6 ms·
I don't know the details history of the system's development, however I notice that with Kunrei everything spelling is neatly 2 characters while with Hepburn it
by mytailorisrich 11mo ago
I don't know the details history of the system's development, however I notice that with Kunrei everything spelling is neatly 2 characters while with Hepburn it may be 2 or 3 characters:
Kunrei: ki si ti ni hi mi
Hepburn: ki shi chi ni hi mi
The politics of the issue is obviously that Hepburn is older and an American system while Nihon and Kunrei are very purposely domestic (Nihon "is much more regular than Hepburn romanization, and unlike Hepburn's system, it makes no effort to make itself easier to pronounce for English-speakers" [1]). Apparently, Hepburn was later imposed by US occupying forces in 1945.
Perhaps 80 years is long enough and suitable to effect the change officially with no loss of face.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon-shiki
- Theofrastus 11mo agoThe political aspect might be a big part of why and how the systems are chosen. Didn't know about that!
- jinushaun 11mo agoPolitics aside, Hepburn is better. You can’t seriously say you prefer “konniti-ha” and “susi-wo tabemasu”
- xigoi 11mo agoShould we also change other languages’ orthographies to make them easier to pronounce for English speakers? “Bonzhoor” instead of “Bonjour”?
- QuercusMax 11mo agoIf French didn't use the Roman alphabet natively, you might have a point. At some point you might as well use Roman characters the way the Cherokee alphabet does - which is to say, uses some of the shapes without paying attention to what sounds they made in English.
- wewtyflakes 11mo agoEnglish is the top language spoken in all the world; it would be lovely to facilitate better communication with that population.
- QuercusMax 11mo agoAnd the way English generally uses the Roman alphabet (obviously excluding the zillions of irregularities) isn't that far off from how most European languages use the Roman alphabet. I'd expect that Spanish, German and French speakers would benefit just as much as English speakers from these changes.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago> And the way English generally uses the Roman alphabet (obviously excluding the zillions of irregularities) isn't that far off from how most European languages use the Roman alphabet. Its not far off from the union of how all other European languages use the Roman alphabet, would be closer to accurate.
- QuercusMax 11mo agoSure, but the point is this isn't really making romanized Japanese more English-like. It's making it more similar to how just about every other language already uses the Roman alphabet. This isn't an Anglo-centric thing, it's just good common sense - unless your goal is to make it harder to pronounce your language properly, which seems like an obvious own-goal.
- AndriyKunitsyn 11mo agoAbout 30% of people worldwide use a language that's not written in Roman alphabet. Additionally, being written in Roman alphabet doesn't neccessarily mean it's clear how to pronounce it. Hungarians calls their country "Magyarország", but unless you know Hungarian, you will be surprised with how it's pronounced. Same as "Chenonceaux", "Tekirdağ" or "Crkvina".
- rdtsc 11mo ago> Should we also change other languages’ orthographies to make them easier to pronounce for English speakers? “Bonzhoor” instead of “Bonjour”? Already done. - Komen ça va? - Mo byin, mærsi. We don't have anything against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole, do we?
- ronsor 11mo agoJapanese people don't read romanized Japanese. Even Japanese learners don't read romanized Japanese. Romanization is, by and large, a thing that exists for people who already know European/Western languages.
- xigoi 11mo agoWhat I’m complaining arout is that it seems to only be designed for English speakers, not for European language speakers.
- SpecialistK 11mo agoOthers in the thread have suggested that Hepburn works quite well for German and other European languages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46286292#46286611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46286292#46286611) But it's a reality that English is the primary (if not sole) focus, for historical reasons and as the global lingua franca. English is taught (poorly, from what I hear) in schools, played on train announcements, is the only Western language available on ticket machines, and is the assumed language of non-Asian visitors to the country. I was even on a couple of domestic flights a few days ago and the captain / FAs made announcements in English. It is not "arbitrary" at all.
- devnullbrain 11mo ago>English Use *h₂enǵʰ-ish please.
- lostlogin 11mo agoWe could start by standardising English, so that pronunciation was always the same for a given letter order.
- stickfigure 11mo ago> “Bonzhoor” instead of “Bonjour” English is already heavily Norman-ized. Half of our vocabulary - including the word pronounce - comes from French.
- soraminazuki 11mo agoDo you think Japanese people actually read and write in kunrei-shiki? No, they write using their own letters. Romanization is an approximation that exists primarily for two purposes: 1. to express Japanese terms in other languages and 2. to enable typing Japanese on a computer. It’s silly to enforce kunrei-shiki, a system rarely used in practice, in the name of "accuracy" based on arbitrary criteria. Romanized spellings will never be accurate for obvious reasons. Given the purpose of romanization, it’s more practical to choose a system that allows non-Japanese speakers to pronounce words more closely aligned with the correct pronunciation.
- xigoi 11mo agoWhat I’m complaining about is that the romanization is based specifically on English, arbitrarily chosen from all languages that natively use the Latin alphabet. For example, what’s transcribed as “shi” is only “aligned with the correct pronunciation” for English speakers. In other languages it would be more accurately transcribed as “ši”, “szi“, “chi”, “schi” or even “si”.
- JuniperMesos 11mo ago"Better" depends on what you care about. _konniti-wa_ (which is the Kunrei-siki romanization of こんにちは, _konniti-ha_ is Nihon-shiki form that preserves the irregular use of は as topic-marking /wa/) and _susi-o_ (again, Kunrei-siki ignores a native script orthographic irregularity and romanizes を as _o_ not _wo_ ) are more consistent with the native phonological system of Japanese. In Japanese coronal consonants like /t/ and /s/ are regularly palatalized to /tS/ and /S/ before the vowel /i/, and there's no reason to treat _chi_ and _ti_ as meaningfully different sequences of sounds. Linguists writing about Japanese phonology use it instead of Hepburn for good reason. Obviously, being more transparent to English-readers is also a reasonable goal a romanization system might have, and if that's your goal the Hepburn is a better system. I don't have a strong opinion about which system the Japanese government should treat as official, and realistically neither one is going to go away. But it's simply not the case that Hepburn is a better romanization scheme for every purpose.
- shiroiuma 11mo agoI don't see how kunrei-shiki is useful at all. If I want to write Japanese words so non-Japanese speakers can pronounce them approximately, then Hepburn is the way to go. If I want to write Japanese words so Japanese speakers can read them best, I'll write them in actual Japanese. This isn't 1975, and computers are perfectly able to render hiragana, katakana, and kanji. What do I need kunrei-shiki for? I've been living in Japan for years now, and have never found a use for it.
- decimalenough 11mo agoIt originates from a Meiji-era society that quite seriously proposed ditching kanji/kana entirely in favor of romanized Japanese. This actually happened in Vietnam, and Korea comes close although they use the Hangul script, not the Latin alphabet.
- naniwaduni 11mo agoYou are very, very likely to find people who prefer "sushi wo tabemasu", because standards are great.