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Romaji and Korean romanization for song lyrics
If you listen to J-pop or K-pop but can't read kana or hangul yet, romanization lets you sing along and start recognising the sounds. PinyinLyrics shows it for you in the same floating window it uses for Chinese pinyin.
Japanese: romaji with kanji readings
Japanese lyrics mix kana and kanji. The same kanji can be read many ways, so the app uses a morphological analyser to work out the reading of each word in context, then writes it in Hepburn romaji. You can choose whether long vowels are written with macrons (ō, ū) and whether auxiliary verbs are joined to the verb they belong to.
Korean: Revised Romanization
Korean lyrics are converted with the Revised Romanization of Korean, the official system in South Korea. You can optionally add hyphens between syllables to make long words easier to read.
Automatic detection
You don't pick the language. The app decides line by line whether text is Chinese, Japanese or Korean and applies the right system. Lyrics in other languages are shown as they are, without romanization.
Tips for learning from romanization
- Use romanization as a stepping stone and keep an eye on the original script, so your reading improves too.
- Learn hiragana, katakana and hangul first: they're small alphabets and unlock lyrics quickly.
- Romanization is an approximation. The pronunciation in a song can differ from spoken language.
Switch it off per language
Each language has its own switch. If you only study Korean, for instance, you can turn off pinyin and romaji and keep just the romanization you need.
Related: how to see pinyin lyrics on Android.