Bad to rely on Romaji?

[leahonthemove9562]

こんにちわ
Hello my fellow Japanese students . Well this is my 3rd day using Japanesepod101.com and I'm loving it. There are a few questions i would like toask from those of you who have been learning for some time and those of you native Japanese people.

1. What is the best script to learn, Im finding it hard to get my head around recognising the scripts (is it Hiragana or Katakana or Kanji)
2. Is it usual in japanese to learn via Romanji? I did read somewhere that is it bad to rely on this as it will slow down your reading and writing skills.
3. I would love a study mate to help me get through the lessons if anyone is up for it? I am living in the UK, native English language and I'm 38 woman to just wants to speak Japanese!!!!!!

I hope you are all doing great at learning this fab language!

Cheers
Leah

[j_bertoni2279]

Hello! I would suggest learning the hiragana and then the katakana. They are used in writing Japanese at every level, and romaji might tend to encourage bad pronunciation. There are only around 45 each in the hiragana and katakana sets, and they are phonetic spelling systems, so learning them is straightforward.

[Belton]

こんにちは〜♪

Romaji is a bit of a can of worms!

I won't rehash stuff I've written elsewhere. My thoughts for what they're worth are here;
http://www.shiawase.co.uk/2008/02/06/is ... -bad-idea/
http://www.shiawase.co.uk/2011/05/24/is ... -japanese/

Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji are what they use in Japan. For that reason alone you should learn them.

It's usual to start by learning Hiragana (the rounded script) あいうえお then Katakana (the more angular script) アイウエオ. For the moment don't worry about kanji (the chinese "ideographic" script) 本日月鳥
It's not too difficult to learn kana and definitely worth the effort. It will open up more resources for you. It's good to be able to both read and write it.
There are a fair amount of resources online. If you prefer books I recommend this one as it shows common writing mistakes to avoid.
http://www.3anet.co.jp/english/books/te ... agana.html

If you are in London I know of some inexpensive lessons, and there is a meetup group every month around Piccadilly.

On the Internet there's Lang-8 where you can practise writing and have it corrected by Japanese natives. and the mixxer is a good place for Skype language exchange partners.
http://lang-8.com/
http://www.language-exchanges.org/

[tvtamas9617]

i say 100%, learn how to write and pronounce hiragana and katakana from the get go, and never look back at romaji.

if you're practicing japanese on a somewhat regular basis, forcing yourself to always use kana will hammer it into your head and keep it there. if you rely on romaji, you will not learn it nearly as fast.

i also say learn how to pronounce it because japanese is a very simple language to speak well, IF you simply learn how to pronounce the kana well. having spent a little time learning and living in japan, i can definitely spot the がいじん who took the time to do this and those who did not. there is a clear difference. japanese is not a language that should require years of practice to pronounce well, like English. in my opinion, it should only take weeks.

one final incentive to learn kana... japanese is a very difficult language to read (they say you need to memorize 2,000 kanji to fluently read a newspaper), but a surprising number of words are borrowed words from english written in katakana. you will see these all over signs, advertisements, and menus in japan if you ever come. so while being able to read FLUENTLY may take years and years of study, you will be able to get around quite a bit just with katakana (also, if you learn how to speak english with a katakana-like accent, you will be much more understandable to typical japanese people when you need to use it!)

ok, that's my brain dump. hope it helps! がんばって！

(one last thing, if you're learning on your own, make sure you learn how to write your kana, and eventually kanji with the right stroke order (don't just look at the kana and try to copy them). it will make a significant difference in your legibility and ability to memorize, especially as you continue on with more difficult kanji. ok, that's it! good luck!)

[Javizy]

Although it probably seems way more approachable than Japanese scripts right now, reading Romaji is actually horrible and can be quite challenging for longer passages of text, and Japanese natives feel the same about it. Asides from the advantages already mentioned, kana (thanks to furigana) opens up the endless world of manga, which is extremely useful for learning to read and gaining exposure to real Japanese at an early stage. You'll also be able to make better use of JPod transcripts. If you have an interest in language learning and Japanese, then you'll also find it extremely rewarding, maybe even fun, so check out Belton's recommendations! がんばって～！

[BruceWizayne]

1) You must learn Hiragana and Katakana not just one or the other.
3) I'll send you an email about that. Its good to study with natives but there are some issues with that if you are a beginner at their language.

They have some good videos on this site with stroke order of the kana, definitely get those to help you.