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Beginner. Questions!

DarrenS97

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2 Jul 2015
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Hello,

I'm new to the learning process so please go easy on me ;)
I joined this forum because I believe that everyone here could be of great help to me in the coming days in which I will be learning Japanese.
I started only 4 days ago.

All through my highschool years I was very impatient, I had absolutely no drive to learn anything and I slept through all my classes or skipped in my final year. Eventually I quit half way through.
However Japanese is something i've been interested in since early childhood. Since i'm currently not undergoing any learning I thought i'd finally try and learn the Japanese language, although I know it won't be an easy task.

My memory isn't something I take pride in but it's not terrible either. In these 4 days i've been learning I believe i've done around 1-2 hours per day. Which would total to around 8 hours.

In these 8 hours, so far I have learned up to や row on Gojuon. I will soon be starting on ら.
This includes Yoon and the Dakuon/Han-Dakuon up to that row.

Of course I am trying to go at my own pace to make sure I learn everything adequately.

I have heard that people memorize Hiragana within a few hours, but also that others learn within a week.
This made me curious as to if these 4 days / (8 hours) ish. Is a large amount of time for what i've learned?

Have i learned quickly? Average? Slow?

How long did it take you to learn Hiragana? And using what method?

Note that, even though I've learned most of the Hiragana characters, it's not easy for me to read. Some characters I am able to recognise with a glance, however I am sometimes forgetful with other characters.
I tested myself with some words comprised of Hiragana, simple words containing vowel characters I was able to read with no problem, but other words containing Dakuon and characters further down Gojuon took me longer to recognise. Worste case scenario it took me around 20 seconds to read the word.
 
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It will take years to become proficient in Japanese. On that scale, it really doesn't make any difference whether you spend 1 day or 7 days on learning hiragana.

Your reading speed will improve with practice.
 
I'm finding learning Japanese to be a long process of fits and starts with lots of time of feeling no progress and tiny successes along the way. Mostly feelings of failure, though.

Honestly, who cares how long it took anyone else to learn hiragana? It's a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm finding that staying power has a lot more to do with success than speed of learning.

My teacher says I'm good at it, but I feel awful at it, the end result of truly being able to understand the world I live in pushes me onwards. If I relied on feeling successful or measuring my progress against others I'd have quit long ago because I usually feel like a failure and others usually look more successful than I do. Of course we are our own worst critics and we compare ourselves to only the best, but that's human nature I think. Yet it's an internal win, not an external one, and when I strip all else away the functional ability is more important than whether I'm getting there as easily or as quickly as anyone else.

Good luck, you've taken on a challenge with a longer road than anyone realizes starting out, I think...
 
I honestly don't recall, and if in five years time you're still keeping track of whether it was three days or two weeks or two months I would be very surprised.

The important thing is not to get fixated on getting one thing perfect before moving on. Testing yourself on simple vocab words is a good step, but there's no reason you can't start on basic grammar/sentence patterns even if your kana aren't 100% quite yet. It's all practice.

If there are kana you find particularly difficult to remember, learning a word that starts with them might help.
 
Thank you for responses. Of course I know it will take years to perfect and of course I won't be keeping track of days forever. However I was curious as to my progress starting out.

Thanks for the advice also,
.
If there are kana you find particularly difficult to remember, learning a word that starts with them might help.
This seems like it could help.
It's a marathon, not a sprint
You're most definitely right.
 
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