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Learning hiragana totally sucks. Albeit in, like, a challenging, fun way. Or am i just bad at it? Also my room smells like ketchup..
Pretty sure the ketchup is just you.
As for hiragana, I learnt it in an afternoon, then solidified it over the course of the next week. Learnt katakana the following week. Mnemonics helped. =)
Have you had a look at Hiragana42?
http://www.textfugu.com/dashboard/
Should help.
The only thing that still kills me occasionally is – め and ぬ
わ, ね, and れ used to get me as well, but I no longer have any problems with them.I didn’t find hiragana particularly difficult but I would learn 10 a day. Personally, I didn’t find Anki to be the best thing to learn it with either, so I used http://unckel.de/kanateacher/index-en.html
After learning hiragana over what was probably 4 or 5 days, later on I was able to learn katakana in one day. So yeah it gets easier
Wanna see photos from my trip to Japan: instagram.com/zachradgeI initially used Obenkyo on Android to learn hiragana, it’s free and does a great job. Playing it like a game trying to beat your last score makes it more interesting. I would start with 5 or so at a time then add more as my scores improved past about 85%. Once I was able to get consistently high scores as multiple choice, I would transition to drawing them out using the built in hand writing recognition, it added a new level of difficulty. Naturally, switching to drawing was insane at first so pick out 5 easy ones and start including more as you get to know them. I did this when I was waiting, doing laundry, laying in bed, or sitting on the toilet. It really became the game I played a lot as it’s challenging and unlike other games it gives you something tangible as a reward.
Currently I use JA Sensei instead of Obenkyo which I’ve come to like more but for what it does Obenkyo is great, and free. Of course I think this works better with a tablet but I started on my phone and eventually bought a fairly cheap tablet specifically for progressing my Japanese.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by
Zenarik.
When I learned the kana, I used smart.fm – originators of the Core 2k/6k decks, currently known as iknow.jp, and flash-card system of choice in TextFugu a few years ago before they turned subscription-based and everything was moved to Anki. I think I did about one kana row per day and reviewed them at the rate the SRS told me to, from what I remember, with a short break between hiragana and katakana. I wasn’t really in a hurry to learn them as at that time I wasn’t even all that sure I wanted to learn Japanese; I was doing it just for something to do and because it seemed kinda interesting. Definitely wasn’t the average Japanese learner: didn’t watch anime, didn’t read manga, had practically no knowledge of Japanese culture or the language, and didn’t curse my parents for not bringing me up in Japan…
After a while, reading kana becomes automatic and it feels good when you realise it :P Even three years later though, I still always read ツ and シ wrong! I can tell the difference easily when they’re right next to each other but on their own it’s still difficult :S
Gaawsh, you guys are awesome. I’ll give all this stuff a go. An afternoon though?! 4-5 days? You animals! I’ll get the hang off it though, fo’sho. and Zach, i’m glad to hear that- really not a huge fan of Anki either. I’m more of a chiptune kinda guy, if you catch my drift Otto Roboto.
-And Joel, I found out that the ketchup wasn’t ketchup at all! It was the sickly sweet stench of Lizard poo.
Also- how many kana does katakana have?
Once again, thanks all! Shine on.
-And Joel, I found out that the ketchup wasn’t ketchup at all! It was the sickly sweet stench of Lizard poo.
Do you often have lizard poo in your room?
Also- how many kana does katakana have?
Same number as hiragana. Or possibly one fewer, because katakana ヲ almost never gets used.
Even three years later though, I still always read ツ and シ wrong! I can tell the difference easily when they’re right next to each other but on their own it’s still difficult :S
This. ソ and ン too. One trick my lecturer taught me is that if you overlay ツ and つ on top of each other, you can see that both are written left to right across the top, then down. シ and し both go top to bottom across the left, then up. ソ and ン have similar comparisons.
Of course, the hard part is still the old game of spot-the-difference.
Yeah, I’ve seen that trick before. That only really helps if I’m writing them down though, for stroke order.
ソ and ン *do* suck too, I just forgot to mention them.
Hello!
I remember that I noticed that learning many things at once I lost interest. My focus point lies around 5 :’)
When studying hiragana I started with 5 in anki instead of 20. (this way you can guess what it might be. k,s,t-column).
Hearing them over and over until everything was double spacebar.
Than I did the drag-and-drop and after that the Real kana thing.
As soon as my fingers automatically went to the right keys on the keyboard I did 5 more in anki (custom study option: increase todays new cards limit with 5) and learned the new column.
Then again custom study and reviewed ahead one day (now all 10).
and repeat drag-and-drop and on and on and then I knew them :’)Took me 3 hours :3
Good luck though! And if you’re stuck, sometimes it helps to just move on. It’s more important to go on studying then to stuck on this and give up. There will be so much practise! :D
がんばって! (ganbatte, good luck)
To revisit this, all of your input was super helpful. I found Obenkyo on Android to be particularly helpful if anyone else is having a hard time.
@Aikibujin … I learned to remember ね and ぬ because they both make ‘nuh’ sounds (ne and nu) that go along with their little ‘noose’-like loop … ne, nu, noose loop, ね、ぬ…
Ah that’s a good idea!
Thanks for that. ^_^
Another question, wizard! There are some differences on the textfugu hiragana/katakana sheets and what other sources say. Like textfugu has じゃ as jya, but i keep seeing it other places (for example, realkana) as just ja. Or ぢ as dzi, where other places say ji. Are there no absolutes!?
Well, no. Romaji came along after the fact, and there’s a lot of different methods of doing it. Same with methods of romanising Chinese – would you believe “Beijing” and “Peking” are exactly the same word, and should be pronounced the same?
Anyway, the system currently recognised by the Japanese government is called Kunrei-Shiki, but the Revised Hepburn is also popular. I prefer the Hepburn, myself. “Tya” and “sya” just look wrong.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by
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