Rōmaji

Rōmaji is one of the Japanese wrting system.

You are probably familiar with these names: TOYOTA, Nintendo, FUJITSU. Even though those names are written in the Roman alphabet, they are Japanese.

The Japanese people call this Roman alphabet as Rōmaji, which is one of the writing system in Japan.

There are several writing systems to write Rōmaji such as Hepburn system, Kunrei system (Cabinet Ordinance system), and so on. Each of them has their own writing rules, so you should know them.

As Hepburn system is the most widely used in Japan now, we will see the Hepburn system.

Here is Hepburn system Rōmaji list

*In cells in the list above, if the same Roman alphabets are used more than twice, that means they are pronounced the same. However, "o" and "wo" are pronouced the same /o/.

The writing rule to Hepburn system:

• Syllabic nasal in Japanese (/n/ [ん]) is written as ‘n’ before consonants, but as ‘m’ before labial consonants (/b/, /m/, /p/).
 e.g. annai (あんない=guidance ) tempura (てんぷら)
• Double (or "geminate") consonant sounds (small[っ]sound, actually there is no sound, it is that you just take a pause for a second) are written as ‘-ss-, -tt-, -pp- etc.’ By doubling the consonant following the first consonant of the set. 
e.g. Sapporo（さっぽろ）
Exception is ‘-ch-.’ It is not ‘-cch-‘ but ‘-tch-.’
e.g. kotch (not kocch) （kotch=here）
• The long vowels (Chōon [ー]) are generally indicated by macrons: ā, ī, ū, ē, ō.
e.g. e.g. Ōsaka（おおさか）