Why Is Romanji Bad When Learning Japanese?

If you have started learning Japanese you have probably been told to avoid Romanji at all costs and you will even find people saying it is the devil …this maybe a little over the top, but there is some truth to this.

In general romanji does more harm than good, so I will go through why that it is and why it’s going to be better for your Japanese if you ignore it.

What Is Romanji?

If we are going to go through why romanji is bad, I should make sure you all know what it is.

Romanji is sort of unofficial Japanese alphabet. Basically  it is the result of shoehorning the Japanese sound system into written English  …and of course the name comes from “roman alphabet and kanji” kind of mixed together.

If I show you the Japanese letter   あ – it has a particular sound to it, which happens to sounds a lot like our English sound “A” and when you translate this Japanese sound, into the English language, it is Romanji.

It maybe makes more sense when you see it other Japanese letters, such as  カ,we don’t have a sound or letter that is the same as this …so we say “ka”, we almost make a little word out of it, but either way, this Japanese sound has now been Englishised …is that a word? and then these are used to write Japanese words, in English. 

This is not to be confused with translation. The word – こんにちは is translated as “hello” …but the romanji would be turning こんにちは into something you can read as “Japanese” but in English …so こんにちは becomes  ”konichiwa”  and now you can read Japanese, without knowing how to read Japanese as  you are using the written Englishished version.

The Japanese Don’t Use Romanji

I think the first big issue with romanji is that no one uses it in Japan.

Well, I am sure if you showed it to someone, they would probably understand it …but look at any road sign, look at any book in a shop or menu in a restaurant …it won’t be in romanji, it will be in Japanese, using actual Japanese letters.

It should hopefully be no surprise to you that the Japanese use actual Japanese, so if you are learning the language you will need to do this too, you will only get so far trying to use this “English” version of the language as all of the resources you will need are going to be filled with the actual Japanese characters.

Trying to avoid actual Japanese is going to be problematic for you.

(You can read more about – The Importance Of Reading In Japanese Language Learning)

You Are Doing Yourself A Disservice By Focusing On It

When you really think about it, you are doing yourself a huge disservice by using romanji, as you are simply not practicing the language to your full potential.

I guess you can argue it still a form of practice, but it is like you have your training wheels on and while you may get some practice with the sounds and what not …you are not reading.

Every word you see in romanji is a word you are not seeing in actual Japanese and this is a missed opportunity.

If you think back to how you learned to read in English, it took time and effort and was hard. You had to look at each letter and sound it out to create a word and slowly overtime you got better at this.

This will happen with Japanese too, but you need to actually be looking at Japanese for this to happen.

You Can End Up Reading Things Incorrectly

A lot of people think that using romanji helps them, but it doesn’t. It is the Japanese sound system mashed into English writing system and this can lead to some things being read incorrectly.

It is easy to see the English letters and naturally read them in an English way …but this wrong.

You are probably going to be doing most of this inside your head, but it doesn’t matter, you will still be “pronouncing” the words in a more English style.

You can sort of see this with the loan words we have taken from Japanese. We have taken a few words like karate and karaoke and they are just sort of English words now and while it makes sense they are in romanji, as they are now being used in actual English, if we listen to how these are pronounced compared to the original  version in Japanese, it’s quite different.   

This is normal for loan words, the Japanese have done the same with English words, they have taken and made them sound more Japanese …but we are not talking about loan words today, we are talking about actual Japanese words, being spoken in Japanese and when these are romanjied, they can end up sounding too English and this is just wrong.

Using Romanji Is Just Lazy

I am just going to come out and say it …using romaji is lazy.

It is too easy, and we like that. It takes no effort to read a word using the English alphabet and romanji is really like a crutch and we get lazy and comfortable with this.

I am all for making things easier and comprehendible when learning a language, but romanji is just laziness.

You have to drop it and actually work on the language.

I remember when I started school they would make you put your finger on the page and move it along to each letter as you read it, and you would try to put everything together to say the word …and it was hard.

This is what you need to be doing with Japanese, you need to drop the crutch and actually face the difficulty. You are going to have look at each letter of a word and sound it out in your head and try to form the whole word and go from there …just like a kid.

It’s hard, but you have to do it and that means you need to  avoid romanji.

Romanji Is Harder When There Is A Lot Of It

Anyone who uses romanji tries to say it is easier and I don’t fully agree. I think if you see an individual word, it can make things “easier” but I have found trying to read full sentences actually harder.

It just looks so strange, you have a full paragraph of English looking text, but it’s not, its Japanese and you end up feeling like you are reading a pile of gibberish in English. It just doesn’t feel right.

The problem is usually the longer words, I think my brain reads them as English, wrongly, then I realise it should sound more Japanese, so I am going back on myself, to re-read things I have just read a second ago. Basically the whole thing is a mess and I would not recommend it.

Reading in Japanese is hard, but this is only until you get good at it, then it’s fine …romanji is always going to be hard as you brain wants to see it as English. 

Romanji Can Have Its Place …When Typing

While I have bashed romanji pretty hard here, I think I need to point out that annoyingly it does have its place in our Japanese studies.

When you are typing Japanese, on an English keyboard, you will need to input the words in the romanji format.

If you want to type   すしthen you are going to need to press “s-u …s-h-i” on your keyboard and this is romanji. 

However, I would say that it is still better to learn everything as proper Japanese and then so long as you know the word, you can say it out loud and sound it out and it will not take you much effort to “translate” it into romanji.

Conclusion

So hopefully you can see that trying to focus on romanji may seem like it is making your life easier, but really you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage and you will actually be slowing down your overall progress in Japanese.

I know it can be hard, but you need to avoid romanji where ever you can, you will thank yourself later on.  Focus on actual Japanese, and you will see this improve!

(You can rad more about – Common Challenges Faced By Learners When Reading Japanese and How To Overcome Them)