greetings! Splendid website and learning system! However, I am a total neophyte when it comes to japanese and I don’t currently want to learn kanji/hiragara- maybe it’s just me but if I ever want to do that it will be waaay later. I have only found 3 romanji texts thus far and this sort of limits me. Will more romanji texts be added in the future? it would help if romanji/hiragara/kanji were all separated somehow for ease of browsing. Currently I have added many kanji/hiragara lessons simply cause I couldn’t preview them and was searching for romanji and have no idea how to delete them.
OK, good point. I will check into it. We could try to add Romaji in the notes for beginner content.
One of the things on our todo list is to enable text in the lessons that would not be counted in our statistics. That would give us more freedom to use Romaji, Pinyin, translations or whatever. Stay with us.
I second a request for this feature. There are a lot of romaji and hiragana texts that I would like to ignore and focus only on kanji.
yuriythebest, I don’t know what your language learning goals are, but I strongly recommend learning hiragana and katakana. Unlike kanji, they aren’t too hard to learn. Learning with romaji makes it difficult to understand a lot of the grammar and is likely to screw up your pronunciation too. Finally, Japanese is not written in romaji and Japanese speakers find it very difficult to read text written in it. Just my two cents. 
gerdemb - you mentioned “a lot of romanji and hiragara texts” - so far I have only found 3 romanji texts if you have the names of those romanji texts it would be most helpful
Katakana and hiragana are just not that hard to learn. There is a one to one correspondence between (approx) 46 symbols and 46 sounds. Instead of suggesting others to transcribe many kana/kanji texts to romaji, why don’t you transcribe the romaji texts you have to kana. After a few texts you will have it learned it. Or get Heisig’s Remembering the Kana and you will have it in about 3 -4 hours maximum. I believe it will help your pronunciation too. Would you suggest learning Russian without the alphabet is an effective way to learn?
I just can’t understand how to use dictionary if you read romaji text…
When I started learning Japanese I read Romaji texts too, for a short while. To each his own. However, I do agree with dooo that it is best to bite the bullet and get on to Hiragana asap. Rasana did so with splendid results.
If you want to create Romaji texts just get a Romaji converter off the web like
http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/
Yuri, if you do some conversions would you be so kind as to leave them in the Notes section for each lesson so that others can use them.
cool just got Heisig’s Remembering the Kana and did the first 30min lesson- was easier than I expected now taking a break. Though I found the “now go to page X” thingy quite redundant
Rasana,
There are quite a few dictionaries out there that have their entries in romaji (I have never given them much attention though).
I think romaji can work for things like song lyrics, or maybe as a way to get into the language in the beginning, but not something to occupy yourself with for too long. As a lot of other people pointed out, I would strongly recommend learning at least the syllabaries, it should only take a few days tops.
romaji lessons can be found at library under the “romaji” type – http://tinyurl.com/yftvrp2
hiragana lessons can be found under the “hiragana” type – http://tinyurl.com/ygrj4fg
“If you want to create Romaji texts just get a Romaji converter off the web like
http://nihongo.j-talk.com/parser/”(steve)
I added a link to the wiki site.
Kanji Converter Translator
http://tiny.cc/kanji
吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。---->wagahai wa neko de aru. namae wa mada nai.
(Kanji Converter Translator )
私の好きなティーポットは、空色です。----> watashi no suki na tiipotto wa, sorairo desu.
(Kanji Converter Translator )
Btw, I just counted the number of romaji lessons in the library – 95 items! “way too little material”?..
This is a very old post, so just hope some of you are still here =)
I like Yuri find it hard to learn through kanji, mostly because i dont know kanji =)
Maybe im looking the wrong place, or typing the wrong thing. but, Where can I find lessons/courses which will teach me? and Cakypa, where do You find the 95 items of romaji lessons?
This is a very old post, so just hope some of you are still here =)
I like Yuri find it hard to learn through kanji, mostly because i dont know kanji =)
Maybe im looking the wrong place, or typing the wrong thing. but, Where can I find lessons/courses which will teach me? and Cakypa, where do You find the 95 items of romaji lessons?
http://www.lingq.com/learn/ja/store/search/?search=&category=&type=194&level=&sort=alpha
I hope this helps!
j:-)
I often use “association techniques” to memorize them.^^
月 means “moon” and 朋 means “companion” (friend)
I remember both of them with a simple sentence: “the twin MOONs are COMPANIONS”.
古 means “old”, my sentence: “I´ll buy an awesome tombstone when I´m OLD”.
If you want to know more about this method:
You should do a google search for “Remember the Kanji” or “The Heisig Method”.
You can even read the first 100 or so pages of “Remember the Kanji” for free: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2012/12/RK-1-6th-edition-sample.pdf
If you have “Anki”, you can find and download some brilliant flash card decks as well
Combine all that with some reading and listening on LingQ and you´ll be able to learn the Kanji much faster than you might think.
PS: I don´t recommend focusing on Romaji too much. You won´t be able to read any real Japanese unless you know Hiragana (and maybe even Katakana) and some Kanji.
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