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I am going to stand up for 'u'.

The reason that tearing all of the extended vowels out of words and homogenising them is wicked and wrong is that you then cause lots of collisions that shouldn't be confusing. I get that it's weird to know how to pronounce 'ou' based on English sounds, because English is a terrible language for consistent phonetics and nobody knows how any of our own words are pronounced without hearing them spoken first, unless they happen to know which language we stole them from. But I found it easier to internalise how to say 'ou' than to pronounce a macron or circumflex in English, which are symbols we seldom use and Japanese doesn't use at all. Inventing an entirely separate system to avoid learning the comparatively consistent Japanese way is too hard for my old brain!

It's critically important that the long vowels are mentioned rather than hidden away or obfuscated with inconsistent symbols (of course, if someone wants to romanise their own name in some incredible way that is their right!) otherwise you get cases like shojo (virgin)/shoujo (girl)/shojou (letter)/shoujou (orangutan) all sharing the same sounds. Japanese has more than enough homonyms already! But to me it's also important to be able to tell whether Mr Ôi is Mr Ooi or Mr Oui (there's a fun one for anglophone pronunciation) so that I can start to narrow down how to pick out his name when written. I think there's a good chance that a non-speaker would mangle all three of those equally, anyway, so the one closest to consistent romanisation wins in my book.

It's not immediately apparent to me (from the romanisation alone; I know the guy's name in this case!) whether Shirow is written that way to denote a long vowel or whether it's to look dramatic and cool as a 'brand'. And don't get me started on the random trailing 'h' some people like, which I can never work out how to pronounce in English at the best of times. It definitely doesn't indicate a long vowel to me, and it seems to be used randomly in romanisation to denote either a long vowel or just to decorate a word that otherwise might look rude in romaji.

R

<blockquote data-quote="Rui" data-source="post: 570030" data-attributes="member: 2">I am going to stand up for 'u'.The reason that tearing all of the extended vowels out of words and homogenising them is wicked and wrong is that you then cause lots of collisions that shouldn't be confusing. I get that it's weird to know how to pronounce 'ou' based on English sounds, because English is a terrible language for consistent phonetics and nobody knows how any of our own words are pronounced without hearing them spoken first, unless they happen to know which language we stole them from. But I found it easier to internalise how to say 'ou' than to pronounce a macron or circumflex in English, which are symbols we seldom use and Japanese doesn't use at all. Inventing an entirely separate system to avoid learning the comparatively consistent Japanese way is too hard for my old brain!It's critically important that the long vowels are mentioned rather than hidden away or obfuscated with inconsistent symbols (of course, if someone wants to romanise their own name in some incredible way that is their right!) otherwise you get cases like shojo (virgin)/shoujo (girl)/shojou (letter)/shoujou (orangutan) all sharing the same sounds. Japanese has more than enough homonyms already! But to me it's also important to be able to tell whether Mr Ôi is Mr Ooi or Mr Oui (there's a fun one for anglophone pronunciation) so that I can start to narrow down how to pick out his name when written. I think there's a good chance that a non-speaker would mangle all three of those equally, anyway, so the one closest to consistent romanisation wins in my book.It's not immediately apparent to me (from the romanisation alone; I know the guy's name in this case!) whether Shirow is written that way to denote a long vowel or whether it's to look dramatic and cool as a 'brand'. And don't get me started on the random trailing 'h' some people like, which I can never work out how to pronounce in English at the best of times. It definitely doesn't indicate a long vowel to me, and it seems to be used randomly in romanisation to denote either a long vowel or just to decorate a word that otherwise might look rude in romaji.R</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Rui, post: 570030, member: 2"] I am going to stand up for 'u'. The reason that tearing all of the extended vowels out of words and homogenising them is wicked and wrong is that you then cause lots of collisions that shouldn't be confusing. I get that it's weird to know how to pronounce 'ou' based on English sounds, because English is a terrible language for consistent phonetics and nobody knows how any of our own words are pronounced without hearing them spoken first, unless they happen to know which language we stole them from. But I found it easier to internalise how to say 'ou' than to pronounce a macron or circumflex in English, which are symbols we seldom use and Japanese doesn't use at all. Inventing an entirely separate system to avoid learning the comparatively consistent Japanese way is too hard for my old brain! It's critically important that the long vowels are mentioned rather than hidden away or obfuscated with inconsistent symbols (of course, if someone wants to romanise their own name in some incredible way that is their right!) otherwise you get cases like shojo (virgin)/shoujo (girl)/shojou (letter)/shoujou (orangutan) all sharing the same sounds. Japanese has more than enough homonyms already! But to me it's also important to be able to tell whether Mr Ôi is Mr Ooi or Mr Oui (there's a fun one for anglophone pronunciation) so that I can start to narrow down how to pick out his name when written. I think there's a good chance that a non-speaker would mangle all three of those equally, anyway, so the one closest to consistent romanisation wins in my book. It's not immediately apparent to me (from the romanisation alone; I know the guy's name in this case!) whether Shirow is written that way to denote a long vowel or whether it's to look dramatic and cool as a 'brand'. And don't get me started on the random trailing 'h' some people like, which I can never work out how to pronounce in English at the best of times. It definitely doesn't indicate a long vowel to me, and it seems to be used randomly in romanisation to denote either a long vowel or just to decorate a word that otherwise might look rude in romaji. R [/QUOTE]