What is Rōmaji? – L004

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with hiragana, katakana, and their combinations, you’re almost ready to move on to grammar studies.

Writing the Japanese characters quickly will come with time. So, until you get comfortable using Japanese characters, you can use rōmaji to spell Japanese words.

So What Are Rōmaji?

Rōmaji is simply Japanese written in a Roman (Latin) script, aka the alphabet. It literally means “Roman Letters” in Japanese. “Rōma” (ローマ) meaning Rome or Roman, and “ji” (字) meaning characters/letters.

Romaji is the easiest way for English speakers and speakers familiar with the Latin alphabet to learn Japanese. We can use rōmaji to understand the sounds of the Japanese language before we can read the Japanese scripts.

Rendering the Japanese scripts of hiragana, katakana, and kanji into the alphabet is called romanization. It’s common to see it if you’re learning Japanese or looking up Japanese music lyrics, and can be seen on marketing and signage in Japan.

There are three main methods of romanization used in modern-day Japan: Hepburn (ヘボン式 hebon-shiki), Kunrei-shiki (訓令式), and Nihon-shiki (日本式). While Nihon-shiki is still around, it’s no longer widely used. The most common methods seen today are Kunrei and Hepburn.

Hepburn vs. Kunrei Romanization

Hepburn is the easiest for English learners of Japanese to use because it aligns better with English pronunciation. Kunrei-shiki, on the other hand, is a little tricky for English speakers at first glance, but it can help you type more quickly in Japanese.

For example, the character し can be romanized as “shi” (Hepburn) or “si” (Kunrei). Obviously, “shi” feels more natural to English speakers because it uses the right digraphs to express the right sounds. However, the merit of Kunrei is in its simplicity. Instead of three letters, it reduces the romanization of each hiragana to just two letters (ie. “tsu” vs. “tu”). Both spellings are accepted when typing in Japanese.

Though you may still see some towns or stations romanized using Kunrei, Japan as a whole seems to be moving away from the use of Kunrei-shiki. Though I can understand the merits of Kunrei, I think this is a good move on the whole, especially since it can be confusing for young English learners trying to spell their names. (Picture “Huzimoto” vs. “Fujimoto”). But that’s a whole ‘nother blog.

If you’re curious, these are the different ways to write rōmaji in both Hepburn and Kunrei styles:

Notice how the Hepburn style (left) makes the sounds much easier to conceptualize as English speakers:

I’ve highlighted the different pronunciations for Hepburn in red above, but don’t worry about memorizing the differences between the romanization methods. Just stick with Hepburn for now.

How to Write Long Sounds and Small Tsu and More in Rōmaji

When using Hepburn romanization, there are a few things to note.

Elongated Vowel Sounds

When we want to write elongated vowel sounds, as in とうきょう (Tokyo), Hepburn typically uses a diacritic mark called a macron. It’s just a bar above a letter, like the ō in “Rōmaji”. It means in Japanese, the sound is doubled or elongated.

However, other methods can be used; for example, きょうかしょ (textbook) can be written: kyōkasho, kyohkasho, kyoukasho, or kyookasho. Japanese words adopted into English may not indicate an elongated vowel at all, such as きょうと (Kyoto).

Elongated Consonant Sounds (Small Tsu)

If we want to show that a small tsu is being used, we can double the next consonant letter, as in: つくった tsukutta (made). This is called an elongated “geminate” consonant.

When you double the consonant of a syllable like “shi”, you can double the “s”.
ざっし→zasshi (magazine).

But when doubling ch-, be careful. Instead of doubling the “c”, add a “t” instead.
まっちゃ→matcha (tea).

Syllabic n Sound

If you’re writing a word using ん, there are a few ways to write it. If it comes before the sounds m, b, or p, use an “m”. For example, “sembei” or “sempai”. Or, you can just use “n” as in “senpai”, “senbei”. Both are acceptable.

In a word like あんない (guide), you can use two n’s: annai. There are more specifics you can get into, such as using apostrophes and hyphens, but for now, this is just fine.

Writing Particles

*Also, when we learn more about “particles” in Japanese, this will become clearer, but for now, just know that these specific particles will be written with special spellings: は (wa) を (wo/o) へ (e)

We’ll get more into particles in a later lesson. For now, we’ll wrap up rōmaji here, and start learning how to begin kanji. Though at first kanji seems daunting, we’ll just take it a step at a time in the next one.

If you enjoyed this or learned something, consider buying me a kofi ♡.