In Japanese あいうえお are pronounced 'a i u e o', かきくけこ are pronounced 'ka ki ku
ke ko'. The spelling is simple and natural. However, when it comes to サ行,
さしすせそ, its relevant roman spelling is 'sa shi su se so'; the same issue also
exists in タ行, たちつてと, for which the roman spelling is 'ta chi tsu te to', which
makes me confused.

The question I want to ask is that why is it spelled 'sa shi su se so', but
not 'sa si su se so' for サ行, and 'ta chi tsu te to' instead of 'ta ti tu te
to' for タ行?

  1. Just to make its spelling correspond with the pronunciation? I don't think so, if you spell it phonetically like the book tells you, the pronunciation would be strange. 

  2. In order to let you type the relevant Japanese letters? If you type 'ta ti tu te to', for instance, you can also get 'たちつてと', without needing to type 'ta chi tsu te to'.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-08T13:32:04.650
19807
2014-12-09T10:00:27.107
2014-12-09T09:06:43.963
3275
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question
pronunciation spelling rōmaji
Why are し/ち transliterated as 'shi'/'chi', and not 'si'/'ti'?
Technically there is no right or wrong way to spell kana in roman characters.
In your Japanese studies you are sure to see just about every combination
there is. Just learn to get used to them, and choose the one you like when
writing. Personally, "ti" for ち irks me to no end, but technically it's
"valid".
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-08T14:30:56.823
19808
2014-12-08T14:30:56.823
7550
19807
answer
Systems of romanisation which were originally intended to render Japanese in a
way that makes it easier for foreigners to pronounce, like
[Hepburn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization), will use "shi"
and "chi" because those are closer to the correct pronunciation.

Other systems, like [Kunreisiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunrei-
shiki_romanization), will use "si" and "ti" instead.

Which is used where is partly down to what the purpose is - Hepburn (or
variants of) is often used when the aim is to represent words for the benefit
of non-Japanese speakers. Kunreisiki is apparently popular in lingustics. [Wa-
puro romaji](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C4%81puro_r%C5%8Dmaji) is for
those of us who are too lazy to change the way we type even when Japanese
input mode is off.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-08T14:48:49.907
19810
2014-12-08T14:48:49.907
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answer
When talking about _shi_ (and absence of _si_ ), to say "there is no _si_ but
_shi_ in Japanese" is not really correct. The truth would rather be **"there
is no distinction between _si_ and _shi_ in Japanese"**.

In other words, there is only one such "voiceless sibilant" phoneme in
Japanese, which is usually written as /s/, and さしすせそ are phonemically parsed
as /sa si su se so/, all sharing the same consonant.

But this /s/ sound somewhat changes its color when it is followed by /i/ (or
merged with /y/), under the influence of its palatal feature, resulting in a
sound a bit more similar to English _sh_.

In English, there are two "voiceless sibilant" consonants, which are /s/ and
/ʃ/ ( _s_ and _sh_ ), and speakers would naturally take it for granted that
these two are different and independent from each other. To their ears, while
consonants in さすせそ sounds almost identical to /s/, that of し feels more like
/ʃ/, and the Hepburn romanization (de-facto standard romanization system for
modern Japanese) spells consonants just according to these impressions.

So, to summarize, while English sounds _s_ and _sh_ are expressions of /s/ and
/ʃ/ respectively, Japanese _s_ and _sh_ are "allophones" of one phoneme /s/,
which are kind of expedientially written in two different ways according to
the impressions conceived by English speakers.

In fact, Japanese _sh_ sound is not completely identical to English _sh_ and
falls somewhere between English _s_ and _sh_. I don't think there would be ANY
problem if you pronounce し like "see" rather than "she" (or like russian сь in
some cases like ～ました), at all.

* * *

The same story applies to _chi_ and absence of _tsi_ (despite _tsu_ existing).
The two consonants are phonemically the same (commonly written as /c/ avoiding
writing in two letters), which means "there is no distinction between _chi_
and _tsi_ ".

About distinction between _t_ and _ts/ch_ is another long story. All たちつてと are
believed to have shared the same phoneme /t/ until recent period, despite that
ち and つ no longer kept the original _t_ sound for these several centuries.

However during the last century, hundreds of imported words from foreign
languages (mainly English) urged people to begin distinguishing ち _chi_ and てぃ
_ti_ (like in チー (a mahjong term) and ティー ("a golf tee")), which automatically
meant two consonant phonemes involved within the two sounds, namely, /t/ for
_ti_ /ti/ and /c/ for _chi_ /ci/.

Now たちつてと is generally considered to be /ta ci cu te to/ (some theories stick
to more classcal /ta ti tu te to/, but they can't explain the distinction
between チー and ティー very well). In this respect you can say that たちつてと contains
two differents consonants that historically used to be one.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-09T02:22:06.593
19815
2014-12-09T10:00:27.107
2014-12-09T10:00:27.107
7667
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19807
answer