Learning Hiragana

[lgceb_509362]

I'm starting learning Japanese after a great trip to Japan last year and returning next year. I'd appreciate any advice from people who have learnt Hiragana as beginners. I am writing everything in hiragana at the moment to fix the syllables in my head. I know my writing will look weird with no Kanji but is learning through hiragana a sensible way to start? My real aim is to be able to converse on future trips and I know it takes years of serious study to master kanji. So rather than using the Roman alphabet to write everything I'm using hiragana and writing new vocabulary over and over again to fix the syllables.
How did other people learn hiragana? I have no serious problem learning languages and scripts having learnt to read and write basic Arabic a few years ago.
Thanks for any advice!

[thegooseking]

lgceb-san, konnichiwa,

Learning hiragana is absolutely a good way to start. Kanji in children's books and beginner resources is often written with furigana, which is hiragana written alongside or above the kanji to tell you how it's pronounced (furigana is even sometimes used for native adult speakers to explain particularly uncommon kanji - for all that they spend years learning a couple of thousand kanji, there are still thousands more kanji that even most Japanese people don't know).

The commonly accepted academic style is to use kanji for 'content' words and hiragana for 'function' words, but in "real" everyday Japanese, sticking to that style will probably be seen as overusing kanji. You're right that Japanese without any kanji at all can look a bit odd, but even Japanese people don't like too much kanji in their writing: it's sort of equivalent to using big words in English when small words will do and can be seen as "showing off". Especially now, when computers have made it easier than ever to sprinkle kanji all over your writing, it's very easy to produce text that's overly dense. All of that comes with the caveat, however, that when you're still learning, overusing kanji is far better than not using it enough - not for the reader, but for your own practice.

One circumstance where you really do want to learn kanji is with homophones. Some Japanese words are pronounced the same (and therefore written the same in hiragana), but have different kanji. That even goes beyond writing: part of Japanese body language is tracing the kanji on your hand with your finger in case what you're saying is ambiguous.

I learned hiragana through an Android app. Just draw the kana directly on the screen, and the app tells me whether I got it right or not. There is a similar app for katakana, though I have to admit, even after a few years, my katakana is still pretty astonishingly bad - I just don't use it enough. There is also a similar app for kanji, which is helpful, but a bit less reliable - sometimes you can get it right and it still says it's wrong, and sometimes you can get it wrong and it still says it's right. I got all those apps for free on the Play store.

But it's good that you're learning hiragana actually in the language rather than on its own. I don't have so much of a problem with Japanese, but I learned Cyrillic on its own, and while I can still pronounce Russian text, I have no idea what it means!

小狼

[lgceb_509362]

Thank you for your advice, "thegooseking" - it's really helpful to me and gives me something to add to what I'm currently doing. It's interesting to know how another person has approached learning the language. Now my next step is to find a Japanese person learning English so that we can Skype together. It's good to know that, as an isolated learner, there's a community here to ask for advice.
Thanks again and good luck with your progress too!

[community.japanese]

小狼 san,
konnichiwa.
Thank you for helping san.

san,
konnichiwa.
If you have any questions, please feel free to post again.

Yuki 由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com