What are the advantages/disadvantages of writing in romaji instead of in kanji and kana?


Romaji is somewhat of a conversion from kanji and kana to the Roman alphabet.

What are the disadvantages of learning only or mostly romaji aside from being
unable to read/write in kanji? I don't think there are many advantages.




Your question body contradicts the title, so I'll answer both questions:

Advantages of rōmaji (I never thought I'd say this!):

  * No need to learn new characters
  * Can be "read" by most people, even if not understood. Although anybody who doesn't know Japanese will get even the pronunciation wrong.

Disadvantages of rōmaji:

  * **Complete inability to read and write in Japanese.** I can't just "set this aside". If you're learning a language, you will most likely want to/need to be able to read and write it as well. Japanese people write in Japanese, and by extension anybody who wants to learn Japanese beyond tourist-level "Which way to the airport?" or a few anime catchphrases _will_ need to learn to read and write in Japanese.
  * Kana make the way Japanese is broken into syllables much more obvious.
  * Due to the number of homophones, telling words apart is difficult (this applies to kana-only text as well)
  * Learning kanji enables you to understand where words come from. A _lot_ of words in Japanese are compound words formed from multiple kanji. If you know the kanji, you can usually guess the meaning of the word and its reading - even if you've never seen it before!




Your question body contradicts the title, so I'll answer both questions:

Advantages of rōmaji (I never thought I'd say this!):

  * No need to learn new characters
  * Can be "read" by most people, even if not understood. Although anybody who doesn't know Japanese will get even the pronunciation wrong.

Disadvantages of rōmaji:

  * **Complete inability to read and write in Japanese.** I can't just "set this aside". If you're learning a language, you will most likely want to/need to be able to read and write it as well. Japanese people write in Japanese, and by extension anybody who wants to learn Japanese beyond tourist-level "Which way to the airport?" or a few anime catchphrases _will_ need to learn to read and write in Japanese.
  * Kana make the way Japanese is broken into syllables much more obvious.
  * Due to the number of homophones, telling words apart is difficult (this applies to kana-only text as well)
  * Learning kanji enables you to understand where words come from. A _lot_ of words in Japanese are compound words formed from multiple kanji. If you know the kanji, you can usually guess the meaning of the word and its reading - even if you've never seen it before!

