I’m not sure if this has been shared, yet. I thought it might be interesting to some people.
13 Likes
That’s somehow way worse x____x oh lord. Romanization is awful but this is way worse.
4 Likes
Finally! 
5 Likes
The wording used is confusing - “Aiti” and “Sibuya” are kunrei-shiki romanisation, while “Aichi” and “Shibuya” are Hepburn. The latter are already used on signage, what’s changing is that the government is now shifting to Hepburn to align with what’s been common usage for decades.
24 Likes
Oh thank goodness, I’m tired of having to fight the Elementary Schoolers about how to write their names in English. Like I’m sorry, but Tiba is not how to write 千葉 I pronounce their words the way they write them and they still don’t get it. The writing in Romaji vs English is hard to get them to unlearn after learning the romaji for two whole years and then suddenly, only in English class in 5th grade do you need to write things differently. I feel for the kids but as the teacher, I am so so so freaking excited for this to become standard
I’ll just have to wait like… 15 years… or something. I wonder how fast this change will even happen
Edit to add: The original romaji way is easier for the kids to type in at least. That’s the only compliment I will give it, outside of that I can’t wait to make it all hepburn
16 Likes
OH ok, I read the article and it sounded like they were changing everything to Sibuya, Aiti, etc.
7 Likes
Wait, hasn’t 渋谷 always been pronounced シブヤ？
I’ve never seen it spelled セィブヤ…
It’s not about the pronunciation. Sibuya and Shibuya are pronounced the same.
9 Likes
In Japan, they just do no have the sound that we see Si as. Therefore, when they originally tried to match the alphabet to the Japanese sounds, they looked for something easier to make their charts. Like A I U E O so next would be Ka Ki Ku Ke Ko. Then going onto Ta Ti Tu Te To. It’s more simple for them as that’s how they type it and it makes sense in a chart to have it all be the same. So they read the Ti as ち aka to us “Chi” despite the spelling not making sense to people who can read the alphabet.
The biggest changes will be to つ (tu- tsu) ふ (hu- fu) ち (ti- chi) し (si-shi) じ (di-ji) ぢ (di-ji)づ (du-dzu) and the slides associated with し and じ like しゃ (sya-sha) and じゃ (dya- ja)
Edit to say: I don’t speak for them, but I assumed this is what was going on when they were making the kana charts for romaji. I welcome links that sound more professional
7 Likes
I prefer Kunrei-shiki, but this doesn’t really matter all that much huh. Foreigners will keep using Hepburn and keep thinking that シ is “pronounced” “shi”, while it’s really pronounced [[ɕi]]. Foreigners who are unlucky enough to use Hepburn long enough will find that it complicates conjugation, but not to any unbearable degree. I will still be able to type si. And nothing really changes. Well, some signage will change.
Maybe some of the romanization arguments will die off. That’d be nice. As if we’d ever stop arguing over inane stuff on the internet.
9 Likes
But then, if シ is supposed to be pronounced “si”, why is there セィ？
Same with ち and ティ
シ isn’t supposed to be pronounced as “si”. he’s saying that the Japanese type シ as “si” in their keyboard and read “si” as シ. as they don’t know that “si” has a different sound.
4 Likes
I シ、I mean, I セィ、I mean, I see 
3 Likes
You’re conflating things that are totally unrelated.
渋谷 is しぶや, no matter how you write it. I could invent a (completely unintuitive) romanization system that says “colue1” is how to write しぶや and it wouldn’t change how anything is pronounced.
Katakana representation of foreign sounds, which is where something like セィ would be used, is totally separate and has nothing to do with romaji.
12 Likes
I know I posted this article because I thought it might be interesting for some people, but honestly, as a beginner, I have no idea what it means 
5 Likes
Time to petition the Japanese government to switch over to Leebo-shiki.
Zya.
3 Likes
I read it last night
and its mostly governmental changes the public/tourists won’t see
Basically there’s different ways of writing Japanese words in English
If you’ve ever been into an anime with a character whose name switches between Mu and Muu or Kyoko and Kyouko depending who spells it, this is why, both are ‘right’ but its different systems of doing things
Basically, the hepburn system of romanisation is the one that pretty much everyone defaults to because its closest to the English pronounciation (IE the Tokyo ward of Shibuya)
But on official government documents and in primary school classes
they had been using a much less common system called kunrei-shiki
which writes things in a valid way, but not necessarily the closest to how it would be pronounced in English, which can lead to confusion
(IE Shibuya being transcribed as Sibuya - Whilst Still Pronounced Shibuya - or Chiba being written as Tiba, or Mt. Fuji being written as Huzi san)
Basically, since everyone uses Hepburn anyway, the government is finally throwing up its hands like “Fine. We’ll use it too since its the one everyone else recognises”
16 Likes
Thank you for explaining it so clearly 
1 Like
It’s probably worth considering that the latin letters → sounds mapping is language specific. Like the “v” sound in English is “w” in German or “bh” in Irish. Volkswagen is pronounced more like Folksvagen in German, Bhí in Irish is prounced Vee, not be, etc.
7 Likes