They certainly don’t sound the same to me. I’m not a native English-speaker though. Either way, my point stands. Alphabets, and certainly rōmaji, are neccessary simplifications.
I think it was mentioned before, but I’ve heard some people say they pronounce humid as /'çju:mɪd/ or something like that? It really depends where you are from though. For me I think it’s kinda in the middle.
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I can’t think of a native dialect where it isn’t /h/ but it’s possible it’s a regional accent or some of the more foreign versions of English such as Indian or Singaporean. But also, transcribing sounds is not a simple process nor easy to do without a lot of practice.
Anyway, the point is really that Romaji isn’t an “Alphabet” in the sense that it is in English. It is not the Japanese writing system. It is more of a transliteration system solely intended to represent and transcribe Japanese sounds in Latin letters.
I’m quite well aware of this. It does not make it any less of a simplification, though a worthwhile one, if you ask me.
That is the point, and what was in question to begin with. (Why do we not distinguish between the h in hi and hu)
Note that I never called rōmaji an alphabet, though I came close.
It’s possible it sounds that way because j is palatal, just like ç. I made a spectrogram of me saying humid and it looked like /ç/ but I am not an expert. So. Take that how you will.
Phonetics is a weird thing, I guess. And using an alphabet to try and write down the very abstract thing that is spoken language will only get you so far 
On my version of RS, they were definitely saying otoko-no-shto and onna-no-shto (or at least, something that sounds way more like that then hito)
We do distinguish between the h in ふ though because it is generally written “fu” in Hepburn, which is much more commonly used than Kunrei. The better formulation of the question is why don’t we distinguish ひ when ふ, つ, ち, and し are differentiated, as well as the different pronunciations of へ
and は, as well as the ん pronunciations turning to “m” (Gumma is correct Traditional Hepburn for 群馬) and the goal of Hepburn was to represent the sounds to an English speaker.
So this if anything, is perhaps the exception, so just saying it is a “simplification” is not really a satisfying answering.
I don’t have anything on me, but just saying it to myself I am in the group that barely, if at all, pronounces the H in the first place. I have something more like 'umid.
My apologies, I’m on my phone. The question was of course between ha and hi.
I think it is a satisfying answer, and so far you do not seem to have come up with a more satisfying one. The Japanese language has many other quirks not noted in neither kana nor Roman letters. N being one easy example. It has at least four distinct pronunciations, and that only in Tokyo dialect. Pitch accent is not written down, but it of course is a main theme for Japanese language. Nasalization of the ga-gi-gu-gyo sounds is another purely phonetic component, not noted in written language, neither kana nor roman letters.
Written language is a simplification, a way to put words on paper.
Well, I have an old, outdated version provided freely by a library, which I’ve never updated because then that would cost money. So that could be the reason.
Well James Hepburn has been dead for over 100 years, so it’s not like I can just ask him. And it seems like a rather long trip to Meiji Gakuin. Kana is irrelevant to the discussion because Kana is not the same thing as Romaji. Frankly I don’t see why you’re taking a discussion and trying to turn it into an argument.
We are not talking about Kana, we are talking about a system that was specifically created as a form of transcription of a different language. If you’re so adamant about the exactness of the question why do you keep changing it? It’s like looking at IPA and finding a sound that isn’t represented and then going, “That’s just the way IPA is, no more discussion is allowed, English isn’t written that way so the end.”
My intention was never to start an argument and I’m sorry if I came off that way.
To me, the answer “because it is impractical” to the question “Why isn’t the difference between ひ and は included in romaji” is satisfactory, although I can understand why it would not be to others. (Different strokes for different folks and all, I suspect).
I think kana is relevant to this question though. It is merely another way of putting sounds on paper, and the mora in question belong to the same gojūon row. See here if you’re interested in knowing more: Gojūon - Wikipedia
Yeah that’s true, people will always say things differently. Who’s to say that I don’t actually pronounce it the same way in casual speech, and only in careful speech (ie, me saying “HUMID.” into my microphone) do I say ç? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I guess it doesn’t really matter because in English (and presumably Japanese) the ç/h thing doesn’t affect comprehension and is just a feature of one’s accent.
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