JSL

JSL is a romanization system for the Japanese language, devised by Eleanor Jorden for her 1987 book Japanese: The Spoken Language. It is designed to mimic the Japanese kana system using the Latin alphabet, and tends to be more intuitive than the Hepburn or Kunrei-shiki systems when dealing with grammar.

The JSL system is based on the earlier Nippon-shiki system. It differs from Nippon-shiki in that it uses doubled vowels, rather than macrons, to represent long vowels. Tokyo and Osaka, for instance, would be transcribed Tookyoo and Oosaka in JSL.

When diacritics are used in JSL, they mark the pitch of each mora, a feature that is unique to the system. An acute (´) vowel denotes the first high-pitch mora, a grave (`) marks the last high-pitch mora, and a circumflex (ˆ) marks the only high-pitch mora in a word.

JSL is not popular outside of academic settings because it is unintuitive for speakers of other languages to pronounce. Most English speakers, for instance, would pronounce a double-O as in "boot," whereas a double-O in JSL would be pronounced as in the English word "go." JSL also retains the unintutive consonants of the Nippon-shiki system.