Given the discussion in topic #17000, it sounds like we've come to the consensus to make a tweak to our official Japanese Romanization system used (primarily for tag names). Specifically the idea is to go from the very common Hepburn Romanization System to a light modification of that system used by the Japanese government for official names on passports (外務省旅券規定, Gaimushou Ryoken Kitei).
Doing this allows us to have a system that gives us the option of supporting "oh" in official Romaji names (such as Toosaka_Rin becoming Tohsaka_Rin, and Azumanga Daiou becoming Azumanga Daioh). This allows us to reverse aliases designed to enforce standard Heburn romanization, but put us at odds with official names for over a decade, and allows us to do so by changing the rule to allow these spellings as valid alternatives rather than simply requiring us to declare many exceptions the existing standard rule.
A short summary of the change:
With this revision, there is nothing existing that must change, as standard Hepburn is a subset of the new system. The new system, however allows for the following additional revised rules we can optionally use (e.g. in the case where an official spelling doesn't follow the Hepburn standard):
- for ん before a "b", "p", or "m" consonant (such as in せんぱい / "senpai"), Previously the rules would have us always encode this as "n", we can now optionally render it either as "n" or "m" (meaning both "senpai" and "sempai" are valid spellings)
- for う after an "o" vowel (standard long "o", as in あずまんがだいおう / "Azumanga Daioh"): Previously we always encoded this as "ou", we can now optionally render it as "ou", "oh", or "o"
- for お after an "o" vowel (as in とおさか / "Tohsaka"): Previously we always encoded this as "oo", we can now optionally render it as "oo", "oh" or "o"
There are a few other modifications as well (such as allowing for "jie" instead of "je" for "ジェ"), that we are probably less likely to run into, but you can read the full guide linked above for all the details. In almost every case though, the alternative spellings allow us to bring the spelling closer in line with common English pronunciation rules, which is nice. With it, there is no more trying to pronounce the "too" in "Toosaka" as english "too" rather than the "toe" pronunciation it's meant to have in Japanese, as "toh" is essentially unambiguous pronunciation-wise in English.
As for rules of thumb for our purposes I'd suggest:
- If there is an established official spelling that makes use of these alternative spelling rules, just use it. They now follow our Romanization rules.
- Put in requests to reverse any existing aliases that break official spellings in favor of enforcing standard Hepburn (as was done in topic #17000 and topic #17010)
- If not, continue to use the old standard Hepburn unless there is a compelling reason not to.
- I'd argue that "oh" over "oo" might be a compelling reason for pronunciation purposes, but we should discuss that, as it's a pretty major general change.
- For "おう", "ou" is almost always going to be preferable unless there is a good reason otherwise, as it preserves more of the original Japanese.
- The new system does allow for a single "o" to transcribe a long お, or a single "u" to transcribe a long う, but I'd suggest against using them without a compelling reason as it changes the apparent pronunciation of the name.
- If there are official spellings that neither follow the old Hepburn system, nor the new revised "passport system" (e.g. they use "si" for し, "tu" for つ, "ci" for き, etc.), you should bring them up in the forum for discussion. As per Evazion in forum #168056, if these alternative spellings are pervasive and well accepted by the English speaking fan-community, there is a fair argument that we approve an exception for them. If standard romanization tends to be accepted by the English community, or no romanization is well established (e.g. the official spelling consists of a brief on-screen appearance but nowhere else), I think there's a fair argument to follow the standard system rather than the official spelling.
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I'm making this post as per Mysterious Uploader's good suggestion to take this out of the specific "Toosaka" vs "Tohsaka" alias request, and give it more visibility and allow for additonal discussion. Are there any objections, comments, or revisions to the above we would like to make? Is there anything additional that should be added? Once we're more or less happy, we should use our revised version to update Howto:Romanize.
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