Self-defense the Tyrolean way by "10th dan Jiu-jitsu" grandmaster

Thanks, CK, for a good chuckle.

It's not spelled "jiu" but "ju". Jiu Jitsu it's BJJ.

I would be really interested to learn whether ju or jiu or jitsu or jutsu are the correct spellings or indeed whether this matters. Thanks

justcurious wrote:I would be really interested to learn whether ju or jiu or jitsu or jutsu are the correct spellings or indeed whether this matters. Thanks

I've always known the correct spell (at least in Italy) it's "ju jitsu".

justcurious wrote:I would be really interested to learn whether ju or jiu or jitsu or jutsu are the correct spellings or indeed whether this matters. Thanks

We have addressed this numerous times on the old forum.

In brief, there is only one 100% correct spelling, and that is 柔術.

The problem is that unless you know how to read Japanese, this probably doesn't mean much, so we 'transcribe' these kanji into Rômaji.

Scholars of Japanese in general largely prefer the Hepburn or Revised Hepburn transcription. As such, the recommended way to transcribe these kanji is: jūjutsu.

When the first writings appeared that talked about jūjutsu these were done by people who were usually not scholars of Japanese, hence why all kinds of different ways were sometimes used. Unfortunately some of these have stuck. There are writings where Kanô himself used the term jiudo. Today no one uses that way of referring to our discipline anymore. Since dictionaries are not grammar or correct use books, they primarily register words that are in use. That also means that there are many 'wrong' words in dictionaries, with the term 'wrong' referring to loan words from other languages which were introduced in a misspelled way, but have stuck. The term 'typhoon' is such a word. There is no such word that ends on '-n' in Chinese or Japanese. The original word ends on '-feng' or on 'fû' thus one can only guess who the heck misheard it to think that it would have ended on '-n'. Nevertheless, the words has stuck.

In a similar way the wrong words 'jitsu' and 'jiu-jitsu' have stayed. You will even find some Japanese, not just English, dictionaries which also contain the word, because it exists although wrong. You will occasionally even hear a Japanese native speaker actually say the (erroneous) 'jiu-jitsu' rather than the correct jūjutsu. This is not really surprising. I would not like to feed the number of native speakers of English who write typo's or mispronounce English words.

Another problem why one used to more frequently see the term 'jiu-jitsu' than 'jūjutsu' is obvious and had to do with technical reasons. You could not create macrons with typewriters, and the first computer words processors couldn't do it either. When I wrote my first thesis (in Japanese/Chinese studies), which in those days was still on a typewriter, I had to add each macron manually afterwards on each vowel that needed one. If I recall well, it took until WordPerfect 5.0 or something before it became possible to type characters such as 'ū' on a word processors.

Japanese is obviously a quite different language when compared to Germanic or Romance languages. Therefore it was necessary to create something called Wāpuro rōmaji in order to make it possible to type Japanese on a word processor. In that type of transcription we actually have to type 'juudou' for jūdō to create the kanji 柔道, and juujutsu.

There exist even other transcription systems, such as for example, the kunreishiki, a government-pushed system, that was more political than scholarly. You then get something like 'zyuuzitu', which to most non-Japanese scholars probably looks rather weird. Then again, to me it does not look any more weird than 'jiu-jitsu' though.

Forget my gi....gonna get me some lederhosen. It's the future

I have a 1930ish extract from a Kodokan Judo magazine in which there is a longish article on 'German Jujutsu'.

Maybe this guy just inherited the style...

Emanuele2 wrote:It's not spelled "jiu" but "ju". Jiu Jitsu it's BJJ.

If I can add to CK, history plays a big part.

I am going from memory here, but I read that Japanese dialects can render jujutsu as "joo juts" or "ji-oo jits", depending on where the speaker is from. The emphasis is on the first syllable, the vowel in the second syllable is almost non-existent, and the last syllable is truncated and ends with an exhalation indistinguishable in English, like a breathy "suh". Early translators wrote what they heard and it would seem most heard "ji-oo jitsuh" and wrote "jiu jitsu".

In the UK in the early 20th century and throughout much of Europe in the following decades "jiu jitsu" was the most common spelling. As CK pointed out, Kano even spelled judo "jiu-do" in one early publication. Many styles from Holland still use that spelling, as do most Kawaishi jiu jitsu schools. Jujutsu reached Brazil in 1914 when "jiu jitsu" was the common spelling and that form stuck. However, "jiu jitsu" most certainly does not refer to BJJ alone.

I don't think it is such a big deal. Just as the French spell "English", "Anglais" and the Spanish "Ingles", English spells "jujutsu", "jiu jitsu" or "ju jitsu" or "ju jutsu".