Lol why am I so slow/bad at reading katakana?

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somstuff Member
Registered: 2012-06-18 Posts: 65

I know all the katakana of course, but for some reason I'm really slow at reading/recalling it. Anyone have any tips on how to improve this?

"Just reading more katakana" doesn't really seem to be working X|

amtrack Member
Registered: 2012-12-23 Posts: 74

somstuff wrote:

I know all the katakana of course, but for some reason I'm really slow at reading/recalling it. Anyone have any tips on how to improve this?

"Just reading more katakana" doesn't really seem to be working X|

Katakana doesn't show up in context a lot outside of japan.  As a result, you encounter it less, and will be slower at reading it.  Just give it time, or if you must speed it up, look for something that might have a lot of foreign words.  Maybe menu items on a Japanese restaurant website or something.  You can try reading forums, or playing online games in Japanese, as either of those places will have a lot of loan words.

Last edited by amtrack (2012 December 27, 7:06 pm)

Crispy Member
From: UK Registered: 2012-05-08 Posts: 126

FRONT
金を掴んでも幸せになると約束されるわけじゃないですよね?

BACK
カネ・ヲ・ツカンデモ・シアワセ・ニ・ナル・ト・ヤクソク・サレル・ワケ・ジャナイ・デス・ヨ・ネ

Here's what I did when I had trouble:
Read the front, write on a piece of paper what it should be if entirely in katakana, then compare your answer. If you get ONE character wrong, fail the card and do it again.
Make maybe 40 cards and review every day for a week or two, it worked really well for me so maybe it'll help you speed up.

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Daichi Member
From: Washington Registered: 2009-02-04 Posts: 450

Give it time, eventually you'll just learn katakana words that matter to you, in my case words like ガンダム, ゲッタービジョン, サイコフレーム, and メガブースター are strange words I have no problem reading now. Well, those aren't really common words unless you play スーパーロボット大戦. You can pick up a lot of weird katakana from video games. Sometimes you just need constant exposure.

Zlarp Member
Registered: 2012-10-26 Posts: 124

Daichi wrote:

Give it time, eventually you'll just learn katakana words that matter to you, in my case words like ガンダム, ゲッタービジョン, サイコフレーム, and メガブースター are strange words I have no problem reading now. Well, those aren't really common words unless you play スーパーロボット大戦. You can pick up a lot of weird katakana from video games. Sometimes you just need constant exposure.

I'm playing this one too. Well, the PSP Z ones. I haven't gotten far, but already learned so much. The contextless menus are still a pain to deal with to me, though. But as soon as there's dialogue I'm happy smile

sartak Member
From: Boston Registered: 2009-10-13 Posts: 32 Website

I've been studying for three and a half years. I'm long done with RTK1 and RTK3.

I still regularly fail my ヌ card in Anki.

Don't beat yourself up about it, you'll get it.

frony0 Member
From: London United Kingdom Registered: 2011-12-10 Posts: 257

sartak wrote:

I've been studying for three and a half years. I'm long done with RTK1 and RTK3.

I still regularly fail my ヌ card in Anki.

Don't beat yourself up about it, you'll get it.

That's funny, me too

mrbryce Member
From: paris Registered: 2012-02-01 Posts: 27

why is it so important considering you ve finished rtk ?
i dont even bother learning katakana vocabulary.
what sort of reading material / context requires you to read faster ?

sartak Member
From: Boston Registered: 2009-10-13 Posts: 32 Website

mrbryce wrote:

why is it so important considering you ve finished rtk ?
i dont even bother learning katakana vocabulary.
what sort of reading material / context requires you to read faster ?

I'm guessing this was directed at me because I'm the only one who's mentioned RTK.

It's not important to me. If I needed to know ヌ I'd already know it. It just doesn't come up very often.

That's what I'm trying to tell the person who created the thread. It's not that important.

yudantaiteki Member
Registered: 2009-10-03 Posts: 3619

Daichi wrote:

Give it time, eventually you'll just learn katakana words that matter to you, in my case words like ガンダム, ゲッタービジョン, サイコフレーム, and メガブースター are strange words I have no problem reading now. Well, those aren't really common words unless you play スーパーロボット大戦. You can pick up a lot of weird katakana from video games. Sometimes you just need constant exposure.

Playing Alpha 3 right now smile

Reply #11 - 2013 January 09, 9:07 pm
Stansfield123 Member
From: Europe Registered: 2011-04-17 Posts: 799

somstuff wrote:

I know all the katakana of course, but for some reason I'm really slow at reading/recalling it. Anyone have any tips on how to improve this?

"Just reading more katakana" doesn't really seem to be working X|

Nothing's gonna work. Reading fast is not about knowing the individual symbols and putting them together fast, it's about recognizing the shape of words and even larger basic sentence structures and, combined with context, deducing what they are without ever looking at the individual symbols.

Eventually, you will recognize common foreign names and words that way. But there's no way to speed that up. Luckily, I can't imagine a situation where not being able to read katakana fast is going to cause significant trouble.

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