[9/28] Country Girls 4th Single "Doo Datte Ii no / Namida no Request"

[Zunu]

Starra, you're not wrong. Everyone else is wrong. "Ou" is no more legitimate than "oo." The rules of Hepburn Romanization are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization#O_.2B_U dead easy to look up. On the internet we use so-called "waapuro" roumaji but it's not officially sanctioned and doesn't have formal rules. So unless we're prepared to start putting macrons (or circumflexes) everywhere then either wapuro-style or "JSL" style are equally (il)legitimate IMO.

[Starra]

To be fair, all Japanese I know I've taught myself so I have no idea if any of it is actually accurate or not (I mean, I assume some of it is, but y'know). I always type out the long vowel sounds no matter what (unless it's a place name that officially doesn't use them, like Tokyo vs Toukyou, although I always want to type Hokkaidou and have to stop myself). It's why I will never, ever type things like "Sato" or "Kudo" because they don't reflect the long vowel sounds. I get that a lot of the time Japanese people themselves don't Romanise them, but imo I think that's a case of English speaking peoples not putting much thought into the system originally.

I also think that keeping long vowel sounds as accurately as possible helps people who are learning Japanese. For instance, if someone were to type くど and select the first kanji option that comes up, they'd get 久度, which is completely different than 工藤 -- the option you get if you type くどう.

I have a very strict Romanisation system in my head and I'm not sure if it's all entirely accurate and I know it'll probably piss a lot of people off, but it's the way I do things. I also get extremely annoyed whenever people leave loanwords (especially shortened loanwords) untranslated. An example would be people who Romanise ダイヤ as "daiya" even though it should be "dia" since it's short for ダイヤモンド, or "diamond". It happens all the time with anime titles -- a major example would be とらドラ!, which is officially Romanised (and Romanised everywhere) as Toradora! for symmetry... However, the ドラ is from ドラゴン (dragon), so it should be, by all means, Toradra!. But if I ever called it that I'd be laughed at, even though it's more accurate, god dammit. Something that's more close to home is people who type "Harosute" for Hello! Station. We have a perfectly good English equivalent... it's H!S. It's even shorter! ハロステ is short for "Hello! Station" obviously, we don't use Haropuro for ハロプロ and use H!P instead, so the situation should be the same here. But it's not because people can't follow rules.

TL;DR: Romaji and Romanisation in general are fucking dumb and people don't follow the rules enough and break consistency all the time and it pisses me off more than it should, but I'll be damned if it isn't one of the things in this world that aggravates me the most. The solution is clearly to get rid of Romaji and just use kana, but that's not user-friendly and also if you use kana instead of Romaji when writing/typing English you come across as a pretentious douchebag, lol.

God dammit here I am talking about languages again...

[Celedam]

The solution is clearly to get rid of Romaji and just use kana, but that's not user-friendly and also if you use kana instead of Romaji when speaking English you come across as a pretentious douchebag, lol.

Writing, not speaking.

</pretentious douchebag technical writer>

[Starra]

Nah, I fucked that one up . I was going for "having a conversation" and typed "speaking" because I'm tired, lol. I also had to make a couple of other grammatical changes but ssshhh nobody saw anything.

Also, the word Romaji itself is an example of incorrect Romanisation. It should be Romeji if anything, since ローマ is the Japanese way of saying "Rome". And all those people who are "incorrectly" saying Romanji may, in fact, be that slightly more accurate. (It's still not Romanji though.)

It's not that I take this stuff too seriously btw, it's that nobody else takes it seriously enough. All I want is some consistency (and accuracy) dammit, it's not actually that hard... to me.

[Celedam]

Also, the word Romaji itself is an example of incorrect Romanisation. It should be Romeji if anything, since ローマ is the Japanese way of saying "Rome". And all those people who are "incorrectly" saying Romanji may, in fact, be that slightly more accurate. (It's still not Romanji though.)

It makes more sense if you break it out as roma ji — that is, the characters of Rome.

[Starra]

Definitely, and if anything it's probably because the word ローマ is from the Italian Roma rather than the English Rome (which I just realised because I'm dumb when it's 1AM). So Romaji is.... not wrong, it just looks wrong to my biased English-speaking self since the word for me is Rome.

[Dan-chii]

Thinking about it "It doesn't matter" seems to make more sense with the rest of the lyrics so I went with that. And sorry about the really bad romaji, I pretty much ran the Japanese transcript I had through a site without checking

[forgetmenots]

Arguments like this would be had and I've had them before and I know where most people stand so really there's about no point since I usually lose or agree to disagree. Living in Japan, and teaching English to kids, there's a certain way that I prefer because it is the most logical when translating, pronouncing things and quickly going back and forth between the two languages, I don't know the official style names and all the rules because for me I go by the sounds being made when spoken aloud and the characters being written down. Japan and Japanese people don't care however, they'll just pick whatever romanji that they think look "cool" whether or not it's the most logical or easiest. On top of that many Japanese words that have become standardized in English, like 'romanji' (which is why this is actually kinda a bad example, though it's often used, and I mispell it in Japanese ALL THE DAMN TIME because it got standardized this way) 'Osaka' 'Tokyo' were standardized before a romanji style was really settled upon for people who use both languages often.

I personally elongate 'o' sounds with 'u' because 99 times out of a 100 (probably even more often than that) that's what it is: お with う. 'oo'/おお is pretty rare. And pronounced out loud 'o-u' is the sound that is being made when that is written, not 'o-o'. At least that's what I hear and what I've always thought. The sound of the elongated 'o' in 'おおきい’ (ookii) sounds different than the elongated 'o' in ”がっこう” (gakkou). Maybe people disagree with that, but I hear the difference when talking to people or listening.

In this particular case, I can see where things are confusing. They decided to be 'cute' with the Japanese. As far as I know, the elongation symbol is not a proper thing to use with hiragana. Personally, I would still write it as 'Dou' as that's how it's pronounced. If I wanted to take in account the way it's written here though, to symbolize that something is different, personally I would have gone 'Do--' or 'Do~' rather than 'Doo'. As this is not real Japanese, there is NO OFFICIAL WAY to translate it however. So you can do whatever you want both Starra and Dan-chii. And everyone else is just as welcome to continue saying 'Dou' 'Do~' 'Doo', whatever. I just brought it up originally because those kind of little things matter to me living here, even if they matter pretty much not at all to the rest of you I have to be careful speaking to a Japanese fan and not miswriting something because I'm used to someone romanizing in a way that doesn't translate accurately for me when I put it into kana. Seeing it as 'Doo' if I don't remember the Japanese off hand, I'm likely to write it is 'どお’ which is much more embarrassing than writing it as どう even though that would be wrong as well, at least it would be a real word that fit the meaning.

[Dan-chii]

If it helps at all the Up-Front LINK page spelled it as "Doodatte Iino" once!

[Amped]

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