[ファブリス]

THanks guys, fixed the romaji 2 kana BB Code.

[ kana ] shi ji di dya dyu dyo [ /kana ] => [kana]shi ji di dya dyu dyo[/kana]

[ kana ] SHI JI DI DA DYU DYO [ /kana ] => [kana]SHI JI DI DA DYU DYO[/kana]

[ kana ] fa fi fe fo FA FI FE FO [ /kana ] => [kana]fa fi fe fo FA FI FE FO[/kana]

There are also a few special characters, including the Japanese quotes :

[ kana ] . , ? `HAHAHA' to itta [ /kana ] => [kana]. , ? `HAHAHA' to itta [/kana]

I personally have a hard time with kana. But that's because about 3 years ago when I took some basic Japanese classes we just didn't have that much time (3 months with just 2 classes a week to learn two alphabets is just too short). We only had enough time to learn hiragana.

I kinda know hiragana though I tend to confuse letters a lot (my university career has kept me really busy these past few years so I haven't been able to keep my Japanese all that fresh) and never learned katakana.

The way things are going I'm going to learn kanji before I ever learn kana. But don't take my .. unusual case as the rule.

Learning kana is not all that hard, but reading and writing it quickly is another thing. Try reading a japanese (kana) text aloud and compare to how fast you read in English. Even with lots of practice I'm still fairly slow.

sailornyanko: When I started taking Japanese in university, we were only given 1 week to learn hiragana, and another week for katakana. Our textbook was just a ancient reader from the early 70s that was entirely in kana/kanji.

The symbols aren't really that hard to learn with the right approach. I learned them all in a couple hours and then did a couple reviews when I had free time at my part time job (would just write down the complete syllabary then focus on any I couldn't remember or wrote wrong, then rewrite the syllabary again until everything was right).

What.

The kana is considerably easier than kanji. You could learn the kana alphabets in 3 days if you wanted to - just keep writing them out. Isn't that easier than writing out 2000+ kanji? That's not even humanly possible.

How the heck would anyone think learning kana is harder.

Bunch of loonies.

The only way I can conceive of kana being harder is for people who do no Japanese reading or writing. Since kana have no attached meaning, and no elements to make up a mnemonic as nice as with kanji, it is harder to retain unless you USE them. In my case I used them from the very beginning of my Japanese study and so required very little study time.

the other day I blanked on how to write "nu" in katakana.

（＊＿＊；）

Honestly, I still blank on ヌ　and メ relatively frequently. All the others I'm totally fine with, but those two, for some reason...

I think ぬ and ネ are also problematic. You just don't see 'em a whole lot.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I still confuse シ/ジ with ツ/ヅ and ソ with ン often enough to mention.

There was a really good post somewhere here about シ/ジ　ツ/ヅ

It was about how when you draw the katakana on top of the hiragana, the し　シ　and　つ　ツ follow the same lines..

There was a picture to illustrate it too.. I haven't had any trouble with them since!

when I was first learning sometimes I would switch up と　and ス

which at first I thought was really weird...after all, they are different sounds...and different character sets. But then I noticed that if you rotate one 180 degrees, the kinda match up. Sorta like students I have that confuse u and n

I used to have trouble with ナ　and メ　at first too...but one day I was at karaoke and someone sang a blink 182 song with a stretch of lyrics that went "na na na na na na na na...na na na na na na na na" so the katakana lyrics "ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　、ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ　ナ" were on the bottom of the screen, so the audio + the visual really made it stick in my brain.

I think I know that song or something similar to it! "naa naa naa naa, hang in there".. That's something that shouldn't exist.. ^^

You mean this image...

alantin Wrote:There was a really good post somewhere here about シ/ジ　ツ/ヅ

It was about how when you draw the katakana on top of the hiragana, the し　シ　and　つ　ツ follow the same lines..

There was a picture to illustrate it too.. I haven't had any trouble with them since!

That's all well and good, but when you're reading fast and the text is small, it's easy to misread characters, especially when they're that sirnilar. For example, l bet a lot of people won't immediately notice the two errors I've intentionally placed in this paragraph.

Of course, if I intently stared at every character as I read, I wouldn't make these mistakes.

Specifically, I was on this 漢字検定 problem and was coming up empty trying to think of a word pronounced うらじける:
自供をウラヅける凶器が見つかった。

Mighty_Matt Wrote:You mean this image...

Thats the one! ^_^

JimmySeal

Yeah. I know the problem but I think when one's Japanese ability gets closer to the English, that problem will disappear..
God knows, I have still have problems with some characters too! (probably more than you do..)

Text can be quite screwed up and still you can read it. I saw a great link on another forum the other day.

Spelling Is Not Important

What do you say about that? ^^
The same must go for japanese kana too..

@alantin

Hmm, I wonder if the same goes not just for the Kana but for the Kanji too.

esgrove Wrote:Kanji, 2,045.

Hiragan, 52. Katakana, 52. Some hiragana and katakana of the same sound also look the same. No letter is more than 4 strokes.

They don`t even compare.

I couldn't agree more.

Old thread and I quickly skimmed this...but

For learners, I think it's quite simple why people complain about kana:

It's usually the first barrier people encounter when studying Japanese. Also because of that, it will be a very common reason why people (who weren't very serious to begin with) quit Japanese, and then go and talk about how hard it is to read. But given that it's the first real barrier when learning, and quite a high hurdle (as far as becoming able to read quickly goes), people will always remember them as very difficult.

Indeed, big hurdle. I know people who have put off learning Japanese just because of kana. I give them a decent method for learning them and tell them it will take them 2 weeks at most. They start and get done in 1 week "This was way easy!". Of course, as soon as you give it a serious try, you realize just how easy it is.

Some people don't even know that there are kanji. So when they see 104 characters that they've never seen before it makes them think "maybe I should go study those formulas for my math class instead". I remember when I didn't even know kanji existed. I learned all of the kana then crapper myself when I found out that there were 1946 or so more I needed to learn lol.

sutebun Wrote:Old thread and I quickly skimmed this...but

For learners, I think it's quite simple why people complain about kana:

It's usually the first barrier people encounter when studying Japanese. Also because of that, it will be a very common reason why people (who weren't very serious to begin with) quit Japanese, and then go and talk about how hard it is to read. But given that it's the first real barrier when learning, and quite a high hurdle (as far as becoming able to read quickly goes), people will always remember them as very difficult.

Katakana still boggles me at moments and I finished RTK1. LOL. I thinks it's because they lack as much definition as hiragana, and are far less complicated than some kanji.

kazelee Wrote:Katakana still boggles me at moments and I finished RTK1. LOL. I thinks it's because they lack as much definition as hiragana, and are far less complicated than some kanji.

Same here. It is almost embarrassing lol. I was at a Sushi place last night where all of the main menu items were written in Katakana and I was sitting there getting stuck while thinking "I can read just about every darn Kanji in this place but I'm sitting here trying to remember if this is the 'Tsu' Kana or not."

To be honest i don't really have any problems with Hiragana/Katakana yes some katakana look very similar but i rarely have any problems distinguishing them as they are'nt really that hard to tell them apart in my opinion, although on the other hand i need to improve my reading speed with them but i'm sure this can be improved pretty easily with just some reading each day which i've gradually noticed i can read them faster than when i first started.

I'm going to just state my opinions here, but I think that learning katakana and hiragana and remember them well should take no longer than maybe 2 weekends, and that this thread seems like people worrying about / being concerned about something that isn't even an issue.

I learned both of these 8 years ago when I just downloaded a .GIF or .JPG chart of the characters, and wrote them on some flashcards I made up by myself using recipe cards. I managed to have these down pat in no time.

After that, for hiragana, I just read manga volumes outloud whether or not I understood them (I didn't), but you get faster at reading them, and it's really not that many characters.

These days, there are flash games online everywhere that do this for you (the flashcard thing).

For Katakana, I used to go on amazon.co.jp and things like that and practice reading them.

I've never once worried about not knowing these things, because all it takes is just to do one of these two things and you'll have the problem solved. As the original poster, I completely agree that having trouble with RTK1 and 3 kanji is something really worth focusing the concern on.

Just my thoughts!

I've forgotten how to write English letters before. I was in high school and had to write a cursive Z upper case on an essay. I could not remember how to do it. I do not remember any other occasion I have had to write it again. So of course I forget how to write some kana at times