A little hello - Is this the right place?

Firstly hello to everyone, I have been reading these forums for around a week now whilst trying to learn some Japanese myself via Rosetta Stone and a couple of books which I have acquired.

I'm not sure if this the right place to ask some of the questions that are racing through my head at the moment so I hope I'm not out of place posting in this Forum.

Anyway, I have been slowly learning the basics of Japanese from Rosetta Stone and by reading some books and I am pretty much at the level of an extreme novice! I have a great interest in Japan, their cultures and history and Japanese has always been one of the languages I wanted to learn.

My question is, if anyone could answer/explain is this... I have been learning words in Romaji and Hiragana, I know of Kanji, Furigana and Katakana aswell but which is the most used, which should I be learning while starting the learn the language?

Thanks for taking the time to read, an I'm looking forward to getting to know some of the users here!

Thanks in advance!

well im trying to learn Japanese via alot of things books programs im learning hiragana and katakana and kanji, hiragana is there main writing system but alot of things will have hiragana and kanji together to make sentences so try to practice alot kanji and hiragana katakana is manly used to say foreign words like English so yeah that's all the writing systems

Ah - Thank you for the reply, the main one I have been using is Hiragana but after trying to read a few things on some JP website I see some characters I have no idea what they are...

Really confusing when I've learnt so many characters in Hiragana and then see so much mixed.. guess I have a lot to learn still

Speaking, romaji, hiragana, katakana and kanji. What order should I learn them in? | Japan Forum

If you want to communicate with Japanese people through writing learn basic kanji after hiragana.

But if you're traveling to Japan in the near future and need to read a menu or store labels, or if you want to use a Japanese commercial website, you should learn katakana after hiragana...

And above all, stop studying reading or grammar if it's in Romaji.

Thank you for all the replies!

So it's set for me now, I will try and learn as best I can Hiragana first along with Romaji, as I started in my first post I am very much a novice still, the only characters I have learned and can read *very slowly* are simple characters like i, u, o, ku, ke, ko, shi, tsu, te, to, na, nu, no, ha, ho, n - I have to type these in Romaji as I'm at work and don't have the language pack installed but I can read them in Hiragana, even words like onnanoko read in Hiragana are taking me some good time but I'm getting there!
Also, could anyone take a look at this image?

omniglot.com/images/writing/hiragana.gif

To me it looks like it's laid out as Romaji - Hiragana - ???, what is the 3rd set of characters?

domo arigato ^^

Nav1 said:

Thank you for all the replies!
So it's set for me now, I will try and learn as best I can Hiragana first along with Romaji, as I started in my first post I am very much a novice still, the only characters I have learned and can read *very slowly* are simple characters like i, u, o, ku, ke, ko, shi, tsu, te, to, na, nu, no, ha, ho, n - I have to type these in Romaji as I'm at work and don't have the language pack installed but I can read them in Hiragana, even words like onnanoko read in Hiragana are taking me some good time but I'm getting there!
Also, could anyone take a look at this image?
omniglot.com/images/writing/hiragana.gif
To me it looks like it's laid out as Romaji - Hiragana - ???, what is the 3rd set of characters?
domo arigato ^^

Click to expand...

use this chart for hiragana
http://shodan.co.za/images/hiragana_chart.jpg
and this for katakana
http://shodan.co.za/images/katakana_chart.png
they are the guides i use there really good and help alot and it tells you which stroke to write first, make sure you try not to learn using romaji the faster you use hiragana and katakana the better so than you can read it ^_^ hope i helped

Nav1 said:

Also, could anyone take a look at this image?
omniglot.com/images/writing/hiragana.gif
To me it looks like it's laid out as Romaji - Hiragana - ???, what is the 3rd set of characters?
domo arigato ^^

Click to expand...

Kanji. Those are actually the kanji whose script forms the hiragana came from (for the most part... some of them are the modern simplifications, like ﾋ? from ﾃ?ﾂｨ, ﾅ鍛 from ﾅ督ｨ, and 窶膿 from ﾃ､o).