In plain-text romanization, the standard and expected spelling is “sensei.”
That’s the formal, conventional representation, especially for typing and learning.
Phonetically, in natural speech, the vowel often compresses toward a long /e/ sound, so you may hear something closer to sense or sensee depending on context and speaker.
In stylistic writing (e.g. light novels or dialogue), you might occasionally see phonetic renderings to reflect speech, but in formal or instructional contexts, “sensei” remains the correct and expected form.
In short:
• Orthography: sensei
• Phonetics: can vary in actual speech
• Stylistic writing: sometimes bends toward pronunciation
Different layers, different purposes.
I think this may mostly be a case of people talking past each other.
One side is focusing on orthographic convention (how it’s written and typed),
the other on phonetic realization (how it’s actually pronounced in speech).
Those aren’t contradictory claims — they’re just different layers of the same thing.
Hi, ursAxZA. Yes, you're describing an "elision," which is where speakers drop or blur sounds together to make speech more fluid, like the way some people say, "Sup?" when they mean, "What's up?" or replace the T with a glottal stop in the word "mountain," as they do in Utah.
I wholeheartedly agree that it is fine to write things like "Sup?" when appropriate, such as dialogue in a novel. You see this all the time in Japanese TV, books, magazines, manga, etc. However, I disagree that elisions should dictate how we spell words in regular written communication, especially when discussing a tool meant to help non-native Japanese speakers learn the language. And as the parent poster pointed out, when singing, you would sing "se n se i" rather than "se n se e." The same is true of haiku and other instances where the morae (linguistic beats similar to syllables in English) are clearly enunciated.
As I said, sensei is technically four morae and different than "sensē," and, in my opinion, should remain that way in Romaji, it being a writing system and one method for inputting Japanese text.
Thanks for the respectful conversation. I appreciate the points you brought up.
Thanks — and yes, I think we’re essentially aligned now.
Once we separate the layers — orthography, pronunciation, and stylistic rendering — the friction mostly disappears.
Romanization is a writing system with its own conventions;
speech naturally undergoes reductions and elisions;
and creative writing sometimes pulls closer to the spoken register.
Different layers, different functions — and the confusion only arises when they’re collapsed into one.
Phonetically, in natural speech, the vowel often compresses toward a long /e/ sound, so you may hear something closer to sense or sensee depending on context and speaker.
In stylistic writing (e.g. light novels or dialogue), you might occasionally see phonetic renderings to reflect speech, but in formal or instructional contexts, “sensei” remains the correct and expected form.
In short:
• Orthography: sensei
• Phonetics: can vary in actual speech
• Stylistic writing: sometimes bends toward pronunciation
Different layers, different purposes.
I think this may mostly be a case of people talking past each other.
One side is focusing on orthographic convention (how it’s written and typed), the other on phonetic realization (how it’s actually pronounced in speech).
Those aren’t contradictory claims — they’re just different layers of the same thing.