I've noticed that there have been quite a few posts using romaji rather than kana in this forum. Since the BBCode tags were added, I've been wondering why people do this. I find romaji difficult to read, ugly and generally unpleasant. What I'd be interested to know is if there is anyone learning kanji with RTK but unable to read kana. I think this would say something about Heisig's method if it were the case.

I'd be very happy if romaji were never used on the forums since I can't see any reason for it and I can see many reasons against. What do other people think?

I feel exactly the same about romaji, and with the kana tags there's not real excuse for it. I think two possible causes are habit and laziness.

Also, as far as I know tags have to be written out on this board (whereas every other board I post on has buttons to insert BBCode tags) and a set of buttons would really make a difference for this and for formatting in general.

On a side note, another thing I would like to see is a BBCode size tag, or if there was some way that the default font size for kanji could be bigger.

Lots of beginners books on Japanese teach Japanese by using romaji at first. Which means there will be a number of people on this forum for who kana are still awkward to read. I would suggest the all-kana stage takes time, and not everyone here has already grown over that particular phase. Also, not everyone studying Japanese in a group has a choice; some groups do not use kana at first. I started out with romaji, and though I diligently try to change to kana, when I downloaded the new vocab tool, I notice I still can work 10x faster by typing in the romaji instead of the hiragana, because despite the fact that I happen to agree that kana should be used asap, my mind is still more comfortable with romaji, even if I wish it wasn't.

I'm currenty in a 4th year group that uses kana, but doesn't use kanji. That vexes me to no end. If new vocab is introduced, I immediately want to put the right kanji to it, but I'm the only one in the group that feels that way. The rest still has too much trouble even working completely in kana. It irritates me, but I can't feel upset about it, I'm simply in a different position, kanji-wise.

Anyway, the point to all this rambling is that I feel that regardless of what the best form of studying Japanese is, in anyone's opinion, this forum should also be a welcoming place to people who do not live and breathe kana yet. I mean, it's pointless to get irritated by people who aren't simply as far in the language study as yourself.

I think that it really says a lot about Heisig's method that people who haven't mastered kana can start learning to write kanji. The question is, are these people on the forum or not? Using traditional approaches to Japanese learning, no one would dream that you would learn the writing of 500 kanji before trying to learn kana. If people have had an experience like this thanks to Heisig then I think it would be really interesting. For those people, I would recommend Heisig's book on remembering the kana. I've been told that it's outstanding.

When you said that you work 10x faster by typing in romaji, I found this surprising. Using windows IME, you type romaji to get the kana anyway, is it still faster to type romaji? I can totally understand that you can read romaji more quickly than kana, I was the same when I first started. Now, it's totally the opposite. I believe that the transition can be very quick though. I was more comfortable with kana than romaji after maybe three months of studying Japanese.

I would never want to stop beginners from posting in Japanese because they can't read kana. What I'm wondering is, how many people are using this site to progress with RTK 1 when they haven't mastered kana yet? If, as Pangolin suggests, the reason is mostly laziness, then I would highly encourage these people to never use romaji. A bit more effort in the short term but the benefits in the long term are great.

wrightak Wrote:I find romaji difficult to read, ugly and generally unpleasant.

I personally find Roomaji easy to read, elegant, generally pleasant, convenient to touch type, and really what Japanese should have been using all along.

There are some perfectly valid uses of Roomaji, such as in Japanese phrase books esp. for visitors to Japan for whom it's not worthwhile learning the written language.

When I was at high school, we started off with Romaji. Sure, we were also learning kana at the same time, but that took a few weeks, and by that time, we were well into grammar and vocab. If we hadn't used Roomaji, I think it would have slowed us. Also, in tests we had to put passages into both Roomaji and English, to prove that we could pronounce the kana/kanji correctly as well as understand the meaning. So there were useful reasons for using it (although I accept opinions may vary).

However, in the final two years (called the HSC in Australia), I realize now that Roomaji had outlived its usefulness and should have been dropped for the most part, but we were still using it, probably only because that's the way it was done.

I also agree that a serious student of Japanese should learn kana straightaway, and then start learning and using the kanji as soon as possible. For some people like me and maybe astridtops, it's part of the appeal of the language and we want to get into it. For others, if they're serious about learning, then they should get about learning it and not balk.

I'm not always at a computer that supports Japanese, so please don't take offense at my romaji.

It's not always a question of not having been introduced to kana, it's sometimes a question of how fluent people are with using them. I daresay I kan read the kana, but if I see for instance ぎゅう I still have to spell through it to make sure I don't mistake it for じゅう, きゅう, or ちゅう. Whereas if I see 'gyuu' I immediatly know what it is and there is no danger of mixing it up whatsoever. That didn't stop me from doing RTK1. One reason why I like being able to read kanji is that it stops some of the kana confusion. I mean, for me it's a lot easier to distinguish 牛 from 丘 or 中 than the hiragana for those sounds. I know at least one other person on this site who is still not really fluent in kana, but studies kanji nonetheless. And I also agree with leosmith about the language support. When I'm at work, I can't review or study because I'm not allowed to install Japanese language support, but I sometimes do read or post to the forum. When I can't read what I'm writing, it makes more sense to me to post in romaji instead.

I agree that if you are just studying in your own time because you want to and not for any particular reason (job, friends etc) then romaji is fine. For people like me who are out here in Japan and so trying to learn the language while just surviving, the kana are essential.

The biggest advantage to the kana is that it helps you with pronunciation in the long run, as you slowly stop converting it into romaji in your head and the characters take on the sounds directly. And personally I find it much easier to read, as on average, romaji will have twice as many characters in unfamilar constructions. Also the pronunciation is easier as you just sound each character for one beat, whereas in romaji you have to check to see if that 'n' is on it's own or a 'na', 'ni', 'nu' etc. Same with the 'kyu', kya's of the world.

Romaji will always be an approximation to the language, but if it fits your needs then that's great.

I found it interesting looking at the wikipedia article on romaji. Really shows how much of an approximation it is by all the different methods of translating it there are!

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

wrightak Wrote:I think that it really says a lot about Heisig's method that people who haven't mastered kana can start learning to write kanji. The question is, are these people on the forum or not? Using traditional approaches to Japanese learning, no one would dream that you would learn the writing of 500 kanji before trying to learn kana.
...
I would never want to stop beginners from posting in Japanese because they can't read kana. What I'm wondering is, how many people are using this site to progress with RTK 1 when they haven't mastered kana yet? If, as Pangolin suggests, the reason is mostly laziness, then I would highly encourage these people to never use romaji. A bit more effort in the short term but the benefits in the long term are great.

I started learning the kanji before the kana, because (and I've explained this briefly elsewhere on the forum) I only really had library time to study and didn't really feel I had the option of learning to speak; given that, I thought kanji alone was probably the better option. Now I've started at a new job, where I get Japanese lessons relatively cheaply and close by, I really want to sort out knowing the kana as soon as possible - I find the handouts with romanji (for the speaking) being totally separate from the hiragana and katakana (for the writing), quite frustrating. It's mostly because I know the sounds are different; the way I say [kana]ri[/kana] should be different from the way I say "ri", and thinking "ri-not-ri" to myself every time I look at a word and try to form it is a relatively slow process compared to just knowing what a different sounds looks like.

The Heiseg kana book is on order right now, I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences with that as well.

+1 for the Heisig kana book

I bought and devoured the Heisig Hiragana book over a 3-day weekend away from home. In the pre-dawn hours, before the rest of my party had woken up, I read the book by the hotel's bathroom light, and scratched out page after page of practice hiragana.

Lacking flash cards, I would just use spoken English as my cues. When I heard somebody say "He", I would use my finger to write ひ in the air or on my knee. When I heard "foo", I'd write ふ. I made flash cards when I got home, and within a week or so, I had the hiragana down.

Thrilled by my success with the hiragana, I promptly purchased the katakana book (this was way back in the long long ago, the before time, when the two were separate monographs), and repeated the success with another weekend studyfest.

Now, years later, fluent in kana, I can't remember a thing from the Heisig kana books, except "wasp" for わ and "move your elbow" for ム. It's inevitable: one reads and writes kana so much that one quickly casts off the mnemonic training wheels. Works for kanji, too. Not a day goes by that I don't write 日 at least a dozen times, I can't even remember what the Heisig story was for that one.

--Z

Sibyl Wrote:cheaply and close by, I really want to sort out knowing the kana as soon as possible - I find the handouts with romanji (for the speaking) being totally separate from the hiragana and katakana (for the writing), quite frustrating. It's mostly because I know the sounds are different; the way I say [kana]ri[/kana] should be different from the way I say "ri", and thinking "ri-not-ri" to myself every time I look at a word and try to form it is a relatively slow process compared to just knowing what a different sounds looks like.

It's interesting that you have this problem. Is Japanese your 2nd language (as opposed to 3rd/4th/...)? Does 訓令式 (susi, matimasu, Mt. Huzi, etc etc) annoy you more than Hepburn?
I think I understand now why many ppl dislike romaji so much, and it looks like they have a good reason, and I finally see what ppl mean when they say that romaji hurts pronunciation.
I don't have this issue with romaji per se, but then English is not my first language, so probably the written Latin letters are not associated in my mind with sounds quite as firmly. But the Russian transliteration system does annoy me for exact same reasons just as much (probably much more so, since it's much farther divorced from pronunciation than Hepburn romaji).

I can also vouch for the Hesig Kana book. I like the way he doesn't teach them 'in order' ie. how they're set out in a table, but instead by those which are either closely related or easily confused.
It only took me a week from getting the book to being able to write out both kanas from memory. OK so I'd often sit staring at a blank space in the table only able to think of the story/keyword for the other kana and I occasionally do that still, but they're all in my head somewhere!
For practice I've made myself copy some grammar stuff off the internet into the kana and made myself a book to study later. That really helped! Like most things practice is the key.

Yes, Remembering the Kana is great. Being able to learn both kana in about a week is something I would previously have considered impossible (for me, personally). The fact that this book made me achieve this was directly responsible for me having enough courage and optimism to attempt RTK1.

We'll be learning the kana on my introduction to Japanese course very soon, from a more traditional book. It'll be interesting to see how my classmate's experiences compare with mine.

Robin

laxxy Wrote:I think I understand now why many ppl dislike romaji so much, and it looks like they have a good reason, and I finally see what ppl mean when they say that romaji hurts pronunciation.
I don't have this issue with romaji per se, but then English is not my first language, so probably the written Latin letters are not associated in my mind with sounds quite as firmly. But the Russian transliteration system does annoy me for exact same reasons just as much (probably much more so, since it's much farther divorced from pronunciation than Hepburn romaji).

To be honest, I never even had considered the angle of monolinguists. How interesting. In the Netherlands, I already got English, French, German and Latin besides Dutch in secondary education. For instance, 'bad' is a word in Dutch, English and German, but in every language it's pronounced completely different. No set of roman letters therefore representing an unfamiliar language triggers a preset idea with me of what those combination should sound like (try Portugese for instance...). As a Dutch 'a' is not like an English 'a' anyway, it makes no difference to me if I write a Japanese a or an あ, it is a Japanese vowel sound, and bears no relation to any roman language. In that case, it's becomes a simple coding matter with no strings attached, and writing romaji is simply easier because I don't have to switch buttons all the time.

There is an excellent passage at the start of RTK II which goes something like: if you are serious about studying Japanese, forget about romaji as soon as you can. The only place it belongs is tourist phrase books. Pick up a newspaper, pick up a book, look at websites: it's kana all over. And what's so difficult about mastering a couple of dozens 'letters' that you end up seeing all the time?

In fact, the biggest favour seriously curious tourists to Japan can do themselves is master katakana before their trip: there is so much information written in katakana and vast majority of gairaigo words are easily recognisable.

astridtops Wrote:I'm currenty in a 4th year group that uses kana, but doesn't use kanji.

Astrid, did I get this right and can anyone be studying Japanese for FOUR years without using Kanji?! Is there a reason you're still with that group?

laxxy Wrote:I think I understand now why many ppl dislike romaji so much, and it looks like they have a good reason, and I finally see what ppl mean when they say that romaji hurts pronunciation.
I don't have this issue with romaji per se, but then English is not my first language, so probably the written Latin letters are not associated in my mind with sounds quite as firmly. But the Russian transliteration system does annoy me for exact same reasons just as much (probably much more so, since it's much farther divorced from pronunciation than Hepburn romaji).

The Russian transliteration system IS quite annoying but those who have grown up using it (ISAA graduates, etc.) still swear by it...

laxxy Wrote:It's interesting that you have this problem. Is Japanese your 2nd language (as opposed to 3rd/4th/...)? Does 訓令式 (susi, matimasu, Mt. Huzi, etc etc) annoy you more than Hepburn?

I think that what annoys me the most is the point that Serge makes - if I'm going to learnt the language properly I'm going to want to ditch the romanji as soon as possible, so starting using them at all seems a bit more learning than is necessary. On the other hand, the class I am in is very basic, perhaps mostly aimed at people learning for fun - and whilst that's certainly what I'm doing, I wouldn't mind putting in the hours at learning a couple of syllabaries to make learning to speak easier. So (I hope this answers your question) it's specifically the use of romanji as a learning tool that gets to me.

In answer to your other question, yes, Japanese is the first language I have learned since I studied German at the age of sixteen! I know a bit of some of the other European languages, but am by no means fluent in any of them.

Really looking forward to my kana book arriving now! I found the start of RTK, learning so much so fast, really exciting, this sounds like it's a similar kind of experience.

Sibyl Wrote:

laxxy Wrote:It's interesting that you have this problem. Is Japanese your 2nd language (as opposed to 3rd/4th/...)? Does 訓令式 (susi, matimasu, Mt. Huzi, etc etc) annoy you more than Hepburn?

I think that what annoys me the most is the point that Serge makes - if I'm going to learnt the language properly I'm going to want to ditch the romanji as soon as possible, so starting using them at all seems a bit more learning than is necessary.

well, you do have to learn romaji even if just to type kana, unless you have a kana keyboard

Serge Wrote:The Russian transliteration system IS quite annoying but those who have grown up using it (ISAA graduates, etc.) still swear by it...

I don't know what's ISAA, but I understand what you are talking about oh boy they do swear. This system is like a club tie for them. Well, for each his own I guess. Luckily we don't have many romaji supporters of the same belligerence

This is very interesting.

I always used to push myself to use the Kana as much as I possibly could as I felt that the more I used them the more proficient I would become.
The issue of accurate pronunciation was (and still is to some degree) there, but once I had learnt the kana, I was then aware of all the sounds and reading romaji at that stage became less of a hindrance (to pronunciation).

I think with regards to the forum, as this topic has proven, there are still some members who cannot read kana properly and or are not yet comfortable with them.

So which should be used? kana,　かな,　カナ or　仮名？

Perhaps there could be a forum section designed solely for the use of practicing kana/kanji? (within simple sentences, questions and so on).

I imagine that I'm japanese. And that I'm writing a note to my friend in class. I think I would be more likely to write カナthan anything else. 仮名 would probably be the last thing I'd even consider writing. Thinking カナand then writing in kanji would feel twisted or show-offy. IMO.

Serge Wrote:

astridtops Wrote:I'm currenty in a 4th year group that uses kana, but doesn't use kanji.

Astrid, did I get this right and can anyone be studying Japanese for FOUR years without using Kanji?! Is there a reason you're still with that group?

It's very much an 'amateur' course at what we locally call a 'folk university', 25 x 75 minutes, so the level isn't terribly high, as people from all kinds of backgrounds are allowed to participate (though most of them have some form of a higher education). As for the reason I'm still with that group, as far as I know, it's the only group in the south of my country available, and I'm even very lucky that it is given in my town. I've seen people travel for hourse to attend this course who weren't so lucky. Japanese is not a common language study around here. The focus of these type of language courses is mainly for people who go to Japan for a short time and have to be able to speak and understand it a little. Reading therefore, apart from kana, has a very low priority. Well, since I'm mainly learning Japanese for listening to anime and reading japanese manga and novels, my aims are not quite the same as the average student here.

We followed the 'Japanse for Busy People'. If you know the book, the first book that we used the first 2 years) doesn't use any kanji. We did all grammar in romaji. We learned the kana, and had to practise reading in kana every lesson, but they weren't used on the blackboard, so to speak.

For the second book, we use the kana version, so no romaji anymore, and our current teacher is determined to bash the use of kana into our heads with full priority, since some of us still have some trouble with them, but apparently that means that she focuses on kana only, and has decided not to use kanji yet. Personally, I find it frustrating, because I'm the only one in the group who has done the complete kanji self study, and would rather see new vocab in full kanji form, but even the book doesn't mention any kanji anywhere that aren't in the JLPT3 or 4 list, so I have to look up everything in my Wordtank during lessons to see what kanji should actually be used.

So, why am I still there? It's this group or complete self study. I find that getting lessons from a Japanese teacher is absolutely essential for having a correct understanding of the grammar, and the finer point of using one particular construction over the other. Currently, for instance, we're discussing the こと construction and there is a lot about it, for instance when it can't and when it can be replaced by の, that I wouldn't be able to learn by selfstudy. Also, it's fun, since I'm doing the course with my husband and one of my best friends. So, it's also something of a social activity .

Serge Wrote:

astridtops Wrote:I'm currenty in a 4th year group that uses kana, but doesn't use kanji.

Astrid, did I get this right and can anyone be studying Japanese for FOUR years without using Kanji?! Is there a reason you're still with that group?

It's very much an 'amateur' course at what we locally call a 'folk university', 25 x 75 minutes, so the level isn't terribly high, as people from all kinds of backgrounds are allowed to participate (though most of them have some form of a higher education). As for the reason I'm still with that group, as far as I know, it's the only group in the south of my country available, and I'm even very lucky that it is given in my town. I've seen people travel for hourse to attend this course who weren't so lucky. Japanese is not a common language study around here. The focus of these type of language courses is mainly for people who go to Japan for a short time and have to be able to speak and understand it a little. Reading therefore, apart from kana, has a very low priority. Well, since I'm mainly learning Japanese for listening to anime and reading japanese manga and novels, my aims are not quite the same as the average student here.

We followed the 'Japanse for Busy People'. If you know the book, the first book that we used the first 2 years) doesn't use any kanji. We did all grammar in romaji. We learned the kana, and had to practise reading in kana every lesson, but they weren't used on the blackboard, so to speak.

For the second book, we use the kana version, so no romaji anymore, and our current teacher is determined to bash the use of kana into our heads with full priority, since some of us still have some trouble with them, but apparently that means that she focuses on kana only, and has decided not to use kanji yet. Personally, I find it frustrating, because I'm the only one in the group who has done the complete kanji self study, and would rather see new vocab in full kanji form, but even the book doesn't mention any kanji anywhere that aren't in the JLPT3 or 4 list, so I have to look up everything in my Wordtank during lessons to see what kanji should actually be used.

So, why am I still there? It's this group or complete self study. I find that getting lessons from a Japanese teacher is absolutely essential for having a correct understanding of the grammar, and the finer point of using one particular construction over the other. Currently, for instance, we're discussing the こと construction and there is a lot about it, for instance when it can't and when it can be replaced by の, that I wouldn't be able to learn by selfstudy. Also, it's fun, since I'm doing the course with my husband and one of my best friends. So, it's also something of a social activity .

Raichu Wrote:I personally find Roomaji easy to read,

OK, sure.

Quote:elegant, generally pleasant

Wow. I'm very surprised by this.

Quote:and really what Japanese should have been using all along.

I'm afraid I couldn't disagree more.

It's interesting to have heard people's views on the topic of romaji, but it strikes me that the biggest concern tends to be about pronunciation. My worries with using romaji have been less about sounding too much like an English speaker and more about thinking too much like an English speaker.

I was once chatting with a business man in Japan and he said to me that kanji is actually much better than the roman alphabet because once you grow accustomed to kanji, one glance at a character can convey its meaning immediately. With English, he said, it's necessary to string characters together, figure out what sound that makes and then figure out what the sound means. I told him that when I look at English words, I don't see a string of characters, I see a pattern of letters that I'm intimately familiar with and one glance immediately conveys the meaning.

This is why romaji is so tempting to learners of Japanese because it's like a cheat sheet. The briefest of glances is all you need due to an intimacy that you've built up over an entire life time of staring at 26 shapes. Japanese people do exactly the same thing with katakana when they're learning English. The most frustrating thing for me when I was an English teacher, was not the pronunciation difficulties that came with the katakanisation of English, but that I could SEE students thinking about English in terms of katakana. You can argue that romaji is better for Japanese than katakana is for English because there is no katakana for the 'th' sound or the 'l' and 'r', or 'v' and 'b'. However, I think both are as bad as each other.

I have had another thought though. It generally appears that people who are less concerned about romaji are those whose native language isn't English. It appears that English speakers get particularly upset about romaji even though there are plenty of other languages that use the roman alphabet. A Swiss friend of mine once said that she preferred French to English because when she read a French word, she knew how to pronounce it immediately. When she saw an English word, she was often uncertain. I may be well of the mark, and this is just a random thought, but do you think that English speakers develop a different mental relationship with the alphabet than French people do because there are no easy rules for pronouncing words?

wrightak Wrote:this is just a random thought, but do you think that English speakers develop a different mental relationship with the alphabet than French people do because there are no easy rules for pronouncing words?

Absolutely - in fact, that was one reason (in a wierd, roundabout way) that I started learning the kanji. When I read a word in English, I don't even 'hear' it in my head - I just know what it means. So my thinking was, I already have this relationship with English words, and they are spelled using an alphabet; how much more difficult can it be to replace one arbitrary signifier with another? That is, there is nothing especially:

about the word 'shellfish' or the character 貝, so why should I find shellfish naturally easier than 貝?

Umn, back on topic, I think that the lack of easy guides to pronunciation - and the way one learns to read in English as a result - is quite likely to have an effect on the way an English person views the romanji.

wrightak Wrote:

Raichu Wrote:and really what Japanese should have been using all along.

I'm afraid I couldn't disagree more.

Feel free to disagree. However, if you think of most writing systems in the world, the majority are phonetically based.

Look how hard it is to learn this blooming character set--we have to have contorted artificial methods like those devised by Heisig because you can't learn it by rote, with web sites and forums devoted to the topic!

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love kanji and I'm enjoying the challenge of learning them, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I even doodle kanji for goodness sake!

The point I was making was that IMNSHO as a writing system, it's ludicrous, arguably the most difficult in the world. Romaji in spite of its imperfections would be a more practical alternative--or any writing system that is capable of representing their spoken sounds. Not sure but perhaps Arabic's syllabic structure might even be a closer match than the Roman alphabet. What you gain by changing to a phonetic system would way exceed what you'd lose.

Back on topic, the main point I was making was that Romaji was being maligned when it's a useful tool in cetain limited cases (phrase-book Japanese, transliteration of names, plus a few applications I mentioned above--e.g. how else could you show in a written exam that you know how to pronounce a passage?). Don't discard it as a Bad Thing, but like all tools only use it when it's the right tool for the job.

I wholeheartedly agree, there's no way that you'll get proficient as a serious student if you're stuck with a transliterated script. You need to start using kana as soon as possible.