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The New Romaji Taught In Japanee Schools

        posted by John Spacey, Japan Talk, December 11, 2011

There are two systems for converting Japanese characters into Latin text:

1. Kunrei-shiki Romanization is intuitive, simple and is taught in Japanese schools.

2. Hepburn Romanization is antiquated and complex. It's used by the Japanese government and most English websites and text books.

Why Hepburn is More Complex

Kunrei-shiki is a simple one-to-one mapping from Japanese characters to Latin characters. Hepburn has more complex transformation rules and invents new characters that aren't native to either Japanese or English.

Example

Consider the word じ-ぞ-う. In Kunrei-shiki it's directly translated to ji-zo-u.

Under the Hepburn system they translate it ji-zō. Inventing an entirely new character "ō". Jizō isn't recognizable to Japanese or English speakers. What's a "ō"?


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