JSL is a

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...

system for transcribing the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...

into the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

. It was devised by Eleanor Jorden for (and named after) her 1987 book '' Japanese: The Spoken Language''. The system is based on

Kunrei-shiki romanization is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Its name is rendered ''Kunreisiki rômazi'' in the system itself. Kunrei-shiki is sometimes known as the Monbushō system in English bec ...

.Jorden 1987: 21 Japanese Yale is a less well-known alternative name for the JSL system. It is designed for teaching spoken Japanese, and so, it follows

Japanese phonology The phonology of Japanese features about 15 consonant phonemes, the cross-linguistically typical five- vowel system of , and a relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few consonant clusters. It is traditionally desc ...

fairly closely. For example, different conjugations of a verb may be achieved by changing the final vowel (as in the chart on the right), thus "bear nga direct relation to Japanese structure" (in Jorden's words), whereas the common Hepburn romanization may require exceptions in some cases, in order to more clearly illustrate pronunciation to native English speakers. JSL differs from Hepburn particularly in that it uses doubled vowels, rather than macrons, to represent the long vowels and .

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

(Tōkyō) and

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

(Ōsaka), for instance, would be written (Tookyoo) and (Oosaka) in JSL. Also, JSL represents ん, the syllabic n, as an "n" with a macron over it, (n̄), to avoid the practice that other systems use of sometimes writing (n) and sometimes (n') depending on the presence of a following vowel or (y). There is a close tie between Japanese pronunciation and JSL, where one consistent symbol is given for each Japanese phoneme. This means that it does depart from Japanese

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

somewhat, as おう is romanized as (oo) when it indicates a long , but as (ou) when it indicates two distinct vowel sounds, such as in (omou) for 思う (おもう). Similarly, (ei) is reserved for the pronunciation ionly, whereas other romanization systems (including Hepburn) follow the

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...

orthography, therefore making it impossible to tell whether ːor iare represented. It also distinguishes between (g), which is used when only a sound is possible, and (ḡ), which is used when a

velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...

sound (the "ng" in the English word "singer") is also possible. The particles は and へ are romanized (wa) and (e), in accordance with their pronunciation. However, like Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki, JSL does not distinguish between

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

s in Japanese which are close to different phonemes in English. JSL indicates the

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...

of each mora. A vowel with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

(´) denotes the first high-pitch mora, a

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages usin ...

(`) marks the last high-pitch mora, and a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around" ...

(ˆ) marks the only high-pitch mora in a word. In this system 日本 'Japan' would be written (nihôn̄) and 二本 'two (sticks)' as (nîhon̄), 端です 'It's the edge' would be (hasí dèsu) (standing for ].Jorden 1987: 11-13 (This is why doubled vowels must be used instead of macrons.)

References

*Jorden, Eleanor Harz with Noda, Mari. ''Japanese: The Spoken Language'', vol. 1. 1987. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Jsl Romanization Romanization of Japanese Japanese writing system

See also

References