Please try to be patient with me, as some of my questions may some 'newb-ish'...

I know I'm supposed to get my Hiragana and Katakana down before I start the Kanji...but I'm not sure what the point of studying either of these is...I'm using Tae Kim's Complete Guide for these. So, I memorize those charts she has, then what? Is there a book like RtK that's preferred to learn the Kana?

Thanks

The ‘point’ is to learn to read Japanese, since Japanese texts are mixed kanji and kana, or 漢字仮名交じり文. ^_^

I used and recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kana books. I spent 20-30 minutes a day for two weeks learning those. If you use those books + Anki or whatnot, you're golden.

Heisig made a Kana book too? I wasn't aware, thanks! I'll surely be purchasing that.

Edit: I noticed there are 3 editions...would you recommend all 3? I noticed a good few people don't recommend the 2nd or 3rd editions Remembering the Kanji, so I'm wondering if the same applies here. Thanks again.

Buy a beginners Japanese textbook.

dizdiz Wrote:Heisig made a Kana book too? I wasn't aware, thanks! I'll surely be purchasing that.

Edit: I noticed there are 3 editions...would you recommend all 3? I noticed a good few people don't recommend the 2nd or 3rd editions Remembering the Kanji, so I'm wondering if the same applies here. Thanks again.

If you Google “Remembering the Kana” I believe it's the third result. I mean oops, the first hit. It's a single book with both hiragana and katakana, I think.

We have a thread here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2152

And I believe there's shared Anki decks (with audio?).

Oh you're right, it's just one edition...sorry.

Thanks for the help. I take it after this, I move on to Remembering the Kanji, correct?

I hope you learn Hiragana and Katakana so you're not one of those people I hate in the YouTube comments saying, "kawaii," and shit like that in ローマ字. I hate it so much. SO MUCH.

dizdiz Wrote:Oh you're right, it's just one edition...sorry.

Thanks for the help. I take it after this, I move on to Remembering the Kanji, correct?

That's what I did. I liked that way because it familiarized me with Heisig's method somewhat before taking on the larger kanji project. If you SRS the kana cards with Anki, it would also get you used to using the SRS. Plus if you wanted to study other aspects of Japanese while you're learning the kanji, you could use the kana forms of words rather than relying on the hated ローマ字. Also, it's just nice to have those sections of Japanese text suddenly have ‘sound’.

dizdiz Wrote:I know I'm supposed to get my Hiragana and Katakana down before I start the Kanji...but I'm not sure what the point of studying either of these is...

Hiragana and katakana are a necessity in the same way that reading or writing in English is impossible without the alphabet, as unlike Chinese Japanese does not use solely kanji, but a mix of kanji, hiragana, and katakana.

A book isn't required to learn them, as it's really simply a case of just memorizing them. You'll encounter them constantly in Japanese so that as long as you're frequently reading or writing in the language forgetting them is impossible, just like an English speaker cannot possibly forget the letter 'A' since they come across it literally thousands of times on a daily basis.

Hiragana and katakana are usually set up in groups based on their pronunciation:
あいうえお a i u e o
かきくけこ ka ki ku ke ko
さしすせそ sa shi su se so
etc.

Just learn one group at a time (any kana chart will have it set up this way) and use flash cards to memorize them. Within a few weeks you should have them down pretty well, just make sure to do it daily.

nest0r Wrote:That's what I did. I liked that way because it familiarized me with Heisig's method somewhat before taking on the larger kanji project. If you SRS the kana cards with Anki, it would also get you used to using the SRS. Plus if you wanted to study other aspects of Japanese while you're learning the kanji, you could use the kana forms of words rather than relying on the hated ローマ字. Also, it's just nice to have those sections of Japanese text suddenly have ‘sound’.

OK then, but the SRSing the Kana with Anki part, I'm a bit lost on...I read the Overview of SRS on this site, and I know Anki is a flashcard program, but that's about all I know...are these two things something I can just pick up? Or is there a guide on using these together?

Aijin Wrote:Hiragana and katakana are a necessity in the same way that reading or writing in English is impossible without the alphabet, as unlike Chinese Japanese does not use solely kanji, but a mix of kanji, hiragana, and katakana.

A book isn't required to learn them, as it's really simply a case of just memorizing them. You'll encounter them constantly in Japanese so that as long as you're frequently reading or writing in the language forgetting them is impossible, just like an English speaker cannot possibly forget the letter 'A' since they come across it literally thousands of times on a daily basis.

Hiragana and katakana are usually set up in groups based on their pronunciation:
あいうえお a i u e o
かきくけこ ka ki ku ke ko
さしすせそ sa shi su se so
etc.

Just learn one group at a time (any kana chart will have it set up this way) and use flash cards to memorize them. Within a few weeks you should have them down pretty well, just make sure to do it daily.

Well, I already ordered the RtKana...is it really not necessary to buy it? I will be using RtKanji eventually, so I was going with nest0r's advice that it would help me become familiar with Heisig's method of learning...

Anki is very easy to figure out. Just put the hiragana on one side of the card, and the corresponding romaji on the other. For example:

Question: あ
Answer: a

As for the book, if you've already purchased it then surely you might as well use it, but no it's not necessary, there are very few hiragana and katakana compared to kanji, and since you encounter them constantly it's no sweat for people to remember them. The only students that have difficulty remembering hiragana/katakana are ones who don't study. It's really just a simple matter of memorizing them, and daily use of flash cards should be more than enough to learn them.

Aijin Wrote:Anki is very easy to figure out. Just put the hiragana on one side of the card, and the corresponding romaji on the other. For example:

Question: あ
Answer: a

As for the book, if you've already purchased it then surely you might as well use it, but no it's not necessary, there are very few hiragana and katakana compared to kanji, and since you encounter them constantly it's no sweat for people to remember them. The only students that have difficulty remembering hiragana/katakana are ones who don't study. It's really just a simple matter of memorizing them, and daily use of flash cards should be more than enough to learn them.

So how would you correlate it with SRS?

nest0r Wrote:I used and recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kana books. I spent 20-30 minutes a day for two weeks learning those. If you use those books + Anki or whatnot, you're golden.

I love how he has you fill in little boxes for when you start/stop lessons in order to prove his claim that you can do the whole thing in 3 hours.

Then again, you'll quickly learn that 3 hours is quite a long time if you're motivated and using time effectively (that's over 1000 reps!).

dizdiz Wrote:So how would you correlate it with SRS?

The book? Just create flash cards in Anki for each hiragana and katakana as you learn them.

Aijin Wrote:

dizdiz Wrote:So how would you correlate it with SRS?

The book? Just create flash cards in Anki for each hiragana and katakana as you learn them.

Thanks! I think I have one last thing I'm a bit foggy on...If SRS is studying via flashcards, then what's the point of using Anki?

overture2112 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I used and recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kana books. I spent 20-30 minutes a day for two weeks learning those. If you use those books + Anki or whatnot, you're golden.

I love how he has you fill in little boxes for when you start/stop lessons in order to prove his claim that you can do the whole thing in 3 hours.

Then again, you'll quickly learn that 3 hours is quite a long time if you're motivated and using time effectively (that's over 1000 reps!).

Yeah, I didn't go that far, but I appreciated the idea behind it. ;p

@dizdiz - Lots of people have learned the kana in different ways, but I think the fastest and easiest is Remembering the Kana. I said it took me two weeks at a few minutes per day, but you could easily learn them in a fraction of that time and stick them in the SRS to make sure you don't forget. I took my time when I did it, and this was before I discovered SRSing. ;p

Once you see the format of the book you'll get an idea of what kind of card you want. I believe Heisig has his own recommendations for flashcard styles. I would recommend having the English-style pronunciation (or audio) on the Question side, because the Answer should contain the target, i.e. what you're trying to learn, which is the kana. Doing it backwards is, well, backwards.

If you download Anki, under File->Download->Shared deck, when you click that it'll take you to the repository of shared decks. Just search for 'kana'. There's quite a few, but I think the Remembering the Kana deck or Kana with Sounds would be best, if you aren't making your own.

Anki = SRS = software to review and/or create/modify digital flashcards that are scheduled so that each time you grade a card as 'easy' or 'hard', etc., it spaces them out in different ways, so that you review sooner if it's hard, or it'll be spaced further away if it's 'easy'. So that each review is further and further apart, rather than just studying the same cards every day. This sounds counterintuitive but it's the most effective schedule (see: 'the spacing effect').

(Aside to myself) I think ideally a deck should have active recall cards w/ sound, animated gif of the kana being drawn, the typing option enabled, and perhaps the ローマ字 'hidden' just in case. That way you'd be getting the multisensory benefit (audio pronunciation plus visual aid for incorporating muscle memory during reviews with pencil/paper or stylus/sketchpad), and typing practice without having to explicitly rely on romaji.

Aijin Wrote:

dizdiz Wrote:So how would you correlate it with SRS?

The book? Just create flash cards in Anki for each hiragana and katakana as you learn them.

You can also add Heisig's story for the character and/or audio (there's some shared kana decks with audio, which makes this easier) to your cards.

nest0r Wrote:(Aside to myself) I think ideally a deck should have active recall cards w/ sound, animated gif of the kana being drawn, the typing option enabled, and perhaps the ローマ字 'hidden' just in case. That way you'd be getting the multisensory benefit (audio pronunciation plus visual aid for incorporating muscle memory during reviews with pencil/paper or stylus/sketchpad), and typing practice without having to explicitly rely on romaji.

Do you have a deck like this?

I'm with Aijin on this one. The kana is simple enough to memorize that a book is not really required. Study one group of 5 at a time, as Aijin suggests, write them down, practice recalling them, and practice reading words which are in kana. Pretty soon you'll know them all. For practice, I recommend http://www.realkana.com. The books "Let's Learn Hiragana" and "Let's Learn Katakana" by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura are good ones if you want to get books.

If I may generalize the disagreement, rather than a ‘book’ it is that some feel a ‘method’ is unnecessary to learn the kana. I happen to think the method is very minimal and vastly simplifies the process of learning the kana. My impression is that even if the total either way is relatively small compared to other areas of Japanese, it's better to take the shortest and easiest route by using a method that augments the process and eliminates overhead from the onset.

It seems that the suggestion is that not using Heisig's method for the kana and simply going with some sort of rote learning is superior. For me, learning the kana right away in a matter of hours with a systematic method is much better than making it a prolonged, fuzzy process of repeated exposure.

If I “knew then what I know now” the only thing I'd change would be the above description of the ideal deck, studying the kana using Heisig's method when first getting ready to review the new batch of cards (based on the way they're arranged in RtKana) and then cementing it with the SRS.

Edit: The other thing I'd change would be to, instead of spreading out the handful of hours across two weeks in a single brief lesson a day, followed by rote internalization (since I didn't know about SRSing then), I'd spend a few hours in one day or perhaps two days learning them before putting them in the SRS and eliminating the rote reinforcement.

I'd recommend the book/method also. No reason to learn it in the basic default grouping order like a lot of us did.

Heisig provides a very efficient order in his Remembering the Kana books, make use of it. You don't even need to buy the book, you can find just about all you need on a spreadsheet on this topic.

Edit: Actually, you might wanna check out Nukemarine's new video series here.

Daichi Wrote:I'd recommend the book/method also. No reason to learn it in the basic default grouping order like a lot of us did.

Ya there is. It's the "alphabetical" order stuff is put in (cept for really old stuff that is in IROHA order etc), so it's worth remembering.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:I'd recommend the book/method also. No reason to learn it in the basic default grouping order like a lot of us did.

Ya there is. It's the "alphabetical" order stuff is put in (cept for really old stuff that is in IROHA order etc), so it's worth remembering.

You don't need to learn it in that order, just the basic list, if you're referring to the あかさたなはまやらわん thingy? I remember that purely from Heisig mentioning it at the end of RtKana. I can't recall ever using it, though. Maybe I used it or something like it recently on the iPod Touch?

@Daichi - Oh yeah! Those look good. Props to Nukemarine. (Just checked out his Anki/Kana deck video. He pronounced “nihilist” as “nee-hill-ist”, hehe.)

nest0r Wrote:(Just checked out his Anki/Kana deck video. He pronounced “nihilist” as “nee-hill-ist”, hehe.)

I don't get it. That's how the word is pronounced, right?

mafried Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:(Just checked out his Anki/Kana deck video. He pronounced “nihilist” as “nee-hill-ist”, hehe.)

I don't get it. That's how the word is pronounced, right?

It's not a big deal, but I've never heard the ‘h’ pronounced. I've also mostly heard the first part as like ない rather than に, but I think that varies. It was mostly the way he enunciated it in an off-kilter way, it was funny because he was naming a site but was like "Yeah this site which is srjiweorijwe or whatever."