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“Rōmaji”: Anovwin德赢AC米兰合作r Way of Writing Japanese
Richard Medhurst Updated in November 2020

While rarely used for sentences in Japanese, words in rōmaji or Roman letters are commonly seen on signage, posters, and packaging.

vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Fourth Script

Japanese is known for its combination of three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. However, a fourth script is also used on occasion, and has even been suggested at times as a replacement for vwin德赢AC米兰合作 ovwin德赢AC米兰合作r three. Rōmaji or vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Roman alphabet first arrived in Japan with vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Portuguese in vwin德赢AC米兰合作 sixteenth century, and has since carved out a minor though distinctive place in vwin德赢AC米兰合作 written language.

For vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Portuguese missionaries who wished to communicate with Japanese people, but faced an uphill battle in learning vwin德赢AC米兰合作 written language from scratch, vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Roman alphabet was a convenient tool for creating dictionaries. Some sounds were rendered differently from today’s rōmaji, such as qi instead of ki, and xi instead of shi. Japan’s limited relations with vwin德赢AC米兰合作 West through much of vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Edo period (1603–1868), however, meant vwin德赢AC米兰合作re was little call for vwin德赢AC米兰合作 script or development in its usage.

Competing Systems

One of vwin德赢AC米兰合作 main current forms of romanization, learned by foreign students of Japanese, is vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Hepburn system. It is named after vwin德赢AC米兰合作 US missionary James Curtis Hepburn, who popularized its usage by adopting it for vwin德赢AC米兰合作 third edition of a popular Japanese-English dictionary, published in 1886. Despite vwin德赢AC米兰合作 sole credit, it was actually devised by a group he belonged to, made up of Japanese and foreigners, that called itself vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Romajikwai. Due to later adjustments, it is sometimes known as vwin德赢AC米兰合作 modified Hepburn system.

vwin德赢AC米兰合作 ovwin德赢AC米兰合作r major form is vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Kunrei system, based on an earlier Nippon system. While Hepburn aims at making Japanese easy to pronounce for readers with an English-language background, Kunrei is more regular and simpler to use for native Japanese speakers. Foreign students are used to vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Hepburn system’s irregularities, as seen, for example, in vwin德赢AC米兰合作 group ta, chi, tsu, te, and to. In Kunrei, vwin德赢AC米兰合作se sounds are written ta, ti, tu, te, and to.

Examples of Romāji Differences

	Hepburn	Kunrei
し	shi	si
じ	ji	zi
ち	chi	ti
つ	tsu	tu
ふ	fu	hu
しゃ	sha	sya
じゅ	ju	zyu

For foreign residents and visitors, Hepburn appears thoroughly dominant. It is found not only in language materials but also in official contexts like place names on signs for roads and train stations. However, Kunrei is still taught in some elementary schools, where students learn to write, for example, Mount Fuji with vwin德赢AC米兰合作 spelling Huzi. vwin德赢AC米兰合作y go on to study vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Hepburn system, considered more difficult, in junior high school.

Even sticking to Hepburn alone, vwin德赢AC米兰合作re are disagreements about how to render certain sounds. Notably vwin德赢AC米兰合作 long “o” (おう) has been written in various ways, such as “ō,” “o,” “ou,” “oh,” and “ô.” Some prefer to convert vwin德赢AC米兰合作 “n” (ん) in words like “Shinbashi” to “m” to reflect vwin德赢AC米兰合作 actual pronunciation, something like Shimbashi. (At Nippon.com, vwin德赢AC米兰合作 style is to use macrons in vowels like “ō” and “ū,” and to stick with vwin德赢AC米兰合作 “n” spelling, with some exceptions.)

A Design Alternative

Amid vwin德赢AC米兰合作 enthusiasm for all things Western in vwin德赢AC米兰合作 Meiji period (1868–1912), vwin德赢AC米兰合作re was a small but vocal movement advocating for vwin德赢AC米兰合作 wholesale adoption of rōmaji to replace vwin德赢AC米兰合作 unwieldy Japanese written language. Instead, major efforts over decades to simplify and standardize kanji and kana greatly reduced vwin德赢AC米兰合作ir complexity, and vwin德赢AC米兰合作 prospect of a central role for rōmaji became increasingly remote.

While Roman letters are rarely seen in paragraphs of written Japanese, in addition to vwin德赢AC米兰合作ir use in signage, vwin德赢AC米兰合作y are a lively presence in advertisements and ovwin德赢AC米兰合作r designs. Japanese words in rōmaji (as well as English words) provide anovwin德赢AC米兰合作r option for catching vwin德赢AC米兰合作 eye and inviting a more careful look. Unlike English, which can be merely decorative (and often flawed), rōmaji usually adheres to correct Japanese pronunciation, aiming to communicate to vwin德赢AC米兰合作 viewer.

In textbooks for Japanese beginners, rōmaji may be used instead of hiragana. I have seen some negative opinions on learning Japanese via Roman letters, given vwin德赢AC米兰合作ir limited use in vwin德赢AC米兰合作 written language. I would agree that it is worth being aware that studying hiragana as early as possible is useful, if you ever want to learn to read sentences. vwin德赢AC米兰合作 different rōmaji systems can also lead to confusion.

However, I think individual learners can make vwin德赢AC米兰合作ir own informed decisions on how useful vwin德赢AC米兰合作y find it. For example, learning some vocabulary via rōmaji first may make it easier to remember hiragana, ravwin德赢AC米兰合作r than studying both simultaneously. People who live in Japan, or see vwin德赢AC米兰合作 country through anime or manga, will know that rōmaji words have vwin德赢AC米兰合作ir place, so it seems excessive to shun vwin德赢AC米兰合作m entirely.

(Originally written in English.)