Is hirigana easier than katakana or is it just me?

43 comments

1. Imo hiragana is easier mainly because it’s used so much more frequently compared to katakana, so you just pick up the recognition much faster as you go along.

2. It took longer for me too. Some of the characters look quite similar & it’s just not interacted with as often as hiragana. I had more success when I went out of my way a little to find Katakana vocabulary

3. Mostly cuz you learn hiragana first but some katakana are more tricky at first like ノソシツ

4. When I first started it was the complete opposite for me. I knew katakana much better. What these other posts say is true though; sheer exposure will make hiragana way easier over time. Hell every now and then katakana I used to know well will have me going, “…nani?”

5. Katakana have a couple of similar characters that can easily be mixed up. But once you get used to them, katakana is actually the easiest to read imo. Lots of writing will help.

6. I know all the hiragana but not for katakana

7. Yeah I sometimes mix up ソand ン, but never ever mixed up ち and さ… I guess it has to do with* exposure.

8. I dislike katakana because of the similar-looking characters and how they’re used to write out (the Japanese pronunciations) of foreign words or even initialisms.

   My BS detector goes off whenever I hear someone using way too many katakana buzzwords like ノーハウ or インスピレーション or ダイバーシティ etc. It’s like when I hear people overusing words like “narrative” or “synergy” or “influencer.”

9. It’s not just you, I think hiragana is a little easier.

10. I’ve just learned both over the last two weeks. Katakana was a easier for me even though I thought it would be harder when looking them over before learning. I thought Katakana would be harder because more of them looked similar to each other but I think being more defined and more straight lined made it easier. Also just already knowing all the sounds and some of them look the same or similar.

11. The four smileys are the bane of my existence

12. At this point I’d rather see kanji than katakana

13. Some days ago i printed a few empty katakana charts and filled them. My recognition has improved a lot after that

14. I am a non native speaker working and living in Japan for nealy 4 years. And every time I see katakana, I still go “oh, my head hurts”

    A probable reason is that hiragana is just used more frequently during the ordinary course of learning the Japanese language. Another one is katakana words are just too long and a burden to memorize for learners.

15. I find Hiragana easier as it revolves around the Japanese language that I am learning. Whereas katakana, I have to translate it to whatever whenever I’m reading that. I’m sure I’ll get better as time goes on, but as of now I mostly have to read a katakana word/phrase twice before I get the meaning.

16. It’s not just you. Katakana is harder to learn then Hiragana, that’s a fact that everyone and their mom recognizes.

17. Hiragana is definitely easier just because you see it CONSTANTLY. After a couple months or so of reading you’ll basically be able to read hiragana flawlessly. Katakana is not nearly as common, but it is still common enough that as long as you learn all of the Katakana characters once as a good base you can retain them well enough to get better at reading them while interacting with whatever reading material or grammar study you use. It probably took me over twice as long to get used to reading katakana compared to hiragana, but for very uncommon katakana I would still say I’m not 100% there, maybe 98%. Two big ones are ヲ and フ vs レ when they’re not in a word I know. Eventually, though, you’ll get used to the differences between ones that seem similar like ノ, ン,ソ,シ, and ツ; or ク,タ, and ケ. Just keep at it and you’ll get used to it, even if it takes weeks and months of consistent practice. That’s really been the moral of my japanese learning experience so far, daily practice will, without fail, lead to eventual understanding. Just don’t rush it and trust the process.

18. Maybe it’s easier visually to see. At first, I had issues telling some characters apart but that went away quickly, mainly because I attempted to read everyday even when I knew so little. You get a sense how loan words (or slang) are expressed and it becomes pretty easy to read after that.

19. I still can’t read 8 katakana out of context and I’ve been consistently studying for 2 1/2 years.. :’)

20. I learned katakana first kinda by accident because of all the loan (English) vocabulary I already knew.

    I’ll never forget when I was like 12 (almost 20 years ago (._.) )and watching the anime block on late-night tv and right before the show (don’t remember which) came back on there was like a filler screen and it said アクションゾーン. It took me a couple seconds to sound it out, but I nearly screamed from excitement because that was the first time I read “Japanese” in “the real world” not from like a textbook or something.

21. Fair impression, because a few lookalike katakana are a bit confusing, but also and probably mostly because we use and read katakana less than hiragana.

    There are some reading exercises easily available online, just list of words to train yourself.

22. Personally I also found it easier. The symbols themselves are more unique and I also find being very curvey helped too.

23. There’s just something about Hiragana that made it easier even though I see Katakana a lot more. I like to use flash cards to practice both together!

24. So many katakana look similar、making them a headache to read. It feels like half of them are just ノ with some extra non-unique lines added. フワスヌソンラナ…

25. I’ve been learning since October and have some over a hundred Kanji memorized but I’m still super slow at reading Katakana

26. 4.5 years in, I despise katakana and all the loan words. Give me kanji+native Japanese vocab any day. I still can’t read/memorise Katakana words properly.

27. I tend to find people have less trouble with hiragana than katakana, in part because it’s the first script they’re likely to learn, but also because I think the characters are a bit more distinct for people.

    Katakana characters tend to look somewhat alike, especially with シツソンノ (compared to しつそんの, which are pretty distinct on their own). It makes it tricky for people learning these characters and learning how to distinguish them is a big part of learning katakana especially.

    That being said, I did also learn katakana first, mainly because with the games that I play and the things I see, I’m exposed to it a bit more unless I go reading.

28. Probably two reasons:

    Hiragana is used for short words and often combined with kanji which then forms a very individual pattern that you don‘t actually read character by character but recognize by that pattern.
    You also see all the grammar stuff that is often only hiragana countless of times.

    Katakana on the other hand is often used for long words that are most of the time barely recognizable loan words. I can read it fluently but it can take a while to recognize what the foreign word once was (e.g. チム for team, wtf). And you see loanword nouns not nearly as often as something like ばかり or という.

29. Probably cognitive bias cos you learned hiragana first

30. Katakana characters look far more similar to each other than hiragana characters (e.g. ソ・ン・ツ・チ) and they’re also reserved for special words, meaning they’re used way less frequently and thus you get less practice through exposure to them. I still have to pause when I use katakana, and I’ve been seriously learning for about 2.5 years now.

31. Hiragana has fewer similar looking characters, which makes it easier to me. Katakana is fairly easy to figure out when you see a word written in it, since often it will be a loan word from english so as long as I know some of the characters I can usually figure it out, but when testing myself on individual katakana I tend to struggle.

32. it was the same for me hiragana was definitely easier

33. I found that my brain basically rejected katakana when I first started because it was so similar to hiragana. Combined with the fact that they’re just less common and you can’t practice them as easily.

    It was such a pain I decided to just leave it for a while. Eventually I got good at katakana when I moved to japan and I had much more exposure.

34. katakana are hard, so may of them look really similar

    ラフレマケ厶ヲス

    ンソノツシ

    I struggled for some time with さ and ち, but katakana is way worse

35. it’s all in your head

36. For traveling, I always recommend learning katakana first since you can immediately start to guess English words in Japanese like サラダ (salad).

    Learning hiragana is great, but then what? You won’t know kanji, and you won’t know any words.

    Once again for traveling, I would learn Japanese phrases, then katakana. Just my unorthodox advice lol.

37. Native Japanese speakers that still live in Japan seem to be more impressed by being able to read Katakana over Hiragana. My friend told me that even he thinks Katakana is hard to read sometimes because they don’t use it nearly as much

38. So I read your question “Is a normal font easier then *italic*?”
    The true answer is it entirely depend on what is written.
    YMMV

39. I hate katakana. I guess it’s because there is the extra process of trying to figure out what non-Japanese word it is after having read it.

40. Hiragana and katakana is such a drop in the ocean of japanese learning. Don’t sweat it. Exposure makes it stick

41. Katakana has more similar stroke shapes, so it’s not just you. But if you’re genuinely having trouble learning it, it might be a sign of dyslexia.

42. I think it’s got something to do with how the individual characters look like. Hiragana characters are curly and different from another, except maybe さ and き or め and ぬ. Meanwhile katakana characters have straight lines and a lot of them look similar to each other. Like, フワウラ or シソンノツ. Meanwhile in hiragana, ふわうら and しそんのつ, the characters look completely different from another. Whilst none of them are real words, mixing up フ and ワ can and does happen, at least to me.

43. Hiragana is way easier imo, but it’s learnable. A lot of similar looking letters and they aren’t the ones that look similar in hiragana.