.

I have that book (as a PDF). Didn't use it, so I don't know how good it actually is, but it pops up from time to time when people talk about learning resources, so it can't be bad.

I can't comment on the book itself but I can't help myself:

john555 Wrote:-Syatyoo wa ano otoko wa kaisya o yamerun' d'ya nai ka to omou kara tyuui site kure to iimasita.

Maybe it's because what little romaji exposure I've had is Hepburn, but this took me an entire minute to grok out - it barely looks like Japanese! Especuially "syatyoo," yikes.

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john555 Wrote:Comment: the authors state in the introduction "The purpose of this book being the teaching of spoken Japanese, we have restricted ourselves to romanized spelling. The writing of Japanese is a complicated study in itself, and unless you can master spoken Japanese you will not make any headway with the written language."

Problem is, there are more than one romanized spelling
I don't know this book, but I'm quite sure that if they kept it in kana (which can be easily learned in a few days... it's not the "complicated part" of Japanese writing), it would have been interesting for a lot more people than it is this way.

john555 Wrote:Just in case anyone is interested, here are the translations from the Answer Key at the back of the book:

-Syatyoo wa ano otoko wa kaisya o yamerun' d'ya nai ka to omou kara tyuui site kure to iimasita.

"The Chairman

So i guess syatyoo is supposed to be shachou? LOL

Did anyone figure that out just by looking at the sentence?
To my eyes the writing may as well be malaysian or something... yuck!

Ugh, the romaji style reminds me of the college class I took which used Japanese: The Spoken Language for their textbook. I got used to it, but it bothered me that the book didn't at least use kana.

Heheh, it looks like they had fun writing the exercise sentences!
It sounds good, despite the confusing transliteration (or the fact that it doesn't use kana).

Ephel Wrote:

john555 Wrote:Comment: the authors state in the introduction "The purpose of this book being the teaching of spoken Japanese, we have restricted ourselves to romanized spelling. The writing of Japanese is a complicated study in itself, and unless you can master spoken Japanese you will not make any headway with the written language."

Problem is, there are more than one romanized spelling
I don't know this book, but I'm quite sure that if they kept it in kana (which can be easily learned in a few days... it's not the "complicated part" of Japanese writing), it would have been interesting for a lot more people than it is this way.

I completely agree. Kana only writing is a bit of a pain, at times, but it's nowhere near as bad as romaji, especially the version they're using.
Personally, the version of romaji I like (can tolerate) doesn't use any fancy characters (like for extended vowels) and compensates for the pronunciation of the diphthongs (like sha, cha, etc. instead of the sya, tya, etc. that this book uses). Otherwise, each kana is assigned some letters and stay as such. Don't know if there's a name for that, but it seems to be one of the more common systems of romaji now.

If this book is as good as the OP says, then it might be worth that nasty romaji, but I don't have a reason to check it out anyway, so I won't.

@sholum Hepburn romanization? That's one of the most common types of romanization in textbooks.