Hey. I started learning Japanese using the busuu app but I saw that there were Japanese letters that I could learn. my question is, is it fine if i learn the words then come back to learning the letter
So funny thing about Japanese, there’s a basic alphabet for phonetics like English, but then entire words and concepts are put into characters called Kanji.
You’ll undoubtedly need hiragana and katakana first since the Kanji is “spelt/worded” with those sounds. later in, the characters and “letters” you learn will be words anyways.
Absolutely would recommend 1) familiarising yourself with the three writing systems (like, just read the wiki article or something to get the distinctions between them) 2) learning the Kana – I used the tofugu method, Google “tofugu hiragana” and “tofugu katakana” in that order. 3) doing something to overcome the hurdle that Kanji represents to someone used to the Roman alphabet, I use WaniKani, but there are other methods out there.
Step 3 is important, but I don’t mean to say you should necessarily devote loads of time to learning Kanji in isolation, just that you need to get your head around how they work, the way Kanji characters are built up, the ways the readings change, the way they can be combined with kana or each other to make new words etc. You could do just the free levels of WaniKani for instance.
you can do it without but I do really recommend learning hiragana first
yeah totally fine, because you won’t be using a lot of those “letters” a lot anyways.
4 comments
So funny thing about Japanese, there’s a basic alphabet for phonetics like English, but then entire words and concepts are put into characters called Kanji.
You’ll undoubtedly need hiragana and katakana first since the Kanji is “spelt/worded” with those sounds. later in, the characters and “letters” you learn will be words anyways.
Absolutely would recommend 1) familiarising yourself with the three writing systems (like, just read the wiki article or something to get the distinctions between them) 2) learning the Kana – I used the tofugu method, Google “tofugu hiragana” and “tofugu katakana” in that order. 3) doing something to overcome the hurdle that Kanji represents to someone used to the Roman alphabet, I use WaniKani, but there are other methods out there.
Step 3 is important, but I don’t mean to say you should necessarily devote loads of time to learning Kanji in isolation, just that you need to get your head around how they work, the way Kanji characters are built up, the ways the readings change, the way they can be combined with kana or each other to make new words etc. You could do just the free levels of WaniKani for instance.
you can do it without but I do really recommend learning hiragana first
yeah totally fine, because you won’t be using a lot of those “letters” a lot anyways.