Learning Japanese (again)

Well, I'm talking anyone that can already speak the language on some type of conversational level... or maybe even survival level anyway. Unlike some say, high level English speaking French with an extremely thick accent.

 

I have a question: why is it important to take lessons that are in hiragana? I can read hiragana, but I'm a little rusty, and as I said it takes me forever to read katatana even though I see it all the time. Considering the fact that I mainly just want to be able to speak and understand it (aurally) and don't really care about learning to read it (at least not right away), what advantage does learning it in hiragana bring?

Obviously the roman alphabet isn't equivalent to kana, but doesn't romaji (if it's clearly stated how it's pronounced) have the exact same meaning? I.e. if a key says "sa" means さ and "ka" means か - what's missing?

It just seems to mean that learning to understand the written language and learning to understand the spoken language are two completely different tasks, so why should they both be taught at the same time?

 

I suppose it's just so you don't have to unlearn it later, because romaji has absolutely no real-world usage whatsoever (aside from abstract situations like advertising boards, Japanese people wanting to write their name in a cool way, etc). If it makes you more comfortable to learn using romaji then it's not 'wrong' as such, but it's a bad habit that should be shaken as quickly as possible. Ultimately, there's no putting off learning the script properly, even if you'd rather focus on the spoken element.

Conversely, reading a piece of text that has been written in pure kana (i.e. no kanji) is quite painful for anyone who have been studying Japanese more long-term.

 

In a literate world, they are the same thing. No-one would ever recommend learning Japanese in romaji for anything other than coming here on holiday and wanting so say something.

You'd only ever want to learn to read at a later stage so I say man-up and just learn it properly. Too many people want a quick-fix for everything.

 

Not only is romaji a massive crutch, hiragana and katakana are as well sometime around year 3, definitely by year 4. To take it a step further E-J dictionaries can be seen as a crutch at some point, and one should strive to use a J-J dictionary.

If it's taking you too long to read the hiragana & katakana, hit the flash cards for 15-20 minutes every day. It is the most fundamental building block of the language.

 

Wow glad I found this thread. Lot's of good advice. i guess I will ask a quick question. I plan on taking a Japanese class in August. I was wondering how to best prepare for the class? I've been told (and gathered from your posts) that learning hiragana and katakana is the most vital but is there anything out side of that I should be doing? Thanks

 

Start learning Kanjis..the more you know the better.
But I'm not a expert either.

 

Watch NHK World and listen in over the dubbing, see if you can pick out words when you get good enough