Talk:Romanization of Japanese/Archive 2

message: I am using a romanization system of my own as a Japanese input method, which I call "an extended Hepburn system." or <I>kwakuchau hebonshiki</I>. Please read
An Extended Hepburn System and/or Japanese version with an appendix
It is a transliteration system of KANA syllabary and produces a good result especially when applied to the classical KANA script. I am not sure the system is worth reference in Wikipedia, but I think the ultimate criterion should be the system itself, its rationality or lucidity. It is dificult to measure and we assume that the widely used system is so much the better. But my system is so young. Alas!
--2006 June 1
It is odd that a system of Latin alphabet, a more elaborete code than Kana, is inferior in the resolving power. None of the traditional Hepburn systems and Kunrei or Nihonshiki systemms can differentiate those sounds which are rendered differently as チ ティ ヂ ジ etc. in Kana. I know the sounds of ヂ ジ are said to be neutralized. But still Kana can be used to differentiate French and English sounds of soft 'G' for example. Pioneers of Japanese romanization systems were rationalists and did not hesitate to rid the Kana syllabary of what seemed to them redundant letters like ヰ ヱ ヲ etc. They anticipated to replace Kana syllabary with Romanized one, but what they tackled was already a defective one. And  today the actual Kana syllabary is extended to cope with the influx of foreign words. My system is a trasliteration system of this extended Kana syllabary. And I worked it out always wondering to myself how Hepburn would have opted. The first step was reintroduction of 'dzu' for ヅ.--2006 June 8 kmns
I must add that 'zhi' is introduced for ジ so that 'ji' can be used exclusively for ヂ together with the stipulation that Sokuon or the syllabic stop preceding 'j' is 'd'.--2006 June 10 kmns
: That's nice, but please see Wikipedia:No original research. Jpatokal 12:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pardon my ignorance, but I fail to see the merits of this system and no one seems to actually use it ... I do not know the purpose of the above post (is it just an "FYI"?), but I would be strongly against even mentioning this romanization system in this article, let alone even considering its adoption as Wikipedia standard. CES 13:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

text: You've clearly spent quite a bit of time with this romanization system, but with all due respect, the point of this talk page isn't to discuss romanization systems per se, but to discuss how this article can be improved.  Perhaps you might consider using your user page to expand upon your romanization system? CES 14:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: An Extended Hepburn System

message: It says that Japanese doesn't have kana for Ye and Yi but it actually does, they're just not standard Japanese anymore. The explanation of how Ebisu became Yebisu just by adding a "Y" makes not much sense... Ebisu has been traditionally written ヱビス or ゑびす. In older times there was a difference in pronunciation between so-called "ye" and "e", but this was not existent anymore when the ヱ and ゑ kana's were finally abolished. Still though, the Ebisu Beer company uses the traditional spelling (in Japanese) and thus it is often transcribed using YE. And the old city of Edo has also been spelled ゑど so a transcription of the old version of the word would obviously result in Yedo. So it didn't go from E to YE, but the other way around. Some revision on this part please. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SuperMidget (talk • contribs) 2006 May 7 02:26 (UTC).
:Oddly enough, that doesn't quite seem to be the case: ゑ is the old kana for we, not ye. As I understand it  , by the time anyone started romanizing Japanese for Anglophones, the Japanese w was already no longer pronounced anywhere save before a. The use of ye at the time is probably just a kana-bijective choice of romanization. It'd be nice if I could find a clearer reference; I'm having to piece together snippets from various pages. Still, I've updated to reference the kana and the sound change. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 19:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, it's because the we kana was used as an alternative to the e kana. Being that ye is now pronounced and written with e kana is probably the reason. --FlareNUKE 05:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for editing this part of the page, and correcting this mistake. I'll correct one thing though it says 'the Kanji' we instead of 'the syllable'. -- SuperMidget 15:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archaic Variants: Ye, Yi 

message: If romaji should be a redirect to this article, there needs to be a better definition of Romaji. With the current redirect, people could be mistaken to think romaji is only the represantation of Japanese words in romaji, which is not true (see the disambig page on romaji in Jap wikipedia also the ラテン文字 article). Mackan 03:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romaji is not only romanization of Japanese 

message: I wish to make a proposal and i hope that this idea will be acceptable. Would be possible to create a Wikipedia totally in Romaji?
:Why? --FlareNUKE 00:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There exists at least a two-digit number of Wikipedias written in a Latin script already... (or do you mean a Wikipedia written entirely in Romanized Japanese?) ;-) 惑乱 分からん 23:16, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia in Romaji

message: This article needs information about where spaces are normally inserted when romanizing. Between words/kanji? One or both sides of particles? Before suffixes? Japanese uses far fewer spaces than languages written in the Latin alphabet. The language itself doesn't contain information about where spaces should be added. Wipe 19:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spacing?

message: I changed "read and write using the Latin alphabet" to "read and write using Romanization of Japanese" several times.  But reverted everytime.  I think "read and write using the Latin alphabet" is ambiguous.  This implies,
# "read and write English" and 
# "rean and write Romanization of Japanese"
But you prefer to say "read and write using the Latin alphabet".   And reverted every times, and will be reverted soon.  Why do you like this wording?--RedDragon 06:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't read and write "Romanization of Japanese", you read and write romanized Japanese. You can also write in or using rōmaji/romanized Japanese/the Latin alphabet. I agree that the emphasis should be on romanized Japanese and not just the Latin alphabet, because reading and writing using the alphabet could also refer to reading and writing English, for example. Wipe 09:30, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have made it "romanized Japanese" as suggested by Wipe. As I stated above, no one would use that phrasing to refer to English. Anyway, English has no more of a special relationship with the Latin alphabet than any other language that uses it. It was there because it is actually a concise way of making clear, to anyone who doesn't know, what it is that "romanization" entails - the use of the Latin alphabet. Dekimasu 09:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Although I don't really care what the article says, I'll remark that, to me, a native English speaker, "read and write using the Latin alphabet" does not mean "read and write English". It means nothing more than it says: writing using the Latin alphabet. The context makes it obvious that what's being written in the alphabet is Japanese, because (as stated above) if we intended to say "read and write English", it would be phrased that way, not as "read and write using the Latin alphabet". - furrykef (Talk at me) 07:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "read and write using the Latin alphabet"

message: Some people use capital letters to represent katakana, while lowercase letters to represent hiragana. For example:
watashi wa SUUPAA ni ikimasu. (I am going to the supermarket.)
Is this a standard anywhere? Should it be mentioned in the article? 66.92.144.74 21:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The only place I've ever seen this was in some elementary Japanese textbooks that used roomaji. I think  it is rare because there is not so much need to romanize katakana words, there's no difference in pronunciation, capital letters are already used to indicate proper nouns, acronyms and start of sentences etc., and it is simply unaesthetic as all-caps is harder for the eyes and its use in warning signs etc. makes any all-caps words in normal text look like "shouting". -- 82.103.215.236 21:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capital letters