This system is particularly known as 'Hepburn' and takes its name from James Curtis Hepburn, the American missionary who created the reading system and published the first dictionary using western alphabet letters. This method of writing is also called the romanization of Japanese. Rōmaji, ローマ字, literally means Roman letters and refers to the Latin script that is used to pronounce the Japanese language for all the beginners. It was invented for non-Japanese people who couldn't read japanese characters. In our first step it is useful to use the transcription with Latin characters, the alphabet in order to be able to read the characters. Introduction to the Rōmaji reading system

It is useful introduce the Rōmaji the Latin characters, used from foreigners to transcribe the Japanese phonetic. Katakana syllabary used for foreign words and technical terms of various professioanal fields, onomatopoeias, etc.Hiragana Syllabary used to write Japanese words or grammatical inflections.Three writing systems are used in Japanese that are integrated within the sentence and are: 和歌, waka, Japanese poetry written in Hiragana Heian period Transcription systems in Japanese It developed during the early to middle Heian period (from 794 to 1185), when it was mainly used by women to write poems and letters it is related to the word 女 ( おんな ) 手 ( で ) female help, female labor. The Japanese word for Hiragana is 平 ( ひら ) 仮 ( が ) 名 ( な ) and literally means common kana in the nuance of easy compared to Kanji, the ideographic system. Hiragana is one of 3 writing systems used in the Japanese language. “N” on the other hand, as stated earlier, is the only English letter that is not represented by a syllable in Japanese.Studying the Hiragana syllabary is the first step in learning the Japanese language. Again, It is “technically” not correct to spell kenpo with an “m” because “mp” does not exist in the Japanese language, and when written in Japanese, the letter “m” must always be followed by a vowel. My former martial art is another example, Kenpo.

The popular Japanese dish with a peculiar name: 天麩羅・天ぷら　（てんぷら）Īccording to the hiragana: Tenpura is the correct spelling but the correct translation phonetically is “ TeMpura”! write them out in english letters).Įxample. Look at how some of the following are written in Japanese and then how we should accurately transliterate them (i.e. So, it is not phonetically wrong to spell sempai, but the proper spelling is senpai. However, phonetically senpai is pronounced like seMpai. The only kana representing m sounds are maま, miみ, muむ, meめ,and moも. The Japanese kanna ん corresponds with the romaji “n”. (Romaji is the use of the English alphabet to spell Japanese words.)īecause there is no “m” in Romaji, the letter “n” is used as a substitute. The correct romaji translation is senpai, because there is no stand alone “m” in Japanese. The English spelling of Japanese words are approximations and “Senpai” is ALWAYS a correct and proper English spelling for the Japanese from which Senpai is derived.īecause of “mosaic nasals” sometimes n’s sound like “m’s” or go unpronounced altogether. Hai, 輩 means fellow, person, colleague, or people. Sem or先means early, in advance, first or prior. In written English you might have noticed with “せんぱい” the Japanese hiragana character “ん” sometimes gets written as “n,” like in “ senpai,” while other times it is written as “m,” like in “ sempai.” Which is right?!Īs a reminder, Senpai (せんぱい – or kanji 先輩) – is someone who is of a higher social standard, such as an upperclassman or upperclasswoman, someone of a higher age, or senior in rank.

Japanese spelled with english alphabet