Re: Pretty Cure comment.

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 17:20:57 +0000 (UTC), Aya the Vampire Slayer wrote:

In other words, what Phil is trying to say is that they are both valid
romanizations of that kana/sound. If you want to be anal, none of the
romanization systems is really "correct", they are only approximations.
Only the actual kana/kanji are "correct". Meh meh meh.

Well said. I can't be that succinct unless I go into Enrique Conty mode.

Nevertheless, I would take issue with the statement that none of the
romanization systems is really "correct." Romanization is taught in
school. The Ministry of Education has designated one of the four major
transliteration systems to be the official system. All four of the systems
are disciplined systems and, if you know the system, and you know Japanese
kana you can go back and forth between romaji and kana. You don't even
need to know Japanese. You just need to know the kana syllabaries.

Many Japanese find it easier to use the EBCDC keyboard than the kana
keyboard. Electronic dictionaries produced for Japanese use can be
configured for either kana or romaji input. Romaji is thus a very
legitimate way of depicting Japanese. Hepburn has the advantage for and
English speaker in that it more closely approximates the pronunciation of
the Japanese with the exception of one syllable. Shin-kunrei-shiki has the
advantage that it best reflects the phonemic structure of Japanese, aligns
itself with Japanese grammatical transformations, and requires fewer
keystrokes to type.

For those of you who are interested in publishing material that includes
Japanese place and people names and transliterated words, there is an 80
page style 'sheet' put out by the Society of Writers, Editors, and
Translators, Tokyo, Japan.

Mata ato de,

Phil Yff


.

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