I've learned a lot of Spanish and French and English is my first language, So i'm looking for something entirely different.

First I started to Learn Finnish but now I believe i would like to learn Japanese.


So first, Should i completely memorize Hiragana and Katakana (Aswell as Kanji??)

Or should i use Romaji to learn vocabulary/grammar first and slowly learn Hiragana/Katakana as i go.

Do i need to Learn Kanji too or is that for later?



Also any tips on easy ways to learn and pickup things would be appreciated.



I don't mean to sound like one of the many who come to this subforum looking for an easy way to learn japanese. I assure you i have patience and am just asking which aspects of the language i should concentrate on first. I would like to be able to read/write/speak/understand the language at an intermediate level within a year.

Hello!

Well I can give you some advice. You learn very basic things in romaji WHILE you are learning hiragana. It's a long process of learning the hiragana and slowly weening yourself off romaji to write completely in hiragana. After you have learnt hiragana, you should start with katakana. Maybe learn one set of 5 a day. Remember to write them as much as possible. Also the stroke order is veeeeeeeeeeeeery important. So I suggest you see some flash site that can tell you the stroke order. Stroke order also helps your brain remember how the hira/kata/kanji look like so that you can effectively write them. I use game number 2001 for my nintendo ds lite (it's a kanji learning program but it also features hiragana and katakana, if you have a ds do get this, or the rom if you have a flash cart). if you can't get some kind of kanji software, like i said, find a free program which can show you stroke orders.

Okay continuing on. Let's say you learn はひふへほ(hi hi fu he ho) on Monday. Write each one repetitively (maybe 10 times each) on paper. And then Tuesday you maybe learn and write かきくけこ and also revise your はひふへほ. Better yet, when you learn basic japanese such as "my name is ___" and things like this, have a hiragana chart available for you to refer to if you forget how to write it. This makes good practice. Try to write hiragana everywhere you can.

Okay then once hiragana is done, move on to katakana. Note that katakana is mostly used on foreign words (words that do not originate from japan). It is slightly harder than hiragana IMO, but perseverance and you'll be fine.

My class learnt some basic language and hiragana and katakana over 6 months. We're in our 3rd term and learning Kanji now at a rate of 10 kanji per week.

If you like games, try play some japanese games and get more familiar with kanji and self teach yourself a few of them.
Or try installing japanese on your computer, if you don't have it, and setting it up as one of your keyboard inputs, and write a simple japanese sentence and get the hiragana to change into the kanji. (it generally changes it to the right one if you've written it properly).

But generally, teach yourself the hiragana, then follow by katakana, then once you have those mastered, introduce kanji into your writing.

Sorry I wrote alot XD I wub Japanese.

Thanks for the reply.


I have done A, Ka, Ga, Sa, Za and then their counterparts for e u i o, with the exception of Shi and Ji being slightly different.

So i can see what you have there is ka ki ku ke ko. I would do something like this and then do ga gi gu ge go. I don't know what they are called in japanese but there are the " which set them apart.


I'm glad you mentioned the stroke patterns, it looks like for the most part, horizontal strokes come first, then vertical strokes, and then any loops or hooks. But i will make sure to take a look at each one as i learn it. This flash tool looks very easy and helpful http://www.easyjapanese.org/write_hiragana.html.


So I suppose i should learn Hiragana, Then Katakana, Then start learning Vocabulary and grammar, and THEN Kanji?


This seems a lot like when I was learning music and learned with Sheet music instead of tabs, it took longer but i wasn't crutched in any way. I'll be sure to learn the hiragana forms of each word. I have a language learning program, but it's not very good for actually LEARNING, it's more of a dictionary than pronounces words too. I need to learn hiragana and katakana first before i use it.

This post was edited by Serdra on Jul 30 2009 11:36am

thats right
" is called tenten
the little circles like in ぽ(po) are called maru

all you need to learn is ka and know that the ga equivs are ka just with " on them
likewise with
s z
h b (p with maru)
t d

まみむめも
なにぬねの
らりるれろ
can be a bit tricky
はほま(ha ho ma)
さちき(sa chi ki)
るろ(ru ro)
めぬ(me nu)
われね(wa re ne)
those ones can get confusing so try to remember how each character is different!!!

when you get to katakana you'll need to do the same with the following
シツ(shi tsu they can be told apart by the direction of stroke tsu line from top, shi line from bot)
ソンノ (likewise with so and n so starts from top and n from bottom)
タヌ (they just look very similar)
マアム (similar too)

Alright well, thanks misamisa. I'll keep an eye out for the differences. I hope you don't mind if i PM you if i have a specific question in the future.

sure no problem
my japanese is kind of limited but i have/am being taught the basics

step one:

Learn Hiraganas and Katakanas. If you think it's too frustrating, you can just quit dreaming about learning this difficult language. (becoz after kanas, there are thousends of kanjis)

step two:

Learn to pronaunce. This is very difficult unless you are Finnish or Estonian native. (I'm finnish).
You say that your native language is english, so it will be hard to pronaunce even somehow nicely.

step three:

Go and buy some "learn Japaneses basics"- book from bookstore.

Step four:

It would be a HUGEEE plus if you could find someone who could also start learning japanese with you.

Step five:

Japanese is very hard language for many people because it is very different from any other western language. (expection: Finland, Estonia)
So in other words, you will have to work twice as much as I do..

Step six:

Start watching japanese tv-shows / anime. This will be useful. This way you will learn pronaunciation as well as some small phrases.



Good luck with this.. really fun language

And btw, the only way you could truly master this language is by moving to Japan (student exchange program maybe?)

This post was edited by greydoom on Jul 30 2009 02:55pm

oh, and everytime you come up with some problem, just post it here.

People are helpful here.

I was interested in suomi at one point as well but the pronunciation looks very difficult.


It's a very fun language to hear though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uedDNy1ERbQ

Pronaunciation system in Finnish and Japanese are the same.