Stupid romaji for stupid jerks...

[Nephtis]

No offence intended by the title here, it's a Simpsons thing, I'm sure you'll understand.

Now, romaji. Here's an example:

Koh Ohtani. This is the crappy way of writing Japanese, at least in my eyes. People see 'Ohtani' and assume the start sounds like the word 'oh', which it does not. Obviously if you can't speak basic Japanese chances are good you'll get it wrong, that's fair enough.

So romaji sucks? Why? Once you've learned hiragana, you won't look back. I'm not saying romaji should die and never come back, but I'm just saying it's rather hard for me to read these days.

I often wonder what Japanese people think about it, and should ask. For me I guess it's confusing because my mind probably gets confused with the English letters and the Japanese pronounciation.

If anyone's wondering this is a continuation of a small conversation created in Ayako's fanthread. I wanted to move it since it was unrelated.

Discuss romaji as you please.

[winterfall]

I think romanji is very long-winded and is a sore to the eyes. Just sometimes, but I dont mind too much.

But remember, something that takes 61254872648903476176347 roman letters in romanji may only take 5 characters in Japanese

[sapphiro15]

man, if it werent for romanji, i would have never survived in Tokyo.

Not everyone has the privilege to be super educated in Japanese. And I figure its good thing is more people can semi-understand Japanese through Romanji, it'll boost Japan's tourism well you ought to know the rest.

[alucard]

well i guess romaji is good for ppl who just want to learn a few words of japanese. but sometimes the romaji spelling does not accurately reflect the actual japanese words if written in either kanas or kanji.

I have to agree with Nephtis that once you learned hiragana, you will prefer to read in hiragana. but again, sometimes is just more convenient to sribble japanese words that you want to catch in romaji. so romaji does have its credit for new japanese learners.

I love kanji the most cause you can tell the meaning of the word immediately and a character can represent a few kanas joining together.


The 46 basic hiragana:
a i u e o
a あ い う え お
k か き く け こ
s さ し す せ そ
t た ち つ て と
n な に ぬ ね の
h は ひ ふ へ ほ
m ま み む め も
y や NA ゆ NA よ
r ら り る れ ろ
w わ NA NA NA を
n ん

[Nephtis]

[chocohi]

I dont see why this is such a big deal to you Nephtis, its a bit silly to make a thread on it. many people with english backgrounds begin learning japanese by using romaji as guidelines and do learn much faster that way. (even if you're some genius of sorts and never needed to EVER use romaji, not everyone is. Different people learn in different ways.)

Pronounciation of words can eventually be corrected as people continue learning.

Plus just as sapphiro15 said, its extremely useful for people touring japan, especially if its just backpacking where you might not stay in the country for long at all.

Just because you happened to know hiragana, doesn't give you the right to point fingers at others who are using romaji and label them as some sort of idiot. If they don't want to learn it, or use it (since they're typing on a english keyboard and aren't familiar with using hiragana on it) then let them be. Its not like the Japanese world will collapse because of it. I don't see any point in making a thread on this at all, its not going to get you anywhere.

[goggles_aniki]