Talk:Romanization of Japanese

Hyphens
Why are hyphens sometimes seen? What do they indicate? Equinox ◑ 23:11, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Hyphens were once the preferred method of noteing "the separation of easily confused phonemes" - that is, Jun-ichirō rather than Jun'ichirō — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.231.28.66 (talk) 01:49, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

"The word rōmaji...is more often used to refer to the Roman alphabet itself than to any specific form of romanized Japanese"
"The word rōmaji literally means "Roman characters", and in Japan it is more often used to refer to the Roman alphabet itself (as used in English and other European languages) than to any specific form of romanized Japanese."

This is completely false. "Romaji" unambiguously refers to Japanese written in roman letters. I work in Japanese elementary schools and the teachers swiftly correct anyone who refers to the roman alphabet generically as "romaji". You will also hear Japanese people say things like "Some English words, like 'pen', can be read as romaji", meaning that if read as romanized Japanese its pronunciation would approximate its actual English pronunciation. Never once have I heard the roman alphabet itself referred to as "romaji" except by children who are too young to understand the distinction.

I would do the edit myself but I don't have a source which meets Wikipedia standards. Then again, the original statement doesn't seem to either. 218.47.129.29 (talk) 10:42, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, the statement is almost the reverse of the truth. But look up rōmaji in a dictionary, and it clearly has the original meaning of "the Roman alphabet". The problem is that in general usage, speakers are almost universally clueless about the distinction between a language and a character set (or "alphabet", with the added problem that in Japanese arufabetto means "a letter from the Roman alphabet). So yes, you hear people saying rōmaji to mean "Romanised Japanese", or something like rōmaji yomi to refer to Italian (meaning that it is more or less pronounced like romanised Japanese). But the "sources" (Daijirin, for example) do not mention this popular (mis)conception. Imaginatorium (talk) 11:12, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

"Yajiro" in 1548? Unsourced claim, and I can't find any Japanese-language resources to corroborate this.
The History section of the page states:

It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro.

The text was apparently added by on Halloween, 2004, in this edit. This claim is unsourced, and what's more, I cannot find any Japanese references that corroborate this.


 * The corresponding Japanese Wikipedia article makes no mention of any "Yajiro", and doesn't put a start date on development. The earliest date they give is 1581 as the start of the first Portuguese - Japanese dictionary, the Nippo Jisho, formally published 22 years later in 1603.


 * Meanwhile, the Encyclopedia Nipponica article (in Japanese) available here via Japanese-language reference aggregator site Kotobank also makes no mention of any "Yajiro". Instead, the article describes one Francisco Xavier starting missionary service as Catholic priest in Japan in 1549, and mentions that the oldest text in romaji is apparently the Sanctos no Gosagveo no vchi Nvqigaqi ("Extracts from the Acts of the Apostles") from 1591, followed the next year by the Feiqe no Monogatari (i.e. The Tale of the Heike).

None of this definitively rules out the possibility that someone named "Yajiro" was the one to develop the Portuguese romanization system for Japanese, but it also doesn't corroborate it either.

I'll be adding to this section. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 06:35, 15 February 2020 (UTC)


 * With the help of a commenter to a thread over on the Japanese Stack Exchange, I found this Japanese-language Britannica encyclopedia entry (in Japanese). Rough translation: "In the 1500s, first Japanese Christian. Also called "Anjirō" in Western writings. Was from Satsuma, committed murder, and went to Malacca in 1547 on a Portuguese ship. Became a student of F. Xavier and was baptised. With Xavier, returned to Satsuma in 1549, traveled and proselytized. Persecuted after Xavier left Japan, so went back to China in 1551, and was reportedly killed near Ningbo." Nothing about romaji. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:46, 19 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I've found some promising results for this on Google Books snippet view, but I don't have access to any of the books in question. There's An Introduction to Vietnamese Culture, which Google tells me contains this passage: "As a matter of fact, in 1548 the Romaji or the romanized script of Japanese was practised for the first time by Yajiro, a Japanese missionary" (p. 50). Viet-Nam, Civilization and Culture by Huard and Durand contains: "The transcription with the Latin alphabet of languages writing in chinese or sinoid characters has been probably attempted for the first time in 1548 by Yajiro, a Japanese convert baptized by Saint Francois-Xavier" (p. 78). An Introduction to Vietnam repeats this information, citing Huard and Durand (p. 26). I've also found a couple of previewable sources which state that Anjiro/Yajiro translated the Gospel of Matthew and the Christian catechism into romanized Japanese (The Mikado's Empire and Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies), but these sources don't claim that he was the first. The latter source cites George Schurhammer (1982), Francis Xavier: His Life, his Times, vol. 4, p. 271, but this book isn't available online. All in all, it seems likely that the information in the article is verifiable, but without proper access to the sources I can't add a citation myself. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:37, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Japanese Diaspora and documents
I started a paragraph about the Japanese diaspora in Western countries such as Brazil and the United States. In countries whose languages use the Latin alphabet and which have a Japanese diaspora, a Japanese romanization system is necessary for transcribing Japanese names in documents such as identity cards and passports. In these countries Japanese immigrants and descendants are mostly known by their romanized names in written media, though they may learn Japanese scripts and sign their names with them. 187.16.131.51 (talk) 12:24, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but your claim really does not make any sense. In the diaspora (in countries using the Roman alphabet), people whose ancestors were Japanese have Japanese names which were converted into the Roman alphabet before they were born, often in a curious way. So Fujimori from Peru is actually called フヒモリ in katakana, which would be rendered Fuhimori in Hepburn. But his descendants are stuck with this Hispanic name, and no further conversion to Roman letters occurs. Identity documents of people born in Peru are generated essentially by a Spanish system. So I am removing the paragraph, but feel free to explain more clearly why you think it might be needed. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2022 (UTC)