From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia JSL romanization
JSL romanization
JSL is a romanization system for transcribing the Ja- Also, JSL represents ん, the syllabic n, as an "n" with a
panese language into the Latin script. It was devised by macron over it, ?n̄?, to avoid the practice that other sys-
Eleanor Jorden for (and named after) her 1987 book Ja- tems use of sometimes writing ?n? and sometimes ?n’?
panese: The Spoken Language. depending on the presence of a following vowel or ?y?.
Example: There is a close tie between Japanese pronunciation
tat-u and JSL, where one consistent symbol is given for each
Japanese phoneme (with the exception of double conso-
Conjugation JSL Hepburn
nants, written in Japanese with the sokuon). This means
Mizen 1 tat-a- tat-a- that it does depart from Japanese orthography some-
Mizen 2 tat-o- tat-o- what, as おう is romanized as ?oo? when it indicates a
Ren’yô tat-i- tach-i- long /oː/, but as ?ou? when it indicates two distinct vow-
el sounds, such as in ?omou? for 思う (おもう). It also
Syûsi tat-u. tats-u.
distinguishes between ?g?, which is used when only a /ɡ/
Rentai tat-u- tats-u- sound is possible, and ?ḡ?, which is used when a velar
Katei tat-e- tat-e- nasal sound [ŋ] (the "ng" in the English word "singer")
Meirei tat-e. tat-e. is also possible in some dialects of Japanese. The parti-
cles は and へ are romanized ?wa? and ?e?, in accordance
It is designed for teaching Japanese, and so, it follows
with their pronunciation. However, like Kunrei-shiki and
the Japanese phoneme system fairly closely. For exam-
Nihon-shiki, JSL does not distinguish between allophones
ple, different conjugations of a verb may be achieved by
in Japanese which are different phonemes in English.
changing the final vowel (as in the chart on the right),
JSL indicates the pitch of each mora. A vowel with
whereas the common Hepburn romanization may re-
an acute accent ?´? denotes the first high-pitch mora, a
quire exceptions in some cases, in order to more clearly
grave accent ?`? marks the last high-pitch mora, and a
illustrate pronunciation to native English speakers. In
circumflex ?ˆ? marks the only high-pitch mora in a word.
her book, Jorden says that this choice was made to ease
In this system 日本 "Japan" would be written ?nihôn?
the learning of Japanese grammar, and that relying on
and 二本 "two books" as ?nîhon?. (This is why doubled
romanization to learn Japanese pronunciation is mislead-
vowels must be used instead of macrons.)
ing as it is an approximation at best.
JSL differs from Hepburn in that it uses doubled vow-
els, rather than macrons, to represent the long vowels See also
/oː/ and /ɯː/. Tokyo (Tōkyō) and Osaka (Ōsaka), for in-
• Yale Romanization
stance, would be written ?Tookyoo? and ?Oosaka? in JSL.
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Categories:
• Japanese writing system
• Japanese romanization
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