Quote:
Originally Posted by mira
Romaji are Japanese words written with English letters. It's not really used in Japanese language.
Example of Romaji: Houyouryoku
Hiragana
Katakana
Kanji
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Good post. I'd like to share my opinion on a couple of points though.
About romaji, I'd say that it is indeed used in Japanese language. For starters, typing Japanese on a keyboard requires knowledge of romaji (for the record there are many different types of romaji... some of them work better for computer input). Another place where you will see romaji is on street signs (like 青カン, or "blue signs" that you'll see on roads that help give you an idea of where you're going. This romaji is even important for Japanese to understand as kanji for town names can be hard to read and there isn't any "furigana"). Another use is on store signs. Most major stores have their store names written in romaji. The truth is though, that romaji is only important for computer input for most people as far as I can tell.
About hiragana- those "smalls" are called "furigana". Furigana are used to show the reading of kanji (and unfortunately sometimes "English"). Sometimes they are there and sometimes they aren't. It depends on what you're looking at and the age level it was made for (you won't usually see furigana on top of basic kanji unless you're reading something for elementary school kids). Likewise, you will sometimes see "furigana" written for katakana words (I've only seen this in material that was for 5-6 year olds).
Katakana is unique to hiragana in that there are certain sounds that you can express with it that would otherwise be hard to do. You'll see certain character combinations that you would normally not see in hiragana (which is to be expected as katakana is frequently used for foreign words).
I'd like to give a tip to you ShinJon. Learn the sounds of the hiragana you are practicing. This is the most important part. I can't tell you of a place to hear them... so hopefully someone has some advice there. I think that saying the hiragana as you write them will help you remember them a lot. However, saying them incorrectly will help you learn them incorrectly. I think that fixing that kind of mistake is pretty hard, so it's better to get it right the first time.
I think that is the problem with learning "romaji" first. You see letters that you are familiar with, so you assign sounds that you are familiar with. They are two different langauges, so even sounds that sound similar ought to be recognized as being different. The earlier you can recognize this, the better.
People will often say that you pronounce Japanese as it is written... while that is true to an extent, it is also misleading. There are many situations where you wouldn't read a word exactly as the hiragana suggests. Here's an example:
がっこう vs ちゅうがっこう
Those two words both share が, but the two がs are pronounced differently. To put it simply, if you can get some kind of audio to practice vocabulary/phrases with as a reference, I think it would do you a lot of good.