Starting to learn how to read & write

I am interested in learning how to read and write Japanese to co-inside with my language training, however, as you know the Japanese system uses 3 main writing methods.. I did have some books in mind to get, but they were focusing on Kanji. Now i've done some research and found out that i need to learn some other writing system first before i move onto Kanji and now i am completely confused on what writing method i should learn first.

Can anyone give me an idea on the perfect book(s) to get for a complete beginner like me started (please be in mind that i have never learnt anything about reading or writing)

Any recommendations will be helpfull

1) Learn kana first before anything DO NOT attempt to read japanse written in english characters, it will be detrimental to your learning. Hiragana first, katakana second.

2) Understand the difference between casual and polite speech early. Also, humble and honorific. Just make sure you understand the concept, so later you can always think: "Is this way of saying things polite or casual?"

3) Dont attempt kanji until you finish heisigs book "remembering the kanji". You can start this book anytime, even before you know any japanese at all. (caveat: heisig is only good for native speakers of english)

After that, dive into basic grammar, phrases, vocab, and all the other fun stuff.

srintuar said:

1)DO NOT attempt to read japanse written in english characters

Click to expand...

On the contrary, I think that in the very beginning when trying to observe the structural components of Japanese roomaji can be very useful. I learned Japanese via Elanor Jorden's JSL series, which although is not perfect, is imo the best place to start learning Japanese as she approaches it from a structural standpoint vs. the typical grammatical "noun, adj, adv" etc. stand point. By doing so, the relationship of words to one another and how a sentence is structurally organized is much more clear to me than other friends of mine who had started to learn Japanese via other methods, such as through the common Genki series. That being said, I do agree that the majority of your reading should be in kana/kanji, but when it comes down to understanding structure, roomaji can be VERY useful.

Also Heisig isn't the only way to go, but it certainly is one way - it all depends on your learning style.

Good luck!

Most definately get familiar with hiragana before you go into learning katakana. First, you can easily get the two confused espcially if you aren't too familiar with hiragana. Secondly, Katakana isn't as easy to grasp as hiragana.(Just my opinion.)

lonesoullost3 said:

That being said, I do agree that the majority of your reading should be in kana/kanji, but when it comes down to understanding structure, roomaji can be VERY useful.

Click to expand...

Hrm, I would argue that ローマ字 does not provide any benefit for learning structure that cannot be gained from hiragana. If you think there is, I'd love to see a specific example where it is better.

My main reason for suggesting that it be avoided like the black plague of death is the scars i have seen it leave. People have already associated thoughts, sounds, and patterns with "Romanji" letters. Learning J cleanly requires breaking those patterns and starting from a clean slate, imo. "Romanji" learners also tend to have a wicked accent that they themselves don't notice.

lonesoullost3 said:

Also Heisig isn't the only way to go, but it certainly is one way - it all depends on your learning style.

Click to expand...

Its only good for adult native English speakers, with a college level vocab.

Your learning style doesnt matter much, whether you are visual, aural, or symbolic learner, mnemonics will work for you.




@Skullcrushergurl ,
Very interesting. I found katakana much harder as well. Perhaps the shapes are less distinct.

srintuar said:

Your learning style doesnt matter much, whether you are visual, aural, or symbolic learner, mnemonics will work for you.

Click to expand...

On the contrary... I tend to forget mnemonics quite quickly. So no, it doesn't work for me. Repetition and understanding the radicals helps me remember a character.

Also, accent isn't to blame entirely on what you read. It depends how well you focus on your own voice and sounding native like. My professors have told me many times that my accent sounds very native, and some acquaintances of mine when I address them in Japanese when I approach them from behind have told me they expected to see a Japanese person standing there. Point being - roomaji doesn't equal an accent, self-discipline will save you from an accent (and good ears couldn't hurt, haha).

As far as structure is concerned, although it isn't a particularly complex (whoa.. I had 複雑 rolling around my head and I couldn't find the English for a moment there!) example, it is even simpler to see the construction of verbals using rooma-ji (note, it's not romaNji).

If you have the verbals: 行きます・行く and 食べます・食べる and 帰ります・帰る. How would you create rule to explain the constructions? Using rooma-ji, I feel that it is easier to explain the conversion from stem to dictionary form by explaining it as an u/ru construction. For example: the root of ikimasu = iki, labeled as an -u verbal you get iku. Tabemasu? Root=tabe, -ru verbal, taberu. Kaerimasu? Root = kaeri, -u verbal, kaeru. This comes in use when trying to explain the difference between 帰る and 変える. Both are kaeru, but knowing the root of the two: kaeri and kae, allows you to successful determine -u verbal and -ru verbal respectively, allowing the forms of kaerimasu and kaemasu to follow naturally.

Another way roomaji can help with construction is with particles. I do not know how many times I see particles attached to the ends of words like they are suffixes when improperly romanized after learning via kana/kanji - they are NOT suffixes. Compound particles/conjunctions are also more easily explained via roomaji, such as 'no de'. 'No' acts as a nominalizer, 'de' is really the gerund of desu, therefore you can get the literal translation of 'A no de B' "Being that A is the case, B", which is the equivalent of "A, so B".

Again, like I said earlier, kana/kanji are extremely important to start learning from the beginning (I wish that where I learned Japanese they put more focus on that in the beginning), but roomaji is VERY useful in understanding structure - if it is explained correctly. I highly recommend you take a look at JSL, although it is old at this point - and I do say not perfect because it DOES use roomaji through all three books (a point that my ex-classmates and I debate all the time) - Jorden had (and still has) a unique look on the Japanese language that has given me deeper insight into the structure of the language than my peers. Rather than teaching "verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.", she teaches "verbals, adjectivals, nominals", which are all defined by their use within the structure of a sentence. Therefore, 食べたい is not a verb "want to eat", it is an adjectival because it follows the structure of other adjectivals, like 高い： 食べたくて,食べたくない,食べたかった etc. In any case, if you're interested, the used books cost about $10 or so, here's the link to Part 1 on Amazon:

Amazon product ASIN 0300038348
One final note on the roomaji in Jorden's series, she uses the Japanese system of roomaji for the consonants: ta, ti, tu, te, to (and explains in linguistic terms how your tongue should be placed for each one and how ti is NOT the same as the English ch, nor syo the same as sho). However, her vowels are bothersome, as おう and おお are rendered the same: oo. Therefore, unless told explicitly or you know otherwise, you may have one heck of a time figuring out how to spell Tokyo and Osaka in Japanese when their romanized by Jorden as: Tookyoo and Oosaka. This, imho, is her romanization-style downside.

I would recommend learning hiragana and katakana first. You can get tables of these anywhere on the internet so they are easy to get hold of and learn. You should focus also on how they are pronounced. No point in being able to write them when they sound like an inside-out chicken when you speak them.

Once you know them, then you could start learning Kanji but there are a LOT. From personal experience, I found it easiest to learn kanji through my textbook (Genki) as it gives you roughly 15 at the end of each lesson, and starts off basic. So by the end you know about 150 common kanji. Just take it from there. Best of luck with your studies!

Wow, thank you for the in depth reply lonesoullost3.

lonesoullost3 said:

On the contrary... I tend to forget mnemonics quite quickly. So no, it doesn't work for me. Repetition and understanding the radicals helps me remember a character.

Click to expand...

You are supposed to forget the mnemonics. And I dont want to defend
mnemonic techniques here, they are quite proven to work far better than rote. If you learned without them, you simply had to put alot more effort in than people who learned with them.

If you think radicals are useful, I'll have to disagree. I started with radicals
and quickly realized that they are of only limited value and dont contribute to fast acquisition of kanji. They are of some etymological interest, but they are far too arbitrary to constitute to a rigorous basis for organization into mnemonics. In heisig's technique, he invents "components" of which some are radicals and some are not. They allow you to perform a standard decomposition of kanji, and recognize patterns across various glyphs.

Many have attempted to use radicals to form mnemonics, but one of the key breakthroughs in heisigs method, is to discard the attachement to them and form arbitrary components.

lonesoullost3 said:

Also, accent isn't to blame entirely on what you read.

Click to expand...

I wouldnt claim it to be insurmountable. But it hurts in ways easy to see,
and you can save yourself some effort by avoiding them from the get go.

lonesoullost3 said:

(note, it's not romaNji).

Click to expand...

"Romanji" is an example of the type of mistake someone will make if they learn via english letters. Assuming the "n" is there is too easy, and often done subconsciously.

lonesoullost3 said:

... For example: the root of ikimasu = iki, labeled as an -u verbal you get iku. Tabemasu? Root=tabe, -ru verbal, taberu. Kaerimasu? Root = kaeri, -u verbal, kaeru. ...

Click to expand...

You didnt even break a syllable at the start consonant to demonstrate something that cant be done in kana...

lonesoullost3 said:

Another way roomaji can help with construction is with particles. I do not know how many times I see particles attached to the ends of words like they are suffixes when improperly romanized after learning via kana/kanji

Click to expand...

Who would bother to romanize things???
And why?
I dont think its necessary for learning the language.

lonesoullost3 said:

- they are NOT suffixes. Compound particles/conjunctions are also more easily explained via roomaji, such as 'no de'. 'No' acts as a nominalizer, 'de' is really the gerund of desu, therefore you can get the literal translation of 'A no de B' "Being that A is the case, B", which is the equivalent of "A, so B".

Click to expand...

Why cant this be done with kana just as well???


I get the impression that English letters are popular in English language Japanese teaching material because they seem less intimidating and thus sell more copies. I would argue that they are far inferior for the purpose of actually teaching the orthography and pronunciation.

Now, English letters as a technology are arguably more precise, being that they represent individual phonemes rather than composed syllables like kana. However, as an adult native speaker of english, you carry around alot of baggage: strong associations to sounds and patterns for those glyphs. Japanese is so different than english, I find it saves time to avoid getting mixed up between english and Japanese use of orthography.

Mm, I'm with srintuar on this one. The only thing that I can think of that would make things easier on English-speaking learners of Japanese is う-verbs--the example used, 行く, looks different from 行きます, between the く and the き. Using ku and ki--and just messing with that last vowel there--makes it easier for a beginner to look at, yes. But I wouldn't really call the end result any more effective than doing it the way I learned--hiragana first, then my professor talking with us about the "vowel sounds" and changing it from there. No one's had any problems since. We use the Nakama series, by the way. We learned hiragana in chapter one, katakana between three and four, and kanji starting in something like chapter seven. That's something English letters won't allow you to do--get you going on kanji earlier so you don't find yourself struggling on it as much later on. Second book in the Nakama series has most of the simple instructions in Japanese, furigana and English in parentheses where necessary. It's a much more immersive experience than a book or series taking the romaji route (which, as stated, has a million and two different methods of writing which all depend on the author, the weather, and what colour shirt you're wearing). I'd also think that you'd be limited on pictures for cultural aid--postcards, advertisements, menus... You can take the intermediate step of navigating a false one in romaji or have actual material to go by.

Speaking of which, lonesoullost, from an English-speaking perspective, I liken "roomaji" more to the sound of the word "room" than the word "rome". It's what I've been taught to see since I was little, and it's difficult to get over that kind of thing. I personally find it easier that I can put Japanese aside as an entirely different thing and not blur lines or be impacted by my own natural English.

As a reply to both srintuar and TsukikoRain:

Like I said, I'm not saying you should use roomaji all the time, but I still believe it has definite advantages - I think perhaps the stumbling block here is that we have already reached points in our Japanese ability that allows us to look past our beginning times with ease because we understand the language much better now. Furthermore, the fact that we've already learned in one manner, we can't go back and "try the other way" to see if it really is better/worse. So again, it goes to which way you learn more easily.

The key to not developing an accent from roman characters is to recognize them for what they are - symbols for sounds in a given context. They can stand successfully for different sounds when talking about Japanese versus English as long as you remember the context and do not slip out of context. An example in English: we all know that 'g' makes a hard, unaspirated sound in the top of your throat via the rear of your tongue - e.g. "good". But when you just read that sentence above, you probably read "...that 'jee' makes...". Therefore, the same symbol produced two different sounds depending on context - this can be done in Japanese as well, all it requires is self-discipline to be successful.

And I do find radicals VERY helpful for me - we just have different learning styles, srintuar.

Oh, I should also point out that Jorden's JSL is focused on speaking Japanese, part of the reason for no kana/kanji. You can buy (should buy) supplements that do have the kana/kanji for the text, but it will not teach you how to read. That's her other, complementary series, Japanese: The Written Language (go figure ). Note that JWL does not cover grammar.

So from what I can understand, the learning styles i should learn first would be:

1. Hiragana - (Any title ideas for a good book)
2. Katakana - (Any title ideas for a good book)
3. Kanji - (Any title ideas for a good book)

Correct me if i am wrong on this. Are there any other writing systems i should be aware of too. Knowing what writing styles to learn first is helpful however, it is only half the battle as I now have to do some research into what book(s) to check out first to see if it will suit my learning style.

Do you know any book titles that you could recommend me checking out? I am more of a varied learner, meaning i am more prone to trying things out to see if the books learning system would suit and work.

I must admit that i do like the idea of Mnemonics as a learning aid, look at a book once and thought that the symbols can in some places be matched to a character and so therefore promote learning on a subconscious level.

I've some ideas on a few books, will add a link(s) below so you can have a look and tell me what you think

Excellent book i think:
Amazon product ASIN 480530877X
Amazon product ASIN 0870117092
Amazon product ASIN 087011719X
Amazon product ASIN 087011719X
Amazon product ASIN 1880656183
Cheers for all the help you have given so far..

The hard part about learning to read/write is if you don't have a context, it takes longer to remember (in my experience). That is to say, unless there is a theme to the chapter or a written dialogue/story with which you can correlate ideas, it's a bit more brute force memorization. As I learned via the JSL/JWL pairing, I can't really recommend anything for self-taught learners at the early stage. However, I use the Tuttle "Kanji & Kana (Revised Edition)" to continue my Kanji learning. It is simply a book of all the "Joyo Kanji" (the officially recognized 1,945 kanji learned through schooling in Japan) as well as Jinmei-yo kanji, those used in names. If you prefer mnemonics, I would suggest you look at Heisig, as yes, it is very good for that. In which case, Heisig and Tuttle would be quite a powerful pair for you.

Hadamitzky, Wolfgang and Mark Spahn. Kanji & Kana (Revised Edition). Tuttle Language Library.
Amazon product ASIN 0804820775
Note you can find that cheaper, new, on alibris.com.

lonesoullost3 said:

The hard part about learning to read/write is if you don't have a context, it takes longer to remember (in my experience).

Click to expand...

What he said.

Try searching for children books (all in hiragana) and try to just read it out loud even if you have no idea what you are saying. That will both train your tongue and help you memorize the characters.

For books, I'm not sure, because I've only ever used Nakama. But some of the additional online resources are very good on their own.

uiowa.edu/~japanese/NAKAMA/index.html

(Mrr, can't add URLs. ._.)

Most of the freebies are for Mac, but the Windows pack is only about $15. Their kana games are quite good for memorization, in my opinion.

lonesoullost: Sorry if I came across before as simply addressing romaji-only learning, but I'm simply trying to understand advantages of the method. My best friend from high school started Japanese at the same time as I did, and she started on romaji for about 3/4 of the semester. The problem, though, was in how the professor taught the class, making the students memorize, in a matter of about a week, the hiragana and katakana, as well as which words used what (which is difficult for some words that are derived from languages other than English, such as pan). I ended up e-mailing her the relevant Nakama pages. She quit Japanese after that semester.

hideway: I agree. Amazon.co.jp has a number, and you can import them without problems, at least in my experience getting them to export to the US. I personally recommend the Peter Rabbit books after you've got a few kanji under your belt, because the stories are somewhat familiar and it was originally published in English--those two facts can help when you're trying to work around meaning.

I'd suggest children/young adult targetted popular manga.
You can buy the original versions from amazon.co.jp, and look for "scanlations" online.

A scanlation is almost perfect for learning: It has english meanings and translators notes,
it tells you what the sound effects mean, and every single conversation has a picture to demonstrate its context.

The is a book that tries to use a similar technique: I think its called "Japanese the Manga Way" . There is also another one called "Japanese in Mangaland". I wish they were around when I started learning J, it would have saved me alot of time to discover this method.

Do you have any suggestions for some simpler yet interesting mangas to practice with? something around the elementary/middle school level perhaps?

Soloistic said:

Do you have any suggestions for some simpler yet interesting mangas to practice with? something around the elementary/middle school level perhaps?

Click to expand...

There was a study group here http://forum.japantoday.com/forum/
doing Karin and Crayon shin-chan. Both are good and interesting, imo.
You'll need to get your hands on some raw tankoubon's though, and
that runs around 10$ per book shipping from japan. You can find translations
versions on the internet, if you get stuck.

You can also try one of the learning books I suggested above, such as "Japanese the manga way" . They are both in my local library branch,
so you dont need to buy them if you can find them in a library.