Emperor Stephen The Mega Man Schlueter wrote:
I recently got ticked off at the spelling and grammar C&Cs I was
getting. Speaking of spelling what's with the extra "u"s in Ranma 1/2
fics? Ryouga, Ukyou, Tendou. These all have extra "u"s in them. Where
are they coming from?!!
-The Emperor (Brought to you by the letter "U")
Ok, I'll field this one. As has been said many times on this list
before, there are two different "romanization" schemes for Japanese.
One of these uses the character "o" to represent the vowel sound in
these names; the other (which I personally use) uses "ou". Neither of
these schemes is incorrect, per se, and you will find that both are
commonly used in fanfiction. To be honest, I use "ou" because I think
"Ryouga" looks better in print than "Ryoga", and so on.
That said, the "u" characters are not "extra" at all; they simply
represent an alternate romanization technique for that vowel sound.
Make sense? I hope so... there will be a quiz tomorrow.