Convert Katakana into Roman Letters with the Romajinator
April 13th, 2007 by MarkThe Romajinator is a simple tool that converts Japanese Katakana into romaji, i.e., roman characters. Most western students of Japanese will have little use for this tool, since katakana words are about the easiest Japanese there is to read for native English speakers. However, for students of Chinese, it’s the opposite. Kanji is pretty easy to understand, but katakana is pretty alien. Since the vast majority of katakana words are actually loan words from English, they’re often easy to guess… once they’re converted into romaji.
Examples
サラリーマン -> sararīman -> "salary" man コンピュータ -> konpyūta -> computer サイエンス -> saiensu -> science プロジェクト -> purojekuto -> project メソッド -> mesoddo -> method
Pronunciation
Most romaji vowels are pronounced fairly similarly to pinyin vowels. The big exception is the “e”. It’s pronounced fairly similarly to a “short e” in English. The “o” sounds somewhat like an English “long o”. Vowels with a macron bar over them are drawn out for a longer period of time. Doubled consonants represent a pause before the consonant. For example “setto” would sound like “se”, followed by a pause, and then “toe”.
The above is obviously a very rouge guide. For a more accurate idea of what words sound like, I recommend the Wikimedia Commons: Japanese pronunciation page.
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April 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Didn’t they have the word “science” before borrowing it from English? What does character 学 mean in Japanese?
April 14th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Vitaly, yes they used the Chinese word for science.,「科学」. (kagaku)
April 14th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I should also add that they still use it and it is more common than サイエンス. サイエンス seems to show up a lot in more modern fields, like computer science or forensice science.
April 14th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Yeah, the Japanese are funky like that, Vitaly. They also use katakana versions of all the colors simultaneously with their own words for them. Similarly, they use both ストロベリー and いちご (苺) for the word strawberry, and children’s Japanese books with animals frequently teach that the ライオン is the kind of the jungle. Can you guess what a タイガー is?
This fondness for English loan words is what makes it worthwhile to learn katakana, even if you don’t have the time to learn Japanese. At least in Taiwan, you’ll see katakana on all kinds of products, on signs and even in video games.
April 14th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
It appears that the Romajinator has problems with the words “project” and “method.” Early bug in the beta version?
April 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I just tested them and it looks okay to me. Could you elaborate a bit? I used it to romajinate those words for this post. I don’t see any bugs here.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
@ Vitaly
“科学”–the Chinese compound for “science” is a “return graphic loan” according to Lydia Liu’s book “Translingual Practice” (highly recommended). What that means is that the Japanese originally borrowed the classical Chinese compound “科学” in order to translate the modern European “science” into Japanese. The Chinese then “re-imported” 科学 from Japan to mean “science” in modern Chinese.
Before the reintroduction from Japanese, I think 塞因斯 (sāīyīnsī) was used, but that’s just a transliteration–one that probably implies the degree to which “science” was investigated seriously.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Matt’s right I believe. Ditto for most concepts / notions of Western origin, e.g., 経済 (economics), 国家 (nation), 革命 (revolution), 哲学 (philosophy).
There’s a joke that without those compound words Japan exported to China, there would have been no Cultural Revolution: both 文化 and 革命 were loaned from Japan.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:37 am
It’s a neat little tool, but I don’t know how useful it would be for Chinese students. Changing the katakana into romaji won’t help them with understanding the meaning of the loan word, unless they are already familiar with the word in its original form (unless they’ve previously studied German, they will never work out something like アルバイト, for example). They would probably be better off relying on a Japanese-Chinese dictionary in these cases.
When I was taking Japanese lessons, my Chinese classmates could understand the meanings of kanji very quickly, whereas the teacher would have to use examples in context and/or synonyms to get the Western students to see the light. When it came to katakana words, however, the tables were turned. While most of the Westerners could work out the meanings for themselves, the teacher would struggle to think of kanji to help make things clear for the Chinese students.
Vitaly asked
学 means “study” or “learning”. It’s read as “gaku” in compounds, or as 学ぶ “manabu” in the form of a verb.
I’ve always liked how when rice is served in a bowl with chopsticks, it’s called ご飯, but when it comes on a plate, along with a fork, it’s written on the menu as ライス.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:47 am
You’re right, Kaminoge. A dictionary would be more useful. This is definitely one of my weaker efforts. It’s just that I’ve been interested in Japanese again recently, and I wanted to make something.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Sorry for the late reply. Either I was hallucinating, or there was some sort of formatting issue when I last logged in. The katakana words “project” and “method” were swapped. I swear! Looks fine now, though …
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Oh, you mean in the post! Yeah, they were. I thought you were talking about the converter.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Hello,
The Romajinator is a great tool. Useful for converting a column of katakana names in an excel file to romaji. Saves a lot of time.
However there seems to be a bug with ヤユヨ. The Romjinator can’t convert these three characters.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Thanks for your kind words and the tip. Somehow I missed the whole y-gyo. It’s included now.