Should you Learn Romaji if you Only Want to Speak Japanese?
There are some people out there that get the idea in their heads that they only want to learn how to speak Japanese, and nothing else. Maybe they have some Japanese friends they want to talk to. Maybe they will be traveling in Japan and want to be able to mingle with the locals. Maybe they love anime and only care about understanding it.
If you only need to speak (and by extension, listen) to Japanese, then why spend all that additional time going through the complicated writing system? Save the time with romaji, and focus on what really matters to you.
I’ve seen beginners tread down this path. Romaji presents the appearance of a shortcut for the “speaker only.” But there are so many reasons why romaji is a bad idea, even if you think you never want to touch the written word.
But first… the one reason I find completely acceptable to use romaji for those who only want to speak Japanese…
You have a one time trip to Japan for a short period of time (up to a few weeks), and you will never use that Japanese or step foot in Japan again. In this scenario, it’s probably not worth the trouble to learn the basic characters of Japanese for such minimal use. Get yourself a guidebook that uses romaji, or some online app, and you’ll be good to go.
Assuming this isn’t you (which if you’re here, shouldn’t be), here’s why you should not learn romaji even if you only want to learn to speak Japanese.
10. The kana (hiragana and katakana) are easy to learn
If you give it several days to a few weeks of moderate study, you can learn them all. Kana makes up the basis for the entire language. It’s a minimal time commitment for a great return.
9. Limited expansion
You may start off thinking you only want to speak. This changes quickly. Most people that start off studying Japanese have a small set of narrow goals. This set grows over time. Don’t waste all that beginner time when you could start yourself off right with learning the kana.
8. Pronunciation
Your pronunciation is going to be off. While romaji tries its best to get the sounds correctly, it just doesn’t always do the best job. If you want your spoken Japanese to sound good, you need to learn the Japanese sounds through kana.
7. Some romaji systems are counter-intuitive
How would you pronounce the following sounds:
Si – Tu – Hu – Ti – Sya
Depending on the system, these are actually pronounced:
Shee – Tsu – Fu – Chee – Sha
6. You are hindering the growth of your “Japanese brain”
By using romaji, you keep the English link inside your brain strong. The stronger the link, the harder it is to connect with and actually think in Japanese. To speak and listen you are going to want your brain in Japanese mode.
5. You probably will fail
I don’t want to sound too negative here, but there are very few people who get to any good level of speaking by using romaji. There may be the occasional anecdotal story, but what are the chances that you are going to be that rare exception?
4. It’s not going to be as much fun
You are probably learning Japanese because you think it’s cool and has something special about it. With romaji, you’ll take away a large chunk of that special feel, and turn it into English. It feels amazing to be able to use Japanese characters.
3. To get good speaking/listening you need to practice reading
You can obtain a moderate level of spoken Japanese without ever diving into reading. But if you want to get better, you probably are going to want to read at some point.
2. You will limit your access to learner materials
Japanese was meant to be learned through kana (and eventually kanji). Regardless of the teaching methods used today, traditional or new, almost all places teach in kana. Don’t restrict what material you can use.
1. You open up Japan for yourself
If you are studying Japanese, then you probably like Japan. With romaji, you can only look at Japan through a narrow filter. If you want to be able to access the real Japan, you need the keys.
Romaji for speaking success?
I’d say steer clear if you want any kind of results that are going to make you happy in the long run.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
You could potentially get away with never learning romanji at all, the only downside I could see is typing on a computer would become difficult (you can type using kana only though). As Adam said, by focusing on romanji you are taking away from your Japanese development. Whenever I look at textbooks and they use romanji consistently, I can’t take those books seriously.
I never learnt the Korean romanji while studying Korean. I still don’t know it. I seriously have no idea to the point that if I see a romanised Korean word I have no idea how to read it. This is not an issue whatsoever because the only time I’ve seen romanji is in text books (which I haven’t read). When actually interacting with Korean materials (comics, texting people, etc) I’ve never come across a need for it once.
Same goes for Japanese. Outside of typing on a computer (which isn’t a problem in Korean), is there a need at all the learn it?
Funnily enough, JALUP has an article about that:
http://japaneselevelup.com/romancing-the-romaji/
Here is a summary of the points it makes:
-All Japanese people learn romaji
-It is very easy to learn
-It makes learning the Kana easier (for some people)
-If you need to write something on a computer, sometimes romaji will be your only option
-You can use to teach someone visiting Japan (but isn’t interested in learning the language) to teach them some phrases
-You will occasionally see signs in romaji when visiting Japan
-Japanese restaurants in your home country will use romaji
-You use it to hide conversations from small children
–
Just to make it clear, that article ends with this:
“However, please note that I don’t support using romaji for any other reasons than the above. Don’t take this post as me promoting romaji as a good way to learn Japanese. For the most part, romaji will not play any large role in your Japanese adventure. However, it is still a useful tool to have.”
Yes, these are the rare exceptions where you may find romaji useful. But as I stated there and Manan pointed out, this has nothing to do with learning Japanese, including learning Japanese “just for speaking.”
If you want to be proficient at typing in Japanese, the buttons that you will press are slightly different than ‘standard’ romaji anyway.
For example: tu instead of tsu, ti instead of chi, si instead of shi, nn instead of n or n’.
This would make for a good article. I feel it’s very beneficial to type like that and it’s not hard to learn at all. I started doing it after noticing it was how Japanese people typed and it quickly became automatic.
Not sure if you’re talking about on mobile phones, but if that’s the case I recommend the swipe keyboard anyway (harder to learn, but then there’s no English to look at).
I was one of those people who resisted learning the kana because I thought I only wanted to talk. I bought Japanese in 10 minutes a day and See it, Say it in Japanese. Now that I’m using Jalup Next, I love it and am not bored, the way I became with the Romaji. Second, I realize that I want to read books in Japanese, which I never would have done. Now those old books are useless to me because it hurts my eyes to look at them.
I’m glad you got off the romaji train. You’ll be much better off without it.
This 巡り合うbetween mother and child video has an interesting way of using Romaji and Japanese as a tool to communicate. Skip to 7:28 for the romaji 手紙 part
https://youtu.be/vvoj-NqU-VA
I think another key point, that I found really surprising in my early studies, is that while it’s slow going to read in Kana at first, you will get to the point you can read it with reasonable speed. You’ll also be completely clear on what is a long vowel, where ん’s are, etc.
Romaji can be rife with errors or just variances, and some English versions of Japanese words omit or erroneously transcribe them into English (such as Tokyo vs とうきょう, “romanji” vs ローマ字)
I cannot imagine getting to the point where you can read romaji fluently, but I guess it happens. But it would be hard to divorce how English (or another native language using the roman alphabet) sounds when parsing romaji into pronounceable Japanese. It’s almost just easier to start over and learn kana.
Also, there isn’t too much material out there that’s all written in romaji (vs maybe pinyin), so there’s a pretty short ceiling for growth for a romaji-only learner.
Hello, after years of saying I want to learn another language , as I know ONLY english , I finally decided on japanese . I really would like to read and write it as well as understand , am in no hurry to speak as I might never visit japan .
I just wanted to know if you had any advice or pointers on how and where I should start and ways to help me learn it . Thank you .
Hi Kelly,
I linked below to some of the walkthrough on the site that will help you get started.
http://japaneselevelup.com/walkthrough-world-2/
Hello david
Thank you very much .
Now let me go see if there is something more complicated than rocket science .
I hope I can ask question , if need be .