Green Tea Forum

okimasa · Posted: May 31, 2008 11:07 am Post subject: Romanji Tips

As of late, I've been trying to learn some more Japanese, but I've been having some troubles with "romanji". It's great for looking at translations, but sometimes I can't make heads or tails of how to pronounce the word.

Is there any sort of trick or golden rule to reading/pronouncing romanji?

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 904 Location: Japan

This confuses me somewhat. Romanji is our Western alphabet.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

Like Kevin I don't entirely understand your question, but...

Getting familiar with the hiragana helped me quite a bit. For me hiragana was like learning phonics in grades shool.

Japanese sounds are failrly consistant, the pronunciation of letters do not vary from word to word, so if you learn the basic sounds, you should be okay.

For example in our language the letters ch can be used differently (chip vs christ), however, in Japanese it is always the same.

Hushfield · Brown Belt Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 49

Hi okimasa,

| THE SHORT ANSWER |
For a guide on how to pronounce the romanized sounds of japanese, i could point you to http://www.akenotsuki.com/kyookotoba/shiryoo/kana/: the first link on google
for "how to pronounce japanese".

| THE LONGER ANSWER |
Japanese writing can be quite confusing because it uses 4 different writing systems.
- Hiragana : a syllabary used for the inflection of verbs, adjectives and to spell other indigenous Japanese words or forms.
- Katakana: a syllabary that is comprised of all the same syllables as the hiragana syllabary, but is nowadays used almost exclusively for loan-words and certain onomatopeia.
- Kanji: the characters, imported from China during three different periods in Japanese history.
- Rômaji: the western, latin alphabet, hence its name (derived from rome) used for romanization of Japanese, and in Japanese it is used for acronyms such as SONY.

A Japanese sentence can contain all 4 writing systems like in e.g.:
私はSONYと言う会社にソフトウェアを作ります。
(totally made-up: I make software at a company called SONY. Don't even know if you can use tsukuru with software but anyways...)

私: kanji
は: hiragana
SONY: rômaji
ソフトウェア: katakana

You had a question about the pronunciation of Rômaji, (the 'o' is pronounced long). There are different systems used to transcribe the sounds of Japanese using the western alphabet, some of the more important are:
- hepburn-system (hebon shiki): the system that is most widely used I think. There are different varieties of hepburn romanization, with the differences between the systems lying mainly in the way they represent the lengthening of a vowel sound. (I am by no means an expert on this, for more complete info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization)
- Nihon shiki
- Kunrei shiki
I don't really recall where these last varieties were used for, I think one of them is still important because it is used in the Japanese National library, but not sure about that.

What might be helpful is listening to the pronunciation, and I could really, really recommend learning hiragana, it's not that hard and will really help you. Check videos like this on youtube, might help you out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycFXWBboIk

sorry for the long reply, hope this helps
cheers
H

okimasa · Posted: Jun 01, 2008 2:25 am Post subject:

I need to revise my question a bit. I'm having trouble pronouncing Japanese words written in romanji.

For example, the word (or phrase, I suppose) "Hajimemashite". If I was to spell it out how I think it would sound, I'd put Ha-ji-mee-ma-shee-teh. However, the website I found this word on also has a pronounciation key (which isn't always the case) and it says hah-jee-meh-MOSH-teh.

I guess a more acurate question would be: how would I break down Japanese words spelt in romanji for proper pronounciation?

Hushfield · Brown Belt Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 49

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

What hushfield is talking about is "whispered consonants." I don't know the complete list but it includes k, ch, s, sh, t. In Japanese if the vowels I and U fall between whispered consonants (or if the consonant is followed by the vowel at the end of the word, ex: desu), than you don't say it.

Example, suki desu isn't pronounced soo-kee de-soo; its ski des. As hushfield suggested, listening to a lot of Japanese can help you with this.

Geting familiar with the hiragana really will solve your problem, I think. You don't have to memorize all the characters or learn how to read hiragana, but if you are at least familiar with how it works you can easily break down words written in romaji.

Example, word suki is two hiragana, su and ki. Vowels can stand alone, but consonants are almost always followed by a vowel. (ma, me, mi, mo)

Here's a Hiragana chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

Become familiar with those sounds and a few simple rules (double vowels, double consonants, whispered consonants) and you should be almost there.

Japanese for Dummies helped me out a lot. Eriko Sato expains most of these rules and sounds in Chapter two. For me learning the science behind how it works was more helpful than merely parroting words that I hear.

okimasa · Posted: Jun 01, 2008 8:16 am Post subject:

Thank you all for your help! I just need to expose myself to the language more, I'll watch more Japanese TV and look into hiragana.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 904 Location: Japan

You guys are making this way too hard. Take the 5 vowels in this order...

a i u e o

"a" as in "father"
"i" as the "e" in "easy"
"u" as "ew", that "smells"
"e" as in "egg"
"o" as in "okay"

Then you tack on the first consonant from each word in this phrase to each vowel, and you pretty much have all the basic sounds of the Japanese language:

"kana signs - take note how much you read and write"

Example: "k"

ka ki ku ke ko
sa shi su se so... and so on.

There are some exceptions in there, of course.

This is also how it's spelled in romaji.

The whispering consonants are actually there if you listen carefully and you need to add them when spelling in romaji. There are definitely occasions in formal Japanese where they are purposefully pronounced, even if not in casual conversation. You would be better off not learning a rule like the "If the vowels I and U fall between whispered consonants than you don't say it", it will only confuse you.

This is one of those languages that looks deceptively easy at first (pronunciation is easy) but is really tough to be good at. It requires exposure, you can only go so far with a book with Japanese. To be really good at it, you need to be exposed to reading, writing, listening, and speaking it simultaneously. There are a lot of foreigners in Japan who can speak it pretty well but can't read or write it. If you learn to read and write it, however, your speaking ability increases way above those who just converse. It's a very cultural language and for most sentences you cannot directly translate it word-for-word like you could English to French, etc. You just have to dig in...

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

Hushfield · Brown Belt Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 49

okimasa · Posted: Jun 01, 2008 11:30 pm Post subject:

Thank you all so much! I think Kevin's bit on the vowels will really help me.

I just need to practise some more and soon I should get the hang of it!

kenny.kor · White Belt Joined: 24 Feb 2008 Posts: 33

Don't learn Japanese with romanji, take the time to learn at least the standard alphabet hiragana. katakana is also very useful but it would help you greatly to learn hiragana. not only for reading but also for speaking.

reading japanese in romanji can be very confusing, learning hiragana will help you get rid of a more american style accent to sound much more fluent

okimasa · Posted: Jun 28, 2008 12:19 am Post subject: Re: don't use romanji

kenny.kor · White Belt Joined: 24 Feb 2008 Posts: 33

actually, i wrote a program to help me learn kanji. it's on linux but i might try to recode it in unicode for a windows environment and it would be very simple to add hiragana and katakana on the program.

if i do that i can give you a copy if you'd like.