Re: Oh!

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:20:10 -1000, Bart Mathias wrote:

One occasionally sees, especially in the romanization of Japanese proper
nouns, a long "o" rendered "oh."

This is no problem, of course, when the "oh" is followed immediately by
a consonant. "Ohtsuka" is no more likely to be mispronounced than "Otsuka."

It might amuse some of you to know that one of the Japanese TV channels
here in Honolulu is doing reruns (I think) of 大岡越前, and they
romanize it for newspaper listings and their own on-screen promos as
"Ohoka Echizen."

What's fun is the audible part of that Japanese channel's promos for
the program. It sounds more like she is saying "Don't miss the next
episode of おほかえちぜん."

Good old passport Hepburn. Check out the caution at the bottom of this
URL:

http://www.seikatubunka.metro.tokyo.jp/hebon/

It's interesting that the site talks about the Hepburn romanization system
but the URL title uses Shin-kunreishiki (or should I say Sin-kunreisiki).

Phil Yff
.