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masaegu (Offline)
永遠の愛
 
Posts: 2,573
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Central Tokyo
08-01-2007, 02:41 AM

good = ii
no = iie
red = aka (the color red)
= akai ('red' the adjective) the final i is NOT silent
big = ookii
air = kuuki
airport = kuukou

Remember that Japanese written in romaji is an artificial language, not a natural language. There is no one correct system to writing Japanese words in romaji. Take the romaji spelling for "airport", for exacmple. I said that it would be 'kuukou' because in kana it would be ku-u-ko-u (4 kana). However, you will see people writing it as 'kukou' or even 'kuko'. But that shouldn't matter too much because romaji is NOT one of the three writing systems in Japanese. All that is important is for you to know that in Japanese, we write 'airport' as '空港' with two kanji, and if the writer is young and hasn't learned those kanji in school yet, he will write 'airport' as 'くうこう'.

I seriously suggest that you not use romaji in your Japanese studies. It will slow you down if anything. I've assisted several dozen non-Japanese in learning Japanese in the last 20 years. Believe me, the ones that relied on romaji the most heavily have been the slowest learners of Japanese.

Finally, romaji does NOT mean Romanization. Japan will never be Romanized. lol Romaji, instead, means romatization.

Last edited by masaegu : 08-01-2007 at 03:00 AM. Reason: grammar error
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