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Hepburn

Hepburn is also a village in Victoria. See Hepburn, Australia.


The Hepburn romanization system (ヘボン式, Hebon-shiki) was devised by an American missionary doctor in the 1860s to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Roman alphabet (in Japanese, "Romaji"). It is widely used today both in the English-speaking world and in Japan, where many younger people are most familiar with the Roman alphabet through the study of English and thus find its spelling conventions more comfortable than the official Monbusho romanization standard. Compared to the Kunrei (Monbusho) system, it compromises with English phonography rather than adheres to Japanese phonological system.

Salient features:

し: si -> shi (/Si/)
ち: ti -> chi (/tSi/)
つ: tu -> tsu (/tsu/)
じ: zi -> ji (/dZi/)
ぢ: di -> ji (/dZi/)
ふ: hu -> fu (/Fu/)
しゃ, しゅ, しょ: sya, syu, syo -> sha, shu, sho
ちゃ, ちゅ, ちょ: tya, tyu, tyo -> cha, chu, cho
じゃ, じゅ, じょ: zya, zyu, zyo -> ja, ju, jo
ぢゃ, ぢゅ, ぢょ: dya, dyu, dyo -> ja, ju, jo

Common variations of the Hepburn system often center around the long vowels: This last method is sometimes called "wapuro" style, as this is how text is entered into a word processor (do purosessā) for automatic conversion to kana and kanji.