Help Daniel Potter
 

Note 2 moderators: Hi Moderator's, If it's ok with u, i would like to keep this thread open for myself so that other people can help or advise me in the future.:rolleyes:

Ok well, the reason why i created this thread is because I'm a South African who is learning Japanese (self teaching), and I'm very sure i'll be needed this thread...

Anyway, I wanted to know if there is a word for how u spell japanese phonetically. e.g.(nihongo)

Threads don't get closed unless you do something stupid. This post was unnecessary.

What are you asking? This doesn't make any sense. All Japanese is written phonetically. There is no other way to write it.

I guess he is trying to ask for the word ローマ字.

For the OP. I assume what you are asking is the word that describes the way of writing Japanese words in western alphabet phonetically. The word you seek is "romaji" which means "roman characters".
Let me tell you 2 or 3 things about romaji tho.
1_ There is not only 1 romaji. That means that there is not only 1 standard way to write phonetically Japanese words, but unfortunately 2 or 3 system were developed. Thus it could be confusing if you learn one system and find a word written in another system.
2_ Even tho romaji could be failry easy for us studying Japanese, don't get used to using them. Japanese exists written in かな (kana, their syllabaries) and grammar rules/word construct are way easier understood if you study avoiding romaji. Using romaji will only slow you down.
3_ If you plan to ask for help in this forum, know now that you will get very few replies if you use romaji. Especially native speakers hate reading romaji. Try and think someone writing to you in English using Japanese kana...even tho you know English it would give you a headache after 10 seconds.

LOL ok kewl thanks, well u answered my question :D
So basically Romaji is a way of writing Japanese in the english alphabet..
Like konichiwa...?
Even tho i may not get an immediate response to my questions, its worth the wait.
Also knowing about this forum and the help that i can get from it, will motivate me to learn the language :D
My goal is to be able to watch my anime without having to read the subtitles LOL

I have to speak the language first before i can learn how to write Japanese in those characters... don't u think?
I'm only learning how to speak it tho..
That's why i want to know about Romaji so that me, as an english man, can atleast write some Japanese (in Romaji) and not only speak it.

You cannot and will not learn how to speak Japanese unless you learn how to write it. You cannot and will not learn how to understand Japanese anime if that is your only reason for wanting to learn Japanese; learning a language takes years upon years of work.

Not realy, i learnt how to speak Afrikaans in about a year and a half...
I find languages interesting. If u set ur mind to it, anything is possible!
Oh and im not just learning Japanese so that i can understand anime, its just my goal.

Moving from Dutch or English to Afrikaans while living in South Africa is a lot different from moving from Dutch/English/Afrikaans to Japanese when you don't have an opportunity to speak Japanese.

English, Dutch, and Afrikaans are very similar languages. Japanese is nothing like any of them.

It will be an uphill battle, just be aware. It took me two years of university classes in Japanese and moving to Japan before I could understand television programs. And I'm what you call "gifted" in languages.

And you must learn kanji as you go, and you should learn hiragana and katakana before learning anything else.

Ok Ok I get the point - it's gona be hard. Well i don't care, I want to learn the language.

None of us are trying to stop you. Most people who go into Japanese thinking it will be easy give up when they find out it's not. We just want to make sure you are prepared so you don't give up.

Hehe thanks dude for ur concern, but i realy do want to learn it :D

OK, the first thing to do is learn katakana and hiragana.

After that, here's what I suggested in another thread as, in my experience, the ideal (or at least a very effective) program for learning Japanese:

and what about Japanese learning tapes...? thats what im useing.
i can already say quite a bit... the tapes are teaching me the basics. there are 90 tapes of 30 minutes each - they teach u sentences and word order, and there's also bonus tapes that teach u words. so if i learn those tapes well - like i hav (im only on the 4th tape because i replay it until i know it off by heart) then i should be able to move on to gramma like u say.
but i dont think moving on to gramma straight away is very wise...

The sooner you start learning grammar the better. You will move from being someone who can repeat a tape-recording to someone who can think in Japanese.