[MMM]

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

I am taking time to learn to read the kana and kanji. It takes a long time to learn to read something. I know all the kana, I can write every single one of them in the proper stroke order. I can reconize every single one of them. I can't read Japanese thougth, not fast enough to be satisfied. It would probably take me a minuite to read a whole sentance, then try to figure out what it says if I didn't know those words.

If you can read and understand a sentence with words you don't know in a minute, then you are doing all right.

But what if you didn't know those words, and the sentence was written in romaji?

It would take even longer to figure out what it said.

There are good kana to kanji/English dictionaries out there:

Denshi Jisho - Online Japanese dictionary

I don't know of any romaji to kanji/English dictionaries (but I have never looked, either).

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

What helps me learn to read is the fact that I already know the words in Japanese, so its easyer to read the words I already know.

I think that is fine for fundamental, first quarter of school vocabulary...I really do...but when you are getting into brown-bellied warbler then you should be reading that IN Japanese, and not using the English alphabet.

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

If I would have learned to read Japanese befor mastering remembering vocab and sentance structure, I would have spent more time.

Rome wasn't built in a day. If your point is, you should have a certain foundation to work off of the kana learning with the vocabulary learning, I agree 100%. Let's say it takes 2 months to learn hiragana...I think anyone can learn 60 some characters in 60 days...well, that's about a quarter in college study. So basic greetings, numbers, colors...that is about enough before one should really be reading and writing totally in kana.

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

It doesn't matter which way you learn Japanese, some people like learning better ways than other. If someone wants to read romaji, let them read romaji. It depends which road you want to take.

I disagree as it is saying there is no wrong way to learn Japanese, and that simply isn't the case. There are wrong ways to learn English, and Japan was teaching English a wrong way for decades.

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

You can learn to speak fast, then work on your reading skills, you will be benifited with already knowing the language. Or you can learn to read it, without knowing what your reading means, and be a bit slower in your progressing.

You act like reading kana takes a lifetime. That is not true. 60+ characters...that's all we ask. As I stated above, you can learn words as you learn kana, and learn words in romaji in the beginning.

Just in あ、い、う、え、お there are several word combinations. Add in か、き、く、け、こ and that number goes up exponentially.

Originally Posted by DanielSheen

Because again, It doesn't take 2 weeks to learn to read. Memorise the characters yes, but actually to look at something and not have to look at every letter, you see whole words looking at it.

No one promised it takes two weeks, and anyone who said that would be cheating the learner out of the joy of learning Japanese.

I have been a student of Japanese for 20 years, and I still wish I could read faster.