Hello everyone 🙂
I’m committing to memorizing 10 hiragana a week. I’ve started learning Japanese about a month ago and so far have memorized 30 Hiragana.
I figured once I’m done learning them, I’d then do Katakana and only then start Anki so that I can rely less on charts.
Is this a good approach or is it fine to start now and rely on a chart when I need to?
I don’t know any kanji but I plan to do wani kani as well.
My current workflow is:
– Pimsleur everyday
– Japanese tutor once a week
Not sure if I can really handle those two plus wanikani and anki on top. I’m okay with doing wani kani over anki or vice versa or whatever.
Would love some advice 🙂 thanks everyone.
7 comments
No you don’t have to wait, you can also use your studying of the decks to learn them too.
10 a week is way too slow. Watch these two excellent videos from JapanesePod 101:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9Il_j0zjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9Il_j0zjc)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6DKRgtVLGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6DKRgtVLGA)
Make notes of the mnemonics, and you should be able to memorize both sets of kana in one day each.
Next, drill your recognition every day on [https://realkana.com/](https://realkana.com/) Drill again and again and again, making sure you choose the option to use random fonts, until they’re embedded.
You will need the kana to do wanikani. The pronunciation is completely written in hiragana on there
Please don’t take this as an attack on you. So many learners come here with unrealistic expectations and become disheartened when they can’t understand ANYTHING after several months. 10 hiragana a week is not anywhere near enough to make any progress. Learning kana is the first 1% of the first 1% of learning Japanese. It shouldn’t take 10 weeks to complete. A dedicated learner can knock it out in 2-5 days and start learning vocabulary.
> 10 hiragana a week
Slow down speed demon! /s
I don’t wanna be rude, but wasting 9 weeks on learning hiragana and katakana is way too slow, and I say this as a slow learner myself. Using other resources plus a kana chart will get you learning them *way* faster. You’ll know 90% of them before you realise it. Sure you won’t come across ヲ much in the wild, but filling in the gaps is easier than taking weeks and weeks to learn them.
What I did was, I just looked at the individual hiragana I wanted to learn and tried to spot as many as I could within a random Japanese text I pulled up.
Focusing on locating that one particular hiragana helped me recognize it really fast.
After a few minutes, I would move onto the next hiragana and try to spot both the new one and recognize what I already practiced.
I use this method for reading Kanji too.
That’s only for recognition though.
If you wanna learn writing at the same time, I’d learn the correct stroke order and practice writing just a little before and after recognition/reading practice, per hiragana/katakana.
You can use this for the hunting:
https://crunchynihongo.com/hiragana-reading-practice-kaguya/
Go ahead and start anki, as you can use that for your recognition practice as well as learn some words at the same time!
kana should be learned in a couple days at most a week. At this trajectory you will get close to being able to read books for toddlers by the time you have great grandchildren