Japanese 101: hiragana and katakana
All righty. I'm throwing together some weekly learn Japanese stuff for 
yhlee, and I'm posting it here for anyone who wants to play along.
This week's post is about hiragana and katakana. I'm going to focus more on drilling and just getting vocabulary out there than how to memorise the shapes and forms; there are many good resources available on Google for that.
In general, I'm going to try to convey what was useful to me as a learner and the methods I used to help brute-force my way to reading competence.
I'm going to try to keep the kid gloves off and throw in real words, with real difficulty, sooner rather than later. The faster we jump into the hot pan of reading real sentences, the faster we'll get to the kick of getting a mental reward for our efforts - without which learning is kinda hard.
Assignments
I'll make the next post next weekend, by which time you should try to hit critical mass with recognising the characters, even if you can only sound them out.
A note
Before even kicking off drilling in hiragana and katakana, here's my personal take on learning these systems:aAfter a certain amount of time, it's useless drilling characters on their own. In a sort of semantic satiation kind of way, writing ははははは over and over again doesn't help to distinguish it from ほほほほほ. Mindless repetition is useful, but only for certain, mechanical things.
Hiragana and Katakana
Stroke Order
The first mechanical thing worth drilling is stroke order. How you go about memorising the characters themselves is entirely up to you - there are thousands of better resources out there, and I personally think it's best to just pick one and stick with it. Drilling hiragana and katakana is boring, demoralising, and only matters when you start to see results when reading words.
I'm going to try to get as much reading of new words out as possible so that there's an effort/reward ratio, but first... Stroke order does matter. Practice it now and your kanji will benefit later. Practice it now and you'll write better in general. There was nothing more embarrassing than going up to a whiteboard and drawing a certain stroke in the wrong way. Just imagine a small Japanese professor staring at you or something.
Resource: animated stroke order
Order
The fifty sounds that comprise the Japanese alphabet are called the 五十音 (go-jyuu-on) - lit. "fifty sounds". They're ordered by consonant sound and then run through a-i-u-e-o.
a-i-u-e-o. あいうえお。 Say that a lot of times to yourself.
Then repeat あかさたな・はまやらわ until you memorise that, too, and you have the table. This is how all Japanese alphabetisations happen, and so now you're able to use a dictionary! Or browse at Kinokuniya. Hooray!
Resource: Pictoral table
Now is a good time to start mindlessly drilling in order to memorise stroke and alpha-order. (I STILL hum "a ka sa ta na" to myself the same way I hum "a b c d e f g," for what it's worth...)
Here are some printable worksheets: http://japanese-lesson.com/resources/pdf/characters/hiragana_writing_practice_sheets.pdf
I also suggest learning how to write small tsu characters. Sokuon readability is important! Aim for the lower left quadrant.
Word Drilling
Words That Are Commonly Written In Hiragana
I'm going to be real here and say that a lot of English-language education materials start off with everything in hiragana and that it is a complete and utter mess. No. It doesn't happen in real life. You will almost never read anything completely in hiragana or katakana, and if you do, you're going to have the headache of a lifetime.
So while drilling hiragana, I'm going to try to avoid "lists of useful vocabulary words," half of which you should be learning in kanji instead. Nah. Let's just learn those in the actual everyday usages in a couple of weeks.
Here are a list of words that you will almost always see in hiragana. Drill these now, because they'll form the basis of your ability to scan longer sentences soon. If you, deep in your gut, can read こと (koto) by just glossing it with your eyes, you can focus on everything else that you don't know in a sentence.
Hiragana
Nouns (meishi)
あいさつ (greeting)
"Be"/existence verbs
いる (is, living creature)
ある (is, non-living creature)
Formal nouns (形式名詞 keishiki meishi)
こと (non-material thing)
もの (material thing)
とき (time/general time)
ところ (place/general space)
Pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi)
あなた (you)
わたし (me)
この・その・どの (this, that, which)
ここ・そこ・あそこ・どこ (here, there, way over there, where)
どうして (why)
Adjectives (形容詞 keiyoushi)
おもしろい (interesting)
おかしい (strange)
かわいい (cute)
すばらしい (excellent)
うらやましい (enviable)
うれしい (happy)
つまらない (boring)
Adverbs (副詞 fukushi)
あまり
かなり
せっかく
ぜひ
だんだん
ほとんど
もし
やはり
Conjunctions (接続詞類 setsuzokushikei)
しかし (but)
Interjections (感動詞 kandouji)
N.B: Don't underestimate the value of being able to read verbal interjections that we often don't transcribe when we write in English. Japanese TV and writing with put down EEs and AAs and OOs.)
もしもし
へえ
おい
Particles (助詞 joshi)
など
ほど
Auxiliary Verbs (助動詞 doujoshi)
〜ようだ
〜そうだ
Sokuon Practice
いっぱい
いった
いらっしゃいませ
Katakana
Again, focus on useful words to you. Countries and units of measurement are good places to start.
アメリカ
フランス
ロシア
アジア
アナウンサー
ニューズ
ドル
ユーロ
メートル
リットル
Onomatopoeic words are often written in katakana, though not always:
ワンワン
ニヤニヤ
Food items are a big one:
トマト
ポテト
ミルク
Common words include
トイレ
コンセント (as in, the electrical outlet, not active consent)
メール (used where we'd normally say "text" in English)
マイク
ホテル
ペン
ケーキ
カップ
Lookalike Practice
シ・ツ versus ン・ソ versus マ・ム will mess you up. Stroke order! Stroke order!
レンジ (stovetop range)
マンション (apartments)
テーマ (theme)
クリスマス
チーム (team)
リズム (rhythm)
Sokuon Practice
ホットケーキ
Reference: http://dictionary.sanseido-publ.co.jp/dicts/encyc/allknow_conv_ja/subPage3.html
Caveat: I don't speak Japanese natively; I have never been involved in language pedagogy. Corrections are hugely welcome, since I've likely made more than a few mistakes!
yhlee, and I'm posting it here for anyone who wants to play along.
This week's post is about hiragana and katakana. I'm going to focus more on drilling and just getting vocabulary out there than how to memorise the shapes and forms; there are many good resources available on Google for that.
In general, I'm going to try to convey what was useful to me as a learner and the methods I used to help brute-force my way to reading competence.
I'm going to try to keep the kid gloves off and throw in real words, with real difficulty, sooner rather than later. The faster we jump into the hot pan of reading real sentences, the faster we'll get to the kick of getting a mental reward for our efforts - without which learning is kinda hard.
Assignments
- Memorise 五十音 alphabet order
- Memorise stroke orders
- Drill hiragana and katakana 五十音 tables or worksheets; preferably twice a day with an interval (long or short) in between. Recalling is more important than writing alone.
- Drill common words list
I'll make the next post next weekend, by which time you should try to hit critical mass with recognising the characters, even if you can only sound them out.
A note
Before even kicking off drilling in hiragana and katakana, here's my personal take on learning these systems:aAfter a certain amount of time, it's useless drilling characters on their own. In a sort of semantic satiation kind of way, writing ははははは over and over again doesn't help to distinguish it from ほほほほほ. Mindless repetition is useful, but only for certain, mechanical things.
Hiragana and Katakana
Stroke Order
The first mechanical thing worth drilling is stroke order. How you go about memorising the characters themselves is entirely up to you - there are thousands of better resources out there, and I personally think it's best to just pick one and stick with it. Drilling hiragana and katakana is boring, demoralising, and only matters when you start to see results when reading words.
I'm going to try to get as much reading of new words out as possible so that there's an effort/reward ratio, but first... Stroke order does matter. Practice it now and your kanji will benefit later. Practice it now and you'll write better in general. There was nothing more embarrassing than going up to a whiteboard and drawing a certain stroke in the wrong way. Just imagine a small Japanese professor staring at you or something.
Resource: animated stroke order
Order
The fifty sounds that comprise the Japanese alphabet are called the 五十音 (go-jyuu-on) - lit. "fifty sounds". They're ordered by consonant sound and then run through a-i-u-e-o.
a-i-u-e-o. あいうえお。 Say that a lot of times to yourself.
Then repeat あかさたな・はまやらわ until you memorise that, too, and you have the table. This is how all Japanese alphabetisations happen, and so now you're able to use a dictionary! Or browse at Kinokuniya. Hooray!
Resource: Pictoral table
Now is a good time to start mindlessly drilling in order to memorise stroke and alpha-order. (I STILL hum "a ka sa ta na" to myself the same way I hum "a b c d e f g," for what it's worth...)
Here are some printable worksheets: http://japanese-lesson.com/resources/pdf/characters/hiragana_writing_practice_sheets.pdf
I also suggest learning how to write small tsu characters. Sokuon readability is important! Aim for the lower left quadrant.
Word Drilling
Words That Are Commonly Written In Hiragana
I'm going to be real here and say that a lot of English-language education materials start off with everything in hiragana and that it is a complete and utter mess. No. It doesn't happen in real life. You will almost never read anything completely in hiragana or katakana, and if you do, you're going to have the headache of a lifetime.
So while drilling hiragana, I'm going to try to avoid "lists of useful vocabulary words," half of which you should be learning in kanji instead. Nah. Let's just learn those in the actual everyday usages in a couple of weeks.
Here are a list of words that you will almost always see in hiragana. Drill these now, because they'll form the basis of your ability to scan longer sentences soon. If you, deep in your gut, can read こと (koto) by just glossing it with your eyes, you can focus on everything else that you don't know in a sentence.
Hiragana
Nouns (meishi)
あいさつ (greeting)
"Be"/existence verbs
いる (is, living creature)
ある (is, non-living creature)
Formal nouns (形式名詞 keishiki meishi)
こと (non-material thing)
もの (material thing)
とき (time/general time)
ところ (place/general space)
Pronouns (代名詞 daimeishi)
あなた (you)
わたし (me)
この・その・どの (this, that, which)
ここ・そこ・あそこ・どこ (here, there, way over there, where)
どうして (why)
Adjectives (形容詞 keiyoushi)
おもしろい (interesting)
おかしい (strange)
かわいい (cute)
すばらしい (excellent)
うらやましい (enviable)
うれしい (happy)
つまらない (boring)
Adverbs (副詞 fukushi)
あまり
かなり
せっかく
ぜひ
だんだん
ほとんど
もし
やはり
Conjunctions (接続詞類 setsuzokushikei)
しかし (but)
Interjections (感動詞 kandouji)
N.B: Don't underestimate the value of being able to read verbal interjections that we often don't transcribe when we write in English. Japanese TV and writing with put down EEs and AAs and OOs.)
もしもし
へえ
おい
Particles (助詞 joshi)
など
ほど
Auxiliary Verbs (助動詞 doujoshi)
〜ようだ
〜そうだ
Sokuon Practice
いっぱい
いった
いらっしゃいませ
Katakana
Again, focus on useful words to you. Countries and units of measurement are good places to start.
アメリカ
フランス
ロシア
アジア
アナウンサー
ニューズ
ドル
ユーロ
メートル
リットル
Onomatopoeic words are often written in katakana, though not always:
ワンワン
ニヤニヤ
Food items are a big one:
トマト
ポテト
ミルク
Common words include
トイレ
コンセント (as in, the electrical outlet, not active consent)
メール (used where we'd normally say "text" in English)
マイク
ホテル
ペン
ケーキ
カップ
Lookalike Practice
シ・ツ versus ン・ソ versus マ・ム will mess you up. Stroke order! Stroke order!
レンジ (stovetop range)
マンション (apartments)
テーマ (theme)
クリスマス
チーム (team)
リズム (rhythm)
Sokuon Practice
ホットケーキ
Reference: http://dictionary.sanseido-publ.co.jp/dicts/encyc/allknow_conv_ja/subPage3.html
Caveat: I don't speak Japanese natively; I have never been involved in language pedagogy. Corrections are hugely welcome, since I've likely made more than a few mistakes!