Talk:Nihon-shiki romanization

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  Original Nihon-shiki [] 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)
thread_title: Long vowels

message: Which is the Nihon-shiki representation for タ, チ, ツ, テ, ト, ティ, トゥ, ツァ, ツィ, ツェ, ツォ? (Hepburn's ta, chi, tsu, te, to, ti, tu, tsa, tsi, tse, tso)
—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—23:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ta ti tu te to for the first five.  The rest are not standard Japanese and are undefined even in Kunrei. Jpatokal 10:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apostrophe, I think 

message: The title doesn’t seem quite appropriate for an article in the English Wikipedia. Wouldn’t ISO 3602 Strict, for instance, work better? The same applies to Kunrei-shiki Rōmaji, which would be ISO 3602 then. Christoph Päper 15:35, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Kunrei and Nihonshiki are much better known under those names than by the ISO code — which is unsurprising, as the Japanese names predate the ISO label by nearly a hundred years. Jpatokal 02:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Maybe, but it’s not like there was one intuitive canonical name or written form: Ni[pp|h]on[-| |]s[h]iki[ [R|r][o|ō|ô]ma[j|z]i| romani[z|s]ation]. Combining the most common spellings (on WP), revised Hepburn and US, proper titles might as well be Nippon romanization and Kunrei romanization. Christoph Päper 13:17, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Nippon romanization" gets 16 (sixteen) Google hits, vs. 1620 for "Nippon-shiki" and 635 for "Nihon-shiki". Jpatokal 16:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I get different numbers, but the same order of magnitude, but to be fair you should have compared “Nippon romanization” to “Nihon-shiki Rōmaji”, i.e. the actual current title of this article (and exclude Wikipedia from the search, but add transcription variants if you want). That number is just as small – whatever this tells anyone. Christoph Päper 01:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move? 

message: How is long "e" represented in Nihonshiki and Kunreishiki? AFAIK, い following a syllable ending with "e" is pronounced as long "e" in modern Japanese, but the Kunreishiki article says that the name of Kunreishiki in Kunreishiki is "Kunreisiki", not "Kunrêsiki". Was "ei" earlier pronounced as a diphthong (e. g. at the time when Kunreisiki was created)? Or is "ei" still pronounced as a diphtong on some occasions? Jaan Vajakas (talk) 16:53, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Kunreishiki is a mapping of script, not pronounciation: the kana えい become ei regardless of how they're pronounced. Jpatokal (talk) 17:44, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The Nihonshiki article says about long vowels only that "Long vowels are indicated by a circumflex, for example long o is written ô, unlike Hepburn, which uses a macron." (I guess there is no difference between Nihonshiki and Kunreishiki in that respect?). The article should elaborate more on long vowels: why is "ei" preferred to "ê" in "Kunreisiki", while "ô" is preferred to "ou" in "Tôkyô" (correct me if I'm wrong)? If the standards are unclear, then the articles should state that and bring prominent examples of how they are used de facto. Jaan Vajakas (talk) 18:00, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That sentences should be "The long vowels o and u are...", since ei is not treated as a long vowel by any of the romanization systems (Hepburn, Kunrei or Nihonshiki).  It would be nice to elaborate on why this is so, but quite frankly I have no idea, it's just the way it is.  Jpatokal (talk) 11:54, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Because ええ and えい are not the same sound, I'd guess.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.191.42.175 (talk) 02:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not agree with 68.191.42.175: I am not a native speaker, but I have understood that in most words (though not all, as I previously thought), えい is pronounced as ええ, just like おう is pronounced as おお in words of Chinese origin; this is confirmed by . It would indeed be interesting to know the historical reasons why えい and おう are treated differently in transliteration. Jaan Vajakas (talk) 09:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: "ei" and long "e"

message: Yes, foreigners tend to use Hepburn romanization, which is near-phonetic in English, but I've yet to see a native Japanese using Hepburn. Based on totally subjective observation, to me it seems that Nihon-shiki may even outrank Kunrei-shiki in frequency of use among native speakers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.163.40.100 (talk) 13:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we have to ask ourselves this question. What is the purpose of having Romanized Japanese? It seems to me of no use to native Japanese, who already have hiragana, katakana and kanji to write to each other. I've yet to see a native Japanese using Romaji to write period. The only time I've seen that happen was to try and teach foreigners the pronunciation of a Japanese word, or Japanese grammar. (Based on my own subjective observation of course.) From what I can tell, it's about 50/50 among native Japanese speakers; they use either kunrei/Nihon-shiki or Hepburn, and when they use anything other than Hepburn, they raise eyebrows with foreigners. If you asked me, I think much ado is placed on coming up with a "Japanese" style romanization with a "lossless, 1 to 1 relationship with kana," which only Japanese speakers (because they will have been taught) or hardcore Japanese scholars will use (when they become aware of it), when, in the end, most foreigners (for whom the system exists anyway right?) will use Hepburn or some variant. Those things considered, I think it a waste of time that Japanese students have to learn this system very few people use. I posit that learning kunrei/Nihon may actually hinder Japanese students in learning other languages that use the Roman alphabet, because they learn to pronounce Roman letters in a Japanese way (basically a different version of kana), and then they will have to learn yet new usages, especially when they learn English. I've taught English to Japanese students of all levels, and in my experience, it's hard to get them to pronounce English words in a way other than Japanese romaji. Anyway, yes, I would argue that on the whole, Nihon/kunrei-shiki style romaji has been supplanted by Hepburn Romanization. Try as the Japanese government might, with its ISO registration and its officialization, the defacto Romanization of choice for the Japanese language is, in fact, Hepburn style. Nobody actually uses it, except maybe Japanese natives (to whom it is redundant) and/or snobby scholars of Japanese.Solar3939 (talk) 07:29, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supplanted?! 

message: Is all extended katakana undefined in Nihon-shiki? If so, some mention of this somewhere in the article would be appreciated. Rod Lockwood (talk) 08:57, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use with Extended Katakana