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JF Ossan
 
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Join Date: Jun 2007
03-17-2010, 05:43 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by BenBullock View Post
Sure, but aren't you setting up a straw man there? If a Japanese textbook said it was "domo" or even "doumo" rather than "doomo" or "dōmo", that would be more of a case of the textbook using poor romanization than a case of romanization itself being at fault. I'd expect any textbook or website which was attempting to teach Japanese to be clear about how the romanization corresponded to the pronunciation.
But even in a case like どうも the three beats of the word are much more clear in hiragana vs. the five letters in "doumo" or "doomo" or the four in "dōmo"

The textbook I taught spelled it "doomo". Guess how long it took me to break my students of spelling it どおも...and that was after getting romaji for only about 2 months. Imagine a year of spelling it "doomo" or "dōmo" and then trying to learn the どうも spelling.
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