Abstract
With the arrival of a global society, the signs in expressway's guidance system need a good readability to help foreigners drive smoothly in Japan. This research is aimed to find the readable alphabet spelling method of Japanese place-name. We chose place-names that have more than 5 syllables, and applied 3 spelling methods to each name: 'no hyphen' , '2 parts with a hyphen' , '3 parts with 2 hyphens'. The selection rate of every spelling method was calculated. The conclusions are the following, 1) place-name composed of 5~8 syllables is adapted to '2 parts with a hyphen' , place-name composed of more than 9 syllables is adapted to '3 parts with 2 hyphens' . 2) place-name composed of 5 syllables and shown with '2 parts with a hyphen' has a good readability for foreigners who have lived in Japan for less than 3 years. 3) Hyphen is needed when 'g' or 'h' is before a vowel. 4) In order to have a good readability, hyphen is needed.
