![]() Put simply, correct pronunciation can be the difference between being understood and not, and knowing hiragana helps with that.įor example, take the words for “bird” and “street”: English Since it’s phonetic, it allows you to see every single sound, giving you a much clearer idea of how words are supposed to be pronounced. However, even if you ultimately don’t care too much about reading and writing Japanese, learning hiragana is beneficial. The only situation where you wouldn’t want to learn hiragana is if you only have very basic or specific goals for learning Japanese, such as for travel, or if you only ever want to speak Japanese, not read and write. Let’s answer these questions for each character set. Now that we’ve established the order in which to learn the different Japanese character sets, the other big questions to answer are: Which Japanese characters do I actually need to learn? My book, 80/20 Japanese, has additional resources available to help you learn all of hiragana and katakana, plus over 500 kanji. This order just makes the most sense, and will be the most efficient use of your time. For example, there’s nothing wrong with learning some kanji right from the beginning. Now, having said that, you don’t have to do it exactly in this order. So, in almost all cases, that’s your basic order: Kanji taught in Japanese elementary schools ![]() It’s also used for the major grammatical parts of the language, like particles (a key component of Japanese sentence structure) and verb endings, making it absolutely essential for reading anything written in Japanese.īetter yet, there are only 46 unique “shapes” to learn (there are 71 different characters, but 25 are just minor adaptations of some of the others), so it can be done fairly quickly. It’s the most “Japanese” form of writing, as it accounts for all of the unique sounds in Japanese, so all native Japanese words can be written in hiragana. Hiragana is, unquestionably, the place to start. In that case, your first questions would be… Now, let’s assume that you are at least interested in learning to read some characters. If you’re not entirely sure what each of these is for, I recommend reading this article that explains the different character types first. Japanese has three main character sets – hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Key Takeaways In what order should I learn Japanese characters?įirstly, if we’re going to try to work out whether or not to learn the different characters, it will help to know first of all what we’re dealing with. So, I’m going to try and answer these questions for you so you can make the best decision for yourself based on your personal goals. Is it better to dive straight in, or is it better to focus on learning other things first?Īll valid questions, and particularly difficult to answer when you’re first starting out.Do I need to learn kanji too, and if so, how many is enough?.Tools like Anki can help tremendously, but you still need to actually do it. You need to learn them, practice reading them individually, practice reading them in different combinations, and continue to use them repeatedly until they’re firmly embedded in your long-term memory. However, there is no getting around the fact that if you want to read and write Japanese, there are a LOT of characters to learn.Įven if you can save yourself from months or years of confusion by grasping the fundamental grammatical structure of Japanese with a single blog post, you can’t do this with characters or vocabulary. It doesn’t need to be as difficult as it is often made out to be. I’ve often said that, as a language, Japanese is simple if approached the right way. Should you learn Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji? And if so, when?
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