What is Rōmaji

Yes, Rōmaji it is… with a prolonged o sound. Many people spell it romaNji incorrectly. Rōmaji is the correct word meaning Romanization of Japanese. Apart from the three different system of writing Japanese, Romaji is also used to write Japanese. In fact, Rōmaji is the standard way of transliterating Japanese into the Latin alphabet. Wikipedia claims that all Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese.

Various system of Rōmaji

The Latin alphabet was first used in Japan in the 16th century by Portuguese missionaries, who devised a Romanization system based on Portuguese spelling. Later the Dutch introduced a Romanization system based on Dutch. By the 20th century, there were a number of different Romanization systems in use.. The three main ones are:

Hepburn Romanization
Kunrei-shiki Rōmaji and
Nihon-shiki Rōmaji

Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used. For example, let’s consider the name じゅんいちろう. This is written in Hiragana. To write this in equivalent English Kana characters - ju-n-i-chi-ro-u. If it was to be written in romanized version it would be - Jun'ichirō (as per Revised Hepburn Application of Rōmaji)

Why to use Rōmaji?

Romanization of Japanese helped big time to input Japanese into word processors and computers and other electronic devices that do not support the display or input of Japanese characters. When it comes to education field, Rōmaji was a lot helpful for foreigners to start reading Japanese faster. It is also helpful in academic papers in English (or other Western languages) written on Japanese linguistics, literature, history, and culture.

Finally, Rōmaji is not English

As everyone else, I was also under the misconception that Rōmaji is English but I was proved to be wrong when I read a document on ‘Rōmaji is not English’. Here is the extract of that document:

The great benefit of romaji is also the source of many problems: it looks like English. When Taro in fourth grade writes his name in romaji lettering, is he writing in English? Many teachers think so, and even instruct him to ‘Eigo de kakinasai’ (write it in English) when what they mean is ‘write it in romaji’. Written romaji may appear similar to English but in fact, several Kunrei-shiki romaji encodings do not follow standard English phonetic patterns.

When students confuse the phonic patterns of romaji as English phonic coding, they are mixing a syllabic language (Japanese) with its inseparable consonant-vowel pairs (ma-mi-mu-me-mo), with the sound patterns of English, which features distinctive vowels and consonants and abundant consonant clusters.

Download the complete document for further reading.