Quote:
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. 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.
If I would have learned to read Japanese befor mastering remembering vocab and sentance structure, I would have spent more time.
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. 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. 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.
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I think you might be misunderstanding the point people are trying to make about romaji. You seem to be thinking that people are saying you must/should first master the written Japanese language before you should speak. And your response to that is speaking is more important and it is easier for you to memorize the language when it is written in a form that you can ready smoothly. I will get to that assertion, but first let me try to explain romaji problems to you as clear as I can.
First I will agree with other people that kana is the most effective way to learn pronunciation. There is no room for confusion there. Take どうも for instance. When one looks at どうも its pronunciation is unmistakable. But in romaji it is written commonly written as domo. Which is quite ambiguous as to what the corresponding (proper) kana and pronunciation should be.
For a person who has learned a large amount of Japanese in romaji, making the inevitable change to kana someday will just slow down their ability to learn to read and write properly. My feeling is that you should just "trim the fat" from the start. Romaji is not a necessary step, it will just be harder on the student in the long run, because it will force them to relearn things that do not need to be relearned in the first place. Romaji is fine for learning to memorize the kana pronunciations, but once your are capable of recognizing the kana and its corresponding sound, romaji is no longer necessary. You can learn to start reading things all in hiragana from then on out, and slowly move your way up.
Which on a second note, if romaji use is continued, it will just form the habit of writing sentences that are cumbersome to read, and may have unclear meanings, not to mention make more advanced grammar and reading comprehension harder for the learner.
So I know you believe that it is easier to learn to smoothly read and memorize Japanese through romaji, but why is smooth reading a necessary step in learning how to speak? I've passed the level 1 JLPT, so I guess you could say that qualifies me as somewhat advanced in my knowledge of the language, but I still cannot read Japanese anywhere nearly as smooth and quickly as I can read English. There will always be that kanji I don't know/forget, or that weird katakana word that I have to stop and sound out. This is simply the nature of the language. I will probably never read Japanese as easily as I read English, but this does not stop me in advancing my speaking skills in any way.
Even as a new learner, having to struggle through slow process of slowly reading sentences and paragraphs was not a hindrance to learning to speak. You can learn basic sentence structure, and memorize words, listen to others and then speak out, without knowing how to read smoothly. The mastery of kana and kanji will have to come someday for serious learners, so why throw in an extra step? Why not just cut to the chase? It will not hinder speaking and listening skills. You don't need to be able to smoothly read a novel, or even a paragraph for that matter to be able to effectively learn how to tell someone how you are feeling, or what you wanna do in the future.
Romaji might seem like a nice comfort for those that are intimidated by the kana/kanji, but it is not doing them any favors in the long run, and in reality.. with literally a few weeks of effort, they will find that it is not so hard to learn to read in hiragana.. it might not be smooth and fluent.. but does it need to be at that point? Students are just learning small parts of the language (expressions, vocab, grammar) piece by piece at that point anyway.. should reading be any different?