Hi, everyone.


I am looking for very basic texts in romaji for total beginners. Could you recommend something easy and solid that is out there?

Thank you.

All caps...seriously? It doesn't make a post look more important, just more obnoxious.

Romaji is very bad for your health.
And a forum for people who are keen to learn somewhere between 2000 and 3000 kanji is probably not the best place to ask.
Besides it takes about three hours to learn all the kana.
This has been debated widely over the last few centuries, as you will see from here http://tinyurl.com/bm32lut .

Just get any beginner Japanese book. I am kind of surprise in the difficulty in finding a Japanese beginner book that uses the Alphabet.

I would advise against using Romaji as the starting point of learning Japanese. It can be learned later, once the Japanese pronunciation system is understood.

Romaji is only really used for taking words from Japanese and writing them using the Alphabet. It is only useful for those who want to concentrate on conversation, or want to avoid learning the Japanese writing system. On the former it makes it harder to learn correct pronunciation.

A lot of the books published by Kodansha International used romaji alongside proper Japanese, which might be useful to you. Unfortunately, the company has since been shut down, but you can probably still find a lot of their books floating about. A good book is "All About Particles" which a lot of people here recommend, but I'm not too sure if it's suitable for the level you are after.

It takes more time to read this thread than it would take to learn Kana so why bother? If you see Kana as too difficult then you have a serious dedication problem and what you really should do is ask yourself if you really want to learn Japanese.

@vix86 and others: Please accept my apologies for the ALL-CAPS faux-pas. It’s just that where I work I have to use CAPS for headings – so this has kind of become a bad habit.

@netsplitter: Kodansha International.. Thanks. I will have a look.. Maybe it’s still possible to find some used publications on the net.

I understand the general concern as to romaji being slightly suboptimal for properly representing the Japanese language. I partially agree. On the other hand, besides the Hepburn system, there are also the phonetically far more correct versions of Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki.

Thank you for your constructive answers.

Shinichirou Wrote:On the other hand, besides the Hepburn system, there are also the phonetically far more correct versions of Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki.

Phonetically correct from whose perspective? Nothing about the Kunreishiki is phonetically correct if you are a native speaker of English. Ex: なつこ would be Natuko in Kunrei. That completely ignores the fact that there is indeed a distinct s sound in there.

What I meant was that in relation to Hepburn, Kunrei is a bit more distinctive as to correct phonological representation. Of course, all of the systems are quite lacking and a proper vocalisation is only possible if the reader possesses awareness of the underlying mechanisms of grapheme-phoneme conversion. I was simply showing my personal preference to Kunrei over Hepburn.

like people said just learn the hirgana/katakana.
JUST FIND a song in JAPANESE that you like and go through the lyrics. I'm sure at least half of the lyrics is in hiragana and the rest you can find out the reading by using rikai-chan.

Pera Pera Penguin's 5-minute Japanese class might be what you're looking for.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/
I haven't used them myself, but they seem nice...

After giving you my nonconstructive comments it occurred to me that the first volume of the excellent Minna no Nihongo also exists in a romaji version http://www.3anet.co.jp/english/books/text_e_m_main.html .

But I still strongly advice against romaji and suggest an early exposure to kanji right from the beginning in parallel to kana (by the way, there is a very enjoyable book by a guy whose name I can't remember... I think it is called 'retaining the kanji', or maybe 'restraining the kanji', or something along these lines, I am not sure).

If this is really what you want, you can get the Ultimate Japanese series of textbooks. There is also Japanese for Everyone for which a Romaji version is available. I am sure that I have seen other books using romaji almost exclusively, but can't remember the titles at the moment. Edit I just remembered one other that I have seen, Shin Nihongo no Kiso, which comes with a Japanese version, meaning Kana, Kanji, and the English translation with Romaji.

しんにほんごのきそ http://www.amazon.com/Shin-Nihongo-No-Ki...037&sr=8-1

JFBP: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Busy-Peop...889&sr=8-1

Ultimate Japanese: http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Japanese-...906&sr=1-4

But as others have already told you there is nothing you can gain from learning Romaji versus learning the Kana. So you had better learn the Kana instead of relying on the Kanji. After you learned them more resources will become available. Not only textbooks to learn the language with, but also childrens stories, Manga, and even newspapers written for children.

So, again, take your time and learn the Kana, either with a pre-made Anki deck, with Nukemarines fantastic video series

or with the Meguro Learning Center Worksheets http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/Download.htm With the MLC worksheets, you also get some writing practice, but this is optional. Anyway you are going to do it, the important thing is to just do it, you will not regret it.

Ultimate Japanese is where I got my start and I thought it was pretty nicely structured, though I never really tried any other textbook besides JfBP, which didn't seem very good IMHO.

When OP said "texts" (as opposed to "textbooks"), I assumed he was referring to actual Japanese writing, transcribed in Romaji. Which is it, OP?

I also wasn't sure what you mean by "texts" for total beginners.

If a textbook would suit your purpose (and since you prefer non-Hepburn romanization), you might like _Japanese The Spoken Language_ published by Yale (by Eleanor Hart.) It has more detailed grammar explanations than most [but be prepared for] some unique terminology. I think the audio is available on one of the univ websites.

There are a number of elementary textbooks and materials that include romaji. They usually contain basic dialogues, sentences and sometimes short readings. Japan Times used to publish one called something like _Modern Japanese_ . Most use Hepburn, I think. (All of the ones listed above?)

If it's longer texts you're after, I recall that a couple societies promoting the elimination of kanji had produced material intended for native speakers in kana-only or in romaji. Probably not appropriate for beginners, though. And the older stuff might contain some outdated Japanese.

fyi, I noticed this site has a beta Japanese-to-romaji converter for sentences. It can't determine the correct kanji readings if there are alternate readings. [It lists the possibilities instead.]

But.... (jumping on the bandwagon) :-) ... I also wouldn't recommend using romaji. As I see it, there are no benefits and several disadvantages.
[fixed link and mangled sentence]

Shinichirou Wrote:I understand the general concern as to romaji being slightly suboptimal for properly representing the Japanese language.

Slightly suboptimal?

No-one suggested that. They (as do I) suggested that romaji is useless when reading Japanese, and that you should make an immediate switch to kana.

Keep us updated on your progress.

"Minna no Nihongo" entirely in romaji… That’s what I was looking for I think! xD
And the "Ultimate Japanese series" seems quite nice too.

Thank you everyone for this huge collection of books and learning materials. Your recommendations are highly appreciated.

PS: These textbooks are not for me, but meant for someone just starting out with Japanese and wanting to keep to romaji for some reason.

These sites have romaji versions, too - they all come with audio.
http://www.japanesepod101.com/
http://www.coscom.co.jp/j-index.html

This one is in kana only
http://hukumusume.com/douwa/0_6/0nen/0_sougou.htm
but you can convert any texts from kana to romaji with
http://www.sharktime.com/us_wReplace.html
it is free.

Shinichirou Wrote:PS: These textbooks are not for me, but meant for someone just starting out with Japanese and wanting to keep to romaji for some reason.

Haha it would have been easier if you would have said that earlier I think

But you've already suggested learning the kana to your friend anyway, right? Does he know about SRS?

Once learning the kana, which doesn`t take long at all, reading Japanese in romanji becomes distincly more difficult.

I would seriously recommend to your friend not to learn anything in romanji. It`s a short cut that will only get you so far and will be ultimately detrimental to learning to language properly.

Edit: "Ultimately detrimental" is a bad way of putting it. Basically, when they do get around to learning the kana, reading words will be as difficult aas when they`d first started off. Learning through romanji is essentially a waste of time.

With Heisig's Remembering the Kana, you can learn both hiragana and katakana within 2 days(or even 1). Learning japanese with romaji, would be the same as learning english with katakana for japanese. With good exercises, he can master reading/writing kana within few days - writing down words, reading something written only in kana. Just dont let him skip it, because he thinks it's easier to use romaji atm(nah, kana is easier). I had polish book with romaji everywhere, but dont know any english ones.

Looking at the OP's history on this forum I suspect he knows very well that romaji is a waste of time. I apologize for being pushy with the standard romaji-is-evil crusade.

Why not get your friend to try something like "Japanese for Everyone"? It starts off with both romaji and kana, and then it kind of slowly weans you off the romaji.
If he's really set on getting a textbook in romaji, Japanese for Busy People has romaji versions of their text. I also believe Japanese for Dummies has romaji, but I'm not sure how good of a textbook that is.

vix86 Wrote:Phonetically correct from whose perspective? Nothing about the Kunreishiki is phonetically correct if you are a native speaker of English. Ex: なつこ would be Natuko in Kunrei. That completely ignores the fact that there is indeed a distinct s sound in there.

No it doesn't. In Kunrei script 'tu' is pronounced　[t͡su͍], and in the script of　hiragana "つ" is pronounced [t͡su͍]. How is the 's' sound being ignored?

Why would being a native English speaker have anything to do with that? You are already aware that the Latin alphabet is used for a ton of different languages in order to represent the sounds of those languages. That's exactly what's going on here too. English speakers are perfectly capable of learning the way the Latin alphabet is used in other languages to pronounce different sounds than that of English.