Shiritori gemu

[VisualKei]

ベル
べる
beru
bell

[82riceballs]

ルール　
ru-ru
rule

ru...

[Amnell]

Originally Posted by anrakushi

first of all this thread is for Japanese learners who should have knowledge of Japanese phono-tactics. people "without knowledge of Japanese phonotactics (sic)" are probably going to read it as 'tat su' and even then it will be accented to their own languages way to pronounce ta and su sounds. sigh..

here is an example how romaji is ridiculous for learners of Japanese to rely on for pronunciation. MMM who is great at Japanese explained for his American accent etc how to pronounce 可愛い and how it conflicts with an Australian accent. he said か sounds like the first syllable in cotton, but for Australians the first syllable of cotton sounds like こ in Japanese. he explained わ is like Washington but in Aust. we say Washington as a 'wo' sound, not at all like わ in Japanese. I do agree however with his explanation for 'いい' in my accent's pronunciation of English. hopefully this makes the faults of relying on romaji for pronunciation clear. in fact in this case if MMM or someone else with that American accent, was to publish a book based on how to pronounce the Japanese sounds and it was brought to Australia (like many text books are) Australians would be pronouncing Japanese quite wrong just from these couple of examples.

I see the only purpose for knowing romaji is as a way of inputting Japanese into a computer and that is the only reason i learnt romaji. I learnt it after i had already learnt to pronounce and write 平仮名、片仮名 and had started learning 漢字. it is NOT necessary for someone to learn romaji to pronounce Japanese. It IS necessary for them to have a native or equal speaker to show them the pronunciation.



lets continue, a nice easy word you should all know:
生花　ー　いけばな　ー　flower arrangement.

I don't DISagree with you. As a learner of the language, I wish my textbook would present more things in Hiragana and that my sensei would stop writing romaji on the board.

But for people that aren't learning the language, just for whatever reason are in a situation where they must read a Japanese transliterated word, I believe that romanizations should be done phonemically relative to the IPA*. Since "tu" isn't a phoneme of Japanese, I don't believe we should use it.

Even if someone pronounced the t and s as seperate sounds, they would still be closer to the real sound--especially since in English we do have that sound (its), if not as a phoneme. I don't think that would be a problem, though. I'd be more worried about the pronunciation of words like Toyota and Hyundai (which I think are inescapable, really...).

*When I say that, I don't mean a phonetic transcription using IPA symbols. I mean that under the IPA, [a] is known by everyone to indicate the /a/ in AE "father" or BE/AusE "da" (like dad) (The A in my screen name is pronounced this way.), etc.

-----

るつぼ　rutsubo melting pot

[Kuroneko]

WOW quite a debate going on in here hahah Just don't derail to much

bo

Bouenkyou - telescope

[82riceballs]

裏　うら　ura- opposite side; reverse side

[anrakushi]

Originally Posted by Amnell

But for people that aren't learning the language *snipped to save space*

you are completely missing my point. you even quoted where i said this: this thread is for Japanese learners who should have knowledge of Japanese phono-tactics

obviously if the word is used in English then we must use our alphabet to represent the word. This is not the case in this topic. this is for Japanese language and learners, we are writing in Japanese! so everyone using this thread should be able to pronounce the sounds in Japanese and have no problem with 'tu' representing つ, hence why i said in the first place stop being so anal about my spelling which is completely correct. You have taken this argument from being about Japanese learners using romaji to the use of romaji representing Japanese words in the English language. completely different argument.
since you have agreed with me on my whole point i will continue to post here without any romaji. romaji free from now on.

来歴　ー　らいれき ー history, career.

[Tain]

きっぷ　- ticket

[Dutchman]

キラー - kira - killer

[ultranova3]

羅針盤座　－　らしんばんざ　ー　Constellation of Pyxis

[82riceballs]

財政　ざいせい　financial affairs; public finance