Romaji
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The Japanese language employs hiragana, katakana, and kanji, which makes it a bit of a challenge for English speakers. The romanization of Japanese (a.k.a. romaji) is the application of the Latin script (i.e. a, b, c, d...) to write the Japanese language. It comes in handy if you are new to Japanese. In Platinum Japanese, every Japanese word and phrase are written both in the Japanese characters and romaji. You can refer to whichever that fits your current level and needs.
A few notes on romaji, though. There are actually a few different styles of romanization. I'll mention two of them here which are relevant to the point I’d like to make.(continue to the next post...) -
One style is the kind that's most commonly used by Japanese native speakers. Not that they would write romaji on a daily basis, but at least they would need to write their names in romaji when applying for their passports or corresponding with people overseas.
When Japanese native speakers write romaji, they use the Latin alphabets as if they were using the hiragana. This entails that the particle は wa will be written as ha; the particle へ e will be written as he; the particle を o will be written as wo. This is because the hiragana which normally reads ha is used as the particle wa; the hiragana which normally reads he is used as the particle e; the hiragana which theoretically reads wo is used as the particle o. So there is discrepancy between the sound and what is written in romaji, just like there is discrepancy between the sound and what is written in hiragana.
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The discrepancy goes beyond these particles; most notably, we find discrepancy in long vowels. For example, in Japanese, the word that means "teacher" is pronounced sensee. But in fact, in hiragana it is written as せんせい(se + n + se + i). So when Japanese people write the word in romaji, they would write sensei, although they pronounce it sensee.
The bottom line is that, for native speakers of Japanese, romaji is a literal translation of hiragana into Latin script, but not a sound transcription.(continue to the next post...) -
The other style of romanization aims at more accurate transcription of the sound. This is the style that we employed in Platinum Japanese. So the word for "teacher" is written as sensee (not sensei); the word for younger brother is written as otooto (and not otouto); the particle wa is wa; the particle e is e; the particle o is o. Straight forward! We particularly chose the style to straightforwardly present you with the sound that you'll actually hear and say.
So, when you encounter a kind of romaji which is not what you're familiar with, it is likely to be the "true to hiragana" style, but not the "true to the sound" style. Keep that in mind so that you won't get confused!
Thanks for reading my long post! If you have any questions about the topic, feel free to ask!
