The war against Romaji!
I wanted to think over something that comes up again and again; Romaji and the pure and utter loathing it receives from the initiated.
Is it a crutch? Absolutely. But are crutches all that bad? That, I suppose depends on your reliance on them. If you use them to the point that you're never pushing yourself to improve, then they are totally wretched. But, when dealing with Japanese, a language with 3 official scripts and a fourth in reality (English Alphabet) it is almost mandatory that the crutches exist. To make my point... the Japanese use crutches themselves. They don't use Romaji, but they often transcribe the Hiragana readings above Kanji and for different levels of learners may even provide the same text completely free of all or certain Kanji, even if writing the Kanji is the more common course of action.
If that isn't a crutch, then what is?
The argument against Romaji is that it isn't Japanese and that you won't see it in Japanese writing anywhere. And sure, that is true. But is the point valid? For instance... if I need to find the bathroom and it is labeled as お手洗い rather than おてあらい does it make ANY difference if I only know how to read in either Hiragana or Romaji? No. But, if I ask someone where the "otearai" is, they'll still be able help me.
If I'm learning to write in Japanese, I suppose the pressure to get off of Latin characters where possible makes sense. But as a general principle... I'm not sure I see it as being as absolutely terrible as people make it out to be.
What all of this also means is that, to the extent new learners tend to use Hiragana, it too is a crutch. But you don't here anyone complaining about that. Learning water as みず is no different from learning it as "mizu" in my opinion, because you're virtually always going to see it as 水. "Water" is a pretty damn common word and even kids in Japan will know the Kanji for it. So, don't expect your hoity-toity Hiragana knowledge to save you from embarrassment.
I started learning Japanese over a year ago. I dove head long into learning Hiragana and Katakana and only relied on Romaji for maybe a month or so until the app I was using basically stopped showing it. By then, I was generally good enough with it. But, then something happened. You see, with 2 syllabaries with 100% overlap and one which is used more often than the other... I some times have some issues with Katakana now.
Katakana IS certainly used often enough that you will see it regularly in proper Japanese materials. But, as a learner in Canada who spends maybe an hour a day practicing, I can go quite a while without seeing certain characters regularly. And some characters are close to one another. And because they are most often used with loan words the pronunciation doesn't always work as expected. Even Japanese people will try and make the word sound more "foreign" and the sound it makes in your head (if you know the loan word) often doesn't match the implied Japanese pronunciation.
The R series for some reason to me is especially hard. リ and ル or ("ri" and "ru") for instance, especially in different fonts, just don't look THAT different. And they are regularly used in loan words for sounds they don't line up well with.
Anyway, that could just be me. I'm confident enough in my skills though, and 90% of the time with a new word this isn't a problem. It just means I read it more slowly. With old words I'm more sight reading than anything. But the point is, what is wrong with me wanting to check the pronunciation?
In fact, if I have a problem with Romaji it is the lack of an agreed upon system. They use varying tricks for the long vowel sounds and glottal stops. Personally, I think it doesn't matter what the system is, as long as it is explained. And in that respect, you should use the system which more closely matches Japanese, rather than aiming for something which is easier for you to read as though it were a native word.
I have chosen to harp on this for a specific reason though. And, it depends on your purposes for learning the language. If you just need to spout a few touristy phrases... well then, you probably don't want to invest the time in the first place trying to figure out how to pronounce something. So, maybe in those cases one of the Romaji systems with the fancy grammar points to help you pronounce without any knowledge of real Japanese is useful.
But! For everyone else... here is why I personally think that the Romaji system you use should matter. We're going to map Japanese back into Romaji or at least English sounds for a very long time. It can take years before you start naturally speaking and understanding Japanese. But, if you're going to make that conversion... shouldn't we try and at least map it to something which we can map directly to Hiragana? Take the long "o" sound. I'd say, 9/10 times in Japanese this is formed by an "ou". There are a few cases like "ooki" where it is a true double o, but most Romaji systems indicate this as an o with a bar on top. So, if you were to try and transcribe it directly to Hiragana... you'd use the wrong characters. Oops. For glottal stops, I think a double consonant is fine. Most keyboards will automatically convert double consonants appropriately anyway. Though, why not throw a small TSU into your text? Just kidding.
So, yeah, I agree. Romaji is a crutch. But you can still use crutches to help you learn to walk. And that is kind of the point. Isn't it? Hopefully, you'll learn to switch to more traditional Japanese crutches over time.
Is it a crutch? Absolutely. But are crutches all that bad? That, I suppose depends on your reliance on them. If you use them to the point that you're never pushing yourself to improve, then they are totally wretched. But, when dealing with Japanese, a language with 3 official scripts and a fourth in reality (English Alphabet) it is almost mandatory that the crutches exist. To make my point... the Japanese use crutches themselves. They don't use Romaji, but they often transcribe the Hiragana readings above Kanji and for different levels of learners may even provide the same text completely free of all or certain Kanji, even if writing the Kanji is the more common course of action.
If that isn't a crutch, then what is?
The argument against Romaji is that it isn't Japanese and that you won't see it in Japanese writing anywhere. And sure, that is true. But is the point valid? For instance... if I need to find the bathroom and it is labeled as お手洗い rather than おてあらい does it make ANY difference if I only know how to read in either Hiragana or Romaji? No. But, if I ask someone where the "otearai" is, they'll still be able help me.
If I'm learning to write in Japanese, I suppose the pressure to get off of Latin characters where possible makes sense. But as a general principle... I'm not sure I see it as being as absolutely terrible as people make it out to be.
What all of this also means is that, to the extent new learners tend to use Hiragana, it too is a crutch. But you don't here anyone complaining about that. Learning water as みず is no different from learning it as "mizu" in my opinion, because you're virtually always going to see it as 水. "Water" is a pretty damn common word and even kids in Japan will know the Kanji for it. So, don't expect your hoity-toity Hiragana knowledge to save you from embarrassment.
I started learning Japanese over a year ago. I dove head long into learning Hiragana and Katakana and only relied on Romaji for maybe a month or so until the app I was using basically stopped showing it. By then, I was generally good enough with it. But, then something happened. You see, with 2 syllabaries with 100% overlap and one which is used more often than the other... I some times have some issues with Katakana now.
Katakana IS certainly used often enough that you will see it regularly in proper Japanese materials. But, as a learner in Canada who spends maybe an hour a day practicing, I can go quite a while without seeing certain characters regularly. And some characters are close to one another. And because they are most often used with loan words the pronunciation doesn't always work as expected. Even Japanese people will try and make the word sound more "foreign" and the sound it makes in your head (if you know the loan word) often doesn't match the implied Japanese pronunciation.
The R series for some reason to me is especially hard. リ and ル or ("ri" and "ru") for instance, especially in different fonts, just don't look THAT different. And they are regularly used in loan words for sounds they don't line up well with.
Anyway, that could just be me. I'm confident enough in my skills though, and 90% of the time with a new word this isn't a problem. It just means I read it more slowly. With old words I'm more sight reading than anything. But the point is, what is wrong with me wanting to check the pronunciation?
In fact, if I have a problem with Romaji it is the lack of an agreed upon system. They use varying tricks for the long vowel sounds and glottal stops. Personally, I think it doesn't matter what the system is, as long as it is explained. And in that respect, you should use the system which more closely matches Japanese, rather than aiming for something which is easier for you to read as though it were a native word.
I have chosen to harp on this for a specific reason though. And, it depends on your purposes for learning the language. If you just need to spout a few touristy phrases... well then, you probably don't want to invest the time in the first place trying to figure out how to pronounce something. So, maybe in those cases one of the Romaji systems with the fancy grammar points to help you pronounce without any knowledge of real Japanese is useful.
But! For everyone else... here is why I personally think that the Romaji system you use should matter. We're going to map Japanese back into Romaji or at least English sounds for a very long time. It can take years before you start naturally speaking and understanding Japanese. But, if you're going to make that conversion... shouldn't we try and at least map it to something which we can map directly to Hiragana? Take the long "o" sound. I'd say, 9/10 times in Japanese this is formed by an "ou". There are a few cases like "ooki" where it is a true double o, but most Romaji systems indicate this as an o with a bar on top. So, if you were to try and transcribe it directly to Hiragana... you'd use the wrong characters. Oops. For glottal stops, I think a double consonant is fine. Most keyboards will automatically convert double consonants appropriately anyway. Though, why not throw a small TSU into your text? Just kidding.
So, yeah, I agree. Romaji is a crutch. But you can still use crutches to help you learn to walk. And that is kind of the point. Isn't it? Hopefully, you'll learn to switch to more traditional Japanese crutches over time.
Comments
Post a Comment