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Absolutely agree. Romaji was absolutely pointless for me and probably a detriment overall to learning a language. Japanese uses consonant + vowel pairs as a rul

Absolutely agree. Romaji was absolutely pointless for me and probably a detriment overall to learning a language. Japanese uses consonant + vowel pairs as a rule, and the faster you train your intuition for this, the better. Remembering both Hiragana and Katakana took me no more than a day each. Although I have to admit that I already tried learning them around 5 years ago and gave up back then out of lack of motivation.

danabramov 22d ago
Have you considered that different things are difficult for different people? Learning hiragana and katakana has taken me about a month, and I found it very difficult. There is no need to make it prerequisite for starting to learn grammar, forming sentences, or pronunciation.
- deleted 22d ago
  [deleted]
- klodolph 22d ago
  If you want to learn pronunciation you should be listening to audio. Sure, maybe don’t force people to learn kana first. But Hepburn is kind of the worst of all worlds, it is just a waste of time to learn Hepburn.
- archargelod 22d ago
  Notice how I didn't say that I "learned" both in a day, I "remembered" them. Of course actual learning will take some time, especially with less used characters. But remembering shapes and differentiating between them using mnemonics should not be too hard for most people.
klodolph 22d ago
The pair is something of a simplification, and romaji makes certain things in the language more obvious. Like the good old mat-u -> mat-anai, mat-imasu, mat-eru. Added the hyphen to make it clearer, but this hyphen splits a kana neatly in half. The stem is “mat” but you can’t write the stem using kana (in some sense of the word ‘stem’, maybe that’s not the correct word and there’s a different word for it, I’m not a linguist). I’m not trying to say you should avoid kana, just that there is some amount of intuition you can develop with romaji that does not work in kana.
- equinoxnemesis 22d ago
  The traditional way to develop a similar intuition with a kana-only approach is to think of it as "moving across the row" in the kana table, which works fine. I think the fact that with romaji we can represent the stem as mat- is interesting and valuable in a theoretical sense but not all that useful to a learner.
  - klodolph 22d ago
    I have trouble comprehending the idea that this is only interesting in a theoretical sense but not all that useful to a learner. Could you give me something additional here? I’m not trying to be a dick here but my first reaction is “that’s just nuts” and I want to know what I’m missing.
    - wk_end 22d ago
      You don’t need to visually split the consonant apart as a separate character to recognize the relationship between か/き/く/け/こ - after all, the Japanese manage to do it without Latin letters. It adds very little to do so except as a crutch to let a learner continue to think using their native orthography, which only impedes learning. And given what a small hurdle it is, especially compared to the multitude of enormous hurdles the language has in store for you, you’re better off just jumping over it and moving on to those more interesting ones.
      - klodolph 22d ago
        I don’t want to be argumentative here, but, - “Need to” is a very different criterion from “is useful”, and “visually split” is, well, kind of unexpected to me! - The comparison to native Japanese speakers seems especially irrelevant here, - You’re not using your native orthography here, you’re using romaji, I don’t think it’s anyone’s native orthography. - You probably want to use the Romaji heavily anyway, because that’s how most people will use computers. When you’re learning a language you naturally multiple approaches to understanding a single topic. You’ll see a word written, you’ll hear it. You’ll hear a sentence and then someone will give you an explanation of the grammar, and you’ll compare that with your notes. It’s multimodal and all of these different modes are useful. Like how romaji is useful for understanding conjugations. Obviously not necessary, just useful.

danabramov 22d ago

Have you considered that different things are difficult for different people? Learning hiragana and katakana has taken me about a month, and I found it very difficult. There is no need to make it prerequisite for starting to learn grammar, forming sentences, or pronunciation.

deleted 22d ago
[deleted]
klodolph 22d ago
If you want to learn pronunciation you should be listening to audio. Sure, maybe don’t force people to learn kana first. But Hepburn is kind of the worst of all worlds, it is just a waste of time to learn Hepburn.
archargelod 22d ago
Notice how I didn't say that I "learned" both in a day, I "remembered" them. Of course actual learning will take some time, especially with less used characters. But remembering shapes and differentiating between them using mnemonics should not be too hard for most people.

klodolph 22d ago

The pair is something of a simplification, and romaji makes certain things in the language more obvious. Like the good old mat-u -> mat-anai, mat-imasu, mat-eru. Added the hyphen to make it clearer, but this hyphen splits a kana neatly in half. The stem is “mat” but you can’t write the stem using kana (in some sense of the word ‘stem’, maybe that’s not the correct word and there’s a different word for it, I’m not a linguist). I’m not trying to say you should avoid kana, just that there is some amount of intuition you can develop with romaji that does not work in kana.

equinoxnemesis 22d ago
The traditional way to develop a similar intuition with a kana-only approach is to think of it as "moving across the row" in the kana table, which works fine. I think the fact that with romaji we can represent the stem as mat- is interesting and valuable in a theoretical sense but not all that useful to a learner.
- klodolph 22d ago
  I have trouble comprehending the idea that this is only interesting in a theoretical sense but not all that useful to a learner. Could you give me something additional here? I’m not trying to be a dick here but my first reaction is “that’s just nuts” and I want to know what I’m missing.
  - wk_end 22d ago
    You don’t need to visually split the consonant apart as a separate character to recognize the relationship between か/き/く/け/こ - after all, the Japanese manage to do it without Latin letters. It adds very little to do so except as a crutch to let a learner continue to think using their native orthography, which only impedes learning. And given what a small hurdle it is, especially compared to the multitude of enormous hurdles the language has in store for you, you’re better off just jumping over it and moving on to those more interesting ones.
    - klodolph 22d ago
      I don’t want to be argumentative here, but, - “Need to” is a very different criterion from “is useful”, and “visually split” is, well, kind of unexpected to me! - The comparison to native Japanese speakers seems especially irrelevant here, - You’re not using your native orthography here, you’re using romaji, I don’t think it’s anyone’s native orthography. - You probably want to use the Romaji heavily anyway, because that’s how most people will use computers. When you’re learning a language you naturally multiple approaches to understanding a single topic. You’ll see a word written, you’ll hear it. You’ll hear a sentence and then someone will give you an explanation of the grammar, and you’ll compare that with your notes. It’s multimodal and all of these different modes are useful. Like how romaji is useful for understanding conjugations. Obviously not necessary, just useful.