The Cultural Affairs Agency has finalized a draft proposal to adopt the Hepburn style as the unified standard of romaji, or romanized Japanese, primarily due its closer resemblance to English pronunciation.
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Currently, schools [in Japan] primarily teach the kunrei style in accordance with the existing Cabinet announcement. However, the Hepburn style is widely used in society.
Might there be efforts to address some of the issues surrounding the Hepburn romanization when it comes information loss especially when there’s a kana → romanization → kana roundtrip?
For example:
As far as the one Youtube video (in Japanese) I watched that summarize the draft, there doesn’t seem to be.
The Agency also previously asked for public comments, and have just released the result here.
Thanks for the information.
I am not so much concerned as the usability of the Hepburn romanization as it’s survived the test of time, but if I am remembering it correctly, Kunrei-shiki was chosen because of this one-to-one lossless transcription between the Japanese kana and the transcription. Hence, I was wondering if this is still a concern, and whether or not there are steps to address this if ever this is still a concern.