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Why does everyone hate romaji? | ||
Tags: Writing System | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4669 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 28 14 February 2013 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
I did start out thinking that the kanji would be hard and that I'd "just learn to speak". It didn't take me long to realise that I needed some way of writing (and reading) so that I could take notes and use SRS. I guess I'm just not an aural person. To be honest, I'm quite glad about that: the writing system is fascinating. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 28 14 February 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I disagree that romaji is not as effective as kana; it does the same darn job, just as well.
I used romaji when I began learning Japanese because I didn't want to wait until I was completely comfortable with kana. Over a normal course of study, though, it gets phased out and you no longer need it. Even if you don't really care about the written language, it's not really possible to ignore writing as a whole, and you will need kana (and some kanji) for very practical reasons. A lot of people take a long time to learn hiragana and katakana and they wait until they are done before they start learning the actual language and in such cases, I would definitely recommend you start studying with romaji if you can and get started rather than wait. But you should definitely start learning hiragana and katakana on the side. Edited by Arekkusu on 14 February 2013 at 5:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6554 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 28 14 February 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Here I go, quoting Arekkusu again, who's name looks somewhat like romaji. You are right of course. Just wanted to add that sometimes in Japan there are signs of place names in Kanji, with romaji below. No kana. And some of those place names have rare kanji, or kanji with rare yomi (pronunciations), so westerners can sometimes figure out the place names faster than the Japanese. Funny, but true. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5385 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 28 14 February 2013 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
It IS romaji, for Alex. アレックス, if you prefer... Edited by Arekkusu on 14 February 2013 at 6:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4405 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 13 of 28 14 February 2013 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is romaji as effective now, I wonder? Most kana is basically two romaji letters in one, which could be
seen as an advantage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5986 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 14 of 28 14 February 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
If everybody used romaji and there was more standardisation, it could be as effective as kana. The lack of standardisation creates frustrating ambiguities as discussed above. The fact that most people don't use it just means that for people who those of us who haven't spent a long time studying romanised Japanese (because there is no need - as most people don't use it), a long paragraph written in romaji is much slower reading than the same paragraph in Japanese script. Single words, such as place names, of course, are not such a problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5013 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 28 14 February 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
And there are places with only Kanji signs. So tourists who don't know any Japanese (like me and my dad years ago and it would be the same if we went now) need to copy kanji on a paper and than guess whether those are the same kanji on the next sign :-) Sorry to go so of topic. A question: How many versions of romanisation are there? I know there is the English one, which is usually considered the correct one. There is a Czech one which was created before international spread of the English one, I suppose, as there is a long tradition of Asian languages on Charles University. Are there more? Which one do the Japanese use when they use it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4703 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 16 of 28 14 February 2013 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Kana are not completely unambigous either. They don't record pitch accent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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