The author is using an anglicised romaji system and evidently thinking in English, so they think writing 話します as "hanasimasu" is "wrong".

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danabramov 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I feel like you’re going out of your way to misinterpret the article. As the article says below:

> this is why it's important that you don't actually "think in" romaji. i'm using romaji as a convenient way to refer to phonetics in text. however, your "mental algebra" should match the hiragana table.

Then the article includes an exercise that verifies the reader’s understanding.

I also included a note:

> (note i could also have used a different romanization that renders し as "si", つ as "tu", and ち as "ti" for this article. i decided to not because everyone else uses romaji, and once you understand this point once, you shouldn't have a difficulty doing this in your head.)

Where is the factual mistake here? “si” is invalid romaji, my article uses romaji, therefore it’s invalid.

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wzdd 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Factual mistake" is a bit harsh, but the missing piece is that there are multiple ways to romanise Japanese; all of them produce "valid Romaji" but only in the particular system being used. Si is how you write し in romaji using the kunrei-shiki romanisation. In the Hepburn romanisation it's shi. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese#Diffe... .

	▲	danabramov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I see, maybe my use of “romaji” is sloppy because I implied “Hepburn romaji” specifically because that’s what I chose in the article. I do explicitly mention that other romanizations exist and that I chose not to use them — so I’m not worried about misleading someone who reads the article. But on pedantic level I see why “si doesn’t exist” sounds overly broad.

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YouMeWeThem 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is pedantic but you're thinking of "romanization", the act of transliterating Japanese with the Roman alphabet (romaji). There are different systems of romanization, most notably Hepburn and Kunrei. In Hepburn shi is correct, in Kunrei si is correct.

It sounds like you're saying "si" are not valid characters in the Roman alphabet.

	▲	danabramov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok yea I see what you’re getting at — my terminology was overly narrow. By “romaji” I specially meant “romanization I’ve chosen for this article”. I do offer an explicit note that other romanizations exist, but outside of that note, I tried to stay within a single self-consistent system, so this nuance was lost.

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lmm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I feel like you’re going out of your way to misinterpret the article.

Nope. You correct yourself after, sure, but what I wrote is how it came across at the time when reading.

> Where is the factual mistake here? “si” is invalid romaji, my article uses romaji

No, that's not what "romaji" means. If you mean Hepburn, say Hepburn. And if you don't know the difference, that's a sign to learn more before presuming to teach others.