Is romaji Japanese?

Answer:

Well, yes and no. Romaji is a way of spelling Japanese words using roman characters (hence “romaji”). It isn’t an official alphabet of Japanese though. The official alphabets are Katakana (for spelling foreign loadnwords), Hiragana, and Kanji.

History & Comments

AaronL posted the question on 02/08/2010 Reply
AaronL updated the answer on 02/25/2010 Reply

Alycia said:

I think reading Japanese in romaji is really difficult. Longer words just look like an incoherent mess of letters. And since there are no spaces in Japanese, sometimes people run a couple words together and it's confusing. Plus, I have to retrain my brain to read letters differently. Take the word あれ. In romaji that's "are", but I look at it and see the English word "are". I think if you are serious about learning Japanese you should do yourself a favor and learn Hiragana and Katakana, and gradually work up to Kanji. I mean, that's the way it's meant to be written right? Let's not reinvent the wheel.

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AaronL said:

@Alycia, Totally agree!

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kevin said:

@Alycia, I also agree. Plus, because there are multiple styles of romaji it can really get confusing! A simple example is し which can be written as "shi" or "si" depending on which style of romaji you prefer.

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KayVonTrarx said:

So I'm guessing you guys would recommend taking Japanese as a writing/reading course first instead of starting off with just learning to speak it? I'm asking since I might have an internship in Japan and I'm trying to decide the best way to prepare myself for it. This site is really useful for familiarising myself with the everyday words but I'm guessing I should also sign up for a Beginners Course in Japanese next semester.

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kevin said:

@KayVonTrarx, I think it depends on your situation. If you have the time, I would recommend learning all aspects of Japanese (reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar) in a way that works for you--whether that's self-study or enrolling in a course. However, if you don't have much time to prepare and had to focus on something, I would focus on speaking/listening. In my experience, I've found this to be the most useful in everyday life. Although I started learning Japanese in school, I really started to improve when I focused on speaking and communication on my own. Once that became comfortable, I went back and worked on my reading and writing. Everyone's different, so think about your own situation and goals and try to see which path fits best for you. The most important thing to remember is to have fun! Motivation is the number 1 roadblock for language learners so try to link your studies with something you enjoy. Hope this helps :)

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seifip said:

Please sign the NO ROMAJI manifesto & support the cause at http://noromaji.com/ :)

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