Green Tea Forum

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

So my research thus far says that there are four written forms of Japanese, kanji, katakan, hiragana, romaji. I understand that in Japan romaji is often available for westerners (although I am don't know that this is true, but it sounds right), so I am wondering which system is most prevalent in Japan.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 926 Location: Japan

All are used and usually at the same time, that's the problem. Romanji is the least used, and it's pretty much only for english words. They use it on signs and at the train station, etc, but that's about it. Once you learn hiragana and katakana (easy to learn) you can surprisingly read "a lot" provided you also know the meaning of the word. Kanji - it's rough. Until you have remembered about 800 of them, you can't read much. Once you have those first 800 or so down, then the pace seems to pick up because you actually get to read them. It is also much easier to read them than to remember how to write them. For sure, you don't learn this overnight.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

So would knowing hiragana be sufficient; it is the one that appeals to me the most.

Kevangogh · Forum God Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 926 Location: Japan

You should learn hiragana first, then learn katakana. A lot of the katakana are similar to the hiragana so once you learn hiragana, katakana should be a snap.

Make a grid. Put one vowel in this order "a, i, u, e, o" for each row. Then take the first letter of the following sentence for each column.

"Kana Signs, Take Note How Much You Read & Write"

Make is so that the "K" intersects with a square for "a", "i", so on and so forth. If you do that, you'll have the 50 basic sounds. Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke, Ko, etc.

Learn 5 a day, you'll have it down in no time. Hiragana and katakana are too easy to learn. You need to learn them both I think.

spacesamurai · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 204

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for your help.

Photiou · Posted: May 05, 2007 8:19 pm Post subject:

For reading japanese firefox extension "rikaichan" is a good tool (just put that to google). Still hard but at least I can decode some sentences.