Japanese Romanization

Of course Nihonsiki is objectively the best way to romanize Japanese.

Against Long O Macrons

Long Os are often romanized by adding a macron, a line above the letter, to the o. Like this: ō. However, I argue that long Os should be spelled out as either oo or ou.

However, this is stupid because it destroys information. Both おお (oo) and おう (ou) are romanized the same way. Furthermore, since macrons are inconvenient to type with English keyboards, it is sometimes dropped, further conflating even short o (お)!

This makes it harder to distinguish similar words like 大阪 and 逢坂, both rendered as osaka. Macrons can also obscure meaning - when udon is prefixed with o, it's rendered as ōdon. For those unfamiliar with the romanization scheme, they may not realize this also refers to udon.


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