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Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-21
Now I know that romaji is in fact an invention of the dark lord himself but . . . Does anyone know of any japanese anime/drama out there that has romaji subtitles? My japanese friends find watching English tv with subtitles a really good way to learn. But what would the equivalent be for japanese tv? Using Kanji would be too hard for me - I just couldn't begin to keep up. And using hiragana would be a nightmare - it is fine mixed in with kanji but on its own it is hard to follow. The purpose of the subtitles is not to learn to read but to help your listening - it clues your brain in to what words are being used so you can hear them better. So I think romaji would (just this once) make lot of sense. Does anyone know of such a resource?
Anime with romaji subtitles - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-06-21
No I have no idea why it would exist
If you really want to go find a way to convert japanese subtitles to romaji subtitlesor maybe just to through the lines after watching the episode using the japanese subtitles with rikaichan etc
I discourage you from doig this. Get used to read Ing japanese by reading japanese
Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-21
I agree that romaji is hopeless as a way of learning to read. In fairness I did actually say that in my original post. Where I think it would be useful is as a means of helping you with your listening skills. Kanji is hopeless for that (until you get really good at which point it probably isn't an issue) and hiragana not really very good either. The French put out a lot of films in French but with French subtitles. It works really well as a learning tool.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Daichi - 2014-06-21
If you think it's hopeless, try to put effort into something that is useful instead. I think converting kanji subtitles to kana would be much more effective. (But it's so error prone if you do it autogenerate it.) But as you say, it does actually make it harder to read.
Even then, if you don't know the language, you are just reading phonetics, and I don't see that being the most helpful either.
Honestly, kanji isn't that scary, (RtK is all about making kanji less scary.) And you have stuff like Core that can teach you some common vocabulary. Just stick with children's anime like Precure or Ginga E Kick-Off. (If something like this doesn't suit your fancy, try a bunch of stuff until you find something that isn't too complicated for yourself. But I think a good drama for kids is usually a good way to go.) You want something where most of it you can understand from context. Even if you can only phonetically read half of the text on the screen, learning to parse what you can read is the trick. Eventually you will start making visual & aural connections to some common groupings of kanji like 大丈夫.
I say tough it up and just dive right into Japanese subtitles. And learn to use Aegisub to retime subtitles around commercial breaks. Don't say it's too hard till after you try it. There is also Subs2SRS that can break your favorite show up so you can learn it in pieces, but I always warn that it's a ton of extra work to setup.
Anyway, it's not television but Assimil is decent for listening and reading skills. It has romaji alongside kanji, so that might actually be up your ally.
Anime with romaji subtitles - john555 - 2014-06-21
Here's what I've come to conclude about learning Japanese: before you learn to read kanji you have to nail down the language phonetically first.
So there's no point learning the kanji for "cause" until, and unless, you remember right off the top of your head that "cause" is spoken out loud as "gen-in" in Japanese.
How do you practice it phonetically? Personally I'm working through the romaji transcriptions in my Japanese reader. When I'm finished and feel I know enough vocabulary phonetically I'll go back and work through the readers again but in kanji/kana. I read the romaji transcriptions out loud over and over again.
The fact that the transcriptions are in romaji is a blessing to me. "Gen-in" sounds out loud like "gen-in" whether written in kanji, kana or romaji. Personally I prefer to practice the language phonetically using romaji because I read romaji a hell of a lot faster than kana. Plus no possibility of making errors (e.g., reading "sa" for "chi" or "ma" for "ki" for example).
Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-21
Daiichi
I think you are misunderstanding what I am trying to say. I love kanji. I adore kanji. I practice writing kanji and learning kanji vocab every day. But for listening to words in japanese anime kanji is no good to me. I am not of a high enough standard yet. So to improve my listening skills romaji subtitles would be useful to clue my ear in. This is a technique other languages use - the example I gave was French. If there are romaji subtitles available that would be a great aid for my listening skills and no use at all for my writing/reading skills but I deal with the latter in lots of other ways.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Daichi - 2014-06-21
Rusty Wrote:I am not of a high enough standard yet.This here is exactly what I'm commenting on. You aren't getting better by saying you aren't good enough. What about all my other advice? What is wrong with something like Assiml? I left that for last in my post because I think it's boring, but it's the most suitable thing I know of to exactly what you were asking for.
Why romaji anyway? Why not grab an actual phonetical alphabet like IPA? Romaji simply doesn't translate as well as kana does.
Since john555 brought it up:
john555 Wrote:"Gen-in" sounds out loud like "gen-in" whether written in kanji, kana or romaji.Wait, what? Even if you don't know what the kanji are, kana is perfectly phonetically sound here.
And why not mix in a comment from another live post.
Splatted Wrote:One of the major issues you will run into depending on what romajination system you use.Vempele Wrote:The trouble with romanisation:john555 Wrote:genin = causeNo, it's "a person of low birth; a servant" (下人). ん followed by a vowel is properly romanized as n'.
Genin = げにん ＝ 下人
Genin = げんいん ＝ 原因
john555 Wrote:Personally I'm working through the romaji transcriptions in my Japanese reader.Anyway, getting back on topic, why not share some of these transcripts? I don't need them but they might be useful for other people that actually want to go down that road.
Anime with romaji subtitles - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-06-21
It's not efficient. You're still gonna learn how to read japanese afterwards and you only get faster and better at it because you do it a lot so you're just taking away from that. The whole point of suckin it up and doing it is so you get used to it. you're just gonna regret it later when you realize how inefficient your idea is. You can do whatever want to do but I can foresee that's whats going to happen. Just check out the dont repeat my mistakes thread
Maybe you should take my suggestion goin through the lines using rikaichan after watching it with English subtitles.
Vocab is much easier to remember and differentiate if you know the kanji and learning kanji with the words make it that much easier to learn future words with the same kanji. When i was in the beginning stages of japanese and found yamazaki or whatever was made up of kanji it just made it so much easier to remember than remember each syllable. I always wondered how the hell they remembered all those long syllable name and now I know
And reading kanji is not that hard. Just try it with song lyrics etc. Readin is much easier than Writing btw. Gettin to the level where you watch with something with japAnese subtitles while the episode is playing is going to take a lot of reading but if you never start you'll never get there or at least much longer than it needs to. Btw I'm at the level where i read fast and don't stare at the bottom of the screen whole time and I'm glad i never did romaji whatsoever
Anime with romaji subtitles - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-06-21
howtwosavealif3 Wrote:It's not efficient. You're still gonna learn how to read japanese afterwards and you can only get faster and better at it because you do it a lot so you're just taking away from that. The whole point of suckin it up and doing it is so you get used to it. you're just gonna regret it later when you realize how inefficient your idea is. You can do whatever want to do but I can foresee that's whats going to happen. Just check out the dont repeat my mistakes thread
Maybe you should take my suggestion goin through the lines using rikaichan after watching it with English subtitles.
Vocab is much easier to remember and differentiate if you know the kanji and learning kanji with the words make it that much easier to learn future words with the same kanji. When i was in the beginning stages of japanese and found yamazaki or whatever was made up of kanji it just made it so much easier to remember than remember each syllable. I always wondered how the hell they remembered all those long syllable name and now I know
Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-21
Dear god can nobody understand what i am trying to say? I want to read kanji and I do read kanji. It gives me great pleasure to do so. But I don't want to just read kanji I want to improve my japanese listening skills as well. My belief is that romaji subtitles would help my listening skills while (of course) doing nothing for my reading skills. So if there are romaji subtitled animes out there I could use them for that. If not I have no wish to create any myself - I have better things to do with my time or I am too lazy - take your pick. To be honest I am not sure some of the people replying to my post couldn't do with improving their own listening skills - and on that grumpy note I will sign off.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Vempele - 2014-06-21
But why are you asking for romaji instead of furigana? (And why has no one suggested furigana? For that matter, furiromaji?)
Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-21
The idea is that you can very quickly read the subtitles the better to clue your ear into what is being said. Remember what I am talking about here is listening skills not reading skills so I am not trying to read the kanji which is what I think furigana helps you with. In any case you'd not be able to read furigana in an anime as it would be too small - I think it only makes sense in manga.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Daichi - 2014-06-21
Rusty Wrote:But I don't want to just read kanji I want to improve my japanese listening skills as well. My belief is that romaji subtitles would help my listening skills while (of course) doing nothing for my reading skills.If you want to level up just your listening skills, why not just rewatch something raw, something you have watched with English subs before? The context is 100% already known, so just follow along with your ears. Why even bother with the crutch of reading along with something? I really do think no-subs is better then romaji subs. It's easier to find too, since at worst you just have to cover up the subtitles if they are glued to the video.
What about audio courses like pimsleur? This is made for listening comprehension.
Rusty Wrote:So if there are romaji subtitled animes out there I could use them for that. If not I have no wish to create any myself - I have better things to do with my time or I am too lazy - take your pick.What you are specifically asking for simply doesn't exist. The amount of effort needed to correctly make Japanese subtitles into romaji isn't really worth the effort, as very few people would find it useful. Which is why I'm suggesting alternatives. Are none of my suggestions useful?
Vempele Wrote:But why are you asking for romaji instead of furigana? (And why has no one suggested furigana? For that matter, furiromaji?)Sadly furigana/ruby-text isn't properly supported by any standard subtitle format. (USF supported it, but it's a long dead format.)
Anime with romaji subtitles - kameden - 2014-06-21
Rusty Wrote:The French put out a lot of films in French but with French subtitles.Japanese put out a lot of Japanese content with Japanese subtitles too. They put out nothing with romaji though, because romaji just isn't used. Romaji isn't Japanese. I think this is one of those things that for some reason you just can't see right now, but maybe in a year you'll look back on how dumb of a question this is. Your best bet is to just get used to Japanese, not some fake version of Japanese.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Sebastian - 2014-06-21
I guess it would be possible to "fake" furigana support by "manually" writing the furigana over the kanji.
Does anyone know if somewhere such subtitles exist?
Anime with romaji subtitles - Sebastian - 2014-06-21
Rusty Wrote:But I don't want to just read kanji I want to improve my japanese listening skills as well.Subs2srs sounds perfect for you. Just create a multimedia Anki file for some movie, anime or dorama you like, and make it into a dictation deck, leaving both translation and Japanese transcripts on the back side of cards.
Anime with romaji subtitles - mc962 - 2014-06-21
I'd second the rewatching raw what you've already seen in english subs. I've experimented with this with Gundam Seed series (both of them) by watching it first in english subs (actually it was dub the first time i think, but close enough), then i found something without the english subs (it was youtube, so it was korean subs but since I can't read Korean, it worked the same). I was surprised at how much I could comprehend afterwards. But I do agree, you aren't likely to find anything like that because there isnt really a demand for it. Those who aren't into the language in terms of learning are satisfied with english subs, and a Japanese person would likely prefer the familiar kanji/kana they are used to instead of trying to cram it into a foreign lettering system. Those that are learning the language and have the know-how to do what you want realize at this point that using kana/kanji subs makes more sense, and romaji would be wasteful. Your Japanese friends talk about english subs, but that makes more sense because english letters are how you see english, it's not how you see/use japanese.
Personally, I've used english subs for the past couple of years (I should really wean myself off them, but I'm lazy and unmotivated at the moment), and I'm just fine. After watching and listening to so much I can generally pick out the words if I'm paying attention. In the end, if you really want to improve listening using romaji subtitles isn't going to be that much more worth it as opposed to just listening and training your ear to distinguish the sounds. You won't have a romaji script when talking to someone, and having a script isnt as useful if your ear still can't pick up more than a a jumble of sounds
To sum up, what you are looking for doesnt really exist in my experience, isnt likely to exist because of lack of real demand for it, and in the end won't do much more for your listening skill than simply watching a ton of things and listening.
Depending on your skill, you might want to check out NHKEasy, as they have a written articles with furigana as well as audio i believe
Anime with romaji subtitles - john555 - 2014-06-21
Daichi Wrote:Why romaji anyway? Why not grab an actual phonetical alphabet like IPA? Romaji simply doesn't translate as well as kana does.Why romaji? Simple. Because romaji is what my Japanese reader uses.
The student is constrained by what the author of the textbook uses. In my case, the author of the textbook transcribed everything into romaji so that is what I am using.
Besides, romaji is better than kana because real Japanese isn't written all in kana anyway.
Plus, as a native English speaker I find romaji much easier to read than kana. This is important, because at this stage I'm trying to nail down the language purely phonetically.
Romaji is the most efficient way for me.
If someone says "chemistry!" I need to be able to instantly say "kagaku!" It's easier for me to learn "kagaku" in romaji.
At this stage of my studies, when I do practice drills, I actually picture the romaji "kagaku" in my head as I say it out loud. There's no logic in picturing the word written in hiragana since "kagaku" is actually written as two kanji when written in Japanese script.
Anime with romaji subtitles - REH94 - 2014-06-22
john555 Wrote:Besides, romaji is better than kana because real Japanese isn't written all in kana anyway.This is painful. By this logic, your own logic, romaji would be the worst choice! Japanese isn't written in romaji almost at all.
john555 Wrote:I'm trying to nail down the language purely phonetically.That is the point of kana in the first place! They are phonetic units - ろ is pronounced ろ、が is pronounced が、ect. Why are you trying to overcomplicate things by learning Japanese with an alphabet, from a different language, that inherently doesn't describe it phonetically?? Kana (and the IPA) exists for a reason.
Really, what I'm taking away from your posts is that you don't know the kana well enough to recognize them instantly. Maybe you should focus on that; it should be faster and more natural to read/write かがく than 'kagaku' anyway (and even faster/more natural to read/write 化学).
@Rusty, I can respect that you feel like using romaji at the beginning to boost your listening but it is likely that Daichi is right, watching the raw after watching the subtitled version is probably more effective.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Rusty - 2014-06-22
I have got to be honest I have been quite disappointed by the replies to my post. It is like I go to the train station and as for a ticket to Edinburgh and everyone has a ton of ideas for where I'd be much better going. So, and this is my last word on this ever, just to remind you. I am not trying to use the romaji to learn japanese. I just want to use it to he me hear the spoken japanese on the audio track. I am guessing it is not out there as otherwise I'd not be receiving all these posts. I appreciate we are all told to get off romaji as soon as possible and I agree with that. Reading romaji dies not help you read japanese. It would help for what I have in mind but nobody seems to be able to wrap their minds round that. I give up.
Anime with romaji subtitles - Linval - 2014-06-22
Well, romaji is a touchy subject, that was to be expected.
That being said, I'm not even sure you'd be able to find much in terms of romaji subtitles anyways, since it basically serves no purpose to anyone. People who are not interested in learning japanese use subtitles in their language(s), and people who learn japanese usually prefer kanji or no subtitles at all.
I guess a simple "[anime] romaji subtitles" google search would yield some result, but it's unlikely you'd have much to chose from.
Rusty Wrote:It would help for what I have in mind but nobody seems to be able to wrap their minds round that. I give up.I'm sorry you feel that way, but I think it's the other way around ; everyone understood what you want, but no one sees romaji as superior to, say, kana or kanji. Kanas are phonetic units, so they "clue" your brain on what is being said, in a much more accurate fashion than romaji. But whatever floats your boat really... However there must be a good reason as to why romaji subtitles are hard to come by.
Anime with romaji subtitles - yudantaiteki - 2014-06-22
Rusty Wrote:I have got to be honest I have been quite disappointed by the replies to my post. It is like I go to the train station and as for a ticket to Edinburgh and everyone has a ton of ideas for where I'd be much better going. So, and this is my last word on this ever, just to remind you. I am not trying to use the romaji to learn japanese. I just want to use it to he me hear the spoken japanese on the audio track. I am guessing it is not out there as otherwise I'd not be receiving all these posts. I appreciate we are all told to get off romaji as soon as possible and I agree with that. Reading romaji dies not help you read japanese. It would help for what I have in mind but nobody seems to be able to wrap their minds round that. I give up.Incidentally, I think your idea is fine; unfortunately as people said the subtitles don't seem to exist. But using romaji won't destroy your Japanese ability. Kana doesn't help you pronounce Japanese any better than romaji does; if anything it harms your pronunciation because people think that if they learned the kana (from a table that gives the romaji for each kana), they know how to pronounce Japanese.
Limited use of romaji for acquiring early oral skill is fine. I did this when I started learning Japanese (I didn't even learn kana until I had been studying Japanese for 6 months). It didn't have any long-term effect on my Japanese ability.
Anime with romaji subtitles - john555 - 2014-06-22
If you want videos with people speaking Japanese with romaji subtitles, I have seen that in the videos that accompany Japanese For Busy People.
When I took a Japanese course at night school the teacher played part of a video (on VHS!) that had romaji subtitles.
The video we saw was a bunch of Japanese workers in an office setting talking about going out drinking after work.
You could probably find these videos on line either from the publisher or eBay or something.
You would just need a VHS player (I think they still sell them at Walmart for something like $20).
Anime with romaji subtitles - john555 - 2014-06-22
yudantaiteki Wrote:Kana doesn't help you pronounce Japanese any better than romaji does; if anything it harms your pronunciation because people think that if they learned the kana (from a table that gives the romaji for each kana), they know how to pronounce Japanese.Thank you! This is what my position has always been. Using kana won't make you pronounce Japanese any "better" than using romaji. I mean, "ma" is "ma" whether written in romaji or kana.
Limited use of romaji for acquiring early oral skill is fine. I did this when I started learning Japanese (I didn't even learn kana until I had been studying Japanese for 6 months). It didn't have any long-term effect on my Japanese ability.
Most of my textbooks use romaji and I have neither the time nor desire to re-write the romaji parts in kana anyway.
I find I've gravitated to older textbooks (which use romaji) because the grammar is more challenging and the material more adult and "grown up" than newer textbooks. In general I've found there's been a gradual "dumbing down" of the material (not just in Japanese either).
Anime with romaji subtitles - DrJones - 2014-06-22
I've only seen romaji in subs of anime openings and endings (for sing-a-long purposes). The good news is that there seems to be a lot of openings and endings and they are short clips. The bad news is that the audio and the pictures are unrelated, and the vocabulary and grammar fall on the difficult side of the spectrum.