Is Romaji a bad idea?
February 6th, 2008Romaji is the way of writing Japanese using the Roman alphabet. I have often seen posts on Japanese learning sites debating whether using romaji is a good idea or a bad idea.
I think it has its uses.
1. The character set is familiar
If English (or a European) language is your first language you are very familiar with the roman alphabet. You’ll be drawing on years of experience.
When you’re beginning you won’t be scared off by an unfamiliar and complex writing system. You can immediately get to grips with classroom situations.
2. It’s quick to take notes in
Again by the time you start learning Japanese you can probably write quite quickly using script (joined-up-writing) or even printing for clarity. Probably much faster and neater (and hence legible) than writing in kana. It’s good for speed.
3. It’s easy to read
Once again it’s familiar. As long as you learn the romanisation system properly and are not tempted to use an English style of pronunciation, reading romaji is pretty plain sailing.
The English writing conventions of capitals and lowercase, spaces, ascenders and decenders, makes it very easy to read quickly. You read by the word shapes. There are experiments where you can still read a sentence as long as the first and last letters in a word are correct and the number of letters is correct. There are also experiments showing that lowercase letters aid legibility.
By comparison the unfamiliar forms of kana mean you often have to read a word if not a sentence symbol by symbol. Granted once you can read kanji reading actually becomes easier.
4. It’s easier to use in an index
I can never remember the order of the kana much beyond あいうえお、かきくけこ、and I only know いろは of the traditional order. Even if I have to recite it sometimes I do know the alphabet’s order.
5. You’ll use it to type anyhow.
To use a roman keyboard to input Japanese you have no choice but to use romaji.
You can buy a Japanese keyboard and input kana directly. However, oddly enough this can be slow as you are probably more familiar with a QWERTY layout even if you are a two fingered look at the keyboard typist than you are with the kana layout. I know I tried and reverted back to QWERTY fairly quickly. Maybe with time you would become familiar with the kana locations.
6. You don’t actually need kana or kanji to speak Japanese.
but it helps. This is a slightly old argument now. Once Japanese courses didn’t teach kana or kanji at all. And it’s possible to speak perfectly good Japanese without being able to read or write it. Just be prepared for the huge shock of finding yourself almost completely illiterate if you ever arrive in Japan.
However…
Kana and kanji are what are used in Japan and to be literate you have to learn them. I think you should use them as soon as possible and as much as possible.
Usually students use romaji at first and then kana is introduced and then kanji even later on, if ever.
One of the main reasons not to use kana and kanji from the beginning perhaps, is so as not to scare beginning students!
(I remember the first class I took. The teacher spoke Japanese all the time! Everyone thought she couldn’t speak English. )
Kana, Kanji and a new language could be information overload.
But perhaps there could be another way. use romaji in a furigana way. That is until students are comfortable with kana give the kanji, kana and romaji for any given word. Eventually dispense with romaji in favour of kana then gradually dispense with kana for particular kanji.
Another possible solution is a foundation course. Before beginning a Japanese course proper have a short 3 to 4 week course to learn kana and some basics of how the writing system and the language works. Basic words would be introduced as a result but no grammar or constructions as such. (and possibly even learn kanji using the Heisig method although this would be very controversial and would take 2 to 3 months.)
You can find further details about romaji at reference.com