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2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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1193298 No.1193298 [Reply] [Original]

>nb4 filthy weeb
I'm trying to teach myself Japanese, however looking at the hirigana and katakana alphabets are a little daunting. So I was wondering if it was possible to learn them separate, or if I had to learn them both together. Also, any general tips for keeping a new language notebook and learning it in general.

>> No.1193303

>>1193298
Stroke order is important. They aren't that hard. Get heisigs remembering the kanji.

Voicing is also more important than introductory books let on, like bridge and chopstick is written and pronounced the same way to gaijin but natives say them differently.


Consider finding a local tutor or college course in japanese

>> No.1193306

>>1193303
would that I could, but I live in the bible belt, and the colleges around me teach Chinese or only offer Spanish/German foreign language focus.

You say stroke order, meaning that they actually can tell what order the strokes were made? That sounds absolutely absurd. I don't think I could ever pay that much attention to detail.

What is/are heisigs?

>> No.1193308

>>1193306
Heisig is an authours last name
If you are whining about detail or this night possibly be too hard for you to ever do, go join the military or something where you're not allowed to fuck up to toughen your shit up.

Literally a child can learn this.

>> No.1193309

>>1193308
I'm not complaining about having to do it. It just amazes me that they pay that much attention to it.

>> No.1193311

Being able to tell stroke order is easier than it sounds, just like you can tell in what order a person writes the number 4.

But why are you even asking this here? Just go to/djt/ in /jp/ and read their OP

>> No.1193312

>>1193311
was asking on /diy/ because I'm doing it myself. Sorry for my lack of knowledge, I mostly spend time on pol/adv. Other than that, I don't really browse other boards. So, I thought here would be the best place for this post.

>> No.1193315

>>1193312
That's understandable, especially since the general's bounced between 3 different boards before. Anyway, their OP should be much better equipped to help you. Going through their material got me as far as N4 of the JLPT with no effort, but a friend of mine managed to pass N2 using advice from that thread and a year and a half of self study.

>> No.1193316

>>1193315
Thank you for your help. From the initial looks of it, it looks like it has the potential to help me get pretty far. I appreciate your help anon.

>> No.1193322

/djt/ can be kinda mean, be forewarned.

Not to dissuade you, but the kana are the first step on a very long journey toward understanding. I suggest adopting a structured curriculum, either by taking a class or at least downloading a book.

>> No.1193329

>>1193322
Yeah, I kinda guessed that. I was actually coming up with a path to take in my head. Like, learn the alphabet, then basic words, like: mom and dad,I want/need, good morning/night. general stuff like that. Then moving onto grammar and the like. But first I have to understand the building blocks for the words themselves.

Again though, thank you for your help. I've got a long path ahead, but, I'll also have a lot of free time, seeing as how I just got my associates and don't plan on going back soon. For now, it's just working and trying to save up for the next round of school.

>> No.1193338

>>1193312
go back to you containment board...

>> No.1193341

>>1193311
To be fair, we had plenty of language learning threads when the board was new. Apparently the idea that they belong here is natural.
I think the most language threads went to /int/.

>> No.1193356

>>1193298
i have quite some PDF files on learning moon runes, i can get you a MEGA link if you want

>> No.1193373

>>1193356
tf are moon runes?

>> No.1193415

>>>/a/djt

>> No.1193421

>>1193415
even /a/ told them to BTFO

>> No.1193422

>>1193373
You must be new here. Welcome.

>> No.1193425

>>1193422
very

>> No.1193428

>>1193373
moon runes = japanese characters
chinese cartoons = anime

>> No.1193431

>>1193428
I know the whole, piss off weebs by calling them chinese cartoons/ korean puppet shows and the like. I just didn't get the moon runes meme, thought it was a peter jackson Hobbit reference. It caught me off guard.

>> No.1193453

>>1193298
If you haven't, get the Japanese Language Learning Pack from TPB. It's 30GB.

>> No.1193454

>>1193453
link pls?

>> No.1193455

>>1193454
https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6672792/Japanese_Language_Learning_Pack
can't miss it, it's the only thing that comes when searching

>> No.1193485

>>1193455
This is probably one of the coolest things anyone has shown me for this. Thank you friend.

>> No.1193557

>>1193306
My children say the same thing about writing letters, "order is not important". Idiots. Their writing looks like shit and it ends up being twice the difficulty if they just would listen and use the correct damn stroke order.

Ever try to write Arabic? Know why it looks so weird? It's written backwards! Once you start using backwards stroke order, suddenly it's possible to write.

You aren't smarter. Try to use your human ability to listen and learn from others. We aren't out to trick you.

>> No.1193559

start with katakana and then hiragana its will make things much easier in the long run.

>> No.1193568
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1193568

>>1193298
So I was banned for making a thread about boots but this shit is perfectly fine?

>> No.1193586

Write every kana in every page of a book

>> No.1193589

>>1193568
I hope you get banned for shitposting in someone elses thread too

>> No.1193795

You onow /a/ got threads for japanese selfteaching 24/7, with good resources and a semi proved method.
Sage for not related

>> No.1194019

>>1193298

You can absolutely learn hiragana and katakana separately. It really doesn't take as long as you might think, if you use flash cards (e.g. Anki).

Beyond that I can tell you from my beyond-dabbling-and-approaching-actual-"I can speak Japanese" experience here is my advice:

1. It's universally accepted that the best way to learn a language is to speak very frequently with native speakers. For me, I have social anxiety disorder and am immensely self-conscious of mistakes (which you will make literally every time you open your mouth), so this is huge struggle for me. My strategy has been to self-study by speaking out loud to get the sounds to feel natural, and believe me, the Japanese phonology and sentence rhythm is radically different from English so it's very difficult to produce the sounds correctly and without tons of halting. I've used pirated Pimsleur audiobooks, Duolingo, and Language101 (have to pay for that last one).

2. This guy seems to have a method that is much more structured and rigorous than the usual Youtube "lmao just start speaking man" tripe: https://fluent-forever.com/how-to-learn-japanese-or-chinese-update/ ...I can confirm that making your own Anki flash cards makes them immensely easier to recall, which is important when learning a language that is so radically different from English. He as in point #1 says that you need to actually interact with people in order to make big gains, and explains an easy way to do that here: https://fluent-forever.com/italki-tutor-guide/

(cont. in next post)

>> No.1194021

>>1194019


3. I can't remember if he brings this up in the link above but another useful site is KanjiDamage. The author gives mnemonics for memorizing kanji and a method for "building" kanji using simpler parts. Kanji is extremely important because you'll need several hundred kanji memorized with multiple readings of each to even have a chance at reading anything. KD unfortunately has a lot of incorrect information so I also use WWWJDIC and jisho.org to verify anything he says, and alter the mnemonics as needed for accuracy.

4. One of the LEAST useful things I ever did was take two semesters of Japanese in college. Huge waste of money that could have been spent elsewhere more effectively, as well as mostly a waste of time. The only thing useful that came of it was that it forced me into interacting with people and practice speaking...but it was with other beginners, so the conversations were shit. The teacher obviously couldn't sit with everyone and give a lot of 1:1 time.

>> No.1194204

>>1194021
>The author gives mnemonics for memorizing kanji and a method for "building" kanji using simpler parts.
This is good becuase this is literally how kanji are formed. It's closer to etymology than actual speaking language to learn it, and it's not worth learning it all, but it is good to note that a lot of characters are made up of combinations of other characters.

As well, those characters are defined more by stroke order and position than actual shape. It's not like A and B where it's just stuff that look like those things, it's more like "Chevron crossed horizontally" and "Vertical stroke followed by two round and continuous strokes from the top to the middle then the middle to the bottom, without lifting the pen."

>> No.1194542

>>1193559
Every where else says to go about learning the hiragana first then the katakana. Is the katakana that mush easier, or is it just easier to follow from learning the katakana first?

>> No.1194545

>>1193298
OP here, I just wanted to thank everyone so far for being as helpful as possible and trying to help me further my ability to learn. You all have showed me some of what I can only guess are going to be some of the most useful and influential pieces of information to get me started on this learning curve. Thank you all.

>> No.1194559

>>1193298
you can learn 26 letters but you can't learn 100 new letters?

>> No.1194877

>>1194559
It actually wasn't that at all. I just didn't know if you could learn them both at separate times, or if you absolutely had to learn 2 completely new "alphabetics" systems at the same time. Two at once is a lot more daunting to me than just one at a time.

>> No.1194898

>>1193298
Hi. I'm not OP just a lurker. I'd like to thank some of the posters in this thread and also the guy in /ohm/ who answered nine questions and explained LC circuits as a voltage-current wibble. These answers give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Moot would be proud,

>> No.1194973

>>1194542
It doesn't matter, these are baby steps.

>>1194545
>>1194898
Glad to help. Keep /diy/ great again

>> No.1195236

>>1194877

I'm not even exaggerating that it will take you like 5-10 hours to learn each set of characters (recognition, longer to reproduce via handwriting) if you use Anki. And I say this as someone with a shitty ass memory. The amount of time spent learning hiragana and katakana is like 1/10000th of the time spent actually becoming thoroughly fluent.

I'd say learn them separately, and it doesn't make a bit of difference which you learn first since you should be done with both within like a week of 1hr/day practice.

>> No.1195249

>>1195236
So, I shouldn't learn how to spell/read before I learn to speak? I don't have the worst memory, but, I feel like I should learn the building blocks before I start throwing words out of my mouth.

>> No.1195269

kana is literally the least of your problems when it comes to learning japanese.

It's not daunting, it's like learning capital letters and lowercase letters, and through rote repetition it shouldn't take long

after you learn the kana, stop using romaji as soon as possible.

Once you actually get them down, download Genki: An Integrated Course for Elementary Japanese. It is *the* standard intro to japanese book, and you'd do well to study it well.

>> No.1195321

don't bother if it is just for chinese cartoons and comics. it is nothing like learning spanish/russian/german/korean etc

>> No.1195404

>>1195249

I think there's some miscommunication. I'm saying learning hiragana and katakana first, just that the order of the two doesn't matter. Then work on words and kanji concurrently

>> No.1195408

why the fuck is this on /diy/ though?

>> No.1195490

>>1195408
The only unironically helpful place on 4chins (sorry /adv/)

>> No.1196280

>>1193298
Son, you are having trouble with ~100 of the foundational characters of a language. Imagine trying to learn English without the Alphabet. That's how bad you are right now. This is something you should be able to do in half an hour. When you get to learning the ~2000 kanji Japanese kids are expected to know by the end of high school, you will have been twisting in your grave by the first hundred.

The only suggestion I can give to you is buck up and fucking do it. It sounds to me like you have less of an aptitude problem and more of a lazy fuck problem.

>> No.1196298

>>1196280

(Not OP) no need to be a dick. It's easy to dismiss what is daunting at first but trivial in hindsight. You're also grossly exaggerating the ease at which you can learn all the characters to the point where you can consistently recall their sounds. No one except some kind of savant can learn all of them in fewer than at least 4-5 hours, and I'd suggest 10-20 is more applicable to most learners.

>> No.1196311

>reading and writing
fill each page of your notebook with one character. I would suggest using the ones for math since it has all the boxes. Remember the stroke order if you don't want the japs to laugh at you. you can ignore it too but your handwriting will be shit (trust me I've been there).

>grammar
I used Tae Kim's guide to japanese. So far its the most comprehensive grammar material out there iny opinion. Since you are a weeb, always try to compare the anime subs to what they are saying. They really give you some insight on how Japanese grammar works.

>speaking
try to repeat what the chinese cartoons say. Its better that you get used to the accent and the tone. In my case almost all japanese that I talked to came from kansai so my tone sounds like one but I still use the standard japanese grammar. Also if you hear unfamiliar/difficult words, try to disect them with the kanji that you learned. Though for this method you need to have advanced to at least lower intermediate.


by the way. Japanese handwriting is fucking hard to read. It is different from what the computer shows you

>> No.1196313
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1196313

jap handwriting looks something like this

>> No.1196315

Go to the djt on /int/ and read the guide

>> No.1196352

>>1196298
senpai I know a linguistics major that took half an hour to learn them all. They're just sounds and curves based on an initial set of 5 vowels. The 'H' series can be modified to the 'B' and 'P' series.
That's literally as complicated as it gets.

>> No.1196365

>>1193298
Hiragana and katakana are easy. I learned hiragana first and then katakana. I know he's kind of a meme, but look up Namasensei on youtube. His hiragana videos are best, I don't think he finished katakana, and he has some kanji and vocab videos but those aren't that helpful.

>> No.1196395

>>1193298
Use Memrise for Japanese learning SRS.

Take these courses they are free.

Katakana+, Hiragana+, 6000 Japanese words, JLPT N5 readings and JLPT N4 readings and definitely get Japanese the Manga way for grammar.

This will at least set you up in a better spot to learn.

>> No.1196396

>>1194019
>Anki

Lol man Anki is only good for those who are self sufficient. Memrise does it all for you.

>> No.1196447

>>1193298
Forced to learn Japanese in school it's so easy. U = old lady gets hit with a rock and says "ooh". You'll never forget this

>> No.1196449
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1196449

>>1193421
gtfo here too. you won't learn by shitposting here so fuck off

>> No.1196457

You can learn Hiragana and Katakana separate, but they're basically the same alphabet with different symbols for the same sounds. Katakana's just for loan words. Learn Hiragana first, and you'll find that lots of Katakana are similar to Hiragana. Hiragana is the more important alphabet to learn first.
Fun tip: Search "Genki japanese book" and there's a 2-part series with a textbook and workbook, it's pretty much the go-to for basic nipspeak.
t. 2 year nip student

>> No.1196477

>>1196447
Fuck う, I can't unsee it.

>> No.1196505

>>1193298
If it gives you any faith, I was able to learn hiragana and katakana quite quickly and found it easy. Start with a little at a time, use flashcards, and expose yourself to their real-world use (which I'm assuming you will encounter for the same reasons you want to learn them).

Kanji is tougher, I've only picked up a few and haven't bothered to learn in a dedicated matter. But kana are easy. You can do it.

>> No.1196810

>>1196352

Sorry, I don't buy it. Maybe if there were some intrinsic connection between the shapes and sounds that made mnemonics really easy to form, but otherwise that sounds like bullshit.

>>1196396

I've never used Memrise so I can't comment on it beyond that it sounds like a pre-built flash card system. I will say though that anyone trying to learn Japanese who isn't even willing to put forth the effort to self-study the kana has 0% chance of advancing into anything resembling a grasp of the language.

Pre-builts are nice as a stepping stone into real learning.