I am now convinced that romanisation is an excercise in futility.
I should have been convinced when my sister, who has English as her first language and was taught Malay and Chinese [the romanisations of which are fairly regular and nowhere near the mess of the horrorthography of English; what is particularly interesting about this is that the romanisation of Malay (the preferred way of writing Malay since the latter half of the 20th century) is quite close to Hepburn romanisation of Japanese] in primary school as I was, managed to pronounce genin, hokage, Iruka, mangekyō, and byakugan as if they were English words. That is to say, to a Japanese speaker, she sounded as if she was saying jenin, hokeij, airuka, manjekyau, and baiakugan. The latter is particularly damning evidence for those people who insist on using <jyu shyu chyu>, claiming that they are less confusing than <ju shu chu>. (I can however forgive confused people.)
But what really swung me was seeing child actress Sapphire Boyce completely mangle kite kurete ureshii (kait kyūrit yureshai, IIRC). (I saw this on the November 21 episode of Eigo de Shaberanaito.)
I should have been convinced when my sister, who has English as her first language and was taught Malay and Chinese [the romanisations of which are fairly regular and nowhere near the mess of the horrorthography of English; what is particularly interesting about this is that the romanisation of Malay (the preferred way of writing Malay since the latter half of the 20th century) is quite close to Hepburn romanisation of Japanese] in primary school as I was, managed to pronounce genin, hokage, Iruka, mangekyō, and byakugan as if they were English words. That is to say, to a Japanese speaker, she sounded as if she was saying jenin, hokeij, airuka, manjekyau, and baiakugan. The latter is particularly damning evidence for those people who insist on using <jyu shyu chyu>, claiming that they are less confusing than <ju shu chu>. (I can however forgive confused people.)
But what really swung me was seeing child actress Sapphire Boyce completely mangle kite kurete ureshii (kait kyūrit yureshai, IIRC). (I saw this on the November 21 episode of Eigo de Shaberanaito.)
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