A question?

[Karate-addict]

I read a few books and I was wondering why do we have jiu jitsu, jiu jutsu, ju jitsu & ju jutsu ? I always use the term ju jutsu and by this I mean the grapling system that existed before judo, also when reading Donn F. Draeger's books he always points out that ju-jutsu is the correct term. Anyway please help a confusing mind .

[Master Jules]

JuJitsu.....thats the proper spelling....the "Ju" means "soft, pliable and yielding"

[username9]

Yeah - it is all just spelling! or a typr if you put B in front of JJ!

 

(I know, I know - Brazilian Ju Jitsu)

[Vito]

bjj spells it jiu where , i think everyone actually, spells it ju.

[Shane]

At my school its spelled Jujitsu, but from my understanding back when Jujitsu came to the United States, people were unsure of the spelling and pretty much just came up with a few possible ways and so today you see it spelled different but it means the same thing.

 

For those misreading IT MEANS THE SAME THING

 

I'm talking about the meaning of the word not the system behind it, I know there are a lot of versions of Jujitsu out there.

[47MartialMan]

Why do people change it? No one changes the spelling of Karate or Judo.

[JohnnyS]

Re Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu:

 

Could also be because it's Portuguese spelling

[Ottman]

There is no 'correct' spelling of asian words using western alphabets since they use characters instead of letters. Whatever spelling you prefer works, as long as the phonetic pronunciation can be read from the spelling you choose. Us westerners had to come up with our own spelling for asian words, and I guess we all differ in our ideas of how the alphabet is used for phonetic spellings. This is why I usually type "Jeet Koon Do" when most (including bruce lee himself) spell it "Jeet Kune Do". It's just become a habit of mine.

 

(stupid english, grumble grumble grumble )

[Kreisi]

Ju-Jutsu is the right spelling

 

Brasilian Jiu-Jitsu is different thing.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Hmmm...guess I'll copy-paste my answer from an earlier post...

 

The confusion comes from the fact that the Japanese alphabet is syllable-based (I forget the scientific term for it). In other words, you have the vowels, "a, i, u, e, o" the consonant "n" and everything else is "ka, ki, ku, ke, ko", "sa, shi, su, se, so", "ya, yu, yo" etc.

 

The first character in "jujutsu" is actually a combination of "ji" and "yu" to form what looks like "Jyu". The vowel sound is actually elongated, so the full character is "Jyuu", which means softness, gentleness, tender, etc.

 

The second character is "jutsu", which just means "skill" or "technique" or "art", but in this case, refers to a combative discipline. Strangely enough, it is never used in the japanese language with the alternate pronunciation of "jitsu". Like the previous one, the absolute technical spelling of this is "jyutsu". In other words, Jujitsu is not correct Japanese, whether in writing or in pronunciation...

 

So if you had microsoft IME and you wanted to type in the word for "jujitsu" in kanji (chinese characters), this is what you would type in exactly: "jyuujutsu". That is what you would also write out if you were simply writing it in the japanese syllabic alphabet.

 

So, where does that lead us? You can even look it up in a japanese dictionary, and it will say "Jyuujutsu" in the Japanese font, yet will come out as "Jujitsu" in the English meaning. Furthermore, it is commonly accepted that "Ju" takes the place of "Jyu" in terms of romanization. Of course, there is an extra "u" in there that most people leave out, but that is the same for "Toukyou", which is commonly called "Tokyo".

 

So now, it boils down to the fact that there is no commonly accepted way to write it, and even the more common ways of writing it are not technically correct. A Japanese dictionary will give you that IN ENGLISH, it could be Jujitsu or Jujutsu. I have seen in some dictionaries that there is a distinction in that BJJ is called Brazilian Jiujitsu. This may even have been done on the Japanese part to enforce the difference? I don't know.