I’m going to Japan on a four months exchange in August. I’ve been learning Japanese on and off for a while, but my education and final exams got in the way and quickly became top priority, so I’ve only now had the time to begin learning properly.
For at least five months know I’ve been trying to memorise hiragana on and off. If someone types a sentence in hiragana I can just about read it, but I just feel like I’m learning too slow. I’m going to be going to Japan to live and to study, and my scholarship requires me specifically to bridge a gap between my home country and Japan, but I feel like I’m just never going to be able to communicate. I’m a huge people person so my biggest fear is not being able to make friends when I’m out there, and I can’t do that if I can’t even speak Japanese to a relatively decent extent.
I have a friend fluent in Japanese who has been tutoring me through this process so far, and he’s adamant I need to stick with hiragana and not focus on learning actual Japanese vocabulary until I’m fluent in reading hiragana. I just don’t know if that’s gonna work or how it’ll even work. When I read Japanese I can SAY the sentence somewhat fluently, but I’ve got absolutely no idea what it means, and I don’t even know where to start as to learning what it means. By no means am I fluent in reading hiragana (I get confused between さ、ち、ら way too often…) so I just don’t know if I should move on yet because I know I’m not confident in it, but I also don’t have much time.
Do you think I should keep sticking to reading and writing pure hiragana for the next two months until my exchange? Will that be of benefit? Or should I dedicate the time to learning key vocabulary and key sentences so I can better communicate with my host family and fellow students? I feel so lost and I feel like I’m out of time, and in a way I am- in no way am I going to become fluent in Japanese within a month by any means, but I want to help myself as much as possible before I go, I just don’t know which way will help me more
by anibele