Updated by Katajanmarja
Posted under General
Updated by Katajanmarja
Well, it's based on the word "Roman", so I'd argue it should only have one O, but I could go either way.
I've only seen it used as romaji.
+1, as per romanization policy.
Anelaid said:
I've only seen it used as romaji.
That's mostly because proper Hepburn is 'rōmaji', but nobody has a keyboard with a macron on it. (Except maybe Latvians.)
I never really argued for this one because I kind of feel the same way as jjj14 on it. ローマ is "Roma" as in "Rome", so "roomaji" feels odd (seems like it would fall under the standard for foreign words in katakana).
Seeing as how its Katakana, I think we can stick with a single O
I think it's okay to regard Roma as a foreign word and spell it with a single o.
I'd like to stick with single o too because the katakana is trying to spell "Roma" in a Japanese way. We translate ヒーロー as "hero", not "heeroo" after all.
ローマ would be a loanword, yes, but I think ローマ字 is more of a Japanese compound (or, at least, is used so widely as such that it might as well be one).
+1 to the alias.
sgcdonmai said:
ローマ would be a loanword, yes, but I think ローマ字 is more of a Japanese compound
I'd say because it's like a compound/portmanteau, it could be left with one "o".
Then again, something like "Spanglish" uses a foreign term ("Spanish") for a given language ("español"), rather than, say, "españglish", but then there's the matter of the word not being "roma字"/"Roma字", so...
Alright, I'mma stop before running myself in circles. At the least, I'd like "roomaji" to get one end of an alias.
sgcdonmai said:
ローマ would be a loanword, yes, but I think ローマ字 is more of a Japanese compound (or, at least, is used so widely as such that it might as well be one).+1 to the alias.
Yeah, this is my main problem with 'romaji'; it feels sort of halfway, like translating ウェールズ語 as wales-go instead of welsh. I could see a motivation for aliasing to roman_alphabet before aliasing to romaji. (Not that I'm suggesting that, mind you.)
I'm with those calling it a katakana loan and leaving it a single 'o'. Moreover (and while this typically isn't a valid argument), the romanization of "romaji" is pretty much frozen in English usage, much like "Tokyo" or "Osaka" which should be "Toukyou" and "Oosaka" respectively if we romanized everything into proper Japanese.
glasnost said:
I could see a motivation for aliasing to roman_alphabet before aliasing to romaji. (Not that I'm suggesting that, mind you.)
I thought we usually called that romanised?
I honestly don't have a preference either way but for now I'm siding with the single 'o' argument.
glasnost said:
[T]his is my main problem with 'romaji'; it feels sort of halfway, like translating ウェールズ語 as wales-go instead of welsh. I could see a motivation for aliasing to roman_alphabet before aliasing to romaji. (Not that I'm suggesting that, mind you.)
I am siding with this argumentation. roomaji is better than latin_alphabet is better than roman_alphabet is better than romaji. Wanted to bring this up ages ago.
On the other hand...
Shinjidude said:
Moreover (and while this typically isn't a valid argument), the romanization of "romaji" is pretty much frozen in English usage, much like "Tokyo" or "Osaka" (...).
...I do not live enough of my life in English to judge how unambiguously right Shinjidude is here.