[4/11] Morning Musume。49th Single「Ren'ai Hunter」DAILY no. 1!

[DARC1993]

So it doesn't matter?! :O

[Zunu]

^ Lol basically.

[esm]

lol... what I said in the previous page, although I guess Zoon explained it more

I always thought it's just to distinguish re-nai (if that has any meaning at all) from ren-ai, which would be completely obvious from the kanji/kana but not romaji

But I also just tag all my files in kanji/kana so I don't care

[DARC1993]

^ Lol basically.

I think it makes Ren'ai look fancy

[Sohee]

Really? I think it makes it look ridiculous, if anything. xD

[Starra]

Pretty much.

- The lyrics are for the people of Japan.

Which is funny, because the international fanbase seems to love it.

[esm]

doesn't mean they aren't supposed to or expected to though

[Starra]

I know, I was just making an observation .

[esm]

I hope there'll be a translation for the lyrics soon

[iceymoon]

You guys. The apostrophe has nothing to do with whether the ん sounds "nasally" or not.

It's purely a function of transliterating hiragana into roumaji. The idea is that you should, in theory, be able to transliterate it bidirectionally, i.e. back from roumaji into hiragana as well.

Take a roumaji word such as "kinen." How do you write that in hiragana? The answer is ambiguous because it could be either the four kana きんえん　(no smoking) or the three kana きねん (anniversary). The sole purpose of the apostrophe is to remove that ambiguity. Kin'en definitely has four kana, not three, and hence means 禁煙 (no smoking). Similarly with ren'ai. It is clearly れんあい and can't be mistaken for れない. The fact that Japanese people in some contexts give ん a uvular or vocalic quality is an entirely separate issue from the placement of the apostrophe.

Anyway, the apostrophe is only a rule in some romanization systems (notably Revised Hepburn) which is why you see it used some times and not others. Expecting consistency all of a sudden would be like saying it can only be Berryz Kobo and not Koubou or Kōbō.

that's probably true, but i have (or rather had, they are in storage) Japanese textbooks that go into the whole apostrophe = nasal ん. maybe it's just a way of arriving at the same thing with an additional explanation about the pronunciation (and who knows, maybe the pronunciation itself is an indicator of the same thing), but in any case i wasn't just like making it up or something. i actually learned it in class, with audio clips of the pronunciation and everything.

and to clarify, i don't expect consistency as in everyone should write it one way (people have preferences), so much as i think at least individuals should be consistent with what romanizations they choose to use for themselves. for example, if you write Goto Maki then you should also write Sudo Maasa, it makes no sense to say Goto Maki but then Sudou Maasa (they do this in H!O's picboard tags, it's annoying).

so yes, it bugs me that the people that chose to write Ren'ai Hunter don't also write Ren'ai Rider and Ren'ai Revolution and Kin'enbi, etc. i'm hoping that the people that don't really know the difference kind of learn a little and decide for themselves what they prefer, and stick to it. and the people that don't care whether they're consistent will continue not to care in any case.