Learning Japanese...is Romaji okay?

Question

As an English speaker, it would be difficult at my age to learn a new alphabet. I heard Romaji though (Japanese into latin characters) wasn't as good to talk with. Do native speakers understand this as well? Are Japanese comfortable with Romaji writing and is it common there?

Answer 1

You'd be much, much better off learning Hiragana, Katakana, and depending on how far you take it, Kanji.

Hiragana and Katakana can be picked up in a few days with study, but Kanji can take a long while. basically, Kanji is Chinese characters. If you learn Japanese in a formal setting, atleast when I did, we started learning it after half a year of introductory Japanese, so it's fairly necessary stuff. However, Kanji can be rather formulaic at times, somewhat like English.

You can guess the general meaning of some Kanji words if you know how they're made. Take shizuka (quiet, silent [adj., -na]): 静か. It comes from 2 parts: 青い (blue, aoi), and 争い (argument, arasoi, but I was taught that this was battle for the kanji used). So you've got blue, a rather peaceful color, and argument. See what it is? The calm after the argument! Silence! Or if I go off of what my Kanji teacher taught, the calm after the battle. :)

Answer 2

all japanese (12yo+) can read romaji. (we study at school)

romaji is ok if you dont want to learn writing systems yet. but hiragana letters (47letters) are really simple as english alphabet and easy to memorize. you better try. coz you can read japanese really easy if you master hiragana. there's no complicated pronounce rule in japanese. each hiragana letters has own sound. you dont need to think like phonics in english. (there're some exceptional reading in english right?)

anyway, everybody can read romaji in japan.

do your best :)

Answer 3

its not comfortable, just like its hard for you to read japanese. romaji can be read, but its hard & not all japanese people understand romaji that well, & it can get hard.

forgive me for any problems with my spelling, i am still not great at english.

Answer 4

The writing system is an integral part of the Japanese language. If you can handle the grammatical complexities and the large vocabulary of learning a new language at your age, you can certainly stand to learn the writing system as well.

Romaji is understood by Japanese people, but it is not how Japanese is written. For this reason, you will not be able to understand any written Japanese whatsoever. If you go to Japan, you will not be able to read signs, menus, or handwritten notes. Japanese people will probably be very disappointed as well upon hearing that you have not bothered to learn the writing system.

Also, learning the writing system makes it easier to understand Japanese grammar. Changes made to a word written in Japanese are a lot clearer than if you just write it in romaji.