Learning Japanese: Thoughts on getting started, Hiragana and Katakana
So, I started learning Japanese this past week. Vacationing in Japan is still on the top of the bucket list for my wife and I and we both agree that we don't really want to do the big touristy cities. Japan has great sites like shrines, castles and temples everywhere, a wide array of scenery and great history and food just about everywhere. So, we would rather experience that, both in a less crowded and perhaps "purer" setting.
Incidentally, after I started learning, I went looking up advice on travelling in rural Japan and one site basically said don't do it, and provided 3 reasons, two of which boiled down to "you don't know the language and will get horribly lost". So, fundamentally, it seem I have the right idea regarding learning the language.
Thankfully, that isn't the only reason I'm learning it. Far fewer people would ever travel if learning the language was required to have a good time. My wife and I also enjoy watching anime. I wouldn't mind being able to enjoy it without having to read the subtitles and rely on someone else's translation.
If I didn't have a more general interest in it as well, I probably wouldn't have bothered getting started. I know that if I don't use it on at least a somewhat regular basis, I'll eventually forget it.
As the title implies, I started with learning Hiragana and Katakana. The 2 syllabaries the Japanese use. Why? Because that is where the app I used (and incidentally, most learning materials) started. And it makes some sense. It covers the native sounds used by Japanese speaking people, and in theory, would allow you to communicate both in writing and speech with locals, which might help if your pronunciation sucks (which mine probably does/will).
It won't enable you to read all that much Japanese though. From what I've seen, most written Japanese is a combination of both syllabaries plus kanji, with the bulk in kanji. Kanji being (to my currently very limited understanding) more like a symbolic library. Adults (if I understand correctly) tend to have a "vocabulary" of roughly 1800-2000+ kanji, learning about 100-200 a year as they go through school. I don't know what the sum total of all kanji is, but as you might imagine, those 2k kanji's cover most common words, concepts and phrases. So, without a decent understanding of kanji, you'll probably be screwed at reading in Japanese.
I suppose this is why, now that I have consumed the bulk of the knowledge on Hiragana and Katakana, that Kanji isn't heavily pushed in a lot training material I'm seeing. Not because it isn't useful, but more because it would drive people off if you tried to integrate it into an early Japanese as a second language regime. Many lessons at this point will write everything in Hiragana, and some will show the Kanji as well. It is a bit annoying. I know it won't all stick, but I imagine some would stick and I don't really need the Hiragana and Katakana reinforced everywhere, I'll already need to rely on that for each new Kanji I learn when getting the appropriate pronunciation.
Onto learning Hiragana and Katakana. Went quicker than I expected. About 3 days, at about 2 hours a day and a lot of that time was me holding myself back to make sure I had understood what I had learned before working on learning more of the characters. Really not much else to say on that. Learned a few new words along the way and a bit in the way of vocabulary lessons. Moving on now to simple Kanji. Will probably also continue practicing vocab. Using a few different tools along the way.
On that topic... what I'm using. I started with the free version of the Human Japanese app on Android. It covered all of the Hiragana, some history and vocabulary and started into Katakana as well. You have to pay to go beyond that. But I think the free version is a great place to start. If you can't get through that, you're probably not as interested in learning it as you think. But, there are a number of free apps and online resources if you couldn't get through that and disagree with me.
Then, I grabbed a few apps which test your knowledge of Hiragana and Katakana. Kana Town for Android is the one I use right now. I used that to learn the rest of the Katakana characters and now I set the random test size to 50 characters and test myself 2-3 times a day just to make sure it all sticks.
I also use paper and pen for practicing writing. And then, as a bit of a fallback/sanity check I also use Google Translate on the phone. It allows me to write out the characters with my finger and attempts to translate them. If it shows up as I expected, I consider it a good sign.
An unintended side effect of using multiple apps is getting the characters in multiple fonts and styles. Just like the 'a' on a computer is written differently that we usually write it, the same applies for some Japanese characters. Certainly helps make sure you can always identify the character you're looking at.
For kanji, right now I'm still trying to find the "right" training resource. Might write another post once I feel like I'm making some progress there.
Incidentally, after I started learning, I went looking up advice on travelling in rural Japan and one site basically said don't do it, and provided 3 reasons, two of which boiled down to "you don't know the language and will get horribly lost". So, fundamentally, it seem I have the right idea regarding learning the language.
Thankfully, that isn't the only reason I'm learning it. Far fewer people would ever travel if learning the language was required to have a good time. My wife and I also enjoy watching anime. I wouldn't mind being able to enjoy it without having to read the subtitles and rely on someone else's translation.
If I didn't have a more general interest in it as well, I probably wouldn't have bothered getting started. I know that if I don't use it on at least a somewhat regular basis, I'll eventually forget it.
As the title implies, I started with learning Hiragana and Katakana. The 2 syllabaries the Japanese use. Why? Because that is where the app I used (and incidentally, most learning materials) started. And it makes some sense. It covers the native sounds used by Japanese speaking people, and in theory, would allow you to communicate both in writing and speech with locals, which might help if your pronunciation sucks (which mine probably does/will).
It won't enable you to read all that much Japanese though. From what I've seen, most written Japanese is a combination of both syllabaries plus kanji, with the bulk in kanji. Kanji being (to my currently very limited understanding) more like a symbolic library. Adults (if I understand correctly) tend to have a "vocabulary" of roughly 1800-2000+ kanji, learning about 100-200 a year as they go through school. I don't know what the sum total of all kanji is, but as you might imagine, those 2k kanji's cover most common words, concepts and phrases. So, without a decent understanding of kanji, you'll probably be screwed at reading in Japanese.
I suppose this is why, now that I have consumed the bulk of the knowledge on Hiragana and Katakana, that Kanji isn't heavily pushed in a lot training material I'm seeing. Not because it isn't useful, but more because it would drive people off if you tried to integrate it into an early Japanese as a second language regime. Many lessons at this point will write everything in Hiragana, and some will show the Kanji as well. It is a bit annoying. I know it won't all stick, but I imagine some would stick and I don't really need the Hiragana and Katakana reinforced everywhere, I'll already need to rely on that for each new Kanji I learn when getting the appropriate pronunciation.
Onto learning Hiragana and Katakana. Went quicker than I expected. About 3 days, at about 2 hours a day and a lot of that time was me holding myself back to make sure I had understood what I had learned before working on learning more of the characters. Really not much else to say on that. Learned a few new words along the way and a bit in the way of vocabulary lessons. Moving on now to simple Kanji. Will probably also continue practicing vocab. Using a few different tools along the way.
On that topic... what I'm using. I started with the free version of the Human Japanese app on Android. It covered all of the Hiragana, some history and vocabulary and started into Katakana as well. You have to pay to go beyond that. But I think the free version is a great place to start. If you can't get through that, you're probably not as interested in learning it as you think. But, there are a number of free apps and online resources if you couldn't get through that and disagree with me.
Then, I grabbed a few apps which test your knowledge of Hiragana and Katakana. Kana Town for Android is the one I use right now. I used that to learn the rest of the Katakana characters and now I set the random test size to 50 characters and test myself 2-3 times a day just to make sure it all sticks.
I also use paper and pen for practicing writing. And then, as a bit of a fallback/sanity check I also use Google Translate on the phone. It allows me to write out the characters with my finger and attempts to translate them. If it shows up as I expected, I consider it a good sign.
An unintended side effect of using multiple apps is getting the characters in multiple fonts and styles. Just like the 'a' on a computer is written differently that we usually write it, the same applies for some Japanese characters. Certainly helps make sure you can always identify the character you're looking at.
For kanji, right now I'm still trying to find the "right" training resource. Might write another post once I feel like I'm making some progress there.
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