がんばって but in Romaji...differences.

[kinyobi]

I've come across this word written in Romaji in several different books and it seems people write it differently, are people also saying it differently depending on where they are from - like Nagasaki-ben or Kansai-ben?

One text book shows: Ganbatte and another shows: Gambatte

I did a Google on each Romaji and found more hits with Ganbatte than Gambatte, is there a reason for the variation?

I appologize in advance for the obscurity in my questions.

[Taurus]

There are several different systems for romanising Japanese script - you can read more here.

The reason that がんばって is written ganbatte and gambatte is because the sound represented by ん is somewhere between the sounds represented by 'nb' and 'mb' in the Latin alphabet.

[kinyobi]

Thank you. Oddly the "Gambatte" was written by a Japanese language teacher. I will have to check JSL or Nihon-shiki to see.

[jemstone]

i think its because of the lip movement... the "n" sound for "gan" ends with the lips apart and the "b" sound for "batte" requires the lips to be closed.

and if you do the "n" sound with your lips closed, you get the "m" sound.

this is technical to what taurus-san said.

[kinyobi]

I think you hit the nail on the head 'jemstone', as I was looking through some of my simple Kanji practice, I noticed the Furigana next to the word for Three Hundred.

三百


さんびゃく　and the romaji next to Sambyaku it too is has the "ん” followed with a "B" sound, so the ん is sounded out as with an "M". And I think in one of the lessons Peter said this was an irregular or was it Sakura-san?

Ithink this case is closed.

[wccrawford]

This is what I really, really hate about romaji. There are so many ways to do it and more are horrid.

The worst ones are the ones that try to be true to the kana and do things like 'ti' instead of 'chi'. It makes it just about impossible to sight-read them. You have to constantly convert what's written into different sounds.

For example: ちがいます　would be tigaimasu instead of chigaimasu. (I'm talking to you, Eleanor Harz Jordan! Cripes I hate that book.)

My second most hated are the ones that get cutesy with it and write gambatte instead of ganbatte. That does -not- sound like an 'm' when native speakers say it!

And in case there just wasn't enough, IME's require silly little tricks when typing, instead of just taking romaji.

For example: For minna you would have to actually type minnna or min'na.

Yes, I understand why it's required, but it's a pain to have yet another way of romanizing.

[Javizy]

Another "cutesy" variation I've seen is mutchuu instead of mucchuu for 夢中 and other words with a glottal stop. I always just stick to the IME version, since it's the only one with any use. Aside from helping you learn kana and as an input system, romaji is nothing but bad.

By the way, you only have to worry about typing 'n' twice if it precedes やゆよ and you want to avoid ゃゅょ, at least with Windows and my iPod.

[wccrawford]

Another "cutesy" variation I've seen is mutchuu instead of mucchuu for 夢中 and other words with a glottal stop. I always just stick to the IME version, since it's the only one with any use. Aside from helping you learn kana and as an input system, romaji is nothing but bad.

By the way, you only have to worry about typing 'n' twice if it precedes やゆよ and you want to avoid ゃゅょ, at least with Windows and my iPod.

Try 'minna' and see if you come up with みんな　or　みんあ. I'm betting you end up with the latter, as I get that on Vista, OS X, and Kubuntu. And iKnow. It's predictable when you need 2 n's, but it's often enough that it's easiest to just always type 2 and be sure.

[Javizy]

Another "cutesy" variation I've seen is mutchuu instead of mucchuu for 夢中 and other words with a glottal stop. I always just stick to the IME version, since it's the only one with any use. Aside from helping you learn kana and as an input system, romaji is nothing but bad.

By the way, you only have to worry about typing 'n' twice if it precedes やゆよ and you want to avoid ゃゅょ, at least with Windows and my iPod.

Try 'minna' and see if you come up with みんな　or　みんあ. I'm betting you end up with the latter, as I get that on Vista, OS X, and Kubuntu. And iKnow. It's predictable when you need 2 n's, but it's often enough that it's easiest to just always type 2 and be sure.

Oh yeah, I forgot about vowels and even the な-row The rest seems to be okay though