One of the most common questions that you’ll see about learning Japanese is about what scripts to learn. Do you learn all three at the same time? Should you ignore kanji because we have smartphones? Why bother learning katakana if you can already speak English?
As with most questions about what to study in Japanese, often there is an underlying tinge of laziness. Most people don’t like to hear this, but if you understand that there is only a certain amount of time in the day and only so many things to accomplish, it is completely rational to try and look for shortcuts, more effective strategies or skipping certain things. At the same time, if you want to actually get good at Japanese even at the most basic level, you cannot be lazy about katakana.
Indeed, skipping katakana is not one of those options that you can skip. It is such an important part of Japanese that you have to spend time getting good at it. Without it, you’re going to have an extremely hard time understanding almost anything written in Japanese, as so many words (particularly nouns). Not to mention the large sprinkling of such words in everyday speech.
Timing of when to start?
Basically you should be starting katakana as soon as possible. You should prioritise learning hiragana first. I’ve done previous posts on how to study hiragana as well as providing good resources to do so. Once you get to a point where you can write a word in hiragana, for example think of what the word for ‘car’ is, then write it out by hand, くるま, you are at about the point to start looking at katakana.
Then you want to do basically the same process with katakana as you did for hiragana. Spend time looking at a hiragana chart, write each out by hand and then start doing flashcards. Flashcards which have audio files or by using NHK Easy to listen to the correct pronunciation while trying to read the characters is a great way to speed up your learning.
Alright, so just study hiragana like I did katakana…
No! Katakana has an extra element to it which means it is slightly more involved than just rote learning the individual characters. First of all, there are some additional sounds in katakana like smaller versions of ァィェォ as well as ヴ and several others you should look through the above links to find out more about.
Finally, there is a way that katakana is used in Japanese that goes against some basic instincts that certain speakers of other languages, such as English speakers, that need to be understood to properly understand and use katakana in Japanese. You can see the below video for a whole explanation on some of these aspects with myself and my Japanese friend Mio.
Use these tips to better your handle on katakana and therefore be better at Japanese!
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