Hepburn (, ) is the main system of romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of his Japanese–English dictionary. The system is distinct from other romanization methods in its use of English orthography to phonetically transcribe sounds: for example, the syllable (italic=no) is written as and (italic=no) is written as , reflecting their spellings in English (compare to and in the more systematic Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems).
In 1886, Hepburn published the third edition of his dictionary, codifying a revised version of the system that is known today as "traditional Hepburn". A version with additional revisions, known as "modified Hepburn", was published in 1908.
Although Kunrei-shiki is the style favored by the Japanese government, Hepburn remains the most popular method of Japanese romanization. It is learned by most foreign students of the language, and is used within Japan for romanizing personal names, locations, and other information, such as train tables and road signs. Because the system's orthography is based on English phonology instead of a systematic transcription of the Kana, individuals who do not speak Japanese and know English phonology will generally be more accurate when pronouncing unfamiliar words romanized in the Hepburn style compared to other systems.
History
In 1867, American Presbyterian missionary doctor James Curtis Hepburn published the first Japanese–English dictionary, in which he introduced a new system for the romanization of Japanese into
Latin script.
He published a second edition in 1872 and a third edition in 1886, which introduced minor changes.
The third edition's system had been adopted in the previous year by the , a group of Japanese and foreign scholars who promoted a replacement of the
Japanese script with a romanized system.
Hepburn romanization, loosely based on the conventions of English orthography (spelling), stood in opposition to Nihon-shiki, which had been developed in Japan in 1881 as a script replacement.
After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the two factions resurfaced as the , which supported Hepburn's style, and the , which supported Nihon-shiki.
In 1930, a Special Romanization Study Commission, headed by the Minister of Education, was appointed by the government to devise a standardized form of romanization.
Although it lacks de jure status, Hepburn remains the de facto standard for multiple applications in Japan.
American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (ANSI Z39.11-1972), based on modified Hepburn, was approved in 1971 and published in 1972 by the American National Standards Institute.
In January 2024, the Cultural Affairs Agency proposed revising the 1954 Cabinet ordinance to make Hepburn the standard romanization system of Japan.
Variants
There are many variants of the Hepburn romanization. The two most common styles are as follows:
-
Traditional Hepburn, as defined in various editions of Hepburn's dictionary, with the third edition (1886)
-
Modified Hepburn, also known as Revised Hepburn, in which (among other changes) the rendering of syllabic as before bilabial consonants is no longer used: for . The version of the system published in the third (1954) and later editions of Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary are often considered authoritative; it was adopted in 1989 by the Library of Congress as one of its ALA-LC romanizations,
In Japan itself, there are some variants officially mandated for various uses:
-
Tetsudō Keiji Kijun Kitei,
-
Dōrohyōji no rōmaji (Hebonshiki), used for road signs, which otherwise follows Modified Hepburn closely but specifies that macrons are not to be used.
-
Gaimushō Ryoken Kitei,
Details of the variants can be found below.
Obsolete variants
The romanizations set out in the first and second versions of Hepburn's dictionary are primarily of historical interest. Notable differences from the third and later versions include:
Second version
-
and were written as : Yedo
-
and were written as : kudzu, tsudzuku
-
, , and were written as , and
-
(modern: ) was written as
First version
The following differences are in addition to those in the second version:
-
was written as .
-
was written as .
-
and were written as .
Features
The main feature of Hepburn is that its
orthography is based on English
phonology. More technically, when syllables that are constructed systematically according to the Japanese syllabary contain an "unstable" consonant in the modern spoken language, the orthography is changed to something that better matches the real sound as an English-speaker would pronounce it. For example, is written not . This transcription is thus only partly phonological.
Some linguists such as Harold E. Palmer, Daniel Jones and Otto Jespersen object to Hepburn, contending that the pronunciation-based spellings can obscure the systematic origins of Japanese phonetic structures, inflections, and conjugations.
Long vowels
In Hepburn, vowel combinations that form a long sound are usually indicated with a macron (◌̄). Other adjacent vowels, such as those separated by a
morpheme boundary, are written separately:
+ Vowels part of the same morpheme
!
!in traditional Hepburn |
|
|
|
|
|
|
+Vowels part of separate morphemes
!
!In traditional |
|
|
|
|
|
|
All other vowel combinations are always written separately:
-
E + I: – + – 'uniform' (despite E + I often being pronounced as a long E)
-
U + I: – + – 'light (in weight)'
-
O + I: – – 'nephew'
Loanwords
In foreign
, long vowels followed by a
chōonpu (ー) are indicated with macrons:
-
: se + (ー) + ra + (ー) = 'sailor'
-
: ta + ku + shi + (ー) = 'taxi'
-
: ko + n + ku + (ー) + ru = 'competition'
-
: ba + re + (ー) + bo + (ー) + ru = 'volleyball'
-
: so + (ー) + ru = 'sole (of a shoe, etc.)'
Adjacent vowels in loanwords are written separately:
-
: ba + re + e – 'ballet'
-
: mi + i + ra – 'mummy'
-
: so + u + ru – 'soul', 'Seoul'
Variations
There are many variations on the Hepburn system for indicating long vowels with a macron. For example, () is properly romanized as
Tōkyō, but can also be written as:
-
– not indicated at all. Common for Japanese words that have been adopted into English, and the de facto convention for Hepburn used in signs and other English-language information around Japan.
-
– indicated with circumflex accents, as in the alternative Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanizations.
-
– indicated with an h (only applies after o). This is sometimes known as "passport Hepburn", as the Japanese Foreign Ministry has authorized (but not required) it in passports.
-
– written using kana spelling: ō as ou or oo (depending on the kana). This is also known as style, as it reflects how text is entered into a Japanese word processor by using a keyboard with Latin script. more accurately represents the way that ō is written in kana by differentiating between (as in (), in ) and (as in (), in ); however, it fails to differentiate between long vowels and vowels separated by a morpheme boundary.
-
– written by doubling the long vowels. Some dictionaries such as the Pocket Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary
Particles
In
traditional and
modified:
-
When is used as a particle, it is written .
In traditional Hepburn:
-
When is used as a particle, Hepburn originally recommended .
-
When is used as a particle, it is written .
In modified Hepburn:
-
When is used as a particle, it is written .
-
When is used as a particle, it is written .
Syllabic n
In
traditional Hepburn:
- Syllabic () is written as before consonants, but as before : b, m, and p. It is sometimes written as n- (with a hyphen) before vowels and y (to avoid confusion between, for example, n + a and , and n + ya and ), but its hyphen usage is not clear.
-
: – guide
-
: – Gunma
-
: – simple
-
: – trust
In modified Hepburn:
- The rendering m before labial consonants is not used and is replaced with . It is written n' (with an apostrophe) before vowels and y.
-
: – guide
-
: – Gunma
-
: – simple
-
: – trust
Long consonants
Elongated (or "
gemination") consonant sounds are marked by doubling the consonant following a
sokuon, ; for consonants that are digraphs in Hepburn (
sh,
ch,
ts), only the first consonant of the set is doubled, except for
ch, which is replaced by
tch.
-
: – result
-
: – quickly
-
: – all the time
-
: – ticket
-
: – magazine
-
: – together
-
: (not ) – this way
-
: (not ) – matcha
-
: – three
Romanization charts
|
|
| お オ |
| |
| こ コ | きゃ キャ | きゅ キュ | きょ キョ |
| そ ソ | しゃ シャ | しゅ シュ | しょ ショ |
| と ト | ちゃ チャ | ちゅ チュ | ちょ チョ |
| の ノ | にゃ ニャ | にゅ ニュ | にょ ニョ |
| ほ ホ | ひゃ ヒャ | ひゅ ヒュ | ひょ ヒョ |
| も モ | みゃ ミャ | みゅ ミュ | みょ ミョ |
| よ ヨ | |
| ろ ロ | りゃ リャ | りゅ リュ | りょ リョ |
| ‡ | |
| ん ン / | |
| |
| ご ゴ | ぎゃ ギャ | ぎゅ ギュ | ぎょ ギョ |
| ぞ ゾ | じゃ ジャ | じゅ ジュ | じょ ジョ |
| ど ド | ぢゃ ヂャ | ぢゅ ヂュ | ぢょ ヂョ |
| ぼ ボ | びゃ ビャ | びゅ ビュ | びょ ビョ |
| ぽ ポ | ぴゃ ピャ | ぴゅ ピュ | ぴょ ピョ |
-
Each entry contains hiragana, katakana, and Hepburn romanization, in that order.
-
† — The characters in are historical characters and are obsolete in modern Japanese.
-
‡ — The characters in are rarely used outside of their status as a particle in modern Japanese,
Extended katakana
These combinations are used mainly to represent the sounds in words in other languages.
Digraphs with orange backgrounds are the general ones used for loanwords or foreign places or names, and those with blue backgrounds are used for more accurate transliterations of foreign sounds, suggested by the Cabinet of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
|
| | イィ | | イェ | |
| ウァ * | ウィ | ウゥ * | ウェ | ウォ |
| | ウュ | |
| ヴァ | ヴィ | ヴ ⁑ | ヴェ | ヴォ |
| ヴャ | | ヴュ | ヴィェ | ヴョ |
| | キェ | |
| | ギェ | |
| クァ | クィ | | クェ | クォ |
| クヮ | |
| グァ | グィ | | グェ | グォ |
| グヮ | |
| | シェ | |
| | ジェ | |
| | スィ | |
| | ズィ | |
| | チェ | |
| ツァ | ツィ | | ツェ | ツォ |
| | ツュ | |
| | ティ | トゥ | |
| | テュ | |
| | ディ | ドゥ | |
| | デュ | |
| | ニェ | |
| | ヒェ | |
| | ビェ | |
| | ピェ | |
| ファ | フィ | | フェ | フォ |
| フャ | | フュ | フィェ | フョ |
| | ホゥ | |
| | ミェ | |
| | リェ | |
| ラ゚ | リ゚ | ル゚ | レ゚ | ロ゚ |
| ⁂ | ⁂ | | ⁂ | ⁂ |
-
* — The use of in these two cases to represent w is rare in modern Japanese except for Internet slang and transcription of the Latin sound into katakana. E.g.: ( Mineru wa "Minerva", from Latin MINERVA ); ( Wu rukānusu "Vulcan", from Latin VVLCANVS, Vulcānus ). The wa-type of foreign sounds (as in watt or wipe) is usually transcribed to ワ ( wa), while the wu-type (as in wood or woman) is usually to ウ () or ウー ().
-
⁑ — has a rarely used hiragana form in that is also in Hepburn romanization systems.
-
⁂ — The characters in are obsolete (out of date) in modern Japanese and very rarely used.
See also
-
List of ISO romanizations
External links
