Best of luck with your studies and please feel free to let me know what we’re missing here on zonjineko!

Thank you, zonjineko, for this most enlightening blog and this most excellent subject entry.

I am the epitome of the absolute novice learner of the Japanese Language. I really have only just begun to try and begin to learn the actual physical written language, rather than say memorise a few stock phrases to amuse myself with the idea that I ‘know’ some Japanese.

I have been incredibly daunted by what appears to be the complexity of the language – this entire multiplicity of layers of Hiragana, the mostly foreign word syllabary Katakana, Kanji and then also Romaji on top of all these just kept putting me off trying to even think about tackling the subject … also, I am not a very good student of languages, in fact, I am a very poor student of languages except my own native one lol… so, taking on one that appears as desperately complex and difficult as Japanese may seem a catastrophic waste my time to those that know me, but I really do want to learn the language of the people I have been so attracted to for so very long, and will one day in the nearish future visit, for some time I hope!

After reading through this post, and grappling with this revolutionary idea of dumping romaji altogether as part of Japanese language learning has clarified how I will approach my self tutored language learning process.

This post, and all the very and most excellently helpful follow on comments have finally given me a better understanding of what I should actually be focusing on.

I am deeply grateful for being guided so well in the short space of time it took to read this blog entry Thank you

1. Anon what you need to realise in the point zonjineko is trying to make, it is to eliminate “the training wheels” A.S.A.P . For a child to get familiar with riding a bicycle, he needs the support for the familiarity to occur. Once familiar, the child must take the next bold step of riding without support, purely based on the newly aquired information of physics.

Relating that to learning a language such as Japanese – Romaaji being your training wheels, Hiragana + Katakana being your pedals. The first step to reading and writing in Japanese (and essentially listening and speaking) is to infuse your brain with the CORRECT understanding of HOW Japanese is processed in one’s mind. Get to that stage via Romaaji, as soon as you are comfortable with using Hiragana and katakana, leave romaaji behind – That is the point. Keep moving forward.

Romaaji is only that extra missing step foreigners require, to get them onto pedaling the bicycle, the Japanese way. The challenge is Kanji, but let Hiragana be your aid. As you might have noticed, Furigana is used to display the reading for certain Kanji’s in textbooks, newspapers, etc. Not Romaaji.

1. One last thing, you will notice in the end of all this, reading romaaji just isn’t as simple as you might’ve thought it was once. It becomes more difficult to interperate the Japanese meaning through it, and CERTAINLY takes up more reading effort for your brain to process, Rather than the shortened version of Hiragana.

Cheers.

Why should I be penalized and forced to learn romaji when it’s the other person who needs to take the time to learn hiragana? Notice I’m not saying kanji. It doesn’t matter to me how many kanji they know, as long as they write in real Japanese. Even when I’m talking with native speakers, I’ll ask them to wait so I can look up things I don’t know. Why should they lower themselves to my level?

You sound like one of these lazy fools who won’t take the time to start learning Japanese the correct way, and just wants an easy way!