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Subject: Re: "ô" vs. "oo", "ou"
From: TAKASUGI Shinji (ts
sf.airnet.ne.jp)
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:41:38 GMT
References: 1
> Takasugi-san, when romanizing Japanese, I notice you tend to use "ô" a lot, rather than "oo" or "ou".
Kana orthography is not so phonemically appropriate for long vowels as Romanization is. See the following chart.
| Word | Pronunciation | Kana | Romanization
|
|---|
| 問う | トウ | とう | tou
|
| 塔 | トー | とう | tô
|
| 十 | トー | とお | tô
|
| 戸尾 | トオ | とお | too
|
Romanization using circumflexes is good as far as long vowels are concerned, because it has better correspondence with actual pronunciation. However, kana orthography is better for the two other special phonemes, /N/ and /Q/. They are always written as ん and っ in kana, while it depends on the following sound in Romanization.
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