Hi everyone!
I have a weird question… I speak already come Japanese (passed JLPT N3 many years ago, also with the help of this sub (different account)). I’ve been a few times to Japan, the last one with my husband. He liked it a lot, and he is now interested in learning a bit of Japanese, but not the whole thing (he’s also learning Italian at the moment, since that’s where we live, and that’s enough for now).
The goal for him would eventually be able to be a bit more independent in our travels, showing gratefulness and appreciation to people, asking directions if we’re separated, deciphering signs and advertisment for fun when we’re there…
In his case, we would like at least at the beginning to focus on practical skills. We are thinking that maybe focusing on Katakana would be the best thing, because a lot of katakana words are loanwords from languages he speaks, so he would have more chances of recognizing those words in the wild.
Are we overthinking it?
Should we just follow the usual order Hiragana > Katakanam given it doesn’t take much to learn both? Are there new apps to make learning those fun?
I had different goals than his when I started studying and in any case it was many years ago, so I feel what worked in my case might not be the ideal way for him.
5 comments
You can master hiragana and katakana in 1 day. Its easy.
Either or. It doesn’t really matter which way tbh but from reading this post. He’d be better off at learning how to read Japanese than speaking it
I think you’re on the right track with your thinking. Japanese is loaded with English loanwords, so he’d be able to understand ~80% of words written in katakana. Hiragana is near useless without taking the time to learn native Japanese words. He might learn katakana and forget it quickly, but the next time you go to Japan he’ll be primed to re-learn them more easily.
For this kind of low commitment-learning he might as well just use Duolingo. For serious learners it is very inefficient and I constantly criticise it here. But if your husband has no specific goals, does not want to spend much time on it, already learns Italian, and does not even want to use whatever Japanese he learns anytime soon, then frankly it might be perfect. For speaking, he can do the Pimsleur course. But I would wait with that until he actually needs it, i.e. until you actually go to Japan again.
> Are we overthinking it?
1000%