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The Katakana are kicking my *** - Snesgamer - 2007-08-12
Especially with those lines with the dots on top, you know, the ones that look like happy faces? Those are killing me. Is there any easy way to remember and write these? It's the major barrier I'm facing trying to get through the 2 kana sets.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - wrightak - 2007-08-12
Heisig has also written a book called Remembering the Kana. I never used it myself but I've been told by a few people that it's outstanding. I assume that it covers both Hiragana and Katakana.
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kana-Reading-Japanese-Syllabaries/dp/0824831640/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/002-5036740-0786455?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186901066&sr=8-3
Also, flashcards are your friends with the kana. Why not use Anki or another flashcard program to help?
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Mighty_Matt - 2007-08-12
I remember this being a problem, but if you compare the hiragana and katakana it's not too hard to separate them. Perhaps this image will help you out (The hiragana is in black, and the hiragana in red).
![[Image: tsu-shi.jpg]](http://www.mattclaridge.com/images/tsu-shi.jpg)
Note how the two dashes in each katakana case follow the direction of the hiragana strokes.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Nukemarine - 2007-08-12
What hurt me in learning kana (and it will hurt me for a long time) is I learned them using picture relations like the Rabbit for Ra or Telephone Pole (Ma Bell) for Ma. Definately use Heisig's book as he approaches it in a better way that encourages not only recognition, but proper writing of the kana.
In fact, I found that revisiting the kana AFTER learning kanji is better as you approach them the way they should be. Best example is katakana for Ta, which I first learned as Tomahawk. Now that I know it means the kanji for evening, I have NO problem writing and recognizing it.
Basicly, get both Heisig's books on the kana.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Megaqwerty - 2007-08-12
And...somewhat coincidentally, a new version of Remembering the Kana was just released a month or two back. I learned the kana via rote over a two week period and that seemed to work just fine.
However, I must say that the first section of RtK Vol. 2, which covers the kanji that the kana were derived from, was lots of fun in hindsight: at the time, I thought it was stupid, but it's nice to say that this came from that.
So, yeah, katakana シ and ツ both follow the same motions as their hiragana equivalents. I differentiate ソ and ン by the fact that is <I>not</I> the same as シ, despite being in the same group.
If you choose to go by rote, then try Slime Adventure: it's pretty damn good for taking care of the シ、ツ、ン、ソ distinction.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Transtic - 2007-08-12
Yeah, ソンツシ can be a nasty combo if you don't
use some strategy to tell them apart.
As for me, I paid attention to 2 features of each kana's dashes, number, and direction
DIRECTION
NUMBER "vertical" "horizontal"
1 ソ so ン n
2 ツ tsu シ shi
So when I have a problem,
I just rehember the sequence "ソンツシ" (sontsushi)
as if it was a word, putting the kanas in the same order as they appear on the table above, and from the position in that "word" I remember the shape of the kana. It can be a bit confusing at first, but after a few times it becomes automatical.
Another strategy could be thinking of the characters as smiling faces,
the "vertical" ones are looking down, while the "horizontal" ones are looking right; the "1 dash" ones are a picture of a smiling face, but showing only the mouth and nose, while the "2 dash" ones are the same, but showing the eyes instead of the nose.
Of course, I know the dashes aren't perfectly "vertical" or "horizontal", but telling them apart that way helps me remembering them.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Kieron - 2007-08-12
For the katakana, I'd grab a set of flash cards and carry those around for a week or two as well as writing them down a lot. There's few enough of them that good ol' brute-force memorization works well. If you're using a book, I'd actually recommend one that goes in dictionary order (unlike Remembering the Kana), for the simple reason that you'll be using dictionaries plenty later on!
For シ and ツ, my trick was remembering the intonation of the sounds: shi is said with a rising tone, so it gets the large stroke angling up; tsu is descending, so its large stroke is drawn going down. This also helped me remember the so side of the ソ/ン pair, even if n is flat.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Megaqwerty - 2007-08-12
Transtic Wrote:Another strategy coul be thinking of the characters as smiling faces.Hah, I can't let that slide without posting this Uncyclopedia entry.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - aboros - 2007-08-12
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the second stroke of [kana]N[/kana] is written heading (N)orth, while the second stroke of [kana]SO[/kana] is written heading (SO)uth.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - craigvanaman - 2007-08-14
found this when I was researching stuff for a friend, thought it looked pretty good (and free): http://www.thefoxsear.com/kana.php
The Katakana are kicking my *** - RoboTact - 2007-09-02
I learned kana by Heisig's Remembering the Kana. It's as fast as advertised, though of course there's this eliminating the story stage during next few weeks. Page jumping system is ridiculous btw, in case someone can miss that.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - sailornyanko - 2007-09-02
I learned how to distinguish シ,ツ, ソ and ン by getting my butt kicked playing Slime adventure.
Learning made fun hahaha.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - Mighty_Matt - 2007-09-03
RoboTact Wrote:I learned kana by Heisig's Remembering the Kana. It's as fast as advertised, though of course there's this eliminating the story stage during next few weeks. Page jumping system is ridiculous btw, in case someone can miss that.I didn't mind the page jumping. It made it easier to look things up once you've gone through the whole book and just want a refresher on one (of course, if the book worked perfectly that wouldn't be needed!!)
It does take a while to loose the stories, but that's what gives me confidence when doing the kanji. I know the stories fell away for the kana so the kanji should be similar.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - dingomick - 2007-09-03
I find シ and ツ to be simple. I learned the kana on my own. For し I think of a girls hair, "she". Thus シ is visualized again as progressing downwards like hair. ツ can be remembered as tally marks: one, tsu, three!
My problem is being able to differentiate ソ and ン in sans serif writing, which more than two years later still causes me trouble... I can easily write them though.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - nilfisq - 2007-09-03
minasan,
the problem is often not how to recognize or write single katakana, but how to read them combined in a word. These web pages might be a good tool to practice reading katakana words. For each word the original (English) word is given. The pages are part of Waranwiki, an excellent online Japanese/Dutch and Dutch/Japanese developed by the University Of Leuven (Belgium).
ganbatte ne!
The Katakana are kicking my *** - eschatokyrios - 2008-01-15
Megaqwerty Wrote:Heh, I wrote most of that article! That was a long time ago, before I started actually learning Japanese and just had a passing familiarity with some of the kana. I realize now that I did screw up the distinction between small ッ and ツ proper. I still think the idea of Not that there's anything wrong with having characters that look like smilie faces - look at ?!Transtic Wrote:Another strategy coul be thinking of the characters as smiling faces.Hah, I can't let that slide without posting this Uncyclopedia entry.
My philosophy about those kana is that there are only 2 possibilities for each set, and if push comes to shove you can guess or figure it out from context. ン is also only permissable syllable-finally, so that helps some.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - wrightak - 2008-01-15
eschatokyrios Wrote:ン is also only permissable syllable-finally, so that helps some.Do you mean that ン only occurs as the last character in a word? If so then that's not true. マンゴ is one counter-example I can think of. It's true that ン cannot occur at the start of words though.
The Katakana are kicking my *** - rich_f - 2008-01-15
My favorite katakana word is ガソリン, just for the annoyance factor. (That, and a funny Sketchbook Full Colors 4-koma about it as the foreign student rails about the frustrations of learning katakana.) When it's handwritten, it can look indecipherable.
