#Hiragana and Katakana Guide

[anielskaaniela]

3 Japanese Writing Systems: Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana

In this post , you will learn on 3 Japanese writing systems. Check out my japanese products [here]. The Japanese writing system is a fascinating and complex blend of different scripts that evolved over centuries. For anyone looking to learn Japanese, understanding these scripts is essential. This post delves into the intricacies of the Japanese writing system, exploring its history, structure,…

[windor-truffle]

is this a pun??? (aka Dolphin doesn't know how to read japanese)

ok i'm going to reveal myself now as an absolute monolingual ignoramus on a site full of people who fluently speak japanese but i think i might have accidentally taught myself something whilst translating the graces perfect guide and it's making me weirdly happy so allow me to be a language-acquiring toddler for a moment and overexplain what happened tonight:

so from the beginning of this translation project i was noticing some inconsistencies in how Google Translate approached the word used to describe Ephinea in relation to Fodra. "Star" is the english word it goes for the most, but sometimes satellite which seems more correct, and this bothered me because, well, Ephinea's not a star?? Not by scientific definitions anyway, I know this is a fantasy world but you can't live on a star, it's gas. But I chalked it up to odd translation quirks and moved on, until I accidentally got a few different translated lines thanks to part of the text being cut off the first time: "A satellite of the planet Fódlan" vs "Mamoru of Planet Fódlan" vs. "guard of the planet Fodlan." The original text is, I believe, エフィネア 【[ 文 明 ・ 文 化 】 惑星 フォ ドラの衛. Anyone who can read this probably can tell exactly where I'm going but I had to learn this so please be nice to me ;_;

The romaji caught my attention here because even with my limited knowledge I was like. wait a minute mamoru I know that word. A certain dumbass won't stop saying it. Is it possible that mamoru is somehow related to the word used to define Ephinea?? Is this a pun???? And upon some isolating of characters and a reference to JapanDict I learned 3 things:

The character 星 is the one google translate likes to define as "star."

The character 衛 is the one google translate told me was mamoru, and wouldn't translate it into "guard" until I allowed it to detect Chinese, so I assume that means it's kanji? (I'm sorry I know fuck all about reading in Japanese). By itself it didn't show up in JapanDict.

But you know what DID show up? 衛星, translated to satellite or moon. It seems the characters for "mamoru" and "star," when put together, become the word for the world of Ephinea, "satellite." The themes of the game are baked into the world itself ;_;

I had to stop myself here for a minute though because like I've said so much already, I don't know the first thing about how character based languages work. Maybe this isn't a big deal at all, maybe this is just equivalent to an ESL learner getting worked up about the morpheme "cat" existing inside the word "catastrophe" when the actual root and definition of that word has nothing to do with cats.

But the thing is, context matters??? If there was a story in which feline-based disasters were happening and it was being described as a catastrophe, that would almost certainly be intentional by the writers and immediately understood as a pun by fluent speakers, probably to their chagrin. But maybe to the ESL learner with juuuust enough knowledge to understand that there is a pun, it becomes immediately delightful.

Anyway, for now I'm gonna assume that this is intentional because it seems like there are many other words for "moon" or "satellite" in Japanese and they chose the one that uses 衛. Someone who actually knows anything feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'd really rather have my bubble burst but learn something than go around with false conclusions I made up because of confirmation bias and a foolish attempt at teaching myself a foreign language without any actual speakers around to consult.

But in conclusion,

[volfoss]

i think genuinely the proper nouns are the worst part of this whole massive project. its either like. the official english translations are inaccurate between material (i will NEVER not be a bit upset about lelie june's translations lol) or having to be the one to decide how to translate a certain thing INTO english. like i thankfully thought ahead to write the katakana down for each name i was unsure of but now i well. am going to have to pencil in a whole day to go and check what the kana actually mean and then make the decision of how to translate it. like obviously i could just take the kana at face value but sometimes it gets wonky. its a bit of a headache lol

[whywalkwhenyoucanride]

one month into studying japanese and i have now finished reading the first panel of one piece :)

[mochayoubi]

hello!! how are you? i'm reaching out to you because you're the one i keep seeing my dashboard that's related to japanese learning.

i wanted to ask: how do you suggest a beginner should start studying? like, they're N5, and they know hiragana and katakana, but do not know how to move forward from there because it scares them? (it's me, btw, hi hello how are you how are the kids)

thank you so much!! have a good day!!

omg hi!!! im doing ok (im sick rn but it's fine lol) thanks sm for the ask! :3

i think the best thing you can do for yourself is follow your curiosity! at the early stages of learning curiosity will take you much farther than trying to set hard deadlines for yourself - especially when it sounds like moving forward is a bit intimidating at the moment.

so, i'm going to list out things that might be worth checking out. it takes a while for people to figure out what works for them, and since you mentioned you already know hiragana/katakana you're primed to get out there and really explore your options! embrace the feeling of possibility rather than the fear of the unknown :D i say this bc if you get too caught up in making the "right" choice it might just make learning too stressful to want to continue

anyway here's some things that beginners commonly go for when continuing with japanese learning (under the readmore)

find a textbook and work through it there's a bunch out there, I know Genki I is probably the most well-known, but i'm also familiar with Tobira I, Yookoso, and Minna no Nihongo. textbooks are nice because they're literally designed for learners and offer structure to what order you learn kanji, grammar, etc. and come with lots of practice questions. the difficult part is self-teaching through them since they tend to assume youre also using it with a teacher who can correct you and give advice. however they're still pretty good as references imo! if you google "[textbook name] pdf" they're pretty likely to come up

find an app you can use daily there are also a lot of these, and many of them are designed to be used daily so you can better enforce the habit of studying japanese every day. these tend to be simpler and gamefied to make it more appealing and easier to pick up as well. i would just stay away from duolingo as i've heard their japanese curriculum is bad. some other ones i've heard are helpful are Renshuu and Human Japanese.

find an online guide and follow it by "online guide" i mean websites people have compiled of their own guides to learning japanese, such as Tae Kim. these are more accessible and unlike textbooks tend to assume that you are self-studying, so it's easier to follow independently, but usually don't have any practice questions or ways to test yourself. still good as a reference. you can also check out this website that specifies their philosophy on what makes effective japanese learning and what steps to take as a beginner (imo it's very. long. and winds on for a while. but people have said it helps!)

download and use anki anki is an app (both phone and pc) that uses flashcards and that many learners use to retain vocab. their site has decks other people have created, and you can find decks of "core vocab" for example which has flashcards of common japanese vocab. you can also create your own flashcards of words you encounter in the wild to help practice them even after you've read it. i think anki is super useful, but i would probably suggest using it once you have more of a grasp on basic japanese concepts or else you'll just be rote-memorizing things that don't make sense to you yet. but i'm putting it here in case this appeals to you!

take a class or find an online tutor now this one will most likely cost you money, but it offers the most structure and guidance possible which can be extremely helpful starting out since you're able to ask questions and get feedback. you can look into nearby universities who might offer japanese classes, or you can try one of the many language-learning tutor websites out there. i've had some decent success with italki, and there's also JOI (japanese online institute) that i've heard is very helpful too.

watch japanese-learning videos these can be nice bc you can actually hear the japanese and how it's supposed to sound, and it's typically lower effort and easier to get into than actively starting a textbook or class. miku real japanese, japarrot, and 日本語の森 are channels i've watched before and like, but there's plenty others out there too. i'd just steer away from clickbait-y looking ones like "i learned japanese in 30 days and here's how!!" since they tend to not be that helpful.

read simple stories in japanese reading in japanese tends to be the most intimidating step for people, but there's sites that have stories made for beginners that are easy to follow and only use hiragana/katakana. my go-to for my students is usually tadoku since the stories are short, organized by level, and very beginner friendly. a while ago someone showed me natively which lets you look up japanese books, also by level. if you want some good beginner manga, yotsuba and teasing master takagi-san are what i've recommended before

misc. things you can try!

watch anime but intentionally - try to actively listen and pick up on words they say. a long time ago i used animelon, which puts japanese subtitles that you can adjust to show hiragana only

look up jlpt n5/n4 specific materials. they're geared for an exam so it might not be the most natural feeling, but they do tend to be convenient for lists of vocab and grammar. this website has some helpful resources for that

add an extension on your browser that will let you hover over japanese words and see its definition. i use firefox and have 10ten reader to do this, but rikaikun and yomichan are also similar extensions

when you learn the japanese word for something in your house, put a sticky note on it that has the japanse word. like, for "table" you can put a note on it that says 「テーブル」. i heard this can help with retention (i haven't done it myself tbf)

EDIT: ohh i can't believe i forgot this. but join a japanese-learning community! there's discord servers out there, and if you have a friend willing to study with you you can ask them to be your accountability buddy.

anyway, i know that was a lot but i hope that gives you some direction on where you'd like to go next in your japanese learning journey! ^_^ and again, absolutely no pressure to do all of these. the most important thing is letting curiosity be your guide and fostering a positive relationship with learning japanese rather than being afraid. if i can help out some more lmk!!

[princessbutler1316]

O!Ciel's Real Name Theory

So, where do I start? First we may have some clues, here and there.

But I will start first with Yana's name, we all know that's a pseudonym, so a Brief description of how the Japanese letter system works, it has three types: Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana

Katakana and Hiragana are basically the same, but one is used to foreign language and the other Japanese language

Kanji is composed of ideograms where each one represents a concrete or abstract idea. Also they can have more than one meaning

枢- toboso

やな- ya na

Let's forget about the Yana and focus in the surname, 枢, when you search on a Japanese name site (I'm also an author and these sites are my salvation), one of the pronunciation is this:

The constellation is composed of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major;

Not only are the stars in the Big Dipper easily found themselves, they may also be used as guides to other stars outside of the asterism. Thus it is often the starting point for introducing Northern Hemisphere beginners to the night sky:

Polaris, the North Star (seems familiar?), is found by imagining a line from Merak (β) to Dubhe (α) and then extending it for five times the distance between the two Pointers. Extending a line from Megrez (δ) to Phecda (γ), on the inside of the bowl, leads to Regulus (α Leonis) and Alphard (α Hydrae).

BUT THE STAR THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION WAS THIS ONE:

By following the curve of the handle from Alioth (ε) to Mizar (ζ) to Alkaid (η), one reaches Arcturus (α Boötis) and Spica (α Virginis). A mnemonic for this is "Arc to Arcturus then speed (or spike) to Spica."

Why was this the only star that caught my attention?

No specific reason the name sounded good to me.

Jokes apart after some research, I'm positive this is O!Ciel real name:

ARCTURUS PHANTOMHIVE

Or Arturo Phantomhive, since u know, French names

But if you ask, do I have more proof or evidence?

HELL YES

Evidence 1

Firstly, let's go back a little and talk a little about colors, starting with Weston High School, which, as everyone knows, is an improved version of Harry Potter but without magic.

The only house that was not represented was Hufflepuff, which has the main color: yellow.

Instead we have Violet Wolf which is represented by the color violet/purple

What does it have to do with it?

They are complementary colors in the spectrum of colors, any painter or artist knows that

This was also applied to the Green Witch Arc, which in this case was used to replace Little Red Riding Hood

So, what else does this have to do with it?

Well, Arcturus is an ORANGE star

While Sirius is a BLUE star

Yes, the two are complementary colors also the fact O!Ciel is always using Blue...

Evidence 2

I'm not going to deny this one but it's kind of stupid, but it could still be relevant

Did you notice that the name Ciel Phantomhive has the same initials as his grandmother?

C.P.

Well, if the name Arcturus Phantomhive has the same initials as if Madame Red had married Vincent

A.P.

And all the evidence points to O!Ciel being closer to his mother than his father…

You understand what I meant

[genoskissors]

Guide to Understanding Genocider’s Many Names

Genocide Jack has many names and it can be hard to understand why so many people use different ones or spell them differently, so I attempted to make a guide that is as comprehensible as possible.

Something to know before hand

Kanji: More complicated, such as 翔

Hiragana: Simple and smooth, such as しょう

Katakana: Simple and sharp, such as ショウ

Let’s get the “Genocide” part out of the way

This part of her name is written in katakana, (ジェノサイダー) and you’ll notice the line at the end. This means the sound is extended, so instead of “da” it’s “dā”. Japanese doesn’t have an “er” so this is used instead, since they sound similar. Her official title is Genocider. The localization simply switched this is be Genocide. I’m not sure why, maybe since Genocider isn’t actually a word, but that’s just my best guess.

Syo VS Sho

Here’s where it get complicated.

In order to make sounds like “kyo”, “bya”, or “ju”, two hiragana are need. First, a character ending in i, such as ki, bi, or ji, characters pronounced like ka or bu cannot be used. Second, one of the three y’s (ya, yo, or yu) in a smaller form.

The character “ki” (き), combined with “yo” (よ), would make “kiyo”. But if the “yo” is written smaller (よ→ょ) then the “i” from the first hiragana is replaced by it. So since きよ is Kiyo, きょ is Kyo. Same for “bya”. びや is Biya, so びゃ is Bya.

Now, we have our “exceptions”, shi (し) and ji (じ). You’ll notice they look very similar, which is why they are both “exceptions”. For “ji” (じ) and “yu”, (ゆ) rather than jyu it’s just ju (じゅ). It’s different since in the case of kyo and ko, it’s a whole other sound, but jyu and ju are pronounced the same, so the y isn’t needed.

But in all my examples, you’ll notice the first hiragana is two letters, which is why it gets tricky for “shi”. Like jyu, shyo is unnecessary, however, h and y are pronounced the same here, so you can remove either one and get the same sound.

Quick Note: I used “kyo”, “bya”, and “ju” as examples since there are Danganronpa characters with those in their names, but, just to clarify, they aren’t the only combinations possible.

The reason I put exceptions in quotes is because this is romanization, there is no rule book saying you must write it this way. While Sho is the most common way to write this, it doesn’t mean Syo is wrong. In fact, the games themselves use this.

However, they also use Sho.

So, really, both are correct.

Syou VS Syo / Shou Vs Sho

> I’ll be calling her Sho/Shou here for convenience.

翔 should be spelt with a “u”, since it’s しょ“sho” then う “u”, so “shou”. Still, a lot of times the u is excluded because it doesn’t sound too different in English. English speakers pronounce “Shuuichi” and “Shuichi” the same, so I suppose the u is unnecessary. You’ll find this is common in a lot of different translations. Even Japanese media that use the alphabet, like the pictures above, will sometimes leave out the u, if following an o or another u.

Jack & Jill

These are just the titles that are strictly English. Since the whole thing about Syo in the beginning was that she’s a serial killer, society will assume it’s a man, so the public will give her a masculine name. In English, people will hear Sho and see it’s foreign, so there’s no gender association. I think it was changed that way so we’d see it as masculine. While I think they should’ve kept her Japanese name like everyone else in the game, I cannot deny how easily Genocide Jack rolls off the tongue.

Overall

All the names work, use whatever you want.

I hope this made sense to at least one person. If it doesn’t, feel free to ask for further clarification!

[lauralearns]

Notes on ひらがな 📚✨️

Disclaimer: I haven't been posting a lot lately (life's been hectic) so I decided to start sharing some of my notes. These were taken a while back, based on Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Japanese consists of two phonetic scripts (Hiragana and Katakana, referred to as kana), with a little less than 50 characters each. Today we'll study Hiragana!

Hiragana (ひらがな) is used for a couple of reasons:

• Grammatical purposes;

• Words with really difficult/rare Kanji;

• Colloquial expressions;

• Onomatopoeias;

• Or by beginner students and children, in place of unfamiliar Kanji;

Every character in Hiragana corresponds to a [vowel] or [consonant + vowel] syllable sound, with the exception of [ん].

When practicing by hand, it's extremely important to remember that stroke order and the direction of strokes matter a lot! You don’t want to end up with the writing skills of a clumsy toddler.

(the chart bellow has hiragana and katakana btw, the hiragana characters are on the left side)

source: r/japaneseresources on reddit

Thought learning all the characters was hard enough? Fear not, there's additional sounds for you to learn.

📚 The Muddied Sounds 📚

There are five more consonant sounds that are written by affixing two tiny lines (dakuten) or a tiny circle (handakuten) to a character. This creates a less clipped version of the consonants, as you can see bellow:

source: japanistry.com

📚 The Small [や], [ゆ] and [よ] 📚

We can combine a consonant with a / ya / yu / yo sound by attaching a small [や], [ゆ] or [よ] to the /i/ vowel character of each consonant.

source: guidetojapanese.org

📚 The Small [つ] 📚

A small [つ] is inserted between characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first.

Note that when you encounter a small [つ] between characters, there's almost always a clipping sound to the pronounciation! You gotta make sure to clip the right consonant (the consonant of the second character).

Example: ざっし (zas-shi / magazine)

📚 The Long Vowel Sound 📚

You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding [あ], [い] or [う] to them. See the chart bellow:

source: guidetojapanese.org

Example: to create a extended vowel sound from [か], we add a [あ] to create [かあ].

Remember to actually hold your vowels long enough, or you'll end up saying stuff like [ここ - here] instead of [こうこう - highschool].

Lastly, there are a few exceptions where and /e/ vowel is extended by adding [え] or and /o/ vowel is extended by adding [お], but those are few and far between, so pay attention but don't worry too much about it.

Example: おねえさん (older sister)

See you next time! 💌

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

The different versions of "Yuri"

There are two versions of the Japanese name "Yuri" and I wrote a short guide how to distinguish them:

The female Yuri (百合) translates as "lily". It's a fairly common name in Japan. In Japan, white lilies haven been symbolising the beauty and purity in women for centuries, and because of this it eventually became the term to describe sapphic fiction, especially in manga and anime.

The male 勇利 is fairly different in meaning and writing. The first kanji 利 ("yuu") translates as courage, the second one 利 ("ri") as advantage--attributes that traditionally haven been associated with men and match Yuuri's personality nicely. Likewise, many female names are derived from terms that describe beauty, gentleness, and other traditional "female" virtues, and not only in Japanese culture but also other cultures (thanks for nothing, patriarchy).

Yes, you read that right: the creators didn't give Yuuri a woman's name.

The pronunciation for each name is different as well. Whereas 百合 has a short first vowel, the first vowel in 勇利 is drawn out. This becomes obvious when both names are written in hiragana:

百合 -> ゆり (yu-ri)

勇利 -> ゆうり(yu-u-ri)

That's why "Yuuri" has established itself as the preferred spelling of our beloved katsudon's name in the fandom. (Another valid spelling would be Yūri.)

In katakana, these names are:

ユリ

ユーリ

The second one looks familiar, right?

To sum this up, we have

勇利 ≠ 百合

and in romaji:

Yuuri ≠ Yuri

With this in mind, watching the show with English subs becomes a bit jarring, especially as you can hear the characters drawing out the first vowel in "Yuuri".

There are a few more combinations of kanji forming both names, with different meanings. If you're interested in that, you can look them up on Wikipedia.

Bonus: What about Yurio's given name?

The Russian (male) name Yuri (Юрий) derives from the Old Greek Georgios (Γεώργιος), which means farmer, or literally, "he who works the earth". Yuri and its variants are popular in Slavic countries, while in Western Europe and English-speaking countries worldwide Georg/George is more common.

So, yeah, we have three different "Yuris" with different meanings and spellings.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk! Hope this helps!

[seitokaisnihongo]

The Entirety of Japanese, Lesson #1

AKA - I'm sorry, you do have to learn all three scripts.

Welcome to our first lesson! Today, we are going to learn how to read Japanese.

Sort of.

See, it's not something you can learn in one day, or one lesson. Learning a language is a gradual process that doesn't cement until you start *using* it.

So we will go over the basics, both the WHY three scripts and the HOW to learn all three over time, and then provide 10+ FREE resources from all over the internet for you to practice with!

Let's go!

Why All Three Scripts?

Short answer: because I said so.

Kidding.

The Japanese language has no spaces in it. Unlike English where there is a space between each word, Japanese sentences look like this:

スモモも桃も桃のうち

All three scripts are in this sentence. It translates to "plums and peaches are both like peaches". An odd sentence, but here's why I chose it...

When you write it in *just* Hiragana (the basic, "first" phonetic script), it looks like this:

すもももももももものうち

Yikes. So many も, with no way to tell apart the multiple words in the も train.

So... how can you tell similar words apart when written out?

Wait, let's look back a bit. Can you tell where different words are in the sentence before? Yes. Even without being taught *anything* about the Japanese language, you can tell where different words start just by looking at it.

By writing in multiple scripts, you can tell similar words apart.

Okay... But How Do I Learn Them?

There's quite a few ways to learn them. In fact, on Thursday we will be publishing community responses from our Discord detailing how THEY learned the scripts.

But for now, here is the two first scripts you'll learn in their entirety, thanks to Coto Japanese Acamedy

You'll learn these first for three reasons:

First, they are easier.

Second, you can spell any word in Japanese with these two scripts. Not a hard and fast rule, but Hiragana is used for native Japanese words and Katakana is usually used for international loan words, emphasis, names, and 'sound effect words', aka onomatopoeia.

Third, you'll see Hiragana above Kanji (the difficult one) that tells you how to pronounce Kanji.

As far as actually learning them, you *could* just write them down over and over.

Writing is super important when learning Japanese.

But it might be easier to start with some apps, games, and videos where you can learn the characters both in context AND within words.

Here's our favorite FREE resources:

Duolingo (Website, Android, and Apple) is great for learning singular words and Hiragana / Katakana, however explanations of grammar is limited to desktop. Still, PERFECT for the beginning stages regardless of device.

Bunpo is another free app for learning Japanese!

JapanesePod101's videos on Hiragana and Katakana over on Youtube are fantastic for hearing natural speach.

Tofugu's Hiragana and Katakana blog posts have the * best * mnemomics, with sound bites.

Busuu's (Website, Android, Apple) Japanese course starts off with Hiragana words to get you speaking immediately.

Kana (Apple, Android) is a free app dedicated to JUST Hiragana and Katakana.

Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese is the holy grail for new Japanese learners. Of course, it has a no-frills explanations of all three scripts.

Japanese Ammo with Misa has detailed lessons on everything, including Kana.

Here's a video on the difference between printed and written Hiragana fonts.

And finally... our discord server.

Wait... what about Kanji?

Well, the problem is there's a lot to learn. A LOT.

You'll be learning them over the course of yearssssssss. But that's fine; you can tune into our lessons to learn them.

Join right here to practice what you learn! You'll also gain access to new friends learning the same language AND more free resources.

We can't wait to see you there!

[notayamichan]

🌟 Learning Japanese 🇯🇵

🔔　あたしのガイドは、人が英語を話す向けー　(⁠◔⁠‿⁠◔⁠)

The following guide is based on my personal experience. I am not an authority on the matter and I am still barely a beginner regarding Japanese.

What am I doing?

Learning languages seems non-lienar and that's partly true (at an intermediate level). But, when you're first starting out, there's generally clear goals to work toward.

Your Beginner Goals

Study and master kana

Japanese employs hiragana and katakana in conjunction with kanji. Together, hiragana and katakana make up kana.

Learn the kana (hiragana and katakana)

Learn the difference between kunyomi and onyomi (kanji)

Delve into grammar and establish some foundational vocab

Immerse yourself with input content (movies, shows, etc)

Study and practice a basic form of "pitch accent"

Continue developing your vocab and particle knowledge

Learn about polite versus casual talk and social culture

Use the language (letters, blog, diary, etc)

Seek conversations to apply the language properly

Find and study tests like JLPT to gauge your progress

What can I use?

Duolingo

If this was your first pick, you're naive but not foolish. It'll teach you enough to get help if you're lost in Japan. But it won't be enough to hold a conversation. Give it a try and see if it works for you. Duolingo is free.

I recommend using Duolingo as a supplementary learning tool rather than your primary learning tool

Textbooks and Guides

Many learners and even classes praise numerous textbooks. I for one received a recommendation for Tae Kim's Japanese Guide. So, I'll recommend it to you. Don't be afraid to see out other guides or attempt some textbooks. However, one should always remember that the textbook is NOT demonstrative of naturalistic Japanese.

For example, 「私は猫が好きです」 is what a textbook correctly teaches, though 「猫好きだよ」 is acceptable and more natural in casual Japanese

Building vocabulary

If you want to develop your vocabulary, you can use JLPT anki decks. Anki is a flashcard program for desktop and mobile. You can also use anki in conjunction with a dictionary like Jisho to create new flashcards decks (suited to the words you'd like to learn). You may also pick up vocab from Japanese media (i.e, anime, manga, books, content creators, music, etc).

If you're using Jisho and want to find a word you only know in English, search for it using quotation marks. For example, "school" or, if you want a verb "to learn" ~ it should help. You can spell out Japanese words normally by just typing... i.e, watashi.

Good input versus Bad input

Immersing yourself in Japanese media and culture is good but you need to be mindful of the content you're consuming— take note of the context behind events, interactions, or the relationship of speakers. Be especially mindful of anime and manga— both are known to use hyperbolic language or phrases that aren't commonly used in day to day conversation. Fortunately, some anime and manga do use everyday language, and you can usually find lists.

I recommend using the Tofugu blog to learn about both Japanese language and culture. But if you don't like reading, there are many YT channels like Kaname Naito and NihongoDekita with Sayaka. For general immersion though, here's a sweet vlog channel, a JP Warframe creator, and a natural born otaku.

[moss-sama-sideblog]

Hello Hello!

I've been seeing a few posts about people not knowing what to do after doing hiragana, katakana and some kanji, so I'm going to give some of the things that gave me a guideline to work with!

First off is Tofugu!

Tofugu has a lot of resources and even their own podcast you can listen to, where they talk about experiences (like the jet program), along with words and grammar, when to use them and what to use instead!

But what I'm focusing on is their ridiculously detailed guide to learning japanese! go have a read if your struggling! like they say "raise the floor before you raise the roof!"

Next is Renshuu!

Renshuu has decks you can choose from, be it genki vocab to grammar or N5 and up! they do have decks they recommend at the beginning like Japanese basics which they call N6. (don't be like me and skip it if your a beginner. I went straight to N5 but I'm struggling with the grammar since they are using words i skipped.)

They also have a leveling system where you can evolve your own renshuu for every few levels you've passed! there are also crosswords, mini games and more to make learning japanese more enjoyable!

If anyone has other things they want to add feel free to do so!

[solradguy]

Do you think one could attain decent-ish ability to read Japanese just by studying kanji? Specifically asking because the kanji learnin' service "wanikani" is the single Japanese resource that works best with my brain, but then there are separate resources for grammar and vocab and and and.....

You will get REAAAALLLLLYYY far knowing only the kanji but you're going to have to know hiragana and katakana at some point too. Tofugu, the company that did Wanikani, has two mnemonics-based guides for the kana that are basically Wanikani Lite. They're how I learned the kana and I swear by them.

Here's hiragana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/

And katakana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/

Hiragana are especially vital to learning kanji; you won't be able to use 99% of Japanese-English dictionaries without them. BUT they're pretty easy and the rules for using them are consistent. You won't have to remember any irregular exceptions for any of them.

I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard really good things about the Crystal Hunters manga series as a fun/low stress way to learning Japanese vocab and grammar. It eases the reader into new concepts and then repeats them throughout the chapter so you remember them. There are free vocab and study guides/lists for each chapter too. Might be worth checking out once you get some kanji and the kana under your belt? The first book is also free.

Official site: https://crystalhuntersmanga.com/

Good luck!!

[bang-bang-gang]

my recs for learning japanese (for complete beginners):

tofugu’s hiragana and katakana guide, teaches you the kana with mnemonics. do this one first, depending on your speed it will take a few hours to a few days. free

wanikani, teaches you kanji and vocab with mnemonics and SRS. free for the first 3 levels, which will take you several weeks to months to get through

anki, SRS-based flashcards program. you can download the full wanikani deck with it lol. free

benkyo, a dictionary and flashcards app. useful for making lists to save kanji to. free, unless you wanna do unlimited quizzes (which you should be using wanikani or anki for anyway)

genki, japanese grammar textbook and workbook. free on the internet archive

[mochimochi-learn-japanese]

Hiragana Full Chart - Japanese Alphabet for beginners

Hiragana is the most fundamental Japanese alphabet, representing the 46 primary sounds used in Japanese. Learn Hiragana will helps you understand how to pronounce Japanese, grammar structure and word using...

If you want to master Hiragana in just one week, don't miss out this website!

[tanuki-02]

Progress Report

For 09.16.23 to 07.08.24

I plan on doing these progress reports weekly. Perhaps with the occasional post in between if I feel like I have some huge improvement within that day.

But for this first progrep, I'll try to detail as much as possible my learning from the day I started until now as I write this post.

For a little more info, I'm a 2nd year university student who is already fluent in 2 languages. I'd say my strong point is memorization which is incredibly helpful.

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— GOAL

Initially, I wanted to learn Japanese because of manga. Yes, I know fanlations exist and I can go buy physical English copies. However, English versions are waaaay more expensive and a lot of the manga I read have very slow fanlations or they've stopped translating it completely.

This brings me to my next point; I wanted to learn how to READ Japanese first and foremost. I hardly cared about other skills (but now I do understand their importance to the holistic learning of it all).

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— September '23 to November '23

I went into this language learning journey blindly. I had no idea where to start. But all I knew was that: 1.) Du*lingo is not your best option, 2.) DON'T use romaji to learn, 3.) Start kanji as early as you can. Looking back on it, I feel like these 3 points are important and I still do believe them now.

So, I went ahead and learned hiragana and katakana in less than 2 days. It was quite easy (although, katakana still does make my head spin sometimes).

After that, I went ahead and started with vocabs and kanji. Basically, I searched up vocab & kanji lists for the N5 level. After I found some good practice/list PDFs, I printed them out and used them as my main study material.

What I would do is to memorize them on my own accord (reading over and over again then, checking if I remember—rinse and repeat). I would say this worked out well for the first couple of months. The N5 lists had around 800 vocabs and 60 kanji which were pretty easy to memorize. I had this down in about a month. The following N4 lists had around an additional 800 vocab and 120 kanji. This one took me 2 months, but I'd say the mastery isn't as great as the N5.

With that in mind and the additional 4000 vocabs and 300 kanji that N3 offered, I started to doubt my method. It was then that I really began to search the web of an efficient way to learn this language.

It was then I discovered TheMoeWay and Anki.

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— December '23 to June '24

Plenty of people recommended TheMoeWay, so I had to check it out. It has a guide for the first 30 days of learning, but I ignored that because I was way past 30 days at this point. I read everything else and learned about spaced repetition systems (SRS); that's basically what Anki is.

It recommends to start with the N5 Tango Deck first and I did that. I began on December 6, 2023 and finished it on March 28, 2023. To consider it finished, all cards should be matured.

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This deck was VERY easy for me at this point because the prior months of inefficient reviewing that I did. If I'm not mistaken, I did about 100 cards per day which explains why I was so fast.

I had to move on to N4 Tango Deck once I ran out of "New" cards in the first deck. So, at some point, I was doing both decks simultaneously. I began this one on January 17, 2024 and finished it on June 15, 2024.

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Admittedly, this deck was a lot tougher than the last one for me at the time. I had to lower the daily card count to 50 (which is still a lot). But I can say after finishing both tango decks—vocabulary, kanji retention, and grammar—all improve drastically. These two decks are super duper helpful in the beginning and I would totally recommend them.

After accomplishing both decks, TheMoeWay says for you to create a mining deck of your own. So, as I was about to go through the N4 Tango Deck, I was deliberating whether or not I'd go through with what is recommended or go for something else.

I think making a mining deck would boost your skill by a huge margin, but I opted for the Core 2k/6k Japanese Vocabulary Deck which I learned from Livakivi on YouTube.

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— Current; July '24

I decided to take on the Core 2k/6k while I was doing the N4 Tango (This also explains why I did fewer cards 'cuz I was trying to balance both). I started this one on January 14, 2024 and I'm still getting through it little by little. By that I mean I'm not even halfway done haha.

This is what my progress looks like so far:

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I'm doing 20 new cards per day while it's still summer break from university. Although, I'll definitely have to lower it once the semester starts. Maybe I'll go back to 10 or something.

Anyway, I found that by doing this, my retention for words and how they are spelled in hiragana have improved so much. Sometimes I can easily read random sentences on Japanese websites or books. Moreover, after doing this for some time, I found that my reading got a lot better (duh, you know more words). I can easily pass the N5 and N4 tests on the official JLPT website. The N3 tests... not so much just yet.

This brings me to my next point: I am lacking in grammar and reading comprehension. To remedy this, I've tried immersing a bit through reading news on NHK or random stories on Tadoku Graded Readers (honestly, boring, but I have to). I tried reading manga, but I'd skip so many speech bubbles that it made no sense anyway.

At the moment, I'm doing an Anki deck related to grammar, another one based on Tae Kim's guide, and a third one for listening comprehension (because my listening skills are also doodoo).

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TL;DR

I'd say I'm around the higher N4 level or maybe a very low N3. For my level, I'd say I'm pretty good at reading... everything else not so much. I barely do output so writing and speaking are non-existent skills for me and listening is something I only started now.