Learning Hiragana

[jpcw20128731]

Hello all,
was just wondering what is a good way of memorizing hiragana so far i have only got down the first 5 あ い う え お　 but strugling on rest maybe i'm trying to do to many at a time, should i do just a couple at a time till i have memorized them ?

Any tips on how others have done it would be of great help.

[mmmason8967]

Well, everybody learns in different ways. But the thing that worked for me was JapanesePod101's Kantan Kana video series. Each lesson covers one row of the table. I sat with a pen and paper and followed along and then, after the first lesson, practised writing the characters while saying the sound until I felt I'd really got them. Then did each lesson followed by writing the full set of characters up to that point until I felt I'd got them, and then did the next lesson. And so on, until I ended up writing the entire table.

It only took a few days to learn hiragana and katakana. For me the key thing was to keep practising writing out the full kana tables; I found that writing them made them stick in my mind, and also removed the confusion between the similar-looking characters--although they look similar, they feel quite different when you write them.

マイケル

[jpcw20128731]

Thank you mmmason will give writing them out and saying the character, will also look at the vidoes aswell

[natsukoy9313]

Kon'nichiwa!
Nice advice, マイケルsan! Thank you very much!
jpcw-san, when you learn some hiragana, try also to practice as word
For example, you already know あいうえお, right? You can already write いえ (= home), うえ (= up, above), あお (= blue)....
This would help you remember a bit more easily

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[jpcw20128731]

will try with the words aswell arigato natsukoy-san

[taffeta1067]

I used to write them out over and over in the time I had to wait for the train home from work (about 20 minutes on average) and after a while they stuck. But I think it also helps to actively try to use and recognise them. By this I mean do online kana quizzes but also read Japanese stuff in hiragana and katakana.

There's probably a bunch on this site or online that you can do that. Try and recognise the characters even if you don't understand the words. Try and avoid using/reading romanised forms of words, because that way you'll challenge your brain to learn the kana more quickly...basically because it has to!

If it's any comfort, I still loathe katakana and would rather be faced with a whole sheet of kanji compounds...

がんばってくださいね：O)

[Carl2012]

ありがと　taffeta-san getting there had a break while i had visitors over last week but back on to learning again and will try writing them down over and over again hopfully they will stick and hopfully that hiragana at the start came out right as (thank you)

[team.relationships]

jpcw20128731-san,
dou itashimashite!

Thank you very much everyone for helping each other!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com