4 ms·
that seems like a very anglocentric viewpoint. sure, maybe for english speakers an english based transliteration might be better. but i'd argue that makes it w
by em-bee 3y ago
that seems like a very anglocentric viewpoint.
sure, maybe for english speakers an english based transliteration might be better. but i'd argue that makes it worse for everyone else.
given how irregular english pronunciation is, i find that a transliteration system is better if it is based on languages with more regular pronunciation of letters.
i don't see how chinese pinyin creates any more hurdles for foreigners in china than say german does for foreigners in germany. (to be fair, i am fluent in both english and german, so maybe i am not a good judge for this)
- brazzy 3y ago> sure, maybe for english speakers an english based transliteration might be better. but i'd argue that makes it worse for everyone else. Certainly not worse than Kunrei-shiki. Hepburn might not be a great match to non-English languages, but it'S still a better one. If you disagree, show me one language whose speakers would naturally pronounce "Sinzyuku" correctly.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lmm 3y ago> If you disagree, show me one language whose speakers would naturally pronounce "Sinzyuku" correctly. Not one language has speakers who will naturally pronounce "Shinjuku" exactly correctly either - no two languages are alike, and it's normal and healthy to have pronunciation differences between languages natively written with the same alphabet (e.g. English speakers will naturally mispronounce many Spanish words - no-one would suggest this means Spanish spelling should change). Plenty of languages (e.g. Irish or Polish) naturally read "Sinzyuku" as something closer to the correct pronunciation than "Shinjuku", which is the only reasonable way to compare.
- numpad0 3y agoThere's hiragana/katakana for regular transcription of spoken Japanese. I'm guessing that's slightly different situation to Chinese language which does not have a phonographic script.