Hepburn romanization

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) often considered authoritative (although changes in kana usage must be accounted for). It is characterized by the rendering of syllabic n as m before the consonants b, m and p: for example, Shimbashi for 新橋.
• Modified Hepburn, also known as Revised Hepburn, in which (among other changes) the rendering of syllabic n as m before bilabial consonants is no longer used: Shinbashi for 新橋. 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, and is the most common variant of Hepburn romanization used today.

In Japan itself, there are some variants officially mandated for various uses:

• Railway Standard (鉄道掲示基準規程, Tetsudō Keiji Kijun Kitei), which mostly follows Modified Hepburn, except syllabic n is rendered as in Traditional. Japan Railways and other major railways use it for station names.
• Road Sign Romaji (Hepburn) (道路標識のローマ字(ヘボン式), Dōrohyōji no rōmaji (Hebonshiki)), used for road signs, which otherwise follows Modified Hepburn closely but specifies that macrons are not to be used.
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs Passport Standard (外務省旅券規定, Gaimushō Ryoken Kitei), a permissive standard that renders the syllabic n as m before b, m and p. Most of the long vowels are not rendered, and macrons are not used above the letter. Moreover, this standard explicitly allows the use of "non-Hepburn romaji" (非ヘボン式ローマ字, hi-Hebon-shiki rōmaji) in personal names with special approval, notably for passports. In particular, the long vowel ō can be romanized oh, oo or ou (Satoh, Satoo or Satou for 佐藤).

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:

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, し is written shi not si. 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. Since the vowel sounds in Hepburn are similar to the vowel sounds in Italian, and the consonants similar to those of many other languages, in particular English, speakers unfamiliar with Japanese will generally be more accurate when pronouncing unfamiliar words romanized in the Hepburn style compared to other systems.

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:

All other vowel combinations are always written separately:

• E + I: 制(せい)服(ふく) – sei + fuku – seifuku 'uniform' (despite E + I often being pronounced as a long E)
• U + I: 軽(かる)い – karu + i – karui 'light (in weight)'
• O + I: 甥(おい) – oi – oi 'nephew'

Loanwords

In foreign loanwords, long vowels followed by a chōonpu (ー) are indicated with macrons:

• セーラー: se + (ー) + ra + (ー) = sērā 'sailor'
• タクシー: ta + ku + shi + (ー) = takushī 'taxi'
• コンクール: ko + n + ku + (ー) + ru = konkūru 'competition'
• バレーボール: ba + re + (ー) + bo + (ー) + ru = barēbōru 'volleyball'
• ソール: so + (ー) + ru = sōru 'sole (of a shoe, etc.)'

Adjacent vowels in loanwords are written separately:

• バレエ: ba + re + e – baree 'ballet'
• ミイラ: mi + i + ra – miira 'mummy'
• ソウル: so + u + ru – souru 'soul', 'Seoul'

Variations

There are many variations on the Hepburn system for indicating long vowels with a macron. For example, 東京 (とうきょう) is properly romanized as Tōkyō, but can also be written as:

• Tokyo – 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.
• Tôkyô – indicated with circumflex accents, as in the alternative Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanizations.
• Tohkyoh – 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.
• Toukyou – written using kana spelling: ō as ou or oo (depending on the kana). This is also known as wāpuro style, as it reflects how text is entered into a Japanese word processor by using a keyboard with Roman characters. Wāpuro more accurately represents the way that ō is written in kana by differentiating between おう (as in とうきょう (東京), Toukyou in wāpuro) and おお (as in とおい (遠い), tooi in wāpuro); however, it fails to differentiate between long vowels and vowels separated by a morpheme boundary.
• Tookyoo – written by doubling the long vowels. Some dictionaries such as the Pocket Kenkyusha Japanese Dictionary and Basic English Writers' Japanese-English Wordbook follow this style, and it is also used in the JSL form of romanization.

Particles

In traditional and modified:

• When は is used as a particle, it is written wa.

In traditional Hepburn:

• When へ is used as a particle, Hepburn originally recommended ye. This spelling is obsolete, and it is commonly written as e (Romaji-Hirome-Kai, 1974).
• When を is used as a particle, it is written wo.

In modified Hepburn:

• When へ is used as a particle, it is written e.
• When を is used as a particle, it is written o.

Syllabic n

In traditional Hepburn:

Syllabic n (ん) is written as n before consonants, but as m before labial consonants: b, m, and p. It is sometimes written as n- (with a hyphen) before vowels and y (to avoid confusion between, for example, んあ n + a and な na, and んや n + ya and にゃ nya), but its hyphen usage is not clear.

• 案内（あんない）: annai – guide
• 群馬（ぐんま）: Gumma – Gunma
• 簡易（かんい）: kan-i – simple
• 信用（しんよう）: shin-yō – trust

In modified Hepburn:

The rendering m before labial consonants is not used and is replaced with n. It is written n' (with an apostrophe) before vowels and y.

• 案内（あんない）: annai – guide
• 群馬（ぐんま）: Gunma – Gunma
• 簡易（かんい）: kan'i – simple
• 信用（しんよう）: shin'yō – trust

Long consonants

Elongated (or "geminate") consonant sounds are marked by doubling the consonant following a sokuon, っ; for consonants that are digraphs in Hepburn (sh, ts), only the first consonant of the set is doubled, except for ch, which is replaced by tch.

• 結果（けっか）: kekka – result
• さっさと: sassato – quickly
• ずっと: zutto – all the time
• 切符（きっぷ）: kippu – ticket
• 雑誌（ざっし）: zasshi – magazine
• 一緒（いっしょ）: issho – together
• こっち: kotchi (not kocchi) – this way
• 抹茶（まっちゃ）: matcha (not maccha) – matcha
• 三つ（みっつ）: mittsu – three

Romanization charts

• Each entry contains hiragana, katakana, and Hepburn romanization, in that order.
• † — The characters in red are historical characters and are obsolete in modern Japanese. In modern Hepburn romanization, they are often undefined.
• ‡ — The characters in blue are rarely used outside of their status as a particle in modern Japanese, and romanization follows the rules above.

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. Katakana combinations with beige backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards Institute and the British Standards Institution as possible uses. Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting.

• * — The use of ウ 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.: ミネルウァ (Mineruwa "Minerva", from Latin MINERVA ); ウゥルカーヌス (Wurukānusu "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 (u) or ウー (ū).
• ⁑ — ヴ has a rarely used hiragana form in ゔ that is also vu in Hepburn romanization systems.
• ⁂ — The characters in green are obsolete (out of date) in modern Japanese and very rarely used.