Roma-ji can be tricky

A little earlier today I had a mini-rant on Twitter, about someone 'teaching' another user (who happens to be a famous British TV presenter and Japanophile, though that's irrelevant) how to say some things in Japanese that were, unfortunately, wrong. One thing that the person was doing was 'spelling out' words in roma-ji, which as you probably know is the phonetic representation of Japanese using the alphabet, incorrectly, therefore changing the meaning.

Here's one phrase the person doing the teaching used:

ima wa Elvis Presley kitemasu.

The use of 'wa' in the sentence is not really correct either, but I want to focus on the kitemasu. This reads as きてます, which would make the sentence mean "Elvis Presley is here now". I know Elvis sightings are not uncommon, but I think the person meant to say

ima Elvis Presley o kiitemasu. いま　エルビス・プレスリー　を　きいています。　（今エルビス・プレスリーを聴いています。）

Kiiteimasu きいています　聴いています　means listen (ing) to things like music. One little syllable, big difference!

While it's convenient for people who come from European languages to start learning Japanese phonetically with roma-ji, it's quite easy to mess things up. One of the best things you can do is to learn how to read and pronounce the two main phonetic alphabets, hiragana （ひらがな）and katakana (カタカナ）as soon as you can. Leave the kanji characters for after you've mastered that!

(And beware of language lessons, and candy, from people you don't know ^_^)

Comments

[Sylvia]

One thing I got stuck on yesterday: translating from romaji to English.

I play EQ2 with a guild of Japanese players who use romaji to speak to each other in chat. Most of it is well beyond me but sometimes I can get close to understanding. The other day I wanted to search on what I thought was a set phrase and found that I had to convert it to hiragana first before I could put it through any of the online translators.

I know romaji->english isn't optimal but this struck me as a bit odd. Are there any resources out there that you know of for dicitonary look up for romaji?

[Eve]

WWWJDIC has an option that lets you search the dictionary for words in romaji :)

[Lauri]

So true. I just started studying Japanese at school last semester and did not like that I could not use romanji, but quickly saw why. Just like you said. Although I use romanji to write out new vocab words and some times to help me if I need to memorize a dialog for class. (I find I can memorize quicker in romanji) But I definitely think that if you are starting out you should absolutely be learning hiragana and katakana.
Do you happen to know of any good resources for katakana memorization? I am still having such a hard time memorizing katakana.

[Eric H.]

The use of romaji is not necessarily that bad for teaching people how to say something in Japanese if that person understands no Japanese at all. The real problem is when people use that horrible Hepburn system of romaji.
I know the guy was a famous linguist and all, but his style of romanization (which unfortunately is accepted as the legal standard used in passports, official documents, etc.) is a very poor representation of the Japanese language.

[Cody]

What's even more tricky is when Japanese people think that the way to type on a keyboard is how the romaji is actually written.

For example: when you type in hiragana you can get 「ちゃ」 "cha" by also typing "tya". There have been more than enough times where my friends think that in romaji it's actually written "tya" and not "cha".

So then, 「お姉ちゃんとお茶してる」 becomes "Oneetyan to otya shiteru". Haha, sometimes it takes me forever to decipher it.

[Mugg]

Cody: Because ちゃ is actually "ti + ya", with the "ya" replacing the "i" in "chi", so it's no coincidence that some people write it "tya".

The bottom line is: There's no reason to use romaji if you are a studying the Japanese language. You should avoid it by all means. That means, in your first few weeks, you might need to use some romaji because you don't know hiragana/katakana by heart yet. But during those weeks you should practice the kanas 24/7, and curse high and loud when you see romaji. There is no thing as "correct romaji" - which leads to confusion, errors, and lots of flames on the internet.

Ok that was a long bottom line.