2024.01 Learning Japanese - Hiragana and Katakana
Weekly notes on my journey learning (or sometimes failing to learn) Japanese.
goals
- Learn the Hiragana and Katakana Vowels
- Learn Hiragana and Katakana 'K' column
resources used
- Tofugu - Learn Hiragana: The Ultimate Guide
- Tofugu - Learn Katakana: The Ultimate Guide
- Genki 1
- Japanese Writing Systems - pages 20 & 24
- Reading and Writing - Lesson 1 - pages 296 & 300
- Duolingo - Hiragana and Katakana practice tab
- Also see created resources at the end
reflections
Learning the first handful of characters is always easiest, but I tried to go slowly this week to really make these characters feel like second nature.
For learning a new character, the mnemonic guide provided by Tofugu (hiragana, katakana) was very helpful coupled with writing the characters repeatedly in my notebook. Coupling the action of writing the character helped me build a stronger connection between a given character and its sound.
For reviewing characters each day, I became a fan of using a practice grid with random characters. The idea is to read through the grid as quickly as possible, without error, saying the character sound out loud. I've added these practice grids to the end of this post in the created resources section.
"Randomize the hiragana vowels so that each character is repeated 10 times. Additionally, there should be two spaces between each character and a line break after every 8th character."
I also added the Spaced Repetition plugin to my Obsidian setup and added some flashcards for the vowels (a copy of these are also at the end of this post).
I wanted to use Duolingo more but unfortunately their lessons drop you into immediately learning vocabulary. On the plus side, the app does have an Alphabets tab where you can just practice learning Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji. I made use of this tab a little bit this week, though I didn't find it very helpful since I could not choose which characters I wanted to focus on learning. I mostly continued to use Duolingo to keep my streak going.
If Duolingo is going to have fixed alphabet lessons and not let me pick what to study, then why wouldn't they start with teaching the vowels? Instead they start with "su", "shi", "ko", "u".
created resources
hiragana practice grid
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
γ γ γ γ γ γ γ γ
katakana practice grid
γ¦ γͺ γ’ γ¨ γ€ γ’ γ¦ γ€
γ¨ γ’ γͺ γ¦ γ¨ γ€ γ¦ γͺ
γ’ γ¦ γ¨ γ€ γͺ γ¨ γ’ γ¦
γ¨ γ€ γ¦ γͺ γ’ γ¨ γ¦ γ€
γ€ γ’ γ¦ γ¨ γͺ γ€ γ¦ γͺ
γͺ γ¦ γ€ γ¨ γ€ γ¦ γ’ γͺ
γ’ γ€ γ¦ γ¨ γ€ γͺ γ¨ γ¦
γͺ γ¨ γ’ γ€ γ¦ γͺ γ’ γ¨
γ¨ γ€ γ¦ γͺ γ’ γ¦ γ€ γͺ
γ¦ γ€ γ¨ γͺ γ¨ γ’ γ€ γ¦
mixed hiragana and katakana practice grid
γ€ γ γ γ γ¨ γ γ€ γ
γ¦ γ γ¨ γ€ γ γͺ γ γ’
γͺ γ γ γ γ¨ γͺ γ γ
γ’ γ γ€ γ γ γ¦ γ γ¨
γͺ γ γ γ¨ γ€ γ γ γ¦
γ¦ γ¨ γ γ γ γͺ γ γ€
γ€ γ γ γ γ¦ γͺ γ γ¨
γ¨ γ γ γͺ γ γ’ γ€ γ
γ¦ γ€ γ¨ γ γ γ γ¦ γ
γͺ γ γ γ γ¨ γͺ γ€ γ
obsidian spaced repetition flashcards
γ::a - "ah" - hiragana - look for the letter "A"
γ’::a - "ah" - katakana - look for the letter "A"
γ::e - "eh" - hiragana - exotic bird laying exotic eggs
γ¨::e - "eh" - katakana - E missing the middle -
γ:: i - "ee" - hiragana - eels
γ€::i - "ee" - katakana - eagle
γ::o - "oh" - hiragana - look for the o's
γͺ::o - "oh" - katakana - opera singer belting "OH"
γ::u - "oo" - hiragana - sideways u
γ¦::u - "oo" - katakana - upside down u
γ::ka - hiragana - broken "k" with a lower case "a"
γ«::ka - katakana - same as hiragana without the '
γ::ki - hiragana - looks like a key, note the bottom loop can be broken in some fonts
γ::ki - katakana - same as hiragana without the bottom loop
γ::ku - hiragana - mouth of a cuckoo bird
γ―::ku - katakana - tilted cooks hat, sidways 'u'
γ::ke - hiragana - two standing strands of kelp
γ±::ke - katakana - looks like a tilted 'k'
γ::ko - hiragana - two short chords laying on the ground
γ³::ko - katakana - two 90deg corners