This is a mobile optimized page that loads fast, if you want to load the real page, click this text.

Where to start? Learning Japanese

A

ankc

後輩
Joined
9 Apr 2014
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Hello,
I am trying to learn writing japanese but I don't really know where to start. I just started with Katakana and I'm trying to memorize them. Next will probably be Hiragana and then the daunting Kanjis. But apart from trying to learn every one of them by heart I don't know what I should really do because I don't really know what I'm supposed to be able to do after learning them. Can somebody guide me through which things should be done first,second...etc and what am I supposed to be able to do when I complete each step. e.g: Like if I manage to learn all katakana syllables what am I supposed to be able to read/write, for hiragana and so on. Ultimately I want to be able to easily read novels,manga and games without much trouble.
Cheers
 
Hi, ankc. Why would you learn hiragana and katakana separately? It is way more efficient (and faster) to learn them simultaneously. Take a row or two a day (あrow, かrow and so on) and you'll master the kana in a week or a bit more, by learning 10 kana per day (5 for hiragana and 5 for katakana).

Here are a couple of links for practicing kana. The first one is nice but the second one has diphthongs.

Learn Hiragana and Katakana ? Real Kana
Hiragana and Katakana practice

And to finally master the kana there is Kanji Romaji Hiragana Convert which basically converts a regular japanese text into romaji/hragana/katakana as it suits you. So what you do is open a random wikipedia article in japanese, copy/paste a chunk of text, convert it into romaji. And then by reading the romaji try to reproduce it in hiragana or katakana. When you find yourself writing such texts at a decent speed - you've mastered the kana.
 

Hello and thank you for your reply.

I didn't really know where to start and thought that I might get hiragana and katakana mixed up since they can both be used for the same syllables.
Is it really possible to learn 10 of them a day? By heart?
What is romaji? Are kana actually useful in reading manga or games? Or are they mostly made up of kanjis?
 
You will inevitably mix up kana in the beginning - that's part of the learning process =)
Is it really possible to learn 10 of them a day?By heart?
Click to expand...
Why not? I did it that way, being quite a lazy person myself. just find some good chart with strokes order, print it out and carry it with you. Spend 10 minutes minutes handwriting 10 new kana and then just try to recall 'em whenever you've got free time.
Consider recalling kana:
1) while you commute to work/study.
2) before falling asleep,
3) on waking up, while you still slug in bed

Romaji is romanised (latinized, englicised, whatever) reading of kana. Like shi fo し or nu for ぬ

Are kana actually useful in reading manga or games?or are they mostly made up of kanjis?
Click to expand...
Kana is surprisingly prevalent in games, especially in older NES/SNES ones. But the majority of vocab in games tend to be of little use, but if you enjoy translating some "Adamantine Ixionian Longsword of Hellfire" then go ahead =). Although there are games with useful vocab. Consider "life sims" and the like. Bakushou Jinsei Gekijou series cover a wide range of everyday vocabulary, and it's all in kana (and it's good for reciting large numerals, when you get to the numerals)

Manga is a different story. While you may be able to read, and even enjoy reading lower age-group manga (like Chi's Sweet Home, or My Neighbor Totoro animanga) since they come with furigana (a kana reading provided with kanji), it becomes difficult when furigana is gone in most of seinen manga.

Also be advised that manga/games/anime use colloquial language, which means it's not quite the language you'll be learning at first. It'll comprise all the weird dialects, slang, stylization etc. On the other hand this abundance of colloquial language is going to soak into your mind, so it may be useful too.
 

Let's say the article is in kanji and I convert it in romaji. Then I try to reproduce it in kana. Would that make any sense?I mean it's in kanji for a reason right?If this is actually possible why wasn't the article already in kana?Since kana is easier. Would it make sense if I use a combination of hiragana and katakana to reproduce it?
 
ankc said:
Let's say the article is in kanji and I convert it in romaji. Then I try to reproduce it in kana. Would that make any sense?
Click to expand...
That way you get genuine japanese text to practice your kana knowledge with. And by "genuine" i mean common patterns of morae (feel free to ask what mora is) Let me put it that way: rendering
The shamisen is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument
Click to expand...
as ゼシャミセンイズエスリーストリングドジャパニースミュシカルインストラメント makes little sense, while rendering
Shamisen wa, nihon no yū sao gengakki
Click to expand...
as シャミセン ハ 、 ニホン ノ ユウ サオ ゲンガッキ gives you a great opportunity to practice diphthongs, long vowels and pretty much any possible morae combinations. And yes, you should try borh katakana and hiragana.
ankc said:
I mean it's in kanji for a reason right?If this is actually possible why wasn't the article already in kana?Since kana is easier
Click to expand...
I've been getting that question a lot from lots of people. I guess everyone should find their own answer. But there are certain points i figured:
1) a text in kanji takes 30-50% less printing space,
2) japanese language is rich in homophones (words, that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning) different kanji for such words solves the confusion
3) since written japanese lacks spaces kanji makes reading more smooth (however, you'll notice that video games that are entirely in kana do use spaces)
4) kanji are gorgeous =Ъ
 
When you know the kanji, large chunks of kana-only text are really, really, really annoying to read.
 
Lomaster said:
And by "genuine" i mean common patterns of morae (feel free to ask what mora is)
Click to expand...
What is mora?
What is rendering?
Why does it make little sense?
What are diphthongs and long vowels?
What is "ゼシャミセンイズエスリーストリングドジャパニースミュシカルインストラメント"?
 
nekojita said:
When you know the kanji, large chunks of kana-only text are really, really, really annoying to read.
Click to expand...

I heard there are thousands of kanjis, what if you come across one you have never seen?
 
You can quite often read around it, using contextual clues, providing you have sufficient understanding of the rest of the text. Of course, in some cases you will have to look things up, but someone reasonably proficient should be able to identify (either with unfamiliar kanji or just unfamiliar vocabulary in kana):

1) What the word is - noun, verb, adjective, etc.
2) What sort of word might fit - e.g. if you're reading a novel and you see:
"I never want to see you again!" he (word), and slammed the door in her face.
You can probably guess what might go where (word) is, and also you get the meaning without having to know the dictionary definition.
3) If there are kanji, there can be meaning hints as well. 魚 = fish. 鯛、鮪、鮭 - types of fish. Or if you know one kanji but not the other in a compound word.

I guarantee that everyone does this sort of thing in their native language all the time without noticing they're doing it. This explanation of using context in reading is written for ESL but is applicable to any language.

What I do if I come across an unfamiliar kanji/word also depends a lot on what I'm doing at the time, and whether the kanji/word is something I've seen before. If I'm reading on paper or playing a game I'm very unlikely to stop to look things up.
 
Realistically after how much time can I expect to be able to read almost any japanese writing?I'm not saying reading like reading english but reading in the sense that I'm able to decipher the words even if I'm a bit slow. In how much time did you guys do it?And what level of efforts did you make?
 
Impossible to say specifically, but we're talking years. I would say I'm reasonably proficient, and I can read fiction and play games etc. but I wouldn't be able to read in Japanese all the sorts of things I can in English - particularly technical stuff - and my reading speed is definitely less in Japanese.

The most important things is putting in time - if you want to study a language seriously, you should be studying daily.
 

I guess my journey has just started

How do you cope with learning a new language and your daily life?It's not like you use japanese in your everyday life right?
 
ankc said:
It's not like you use japanese in your everyday life right?
Click to expand...

Umm, I do...but then, I work in Japan...Though admittedly, I'd probably be able to just get by being able to say "please" and "thank you", but what fun would that be?

I don't study nearly as much as I should, but I'm pretty bad at self-motivation. I need to find some Japanese friends willing to help me learn, or maybe take a class.

And you don't need to spend all day every day studying. Even an hour or two would probably help quite a lot.
 
It's not like you use japanese in your everyday life right?
Click to expand...

I'm in the UK so I don't use it at work. I have games, books, and the internet, though. Therefore my active knowledge extends a lot more to internet slang (うｐ乙!) than business language, but for the moment I'm okay with that.
 
ankc said:
What is mora?
Click to expand...
Mora is a phonetic unit like syllable, but unlike syllables one mora is represented by one kana or diphthong. So か is one mora, ん is one mora, きょ is one mora but きょう is two morae.
ankc said:
What is rendering?
Click to expand...
To render a text means to reproduce it in a different language or in a different script (at least that's how i see it)
That's what i came up with trying to render the first sentence in that wikipedia article Shamisen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in katakana. It makes little sense since english phonetics are different from japanese and are not meant to be rendered like that. That's why i switched the same article to it's japanese version, converted it into romaji and then rendered the converted version in katakana.
ankc said:
What are diphthongs and long vowels?
Click to expand...
That's simple. In western languages diphthongs are two adjacent vowel sounds. Like [aʊ̯] of cloud or [aɪ̯] of light. But in japanese diphthongs are actually called yōon and refer to い-column kana (き、し、み and so on) followed by や、ゆ、よ. Like きゃ (kya), みょ (myo) にゅ (nyu) and so on.
As for the long vowels - I'm too sleepy now to explain them. Perhaps I'll do it tomorrow =Ъ
 
From Wikipedia:

"Japanese is a language famous for its moraic qualities. Most dialects, including the standard, use morae (in Japanese, haku (拍) or mōra (モーラ)) rather than syllables as the basis of the sound system. Writing Japanese in kana (hiragana and katakana) demonstrates the moraic system of writing; for example, in the two-syllable word mōra, the ō is a long vowel and counts as two morae. The word is written in three symbols, モーラ (corresponding here to mo/o/ra), each containing one mora.

For example, haiku in modern Japanese do not follow the pattern 5 syllables/7 syllables/5 syllables, as commonly believed, but rather the pattern 5 morae/7 morae/5 morae.

As one example, the Japanese syllable-final n is moraic, as is the first part of a geminate consonant. For example, the Japanese name for "Japan", 日本, has two different pronunciations, one with three morae (Nihon) and one with four (Nippon). In the hiragana spelling, the three morae of Ni-ho-n are represented by three characters (にほん), and the four morae of Ni-p-po-n need four characters to be written out as well (にっぽん).

Similarly, the names Tōkyō (to-u-kyo-u とうきょう), Ōsaka (o-o-sa-ka おおさか), and Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki ながさき) all have four morae, even though they have two, three, and four syllables, respectively."
 
Are there any books that can help me with reading kana?I want to reading books that are entirely written in kana so that they can help me memorise kana faster. I'm having problems memorizing them.
 
ankc said:
I want to reading books that are entirely written in kana so that they can help me memorise kana faster..
Click to expand...
There are all sorts of 絵本(Ehon, literally "picture book) They are basically children's books, written in kana (with perhaps a couple of the most basic kanjis) with lots of illustrations which may help to understand the text. I'm not sure whether it'll help you memorize kana, but you could give it a try. Here is one i quite enjoyed Amazon.co.jp： にっぽん地図絵本: とだ こうしろう: 本 Also you absolutely have to check if there's a Japan Foundation branch in Mauritius. Japan Foundation branches are a bless for Japan enthusiasts worldwide. There you can borrow books and media free of charge, participate in different activities and clubs and even study the language. God be thanked, we have one in Moscow.
 
Let's say I know all kana and kanjis, how would I know what to use to write a sentence?
 
That's just something you learn over time. Kanji are usually used for nouns and the non-inflectional parts of verbs and adjectives. Kana are used for the inflectional parts of verbs and adjective, often for foreign words, and then there are just some words that are more often written in kana than in kanji and are up to the writer's preference (for example, I like using the kanji for the word 言う, but many people prefer to just use the kana いう; probably because it's 2 strokes rather than 7).

As you learn more kanji, you will just start to use them more often, filling in the blanks (kanji you don't know, or can't remember, or can't remember how to write if it's handwritten) with kana.

The vast majority of sentences will contain at least some kana (sometimes hiragana, sometimes katakana, sometimes both) and kanji together, with mainly very short sentences containing only one or the other.
 
I was wondering if there are universally accepted ways of writing words. For example asa (morning), this can be written in hiragana, katakana or maybe kanji (not sure about that). When teachers teach to children at school, what do they teach them?hiragana or katakana?
 
Children learn kana first (hiragana then katakana, I presume), then begin to learn the kanji (there are a set taught in schools, and for the earlier years there are breakdowns year-by-year).

朝 is a second grade kanji, so primary school children would start off writing あさ, then be expected to start using the kanji after they were taught it. They also would be taught when to write words in katakana (e.g. learn to write パン not ぱん). Material aimed at children will either limit itself to a subset of the kanji appropriate for that age group, or use furigana (small kana next to the word) to show how the word is read.

There are not 100% set ways to write every word, since a lot of them have multiple acceptable versions. If you are writing for the government or a publisher they will have some rules/guides about which kanji get used, when/where, etc. If you are writing a blog, on the other hand, you may feel free to write the word きれい、奇麗、綺麗、キレイ、or any other versions you can think of.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

K
How do you say "I love you" in Japanese?
2
Replies
46
Views
491K
Grandpa Frank
Let's play a Shiritori Game - Japanese word game
78 79 80
Replies
2K
Views
305K
thomas
  • Sticky
Japanese Language Learning Resource List
3 4 5
Replies
107
Views
76K
hellokurt
C
How to say "Im trying to learn japanese"
Replies
8
Views
77K
undrentide
B
How to say "my love" in Japanese
Replies
19
Views
203K
Toritoribe
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…