Yeah, absolutely learn them now. I liked the Kana Pict-o-graphix book, but there are plenty of online sources too. The way you get them to stick is to use them... and this will also help you remember some of the ones that are hard to tell apart (wa/re/ne, anyone?) After you've read (or better still, written) watashi blah blah a few dozen times, you won't have any trouble telling wa from the other two.

You need hiragana for particles and conjugation, but also for beginner texts.

Yeah, learn hiragana. It will atleast give you more motivation, than just starting off at kanji.. I'm like 350-400 in Heisig, but I took a brake to learn the kana, because I wanted to read atleast something in japanese...

Try these!
I bet, you'll find them extremely helpful!

Hiragana Drill
ReadingTheKanji - Hiragana

bodhisamaya wrote:

Maybe i just love female Japanese voices but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWR1Ziynt8g

If I wasn't pretty sure that would drive me insane if I listened to it even thrice in a row, I might put that on loop just to try and memorize the standard order of the kana.

Don't worry about putting kana in SRS, it isn't worth it. Just get a normal review program and review all the kana every day and you'll know em all in 1-2 weeks.

Learn the kana, and practice writing out some words.  It's fun and good practice, and at least with katakana, you'll be able to read menus and signs and such in Japan (a little).

I'm not sold on the Heisig kana book, because it's really American derived.  は for hopscotch?  What the?  See that letter after 'h'?  That's an 'o'.  Surely he could have found a word which actually has a は sound in it for everyone.  Harmony, harmonica, etc.

けfor kangaroo.  Listen, cobber, I'm an expert in the pronunciation of kangaroo, and there isn't an 'e' sound within cooee of the thing.

あ for on?  え for ape, さ for sock,  た for top, な for knock and not, ま for motley, ら for rocker, わ for wasp and want, there are just too many with unclear sounds, he should have just gone the audio tape route or something.  The mnemonics even for an American don't all sound like the Japanese equivalents.  If you're not a native English speaker you are going to be really confused about the sound he is trying to give you.  Better to just hear some Japanese people say it.

Also he doesn't acknowledge any difference between the two forms of 'u' in English, so his ぬ examples are misleading.  Non-Americans usually pronounce 'u' with a 'yu' sound all the time, somewhat like the 'u' in 'annual' or 'cure' for all English speakers.

I forgive you guys 'cause of Obama, though.

Here are some drilling sites, these ones have audio:

http://genkienglish.net/genkijapan/hiragana1.htm
http://genkienglish.net/genkijapan/katakana1.htm
http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/self/self.html

Just drill them a lot and then read stuff, even if you don't understand the meaning, you can practice the pronunciation and recognition.

Last edited by phauna (2008 November 07, 5:58 pm)

Yeah, some of those are kinda off from my English pronunciation as well. I don't think trying to show the pronunciation using words from another language is a good idea at all, not now, when media files are so easy to attain. Even learning them from romanization at all is hazardous, because of the associations already there. Just as in your example, it actually took me a rather long time to realize that I was starting every word with a う in sentence initial position with 'yu'.

Oh well.

Edit: Tobberoth; Actually, they're fairly accurate for a CERTAIN American accent. It's hardly universal though; like I said, it doesn't really match mine, and I'm very standard American with a bit of a south-eastern (Virginia) bent. And to be fair, something like 'harmony' woudln't work at all because 'ar' is a unique phoneme that doesn't correspond to anything Japanese.

Last edited by QuackingShoe (2008 November 07, 6:10 pm)

Well, 'A' is supposed to have three different sounds, as generally taught through US phonetics (or at least through my education). What I'd write as ah, aye, and aw(but that doesn't really get it across). The 'aw' is very much identical to one of the FOUR sounds of 'o' (aw, oh [<-- J sound of o], oo, uh). It's also similar to the 'a' sound in Japanese. This is the sound that's theoretically used in 'on,' but the actual sound that I (and everyone I hear) use is pretty slurred and doesn't really match any of the traditionally taught 'o' sounds, but it is closest to that one. And I do hear it out of people trying to sound snooty and correct.

But, that's the whole thing. Whose pronunciation are you supposed to be going by? It's pretty pointless.

Note: I'm only speaking from the perspective of the pronunciation ideas used to teach children phonetics in English. Universal phonetics will obviously differ They're much more accurate, but Heisig was attempting to use strictly English representations that English speakers are already familiar with.

Last edited by QuackingShoe (2008 November 07, 6:36 pm)

Is there any reason why you SHOULDN'T learn the kana BEFORE kanji?

Tobberoth wrote:

He seriously picked those words as examples? No wonder Americans are so terrible at pronouncing Japanese...

Yes. I'm sure one man, in the entire world, is solely to blame for the American Japanese accent. And I'm 115% percent sure each country has their Heisigian scapegoat-like individual as well.

That is, assuming Heisig is actually American. I wouldn't know.

Tobberoth wrote:

I don't think I've ever heard an American dialect where there's an あ in on... then again, I've heard some really spooky stuff online, some Americans really don't know how to say stuff. I can't bring up any examples right now but some stuff is just unbelievable.

Boston. Seattle maybe. Mop sounds like mahp. Hopscotch sounds like hahpstatch. Yeah, he really went to the heart of America with that one. Or, maybe he was just using sounds that made mnemonics easier to come up with. Any serious student will inevitably learn the real pronunciations anyway.

Hiragana is simple, though. It's katakana that rapes the mind... well ... mine at least.

Just 'cause Khatzu says not, even though he did, I think.

How retahdid is that?

Last edited by kazelee (2008 November 08, 2:40 am)

Heh, depends on the individual actually. If you're one of those people who sleeps through advanced chemistry and passes, seemingly, without ever cracking open a book, then just doing RTK alone, assuming you muster up the willpower, is....stupid. If you're one of those people who forgets the old when they learn the new, then you might want to see a doctor about that. For everyone else. Just learn the kana. It's doable in a couple of weeks.

Last edited by kazelee (2008 November 08, 2:51 am)

It takes less than a week to learn kana.  There is no reason not to.  It will not impede your kanji studies.

Kanji is not Japanese.   They had their own language before those characters ever reached Japan.  You could adapt Chinese characters to English if you wanted to and combine with our alphabet to created sentences. 

I see no problem with learning all the kanji before learning a word of Japanese. The kanji part can be done in four-six months as we have proven here.  That accomplishment would make the spoken much faster to master.

Last edited by bodhisamaya (2008 November 08, 3:24 am)