Romaji

Romaji is the transliteration of Japanese to the Roman alphabet. It's a good tool for translation and pronunciation, but it's not as exact as it seems.

The most common way of Romanizing Japanese is by using English consonants and European vowels. While this is generally easy to use, it can often make it tricky to change it back to Japanese if you're not familiar with it.

Here are a few tips on reading romaji:

While most consonants are the same, the Japanese r is more like a quick l sound, and the f is lighter, more like exhaling or saying phew. (More a general tip for speaking Japanese)

The ん can be written as n or m depending on euphonics, but it's easy to figure out since it's the only vowel free character.

The small っ can be written as a double consonant, a double consonant with a hyphen in the middle or not at all. I suggest using a double consonant.

Combinations using y are written simply by omitting the i of the first syllable.

Ellongated vowel sounds can be written as the vowel, the vowel with an accent, the vowel doubled, or the vowel with the corresponding vowel used in Japanese (example, とう as tou). I suggest using an accent, although writting the corresponding vowel is good practice for your Japanese writting.

Euphonics will mess you up with kanji, that'll just be annoying.