The answer is: various people. And they did it in multiple ways, for different purposes. That's right, romaji isn't as simple as you thought. There are different system of romaji, or "romaji styles," roomaji-shiki ローマ字式.
This article doesn't explain in detail the rules of each system. It just attempts to highlight how one romaji system is different from another.
Hepburn
Purpose: teach non-Japanese people Japanese.This is the most popular, most standard style of romaji used by non-Japanese people, the (James Curtis) Hepburn style.
The greatest feature of the Hepburn style is that it has a pronunciation similar to Italian. That is, it tries to spell Japanese words as if they were Italian, Spanish or Portuguese words.
Since most English speakers do not speak Italian, they probably can't guess the romaji of a Japanese word just by hearing it, and they can't pronounce the romaji right either. But the standard ensures most of the time a single Japanese word is romanized the same way, and, to some people (Italians, Brazilians like me, etc.) the romaji spelling just sorta makes sense.
For example, gaijin. But if you try to read the romaji as English instead of Italian, you'd end up pronouncing it "gay Jim," which'd be wrong. The proper English pronunciation would be like guy djinn. However, nobody romanizes it as guy djinn 外人, because the most popular standard is Hepburn, and Hepburn says you should romanize it as gaijin.
Traditional vs. Modified
There's a traditional Hepburn style and a modified Hepburn style. The traditional is older and not as popular anymore. In it, a word such as sempai 先輩 with an m. Along with other differences and details that were ironed out in the more modern modified version.Nihon-Shiki
Purpose: standardize how Japanese people write Japanese words with the Latin alphabet
The nihon-shiki 日本式 is the "Japanese style" of romanization. Since Japanese people already know Japanese, they don't care if the romaji makes sense in Italian, English, etc. This style of romaji is extremely systematic and pays no heed to changes in pronunciation.
Examples
Let's see some differences between Hepburn and Nihon-Shiki in order to understand how Nihon-Shiki is really just bare-bones romaji while Hepburn has that extra care to help people learn Japanese.First, the H row in Nihon-Shiki is ha-hi-hu-he-ho はひふへほ. All romanizations of syllables are pretty much just combining the consonant with a vowel. In Hepburn, the hu ふ is fu ふ, as it's assumed the syllable is closer to the fu sound than to a hu sound. (this isn't exactly true, but you can see the attention to the pronunciation and lack of thereof between the styles)
This means that "balloon" is romanized fuusen 風船 in Hepburn, but huusen 風船 in Nihon-Shiki.
Similarly, Hepburn uses the irregular romanizations chi ち and tsu つ, whereas Nihon-Shiki doesn't care and goes with just ti ち and tu つ.
In sho しょ, cho ちょ, jo じょ, etc. Nihon-Shiki affords none of these and is ultimately regular. So syo しょ, tyo ちょ, zyo じょ, etc.
This means that shounen 少年 is Hepburn romaji, and syounen 少年 is Nihon-Shiki romaji.
Also, Hepburn goes sa-shi-su-se-so さしすせそ with shi instead of si. That means Nihon-Shiki is Hepburn romaji, Nihon-Shiki in Nihon-Shiki is Nihon-Siki.
Kunrei-Shiki
Purpose: update Nihon-Shiki after World War II.
The Kunrei-Shiki 訓令式, "instructions style," is basically just a new version of Nihon-Shiki. Probably made together with other language reforms that occurred after the Second World War™.
One of the main differences between Kunrei-Shiki and Nihon-Shiki is that Kunrei-Shiki instructs people to romanize the particles はをへ as wa, e and o , which's the same way Hepburn does.
- ore wa kore o yomu 俺はこれを読む (Kunrei-Shiki and Hepburn)
ore ha kore wo yomu 俺はこれを読む (Nihon-Shiki)
I'll read this.
There are also some minor changes in romanization to match the modern Japanese pronunciation.
The di ぢ and du づ of Nihon-Shiki become zi ぢ and zu づ in Kunrei-Shiki. And yes, these romaji are ambiguous with zi じ and zu ず. Take the following word for example:
- tsuzuku 続く (Hepburn)
tuduku 続く (Nihon-Shiki)
tuzuku 続く (Kunrei-Shiki)
To continue.
What a mess. But it gets messier!
Mixing All The Three
Because nobody can honestly be expected to keep track of all these romaji shenanigans, it's often the case that someone mixes up one romanization system with the other.
This often happens with ja-ju-jo じゃじゅじょfor example. This romanization is Hepburn, neither Nihon-Shiki nor its update Kunrei-Shiki have said romanizations; both use zya-zyu-zyo instead. So if there's a ja-ju-jo and something not Hepburn in a romaji, it's mixed Hepburn and non-Hepburn romaji.
Notably: syoujo 少女, "girl." In Hepburn it would be shoujo. Nihon-Shiki and Kunrei-Shiki, syouzyo. So syoujo could only be a mix of both.
JSL
The book Japanese: The Spoken Language (JSL) has its own style of romanization based on Kunrei-Shiki, but intended to teach Japanese for foreigners just like Hepburn does.
One of the main features of JSL over Hepburn is that it's meant to convey how a Japanese word is pronounced rather than just how it is spelled.
That is, with Hepburn, you're just transliterating the kana. If you have the same kana, you get the same Hepburn romaji. With JSL, the same kana may have different romaji.
For example, long vowels mat be represented with a doubled vowel in JSL. This isn't possible in Hepburn. See:
- kōhai 後輩 (Hepburn with macron)
kouhai 後輩 (Hepburn without macron because nobody knows how to type a macron)
koohai 後輩 (JSL)
Junior (of a senior)
Furthermore, JSL is also designed to allow pitch accents to be represented in romaji by using ticks.
This is, however, a double-edged sword.
Complex Romaji
Basically, JSL is a type of romaji that can only be written by a Japanese teacher or an author of a book teaching Japanese. Someone who knows very well the Japanese language.
With Hepburn, all you need to know to write theright is how a word is read. This means that if you have thefor the word, you can write the Hepburnfor it.
With JSL, you need to mind details such as pronunciation, pitch accent, etc. This stuff is not represented in writing. You don't write the pitch accent in Japanese. It's not shown in the kana. Two words written with the same kana may have different pitch accents. So it's not something as obvious.
So, although JSL is more useful than Hepburn, it's not as practical. The result is better, but it takes more effort and knowledge to romanize the JSL way than it does to romanize the Hepburn way.
Waapuro
Purpose: to type Japanese.
The waapuro ワープロ, "word processor," (wasei-eigo), style of romanization is totally different from the styles so far described.
The main difference between waapuro and the rest is that waapuro isn't about turning Japanese words into romaji, it's about turning romaji into Japanese.
That's right. You can type Japanese in a computer by typing the romaji and telling the computer to convert it. Said romaji is called waapuro romaji, used in the romaji kana henkan ローマ字仮名変換, "romaji [to] kana conversion."
One particular feature of the waapuro romaji is that every kana has an unique, distinct romanization. So you can type a kana by typing the romaji associated with it. If two kana had the same romaji, you'd have trouble typing them.
For example, in Hepburn, zu ず and zu づ are both zu. So zu is ambiguous in Hepburn. in waapuro, it's zu ず and du づ, no ambiguity.
On the other side, another particle feature of the waapuro romaji is that a single kana may be romanized in multiple ways. That is, in Hepburn it's jo じょ, in Nihon-Shiki it's zyo じょ, but in waapuro it can be jo, zyo or even jyo. This way you can type the kana no matter which romaji system you're familiar with.
The waapuro also has some weird romaji that wouldn't make any sense in any other system. For example, Japanese doesn't have any L syllables or, butare all valid, used to type the small kana っゃゅょぁぃぅぇぉ
And some compound kana have weird combinations like dhe でぇ or dyi ぢぃ.
JWA
Purpose: to blog about Japanese and anime.
The JWA romaji style is the style used by the blog Japanese with Anime, of course! Yeah, this one. You know, this one, which is neither official, nor authoritative, nor important or anything. And hasn't published any books either. So who cares about how this blog romanizes words? Seriously, the romaji they use isn't even consistent!
But anyway I figure this would be a good place to write what the actual hell is going on with the romaji used in this blog.
Basically, I use mix of waapuro, Hepburn, and a tiny bit of JSL. Nah, not really. JSL just happens to do a thing I do too. The way I romanize has nothing to do with JSL. So it's pretty much just waapuro, Hepburn, and some rules I made up after romanizing too many words.
My style rules are as follow:
For the most part, stick to the Hepburn style. For example, tsu つ is tsu, not tu. Even though waapuro would recognize both.
Switch to waapuro for ambiguous romaji. That is, du づ is du, not zu づ as Hepburn says, because then it'd be ambiguous with zu ず. I assume the main audience of this blog would like to be able to type the romaji they find without such ambiguity problem, while still feeling the familiarity of Hepburn.
The ー prolonged sound mark creates doubled vowels. This is regardless of the actual pronunciation. That is,後輩 is, butこーはい is. Ideally I'd have preferred to use a hyphen like in= こーはい), but that'd be troublesome since hyphens inare common for suffixes, so I chose this way instead.
The n ん is n as per modified Hepburn rules, never m ん. That is, use apostrophe to disambiguate in words like, kon'ya 今夜, "tonight," but gunma 群馬 should be gunma following wanpuro, and not gumma 群馬, which looks like a double consonant.
The wa は and e へ particles are romanized like in modified Hepburn and Kunrei-Shiki, but wo を is romanized wo, following traditional Hepburn and wanpuro. This is because the first two particles are very different in pronunciation, but wo is pretty close to o. There is little to gain by making its romaji o, and a lot to lose since it's ambiguous with o お and as such you can't type it as-is.
So you've learned what romaji is : the transliteration of Japanese words to the Latin alphabet. Good. But why is the romanization done in a way and not in another? Who decided thein the romaji chart ? Who chose which letters match which? And why?The answer is: various people. And they did it in multiple ways, for different purposes. That's right,isn't as simple as you thought. There are different system of, or "romaji styles,"ローマ字式.This article doesn't explain in detail the rules of each system. It just attempts to highlight how onesystem is different from another.Purpose: teach non-Japanese people Japanese.This is the most popular, most standard style ofused by non-Japanese people, the (James Curtis) Hepburn style.The greatest feature of the Hepburn style is that it has a pronunciation similar to Italian. That is, it tries to spell Japanese words as if they were Italian, Spanish or Portuguese words.Since most English speakers do not speak Italian, they probably can't guess theof a Japanese word just by hearing it, and they can't pronounce theright either. But the standard ensures most of the time a single Japanese word is romanized the same way, and, to some people (Italians, Brazilians like me, etc.) thespelling just sorta makes sense.For example, gaijin 外人 is pretty much always romanized. But if you try to read theas English instead of Italian, you'd end up pronouncing it "gay Jim," which'd be wrong. The proper English pronunciation would be like. However, nobody romanizes it as外人, because the most popular standard is Hepburn, and Hepburn says you should romanize it asThere's a traditional Hepburn style and a modified Hepburn style. The traditional is older and not as popular anymore. In it, a word such as senpai 先輩 would be romanized as先輩 with an. Along with other differences and details that were ironed out in the more modern modified version.Let's see some differences between Hepburn and Nihon-Shiki in order to understand how Nihon-Shiki is really just bare-boneswhile Hepburn has that extra care to help people learn Japanese.First, the H row in Nihon-Shiki isはひふへほ. All romanizations of syllables are pretty much just combining the consonant with a vowel. In Hepburn, theふ isふ, as it's assumed the syllable is closer to thesound than to asound. (this isn't exactly true, but you can see the attention to the pronunciation and lack of thereof between the styles)This means that "balloon" is romanized風船 in Hepburn, but風船 in Nihon-Shiki.Similarly, Hepburn uses the irregular romanizationsち andつ, whereas Nihon-Shiki doesn't care and goes with justち andつ.In compound kana , Hepburn has a bunch of irregularities, likeしょ,ちょ,じょ, etc. Nihon-Shiki affords none of these and is ultimately regular. Soしょ,ちょ,じょ, etc.This means that少年 is Hepburn, and少年 is Nihon-ShikiAlso, Hepburn goesさしすせそ withinstead of. That meansis Hepburninis
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