History UsefulNotes / JapaneseRomanization

* ''[[ShadowHearts Shadow Hearts: From The New World]]'': Shub Niggurath → she-bu-ni-gu-ra-su → Jeb Niglas
* ''FinalFantasyTactics'': Breath → bu-re-su → Bracelet

** "v" can be written as "u" with a digraph on it, followed by a vowel, but more often is just rendered with a "b" (e.g. "violin" would be "ba-i-o-ri-n"). This has caused the weapon name "Vulcan cannon" to be mistranslated as "Balkan cannon" in such games as ''VideoGame/MagicalChase'' and ''VideoGame/ForgottenWorlds''.

** "v" can be written as "u" with a digraph on it, followed by a vowel, but more often is just rendered with a "b" (e.g. "violin" would be "ba-i-o-ri-n").

* The lack of ending consonants. "n" is the only consonant that Japanese allows to end a syllable, so when foreign words are transliterated into the Japanese syllabaries they end up with extra vowels. "U" is commonly used since it's often elided in speech when it comes between unvoiced consonants. When "r" comes at the end of a syllable or is followed by a consonant, it's typical to double the preceding vowel (represented by a long dash in katakana), so for instance "number" becomes "nunbaa". The trailing "s" of plural nouns is often omitted, because the Japanese language lacks plurals.

** This is because "n" is assimilated so it's pronounced "m" before labials (i.e. "b", "p", and "m" in Japanese), so writing it "ko-mu-bo" is unnecessary. The same thing happens in English when the prefix "in-" is added to a word beginning with "p" (i.e., in+possible=impossible).

This assimilation sometimes also happens in other languages, whether the speakers are aware of it or not.

* For some reason, Japanese sometimes treats an ending "m" like an "n", leading to words like "combo" being turned into "ko-n-bo".

* The lack of ending consonants. "n" is the only consonant that Japanese allows to end a syllable, although "r" is also simulated by a horizontal dash. The trailing "s" of plural nouns is often omitted, because the Japanese language lacks plurals. For everything else, an existing syllable is used, meaning there is an ending vowel (usually "u") that has to get chopped off when romanizing. Such vowels must also be used to break up consonant clusters.

** This is because "n" is assimilated so it's pronounced "m" before labials (i.e. "b", "p", and "m" in Japanese), so writing it "ko-mu-bo" is unnecessary. This assimilation sometimes also happens in other languages, whether the speakers are aware of it or not.

* Kunrei-shiki uses the circumflex (ô) to indicate long vowels.

* Japanese vowel sounds are often not the same way in English. The katakana used to represent loanwords may either approximate the English vowel sounds or represent the vowels as written (which in words not native to English is often closer to the ''original'' pronunciation). One old controversy among Japanese speakers was whether ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'' should really begin with "a" instead of "u".

* Similarly, Japanese don't really have a "f" sound; "f" is basically a somewhat stronger version of "h"; the -u syllable is usually written in English as "fu" but the others are "ha, he, hi, ho". This makes for weird combinations like "fu-(small ya)" for "fya" to stand in for "fa". Sometimes the two are interchangable; for example, "hu" in Japanese would still be spelled with the "fu" syllable.

One more issue is how to treat "n" followed by a vowel. Since "n", unlike other consonants, does not have to have a vowel sound after it, it's ambiguous whether "ni", for instance, refers to a single syllable or to a "n" followed by a separate "i". Some systems use an apostrophe to indicate this. (Example: ''ren'ai'', "romantic love", vs. ''re'nai'', "no ''re''".)

** The lengthened "a" and "o" are used to stand in for all sorts of different English vowel sounds; together with the R/L collapse noted above, this is how "claw" is often mistranslated as "crow" and vice versa.

In katakana, long syllables are shown with a dash-mark, which is also the stand-in for the English ending R sound. This is why so many Japanese people will accidentally say "ice cream corn" instead of "cone."

[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese Japanese Romanization]] is the way that Japanese text gets transliterated into the Roman alphabet. The romanized text is often referred to as "Rōmaji", from Roman alphabet + "ji" meaning "characters" (much the way "Kanji" literally means "Chinese characters"). The word Romanization can actually refer to using ''any'' Latin-based alphabet (French, German, Polish, ...) to write a words originally written with ''any'' non-Latin script, but in English-speaking fandom it almost universally refers to Japanese-to-English transliteration. See UsefulNotes/{{Romanization}}.

Japanese has three writing systems, two syllabaries and one logography. '''Katakana''' and '''hiragana''' (both types of '''kana''') are two syllabic systems which are both used to write the same set of syllables; hiragana is the "everyday" system and katakana is mainly used for foreign words and for emphasis. (Technically they represent not syllables but morae. The difference probably won't matter to you.) '''Kanji''' are logographic Chinese characters, often with multiple pronunciations depending on context, and their pronunciation must be memorized individually. Small kana (furigana or "rubi") can be written above the kanji to show how they are pronounced; this happens in works meant for younger readers (who may not yet know many kanji) and is very common for names (which typically have [[AlternateCharacterReading multiple possible pronunciations]]), even on business cards.

Japanese has a few quirks that don't exist in English. Although in general pronouncing kana is simpler, there are challenges in representing it in Roman letters. There are several systems to do this:

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization Hepburn romanization]] and its revised variants are the most widely used methods of transcription of Japanese., especially for formal and academic writing. The Hepburn system is intended for use by English speakers and is based on English phonology, so a native speaker of English with no knowledge of Japanese will be more likely to pronounce Hepburn-romanized words correctly than if a different system were used. Some linguists dislike the Hepburn method, as it can make the origins of Japanese phonetic structures unclear, but those in favour of it say that the Hepburn systems isn't supposed to be used as a linguistic tool anyway.

* ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheSecondStory'': Scylla -> su-ku-ra -> Scewer
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'': Thamasa Soul -> sa-ma-sa -> Samantha Soul
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'': Stirge -> su-te-i-ji -> Stage
* ''[[ShadowHearts Shadow Hearts: From The New World]]'': Shub Niggurath -> she-bu-ni-gu-ra-su -> Jeb Niglas
* ''FinalFantasyTactics'': Breath -> bu-re-su -> Bracelet
* ''{{Wild ARMs}}'': Jack Vambrace (a vambrace is an arm guard) -> va-n-bu-re-i-su -> Jack Van Burace
* ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX Mega Man Xtreme 2]]'': Iris -> a-i-ri-su -> Aillis
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'': Wyvern -> wa-i-baa-n -> Y Burn

* ''Ha'', when used as the topical particle, is pronounced ''wa'', and Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki follow the pronunciation.
* ''He'', when used as a directional particle, is pronounced ''e'' and written that way in Kunrei-shiki; Old Hepburn rendered it as ''ye''.
* ''Wo'', which is obsolete in modern Japanese except when used as the objective particle and sounds like ''o'' in all cases, is usually rendered as ''o'' in modern Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki.

In the Japanese language, there is technically no "l" ''or'' "r" sound; instead, there is a single sound half way between both, kind of like a partly rolled "r". In natively Japanese words this is romanized as "r" in all systems. With loan words written in katakana, whether it is romanized as an "l" or "r" depends on the source word.

Looking at the kana tables, you may notice that there is no "ye" sound, but the unit of currency of Japan is the yen. This is a holdover from Meiji days where え(e) was romanized as "ye" (if spelled today, it would be "en"). This is usually limited to older things that want to keep it for old times' sake, such as Yebisu Beer from the Ebisu district of Tokyo.

There are three particles which in Kunrei-shiki are written differently from Nihon-shiki to correspond with their irregular pronunciations, which are a remnant of historical kana usage:
* ''Ha'', when used as the topical particle, is pronounced ''wa'' (which otherwise remains a different character), and Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki follow the pronunciation.
* ''He'', when used as a directional particle, was rendered as ''ye'' in Old Hepburn (''ye'' was also how Old Hepburn romanized words beginning with ''e'' or the now-obsolete ''we''); Kunrei-shiki reduces it to ''e''.

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", "ri-yu", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. (The smaller kana are a modern invention, and historical kana usage also included many confusing alternate spellings.) In modern Hepburn this is turned into "ja", "cho", "ryu", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya". Old Hepburn only did this consistently with sh(a/o/u), ch(a/o/u) and j(a/o/u), and wrote, for instance, the names of the city of Kyoto and the province of Kyushu as "Kiyoto" and "Kiushu."

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", "ri-yu", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. (The smaller kana are a modern invention, and historical kana usage also included many confusing alternate spellings.) In modern Hepburn this is turned into "ja", "cho", "ryu", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya". Old Hepburn only did this consistently with sh(a/o/u), ch(a/o/u) and j(a/o/u), and wrote the name of the city of Kyoto as "Kiyoto," for instance.

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", "ri-yu", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. (The smaller kana are a modern invention, and there used to be many confusing alternate spellings.) In modern Hepburn this is turned into "ja", "cho", "ryu", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya". Old Hepburn only did this consistently with sh(a/o/u), ch(a/o/u) and j(a/o/u), and wrote the name of the city of Kyoto as "Kiyoto," for instance.

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", "ri-yu", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. (The smaller kana are a modern invention, and there used to be many confusing alternate spellings.) In Hepburn this is turned into "ja" and "cho", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya". Old Hepburn only did this consistently with sh(a/o/u), ch(a/o/u) and j(a/o/u), and wrote the name of the city of Kyoto as "Kiyoto," for instance.

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", "ri-yu", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. (The small kana are a relatively recent invention, and there used to be many confusing alternate spellings.) In Hepburn this is turned into "ja" and "cho", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya". Old Hepburn only did this consistently with sh(a/o/u), ch(a/o/u) and j(a/o/u), and wrote the name of the city of Kyoto as "Kiyoto," for instance.

There are a few syllables that turn into combinations, like "ji-ya", "chi-yo", etc., with the second syllable written smaller. In Hepburn this is turned into "ja" and "cho", but you can also see "jya"; Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki actually use "zya".

There are three particles which in Kunrei-shiki are written differently from Nihon-shiki; their special pronunciations are a remnant of historical kana usage:

* ''Wo'', which sounds like ''o'' and is obsolete in modern Japanese except when used as the objective particle, is usually rendered as ''o'' in modern Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki.

* The lack of ending consonants. "n" is the only consonant that Japanese allows to end a syllable, although "r" is also simulated by a horizontal dash. The trailing "s" of plural nouns is often omitted, because the Japanese language lacks plurals. For everything else, an existing syllable is used, meaning there is an ending vowel (usually "u") that has to get chopped off when romanizing.

* ''Wo'', which sounds like ''o'' and is used almost exclusively to denote the objective particle, is usually rendered as ''o'' in modern Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki.