At 21:07 12/1/96, Mike W. Loader wrote:

A very interesting, informative and accurate essay, which Zen has snipped
the hell out of. ^_^

  And now we get to the serious "ou" problems. Under this
system, Akane's father is named "Souun", and he runs the
"Tendou Doujou". I've only seen this spelling in Kun-chan's
fanfics, _but_, if we hold that "Ryouga" is the proper
romanization, the same grammatical laws say "Souun" is the
correct spelling. Kun-chan is being consistent with the system.

Known as the Hepburn Modified system.  It would also, technically, require
an additional "u" on the end of Tofuu's name, like so.  The additional
character serves NO PURPOSE, other than to illustrate that the vowel should
be held of an extra beat - ie, it is a long vowel. (And in Japanese, a
'long vowel' means precisely that.)

  Well, mostly consistent. You see, the same "ou" romanization
system calls for the capital of Japan to be spelled "Toukyou",
which Kun-chan stops short of doing. And the city of Kyoto
would likewise be spelled "Kyoutou".

True - Zen stops short here too...  Zen generally WILL use the "u" unless
it comes in conflict with a culturally established normative variant -

Hence, Zen will romanize Toukyou as "Tokyo" and Doujou as "Dojo" et al.

  As for authorities' preference, I offer the following.

* Every atlas I've ever come across has used the "o" system.

* The AP uses the "o" system when romanizing place and
person names.

* My Weatherhill Kana textbook uses the "o" system.

Most of Zen's resources use a macron, or other diacritical mark to denote
long vowels - since these are generally not available in seven bit ASCII,
Zen opts for aesthetic variation.

  I've never seen a official source using the "ou" system,
though this may be due to a lack of looking on my part.

They're there.  Zen has a few.

  In fact, I believe the "ou" version might be common in
Australia due to their spelling of certain English-language
words.

American         Australian
Honor                Honour
Color                Colour
Armor                Armour

  Thus, while the "ou" spelling may be correct if you're
romanizing into Australian English, it would appear to be
inncorrect for American English. Bear in mind that "correct" is
a relative term.

Anou...  Zen spells these words with the "u" as well...  <<shrug>>

  The bottom line is that there's evidence for using either the
"o" or "ou" system. Most people, however, seem to use a
mishmash of the two, which is grammatically incorrect by
both systems. But hey, if it works for you...

Grammar has nothing to do with it - it is merely inconsistent to mix.
<<Shrug>>  If Zen were anal enough about the way a romanization was
handled, but did like the fic enough to keep a copy, he could always use
the ol' "Search and Replace" feature on the word processor.

  And there is no justification for spelling Miss Kuonji's name
as "Ukkyo". Talk about lousy translations....

^_^


Zen the Heretic-