About learning to write

[jessefoxmacloud7581]

Hello guys, im new in this community and very eager to learn japanese, so i began in the absolute beginners lessons, and i have a question about learning the hiragana, whats the best way to learn to write? just practice and memorize the words that come in the lesson notes? or get an alphabet chart, and learn every character, and then start learning to write the vocabulary in the lesson notes?

[tobinwright3128]

Hey,

I've only tried with Heisigs method using his book (Remembering the Kana, not to be confused with Remember the Kanji), but it worked like a charm. He states that 3 hours hard work on the hiragana and 3 hours on the katakana are all it takes to memorise each. It took me a bit more, but that's because I wrote them down 70-80 times each on graphing paper to practice my form and stoke order. (His method is based off of mnemonics which are attaching vivid stories to the shape of each character so that you remember it through 'imaginative memory' as opposed to 'visual memory').

Heisig is a pretty popular name when it comes to the kana and kanji and I fully stand behind his method, but others may disagree. Depends on how you learn. Hope that helps.

[Javizy]

I never used Heisig's book for kana, so I don't know how good it is, but since it's fairly easy to do anyway, you could go to somewhere like http://japanese.about.com/library/blhira.htm and learn it by yourself if you want to save a bit of money. If you have an iPhone/iPod, there are a ton of kana learning apps available too. I'd definitely recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book though. It doesn't just teach you all of the jouyou, but gives you a system that allows you to carry on learning by yourself. I still use it today to learn all sorts of new kanji. Be sure to check out this forum if you do get it http://forum.koohii.com/index.php

[jessefoxmacloud7581]

So the bottom line is to learn the the writing systems as an alphabet not just try and memorize the phrases that i encounter along my lessons?

[jessefoxmacloud7581]

So the bottom line is to learn the the writing systems as an alphabet not just try and memorize the phrases that i encounter along my lessons?

[Javizy]

Learning it as you see it would be horribly confusing and difficult. If you just spend a short amount of time each day practising, you should have it down within a couple of weeks. Another reason the lesson notes will be no good is because you won't be able to learn the proper stroke order, which can make your handwriting illegible.

Some people try a similar "learn as you go" approach with kanji, but that can practically be asking for trouble. Although it might seem difficult learning 2000 characters, there are a lot of repeated parts, known as radicals, that can really help speed up the process. For example, instead of learning 質, first learn 斤 and 貝 and simply put them together. I believe there are a few books that take this approach nowadays, so be sure to check them out starting with RTK