This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing about learning Japanese. They will be written alongside my own study and I’ll only approach a subject once I feel I have fully understood it myself. If you find any errors please let me know. I hope these articles make a useful introduction for anyone looking to learn Japanese.
Some time around 2002 I first started learning Japanese. I began with a set of CD’s and a book full of “some random script” and I thought I’d just leave the book until later. I wanted to start speaking Japanese straight away! Big mistake!
I soon got bored, I had nothing but the CD’s, I didn’t want to read textbooks and a quick browse online didn’t find much. I thought learning by CD was the only real way to do it. I also became busy with partying university study. So my efforts slowly dwindled into nothing and I stopped.
Starting with solid foundations
6 years later, with some experience in self-teaching, I decided to try again. I found a lot more resources online. I began using advice from several sites (alljapaneseallthetime.com, goddesscarlie.com, wikihow.com) and carved out my own learning plan. My first step was to memorise the 255 kana, which contains hiragana and katakana.
I truly believe learning the kana first gives you a solid foundation to work from. It’s not difficult to memorise them if you use a tool such as Anki and some web games (Hiragana Drag-n-Drop, Katakana Drag-n-Drop).
Hiragana, the squiggly script
Hiragana is made up of 46 basic symbols, with a total of 107 variations. It can be used to represent whole words but it’s mostly used alongside kanji to indicate prefixes, particles and grammatical word endings.
| Hiragana | Romaji | English |
| おいしい | oishii | delicious; tasty; |
| こんにちは | konnichiwa (konnichiha) | hello; good day; |
| またね | matane | good-bye; see you later; |
Katakana, the angular script
Katakana is made up of 46 basic symbols, matching the 46 hiragana, with a total of 148 variations. It is mostly used to write foreign words that do not have kanji representations. It is also used for technical and scientific terms.
Sometimes it can be very difficult to work out what foreign word the Katakana is referring to. There is a tendency within katakana to shorten the word, for example “Personal Computer” is shortened into パソコン (pasokon). It takes a bit of practice but eventually you will find it possible to work out the meaning by yourself.
| Katakana | Romaji | English |
| チョコレート |
chokorēto | Chocolate |
| クレジットカード | kurejitto kādo | Credit Card |
| アジアン・カンフー・ジェネレーション | ajian kanfū jenerēshon | Asian Kung-Fu Generation |
Furigana, the helping hand
Sometimes, especially in children’s books, kana is written in small form next to difficult kanji to help the reader. This is called Furigana.
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In books for very young children hiragana is sometimes the only script used. In this case it is usually combined with spaces to make it easier to read. I’ll be looking for some of these books on my next trip to Japan. I think they would be great for practicing kana.
Building upon the foundations
Now that I’ve learnt the kana I feel comfortable using a few words with my Japanese penpals. At first I was overwhelmed with information about the Japanese language and a lot of the things I read I didn’t entirely understand. Eventually I began to put the pieces together and I feel I’ve now got a good grasp of what’s involved in learning the language. Now I’m learning the kanji and feel it’s only a matter of time (and a lot of practice!) until I can use Japanese fluently.
I continue to review the kana at least once a week to ensure I remember them all. I’m also starting to read through the Death Note books I purchased in Tokyo because they have furigana!
In the next articles I will take a closer look at hiragana and katakana.
Check out Wikipedia for more in-depth information on Kana.
| Buy the Death Note books at YesAsia.com |
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Photo Credit: massdistraction
July 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Hey Chris - the romaji for こんにちは would be “konnichiwa,” right? I know that to type it and to write it you use the character は (ha), but the pronunciation is “wa” in this case. (It’s being used as the subject marker は, which is always written as “ha” but pronounced “wa.” It’s a wonky part of Japanese. I suppose transliterating the phrase would turn out something like “Speaking of this day…” Or, “This day…” See?)
July 9th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Hi Deas - Yeah, I wasn’t sure whether the romaji should be based on the written syllables or the spoken syllables. I’ll add konnichiwa to save confusion. It certainly confused me when I first learnt it. Cheers
July 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am
You say you use sites like AJATT, but I have a question for you;
Khatzu recommends learning the Kanji FIRST, so that you don’t have to deal with the most difficult part anymore. Now, I don’t have any experience learning Japanese, but I do have experience learning Mandarin and the massive amount of Hanzi. Learning the Hanzi first really helped A LOT.
What are you thoughts on this? Learning Kanji before Kana.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hi Ramses - Good point. I decided to approach it in a similar way to how a Japanese child would learn (immersion and kana first), but also use my adult skills of self-teaching. So I began with the kana and followed the AJATT immersion advice.
I don’t know which way is better, kana or kanji first, but I found that after learning the kana I could spell correctly most of the words I was hearing on TV and in music, which in turn helped me find the meanings for them. It was also rewarding to be able to read some of the signs whilst I was in Japan in May. I would guess that learning the kanji first is also just as rewarding.
Now that I can read kana I can begin to build up my vocabulary by reading books with furigana in them whilst learning the kanji using the heisig method. I’m finding the reading really fun and rewarding.
I guess it’s just down to personal preference but I wanted to get the kana done first so that I could at least write to my penpals using hiragana.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I taught myself katakana first as I knew I could test myself on my understanding by reading many of the advertisements and product names in Japan. However, I think that you are on to something by learning hiragana first - I wish I had done it that way
I haven’t even tackled Kanji yet.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Thanks for the quick answer Chris. I’m not saying that learning Kana first is wrong, but I think Khatz is trying to say that learning the Kanji first keeps you motivated. Because most people start with the easiest part, and when it get’s more and more difficult they’re more likely to quit.
He actually has a point there, and it’s something I do in every day life; do the difficult and unpleasant things first. The easy and pleasant stuff will come later. But if you already enjoy it so far, I don’t think learning the Kana first is a danger for you, but not everybody is the same.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Ramses - Thinking about it I do the same thing in daily life. Get the things out of the way first that are difficult or unpleasant. I’m not sure why I didn’t look at Japanese the same way. It does make sense. Maybe because I don’t see the kanji as unpleasant. Strangely, I find it fun…
Luckily I am really enjoying learning the kanji and I have a lot of other motivating factors to keep me going. I agree, for me it has really helped to learn the kana first, but for others it might not be the best option.
I guess the only thing to do is to try each method out. I certainly had a few stops and starts before I found a method I enjoyed.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Very nice post, I bought “Lets learn Hiragana”, “Lets Learn Katakana”, and Pimsleur audio lessons but I have yet to start learning. Your article as well as your blog in general (along with a few other similar blogs) have inspired me to stop procrastinating.
However, I don’t have a clue were to begin as far as a “learning schedule” goes. How did you manage your learning time with all your other daily things?
July 9th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I’d say my weakness when it comes to Japanese is reading and writing Kanji. Like most people who study the language, I’m sure I can read a lot more than I can write. When I studied back in the States, I was always hell-bent on becoming conversationally fluent and when I finally came to live in Japan, I was able to get by most of the time without English (it helped living in a small town). Anyway, long story short, I moved in with my girlfriend who didn’t speak English and spent a couple of years speaking Japanese about 90% of the time. Unfortunately, I didn’t progress as quickly with reading and writing as I did with listening and speaking. Admittedly, I neglected my Kanji studies quite a bit. So now, Japanese people often laugh at me when they see the discrpancy. It’s kind of embarrassing to be able to speak like an adult, yet read and write like a child. So, definitely don’t put kanji on the back-burner.
You’ve got the right idea; learn to read the kana and start with kanji. Forget romaji except for when you want to quickly look up a word in a dictionary and don’t have time to worry about keeping up your kana/kanji practice. I use my trusty Random House Japanese-English, English-Japanese Dictionary for this.
Anyway, keep it up!
Cheers!
July 9th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Hi Justin - I’m glad the article has inspired you! You’ve given me an idea for another article actually. I’ll write about my learning schedule and methods soon.
I try to immerse myself as much as possible in Japanese. I do an hour of revision before work in the morning and another hour at lunch during work. This either involves working through textbooks, revising kana/kanji in Anki or listening to the japanesepod101.com podcasts. During work I can listen to my iPod which is full of Japanese podcasts, music and j-dramas. I sometimes listen to it as soon as I wake up and as I’m falling asleep at night. In the evenings I either write on my blog, which can help refresh my memory when I’m writing about previous things I’ve learnt, or I watch some anime or a Japanese movie. I also have a 2 hour lesson with a tutor on Saturdays and we are working through “Japanese For Busy People”.
I can’t always keep this up though, but I don’t let myself feel bad for getting behind with it. If I do that I tend not to get started again! So I just gradually get myself back into a routine.
I basically try to fit in Japanese at every spare moment. I’m even thinking of having all 2042 kanji tattooed under my eyelids…. just kidding.
I hope that helps! If you have any other questions feel free to email me or comment again. Good luck!
July 9th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Cheers Billy, I find writing practice the hardest thing to keep motivated with. I’m well behind on my written homework for my tutor, but I’m gradually getting it done. I’m finding the Heisig method of learning kanji really effective so my motivation to keep going is high. It’s fun to make up my own stories to remember the kanji, however weird and twisted they may be
However, like pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to that’s learnt Japanese, I’m sure I’ll get to the “Kanji is hell” phase soon 
August 19th, 2008 at 3:14 am
When I first started out, I decided to focus only on comprehension and speaking. Forget about reading/writing. I figure that’s how infants learn, so why break with nature!
That said, I am starting to force myself to read more. As I’m increasing my vocab, I’m starting to recognize the re-used components of the word (that is, the kanji). Perhaps if I knew them better, I’d have an easier time picking up new words.
Writing isn’t as hard because I only need to recognize when a kanji has been auto-converted incorrectly. And the Mac Dictionary provides me with quick lookup for words that I don’t know. For me, I’m never going to hand-write a letter; I don’t even do that in English.