Tips on learning katakana and hiragana

20 comments

1. Tofugu

2. There’s a good series of videos on YouTube by Japanese pod 101 that are very good and it’s how I learnt them

3. tbh all I did was make writing out my kana charts part of my daily practice, and now reading them is like second nature.

4. Duolingo for 6 weeks for hiragana and katakana, is really all duolingo is good for

5. And “kanji study” has the syllabaries too. And kanji per jlpt level

6. [These suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/s5mtva/comment/ht1lo0x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) may help.

7. Play this game, Hop Hop Evolution – https://ew-big-fish.itch.io/beginner-japanese

   It’s a drilling game that if you play a little bit every day you’ll naturally start to read the characters

8. I recommend the app Renshuu. It’s great for learning hiragana and katakana

9. It’s seriously not a big deal. I memorized all hiragana and katakana in 10 days (except rules). Write them, write something you want to write and whenever you don’t remember something look it up. This is a fast way I think. I studied hard tho I think it’s possible to learn even in a week

10. I learned hiragana in one week. The method I used was:

    1) sort the characters in groups of about 6 or 7, grouped by similarity instead of the default sort
    2) using some guide you can easily find on the internet, write the characters you grouped in step 1 a bunch of time to learn, how to write them. Don’t forget to repeat the sound after write each
    3) after the write training, cut some pieces of paper with the same size, and write in romaji (ex: KA) on one side and in hiragana/katakana on the other side.
    4) with the romaji side up, pick the papers randomly and write the characters in hiragana in a sheet, and then flip the paper to check the answer. Repeat this step all day long
    5) on next day, repeat the whole process with a new bunch of characters, but not forgiven to include the previous characters

    This is a suggestion, but this method worked pretty well to me

11. Duolingo. Learn hiragana first, practice writing it on paper. Learn it pretty well before you start katakana. Katakana is basically the same thing but a little harder because it has a few lookalikes.

    They’re just as easy as the alphabet once you get used to them though. It just takes exposure over time.

12. When I was learning Japanese in college, our instructor gave us a sheet with mnemonic images to help us learn kana. I thought it was kind of silly at the time but it was effective for me – to this day, I still recall some of those images when I write certain kana. It was very similar to the chart posted here:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/h2lsj/great_mnemonic_chart_for_learning_hiragana/

13. Not sure if it helps but my personal experience was just using Duolingo. They have a specific section just for learning hiragana and katakana. I maxed out all of the characters in about a week while writing them all down in my notebook with the romaji above it on a daily basis. I memorized them all in 2 weeks.

14. The Weite It! App is how I learned them

15. Well, it’s honestly just like memorizing any new Alphabet.

    If you’re struggling with the easiest part of learning Japanese, then you’re honestly hopeless. God willing you’ll actually figure it out.

16. If you kike RPG video games you might check out the “Learn Japanese To Survive” games.

17. When I learned hiragana and katakana, I used a game that helped me stay engaged. There is a discord bit called kotoba that I used to study kanji, it will show you a hiragana or katakana character and you have to type the reading in 5 seconds or you have to do it again until you get it right 80% of the time.

18. There is no easy way. Learn by writing it again and again.

19. duolingo isnt great for learninh japanese as a whole, but i found it very useful for learning hiragana and katakana. i combined it with drops to both help me space out the learning so im more likely to retain it, and also bc drops includes a feature to show you how its written

20. that tables that go like:

    あかた…
    いきち…
    うくつ…
    えけて…
    おこと…

    those are helpful