i started learning japanese only on sunday so maybe i’m progressing too fast but i’ve been doing like 1.5-2 hours each day of studying. i started doing pronunciation work but i have a talent for being able to do foreign accents/pronunciation really well. the issue i’m struggling with his the hiragana. i have shit memory so even after doing like 3 hours of practice i can literally only remember like 5. probably less. maybe i’m just tired but man i feel bad. i know everyone moves at their own pace but i don’t want to be repeating the same 46 characters for weeks. might just be my anxiety too so idk
5 comments
2-4 weeks for kana
Don’t believe those claims of people learning kana in a day. It takes time.
For me, reading practice was the best way to cement hiragana in my brain. Avoid all romaji and get your reading practice in.
How have you been studying the kana so far?
Your mistake is that you’re trying to master kana before you use them. Spend 10-20 minutes a day on them at most, move on to the next higher level of activity.
It’ll probably take a few weeks, but eventually the practice will feel unnecessary and you can phase it out. The more you actually use kana, the faster you’ll become good friends with them.
Also, that’s the mood you should set with kana. Try to become friendly, accept that learning will be a slow process, don’t beat yourself up. You *don’t* want to give yourself study-trauma over the absolute fundamentals of the language.
Took me two days for hiragana and two more for katakana. My ability to recognise them is at like 90% rn. You can hypothetically learn kana fast, even with a bad memory like me, through spaced repetition. But being able to fully memorise them all? It’ll probably take a couple weeks of chipping away at them.
I learnt with this guide after finding videos very unhelpful [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/)
And I know the feeling btw, I felt like a useless moron when I found out some people learned both in a day and I barely even learned half of hiragana, and at that still very shakily in terms of recollection. Give yourself time, success is inevitable if you make continuous efforts.