Usage
Despite its official recognition, Kunrei-shiki has not gained widespread acceptance in or outside Japan. The Japanese government generally uses Hepburn, including the romanization of Japanese names on passports, road signage and train signage. The great majority of Western publications and all English-language newspapers also continue to use Hepburn.
| Conjugation | Kunrei | Hepburn |
|---|---|---|
| Mizen 1 | tat-a- | tat-a- |
| Mizen 2 | tat-o- | tat-o- |
| Ren'yô | tat-i | tach-i |
| Syûsi/Rentai | tat-u | tats-u |
| Katei | tat-e- | tat-e- |
| Meirei | tat-e | tat-e |
Because Kunrei-shiki is based on Japanese phonology, it can cause non-native speakers to pronounce words incorrectly. John Hinds, author of Japanese: Descriptive Grammar, says that this would be "a major disadvantage."
Additional complications appear with newer kana combinations such as ティーム(チーム) team. In Hepburn, these would be distinguished as different sounds and represented tīmu and chīmu respectively, giving better indications of the English pronunciations. For some Japanese speakers, however, the sounds ティ "ti" and チ "chi" are the same phoneme; they are both represented in Kunrei-shiki as tîmu. This kind of logic often confuses those who do not know Japanese phonology well.
Today, the main users of Kunrei-shiki are native speakers of Japanese (especially within Japan) and linguists studying Japanese. The main advantage of Kunrei-shiki is that it is better able to illustrate Japanese grammar, as Hepburn preserves the irregularity of certain conjugations (see table, right). The most serious problem of Hepburn in this context is that it changes the stem of verbs, which is not reflected in the underlying morphology of the language. One notable introductory textbook for English speakers, Eleanor Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language, uses JSL romanization, a system strongly influenced by Kunrei-shiki in its adherence to Japanese phonology, but adapted to teaching proper pronunciation of Japanese phonemes.
Read more about this topic: Kunrei-shiki Romanization
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