Japanese and Romanji

[justin9213]

Is Romanji point less to the japanese?
if not, how usefull is it?
I ask these questions because I am translating a game and since my computer shows "???" when inputting japanese I was thinking about putting it in Romanji.

[Glenn]

1) There's no "n" in romaji.

2) Not pointless, but I've heard that it gives them a headache to read.

[nice gaijin]

The only use I can think of romaji is for beginners learning their kana, and inputting Japanese on a computer or electronic dictionary...

[Gaijinian]

The only use I can think of romaji is for beginners learning their kana
I don't even recomend using it for learning Kana.

[Mike Cash]

I believe the question has received a comprehensive treatment at http://tinyurl.com/r3k57

[justin9213]

The only use I can think of romaji is for beginners learning their kana, and inputting Japanese on a computer or electronic dictionary...

So should I or should I not translate the game inot romaji.Actually it is a good idea because learners and japanese can play it.

[nice gaijin]

If you are still a beginner with Japanese yourself, why not just use English, as it will appeal to the widest audience, and you'll have a better chance of the audience understanding what you write.

[JimmySeal]

Japanese people don't like reading a lot of romaji. Good luck. You're going to need it.

[J44xm]

So should I or should I not translate the game inot romaji.Actually it is a good idea because learners and japanese can play it.
My vote would be for no. I can see where the Japanese folks are coming from with their not wanting to read lots of rōmaji. I've been studying for a litter while now and rōmaji is already difficult and awkward to read. It's just so much easier to read real Japanese.

If you're doing this for Japanese practice (I didn't notice whether or not you said you were fluent), I'd say do it on a personal level. But if you can't release the game in any non-rōmaji form, then I say don't bother. Even if there are some folks interested in learning Japanese, rōmaji is a terrible way to get your bearings in Japanese. (A bit at the very beginning, I think, is fine. But a whole game of it would likely be detrimental to their education because that's not quite Japanese.)

[JimmySeal]

(I didn't notice whether or not you said you were fluent

I think he still considers himself a beginner, even though he knows over 10 words already.


How do you get those macrons to show up over your vowels, J44xm?

[J44xm]

How do you get those macrons to show up over your vowels, J44xm?
Well, I'm insane, so when I first started romanizing Japanese, I wanted to properly emulate katakana's extended vowels and so I copied the characters from Windows's Character Map and saved them to a text file. (I just don't like how "romaji" looks, really.) I don't think that Windows can do this sort of thing easily.

Here are the vowels I got:

ascii A's [ À Á Â Ã Ä Å à á â ã ä å ]
ascii E's [ È É Ê Ë è é ê ë ]
ascii I's [ Ì Í Î Ï ì í î ï ]
ascii O's [ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö ó ô ò õ ö ]
ascii U's [ Ù Ú Û Ü ù ú û ü ]
vowels with macrons [ Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū ]

[JimmySeal]

Most accents I would want aren't a problem and they're even easier if I have my computer set up for English-International input, but macrons aren't part of ascii and so they're hard to find. Thanks for supplying them.