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I am new to Japanese Language stack exchange and a beginner at learning Japanese too.

I have recently gotten a Japanese penpal who is lovely. I want to send her a message but I am having trouble getting across my meaning with these sentences:

すみません、ひらがなです。

What I am trying to do here is apologise for mostly writing to her in hiragana. But it looks like I'm just apologising for the existence of hiragana, or something... How can I explain that I'm sorry about using my hiragana in my penpal messages?

This is the next sentence:

私の漢字はだめ。

I'm trying to say my skills at kanji are not good, but again I don't think I'm getting the right meaning across here. How would I say this?

I would really appreciate it if you could include romaji in your answer.

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    I think we'd rather use [下手]{へた} over だめ... (だめ is the direct translation of the English "bad")
    – chocolate ♦
    Jan 19, 2017 at 0:20

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Add the です on the end and your sentence makes sense and is appropriate: 私の漢字はだめです。 If you want to say "sorry for writing in hiragana only", you're close: ひらがなでかきますから、すみません。 (Literally, "because I'm writing in hiragana, sorry [about that]".)

Putting the two together makes things clearest, I think: 私の漢字はだめです。ひらがなでかきますから、すみません。 Have fun writing and learning!

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    Thank you so much! :) You unlocked my meaning in Japanese perfectly.
    – Lunakshc
    Jan 18, 2017 at 19:34
  • Downvoter, a comment or even an alternate answer would be much more productive.
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Jan 19, 2017 at 5:30
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    Maybe "(...)から、すみません。" for "Sorry for (...)" sounds a bit strange. Usually I would say "(...)て、すみません。"　(Though in this case I'd prefer ひらがなで、すみません。to ひらがなでかいて、すみません。 Or better yet, ひらがなばかりで、すみません。)
    – goldbrick
    Jan 19, 2017 at 10:05

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