Talk:Nihon-shiki Rōmaji

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Nihon-shiki uses ō for both おお and おう. Doesn't that contridict the statement that it "allows lossless mapping to and from kana"?

Zeimusu 14:41, 2004 Apr 17 (UTC)

Kunrei allows (and AFAIK even recommends) "Oo" for initial long O, which is the only place you'll find おお; are you sure Nihonshiki doesn't? Jpatokal 09:53, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually, 'tis not true. Long o written as oo instead of ou isn't limited just for initials (see below, 通る, for instance). Of course, if oo is allowed instead of ô in this case, it isn't a problem... If not, however, the clause about lossless mapping is simply untrue. How is it, then? I don't know. --213.186.250.141 07:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Original Nihon-shiki [[1]] said nothing about long vowels explicitely. But in example, they use 'Heimen' and 'shikō site'. So "allows lossless mapping to and from kana" is true, but did not allows lossless mapping to and from word or sentence of kana.--RedDragon 07:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC) 　

[edit] Kwa and gwa

Relating to this: http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/02/just_make_sure_you_spell_it_incorrectly.php

What about kwa and gwa? They seem to be "outdated" romanizations - How long have they been outdated? Is there any more info on kwa and gwa? WhisperToMe 00:07, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They're obsolete forms of modern "ka" and "ga", reflecting an ancient difference in pronunciation and theoretically written くゎ and ぐゎ, but in practice absolished (AFAIK) in the post-WW2 writing reforms. About the only place you'll run into a "kwa" in English is the equally obsolete spelling "Kwannon" for Kannon (and this only in pre-WW2 sources that also speak of "Yedo" and so on).

The blog you cite is incorrect in that the existence of "kwa/gwa" is still recognized in Kunrei as well. However, since the kana combinations くゎ/ぐゎ are never used in the modern Japanese, there's no need to transliterate them either... Jpatokal 00:24, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Long OH sound

I've had several confusing conversations with native speakers of Japanese over the years, trying to clarify the spelling of words like shoyu (soy sauce), Tokyo, etc.

Are おう and おお used interchangeably, or what? --Uncle Ed 16:28, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, both resolve to long o. Some words are spelled "o-u" and some "o-o". WhisperToMe 17:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

They are not interchangeable in Japanese; which is correct depends on the word. おお is generally a kun-yomi (i.e. Japanese) reading, so you have おおきい, とおい, etc. It also appears when you have a character ending in "o" followed by a character beginning in "o," as in the place names ひろお and みのお.

おう is usually an on-yomi (i.e. Chinese-derived) reading, e.g. おうさま (王様), たいおう (対応), although it also shows up as a conjugation of verbs ending in う (e.g. 会おう). This is why you have To-u-kyo-u and Kyo-u-to, but O-o-sa-ka... Tokyo and Kyoto are both on-yomi readings, while Osaka is kun-yomi.

Francis Drohan's book A Handbook of Japanese Usage has a nice little list of common おお words. - Sekicho 23:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)