File:Kana_&_Romaji_Chart.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Hepburn romanization
Sign in to saveAlso known as Hepburn romanisation, revised Hepburn romanization, modified Hepburn
system of Japanese romanization
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Chart of kana and their Hepburn romanizations, including both hiragana (roman) and katakana (italicized)
Hepburn (Japanese: ヘボン式ローマ字, romanized: Hebon-shiki rōmaji, lit. 'Hepburn-style Roman letters') is the main system of romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of his Japanese–English dictionary. The system is distinct from other romanization methods in its use of English orthography to phonetically transcribe sounds: for example, the syllable [ɕi] (し) is written as shi and [tɕa] (ちゃ) is written as cha, reflecting their pronunciation in English (compare to si and tya in the more systematic Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki systems).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hepburn romanization” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.