LOL "Tetsuya Nomura's True Intentions Discovered"

[ChichiriMuyo]

Icyedge said:

Millennium said:

RolStoppable said:
How is "Nomula" Japanase for "Nomura"? As far as I know the Japanese have a hard time pronouncing the letter L, because that sound isn't part of their language.

It isn't Japanese for Nomura (which is itself Japanese), but "Nomula" is technically also a valid way to spell it in romaji. Of course, technically you could spell it however you wanted in romaji, since you're changing the script it was defined in anyway, but the systems that have been organized for this sort of thing are fairly consistent. On the R-versus-L issue, though, the systems differ.

Japanese doesn't have sounds for R or L as English-speakers tend to think of them, but it does have a sound somewhere in between the two, and this sound appears in Nomura's name. It can be romanized as either R or L, depending on the system used. However, Nomura himself seems to prefer using an R.

I always learned (courses and book) that the official translation is to use an R even if the sound is actually closer to L. Which different system are you talking about?

I imagine it's because going the other way, both L and R are written with the same characters in Japanese.