Should i learn kanji or katakana

This brings us to the important question — should I learn hiragana or katakana first? Having said this, I recommend that you learn hiragana first.

There are so many reasons for this recommendation and they include :. As mentioned earlier, hiragana is the most commonly used Japanese script today. Therefore, if you are concerned about the day-to-day use of the scripts, you have to start with hiragana. Factually, you will likely come across this writing script regularly whether you are reading a text, a video subtitle, etc. Resultantly, hiragana provides new learners with the most natural opportunities to practice reading.

Notably, by coming across hiragana regularly, your understanding of Japanese will be easier and quicker.

In fact, learning hiragana first can boost your ability to learn katakana later. In Japan, most kids are first introduced to Japanese writing by learning hiragana. This tells you that hiragana tends to contain the basics you need for learning the Japanese writing system. Besides, as a new learner, your understanding is like that of a kid; hence, you should also start learning by focusing on where the Japanese kids usually start.

In general, hiragana serves as the fundamental phonetic writing system that is often utilized for symbolizing each particular sound. Therefore, if you learn hiragana first, it will be easier for you to understand the pronunciation of various Japanese sounds. As stated in the beginning, katakana has most of the borrowed words that the Japanese language uses. Although katakana can be utilized for writing independent words, it can be really difficult for beginners to have a good understanding of any long row of katakana.

In other words, if several symbols of katakana are written together, you may not be able to understand it at all. So, a long row of katakana must have some symbols of hiragana and kanji which is another Japanese writing script before it will be easy for a beginner to understand it. As a consequence, if you start learning katakana first, you will still need some knowledge of hiragana or kanji before you can understand some texts.

Therefore, learning only katakana at the beginning may not help you. As you start learning any Japanese writing script, you need the simplest resources. Since beginners need to learn like kids, they tend to get more useful learning resources in hiragana than katakana.

Consequently, this will aid your ability to learn hiragana. The more resources you have on a language, the more your chances of understanding it. As a beginner, you will need to learn this in order to read and write. On average, it takes learners 1 week to learn them. What are the Hiragana characters and how do you learn them?

Click here to Learn Hiragana in under 1 Hour. Katakana is the equivalent of Hiragana. Same sounds. Same readings. Same number of characters The only differences are that the Katakana characters look different and are used for foreign words borrowed from other languages like….

As a beginner, you need to learn Katakana too. I say, learn Hiragana first. Kanji are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. See, there are a few problems with Japanese…. I say, learn Hiragana and Katakana first. Then start reading basic Japanese writing. I think this method works to help solidify the relationship between the words and the characters in your head.

Japanese can be kind of tricky when characters have multiple pronunciations, so learning as you go can help you pace things and really get the simple characters down. One of my friends thinks reading is actually easier than speaking because she has been so diligent in studying kanji. The other option you have is to hold off on learning kanji until you can comfortably speak.

I would only recommend this if you were in a certain situation which I happened to find myself in after one year of studying Japanese. After one year of study, armed with my fantastic baby Japanese I could introduce myself and ask where the train station was, and that was about it , I found myself living in Japan for about a year and a half. I certainly could have gotten by with my scraps of Japanese if I was able to keep to myself, but the nature of my job meant I would need to speak to people in Japanese every day.

And not just passing conversations. Actually speak, for extended periods of time. I even lived with Japanese people during some periods of my stay there. This is the kind of situation where speaking ability is far more important than reading.