Rōmaji dialog between "bread" and "tea"
« previous post | next post »
The following photograph shows a chalkboard sign inside of a Kobe cafe that is entirely written in rōmaji (Roman letters), with superscript 2s representing reduplication:
From a learned, senior scholar of Japanese literature:
This is a very informal, vernacular sign.
The speakers are "bread" and "tea."
So I find it difficult. You have to change them into young people's everyday speech, which I am not good at.
I don't understand the "kira-n" at the end of the 5th line.
From a Japanese teacher 20 years younger than the scholar cited above:
焼きたてパンが何とお代わり自由。僕達パンは仲間がいっぱい。
Wow, all you can eat bread just out of oven! We, bread, have many friends. You can't make up your mind (lit., your eyes keep moving on to new ones continuously) because we come out of the oven one after the other. Twinkle.
…
From a recent Japanese Ph.D. who is 25 years younger than the teacher just cited:
焼きたてパンがなんとおかわり自由～♡
Nanto (I cannot translate this word; something to express feeling of surprise? Something close to "What!?") our bread is all-you-can-eat.
僕たちパンは仲間がいっぱい♡
We, the bread, have many comrades.
次々焼き上がる仲間たちに
ついつい目移りしちゃいます （キラーン）
(Two lines for a sentence; direct translation) [You] are unintentionally attracted by the comrades that are baked by succession. (Kira-n is an onomatopoeia for beaming eyes.)
オイラたちは”tea”
We are "tea."
Coffee（?）に負けないくらい仲間が
いるんだぞー！
(Two lines for a sentence; direct translation) We have comrades [whose number] cannot be surpassed [by those of] coffee.
From a young American Ph.D. in Japanese language and culture:
There are multiple ways this could be written in Japanese and translated, but here's mine:
焼き立てパンがなんとおかわり自由〜♡
Help yourself to seconds of fresh-baked bread!
僕たちパンは仲間がいっぱい♡
We Breads have lots of buddies
次×2 焼き上がる仲間たちに
つい×2 目移りしちゃいます ӦӦ✧ キラーン
[You] won't be able to choose between all of us
as we keep popping out of the oven
オイラたちは「TEA」
We're Tea
COFFEEに負けないくらい仲間がいるんだぞ〜！
We've got as many buddies as Coffee!
Lost in this notation and translation:
おかわり自由
→ It's not exactly "all-you-can-eat," but it's not just seconds either… Foucault would be so proud.
なんと
→ Functions something like, "Guess what!" or "You'll never believe it!" in English.
仲間（なかま）
→ Whether you translate it as comrades, chums, buddies, friends, companions, mates, etc., it's a word that means mostly "We're all in this together."
次×2 and つい×2
→ In the ×2, the 2s are raised slightly, indicating the mathematical notation for squared. This is common.
→ The mora/syllable repetition has both rhythmic and affective effects. Especially ついつい, which means "unintentionally," or even "against one's better judgment," is typical advertising language. Give in to the Dark Side….
ӦӦ✧ キラーン
→ It's the eyes (ӦӦ) and their sparkling indecision (✧キラーン) that comes from having too many great choices.
Questions:
- I wonder why they decided to write the sign all in rōmaji, without a single kanji or kana.
- I wonder how common rōmaji writing is in Japan today, both publicly and privately.
[h.t. Calvin Ho; thanks to Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Hiroko Sherry, Miki Morita, and Nathan Hopson]
krogerfoot said,
August 9, 2015 @ 4:19 pm
Writing the entire whimsical passage out in rōmaji makes it kind of laborious to read and work out the intended meaning, which might heighten the attraction a bit, like putting an English slogan in an ornately complicated font might for English speakers. I'm not a native Japanese speaker, so my impression might be off. I've seen quite a bit of public writing in rōmaji in my 20 years in Tokyo, used in the same decorative way as English is here. I doubt rōmaji would be used in any serious effort to communicate.
Victor Mair said,
August 9, 2015 @ 7:10 pm
@krogerfoot
"I doubt rōmaji would be used in any serious effort to communicate."
So you don't think the people in this Kobe cafe were making a serious effort to communicate by means of this Rōmaji sign? But it's so clever, and the lettering and design are so attractive. It's hard for me to believe that they intended it merely as some sort of decoration.
Eli Nelson said,
August 9, 2015 @ 9:17 pm
Are the comments on this post displaying oddly for anyone else? For me, they've appeared on the top right for some reason, rather than beneath the post, which is where I usually see them. Meanwhile, what should be at the top right has moved to the bottom left of the page. Very odd!
Victor Mair said,
August 9, 2015 @ 11:35 pm
@Eli Nelson
That was true two or three hours ago, but the format has since been fixed.
krogerfoot said,
August 10, 2015 @ 2:42 am
@Victor Mair
"So you don't think the people in this Kobe cafe were making a serious effort to communicate by means of this Rōmaji sign?"
Well, no. As you point out, it's attractive and clever, which is why I think its purpose is primarily decorative. By serious effort to communicate, I meant communicate necessary information, such as a menu, business hours, etc. The "okawari jiyu" part of the message is the closest it gets to telling customers something they need to know—hey, free bread refills—but I'd be very surprised if this were the only place that policy is spelled out. In fact, I think Japanese customers would feel miffed if it were, since Japanese in rōmaji can be difficult to work out.
It is really quite common in restaurants here to see Japanese written out in rōmaji in various places. The yakiniku chain Gyukaku, which has locations in Los Angeles and New York, has it all over the menus and on walls in some branches. The content, however, is just like the one pictured—cutesy messages and slogans. Again, all I have are anecdotes, but the reaction these things seem to mainly get from Japanese customers is, "Oh, that's Japanese! I didn't even notice."
Don't get me wrong—I don't mean that only serious bidness counts as communication. The sign is cute, and effort went into it, and and it does invite the viewer to inspect it and decipher the message. My interpretation, for what it's worth, is that writing the message out in rōmaji forces the reader to slow down and work through it syllable by syllable, the way a child just learning to read would, the better to appreciate the whimsical message.
Victor Mair said,
August 10, 2015 @ 7:21 am
Pinyin alone occurs not infrequently in China. When it does, I grant you that it is sometimes functioning for ornament, decoration, or international "feel", and we have examined these instances quite often on Language Log. But sometimes the Pinyin occurs alone in places of utmost importance, as on police paraphernalia, uniforms of transportation security agents, and so on. Here are a few relevant posts (all with valuable discussion in the comments):
"Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11)
"PINYIN ALONE" (10/13/11)
"Pinyin without Chinese characters" (7/20/15)
Matt said,
August 10, 2015 @ 7:48 am
Yeah, krogerfoot is right. The only people in Japan who find it easier to read and write in Roman characters are those who didn't go to school here. The release valve for kanji amnesia is kana, not romanization. (People who aren't even literate in kana don't know the alphabet either.) This entire sign is a special effect.
J. M. Unger said,
August 10, 2015 @ 8:02 am
I think the distinction between serious and not-so-serious communication is something of a red herring. There are (or were) other examples of young Japanese using rômazi texts for their shock/cuteness/strangeness appeal. I recall an avant garde fashion magazine of the late 1990s called Zyappu (i.e. Jap), Incidentally, it used kunrei-siki romanization whereas the café sign uses Hepburn.
Without getting fancy about it, what does the sign show? At least that there are Japanese who know how to make it, and that they can count on some customers to read it (for information, amusement—the particular reason doesn't matter). That’s saying a lot when there are still people around claiming that it is inherently impossible to read and write Japanese without the use of kanzi. Nothing like disconfirming empirical evidence!
krogerfoot said,
August 10, 2015 @ 8:54 am
". . . What does the sign show? At least that there are Japanese who know how to make it, and that they can count on some customers to read it . . . . That’s saying a lot when there are still people around claiming that it is inherently impossible to read and write Japanese without the use of kanzi. Nothing like disconfirming empirical evidence!"
Anyone who has gone through grade school in Japan—basically, every Japanese person—could produce* and read this text. As a design convention, the use of rōmaji is well established to the point of raising approximately zero eyebrows.
* That said, several touches in the image show that the designer is not simply using rōmaji as an alternative orthography. Note the spelling of "tea" (in quotes) and coffe[?], which is not rōmaji.
J. M. Unger said,
August 10, 2015 @ 10:31 am
krogerfoot: I fail to understand what you mean by your last comment. Sour grapes? If the sign isn't long enough to qualify as "real communication," articles and editorials in Zyappu, written entirely in rômazi, certainly do.
By the way, in regard to tea and coffe[e], in the prewar period, when Nippon-siki rômazi physics textbooks were used at Tôdai (published by no less than Iwanami syoten), authors like Tanakadate Aikitu and Tamaru Takurô favored writing loanwords in their original spelling (e.g. German Vektor). A Japanese reader could (sub)vocalize such a word any way s/he pleased.
S Frankel said,
August 10, 2015 @ 1:26 pm
I hope this isn't too offtopic, but could someone please explain the word "reduplication." I know that it's a standard term and I know what it means, but I don't understand the re-. Why not just "duplication"?
Rubrick said,
August 10, 2015 @ 4:46 pm
Since the musings on the sign are in the first person, surely Occam's Razor would suggest that the bread rolls and tea have simply never learned Japanese script.
krogerfoot said,
August 10, 2015 @ 4:57 pm
"krogerfoot: I fail to understand what you mean by your last comment. Sour grapes?"
Sorry, are we having a spirited debate here? I agree with you that rōmaji is used, as it seems to be here, for "shock/cuteness/strangeness appeal." I hadn't heard of Zyappu, so thanks for that example.
The sign is cute and fun to read. I hope I didn't offend by saying it wasn't "serious communication." If you do ever run across anyone "claiming that it is inherently impossible to read and write Japanese without the use of kanzi," I'll be behind you all the way as you argue with that person.
Victor Mair said,
August 10, 2015 @ 7:50 pm
From the Rōmaji nikki to today's Rōmaji chalkboards in cafes, we see romanization playing a variety of roles in Japanese literature and daily life. It's hard to predict where it will end, but it's fun watching the transformations.
krogerfoot said,
August 11, 2015 @ 1:00 am
I don't have an axe to grind here, I'm just an amateur observer. On one hand rōmaji—mostly following Hepburn, rather than kunreishiki— is widespread in product design and signage, but on the other, it's obviously incorrect to think most Japanese would be able to produce it.
Rather than have a bunch of foreigners arguing about what Japanese people think, I've asked some native speakers to take a look at the post and give their impressions, which I'll pass along.
phspaelti said,
August 11, 2015 @ 1:09 am
@S Frankel: I know that it's a standard term and I know what it means, but I don't understand the re-. Why not just "duplication"?
Tradition?
More seriously, when I think about it, I feel that the term "duplication" would imply something that has been copied or said twice, perhaps redundantly. "Reduplication" describes word forms which have a form that is (partially) doubled, while the function is something independent entirely.
Nathan Hopson said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:25 am
I've thought about this a lot since moving back to Japan a year ago. After a decade-long hiatus, it seemed to me that there was a lot more rōmaji use in product design. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think there are several reasons or this increase — if that is indeed what's going on.
1) Rōmaji design leads to less embarrassing Engrish. Native Japanese designers can comfortably and safely write in "English" when it's just romanized Japanese. This extends to the consumer as well. It's a win-win.
2) As Oscar Wilde said of fashion, so too, design. "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." In many fields, design needs to change and innovate constantly to remain relevant.
You see a lot of pop uses of rōmaji these days, in the ¥100 shops and the cheap t-shirt stores. Without anything more than a vague impression to guide me, I feel like you still don't see a whole lot in higher end retail, where English and French are more common. Confirmation bias, perhaps.
BTW, the talk about any school-educated Japanese being able to produce that sign is not necessarily correct, since the schools don't teach Hepburn as the standard. They still use kunreishiki, which is abjectly awful in every possible way and should be abolished. It hasn't been because it's the native romanization system — not one by some damned gaijin.
michael farris said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:44 am
Getting here late, but I thought the weirdest thing about this was the use of a- for long a instead of aa in kira-n (or a-macron which is easy to do by hand).
I
Victor Mair said,
August 11, 2015 @ 7:47 am
@michael farris
Excellent observation about the way they write macrons, which leads me to believe that this is basically "unschooled" rōmaji. Same for the "2" for reduplication. Etc.
J. M. Unger said,
August 11, 2015 @ 11:17 am
Indonesian used to write 2 for reduplications, which I always liked. Alas, I believe they've abandoned the practice, and it was never a part of romanized Japanese as far as I know. But writing para2 for parapara, and similarly for other mimetic compounds, strikes me as quite appropriate for Japanese.
@Nathan: Kunrei-siki is the ISO standard, like it or not.
S Frankel said,
August 11, 2015 @ 11:23 am
@phspaelti Since "reduplication" is pretty much confined to linguistic or philological language, you may be right – it indicates a function, not just a form.
For what it's worth, the earliest citation in OED of the term in grammatical use is from 1832, and the dictionary defines "reduplication" as copying a letter or a syllable, not copying a whole word. Presumably, in 1832 most philologists were dealing with classical IE, so this definition makes sense.
But it's easy to find later examples of "reduplication" applied to entire words; here's an example for Tagalog from 1917 http://www.jstor.org/stable/288967?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents – presumably people describing Tagalog or Malay or whatever simply used the existing term.
But that just kicks the can down the road a bit. Why re- in the first place? A duplicate is a copy. (And why is there no noun "reduplicate"?)
I should redouble my effort on this.
S Frankel said,
August 11, 2015 @ 11:27 am
@ J. M. Unger – Indonesians still use 2 all the time in informal writing (in Javanese as well as in Indonesian; I don't know about other languages). It's not part of the official standard taught in schools, but it's ubiquitous in everything outside of formal printed works.
krogerfoot said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:02 pm
I asked a bilingual Japanese woman, early 30s, to give me her impressions of the post. She writes:
I personally feel that the cafe used it more for decorative purposes rather than for communicating a serious message. Of course, if you read the first line of the blurb, you can tell that the bread is freshly baked and it's all you can eat so maybe this part is somewhat important, but I'm sure the cafe's selling points are stated elsewhere in the store. To me, romanji is an impractical form of writing which is more suited for packaging and advertising for its "alphabetized" appeal.
My previous comment was a response to Nathan Hobson's remark that because kunreisiki is the romanization standard taught in schools, it's incorrect to say that any Japanese person could produce writing like what we see on the signboard. For some reason, my response wound up appearing before his comment.
Matt said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:20 pm
The spelling "kira-n" represents a character-by-character transcription of "キラーン". In that it's closer orthographically to the (conceptual) original than "kiraan" or "kirān" would be, it's arguably more natural — but only once you recognize that the author of this sign was romanizing from an imagined native-orthography version, and not from sound alone.
BTW, the talk about any school-educated Japanese being able to produce that sign is not necessarily correct, since the schools don't teach Hepburn as the standard. They still use kunreishiki, which is abjectly awful in every possible way and should be abolished. It hasn't been because it's the native romanization system — not one by some damned gaijin.
Okay, this is not correct, and although I get that it's meant to be partly humorous, and it's in poor taste to make accusations of bigotry in the absence of evidence for such. Kunreishiki is better than Hepburn at transcribing the Japanese language in a way that is consistent with the structure of that language. That's just a fact. Its major failing is that it isn't as intuitive to pronounce for people who expect something set in Roman characters to be pronounced according to the norms of English or at least W. European orthography.
krogerfoot said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:30 pm
@ Matt,
The history of the adoption of Kunreishiki over Hepburn in Japan, written by Prof. Unger among others, provides some context to the "damned gaijin" comment, which really wasn't meant to be nasty, I think.
It might be a thorny issue in academia, but I think for the most part Japanese people have voted with their pens as it were. Hepburn is what you see on signs and maps and TV, and to write out romanized Japanese for whatever reason, Japanese people seem to invariably follow conventions closer to the sign in this post than anything else.
krogerfoot said,
August 11, 2015 @ 6:43 pm
Ways to handle doubled vowels in romanized Japanese seem to go in and out of fashion. Twenty years ago it was common to use "oh" for names like 遠藤 Endou/Endō/Endoh. I thought the station 大井町 was pronounced "Ohimachi" rather than Ōimachi. You don't see that so much anymore. Nowadays people seem more likely to do as Matt points out, as in "oka~san" for okāsan "Mom," or "JIYU~" as in the sign.
Victor Mair said,
August 11, 2015 @ 7:08 pm
If the Rōmaji was meant merely for "special effect" or decoration, and not to convey meaning, they could have put the same notice up in English, or they could have copied something from an English magazine or book.
krogerfoot said,
August 11, 2015 @ 7:53 pm
@ Victor Mair
Certainly, but I don't think anyone has said the writing is merely for decorative purposes. I said I think the deliberate choice to romanize the Japanese message highlights the whimsical nature of the dialog. I don't understand how the writer could somehow not intend to convey meaning.
Victor Mair said,
August 11, 2015 @ 8:45 pm
@krogerfoot
"I think the deliberate choice to romanize the Japanese message highlights the whimsical nature of the dialog."
Are you now saying that you think that the Rōmaji text is more effective in that regard than a kanji + kana text would have been?
jamie said,
August 12, 2015 @ 3:09 am
@michael ferris
I think showing long vowels as kira~n (and jiyu~) is "cuter" than the alternatives.
krogerfoot said,
August 12, 2015 @ 3:41 am
"Are you now saying that you think that the Rōmaji text is more effective in that regard than a kanji + kana text would have been?"
I thought I had been saying that from the beginning. Haven't I? To quote an earlier comment of mine, "My interpretation, for what it's worth, is that writing the message out in rōmaji forces the reader to slow down and work through it syllable by syllable, the way a child just learning to read would, the better to appreciate the whimsical message."
My apologies for this long comment, but I feel like I'm in a debate without knowing what side I'm on.
I thought I was answering your questions with unremarkable observations. You asked how common rōmaji writing is today, public and private. I said I've mainly seen it in primarily decorative contexts, like the cutesy message in the OP. Here are a couple of other examples: an ad featuring the haafu singer Kaela Kimura from a few years ago, and a video game based on the anime and manga character Lupin Sansei. Not that romanized Japanese is mere gibberish, but publicly and privately, the vanishingly rare times that I've seen anyone choose to communicate purely with rōmaji have been in unusual circumstances, such as sending an e-mail from a foreign country without Japanese text converters, or writing a note to someone who grew up outside of Japan and never learned to use kana.
Prof. Unger has pointed out that the short-lived avant-garde fashion magazine Zyappu put out a handful of issues entirely in romanized** Japanese, and you've found a rōmaji novel. If those examples refute what I've said, I stand corrected, but in all honesty I'm not sure what I've said that other commenters are taking issue with.
Maybe my "serious communication" comment struck a wrong note, but if "serious" is not a suitable antonym for "whimsical" or "playful," what would be better? Or alternatively, are the talking anthropomorphic food and beverages in the photo NOT an example of whimsy? If not, what would be? If it's wrong to consider the sign to be mostly decorative*, what is a better interpretation? Are my observations about the way rōmaji is used and regarded in Japan off-base? I've asked some Japanese acquaintances for their impressions, and if I find examples of romanized messages or signs that are not backed up by kanji/kana elsewhere, I will surely pass them along.
* Can the concept of "text as decoration" be remotely controversial on a blog with many, many discussions of Chinese calligraphy on it?
** Boy, am I ever getting repetitive stress injuries from extracting that macron-topped o from this computer.
Matt said,
August 12, 2015 @ 9:36 am
Romaji Nikki is actually an interesting example of how romanization has been used in Japan. Takuboku says himself that he wrote it in romaji to make it harder to read, specifically for his wife to read, although I think the consensus now is that she probably could have if she'd tried (and she had possession of the diaries for a while, so maybe she did). There's also little evidence that Takuboku wanted it published as such — I understand that Kindaichi Kyosuke, who was the initial guardian of Takuboku's diaries after the latter's death, was not happy about this event at all.
Something like Toki Aika's Nakiwarai is probably a better poster child for romanized literature, although of course this was published to prove a point by the Romaji Hirome Kai ("Society for the Spread of Romanization") and shouldn't be mistaken for spontaneous use of Roman characters by everyday folk.
It might be a thorny issue in academia, but I think for the most part Japanese people have voted with their pens as it were.
Sure. The issue is not "What is the revealed preference of the Japanese mainstream?" or even "What Romanization system should children be taught, given that they are much more likely to use it to communicate with English speakers than Japanese speakers?" In both cases the answer is almost certainly some form of Hepburn. Nor would I argue with the claim that the adoption of Kunrei-shiki as an official standard was partly driven by nationalism. But it's just not correct to claim that it's objectively worse than Hepburn and would have been abandoned long ago if not for that same nationalism. That's all I want to say (and I apologize, Nathan, for making what turned out to be such a big deal out of it rather than finding a gentler way of making the point in the first place).
Pedant said,
August 12, 2015 @ 2:58 pm
I don't know what to make of this sentence: "Kira-n is an onomatopoeia for beaming eyes." Is "onomatopoeia" the wrong word, and if so, what is the right one? Or do beaming eyes really sound like "kira-n"?
S Frankel said,
August 12, 2015 @ 4:14 pm
@Pedant – how about "… is mimetic for …" ?
krogerfoot said,
August 12, 2015 @ 6:50 pm
Does English have a handy word like Japanese does with 擬態語 gitaigo for words that mimic a quality besides sound? I'm thinking of the way twinkle, glitter, glisten, flit, sprinkle, blink, and wink evoke lightness and quickness with their similar sounds, as opposed to glom, clump, lump, sludge, slab, hunk etc. Or a tweak vs a kludge when applying an adjustment to something. Japanese is full of this, but English has more than I realized at the beginning of this comment.
krogerfoot said,
August 12, 2015 @ 7:33 pm
I've asked a number of Japanese folks to give their answers to Prof. Mair's questions and their impressions of the bread & tea manifesto on the chalkboard. Here are some more responses:
Bilingual Japanese woman, mid-40s, living in Tokyo:
"I used to see a lot of this kind of writing from 1979 to 1982, in comic books for girls, etc. (. . .) I think that the artist [of the cafe chalkboard] chose Romaji because he/she thought using alphabet would be stylish, but did not know enough to write in English. (. . .) Nowadays for Japanese people, "Cool” means writing in English — that's why you see English (in terrible grammer) on the cover of notebooks etc. For instance, my ex-boss always wanted something in English on company's nengajo [New Year's cards], but if you suggested anything in Romaji he would have thought I were insane."
Multilingual Japanese woman, mid-30s, living in Europe:
"I saw the blog post and found it very interesting. We (between Japanese) do not communicate with Romaji unless it's needed because it takes time to write & read and it seems really (for me) childish. I guess people who cannot write English but want to use alphabet – just because it seems "kakkoii" [cool] use Romaji but I'm not sure 100%.
When "sumaho" [smartphones] did not exist I had to use Romaji to text to Japanese friends but otherwise I have not used Romaji a lot. As mentioned, it's mendoukusai [a pain in the neck] to read and write Romaji and I am not a big fan of it :P"
An American university professor reports:
"OK, the limited results of an informal survey indicate that it is in fact quite difficult to read for native J-speakers in just about all age ranges. All agreed, though, that it would not be difficult to produce. One respondent pointed out that many J-speakers use romaji input on computer keyboards, so they can basically do this without much thought — so it's sort of unexpected (to me) that parsing it would provide as much difficulty as they reported (to tell the truth the keyboard-input angle hadn't occurred to me, but I did have the sense that producing romaji text was not difficult for most Japanese). All agreed it was purely decorative or at least inconsequential, and most said they ordinarily wouldn't bother to read it.
Oh, and to answer an earlier question (perhaps obviously): no, I've never seen a consequential message of any kind in Japanese written out in rōmaji anywhere in Japan (outside of JFL/JSL textbooks), place names excepted, of course."
krogerfoot said,
August 12, 2015 @ 11:11 pm
Another response, from a bilingual Japanese woman in Tokyo, mid-30s:
(In Japanese): "I read the blog. Pretty interesting, huh? If I have time I might post a comment, but I'd say writing Japanese in rōmaji is pretty common on products and so forth, but I've never seen it in a cafe like that. That's hard to read! LOL
In elementary school just after learning rōmaji I might have used it, thinking it looked cool, but I would DEFINITELY never use it to communicate. That cafe—kind of unbelievable, you know?"
Victor Mair said,
August 13, 2015 @ 6:33 am
"Fat shaming (?) in Rōmaji" (12/22/14)
Calvin Ho said,
August 13, 2015 @ 11:58 am
Can anyone in Kansai investigate further? If I remember correctly, the cafe is in the mall next to Shin-Kobe station, near the ANA Crowne Plaza.
Kaz said,
August 15, 2015 @ 10:45 am
I'm a Japanese man in my late 40s, born and raised in Kanto. Let me comment on your questions.
Q1: I wonder why they decided to write the sign all in rōmaji, without a single kanji or kana.
I think that's partly because the message was on a chalkboard; they wouldn't use romaji in a print ad, for example. A Western alphabet looks good on a chalkboard while kanji and kana look good on a white paper in black bokuju in a calligraphic style. Some French restaurants have a chalkboard with some French words, phrases or sentences written on it and they look nice, adding the air of Frenchness. I guess the Kobe cafe tried to create a similar effect with romaji. Also most Japanese understand romaji so it has an advantage over French.
Q2: I wonder how common rōmaji writing is in Japan today, both publicly and privately.
Romaji writing in Japan today is mainly for proper nouns. Street names, station names and places names are written in romaji in signs in public places for those foreign visitors who don't read Japanese. Also our names on our passports are written in romaji. I don't see a sentence or a passage written in romaji in my daily life. One exception I can think of is some "character goods", anime-character-themed products like those of Hello Kitty.
nickM said,
August 16, 2015 @ 1:28 pm
I just wanted to second everything that krogerfoot has said. My impression has always been that, in cafes, advertisement hoardings, TV commercials, and so on, the function of romaji is not primarily informative. But this doesn't have to be an either/or question.
Much of the charm of the romaji in the above example (at least for the large number of Japanese – not all of them young and/or female – who like cute(sy)/ kawaii// cool/ kakkoi// fun(ny)/ omoshiroi sales pitches) is in the way it slow-motion-defamiliarises their own language. It wouldn't do that 1/100th as effectively if its function were purely decorative (as, e.g., a rendering of the same words in Cyrillic or Hangul scripts would be for most of the population).
What explains the fact that most Japanese nowadays are completely fluent in using romaji instead of kana to input text, when writing their own language on a computer or tablet or phone – but would still find it irksome or absurd to have to read romaji texts for any "serious" purpose?
Any amount of qwerty adroitness won't make up for sheer lack of practice in reading, I suppose. Even a foreigner brought up on romaji can find reading romaji Japanese very hard going. To take my own sample of one, my reading speed for standard kanji+kana Japanese is at least three times faster than my reading speed for romaji Japanese.
I can well believe that things would be different if and when romaji Japanese became anything more than a curiosity. But that's a chicken and egg sort of question. I wonder what would have to change in order for romaji to get to "lift-off" point? A more open immigration policy could be a big factor – if that ever came about.