On Wed, 23 Jul 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:
: Kevin Allstot wrote:
:
: > Is there ANY correct spelling for this stuff?
:
: No. ^_^
:
: Different branches within the Japanese government itself use different
: rules of romanization. There is no "correct" spelling.
Tsk, tsk. Is this the same Richard Lawson who posted flamebaits
about "official" romanizations? :)
In fact, there is not only *a* correct romanization, but there are
*many*, all of them correct. This does not, however mean that
*any* romanization is correct, and I certainly wouldn't advise
anyone to follow the "if the reader can still recognize it, it's
okay" credo.
"Jusenkyo", "Jusenkyou" and even the somewhat rarer "Jyusenkyo[u]"
are all correct, in that they are based on the Japanese word and
are derived by a set of rules that are applied to every romanized
word the same way (or at least they should be. Mixing
romanization schemes is a perennial sore point for many of the
more tidy-minded fanfic enthusiasts. :)
"Juusekyo", for example is just plain wrong. While the
different romanization schemes have different opinions about how
to represent elongated vowels (The old "Ryoga<->Ryouga" debate),
there is none that calls for artificially elongating a short one.
Also, there is no romanization scheme in use (nor probably in
existence) that would allow simply leaving out a part of the word,
like the "n" in this case, that is quite clearly there, in writing
as in speech.
Just because there are many ways to spell a word, doesn't mean you
can't do it wrong. If you want to use Japanese words in your fic,
take the time to make yourself familiar with romanization, and
look up the words from an authoritative source. If in doubt,
leave 'em out. Or use the Viz romanizations, if you must (I hate
those, but at least they're common ground) - just don't assume
that you can write whatever you want, just because it's a foreign
language, and never ever trust the spelling anyone else uses. :)
Sebastian