"wo" or "o"?

[Titis]

Hi
I read in another thread that "even though the particle "wa" is spelled "ha", it's bad practise to say "ha" when you're typing in a place like this, because the word "ha" by itself means something" so I will use "wa" in the future but what about "wo" or "o", wich is best to use? (of course talking about the particle).
thanks in advance.

[Akihiko Yamamoto Hozagaki]

I'll be honest, I use "o" a lot more than "wo". However, they have the same exact meaning. The only difference is the kana. There's no particular reason why I use one more than the other, but when I type in kana it's different. I write "wo" and say "o"... I hope that wasn't too confusing ^^;.

[Titis]

thanks a lot!!

[Capernicus]

Yesh, what the penguin said. Even whe you write wo it's prononounced o, so it doesn't matter which you use. I always write wo though.

[Kaitou Ace]

I write 'wo' mainly because it's easier to make a distinction between the 'wo' particle and the 'o' prefix, that isn't always romanized as being attached to the following word.

[shinnraiu]

I just type wo... It sounds the same to me anyway... :oy: But I sometimes switch between ha and wa to be honest... whatever.

[Ange]

For me, it's kinda weird to see the particle wa spelled as "ha" but in kana, of course I never use "wa." For the particle "wo" I always spell it as "wo" since, I believe it is never used in other cases than the particle, so I don't get confused. I always read it as "o."

[Titis]

皆さんどうもありがとう。

[LavaBug]

hmm even though it's a little late, here's what i've learned about it and hope that i recall it correctly:
the "wo" is usually pronounced as "o" in today's japanese but is written "wo" for traditional reasons, since in earlier times the Japanese language had a lot more syllables starting with "w" like "we, wi, wu" than it had today.

[MistressPookyChan]

I think that people write o because that's how it's pronounced- it's easier when reading the romanji back. But most of the advanced students I know write wo because that is how the hiragana usually is. However, most people I know always write wa instead of ha. Very random. That's one of the reasons I hate romanji and suggest people get away from it as quickly as possible.

[kekepania]

Yes! I agree with MistressPookyChan. From my experience, romaji only creates confusion. It is so much better to get learning kana over with from the beginning, and not use romaji again. XD

When you get to the point where you think of a Japanese word and visualize it as being only written in Hiragana as oppossed to the alphabet, you know you have done well. XD

[VraieEsprit]

I've noticed that Japanese folk pronounce it as "wo" and "o" at random intervals just like "fu" can be anything from "hu" moving through all kinds of combinations of the two sounds to the actual "fu" and all the "r" sounds can come over as either pure 'r', pure 'l' or a mix inbetween.

So it probably doesn't matter overly which it is.

Personally I hate the fact there are multiple types of romanisation though. I've always written it as 'o' because I think wo looks ugly, but that's probably because it was how I was taught was correct.

The romanisation I have issue with are the ones when people eradicate double or elongated vowels (so transcribing courage and snow - yuuki and yuki - as the same word, the former just having a hat over the u to mark its elongation. Some people are so lazy they don't even bother doing that.

And also with "ou" sounds. I hate when people romanise those as "o". To me, if the furigana says "ou" then it means "ou" not "o". When I'm writing fanfiction I have to generally dig through and check the original kanji and furigana these days to make sure that I'm writing the names correctly because so many online sources have different spellings...from Fushigi Yuugi alone characters like Kouji and "Ri Hou Jun" (Chichiri) are romanised as "Koji" or "Li Ho Jun" which goes completely against the furigana for the names:

こうじ(攻児) ＆ りほうじゅん（李芳准） respectively.

Just a personal bugbear I have. That and the "l-for-r" thing too because nobody who uses 'L' in romanisation ever uses it consistantly for every example of a 'r' character sound.

So yeah. Romanisation is ugly and confusing, and not helped by the gazillion different methods of doing it...

Vraie