The Romanized Orthography of Ishikawa Takuboku's Romaji Nikki

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  • 石川啄木「ローマ字日記」のローマ字表記
  • イシカワ タクボク ローマジ ニッキ ノ ローマジ ヒョウキ

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Abstract

Ishikawa Takuboku's Romaji Nikki (Romanized Diary) has been esteemed as a work of literature, but its alphabetic notation has not been fully researched. This study is based on a text prepared from a facsimile of the original manuscript. The study reveals that the orthography of Romaji Nikki can be roughly divided into four periods, and that the change from the 2nd to the 3rd period was particularly pronounced as Takuboku changed the style of romanization from the so-called Japanese (kunrei) system to a close approximation of the Hepburn system. Between the 2nd and the 3rd periods, a romanization chart (Kokuon Romaji-ho ryakkai) was published, which was mainly based on the Japanese system, but included the Hepburn orthography in parentheses next to the Japanese system transcription, and also used the Hepburn system for palatalized contracted sounds. This table is found to have two remarkable features: (1) Contracted sounds expanded to accommodate all five vowels to form such rare compounds as kya, kyi, kyu, kye, kyo, and (2) a comment is attached to note that a diaeresis mark (¨) should be attached to vowels after syllabic n. Further investigation of books on romanization in the possession of the National Diet Library reveals that the first of these two features is shared by Nanbu Yoshikazu's Nihon Bunten Ui-manabi, while the second one is found in Suematsu Kencho's Nihon Bunsho-ron and Maruyama Michikazu's Romazi no Tsuzurikata ni Kwansuru Iken. Although the connection between Takuboku and the aforementioned works is presently uncertain, it is clear that Takuboku's approach shows some commonalities with these linguistic authorities.

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