Talk:Hepburn romanization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
"Book" This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s quality scale.
??? This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project’s importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Standardization issues

A previous version of this article made the strange claim that "Hepburn was abolished in 1994". I've removed this until some proof can be found.

Additionally, any hard information (copies of gov't decrees and such) regarding the legal status of Hepburn would be most welcome. Jpatokal 07:57, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


ANSI Z39.11-1972 American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese, American National Standards Institute, 1972, 11 pages. (known as Modified Hepburn) was abolished on Oct. 6, 1994.

Aha, so ANSI has abolished it! This is very, very different from the Japanese government doing so.

ANSI revised Z39.11-1972 in 1989 as the draft for ISO 3602. But since ISO rejected the system and approved Kunrei system in the same year, ANSI finally abolished Z39.11-1972. Ask the institute if you don't believe the fact.

There is no standard for the Romanization of Japanese in the United States today. Present valid standards are ISO 3602 (Kunreisiki), ISO 3602 strict (Nipponsiki), and Japanese Cabinet Order No.1 as of December 9, 1954 (Kunreisiki). ANSI itself, today, recommends ISO 3602:1989. Documentation--Romanization of Japanese (kana script).

In the US the de facto standard is to copy what the Library of Congress does -- and they use Modified Hepburn.

Your so-called Modified Hepburn is NOT Modified Hepburn. Long-vowel omitted Hepburn is informal, and should be called Simplified Hepburn (通用ヘボン式). -Suika

No, the difference between original and modified is the treatment of syllabic N (Nihombashi vs Nihonbashi). I make no claims about the no-long-vowels version, so feel free to edit the text. Jpatokal 01:44, 25 May 2004 (UTC)


In the US the de facto standard is to copy what the Library of Congress does -- and they use Modified Hepburn.

That is the in-house standard of Kenkyusha's New English-Japanese Dictionary that the Library of Congress adopted. It's a kind of convension not corrected yet. Modified Hepburn is no longer regarded as a legally valid standard anywhere.

I don't know if you can really speak of Hepburn being based on English phonology. Actually, almost all the vowels are pronounced completely different than in standard English. To me it seems to be more based on Latin-based languages. If it was based on English, you would write "ee" instead of long "i", "oo" insted of "u" etc.

Ironically speaking, Table II of Japanese Cabinet Order No.1 as of 1954 allows Hepburn with slight differnces; Long vowels are indicated by a circumflex, Syllabic ん is written as n, Geminate consonants are marked by doubling the consonant WITHOUT exception. I think this is the only authority for Hepburn. -Suika

[edit] Hyojun

This page (http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/02/just_make_sure_you_spell_it_incorrectly.php) says that Hyōjun is another name for "Hepburn". Is this true? WhisperToMe 05:29, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC) In addition, KIZU/Britty sez that he's heard of "hyojun-shiki" as a way to refer to hepburn, and that "Hyōjun" means standard. WhisperToMe 06:25, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, Hyojun-shiki means "standard style". It's a somewhat ambiguous term but usually it does mean Hepburn. Jpatokal 14:27, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
A while ago, I took the liberty of expanding the part about Hyojun-shiki a little bit. According to http://www.eurus.dti.ne.jp/~halcat/roomazi/iroiro1.html Hyojun-shiki specifically refers to Revised Hepburn...

[edit] Long vowels

AFAIk the only Hepburn-sanctioned long vowel representations are macrons and (in old Hepburn as surrogates) circumflexes. All the other variants listed should be nuked and moved to Romaji where they belong. Jpatokal 16:04, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think any representation except single vowel with no mark (Tokyo) or single vowel with macron are used. Stop it Whisper to me. Exploding Boy 18:38, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe not in the case of "Tokyo" in the world of English-speakers, but Hepburn variants like "ou" are passed around like hotcakes, especially in the world of anime fans. Sorry, but the "Tohkyoh" thing wasn't really referring to the use specifically with "Tokyo", but in a more general context. Perhaps "Tokyo" isn't such a good example in explaining Hepburn variants, but it's not my fault that "oh" is used in place of ō, is it? Either all of them stay, or none of them stay. (Except in the case of ignoring the long vowels, which is done with loanwords into English) WhisperToMe 18:43, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
WTM, I'd send you to the Japanese Romaji page which discusses Hepburn variants in detail, but hot-diggity-dawg, you can't read Japanese now can you?
Anyway, "oh" is so-called "passport Hepburn" as endorsed by the Japanese Foreign Ministry for passports only. "ou", on the other hand, is wapuro romaji and not Hepburn of any kind; I'll type up an article on this some day. Jpatokal 03:32, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Some day" finally came today: wapuro romaji

No, "Tokyo" is not a good example to use. The "ou" construction used to be common but isn't any more, and anime fans aren't the arbiters of correct romanization. Exploding Boy 19:03, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you here. I personally don't care what happens to the "alternate romanization" information on the romanization variants on the Hepburn page as the same info is more or less at the Romaji page. WhisperToMe 19:07, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)


"Features of Hepburn romanization" Perhaps I didn't read carefully enough, but I don't see much difference in the features of hepburn and the features of nihonshiki & kunreishiki. Is there something I missed? If there truely is no difference then how are these features? I agree that the things should be mentioned, but if they are exclusive, they are hardly features. The reason I came on here was to find out what system uses "ou" type romanization. I was surprised to find out that this is called "wapuro" and isn't as ubiquitous as it seems to be. Something I feel I should note is that when my friends and classmates (international students) send me email in Japanese they seem to mix wapuro and "adopted into English" styles. The difficulty of typing with macrons, circumflexes, and tildes seems to be changing the face of what is standard. Dustin Asby 17:51, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Fundamental problem?

I removed the following:

There is also a fundamental problem in the use of ō-- when seeing a new word without a pronounciation it can be impossible to tell whether the Japanese would use the hiragana/katakana oo or ou.
  1. This is not unique to Hepburn, both Kunrei and Nihonshiki do the same thing (just with a circumflex).
  2. The pronunciation of the two cases is identical. Only the kana spelling isn't, and this is pretty much irrelevant if the original is kanji (which is usually the case).

I'd suggest moving this to Romaji if you can explain why this is such a "fundamental" problem. Jpatokal 17:06, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Wi" and "we"

Shouldn't the hepburn romanizations for ゐ and ゑ reflect the pronunciation of those characters during the 11-20 centuries period, which were i and e/ye? Just wondering that oh maybe a millennium is relevant and that hepburn is supposed to represent pronunciation.

Wikipedia doesn't propose improvements, it documents. And this isn't exactly a major problem. Jpatokal 08:33, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not always have flawless documentation. And that's why we need fact checking when something doesn't sound right.
Could you help me find some sources that shows why the two characters should (or "Wikipedia should") be documented as wi + we instead of something else for this article? If this doesn't interest you, it really isn't a major problem for you or me if you don't reply.
Here's a link to BS4812 (a British standard for Hepburn), which uses "wi" and "we". It's cross-referenced to ANSI, with incompatible parts visible but struck out, and references the Library of Congress standard. Jpatokal 07:25, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I also find it unusual, the kana were generally used as alternatves to the i and e kana, and that is the proper pronounciation. It also creates conflict with the ウィ and ウェ, as they are also romanised similarly and relfect the actual pronounciation of a "W" sound. --FlareNUKE 03:35, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Legal status paragraph

From the point of view of someone who doesn't know much about Japan, it should be obvious that "Newspapers and TV use Hepburn" is extremely misleading, because it is totally unqualified, and thus implies to a naive reader that Japanese newspapers are written in romaji. The whole paragraph reads like a rant, so I toned it right down and commented out the Newspapers line completely. Also, it should be said that this is actually a quasi-Hepburn, since "n" and long vowels are not indicated at all. Also, there are some places which use the other systems - blanket statements "All ... use Hepburn" and "Every ... is in Hepburn" aren't justified. --DannyWilde 03:23, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

"<!-- This comment is extremely misleading -> Newspapers and TV use Hepburn.-->"
How are they misleading? There are English-language newspapers and media in Japan for expats. WhisperToMe 18:56, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Syllabic n

"Syllabic n (ん) is written as n before consonants, but as n' (with an apostrophe) before vowels and y."

Wouldn't it also be n' before another n? Otherwise konnichi might be accidentally interpreted as a doubled consonant (こっにち), rather than a syllabic n (こんにち). (originally unsigned by 210.50.55.25 on 01:02, 14 September 2005)

The small tsu never directly precedes an "n" consonant in Japanese, so "konnichi" can be unambiguously interpreted as こんにち and not こっにち. Hence disambiguation with an apostrophe would be unnecessary. —Tokek 01:52, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Repeated vowel vs. long vowels

A phonetics book on Japanese that I have read interpreted some words as having a phoneme repetition (e.g. /uu/) instead of a single long vowel phoneme (e.g. /ū/), if the two vowels in question come from different morphemes or different kanjis. For examples, 箕面 Minoo (箕, mino + 面, o), 黄色 kiiro (黄, ki + 色, iro), 須佐之男 Susanoo (之, no + 男, o), and 暴風雨 bōfūu (風, fū + 雨 u). I wonder if any of the hepburns or any other romaji makes this distinction? —Tokek 02:36, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Circular definition

Maybe this isn't the best page, but not sure where else should I point this. In Hiragana and Katakana articles, pronunciation of kana is given using Hepburn. But in this article, Hepburn is defined using kana, so someone who doesn't know Japanese is at a complete loss as to how they are actually pronounced, except that it is "as an English speaker would pronounce it", which isn't very informative. Probably the best way to solve this is by giving IPA equivalents as well, preferably in Hiragana and Katakana articles, or here as well. Nikola 05:37, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point. My college Japanese textbook devotes considerable space to pronunciation of the kana, and its author Eleanor Jorden chose not to use Hepburn at all. I've written a Javascript which converts Hiragana into Romaji, so I'm "involved" to some extent. --Uncle Ed 19:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

See our article on Japanese phonology. Gdr 21:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extended katakana

Does anybody object to the addition of スィ and シィ to the extended katakana chart? Both are unofficially used for the English sound "si", often by the media.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  05:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I suppose. --FlareNUKE 05:28, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tsi kana?

The romanisation for the ツィ　for Hepburn would be tshi instead of tsi. Considering シ is romanised similarly. Also, tshi = chi. So therefore the romanisation could also be chi, and a better way to represent that is チ. So the ツィ kana should be removed. --FlareNUKE 02:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you're confusing ツ and シ。201.239.182.69 22:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

We use ツィ only for foreign word such as ツィオルコフスキー (Tsiolkovskiy). From the principle of the romanisation of Hepburn -- to express Japanese word for ease for English speaking people -- It may be written in original spelling.--RedDragon 05:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Students of Japanese as a foreign language usually learn Hepburn

User:Hirasaram slapped a [citation needed] tag on the statement "Students of Japanese as a foreign language usually learn Hepburn". I'm not sure how we're supposed to get a "citation" for this, but every Japanese-for-English-speaking-foreigners textbook I've seen and owned uses Hepburn. Jpatokal 09:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. It's an unverifiable fact and should therefore not be in an encyclopedic article. --Himasaram 14:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Huh? It's a completely verifiable fact to the point of being obvious — which is why you can't find a reference to an scholarly review in the Journal of Romanization Studies confirming this.
As it stands, the article doesn't have a single reference, and I dare say there are plenty of much more disputable facts in there... Jpatokal 15:09, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RedDragon's edits

RedDragon, I appreciate your effort, but please realize that the topic of this article is Hepburn romanization, only, and the main audience of this article is English-speakers, not native Japanese. Essay-type commentary like [1] is not relevant or appropriate here. Jpatokal 09:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to notice that 'hyōjun-shiki' is not used in Japan. Even Hepburn system supporters do not use 'hyōjun-shiki'. --RedDragon 10:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Jpatoka, it certainly is relevant if the term is not actually used. We should not say that something is sometimes used if it is not.
RedDragon, the reason we are not convinced it isn't used is that it does seem to be used by some people, since according to Google there are many thousands of pages on the internet that use it, and the term is defined in dictionaries like 大辞林.
Is it perhaps the case that it used to be called "hyōjun-shiki", but that term is no longer used in Japan? If so, then perhaps we ought to change "is sometimes called" to "was formerly called", or even to remove the term from the introduction and move it to a section on the history of the system. We just need the facts, so if you can help us to find them, please do so! — Haeleth Talk 16:15, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
As I wrote, hyōjun-shiki is historical term. Google has 30 hits for "標準式ローマ字". And they are almost historical discriptions. I myself did not know hyōjun-shiki before. [[2]] For "ヘボン式 ローマ字" 41,600 hits. [[3]] So we have no entry or redirect for "標準式ローマ字" in Japanese Wiki. I recommend you to refer abandaned or historical name for "hyōjun-shiki rōmaji". When you use Google.co.jp, it is recommended to set word in " ". I you specify 標準式ローマ字 without " "s, Google separates word into "標準", "式", and "ローマ字". So almost all are garbage. --RedDragon 13:42, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Did Hepburn invent it?

This article says that Hepburn romanization was "devized" by Hepburn for his dictionary. He doesn't claim that in the dictionary front-matter, and I read somewhere, I think it was in Christopher Seeley's book: "A History of Writing in Japan", that the system was devized by a Romaji Kai some time before Hepburn's dictionary was published and Hepburn used it (wisely.)

Any independent confirmation that JCH actually devised it? JimBreen 04:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

TAKEBE Yoshiaki 武部良明Nihongo no Hyōki『日本語の表記』1979 said

>After 2nd edition of Hepburn's Dictionary was published, Rōmajikai (羅馬字会) defined modified Hepburn style in 1885. In 3rd edition of Hepburn's Dictionary he adopted this style.

So Rōmajikai modified Hepburn style.--RedDragon 14:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have access to 武部良明's book, but I have found several references to a slightly different sequence. In his first edition dictionary (1867) Hepburn used the form of romanization then commonly used by Westerners in Japan. え was "ye", つ was "tdz" and words like 東京 came out as "Tokio". The Rōmajikai published its recommended romanization in 1885. and Hepburn adopted it for the third (1887) edition of the dictionary. So it's true to say that the Rōmajikai "defined modified Hepburn style", but it most likely wasn't of Hepburn's devizing. JimBreen 23:30, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to RedDragon for that addition to my amendment.JimBreen 03:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where did you define revised Hepburn?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs defines Hepburn style [4]. In this style "n" is replaced by "m" before "m", "p", and "b". And station names of JR are like Shimbashi not Shinbashi according to Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport requires. We think "Shinbashi" is in Kunrei-shiki. Only road signs use "Shinbashi". --RedDragon 08:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Gaimusho's style is "passport Hepburn". MILT can say whatever it likes, but JR's "Shinbashi" is revised Hepburn. (Kunrei would be "Sinbasi".)
Anyway, like the article says, the Library of Congress is the standard for revised Hepburn. See eg. [5]. Jpatokal 07:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
JR uses Shimbashi for station name. All JR use this type of Hepburn. At least, "Revise Hepburn" is not most used in Japan.--RedDragon 08:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I stand corrected (and surprised). Tokyo Metro also seems to use "Shimbashi". Jpatokal 05:23, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
The Library of Congress have books below also.
  1. Nampo Doho Engokai
  2. Gumma Bundanren sōsho
  3. Semba
They should be written as,
  1. Nanpo Doho Engokai
  2. Gunma Bundanren sōsho
  3. Senba
--RedDragon 13:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../h/e/p/Talk%7EHepburn_romanization_6ecc.html"