Hello! こにちわ
I am beginning my journey learning japanese and i have a question about Hiragana. I am a bit of a viasual learner and i’ve noticed that many of the Gojuon have visual motifs that are repeated among multiple different characters, but it is driving me up the wall that the characters that share these visual motifs sound *nothing* alike. now, to be clear, the english alphebhet does this as well. d and b, l and i, g and p, in fact the letters in the english alphabhet are probably more similar to each other than in Hiragana
so with Hiragana, things like the “t” motif that appears with only slight variation bewteen た and け, or the こ appearing in た and に with slight variation. the similarity between さ and き , the line (sometimes, but not always) with a hook in け, ほ, に.
are there any learning methods that help with this sort of thing or is it just something i need to write out multiple times and continue to go back on to test my memory?
9 comments
I don’t think there really any trick or method to the madness. What helped me the most was actually the Duolingo apps Hiragana/Katakana learning section. It does spaced repetition with writing/listening/recognizing all mixed in in 5 character increments.
https://drlingua.com/japanese/games/kana-bento/ This site is also a nice little quick test to go through every now and then.
おはよう
I have just started learning (well, 2 months ago). Unfortunately I haven’t found any sure way to differentiate besides just writing them down and keeping at it. There are a couple of YouTube videos I have found that are fun and useful, but just writing them down helped me a lot.
With that said, one thing I have done recently is added the Japanese QWERTY to my phone, so I can switch over and type things in kana. It’s especially useful when you hear a word (from a podcast, anime or just in the wild) as you can spell it out in english (romaji) and it generates hiragana etc.
またね
What worked for me was learning the hiragana chart and the correct stroke order.
あかさたなはやらわ
いきしちにひ__り
うくすつぬふゆるを
えけせてねへ__れ
おこそとのほよろん
Take a column, right it over and over while sounding it out. Force yourself to right in hiragana from what you recall if youre righting anything in Japanese, avoid roomaji. Take the next column when you’re ready. When you complete this, memorize the ten ten and chisai maru (はばぱ) sound modifications they make and which columns use them. Then learn the combination characters, like the name Ryu. りゅ big ri little yu. Or polite decline/I’m fine, kekko けっこ.
Then do it all again for katana. But you have to write it in my opinion.
When you get hiragana and katakana down, write everything in those, but then start writing Kanji (jisho.org is great for stroke order in the Kanji details). Write the Kanji and the hiragana over it (aka furigana).
Just keep writing. There are plenty of resources for finding easier Kanji to start with too, or you could look up the N1-5 (1 is fluent? 5 is beginner?) Characters, based on the Jaoanese proficiency test that has N1, n2, n3, n4, and n5 levels. Some dictionaries will label Kanji based on what is expected of the 5 tests.
others have answered well and i dont have much input but just so you know it’s こんにちは not こにちわ 😉
Have you got into Katakana yet? Wait until you find out about シ, ツ, ソ and ン – I swear they’re becoming the bane of my life.
My Japanese teacher said the difference between ろ and る is that る is holding a little RUby. That helped me in the beginning.
I’m pretty sure the textbook Nakama has visuals to help remember each hiragana and katakana, but it has been 20 years since I first studied Japanese, and the books are likely different now.
Unfortunately there’s no correlation between the looks of characters and their sounds. Though it is good you’re spotting the similarities between the characters. Once you get used to them long enough you’ll start paying more attention to the differences, and those more unique giveaways will cue you to each sound one-to-one. Same with katakana.
I think you’re overthinking it. It’s just a writing system, a syllabary plain and simple. The sooner you gain a reflexive recognition the better. Try this drilling game,
[Kana Game](https://ew-big-fish.itch.io/beginner-japanese)
おはいよう！I struggled with this quite a bit in my 日本語 journey and the only thing that helped me was repetition and writing 😅 that’s probably not what you want to hear but I promise after a couple of days it will stick! A lot of things in 日本語 were like that for me in the beginning, I’m 9 months deep now and it gets way way better 🙂 頑張って！
P.S. The “wa” in こんにちは is spelled with “ha” – は only telling you because no one told me and I was spelling it wrong for a long time lol