So I am making progress. I am at lesson 16 in RTK1 and have noticed something. Some Kanji look like Kana.
CRAFT looks like E.
POWER looks like KA.
TEN looks like NA.
MOUTH looks like RO.
THOUSAND looks like CHI.
EIGHT looks like HA.
And so on.

My question is this. When do you know which is which in a reading? Maybe the question answers itself but I do not want to be confused. Maybe someone could give some insight on this matter. Thanks a bunch.

Wisher

Just make sure you know the differences and you shouldn't have much trouble.

八ハ Look at the second stroke on "はち".
千チ The middle stroke on chi.

Etcetera.

You know which is which when reading because they look different. Also, context.

If you go through "Remembering the Kana" or RTK2, you'll find that they're similar because the kana derived from a particular kanji.

When you get to doing reading and writing, you'll see it's not too hard to distinguish when you're looking at Kanji or the Kana. That's a bit down the road though.

Since the kana were derived from kanji, there are going to be some similarities. チ was taken from 千, タ was taken from 多, ハ was taken from 八. (Strangely enough, エ is actually derived from 江, and ロ was taken from 呂.)

十 is different from ナ, and 千 from チ.
For the others, it's unusual for katakana to stand alone, so if you find a lone 口 in a sentence, it's probably a mouth.

Edit: And if you find a sentence consisting of nothing but a bunch of 口s, your computer doesn't have Japanese text support. ._.

hknamida Wrote:Edit: And if you find a sentence consisting of nothing but a bunch of 口s, your computer doesn't have Japanese text support. ._.

And if you see a bunch of 口 on your screen that looks like drawings, it's Shift_JIS art!

And if you see the name of a band that's spelled □□□, it's pronounced "くちろろ."

口 vs. ロ can definitely be annoying. When I first saw 口コミ I was confused for a few minutes.

Context. Katakana is used in such special cases that there really isn't much chance for misunderstanding.

Am I the only one that is learning katakana only now, with the sentences, after doing the whole joyo?

I actually have more trouble with ヘ than with kanji-like katakana.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Am I the only one that is learning katakana only now, with the sentences, after doing the whole joyo?

Probably. Some even learn katakana before hiragana.

I learned hiragana, then katakana, then started on kanji. I've heard many times it's best to get away from romaji as soon as possible, so I did.

[ファブリス]

See Katakana history on Wikipedia. Katakana is difficult to remember how to write, but you could try to use the same approach as RtK for those that really bother you. I'm not sure the history of hiragan or katakana is of help for memorising though, I find it more confusing instead.

ファブリス Wrote:See Katakana history on Wikipedia. Katakana is difficult to remember how to write, but you could try to use the same approach as RtK for those that really bother you. I'm not sure the history of hiragan or katakana is of help for memorising though, I find it more confusing instead.

Remembering the Kana was like magic for me. I didn't really need the hiragana part, since I'd known those for a while, but the katakana part broke down some kind of barrier in my head. It's like, katakana isn't actually that hard, but I had to flip around how I thought about learning them before I could stop holding myself back.

Honestly, I think a lot of katakana's difficulty rep comes from people seeing ソ ン ツ and シ, then building it up in their heads.

Well, it was no trouble at all to learn the katakana. But I just could'nt care less about it.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Am I the only one that is learning katakana only now, with the sentences, after doing the whole joyo?

But, to answer your question, nope. I didn't bother learning a bit of katakana until I had already finished with RTK1.

I got really good with katakana when I started learning the kanji with my method. Since the onyomi sorted kanji list I used wrote them out as katakana.

I guess that shows that the answer to learning is lots of practice.

I learned hiragana first.
Katakana looked to intimidating to tackle, mainly because of what Mcjon01 said.

Strangely I had no trouble learning either hiragana or katakana. But I still have trouble with similar looking characters, esp. ソ vs ン and ツ vs シ. What came over them to invent characters like that I don't know.

Mind you English isn't free from homographs. Look at I vs l which look identical in sans serif fonts and 0 vs O which look identical in handwriting.

The worst Japanese homograph IMO is 一 vs ー. These look identical in handwriting and in small point fonts, although context will normally help you distinguish them easily. I can't remember the context but there was a sentence with an unfamiliar katakana word immediately followed by an unfamiliar kanji word, and in between was this line. Was it a ー ending the katakana word or a 一 starting off a kanji compound?

I can't say I've mistaken a kana for a kanji or vice versa even a single time in my few years of reading...

Then again I don't read much handwriting, but in that case the generally poor penmanship of most people becomes a larger issue. My girlfriend's か／が look like ロ.

Raichu Wrote:Strangely I had no trouble learning either hiragana or katakana. But I still have trouble with similar looking characters, esp. ソ vs ン and ツ vs シ.

Eh... ...those Kana are totally different - didn't even notice their similarities until you mentioned them.

The second stroke in ソ is a downstroke, while in ン, it is an upstroke.
Also, the positioning of the strokes are different: ソ is kind of top-heavy while ン is left-heavy.

Similar things can be said of ツ vs シ.

ツ = school roof radical
シ = water radical

ン = ice radical
ソ = horns radical

^_^