrei-shiki, Hepburn, and Nippon-shiki. The system most familiar to Westerners is probably the Hepburn system, a proununciation-based system. To get an idea of the differences between the four systems, here are the various romanizations of the word for "romanization":
JSL roomazi
Shin-kunrei-shiki rômazi
Hepburn rõmaji
(note: that tilde is supposed to be a straight line, but I don't think HTML can produce that character)
Nippon-shiki rõmadi
Like I said, the most common systems are JSL and Hepburn, which are unfortunately the two with the least in common. For example:
Ohayõ gozaimasu. Watashi wa Jîbasu to moshimasu, soshite nõdo o kakitai desu yo. (Hepburn)
Ohayoo gozaimasu. Watasi wa Jiibasu to mosimasu, sosite noodo o kakitai desu yo.(JSL)
Good morning. I'm Jeeves, and I like to write nodes!
Because JSL emphasizes consistency and corresponds directly to the native Japanese phonology, it tends to ignore the actual sound of a phoneme in favor of a consistent way of representing it:
- "si" is pronounced "shi"
- "zyoo" is pronounced "jõ"
- "syoo" is pronounced "shõ";
- "tu" is prounced "tsu"
...and so forth. Those odd representations of simple sounds make it slightly easier to
manipulate the words down the line, but require the student to learn how to read
JSL itself.
An advantage of JSL is that it doesn't require special symbols -- long vowels are simply written as a double vowel, like ã --> aa. The major disadvantage is that the average foreigner has no idea how exactly to prounounce a word like "zyugyoo", which would be rendered "jugyõ" (class) using Hepburn.
When I write about Japanese for fellow Westerners to read, I usually use Hepburn, but with the vowel system of JSL to avoid special symbols. So if you see "deshoo", remember that the double "o" is pronounced "oh" rather than "ooh".
Non-vowel differences between JSL and Hepburn are summarized below:
JSL Hepburn
sya sha
si shi
syu shu
syo sho
zya ja
zi ji
zyu ju
zyo jo
tya cha
ti chi
tyu chu
tyo cho
tu tsu
hu fu
Note, however, that the Japanese syllable "hu" or "fu" is actually pronounced somewhere between the two, like blowing out a candle or something. It's tricky.
To get around the problems of romanization, I advise simply learning the syllabaries (katakana and hiragana) and writing all your Japanese in its native script. This makes learning the language easier and causes no pronunciation or rendering confusion. Unfortuately, I don't believe that Japanese characters are supported by E2, so romanziation is our only option here.