I was taught as Animefreak said. Long o is romanized as oo (or marked ô). Also I've checked three sources, all were Japanese born (two I know were born in there, one I have a reason to believe was either born there or born here in Finnish-Japanese family; my language teacher, my previous Judo sensei, and the official translator of the Inuyasha manga (Japanese to Finnish). One could count a fourth source, who happens to be my Judo sensei's father (a Judo black belt himself). Of these sources, all I checked directly or undirectly confirmed this romanization.
However, one must bear in mind that as languages Finnish and Japanese are similar, and words are pronounced fairly similarily. In here (and Japan) long vowel is marked double vowel. In the US (and english speaking countries, as I understood it, ou is pronounced as long vowel, thus romanization in those countries is ou.
In here 'ou' is pronounced diffenrently, and I was told that it doesn't differ much from Japanese pronounciation (just a side note, I couldn't find from my language book, which uses modified Hepburn, kana for ou). In Finland we pronounce words as we write them. Ou in here would be pronounced as two different vowels, o and u, not combination of them.
In my fics I use the 'ou' though, for my readers' sake, since majority of the readers (that I know of) are from English speaking countries. In few of my fics I had chapters written in Finnish at first, then I translated them to English. In these chapters, the names and words containing long vowel were written either ô or oo, for the Finnish speaking people's sake.
For reference's sake, I'll add another example of the different romanization of a word. The word is Tessaiga. Again, according to my sources, Tessaiga is the 'original' Japanese romanization.
Why? I'm aware that in American translations it's Tetsusaiga. This appears to be to help the English speaking to proounce it. And I'm told that there appears to be symbol for 'tsu' (kana or kanji, I can't remember, but this is what I heard) in the non-romanized word. Still I was taught that in front of 's' tsu is shortened to 's'. Some claims that the way Sesshômaru is written there is actually 'tsu' there as well, although it shortens to s in front of s. I'm not sure if there really is a 'tsu' in there, though.
About kanji/kana for tsu, can anyone confirm that in non-romanized Tessaiga and Sesshômaru has them or not? My browser/computer doesn't support kanji/kana as a font and I don't know how to make it support them so I can't confirm it myself. In wikipedia there where kanji is supposed to be I see only ?-symbols.
Ps. I'm not saying that the romanization Americans use (for their pronouonciation) is wrong. I'm just saying that the original romanization differs from the American style.
Kaiganeru kirjoitti 01.03.2008 kello 03:35:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 9:39 PM, <Alwapas@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Not sure where everyone's getting their information from, but I was
> taught
> > differently. My professors (born and raised in Tokyo) taught us that a
> long
> > o is signified with ô. The ou you're talking about is a completely
> different
> > sound in Japanese. Like I said, Americans pronounce their vowels
> > differently.
> >
> > - Lots of fansubs are translated and are mistaken for legitimacy. Please
> > check your references. -
> >
> > ~Animefreak242
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Animefreak,
>
> I think it depends on which method is being used. I have been taking
> Japanese at the local language institute; and our teacher is from Japan,
> fully trained to teach Japanese as a second language, with all the
> requisite
> credentials. This particular language institute uses Hepburn
> method; there
> are others. Some signify a long vowel with a macron (the straight line
> over a vowel) and some a circumflex - the "hat" symbol you have
> below. I've
> seen vowels doubled to indicate a long vowel as well. In my text
> book, two
> different methods are shown, but neither is the circumflex.
>
> We were taught that the long o is rendered in Romaji as ou. That
> is why I
> spell it that way. Not because of fansubs - because that is how I was
> taught; although I admit that fansubs are my preferred method of
> watching
> anime.
>
> I think that all useful ways are equally valid. Some are used more,
> some
> are used less - Hepburn, according to Wikipedia, is the most
> prevalent in
> use, but any method that teaches it well and help the student to
> understand
> with the least amount of difficulty is valid, at least in my view.
>
> :)
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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