Hello. I was thinking of learning Japanese, but don’t care about being too advanced with it (for now). If I learn Hiragana and Katakana will I be able to understand software (like browsers, apps and programs), anime/manga, websites and games in Japanese?
For now I don’t care too much about being able to speak it with others, but of course I’d like to be able to form basic sentences.
Also, what sources do you recommend? I’d like if I could learn it in about 3 months (Hiragana and Katakana). I heard that Duolingo isn’t the best. Thanks in advance!
11 comments
If you were planning to write, technically yes, but it would look weird.
If you were planning to read things, no. You can’t make other people and services only write in Kana.
You don’t need to learn everything at once, but you’ll be stifling yourself if you deliberately avoid kanji. There’s a lot to learn and the sooner you start the sooner you’ll get on a roll with it. Putting it off til later is just prolonging the brick wall experience.
Can you? Sure, do anything you like. But there will be consequences.
For online reading and comprehension you’ll definitely need to learn essential kanji at the least. They are as commonly used as hiragana and katakana and you won’t really find any media, meant for any audience over the age of 5, without kanji.
Starting with kanji from day one of learning really helps reduce the fear of kanji being too hard.
The good thing is you don’t need to be able to write kanji to be able to read them.
Also learning hiragana and katakana in 3 months is perfectly possible. I recommend [Learn Japanese 101](https://youtu.be/6p9Il_j0zjc) a couple of hours a day writing all the characters until they become memorised.
– Software UI elements: yes they’re mostly in Katakana but occasionally you have to deal with prompts. Most softwares are available in English though.
– Anime: Japanese subs are usually in the full orthography so you’ll rely on your listening skill if you don’t know kanji
– Manga: mostly yes. They have kanji but they have furigana (pronunciation guide for kids who don’t know kanji)
– Websites: no unless you use some addons that adds furigana to websites. (Or you can use TTS if you’re okay with listening)
– Games: if it is text heavy like RPG’s then no. Otherwise same as regular softwares.
In short, no.
The only thing you’d be able to comfortably read would be lower elementary school books.
I mean, technically yes. Realistically, no. If you want to read anything more advanced than a Pokemon game you’ll be shit out of luck.
This is a funny way to show why kanji is necessary https://youtu.be/iCOS8_for9k
Actually, if you know the Kanji, Kanji is faster to read than hiragana.
And sometimes you do not know the reading, but if you know the kanji, you know the meaning.
I’d say Kanji is not the hardest part of learning Japanese. It’s a lot of work to memorize, but it makes it easier to learn vocabulary actually.
Other people have basically answered your questions, but let me add on that kanjis in textbooks appear in a certain order so that learners can remember the more common and easier ones first. So learning the first 1% doesn’t just allow you to read 1% of the words with Kanji in Japanese literature. It allows you to read much more than that because the 1% that you learn is used very frequently. Yes a lot of Japanese people are bad at kanji, but they can still read 99% of words in everyday life because the ones they know are the ones that are used frequently. So yeah, I recommend you to start learning little by little.
Not if you plan on reading, and writing.
Hiragana and Katakana will be enough to get you through the simple stuff. But if you actually want to understand restaurant menus, manga, websites, etc., you will need to start learning Kanji at some point. That being said, google translate and having a Japanese keyboard on your phone are godsends and can get you through text conversations if you only know kana.
As for actually learning kana/Japanese…
Grammar: Bunpo on iOs
Vocab/dictionary: Japanese, published by renzo Inc. on iOs
Kana: Grab an empty notebook. Once a day, write EVERY hiragana and katakana symbol from memory. No peeking. Leave any blank if you’re not sure, or give them a try. Once you’re finished with that, grab a reference and write every symbol again but this time it’s okay to look at the proper way to write them. Do this once a day and in a week or two you will have them memorized. Then do it once or twice a week for a few weeks and you’ll never forget them.
Duolingo can help you learn some phrases to get you started, but you will never become even close to fluent if you only use it. It won’t even help you memorize kana. T