Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Hepburn romanization
Summary
Hepburn romanization 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 ɕi (し) is written as hepburn and tɕa (ちゃ) is written as hepburn, reflecting their spellings in English (compare to nihon-shiki and tya 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 romanization 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 Japanese syllabary, individuals who do not speak Japanese will generally be more accurate when pronouncing unfamiliar words romanized in the Hepburn style compared to other systems.
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 "Romanization Club", a group of Japanese and foreign scholars who promoted a replacement of the Japanese script with a romanized system.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.