The Cultural Affairs Agency has finalized a draft proposal to adopt the Hepburn style as the unified standard of romaji, or romanized Japanese, primarily due its closer resemblance to English pronunciation.
[……]
Currently, schools [in Japan] primarily teach the kunrei style in accordance with the existing Cabinet announcement. However, the Hepburn style is widely used in society.
Hmm, does this mean if we tried to use the hepburn style to speak Japanese it would still be correct or is it only ‘correct’ in writing for this specific purpose?
This has nothing to do with speaking. This is just the government deciding which system to use (or at least favor) for transliterating things into English when writing (street signs for example). If you want to speak/learn Japanese, skip romaji altogether.
Okay, thanks!
using romaji as a guide to pronounce is problematic no matter what system. pronouncing strictly based on kana is not problem free either. Korean hangul romanization may be a more obvious example of the dissonance with pronunciation but Japanese also has it.
most effective is to rely primarily on listening.
having grown up in US, I can say that our English instruction for anglophone natives draws a false equivalence between pronunciation and orthography/spelling. this creates a counterproductive mindset for approaching new languages.
I very much doubt it, but that’s just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt the size of your choosing.