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This article is from the Japanese FAQ, by TANAKA Tomoyuki tanaka@cs.indiana.edu and Olaf Meeuwissen olaf@IMSL.shinshu-u.ac.jp with numerous contributions by others.

37 Why is everyone using different romanisation schemes? (Japanese)

Romanisation schemes are a reading aid, just like furigana. They
convert kanji and kana to something you can, supposedly, read and
when pronounced actually resembles Japanese pronunciation. The
reading part of this is fairly easy, but the pronunciation part
is a lot harder. It depends heavily on the target language and,
to make matters worse, opinions on what best represents the
Japanese pronunciation in a given target language differ, widely
at times.

[ed.: I'd like to include a striking example or two. Any ideas?]

 

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languages, Japanese, learning, misconception, characters, expressions, kanji