Romaji (Romanization) note—we have primarily used the Hebon-Shiki (Hepburn) method of translating Japanese writing into the English alphabet and determining how best to spell the words (though accent marks have been excluded), as it is generally considered the most useful insofar as pronunciation is concerned. We have italicized foreign terms such that they can be readily differentiated from their English counterparts (for example, dan meaning black belt rank versus Dan, the male familiar name for Daniel). As the Japanese and Chinese languages do not use capitalization, we have only capitalized those words that would be used as proper nouns in English.
Japanese is a challenging language for many English speakers to pronounce correctly. A few hints—for the most part, short vowels sound just like their English counterparts (for example, a as in father, e as in pen). Long vowels are essentially double-length (for example, o as in oil, in the word oyo). The u is nearly silent, except where it is an initial syllable (for example, uke). Vowel combination e + i sounds like day (for example, bugeisha); a + i sounds like alive (for example, bunkai); o + u sounds like float (for example, tou); and a + e sounds like lie (kamae). The consonant r is pronounced with the tip of the tongue, midway between l and r (for example, daruma). Consonant combination ts is pronounced like cats, almost a z (for example, tsuki).
Although there are a few words here from other languages, the majority of words listed in this glossary comes from Japanese.