I might not answer any more questions.

[Sashimister]

I have been answering many questions in the Japanese Help section as some of you may know. I will, however, refrain from doing this for a while.

I have come to this decision because it's just impossible and very uncomfortable when a certain old member keeps pouncing on me and a couple of others for saying anything negative about romaji. If I can't write Japanese, my first language, the way it's supposed to be, which is by using kanji, hiragana and katakana, and recommend that others to do the same, I might as well wish the whole language section was closed down.

For those of you who still aren't getting what I'm saying, how about this? You post in English using the alphabet because it's just the proper way to write English. Then I come to you and say "You shouldn't write English like that. It looks ugly. Write it with Japanese letters so I could read it better."

Wouldn't that make me look like the most uneducated person in the world? Well, that's essentially what the aforementioned member has been doing to me over and over.

[MMM]

The Japanese Help section has been inundated with romaji questions, and is why I don't answer there often (along with the fact we have some more qualified and active members here, including the OP of this thread).

Would it help to have a "Romaji Help Thread" and "Kana Help Thread" so that those that choose to help learners can decide what level of learner they want to help?

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by Sashimister

I have been answering many questions in the Japanese Help section as some of you may know. I will, however, refrain from doing this for a while.

I have come to this decision because it's just impossible and very uncomfortable when a certain old member keeps pouncing on me and a couple of others for saying anything negative about romaji. If I can't write Japanese, my first language, the way it's supposed to be, which is by using kanji, hiragana and katakana, and recommend that others to do the same, I might as well wish the whole language section was closed down.

For those of you who still aren't getting what I'm saying, how about this? You post in English using the alphabet because it's just the proper way to write English. Then I come to you and say "You shouldn't write English like that. It looks ugly. Write it with Japanese letters so I could read it better."

Wouldn't that make me look like the most uneducated person in the world? Well, that's essentially what the aforementioned member has been doing to me over and over.

I think this unmentioned member should butt out. We all already know where they stand, and the debate is over if you ask me. The majority of experienced Japanese learners/teachers disagree with this person's view. It is over, they lost, end of story. You should not be patronized for giving good advice and extremely insightful language help that I doubt many others can match.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by MMM

The Japanese Help section has been inundated with romaji questions, and is why I don't answer there often (along with the fact we have some more qualified and active members here, including the OP of this thread).

Would it help to have a "Romaji Help Thread" and "Kana Help Thread" so that those that choose to help learners can decide what level of learner they want to help?

I think that's a very good idea. I admit that I occasionally slip and type in romaji when helping someone, but I try never to ask a question involving romaji. I think I've succeeded thus far.

I can understand why someone absolutely new (or hasn't even learned anything yet) would ask using romaji. But the board's force should be used to get people to stop with romaji ASAP. Maybe we (read: I) need to tone down the anti-romaji rhetoric a bit at the outset, but if someone argues that romaji is a valid tool to learning Japanese beyond, say, month #1, they should be chastised. If nothing else, natives just won't want to help that person!

[jesselt]

It would be a terrible loss for those of us who are trying to learn the language but know very many/any natives to help =(

I just ignore romaji questions. I hope you will decide to ignore them with me and help those of us who are making a real effort

[Columbine]

I agree. We could create a couple of threads then to ease things up for Sashimaster? SM does an amazing job here, but i'm sure there's plenty of us in what Kyle calls the secondary group who could easily pick up on some of the beginner's questions and give SM more space to deal with the stuff that he's really adept at; aka all the upper intermediate and advanced questions where a native view is integral to getting the answer right. I've been thinking this for a while actually, but I wasn't sure it was my place to say anything. I really think a small over-haul of the section like this would help with the running of it, but of course, it requires voluntary effort from the regular members.

Anyway, I think pulling all the small-time and romaji stuff into it's own "beginners help" thread would make things cleaner all round. It would give others a chance to step up, without feeling like their butting in on the help thread and SM would only have to deal with the more serious learners. The intermediate thread could also have a "NO ROMAJI" condition on it. That get's the point of JF across nicely- even if you're fluent, if you can't read hiragana then we still consider you a beginner. I don't know. Maybe we could put up a "Learn Hirgana Here" thread to support the beginner's thread? I have some materials i wouldn't mind sharing. and I ~know~ there's a billion and one sites out there for this, but people never think to google and it might make life easier if we flag up some hiragana resources in a sticky if romaji is becoming a bone of contention.

It would also get the people who post to self-organize where they post and some of the small questions might not then get missed (which usually leads to double threads) in favor of the bigger questions.

[Blitzwing85]

I agree that splitting up parts of the forum would be a good idea.

I only started learning Japanese 2 weeks ago and actually haven't had time to continue since the first few days. But after this week i will be continuing properly.
To be honest i never understood the point of learning Romaji because it doesn't really help with anything.

I can see how it would have some uses under certain circumstances but even as a complete beginner i want to learn using true Japanese characters. I mean if i learn to speak the sound of each symbol then it's going to make learning it a lot faster.

Sashimister helped me out a lot in my thread which got me started quite well...and as much as i haven't studied it at all since, i still remember everything i learnt in that 1-2 days. (so that's good).
Luckily i also have about 5-6 native Japanese people who i speak to via e-mail from japan-guide and have got on very friendly terms with 2 of them.

But it's be a shame if all the native speakers of this site stopped helping people...so i deff agree with ideas to change things a little and segregate certain parts with regards to language learning.




よろしくおねがいいたします - Apologies if that's not exactly relevant. I may have got it wrong...

[chryuop]

普通、ローマ字で書いて人びとは初心者の学生で、基本 的な質問をするんです。僕みたいな低レベルの学生はそ の質問に答えることができますよ。喜んで引き受けます 。smさんは難しい質問にしか答えられません。
。。。個人的な意見です。

[MMM]

It is starting to look like a good idea to do it this way. I'll talk it over and make a change soon.

[robhol]

How about a thread each for romaji, kana and for the more advanced users, kana + kanji? Personally I think that having a "kanji-free zone" could be useful, because not everyone (*cough* ) are that familiar with them yet even if they do have the kana down.

I'm not trying to discourage use of kanjis, it's just that people could lose a little heart when getting 50 kanjis they don't know in their face all of a sudden, I guess. In that case there could be a thread that doesn't use kanji, or just a few of them. Just a suggestion.

I think the ideal thing would be subforums, though (hell of a lot neater than long threads), but judging from what I've heard, the admins here have gone into hibernation (or orbit) and I guess that could make it a bit difficult to pull off.

Edit: uh, and how did this start again and.. escalate to this level? E-drama on account of writing systems is something I can honestly say I've never seen before. Don't get me wrong, I'm on TS' side, (nobody should whine at you for wanting to do it right) but this seems like a decent example of the phrase "mountains out of molehills" unless I've missed something major.