Japanese Romanization Converter - Ruby Annotation
Converts any Japanese text into Hepburn-style Romanization, shown as ruby text.
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About Japanese Writing and Romaji
Japanese is primarily written using a combination of three types of characters: 'Hiragana,' 'Katakana,' and 'Kanji.' Understanding how these characters are converted to Romaji allows for more accurate romanization.
Hiragana (The Basics of Sound)
Hiragana are phonetic characters representing the basic sounds of Japanese, used for grammatical particles, verb endings, and native Japanese words. Hiragana is the most straightforward script to convert to Romaji. For example, 'あ' becomes 'a', and 'き' becomes 'ki'.
Katakana (Foreign Words and Emphasis)
Katakana are also phonetic characters but are mainly used for foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, or to emphasize certain words. When converting to Romaji, pay special attention to the long vowel mark 'ー' and the small 'っ' (sokuon). See 'Major Romanization Styles' below for details.
Kanji (Variety of Readings)
Kanji are characters that represent meaning, and the same kanji can have different readings (and thus different Romaji conversions) depending on the context. This tool infers the most appropriate reading from the context to convert to Romaji, but it may occasionally produce a reading different from what you expect.
Major Romanization Styles
There are several ways to write Japanese in Romaji. This tool uses the Hepburn system, which is the most widely used internationally.
Hepburn
A romanization system that emphasizes ease of pronunciation for English speakers.
- Long vowels: Represented with a macron over the vowel, like 'ō'. Example: 東京 (Tōkyō) → Tōkyō
- Syllabic 'n' (ん): Becomes 'm' before b, m, and p. Example: 新聞 (shimbun) → shimbun
- Sokuon (っ): Represented by doubling the following consonant. Example: 切手 (kitte) → kitte