Various martial arts aliases.

kendo -> kendou
kendo_mask -> kendou_mask
kendo_armor -> kendou_armor

sumo -> sumou

judo -> juudou
judo_throw -> juudou_throw

Reason: Proper romanization.

ShadowbladeEdge said:
kendo -> kendou
kendo_mask -> kendou_mask
kendo_armor -> kendou_armor

sumo -> sumou

judo -> juudou
judo_throw -> juudou_throw

Reason: Proper romanization.

No

I agree with Yavie. There may be proper romanization, but the English speakers have used the above words without the "ou" spelling for years and have been accepted into the English lexicon. Respelling them make them more (for a lack of a better term) "unregonizable."

nanami said:
Respelling them make them more (for a lack of a better term) "unregonizable."

Doesn't that excuse only fly when the change will cause a clusterfuck, e.g. Tokyo? This would barely cause a ripple.

ShadowbladeEdge said:
This would barely cause a ripple.

What do you base this assumption on?

Yavie said:
What do you base this assumption on?

The fact that it would affect just shy of 100 posts?

The fact that all the tags together account for not even 100 posts? That said, I'm least enthusiastic about juudou, because it's the most dissimilar to the established "judo" spelling, and consequently the one most likely to cause confusion. OTOH, we have aliases, so it's a problem for at most 10s before people figure it out.

+1 to the aliases.

-1 for the same reason we don't "fix" the romanization of "Toukyou". These are frozen romanizations in wide usage in English. Let's keep the "proper" romanizations for words that are truly being imported for our usage in the here and now, and not ones that were adopted (and the spelling established) by our native language a century ago.

Shinjidude said:
Let's keep the "proper" romanizations for words that are truly being imported for our usage in the here and now, and not ones that were adopted (and the spelling established) by our native language a century ago.

What if one's not a native English speaker? :)

I say "our native language" based on the fact that the site is written in English, and hence the de facto native language of it, and of in all likelihood a majority of its speakers is English. Of course we have plenty of users from different linguistic backgrounds.

Shinjidude said: Let's keep the "proper" romanizations for words that are truly being imported for our usage in the here and now, and not ones that were adopted (and the spelling established) by our native language a century ago.

This is an approach I would apply very carefully and selectively, on a case by case basis. I guess I'll go along with it in this case, but people (not you, I know you get it) shouldn't take this as precedent for keeping "popular" spellings for other things, e.g. "but a certain Japanese guy from Street Fighter has always been spelled that way!" arguments. As Shinjidude says, this would be for concepts that have, for all intents and purposes, become English words as much as anything else. Everyday words, not ~15 yr old fictional character names.

Though I admit I'm not totally comfortable with it. I generally prefer accepting changed spellings only when there's been significant semantic drift or narrowing. Like kung fu, for an example in this area. To come at it from the opposite direction and look at words the Japanese loaned, take randoseru vs ransel, or arubaito vs arbeit. There hasn't really been any drift with the concepts in this thread, though. Eh~