kanji, katakana or hiragana?

[james0vince]

I am learning hiragana because it seams easiest (it doesn't have 2000 characters and is a syllabary) and a lot of books I have seen in Japanese use a lot of it. But I just wanted to know if there was an are I need to focus on most. Which or which parts of each should I concentrate on?

It the like a first 50 Kanji that is use 90% of the time? Is there a rule that says its ok for a beginner just to know hiragana, or do I have to know everything before I can understand road signs?

[R3belD0gg]

Start by learning the kana (hirigana first, then katakana.) Hirigana is PART of kanji, in that many kanji joined with hirigana to make full words and conjugations. Often full words in a sentence will be in kana (hirigana or katakana) with kanji sprinkled around.

It the like a first 50 Kanji that is use 90% of the time? Is there a rule that says its ok for a beginner just to know hiragana, or do I have to know everything before I can understand road signs?

If I'm not mistaken it's like the first 2000 kanji that are used 90% of the time! They're called the Jouyou Kanji. I think there are like 50,000 kanji or something like that. There are lots of thoughts on how to study kanji, there is another thread with some thoughts on this here:

http://www.japanesepod101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6850

Kana, I found, is pretty easy once you get used to it. Try to get away from reading romaji as fast as you can, even if you have to keep a kana chart handy and take FOREVER to read something. Eventually you'll speed up. I can read kana almost as fast as English now and I've only been doing this a couple of months.

There are lots of web sites and mobile apps for studying kana. Just drill. I used the following site a lot and still occasionally test myself, as I don't read katakana as often and find myself slipping sometimes. There are four notorious katakana (so, n, tsu and shi) that are tough until you understand the difference. soソ nン，tsuツ shiシ. Check YouTube for a good video explaining how to tell them apart easily.

http://unckel.de/kanateacher/index-en.html

Just make a point to go over it daily until you have it down, but don't drill for hours. Just go over the chart once or twice, more if you feel like it, but then let it go and do it again the next day. You can also use flash cards. Write the kana if you wish, as well, but learn the stroke order if you do that. Super important, especially for kanji later. If you're using flashcards, learn about something called SPACED REPETITION. This is good for your vocab as well as kana or anything else.

Once you have kana down 100%, then figure out how you want to deal with kanji. When I use flashcards, I use NO romaji. For vocab it's kanji on the front and kana on the back, with the definition in English. Doing this will cement that kana in your brain.

[community.japanese]

james0vince-san, R3belD0gg-san,
kon'nichiwa!
Thank you very much for a long comment of help, R3belD0gg-san

It's normal that all those "wonderfully weird-looked" characters look scary at the beginning, but
you can take as much time as you need. The order of study would be Hiragana => Katakan => Kanji
and there's no actual "completion point" for kanji. It means you can understand standard Japanese with
certain amount of kanji, not all. I'm not very good at kanji (and I'm Japanese ) but I can live
in Japan!

You'll know how those three different characters/letters work in Japanese sentences and also "why" three are
necessary in Japanese language. In meanwhile (whilst you're studying Japanese), you can see alphabet sign
(romaji) on road signs as well

Please feel free to ask any question anytime!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[mewes6190]

As for the Kana, I struggled a LONG time with the Katakana, because many of them look so similar...
スヌワフウ for example, or テチ．I actually still use my mnenomics, which I got from Heisig, like:

ヌ looks like a NOOdle, hanging over the edge of the bowl, and ス looks like the SOUp spoon you eat with etc.
Also, many Katakana have much more in common the the hiragana than you might think at first, so メ ist the middle part of め , ノ ist the first part when writing の, and of course ナ are the first two strokes of な.
Also, ん has the same stroke direction as ン, while そ shows you the stroke direction for ソ, and in つ you see the stroke direction for ツ, while し gives you the stroke direction for シ.
There really are a lot of those helps.

While you learn the hiragana quite fast, simply because you read them so much, the katakana often need some sort of mnenomic.

Have to agree with rebeldog though: Drop romaji as fast as you can! Immediately right NOW if possible! Every second spent with romaji makes you weaker in learning Japanese.

Best
くろくま

[R3belD0gg]

ヌ looks like a NOOdle, hanging over the edge of the bowl, and ス looks like the SOUp spoon you eat with etc.
Also, many Katakana have much more in common the the hiragana than you might think at first, so メ ist the middle part of め , ノ ist the first part when writing の, and of course ナ are the first two strokes of な.
Also, ん has the same stroke direction as ン, while そ shows you the stroke direction for ソ, and in つ you see the stroke direction for ツ, while し gives you the stroke direction for シ.
There really are a lot of those helps.

Where the hell were you when I was trying to learn Katakana?

Seriously, though, タ and ヌ always got me. So many of the kana look SO similar, hirigana as well (そ、る、ろ;　の、め、ぬ、etc...) I never noticed that some of the katakana could fit into their hirigana counterparts. I wonder if they are like that on purpose?

As for the mnemonics, I have a really dumb one that for some reason works for me with シツ、　ソン (the WORST KANA EVER! ) Shi-up (like shut up), So-down (throw down.) N-up (Nut up. Not a nice expression... but...) Tsu-down. Anyway, the up and down refer to the stroke direction of the ノ, opposite the てんてん. If the dots are aligned with the left, then you stroke up シン and if aligned with the top, you stroke down ソツ. Hey... if it works...

I wonder if any Japanese have this trouble learning romaji? 52 characters... c e, b d p, g q, l i I... punctuation! Even many native English speakers seem to not grasp that one! lol

[mewes6190]

ヌ looks like a NOOdle, hanging over the edge of the bowl, and ス looks like the SOUp spoon you eat with etc.
Also, many Katakana have much more in common the the hiragana than you might think at first, so メ ist the middle part of め , ノ ist the first part when writing の, and of course ナ are the first two strokes of な.
Also, ん has the same stroke direction as ン, while そ shows you the stroke direction for ソ, and in つ you see the stroke direction for ツ, while し gives you the stroke direction for シ.
There really are a lot of those helps.

Where the hell were you when I was trying to learn Katakana?

I got that from Heisigs "Remembering the Kana" - really a helpful book, and with a lot of helpful things.

Seriously, though, タ and ヌ always got me. So many of the kana look SO similar, hirigana as well (そ、る、ろ;　の、め、ぬ、etc...) I never noticed that some of the katakana could fit into their hirigana counterparts. I wonder if they are like that on purpose?

Actually, each and every Kana evolved from a Kanji. Often, those Kanjis were the same, so that Hiragana AND Katakana evolved from the same Kanji, therefore looking a bit alike. Actually, (one of) the ON-Reading of these Kanji are the same as the Kana. So, by learning, which Kanji evolved into which Kana, you automatically learn one of its readings.
Some Kanji-dictionarys show, which Kanji, or which part of which Kanji, evolved into which Kana.
Here too, I learned a lot from Heisig, this time "Remembering the Kanji Pt.2" I really love those books!!

As for the mnemonics, I have a really dumb one that for some reason works for me with シツ、　ソン (the WORST KANA EVER! ) Shi-up (like shut up), So-down (throw down.) N-up (Nut up. Not a nice expression... but...) Tsu-down. Anyway, the up and down refer to the stroke direction of the ノ, opposite the てんてん. If the dots are aligned with the left, then you stroke up シン and if aligned with the top, you stroke down ソツ. Hey... if it works...

That's just it, isn't it? Main thing is, it works!!

I wonder if any Japanese have this trouble learning romaji? 52 characters... c e, b d p, g q, l i I... punctuation! Even many native English speakers seem to not grasp that one! lol

Romajis the worst for me! Sometimes, I even don't know how to write some name or whatever in Katakana, but I'm never good at romaji. Can't read it, it's just gibberish to me... I'm so used to は, "wa" just doesn't have much meaning to me as a particle...

[mewes6190]

LIttle funfact: While there are great similarities between れ, わ and ね and also between め and ぬ, in the end I often misread ね and ぬ, because both have that little "kringel" at the end, and their reading is so similar...

[thegooseking]

I actually did hiragana, then some basic kanji, then katakana. A lot of the katakana are actually derived from basic kanji (strictly speaking, (a) they're derived from man'yougana, which is itself derived from kanji, but that distinction is really only of historical interest, and (b) hiragana is also derived from this, but I just find this approach works better for katakana). E.g. ハ comes from 八, ニ comes from 二, etc. Some are more complicated: エ looks like the kanji for 'work', but is actually derived by removing the water radical from 江, meaning 'bay' and read え; ツ is derived from 州 which is actually read す, not つ; シ is derived from 之 which is actually the kanji form of the particle の (as well as being the name Susumu), but has an On'yomi reading of し.

So although I did drills and practices for learning hiragana, I actually found myself learning katakana more by studying kanji (although sometimes I had to deliberately look up the origin of the katakana to find out which kanji to study). I'm not sure that's the best way for everyone, but personally I learn better if I can see the logic behind things, so I find knowing where these characters came from in the first place really helpful.

小狼

[community.japanese]

くろくまさん、R3belD0gg-san, 子狼さん、
it's always interesting to know how you try to memorise all those characters
Is it only me who see ね has something like a tail of cats (ねこ)?

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com