Any of you guys seen this, it's being pushed by the Hiragana Times as the way to help communication across languages. By standardising romaji to match how you would be typing Japanese on a keyboard; so Onna becomes Onnna etc.. but then instead of using katakana words, if there is an English equivalent, you use that instead.

watashi ha england jin desu /facepalm.

http://www.glomaji.com/index.html

Not only does it seem to catering to weeaboo's but its quite patronising too.

"There are various different ways to write in romaji. Take, for instance, Osaka (Ōsaka, Osaka, Ôsaka, Oosaka, Ohsaka) or Kobe (Kōbe, Kobe, Kôbe, Koobe, Koube, Kohbe). Needless to say, this state of affairs is very confusing for foreigners."

Really? are we that dumb?

Seems utterly needles,s and trying to force another way of reading Japanese, when people should actually just sit and learn it is rather pointless imo, fractures an already fractured language base even further and adds more confusion to what is and what is not correct.

I personally wish that the Japanese would learn to pronounce foreign words better and ditch the katakana bandaid. Some of the words look like they were desperately trying to Japanize a word that doesn't translate into kana at all.

Actually, we are that dumb. For anyone learning the language, it's not a problem. But for the rest of us, it's all terribly confusing. Maybe you don't remember those days, but I do.

However, Glomaji is stupid.

If you want to communicate with the entire world, learn a universal language. I suggest English or Esperanto. Esperanto is rather a long-term goal, though, because even though it's really easy, not many people have bothered compared to English.

If you want to communicate with Japanese people, learn Japanese. Don't expect them to learn Glomaji. They'll never even have heard of it, and will think you insane.

Seems rather pointless. If you're even considering studying Japanese seriously why waste your time with this kind of BS ?

Gingerninja Wrote:...By standardising romaji to match how you would be typing Japanese on a keyboard; so Onna becomes Onnna etc...

watashi ha england jin desu

Shouldn't it be "watasi"? Or do the Japanese actually bother typing out "shi" and "chi" when they use IME?

according to their rules page they use shi, because it's closer to the English..
it's so full of contradictions its a total mess.

Well, the whole reason that romanization is such a mess is that there are multiple, competing romanization systems. Each of them is perfectly consistent within itself, but almost nobody learns the rules closely enough to use one system consistently, and just mix and match romanizations they think they recall. I don't think adding one more system is going to help...

(Then again, I don't think romanization should be used outside of very introductory grammar lessons, just a little something for people to work with while they are memorizing the kana.)

I think it's a mess.

However, I do have to thank "Glomaji" for reminding me of one of my favorite words.

Glomerulus.

That is all.

vonPeterhof Wrote:

Gingerninja Wrote:...By standardising romaji to match how you would be typing Japanese on a keyboard; so Onna becomes Onnna etc...

watashi ha england jin desu

Shouldn't it be "watasi"? Or do the Japanese actually bother typing out "shi" and "chi" when they use IME?

I was just about to type that there are different key strokes for inputting some kana.... though microsoft ime gives me し　for　ci.

The best romaji system is kana.

Eikyu Wrote:The best romaji system is kana.

but how do you transliterate the kana?

"... "There are various different ways to write in romaji. Take, for instance, Osaka (Ōsaka, Osaka, Ôsaka, Oosaka, Ohsaka) or Kobe (Kōbe, Kobe, Kôbe, Koobe, Koube, Kohbe). Needless to say, this state of affairs is very confusing for foreigners."

Really? are we that dumb? ..."


Yes, we are.

Remember that those "Ō","O","Ô" and "Oh" not only can mean "おお" in "おおさか", BUT ALSO can mean "おう" in other words. Not to mention "オー" and "お~"...
There is also "おオ" and　"おぉ"...
Dammit, and I bet I'm forgetting some others...

"When writing loan words such as ‘coffee’ (コーヒー) do not write them as you would in katakana, i.e. ko-hi-, but as you would in English, i.e. ‘coffee.’ However, words like ‘convenience store’ (コンビニ) ‘konnbini’ which have been greatly altered by their inclusion into the Japanese language, remain written as they would in katakana, i.e. ‘konnbini.’ "

My comment on the above is - where do you draw the line?

"When two place names and proper nouns are a conjugation, separate the two with an apostrophe as ‘Yoyogi’uehara,’ ‘kabushiki’gaisha’ and ‘jinnkou’eisei.’ Sann used after a name is separated by an apostrophe, e.g. Suzuki’sann. "

These aren't conjugations.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I personally wish that the Japanese would learn to pronounce foreign words better and ditch the katakana bandaid. Some of the words look like they were desperately trying to Japanize a word that doesn't translate into kana at all.

So would you suggest Japanese people write like this?:
先月Europa旅行に行ってItaliaでhikingしてきた。おいしいpastaもいっぱい食べられて、めっちゃrefreshできた。

"... it's being pushed by the Hiragana Times ..."
"... By standardising romaji to ..."
"... trying to force another way of reading Japanese ..."
"... fractures an already fractured language base even further ..."

Those phrases led me to think it was an attempt to push another romanization scheme on ALL of the learners and teachers.

But going to the site, it is clear that this "Glomaji" is meant to be used only in their online "Glomaji Community"...

Of course, in an ONLINE community, a keyboard based romanization scheme is not so stupid as it would seem otherwise, and it is meant to be used only there anyways.

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:

Eikyu Wrote:The best romaji system is kana.

but how do you transliterate the kana?

With romaji of course!

Gingerninja Wrote:watashi ha england jin desu /facepalm.

http://www.glomaji.com/index.html

According to the site it would be watashi wa igirisu jin desu

1) i was being facetious..
2) it doesn't mention nationality, the closest it mentions is place names which are then put into their english counterparts.

either way.. its still stupid. as jimmyseal wrote its effectively becoming
先月Europa旅行に行ってItaliaでhikingしてきた。おいしいpastaもいっぱい食べられて、めっちゃrefreshできた。 but with romaji instead.

and actually looking back it'd be watashi wa english desu. but even still. they say to type as a keyboard but want you to type wa instead of ha..

broken system is broken.

igirisu see rule 7 http://www.glomaji.com/rule/index.html

edit: I think its f*****g ridiculous and will be emailing them to tell them.

Eikyu Wrote:

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:

Eikyu Wrote:The best romaji system is kana.

but how do you transliterate the kana?

With romaji of course!

is　し　shi　or　si？
づ　zu　or　du？
are Osaka, ouchigari and Ohno spelt differently?

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:

Eikyu Wrote:

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:but how do you transliterate the kana?

With romaji of course!

is　し　shi　or　si？
づ　zu　or　du？
are Osaka, ouchigari and Ohno spelt differently?

I'm just joking around. What I mean is that textbooks should skip romaji and use kana only, hence the phrase "The best romaji is kana.". The less romaji, the better.

JimmySeal Wrote:

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I personally wish that the Japanese would learn to pronounce foreign words better and ditch the katakana bandaid. Some of the words look like they were desperately trying to Japanize a word that doesn't translate into kana at all.

So would you suggest Japanese people write like this?:
先月Europa旅行に行ってItaliaでhikingしてきた。おいしいpastaもいっぱい食べられて、めっちゃrefreshできた。

Yes. However, some words would still need to be somewhat altered to fit the flow of the rest of the language (ex. Englando) but that's okay. Imo it's pretty sad that the otherwise very dense language is butchered by these sometimes huge chunks of katakana when romaji could actually provide much better results.

That whole system is pretty poorly thought out and English-centric. nn for ん is an especially stupid idea, as is putting a ' between elements of a compound word (seemingly according to how the word would be chopped when translated into English).

Eliminating katakana for Latin alphabet languages from regular Japanese isn't a bad suggestion though (I actually see it now and then at work).

The idea of switching all katakana-fied words with their English replacement is ridiculous. Would you do the same for words borrowed from other languages? イクラ for example comes from Russian (I don't know any Russian, so I have no idea how it would be written but) should they learn the Russian alphabet and use that?

And if they should do it in Japan, why not in English speaking countries as well?
"Hey, you want to to get some 寿司 after work?"
"No thanks. I gotta pick my kid up from 空手 practice."

Edit: I see Jarvik7 specified "latin" but still...I don't see the point.

The point is that Japanese people can read the words in the alphabet anyways and already sometimes write it in alphabet. The same cannot be said for Russian words in Cyrillic in Japanese text or people putting kanji into their English.

It very likely is more effort than it's worth, but there are some benefits. Long kana chains are difficult for even natives to read smoothly, it would encourage more accurate pronunciation and perhaps chip away at nihonjinron.

You can notice many people who speak other languages (esp. European ones) will accurately pronounce English loan words. I was watching a German video reviewing a midi piano and a good 1/3 of the words were native English pronunciation of English loanwords.