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Japanese learning : Romaji vs Hiragana | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6805 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 25 of 32 08 January 2010 at 11:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Seriously, it is your one way ticket to hell.
It's like trying to learn the latin characters through greek characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5522 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 26 of 32 08 January 2010 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not so sure romaji is going to be faster, if you are used to seeing Japanese in kana, romaji looks strange. On the other hand, I don't think it is true, as a previous poster claimed, that your pronunciation will suffer. If it does, it is not because of romaji per se (but because you confuse romaji with Latin letters used for English), they are capable of expressing all the phonetic differences that kana show. It is certainly true that learning materials will be limited if you don't know kana. Most of all though, they are so easy to learn that there really is no reason to put it off any longer. Unless you are really dense, you'll remember them after a few hours, and will be using the passively within a week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yirmeyahu23 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5097 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Studies: Biblical Hebrew, English*, Modern Hebrew Studies: Japanese | Message 27 of 32 16 July 2011 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
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It always seems like I'm finding these older topics interesting. I would agree that if you want to take your studying to a more advanced level, then kana/kanji is definitely the way to pursue that course. Even though I myself am just starting out learning Kanji myself, Romaji has been an excellent guide. It helps you to recognize word endings which for a long time I had a hard time hearing with native speaking (which is often mumbled). It also gets you use to the fact that Japanese, for the most part, is a very simplistic language made complicated by the writing system. I've taken it upon myself to put a few Japanese novels in Romaji to help me along the way. People are being a little too harsh on here saying its a one way ticket to hell and all that. Even a 日本人男 said that he used the Latin system for learning some of his later kanji in his life. Each method is suited to the person. If it takes him 20 years to learn the language its on him. Good luck to the guy though.
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| strummer Diglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4923 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 28 of 32 16 July 2011 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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for my japanese studies im currently using romaji. I have had the idea of learning hiragana and katakana, but i think i will never find the time to keep it in my mind later in life, so i decided that i will learn only the spoken language with romaji.
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 29 of 32 16 July 2011 at 5:53am | IP Logged | ||
I'd like to hear what Po-ru think about this nowadays.
And what's the difference between a phonetic transcript using Latin letters and one using kana in that context? I honestly cannot comprehend how people can learn Japanese without investing into its writing system, because kanji at least can be a great help when it comes to remembering vocabulary. Only that you don't get kanji + romaji to work with, so it's a good idea to practice kana. Edited by Bao on 18 July 2011 at 12:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5208 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 30 of 32 16 July 2011 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, it would be interesting to hear if Po-ru ever got comfortable with kana/kanji.
I don't think it's necessary for beginners to use kana for everything. Learning how a bunch of words look in kana is just as useless as learning them in romaji, since either way you will have to relearn them later when you study kanji. I think the main problem with romaji is that it seems simpler than it is; it actually requires you to learn new pronunciations for the letters you have stuck in your head as sounding a certain way. I think that's harder than simply learning new letters and their sounds. I don't even think that kanji knowledge is absolutely vital for a beginner. The advantage to learning it from the very beginning is that you give yourself a lot more exposure to it, which will make reading easier when you are an intermediate learner. I think it's a serious misuse of time for someone to try to reach an advanced level in Japanese (or Chinese) without learning the characters. At least it's not a complete waste of time, since someone in that position would have a much easier time learning kanji compared to someone with no exposure to the language. However, reading is one of the best tools for acquiring vocabulary, learning grammar rules, and just generally integrating the new language into your brain, so I always think it's a shame when I hear someone is trying to learn only the spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 31 of 32 18 July 2011 at 6:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey. I didn't even realize I made this thread haha. I felt inclined to reply without
evening knowing what I had posted with advice for the OP not even knowing it was myself! Anyway here is my advice to myself in 2009. I posted that back in December 2009. Right before I went to Japan to study for the semester. I can say at that time I was trying to get comfortable with "Intermediate" level Japanese. I was in level 4/7 at my University in Japan having never taken a Japanese class prior so that was who I was a year and a half ago. Now 2011, here is where I am at. I'm done with my study in Japan and for a good while dropped Japanese study all together to take up Korean. Japanese study for me pretty much dropped from Aug 2010 until March 2011, when I was offered a part time job teaching Japanese. Since then I've been going at Japanese everyday for at least two hours. I can honestly say I am a much more proficient listener and READER than I was in 2009. Advice to myself in 2009 and others like me: AVOID ROMAJI! I honestly look at books now and if there's no hiragana or kanji, I drop it. After enough time I got accustomed to it and cannot even imagine reading romaji now, especially with the ways different books use different latin symbols to represent the sounds. I know how they sound in Japanese but when I see them in some of these books with romaji, I must admit I am myself a bit confused(this is even more true for Korean). Anyway, the important this is to avoid romaji and get familiar with hiragana, katakana, and kanji as soon as possible. By studying just two or three kanji a day writing you will make more progress than you could ever expect! There's my growth in the last 18 months haha. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5082 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 32 of 32 18 July 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I confess that Kana might be difficult, but I can't imagine Japanese without Kanas.
Even if I don't learn all Kanji with different pronunciations, learning Kana will able me to read texts with Furigana, and Furigana is still accepted in Japanese, different from Romaji. To the guy who created the thread, I'll be honest, do what works for you. But if I were you, I would struggle to study using Kanas, because, in the future, you will read much faster because you will have gotten used to the system, but if you don't start know, when you get at an advanced level, you will purchase some book and see only kanas+kanji or furigana+kanji and you will read just like a child, very slow. It has to be started at the beginning, otherwise you might regret in the future. But if you are learning using romaji, you don't care about the written language, and are having no problem avoiding kanas to study, keep doing what is working for you, we are not here to judge, but to help, some of us made a lot of mistakes before we learn. You are having problems to read kanas now, but if you practise, after maybe 5 or 6 months, do you really think that you will still having problems with this? Edited by Matheus on 18 July 2011 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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