User:TriforceTony/Sandbox

Japanese Romanization Standards
Zelda Wiki's Romanization standards are derived from the modern Hepburn Romanization standards which determines how Romaji (writing Japanese characters using the Latin alphabet) is to be written. The Japanese language has three main forms of writing: Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji and Hiragana are used to represent original Japanese words, while Katakana is used for loanwords and names. Every instance of Japanese is to be surrounded by the Japanese template, like: which looks like:

"Zu" is written for both ず and づ, while "Ji" is written for じ and ぢ. You should only capitalize the first letter of a word in Romaji and leave the rest lower case. Hence ゼルダ reads as Zeruda rather than zeruda or ZERUDA. In the case of multiple words, the first letter of each word, except for particles, is to be capitalized. ゼルダの伝説 (ゼルダのでんせつ) would yield Zeruda no Densetsu. Kanji that combine into one word only have the first letter capitalized as well; separate Kanji, however, are considered two different words, so the first letter of each would be capitalized.

Extended Vowels
Japanese characters often use extended vowels which are marked by Chōonpu (ー) symbols for Katakana and repeated vowel letters for Hiragana. To Romanize these characters, you should always use Macrons (Ā Ī Ū Ē Ō ā ī ū ē ō) to indicate a longer vowel rather than repeating the vowel letters.

Here is an example of how Hiragana and Katakana are to be Romanized:

In use, this would look like:

There are, however, exceptions to this. In the case of vowel stops presented by Kanji, if one Kanji ends in a letter and the next Kanji begins in the same letter, macrons are not to be used. For example, 王失う (おううしなう) is written Ōushinau and 夕憂い (ゆううい) is written Yūurei. Macrons are also not to be used if a Kanji letter is followed by a Hiragana letter. For example, 生う (おう) is written like Ou, rather than Ō. However, 呪おう or 呪王 (のろおう) would be written as Noroō.

Ei (えい/エイ) is not to be written with the ē macron.

ン and ん
When Romanizing n from Hiragana and Katakana, the letter "n" is always written as "n". Only during the translation section of the Japanese template for Katakana can "n" be alternated with "m". In this case, the word is usually a loanword. For example, Impa's Japanese name reads, but can be translated as "Impa". The letter "n" in Hiragana is usually never exchanged for "m", as 印判 (いんぱん) is written as "Inpan". The "n" is followed by a consonant in the case of loanwords. Say you wanted to write the name "Sam", you would rather use "mu" at the end, resulting in, rather than. "N"s at the end of names always result in the Romanized letter "n".

ッ and っ
When a consonant is preceded by a small "tsu" letter, it indicates that the consonant is supposed to be repeated. For example, パックン reads as Pakkun and 漆黒 (しっこく) reads as Shikkoku. While this is more prevalent in Katakana, it also exists in Hiragana.

Special Katakana Characters
Certain letters in Katakana are combined to pronounce words otherwise unavailable in the alphabet. These letters are always smaller versions of vowels, which have their own characters. For example, Fi's Japanese name is written "Fai", with a smaller "a" symbol following the letter "Fu" (ファイ). This is used to pronounce loanwords words more correctly than if it was written. Below is a list of commonly used conjugated Katakana letters.