KENPO'S #1 CONTROVERSY

A quick end to the controversy. From a technical standpoint the correct spelling is KeNpo. However because of modern usage it is becoming acceptable to spell it either way. Notice I will many times refer to it as Kenpo/Kempo. When spelled Kenpo you know it refers to the style of Kenpo taught by James M. Mitose, and the style we teach today. Those of Okinawan lineage traditionally spell it KeMpo.

Is Kenpo/Kempo - spelled with an M or an N?

Al Tracy

WARNING: No matter which way you spell it: Kenpo/kempo is always pronounced KeMpo!

The fact that I have been teaching Kenpo for nearly 40 years will mean nothing unless I can authenticate what I say. If you want to know how to spell an English word, you would go to an English/American dictionary. If you want to know how to spell a French word you go to the source, a French dictionary.

Logic - If I ask you how to spell a Japanese word you go to the Japanese source!

A HANDBOOK AND DICTIONARY OF THE JAPANESE WRITING SYSTEM KANJI & KANA

by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn Copyright in Japan, 1981 by Charles E. Tuttle Company

I have several hundred books in my personal reference library. I also have thousands of martial arts magazines including the first issue of BLACK BELT. Of the tens of thousands of articles less than 50 were truly researched and contained more than just myths.

FROM KANJI & KANA

The transliteration of Japanese words and texts into Roman letters presents no problems; the Japanese language can easily be transliterated by using only 22 Roman letters and 2 simple diacritical marks.

Why then have the Japanese not adopted such an alphabet to replace a system of writing which even they find difficult? The answer lies in the large number of homophones, especially in the written language; even in context it is frequently impossible to uniquely determine the sense of a word without knowing the characters with which it is written. Other rational as well as more emotional considerations, including a certain inertia, make it very unlikely that the Japanese writing system will undergo a thorough overhaul anytime soon.

The kunrei-shiki romaji system

This system is patterned after the Fifty-Sounds Table (goju-on-zu), the five-by-ten grid in which each kana syllabary is conventionally arranged. In the kunrei-shiki the initial consonant sound of all five syllables in each row is represented uniformly with the same Roman letter, despite any phonetic variation associated with different final vowel sounds. The government introduced the kunrei-shiki for official use in 1937, in a form which differs only slightly from that used today.

The Hebon-shiki romaji or Hepburn system

This system is similar to the kunrei-shiki, except that the consonant sounds in the same row are not represented uniformly with the same letter. The Hebon-shiki was developed by a commission of Japanese and foreign scholars in 1885 and was widely disseminated a year later through its use in a Japanese-English dictionary compiled by the American missionary and philologist James Curtis Hepburn (in Japanese: Hebon). In the Hepburn system the consonant sounds are spelled as in English, and the vowel sounds as they are in Italian.

The following additional transliteration rules are taken from the official recommendations:

The Very First Rule of Kanji

1. The end-of-syllable sound... is ALWAYS written "n" (even when it appears before the labials b, p, or m and is phonetically assimilated to "m", ergo, konban, kanpai, kanmuri). In other words, the syllable ending of "ken" is always written "ken" even if it is phonetically pronounced "kem".

For even more proof we are giving you the web site in Japan to get directly to the Japanese dictionary!

Japanese Dictionary on the web

When the dictionary comes up all the information you will need to enter is In a frame in the middle of the page.

Go to the frame section move down to the third line where you will check the first box:(1) Kanji in line q (2) (3) leave the color red - change 26 to 48 to make the kanji larger - go up to the top of the box and type in kenpo: You will get 10 definitions - this is why it is so important to be able to actually see the Japanese Kanji for any word you are looking up!

WARNING - Webster's New World Japanese/English Dictionary

States just the opposite. Here is what Webster ways: An N occurring before b, m, and p changes to an M in sound and is so written when romanized; ie.,

shin-bun=shimbun (newspaper) shin-pai=shimpai (worry) an+ma=amma (massage) Who is right? Webster or the Japanese! Remember Webster did not develop the Japanese Romaji system.

Not only did Webster violate the first rule, they actually changed it to make it exactly the opposite.

Find out for yourself -- go to the Japanese dictionary and type in: shinbun - shinpai - anma and see if the Japanese use Webster's rules or the rule developed by the Japanese! After all I think the Japanese know more about their language then Webster! Notice, in each of these cases the general search returned more than one word. Not once was the N ever converted to an M. WHY! It violates the first rule of Romaji. If you try to type the words in with an M rather than an N you get an error reading!

ONE MORE TEST

Change the top choice to Full Regular Expression. Type in shinbun. You will now have 12 choices. Take the first word; - (akutokusiNbun) - type in this word but change the N to an M! The Japanese dictionary won't accept it. The rules of Romaji state:

1. The end-of-syllable sound... is ALWAYS written "n" (even when it appears before the labials b, p, or m and is phonetically assimilated to "m", ergo, konban, kanpai, kanmuri).

If I actually thought that everyone who spells it with an M had actually researched it and looked it up in the Webster Japanese/English Dictionary I could see where they had been misled!

NOTE:

When the Japanese print an English/Japanese newspaper they do not use the Webster New World Japanese/English Dictionary! END -- But I am sure it will not be the end of the controversy! P.S. Just say the comment of a college professor who stated very simply - we should use the Chinese "chaun fa" to be correct! But is that the "Cantonese" or "Mandrin" way of pronouncing it? We are back to the same problem, even in Chinese. Example: (Young Forest Temple) "Shaolin Temple", or "Sil Lum Temple"! Perhaps, if we ask "Grasshopper".