Forum - View topicProposed extension to romanization policy
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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I'd like to propose a slight deviation from the Hepburn standard of romanization at ANN. I've always hated seeing Japanese names with "oo" in them. Sometimes they should be written "ō", but sometimes it is correct to write them "oo" as per Hepburn modified:
But that really bugs me because "oo" reads to me like the sound in "cookie", not the double-o sound of Japanese. And the same goes with the other double-vowels described above. "ee" reads like the sound in "spleen" and "ou"/"uu" are indistinguishable from wapuro-style long vowels. So I propose we put an apostrophe or a hyphen between those word-border vowels, like this:
Any thoughts? |
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Dessa
Posts: 4438 |
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My only concern would be distinguishing between things that have hyphens and apostraphe's due to romanization, and things that have them as part of their official title (such as La Corda d'Oro / Kin'iro no Corda).
ANN is taken as an authority for many things relating to anime, and I can see people taking these as "official" spellings/romanizations. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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We're not getting rid of our existing practices, so if there's an official romanization then that takes precedence. But in the absence of such a thing, all romanizations are IMHO equally valid; we just have to pick one.
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Another concern would be people's names like Keito Koume. His family name 小梅 should be break down to "(ko) + (ume)", but I have yet to see any official romanization using "Ko-ume" or "Ko'ume" in order to "teach" readers not to pronounce it as "(kou) + (me)".
And the biggest challenge would be those male given names with "-ichi" at the end with a "n" (ん) right in front of it. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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Hmm, yeah, neither Ko-ume nor Ko'ume feel right. Koume looks natural but instinctively I read that as (Ko+u)+(me).
What about Ko·ume? But for someone like 小杉 十郎太 (misromanized as Juurouta Kosugi ), personally I prefer Jūro'ota to Jūroota. The n'ichi names don't present a challenge because according to Hepburn rules they're supposed to have an apostrophe; in a way my proposal was to extend this rule to cover other ambiguities. And maybe I'm overthinking this and there's no point in trying to "teach" readers the proper pronunciation like you say. |
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Dessa
Posts: 4438 |
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My comment was more differentiating between things with official romanizations like that, and ones that have been added for pronunciation aid. Like "La Corda d'Oro" vs the "Ko'ume". The "·" reads a bit better to me, since a) I don't know of anything off the top of my head officially using it in romanization (like with the hyphen or the apostrophe), and b) since it's smaller, it's easier to read, IMO.
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doc-watson42
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While I'm not certain about the rest of the proposal, I am opposed to introducing the interpunct, since it does not correspond to any official romanization. (Though I acknowledge that your smiley may mean that on this point you are joking.) |
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EmperorBrandon
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Posts: 2209 Location: Springfield, MO |
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If we do this, I would prefer apostrophes to hyphens. Otherwise, don't think I have anything to add.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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The apostrophe is definitely better than the hyphen, especially since you do occasionally see the hyphen used in romaji to represent a chōonpu (for example Eiji Komatsu writes his name in a nonstandard fashion as えーじ and I have seen it romanised E-ji more than once, although we use Eeji).
Some of the proposed examples "look" better than others. I'm not famiiar with maatarashii, but ma'atarashii is the most natural-seeming of the lot and the shorter ones like ku'u and o'u the most "unnatural", probably due to the letter/punctuation balance. |
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doc-watson42
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Having thought about it, IMHO it would be better not to create an unofficial extension of an standard romanization system, but to instead add links to the applicable submission forms (titles, songs, cast and staff, and episode titles) to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Japan-related articles and Hepburn romanization articles, with a statement of what our romanization policy is.
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3782 Location: Montreal |
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Adding links to the romanization policy would indeed be a good thing, but is not directly relevant to the topic at hand which is about extending said romanization policy to fix a (perceived) deficiency. The purpose of the Hepburn system is to emulate Japanese pronunciation in a way that can be read naturally by English speakers. If that was not a concern then we'd all be using Nihon-shiki since it allows a much more simple one-to-one mapping of kana. But in the cases presented above the Hepburn system fails its purpose; the oo in Mari Yokoo should not be pronounced like foot and the ee in Megumi Kanee should not be pronounced like feet.
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doc-watson42
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Then just link to Wikibooks's Japanese/Pronunciation entry, or copy what we need from the pronunciation guide from the back of any of Icarus Publishing's books (it's the most comprehensive one in English-language manga), modified to include macrons and other necessities:
Add a page with that, with whatever changes, and link the applicable submission forms to it. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Whatever you do, don't use the example I found in one of my Japanese learning books - "'a' as in 'hot'". Had me scratching my head for a while that one, till I remembered Ross yelling "hat caffee" in Friends.
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