New to the Japan Forum and language.(=

[Jeimii]

Hello, watashi wa Jamey desu yoroshiku onegaishimesu. Yesterday I wanted to learn a new language and I was going to go with Spanish, but then I thought Japaneses was much cooler so I went with that. A friend suggested that I learn the hiragana, I can recite hiragana as used here. I can also say the phrases "I love you" "good morning" "My name is _____" "good after noon" "bye" "nice to meet you" and that is about it. I joined the forum with the hopes that I could grow in the wonderful Japaneses language.(=

God bless. ^_^

[dosu]

Welcome!!!

[hyperweirdness]

welcome jeimii. im new to JF as well, hope you like it

[RealJames]

Hi and welcome!

by the way... using roman characters to write Japanese words will get yourself shat on all over on these forums by a few elitists/purists/fanatics/etc, I wont mention names...
personally it doesn't bother me at all, in fact like you it was my first stepping stone

It's just a heads up, if one of those ball-busters decides to give you a hard time about it, don't worry! Most of us aren't so ridiculous!

[dogsbody70]

My book is l-all in romanji-- but I wish it also had the Kana beside it.

I can understand why Japanese members will take an exception to it-- but it is like a stepping stone really and can be helpful to beginners.

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

My book is l-all in romanji-- but I wish it also had the Kana beside it.

I can understand why Japanese members will take an exception to it-- but it is like a stepping stone really and can be helpful to beginners.

Romaji is all over the place in Japan, in media, on advertisements, you name it.
Regardless of whether one considers it official or not, it's as omnipresent as the kana and kanji.

I've never met a Japanese person in real live who would take exception to writing something in Romaji, it's just a handful of loudmouth anal retentive nitpickers, who more than likely only voice themselves online.

[dogsbody70]

Maybe its good to Have to learn the Kanji and Katakana

I did borrow a course from my library which included romanji and Kana.

[RobinMask]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

Maybe its good to Have to learn the Kanji and Katakana

I did borrow a course from my library which included romanji and Kana.

I do think it's infinitely helpful to learn the kana. It's a fantastic writing system as it's basically phoenetic, so you can read the word and pretty much know how it's pronounced, which is a huge help when learning via books and things. It's not something you can do in English, so romaji can really hold you back (at a certain level).

That said, I agree with you and James that romaji should be considered okay for beginners, and that we should be more tolerant towards it on this forum. Japanese is an entirely different system entirely, no one can jump in at the deep end, and I would be somewhat sceptical to a person who said they learnt the basic Japanese without romaji. I personally learned the basics with romaji and then moved onto kana when I was more confident. It jolly well irritates me to see some more senior members tear into those at a beginner level for using romaji, it must really knock their confidence.

[tenmins]

Same here. Romaji was key to my early studies. Started by making about 100 english / romaji flashcards from the vocab section at the back of my phrase book. Bumped it up to 500 after a couple of weeks, then to 1000 and so on. I learnt a small amount of basic grammar but really went crazy with the vocab. After only a couple of months I could understand what topics people on the train were talking about. After getting that far I then delved into the characters and some intermediate grammar. In fact by that stage just from lots of daily listening for the vocab when Japanese people were talking a lot of the grammar had planted itself in my head and when I did get around to actively studying it it was easy to remember.
So if you want quick results for listening go heavy on the vocab first.

[masaegu]

Thanks for the nice words, romaji-lovers!

What would you advise an English-learner from Japan if he asked you to correct his English sentences right below?

「ユーガイズアービーイングソーアンリーズナブル。ア イムリアリーディスアポインテッド。」

Would you be willing to correct that? Would you even care to read it for that matter? Will this "English-learner" be communicating with anyone effectively if he kept writing English like that just because it's easier for him to write English with kana as the Roman alphabet looks so strange and foreign to him? Would you call yourself elitest/purist/fanatic if you thought English should not be written in kana?

If you just said to yourself "no" a couple of times, then why the heck should I or anyone else not say the same to romaji-users? Wrong is wrong. Weird is weird. Let's start thinking things in relative terms and, most of all, be fair, dudes!