グード！

I have to say, the “homonym” argument is pretty weak : if you write it in “pure” Japanese characters, i.e hiragana or katakana, it doesn’t solve anything.
As for romaji, every student I know who kept on writing the romaji reading of characters (even hiragana, go figure…) gave up Japanese pretty quick. No exception.

You do know that you could learn the songs using Hiragana and achieve the exact same, if not a better, understanding of the pronunciation.

Yeah, that’s what I meant – hence the uniqueness of Hangul I mentioned earlier that it makes it impossible to romanize. Thanks for making it clearer for me. 

When I started learning, I used romaji for in the first 4 or 5 chapters in my book (I used Genki), at university by the way. We studied hiragana and katakana simultaneously though, which is important^^

 Thus context. No written word helps you with auditory input. Talking about a writing system should tell you that we are discussing the downfalls of said writing system.

The specific downfall in question is that, in a language full of homophones, using a system where the components mean nothing is hardly going to help you read.

Just one of those things you need to learn…I’ve also gotten into that habit…Although some inputs only need one N so it gets confusing sometimes if you use several diffident ones..So now just use Google IME :D 

I should really just buy a Japanese keyboard…O.O

Here’s one that throws me off: when English sounds and Japanese sounds are combined. There’s a chain of malls called (written like this) “youme town.” I thought it was ようめタウン but when I saw a commercial heard that it was ゆめタウン. So I guess we’re supposed to take the “you” as being the same as the English pronoun “you” (something I’ve seen many males named ユウ do as well) but know that the “me” is め not the English pronoun “me.” On the one hand it’s cute because the name has two meanings as “You & Me Town” and “Dream Town,” on the other hand, any further confusion caused by romaji is just annoying.

the article wasn’t pointing out the weakness in romaji compared to hiragana, but all combined including kanji. The example Hashi used with his name makes that pretty clear, as you have to see the kanji to determine the meaning (especially out of context). ハシ、橋、箸。

I prefer any rigidly one-to-one romaji when I need to use it.

I’m subscribed to hiko’s channel and love his videos. The jab above is just a bit of harmless trolling =) Gotcha!

Man, I’m so jealous.

 Personally, I preferred the romaji that had one written syllable per kana (おう being ‘ou’ as an example) if I had to use it. That way, it’s more like reading something in kana, just with romaji…

Doesn’t make sense, but it’s just my opinion of the lesser evil.

I would argue that those words are more English translations of proper nouns rather than romaji in the way it’s being described in this article. Yes you could argue that any form of describing Japanese words with the Roman alphabet constitutes romaji but how many other ways can you really translate proper nouns?

 It actually was. Maybe i have the copy somewhere lying around so i could send you the scans if you want..

Haha yeah, romaji sucks. But the version of it in Korean is even worse. Because in Korean for a couple vowels they different romaji sets but when set is switched it sounds like a different vowel. For example the vowel ㅓ is eo in one set of romaji but u in another set but in the first set u is actually an ㅜ. This happens with many vowels and consonants in Korean romaji in addition to most of the problems mentioned above. :( 

I think though textbooks shouldn’t even acknowledge the existence of romaji though. Just start out with hiragana and put like an english guide for those characters only, then every word and stuff after that should be written in hiragana. But don’t even mention that romaji exist so the learner doesn’t get any funny ideas like trying to use it.

thank god i am only learning to speak Japanese. (^_^)

First thing I’d like to point out is that in French the pronunciation of the vowels is actually shown for you on the page with the accent marks. I would say learning to read Japanese with only romaji would be a kin to learning French without the accent marks for the sake of this comparison. As you’re fluent in Italian, I’m sure you’re no doubt aware that Italian has a very conserved spelling regime which is almost as phonetic as hiragana itself. Tell me, when you first learned French or Italian did you start by going through the grammar and learning phrases or did you also look at the alphabet presented? The idea behind looking at the French alphabet before you start, even though it is similar to the English alphabet, is to give you a feel of the way words are pronounced in French. You are supposed to become aware that this isn’t the same rules as English. Learning the syllabary through hiragana rather than romaji would, in my opinion, be killing to bird with one stone, you’d get an understanding of how to pronounce the language at a fundamental level and you’d also be cementing the phonetic meaning of the symbols in the process.

Something to keep in mind is that there is no standardisation of romaji, there are many different varieties and each of them have differences which make it effectively essential to learn the nuances of each in order to preserve understanding of pronunciation between systems. Let’s take these two words as an example: 狼（おおかみ）Which can bi written, depending on the system as “Okami” “Ookami” or “Ōkami” and then we have the word: 東北 （とうほく）which can be written “Tohoku” “Touhoku” or ” Tōhoku”. As it isn’t standardised, books are free to use which ever version they like and the version used by books might be very different to the version used by other sources and even the Japanese themselves (東京 should be written とうきょう (Toukyou) but it often romanised as “Tokyo”, completely omitting any reference to the extended vowels). So while yes it is possible to learn the rules of romaji and adapt their rules to how you pronounce, there’s no way to actually be sure that the fine detail is preserved. If you used hiragana, which has been standardised within certain spellings of words by the Japanese administration of education, you’ll know exactly how long to hold a vowel for.

Then there’s ん which for the following words 万円 (まんえん）変異（はんい）would be romanised as (manen) and (hani) which is A) the same way as the romanisation of (まねん）and （はに）and B) gives no hints as how to properly pronounce the word as you do not pronounce ん like you would an n in this context. Sometimes they are romanised as (mannen) and (hanni) but that would be the same romanisation of 万年（まんねん）and 半に（はんに）which have completely different meanings. These subtleties would completely elude you if you had no understanding of Hiragana.

Another thing would be the use of loanwords which, in Japanese, would always be written in katakana. For example ドライブ meaning “drive” would be written as “doraibu”, no different to how a word in hiragana might be written and with much less of a visual clue that it could be a word that you’re already familiar with.

The fact that the Japanese do not use these systems for everyday life is part of the reason as to why there is so much variation and inaccuracies within them. As far as the Japanese are concerned, romaji exists solely because of foreigners. Businesses use Romaji for their companies so foreign countries can read and then research them. Station platforms are written in romaji so that foreigners don’t miss their stops and they may write their name in romaji so that foreigners may be better able to remember them. Most Japanese can read romaji with the same acuity that a beginner of Japanese might be able to read Katakana with only a basic understanding of what each symbol should correspond to. So unless you wish to have an extra barrier between you and the people who’s language you’re trying to learn, it would be best to familiarise yourself with the way they see the language rather than focus on the way you see the language.

In order to read Japanese, you need at the very least hiragana and that’s only if you wish to be as literate as a child. Once you get past the intermediate stages, literature is one of the best ways to expand your vocabulary, increase your understanding of grammatical nuance and really start seeing Japanese as a language rather than as a foreign language and the longer you put off learning Hiragana, the harder it’s going to be to learn the oh so necessary kanji that is a requirement to understand in order to read anything at an adult, or even middle school level.

As for how hard it is to learn from the start, I would say the difficulty is blown out of proportion. When I started learning Japanese, the first thing I did before even learning my first word was learn hiragana and it took me a week to memorise and another week to memorise Katakana. I’ve also heard of people who managed to learn them both in a single evening which on an intensive course so it’s completely possible to learn them very quickly early on. However, I think it is more difficult to, once you have learned words and grammar in the context of romaji, to then try to incorporate hiragana into everything you have learned. If you’re so used to seeing “hana” for the word flower, then it will be a bit jarring to have to get used to はな for a while and will slow your reading to a crawl.

Additionally, as grammar in elementary Japanese are usually no more than a single particle （は　の　を　へ　が　に　で）it can me incredibly helpful in building a relationship between these symbols and the grammatical context which they imbue with the words that come before them.

Another thing to point out is the difficulty of the symbol は which is read as “wa” as a particle but as “ha” in all other contexts. Most romaji systems will romanise this as “wa” meaning that once you do attempt to switch over, it might be harder to recognise from context when to pronounce は as a particle and when it’s part of a word. For example:
“My mother ran”
母は走った
ははははしった
haha wa hashitta

The longer you rely on romaji to understand what sentences mean, the harder it is to stop using it and use Japanese alone, and if you’re unable to use Japanese alone, then you have very little hope of seeing Japanese as a language as the Japanese do instead of as a foreign language that you’re trying to learn and thus every so further away from achieving natural fluency.

I do not wish to demonise those who find the use of romaji as an aid to their understanding of the language, but rather I wish to express my view that, in so doing so, the slow down their ability to become more at one with the language than they might otherwise have done so.

The idea is in layering experiences, in using what you have learned in order to learn something new. Yes it’s possible to learn new vocabulary just as well with romaji as with hiragana, but doing so with hiragana strengthens the association of sound and symbol and makes reading hiragana much easier.

When we learned to read our native language, we didn’t learn by using a different system of symbols since no other system was available. Instead we were forced to go through the letters that were in front of us in order to make sense of what information was imprinted on the page. In so doing so we strengthened our understanding of our language, the feel of the letters as we used them kinesthetically as well as visually seeing the sounds we on page. As we move on to start to read stories and try to make sense of the grammar and plot, we strengthen our connection with these letters, and then eventually these words until reading becomes so innate that it doesn’t even feel like a skill.

The same process, I believe, can and should be applied to a foreign language in order to achieve the same level of fluency we feel with our native language. We need to become good enough that it doesn’t feel like a skill and the only way to do that is through repeated exposure and I feel that romaji is an obstacle to this.

While learning grammar, you could be doing it in hiragana instead of romaji and thus strengthen your familiarity of the symbols while thinking about something completely else (the grammar), similarly, when learning kanji, you reinforce your familiarity of hiragana by using them to memorise readings from.

What the ultimate goal should be is to completely liberate yourself from English entirely and use Japanese itself to further your understanding of the language. Use text books in Japanese to further your understanding of the grammar, use Japanese-Japanese dictionaries to learn the meaning of new words, etc. In order to achieve fluency, real fluency, I believe you need to stop translating and start understanding. And I feel the only way you can do that is to start, and the sooner started, the sooner the results will arise.

The longer romaji is used, the longer you will keep yourself in the mindset of translation rather than understanding, and that is why I think that the moment you stop relying on it, the more better off you will become.

I can understand where you’re coming from. But I think you’re looking far too short term in your approach simply because you state that the best method towards speaking acuity is the fastest way towards speaking acuity.

My opinion differs in this regard:

It is not how fast we can get there, but how long we can stay there.

To be able to speak a language and to be fluent are very different things, one requires you only understand what to say and how to say it, the other requires a great depth of understanding as well as an expansive breadth of experience, neither of which can be gained quickly.

If you are truly passionate about learning a language, I think you’ll find that gaining the ability to merely communicate effectively will leave you feeling thirsty for more and it is then that you’ll realise that working slow, steady and comprehensively create a much more rewarding experience than any quick results could possibly provide.

Counter argument to first paragraph-
Similarly I can quite easily claim that your statement is the sort of thing that people who can’t be bothered to learn something fully and prefer the fast with results route over the slow but rewarding route. I can also say that, while yes you might say it’s only 2 months, but that’s two months of which you could have used to compound your knowledge and get more used to hiragana, two months of which you could have used to be at the same level you are at now grammatically but with hiragana on your side. It has been known that it is easier to learn something new that it is to relearn something. In this case, it’s easier to start with hiragana than it is to learn the Japanese you learned with romaji over again and then try to incorporate the native script.

Sure you might have learned to instantly read the phrase “watashi wa hontouni ureshii desuyo” but it would take you a bit of time to get yourself to read “わたし　は　ほんとうに　うれしい　ですよ。” and following on from that, even longer to learn to read it as “私は本当に嬉しいですよ。”. As I said earlier, the firs thing I learned was kana, I never used romaji for study, the other thing I did was force kanji upon myself. It’s kind of like DBZ where you train at 10X gravity, it’s difficult at first but once it becomes normal, everything else gets easier. Though to continue the acceleration it is imperative that study should not be too easy or simple. Otherwise you risk falling into a groove of “yeah, I can do this” and just stay at the same level with no real improvement. Kinda the same way your typing speed never improves no matter how much you type unless you actively try to type faster.

And speaking of typing; Counter argument for paragraph two and three-
Please bare in mind that my original complaint was a solely visual one, whereas typing is a tactile skill. Unless you have to look at the keys as you type, you need not know what the keys have printed on them in order to type effectively. It’s even possible to type accurately with your eyes closed, and even if you make a mistake in the placement of your fingers to feel it out and put it right. Reading and typing are two completely different skills.

To emphasize this, while hiragana map keyboards exist, very few people use them, even the Japanese use the qwerty keyboard set up rather than type in hiragana even if the option is there. However, their reading or understanding of English is unaffected by their typing prowess. Just because someone can type using a romaji setting on the keyboard, does not mean they can actually read anything they just wrote had they not had it automatically change to kana and then kanji. Similarly, just because I can type Japanese using the qwerty keyboard setting, doesn’t mean I can read romaji easily.

In honesty, I find romaji to be very difficult to read and a hindrance to my performance, I find hiragana on it’s own marginally better, but lacking in specificity required to really understand what the sentence is saying properly. My opinion is it is important to get to kanji as soon as possible, and relying to romanji just adds an unnecessary step in getting fluent with the written language.

Also, as a sub note, you need not buy a Japanese computer, if you can type Japanese on you’re keyboard, just switch the setting and you can type with the Japanese keyboard map without any additional setup needed.

…I don’t think you’re an idiot.
You wanted to challenge a statement I said, and I was defending the statement. A normal reasonable argument really. No need for sore thoughts.

Also, I don’t think my way is best because I do acknowledge that using romaji would be initially quicker. I just don’t think the relative speed gain is worth the already mentioned disadvantages.

im starting learning japanese now ^-^

The “intimidating” argument is dumb. People know what Japanese looks before they begin studying it. If they are that brain dead that they can’t learn hiragana and katakana, then there is no reason for them to be studying Japanese in the first place.

Perhaps I need to explain my comment better.
I was saying that the majority of Japanese DON’T use the hiragana map on keyboards but instead use the romaji settings of a qwerty keyboard and presenting that as an example of how there is a dissonance between reading characters and typing characters.

I don’t think using romaji as an input method hinders progress in Japanese. I think using romaji as your primary method of learning Japanese reading skills hinders your progress.