Thread: romanji
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steven (Offline)
JF Old Timer
 
Posts: 544
Join Date: Apr 2010
09-26-2010, 02:41 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by KyleGoetz View Post
I don't think there's anyone who speaks English who cannot natively read romaji.

But doing a romaji to kana transliteration is pointless. It's an absolute waste of time. That is something that is absolutely not a skill that aids in speaking Japanese.
Well let's just say that you'd be able to look at a word and recognize it if you saw it again. On the other hand, if you read a word like "Udon" as a native English speaker, you'll probably say the "on" part of it like "turn the lights on" which may or may not be understood by a Japanese person. "Onsen" is the same way. The word "Karaoke" is a prime example of this phenomenon. Have you tried saying that the English way to a Japanese person? Have you seen a native English speaker hear that word in Japanese for the first time? That's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.

Evanny, good luck with Japanese. I believe you probably have a great advantage having learned multiple languages before coming to tackle Japanese. However, if your langauges are all European, there might be some surprises awaiting for you in Japanese. If you feel that copying romaji into hiragana or katakana will help you then go ahead and do it. While Kyle and I have some different opinions on how to learn Japanese, I totally agree with him in that copying romaji into hiragana/katakana will take time that would be better spent doing something else (like pronouncing what you write or listening to the kana as you write).
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