After seeing the presentation of hiragana, katakana and kanji, we will finally see the detailed presentation of rōmaji. So rōmaji, what is it ? This is the name that Japanese give to our Latin alphabet. Besides, in « rōmaji », you have « Rome » in reference to the Latin alphabet. Be careful however, the rōmaji do not take into account the accents that one can have in the French, Spanish and Portuguese language, neither the cedillas, nor the umlauts, nor even the twenty-seventh letter of the German language. They only take into account the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet which are also the 26 letters of the English alphabet which does not include accents, cedillas or umlauts. Also, knowing that Japanese language relies heavily on English to retrieve foreign words, both are good.
You should know that the Latin alphabet is widely used in Japan. A Japanese child, from an early age when he enters school, he learns hiragana, katakana and the Latin alphabet. He learns all three. Simply because in Japan the Latin alphabet is found everywhere. But it is not used to write the Japanese language. We have already seen that in Japanese, when we have foreign words, we write them in katakana. In the Latin alphabet, the Japanese will mainly write brand names : Sony, Sega, Nintendo, Kenzo…
It’s a style that most people find « cool ». Most Japanese people sometimes have fun writing their first or last name in Roman letters. Conversely, we westerners sometimes like to have fun writing our name in Japanese or Chinese just to see what it looks like.
Most often, brands adopt this style for marketing and communication reasons. For example, how do Western video game fans recognize Nintendo brand games? Because the name, especially in the logo, is written in Roman letter therefore Western customers immediately recognize the name of the brand. It’s exactly the same for brands like Capcom, Sony, Sega, Kenzo and all the other Japanese brands.
We can also find Roman letters in Japanese newspapers, magazines, mostly in the names of movies, video games... On the menu cards in some restaurants too, the ingredients of the dishes are sometimes written in English for the foreign customers. The advent of the Internet and globalization have also contributed to the more frequent use of the Latin alphabet by Japanese people and this is why Japanese children learn it from an early age. On the other hand, the Japanese still remain very attached to their roots and when it comes to building a sentence in Japanese, this sentence will mainly consist of kanji, hiragana and katakana. Exception when it comes to writing dates and hours but we'll see it all in more detail in due course.
To give you some examples of words containing romaji, we first have the word Eメール with the « E » for « Electronic » since e-mail means « Electronic mail ». The Japanese decided to keep the « E » de « Electronic ». Then you have the word « Tシャツ » where the Japanese kept the « T » of « T-shirt » simply because a « T-shirt » has the shape of a « T » so they kept the rōmaji. Finally, a last one for the road, the word « shirt » is said in Japanese « Yシャツ » because a shirt has the shape of a « Y ».
Note : For now, don't ask yourself why the katakana ャ is so small in the word « Tシャツ ». We will see that in more detail later.
So, you can see that we can use rōmaji in our sentences. Now, I take the examples we saw in the previous course :
青い帽子を買う。
I buy a blue hat.
青いベルトを買う。
I buy a blue belt.
If now we want to say « I'm buying a white shirt. » :
白いYシャツを買う。
I buy a white shirt.
You already notice some small novelties. I put you in color the kanji on the one hand, the hiragana on the other hand and finally the katakana in another color :
白いYシャツを買う。
I buy a white shirt.
The hiragana い and う are okurigana and the hiragana を is a particle. We have the word « shirt » in katakana Yシャツ. Note the presence of the rōmaji Y.
So, you see that it is possible to mix these four Japanese writing systems in one sentence.
I did not specify this above, but rōmaji are also used to transcribe Japanese into Roman letters for foreigners who want to learn the Japanese language. And I'm talking to you here about whole sentences like we, sometimes, find in tourist guides filled with ready-made expressions, polite expressions like « hello », « goodbye », « thank you »… But that's for tourists. Do not forget that we are here to learn Japanese seriously, to learn to speak completely Japanese. As I told you, a language can only be learned in its writing system, so reading whole sentences in rōmaji will never make you progress.
That said, we’ll cover several ways to write Japanese in rōmaji in more detail. I’m not telling you more for now, just this course will be more cultural than anything else. Once we have definitely finished with everything there is to say about rōmaji, know that you will never see sentences transcribed in rōmaji in my courses. You must learn your kana or you will never succeed. Once the first season is over, I will consider that you have mastered your kana and we can move on to grammar. Of course, if you happen to have forgotten, to no longer know how to pronounce or write this or that kana, don't worry. You'll just have to go back to revise the necessary lessons to refresh your memory.
This course is now over and thank you for reading it. Take the time to read again everything we have seen and in the next course we will cover the arabiasūji, which will be the last course in this part. So, keep working.
Rōmaji introducing