Comments on: Avoid Romaji

by: goofypunter

Sat, 13 May 2006 06:54:27 +0000

I am learning Japanese using the Pimsleur Japanese program. I think that it is a great course since it makes you actively recall stuff and hence better able to remember them.
I have been transcribing the course conversations and new vocabulary using romaji based (as best I can) on the real hiragana spellings. I think once you know hiragana, it is not bad to use romaji since it is faster for non-Japanese people to read in the abc-alphabet system. At least during the beginning phases of learning…

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http://goofypunter.blogspot.com

by: Mo R-B

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:27:25 +0000

Oh and to Curtis R, until you are able to find tutorship with japanese I would sugest you download a complete Hiragana and Katakana table and learning, shouldn’t be too hard to find, and familiarize yourself with them and the romanji they represent, also learn as many Kanji as you can, then you have a major head start when you do get around to officially studying the language. if you can learn the meaning of the characters the pronounciation can be learnt at a later date… hope this is of some help.

by: Mo R-B

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:20:28 +0000

I’ve been learning japanese now for about 20 weeks, romanji is handy due to it’s western alphabet and seems great to start with however I will admit that it quickley becomes a hinderance, once hiragana and katakana are learnt they should proceed to use only them in writen japanese, otherwise the learner can find themself turning to romanji as a quick fix, I learnt Hiragana and Katakana within two weeks of being given the kana (the japanese alphabet characters) tables, but I still find myself using romanji when taking note from my teacher, my advise is the quickley familiarize oneself with kana and use it when ever possible when it is learnt fluently and can be writen as fast as english the need for romanji disapears.

by: Curtis R.

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:09:47 +0000

I have been playing a game FFXI. It has a ton of japanese players on it and I would love to get to know most of them. My only problem is my school does not have a japanese language program so I am unable to study with someone who knows more about the language. So anytips on how to best study this language is helpful. Thank you.

by: Thomas Wong

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 14:28:14 +0000

I have no problem with using Romanji, as long as you learn the syllabary first.
But since I didn’t learn Romanji, I cannot type toe small letter tsu etc, a e i o u is fine, just precede with a y
Well not everyone has access to a Japanese keyboard.

by: Jon

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 00:53:49 +0000

I found one of the better books to learn from is Colloquial Japanese. It starts out in romaji and quickly introduces hiragana and katakana, which are gradually replaced with kanji.

There is also an edition that includes a CD or tape, but I haven’t seen it yet. Besides, I think the Pimsleur CDs are probably much better. (I need to get back into the habit of actually listening to them…)

by: heather

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 03:53:01 +0000

i jumped straight into hiragana this past week, and have the 48 basic hiragana down now for sight reading. ( i used handy paper flash cards i made). i can write a bunch now too. i was surprised.

i don’t know if romaji is evil, but it is potentially confusing. after those warnings, i decided to go the hiragana/katakana road.

glad i did!

i found out, far as typing goes tho’, as i type romaji (simply sounding out the hiragana) it types the hiragana for me. how lovely.

by: ben

Sun, 07 Aug 2005 01:29:29 +0000

ive just started learning japanese, im trying to memorize the 46 main hiragana symbols first. I was using romanji to better my knowledge of the hiragana by writing out romanji words in hiragana, what should i be doing instead? :/ whats wrong with learning romanji, is it THAT evil?

ben

by: David

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:14:06 +0000

On when to introduce kanji:- I find it odd that beginners’ textbooks tend to avoid kanji, using hiragana/katakana exclusively - or worse, using romaji. Surely it’s best to have kanji as part of your language environment from the beginning, even if it’s a long while before you actually come to use them. That way, it’s not such a shock when you first have to formally acknowledge their existence. It’s rather like a young child, who is exposed to written words for a very long time before being sat down and taught to read.

by: joshua

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 09:17:43 +0000

I agree with this advice completely. The only thing I’d add is that it is not necessary to delay starting on Kanji for very long at all. Kanji-remembering systems like Heisig’s and other radical/imaginitive based methods are excellent to get you feeling comfortable with Kanji early on.

Also re. #4 with Pimsleur CDs you might learn best without any distraction from a dictionary. But I can imagine the dict. would be handy if you’re listening to real samples of Japanese dialog etc…