Romaji
From UniLang Wiki
Writing Japanese words with the latin alphabet is called Romaji (ヘボン).
It is important to know that there are different systems for transcribing Japanese words.
As a particle ã‚’ is pronounced [o], but according to the Hiragana table it is written [wo]. So depending on the transcription system you will see "o" or "wo", but when writing a text with your Japanese input system you need to type "wo".
The same goes for the particle ã?¸, which is pronounced [e] but according to the Hiragana table is actually [he].
And there is the particle ã?¯, which is pronounced [wa] but uses the Hiragana character for [ha].
So watch out for ã?¯, ã?¸ and ã‚’ when typing a text in Japanese.
There are three main systems for transcribing Japanese into roman letters.
- ヘボン�: Hepburn-style, close to English pronunciation, wide-spread.
- 訓令�: Kunrei-style, the "official" transcription system, used in Japanese schools.
- 日本�: Nihon-style, closest to the original kana.
ヘボン�: Hepburn-style
...
訓令�: Kunrei-style
...
日本�: Nihon-style
...
To read about how Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana work together, take a look at the page on Japanese writing systems.
