Tag: should you use romaji?

Should You Use Romaji?

RomajiーJapanese spelled using the writing system you already knowーis something many new learners of Japanese will rely on for all their information. But does it hurt more than it helps?

SPOILERS: 

Don’t even think about using it.  

ROMAJI, WHAT IS IT? 

Simply put, Romaji is the Roman character spelling of Japanese words. Simple, right? So why don’t we all just learn Romaji instead of that scary Kanji and the two other writing systems Hiragana and Katakana? We don’t use it for a couple of reasons. For one, nobody in Japan is writing in Romaji. It’s confusing, and due to all of the homonyms in the Japanese language, things can get more than tricky if you’re trying to read everything using Romaji. For example, let’s say I write Kyuuban in Romaji. What did I just write? Cuban? Suction cup? The number nine? If you answered all of the above, you would be correct. 

“ONE SYSTEM TO RULE THEM ALL?”

To make matters worse for Romaji, there isn’t a set system for actually “translating” Japanese into Romaji that all people equally follow. Let’s take a look at the word “Romaji” to help get this point across. Romaji is normally spelled ローマ字 but look at how you would spell it using Roman characters: Rōmaji, Rômazi, and Rômazi. This one word has three possible spellings in Romaji. 

Tofugu has another amazing example in their article here that I just have to mention. It shows another word 大きい with its Romaji examples: Oki, Ookii, Ôkî, and Ōki. None of these are wrong in any way and would be accepted equally in situations where they’re used. See? Romaji is trash…

DON’T, JUST DON’T 

Long story short, just learn how to read the original Japanese characters as soon as you can. At the end of the day, Romaji is just meant to be a bridge to help foreigners along in the country or when they’re FIRST starting Japanese. Once you can read Hiragana and Katakana, drop Romaji. Trust me.