Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielSheen
I learned basic sentances and vocabulary before I even started to learn how to write Japanese. I still am focusing more on speaking than writing. Thats the way you are taught when you are a child. You don't teach a child to write a language as they are learning to speak it. Learning to read is not an easy task.
I don't belive that saying If you don't learn to speak as you read you will never or hardly know how to read. Reading is a different thing than learning to speak a language. Again, It takes more than 2 weeks for someone to know how to read. Unless you are some kind of super child. Tell me one child who learned the alphabet and suddenly knew how to read after two weeks. My brother, and everyone in his class, every kid I know of, even when I, and my friend were in kindergarden and learning to write. We learned the alphabet, but couldn't use it, because it take a few months to learn how to read.
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Let me just say first that I hope we can keep the conversation at a respectable level of discourse. I think it is fascinating topic, but I realize we are talking about people's personal works here, so let's make sure not to make it, or take it, personally.
I started learning hiragana on day 1 or 2 of my Japanese study. I can't remember how many weeks it took to get it down, but once it was down we dropped the romaji like a hot potato.
I think that is a good philosophy to go by if you are learning for any sort of long-term goal.
Romaji is not good for learning pronunciation, and since not all sounds in Japanese exist in English, using the alphabet to write them impedes learning. Reading how to speak is like reading how to play a musical instrument. Words on a page cannot completely convey the correct and proper ways to communicate.
For example:
U is pronounced like "oo" like in "put".
You are from Canada, right? Because this is not correct for American English speakers. う is more "oo" in moose (for me) but different English dialects will have different pronunciations. Therefore is is better to learn the proper pronunciation of う and all the others from proper sources.