Should I learn Rōmaji first for Japanese reading and writing?

If you are just starting to learn Japanese or are a beginner, I recommend learning the Romaji.

Lots of foreigners can speak Japanese.

However, many of them cannot pronounce it correctly or read or write it.
This is because they do not understand the Rōmaji readings that serve as a guide for how to read Japanese.

Even though my son speaks Japanese, he couldn’t pronounce it like a native speaker before learning Romaji.

He just caught sounds from the Japanese-speaking until then. However, after understanding Romaji’s reading, he can learn words easily.

Rōmaji ≠ English

ローマ字 (rōmaji) is a Latin script used to represent Japanese phonetically.

It’s not the same pronunciation as English!

Japanese learn Rōmaji. Why?                                                        

Even Japanese children learn Romaji as a Japanese language education in elementary school.　The purpose for them, there are three main reasons.

1. To understand that Japanese sounds are made up of a combination of consonants and vowels.

か＝KA  → K＋A　/ す＝SU  → S＋U

2. To understand the notation methods often used when communicating with foreigners, such as place names and names written on passports.

3. To learn to input data into computers.

However, it also makes a problem for Japanese people.

Learning Romaji pronunciation causes trouble with English pronunciation.
This is an issue for Japanese people.

On the other hand, native English speakers may be confused about English and Roman letters use the same alphabet but are pronounced differently.

Although, If you are a beginner Japanese learner, you should know Romaji.
I’ll explain the advantages of learning Romaji.

Help your reading Japanese

As you know, the Japanese writing system has three characters, Hiragana, katakana, and Kanji.

When you read these characters, you need guidance on pronouncing them, just like Japanese people learn phonetic symbols for English words.

Rōmaji is useful for it.

For example, please see below the sentence.

私は、昼食にラーメンを食べました。

You see combining all three characters in just one sentence.

Japanese people don’t use just one character except for early primary students.

Sooner or later, if you want to read Japanese, learn all of them.

But don’t worry!
Rōmaji is a super helper for your reading and writing at the beginning.

As you can see, by learning to read in romaji, you can efficiently learn hiragana, kanji, and katakana.

　Help your correct pronunciations

Learning Rōmaji also lead you to making correct sounds.

When you start learning Romaji, you realize it differs from English pronunciation.

Here’s an example: I write Japanese pronunciation in romanized characters.

How do you pronounce these words below?

＊井上さん：Inoue san

＊酒：sake

＊竹：take

＊店：mise

＊亀：kame

＊蛇の目ミシン：Janome mishin

If you don’t know how to read Rōmaji, you probably will automatically read English reading.

＊井上（いのうえ）：Inoue ☞ inoh ? inū ?

＊酒（さけ）：sake ☞ séik

＊竹（たけ）：take ☞ téik

＊店（みせ）：mise ☞ máiz

＊亀（かめ）：kame ☞ kéim

＊蛇の目（ジャノメ）：Janome ☞ Janómi

This had happened to my son too, before I taught him Romaji.

Now, I’ll indicate mora separation with dots to make it easier to read.

I will introduce suitable textbooks for understanding Rōmaji and the mora system.