🚀 go-pugleaf

hbarnes@ST6000.SCT.EDU (Hal Barnes) writes:

[Thanks, Hal, for the nice things you say about the goodies on monu6.]

>You'll notice that none of these files include japanese words written
>in romajii (ie, roman letters) - they're all in japanese.  I think this
>is because japanese words in romajii don't capture the precise japanese
>pronounciations.  

The reason I have eschewed romaji is more fundamental. In Japanese literacy 
romaji plays no role whatsover. I believe that anyone taking Japanese
language study beyond the trivial level MUST come to grips with kana
and kanji, and the sooner the better. As I say in the .doc file for 
JDIC:

 All the Japanese displayed by JDIC is in kana and kanji,  so if you cannot read
 at least hiragana and katakana,  this is not the program for  you.  The  author
 has no intention whatsover of producing a version using romanized Japanese.

>For myself, I think I'd settle for approximations
>in pronounciation to make it a bit easier to get started, but that's
>the way it goes.  I think you could romanize the onyomi and kunyomi
>readings in your program, but I haven't had a chance to play with that much.

Pronunciation is not the issue. If you take care, you CAN transliterate
the Japanese syllabary quite precisely into a vowel/consonant system. (Of
course you need to be aware that "shi" or "si" is not pronounced the 
same was as someone in Tennesee would pronounce the first syllable of 
"shit", but that applies equally to pronouncing French, German, .....)

No, learn kana. It's worth it.

[I hope I have not triggered an outbreak of the Holy Romanization War.
But then, I was not championing either Hepburn or Kunrei, I was
damning both.]

-- 
Jim Breen                           JIS:$B%8%`!!%V%j!<%s(J
Department of Robotics & Digital Technology. Monash University. 
PO Box 197 Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia (ph) +61 3 573 2552 
(fax) +61 3 573 2345  AARNet/Internet:jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au  

In article <jwb.728178914@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au>, jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) writes:
> hbarnes@ST6000.SCT.EDU (Hal Barnes) writes:
> 
> [Thanks, Hal, for the nice things you say about the goodies on monu6.]
> 
> No, learn kana. It's worth it.
> 
> Jim Breen                           JIS:$B%8%`!!%V%j!<%s(J

I couldn't agree more with what Jim has said, I have used JDIC and love it. I've
been studing Japanese for about 9 months. At the beginning we use romaji and I
found that it hampered my learning. Also I found myself mispronouncing english
words because I was grouping the characters into the wrong sounds. 

It only took a few weeks to learn the kana, it is weel worth the effort.


-- 
Alan LaPenn      att!mvuxd!yy          .signature not found!

yy@cbnews.cb.att.com (alan.j.lapenn) writes:
|> It only took a few weeks to learn the kana, it is weel worth the effort.

Frankly, kana can be learned in one day (well, one for each is what I and
many have done).

With help from someone that knows, learn to write "a". Then "a e".
Then "a e u e o"....
So spend maybe five minutes to learn "a e u e o".
Then go on to "ka ki ku ke ko".
Ok, now you've spent 10 minutes and know "ka ki ku ke ko", but you've
forgotten "a e u e o" which you learned five minutes ago, so go back and
learn those again.  By the time you've done that, you'll have forgotten
"ka ki ku ke ko" (well, maybe you've remembered one or two).
So learn those again, and continue with "sa shi su se so".
Then back to the others. Then back to these, then on to the next.

After an hour or two, you'll probably be able to write well over half
the kana table. Just keep writing it over and over and over (and over).
After another hour you'll be able to write the whole thing.
And to learn them in one day makes them a *much* less fearsom thing
(now if I could only learn the kanji in one day :-)

The next day you'll get maybe half of them, so start over again.
Keep doing it. Over and over. Then read. If you're in Japan, read every
kana you see, even if you don't understand it. And did I say keep writing
it? Do it.

Spend another day to learn the other kana.

Personally, I've found hiragana to be of astronomically more usefullness
than katakana, so I'd start with hiragana. Sure, you'll have to wait one
day before you can read "tabako" and "supotsu", but so what?

So now you know the kanas, so what? Well, never write romaji again unless
you have to, or hell freezes over, or you're writing a post on in a 7-bit
English-letter world.  Specifically, if you make study flash cards (very
effective for my studying), certainly don't use romaji.  Make's it less
useful to have someone help you study.... while studying German I had my
English-only speaking sister help me, 'cause she could at make an attempt
at reading the German, but with Japanese.....

Anyway, learning kana is not a big deal, I think, but as Alan says
above, *well* worth the effort.

Tad (P)? Mark (C)? Alton (H)? Bill (L)? Your thoughts?

	*jeff*
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Eric Francis Friedl   jfriedl@cs.cmu.edu -or- jfriedl@omron.co.jp
Omron Corporation, Section RZC, Shimokaiinji, Nagaokakyo Kyoto 617, Japan
Visiting researcher to the Mach Project, Carnegie Mellon University