yudantaiteki Wrote:The use of romaji in a text like Japanese: The Spoken Language is based on divide and conquer; the idea is that you should basically pass through three stages in your learning:

1 - Focus on the spoken language

2 - Start learning to read, reading only things that you already know how to say

3 - Learn new structures and vocab through reading as well as spoken practice

Divide and conquer is not the same thing as setting up stages. With divide and conquer, the stages would need to be simplifications. Steps 1 and 2 aren't simpler than the initial task (learn to speak Japanese), they're of equal complexity. And step 3 actually adds complexity, rather than take it away.

Doesn't make the method wrong, of course (adding complexity often is the right move), but it's not divide and conquer.

For me romaji is discouraged especially because the quantity of material in romaji is almost non existent. Anime is only one of many examples. You could pick a textbook which uses romaji but after that you're on a dead-end street.

cophnia61 Wrote:For me romaji is discouraged especially because the quantity of material in romaji is almost non existent. Anime is only one of many examples. You could pick a textbook which uses romaji but after that you're on a dead-end street.

I realize that ultimately the amount of material in romaji is going to be limited; what I want to do is at least master the romaji contents of the excellent textbooks that I currently own. This will make it far easier to later mentally map on and kun readings to particular kanji. I want to have a working vocabulary of a few thousand words (phonetically) before I start working on associating on/kun readings to particular kanji.

Also, I find that I grasp and remember complex grammatical structures in Japanese when I study them in romaji first. Maybe that's because for me, a native English speaker, the roman alphabet is more natural.

john555 Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:For me romaji is discouraged especially because the quantity of material in romaji is almost non existent. Anime is only one of many examples. You could pick a textbook which uses romaji but after that you're on a dead-end street.

I realize that ultimately the amount of material in romaji is going to be limited; what I want to do is at least master the romaji contents of the excellent textbooks that I currently own. This will make it far easier to later mentally map on and kun readings to particular kanji. I want to have a working vocabulary of a few thousand words (phonetically) before I start working on associating on/kun readings to particular kanji.

Also, I find that I grasp and remember complex grammatical structures in Japanese when I study them in romaji first. Maybe that's because for me, a native English speaker, the roman alphabet is more natural.

Compared to what exactly? Have you tried anything else? Why do you think your book is so good? Why do you think you learn better with romaji? In my experience it takes just as much effort to learn a word with new kanji as it does learn a phonetic word. Kanji doesn't make it harder, but it's how it's actually spelled so that's what you should learn. If you ever make it, you'll look back and realize how stupid you sound.

john555 Wrote:I want to...master the romaji...[to] make it far easier to later mentally map on and kun readings to particular kanji. I want to have a working vocabulary of a few thousand words (phonetically) before I start working on associating on/kun readings to particular kanji.

I think this is going to backfire on you. There are simply too many homophones in Japanese to do what you want to do. I did RTK and then moved right into doing vocab (in kanji) and I mapped on/kun readings just fine, as do most other people. I don't get why you think learning 1000's of words in romaji is going to make it easier to learn kanji readings. From my perspective that would be way more complicated and way more work. Kameden is right.

kamedan Wrote:it takes just as much effort to learn a word with new kanji as it does learn a phonetic word. Kanji doesn't make it harder

Not only is it not harder, I would say it is easier. I have a much higher retention rate for new vocab when the words are written in kanji. All kana words are hard to learn, in my opinion.

So off topic...

kameden Wrote:f you ever make it, you'll look back and realize how stupid you sound.

Come on now, that is unnecessary and rude for this forum.

REH94 Wrote:There are simply too many homophones in Japanese to do what you want to do. I did RTK and then moved right into doing vocab (in kanji) and I mapped on/kun readings just fine, as do most other people. I don't get why you think learning 1000's of words in romaji is going to make it easier to learn kanji readings. From my perspective that would be way more complicated and way more work. Kameden is right.

But when you type in Japanese on your computer don't you have to know the word phonetically right before you type it (in romaji, naturally) in order to make the kanji pop up?

For example, I wrote in kanji/kana (I do that sometimes) the sentence "雨が降れば公園え行きません。" In order to make the first kanji "rain" pop up in Microsoft Word, I had to type a-m-e on my keyboard. To make the kanji for "fall" come up, I had to type h-u-r-e-b-a.
You see what I mean. To type kanji on your computer you have to type them in phonetically.

Plus, how do people speak Japanese orally if there's "too many homophones"? Also don't blind Japanese people read braille (kana of course). This would be all phonetically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Braille

Now we're getting off-topic from using romaji in learning Japanese to basic romaji issues that have been discussed to death here and elsewhere.

With self-study you can of course do whatever you want. I'm not sure I would recommend using romaji as much as you want to -- of course kana/kanji is hard and slower when you first do it, but it becomes easier with time and it opens up the resources you can use quite a bit.

john555 Wrote:For example, I wrote in kanji/kana (I do that sometimes) the sentence "雨が降れば公園え行きません。" In order to make the first kanji "rain" pop up in Microsoft Word, I had to type a-m-e on my leopards. To make the kanji for "fall" come up, I had to type h-u-r-e-b-a.
You see what I mean. To type kanji on your computer you have to type them in phonetically.

But a lot of times you have to be able to select the correct kanji if there are a lot of homophones. Try typing つく, there are like 15 words that are all spelled つく in kana.

Also careful about the particles, you wrote え in that sentence, although the particle is pronounced え, it is written へ.

john555 Wrote:But when you type in Japanese on your computer don't you have to know the word phonetically right before you type it (in romaji, naturally) in order to make the kanji pop up?

I actually use the JIS keyboard on my computer and 10-key kana on my phone...I guess while romaji is fine for learning the kana, once I know them I no longer want the romaji association in my brain when I try to think in Japanese.

john555 Wrote:Plus, how do people speak Japanese orally if there's "too many homophones"?

Context, and even then sometimes I need to get clarification. For example, if someone said "あめが好き" out of the blue I wouldn't know what "あめ" they are referring to without A) looking outside to see if it is raining or B) looking to see if they or someone around them was eating some candy. But that is beside the point, the post I was replying to was about using romaji to learn vocab. Learning isolated words in anything but kanji (ie. spoken, kana only, romaji, ect) sounds like a nightmare. And as for your other points, Patriconia and Apirx already answered them.

Yudantaiteki is right again though, we are free to study how ever we want and this discussion has been done to death. We know each others opinions and I don't see anything constructive coming out of any further discussion so I'm going to call it here. Good luck with your studies!

REH94 Wrote:if someone said "あめが好き" out of the blue I wouldn't know what "あめ" they are referring to without A) looking outside to see if it is raining or B) looking to see if they or someone around them was eating some candy.

1. I fail to see how one can “say”:
あめが好きだ

If anything they would say
あめがすきだ

(You meant “write”, right?)

2. In speech あめがすきだ is not ambiguous if you pay attention to the pitch accent, for example assuming the standard pitch accent, you would hear:
あめがすきだ for the rain case, and
あめがすきだ for the candy case

3. Kanji is not part of the spoken language, so the nightmare of learning words is there regardless of whether you study kanji or not.

Inny Jan Wrote:3. Kanji is not part of the spoken language, so the nightmare of learning words is there regardless of whether you study kanji or not.

If kanji aren't part of the spoken language, than neither are kana, romaji, or any other form of writing. They're all written representatives of the spoken language.

That being said, when I'm speaking with someone and I hear a new word, the connection is much stronger when I can visualize the word in kanji. I'd argue that kanji aren't completely divorced from phonetics, anyway.

Rusty Wrote: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.

I agree with most that watching anime with romaji subtitles is not going to help your Japanese. At least not more than watching with either English or native Japanese subtitles.

If you want to improve your listening skills while watching anime but can't read the Japanese subs then I think using the English ones is fine, or even no subs at all.

For single words in the beginning of studying Japanese romaji is fine but reading full sentences of romaji is actually really hard.