For the self-learner, there really aren’t the same sort of consequences. You skip doing Japanese for a week and you’re not punished at all. You’re actually rewarded. Rewarded with more time to play video games, watch TV, or go out with your friends. So how do you keep yourself motivated when there’s so much other fun stuff to do?

Habit, Habit, Habit

One of the most important factors of keeping motivation is developing it into a habit. Once something becomes a part of your daily routine, you’ll be much more likely to keep doing it from now until forever as it’s become second nature to you, just like walking the dog or brushing your teeth.

Lots of places on the internet say that it takes about twenty-one days to develop a habit. I personally feel that this is a very arbitrary number and how long it takes to develop a habit will very much depend on the activity and the person in question, but three weeks is a good starting point.

To make sure you stick to this habit of studying Japanese every day, every other day, or every week (especially in the beginning when the going is tough, and then once again when you reach the intermediate plateau) a great idea is to schedule your time. Actually block off time for activities during the day, or at the very least your Japanese. Physically write it down somewhere that you’re going to study Japanese from 7pm to 8pm Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and set an alarm or something to remind you when it’s time.

It also helps to be specific. Instead of just writing “Study Japanese,” write stuff like “Study Anki Deck,” “Study WaniKani,” or “Study TextFugu.” This makes it much easier to get right into your study session instead of wasting time thinking about what method you want to use because you’ve already laid it out ahead of time.

I really like this method a lot and I use it often when I have a lot of stuff to get done in one day. I’ve also used it in the past to get into the habit of working out each day and I also used it for studying Japanese (and now French). I feel like I’m much more productive when I have my whole day mapped out in an Excel file or something and I waste way less time derping around the internet. Trust me, it works. Mapping out your day is absolutely wonderful for productivity and motivation.

You don’t have to take my word for it though, just check out this list of famous people and their daily rituals and scheduled activities. If it worked for them, it can work for you too.

But of course there will always be that one night you were planning to have a study session and out of the blue your friends show up and want to go see a movie, or play video games and hang out or something and you’d feel like a real jerk blowing them off to study Japanese. You just need to promise yourself that you’ll reschedule your study time for later so you don’t get behind.

It’s important to keep up with your learning, but you don’t want to become a social outcast because of it. Unless of course you’re already a social outcast, then in that case, study away!

Keep it Fun

Fun is a huge motivator. You’re a lot more likely to do something and keep up with it if it’s fun. So, it’s important to find study methods that both work well for you and aren’t boring as all get out. Some great ways are to study with video games, anime, and dramas.

It’s also important to keep your individual study sessions short enough so that you aren’t burnt out by the end of them. The sweet spot for me is usually about thirty minutes to an hour, but you should go with what works best for you and then you can schedule that block of time into your week like I mentioned above.

Studying with these materials is also very rewarding. It may seem terrible at first when you start studying with a drama or something because there are so many new words, but in the end when you can watch the entire show and not have to look up any words and you know exactly what’s going on and what’s being said, it’s a pretty amazing feeling.

You should also be sure to select material that’s suitable for your level of learning. If you’re at expert level, you shouldn’t be reading and watching kid’s material (unless you’re just looking for an ego boost), and if you’re a beginner, you shouldn’t be diving into news reports and technical manuals.

Children’s books and TV shows are a great place to get your feet wet, and they can really make you feel a lot more accomplished. Unless of course you have trouble understanding anything that’s going on in the kid’s show, in which case you’ll feel like an idiot (it’s happened to me more than once), but that’s something you just have to get over. You’ll understand it eventually, just be patient.

Accountability

Accountability is a great motivator. Tell someone else your plan for keeping up with your Japanese studies and let them know exactly what you plan to do, when you plan to achieve milestones, and how you’re going to get there. Tell as many people as you can. You could even have some of them remind you about it, or get some really good friends to ask you if you studied Japanese today or not. Having to be accountable to people about your learning is a great way of guilting yourself into being motivated.

This way, if you fail to keep up with your studies, you’re not only letting yourself down, but you’re letting down everyone you told about your grand plans. You don’t want all your friends to be disappointed in you, right? Accountability works wonders. Plus, when you do achieve your goals, you’ll not only be proud yourself, but you’ll also have lots of other people to be proud of you and support you along the way.

Accountability is a great way to motivate yourself to achieve goals. Just don’t annoy your friends and family by talking to them about it all the time (unless they’re studying Japanese too, then by all means, bug the crap out of each other), wouldn’t want to alienate yourself or anything. Just use your best judgment.

Keep at It

Once you’ve developed a good habit of studying Japanese and having fun with it, you’ll be an unstoppable Japanese learning machine. No longer do you need a classroom, nagging teacher, or the threat of bad grades to motivate you. You have a fun schedule you created yourself, awesome self-learning materials, accountability, and the self-satisfaction of making it on your own. Learning Japanese solo is entirely possible with the right materials and the right attitude. So get out there and JFDI.

So tell me, how do you keep motivated with your Japanese self-study? Do you struggle with keeping up with it? What other tips and tricks do you use to stay motivated? Let us know and share in the comments!

Listen to as Much Japanese as You Can

Think about it – as a baby you listened to the English language constantly before you ever spoke a single word. By listening to Japanese all the time (TV, music, podcasts, etc) you prepare your brain for the great adventure ahead of you. It also helps out a lot with pronunciation. The more authentic Japanese you hear, the easier it will be for you to produce Japanese with little to no accent.

I listened to a lot of Japanese before I ever started seriously studying the language (TV, movies, music) and as a result I had a much more native sounding accent when I started taking classes. It really works!

As far as TV shows – dramas and talk shows are definitely the way to go. Watch them without subtitles, or just have it playing in the background while you do something else. Even passive listening can be a great help.

Anime can be good too, but for the beginner I’d say listening to real people talk in dramas and talk shows is best. The style of speech in anime is not always parallel with how people speak in the real world, and if you’re still just a beginner you might not always know if the styles and phrases used are practical. Wouldn’t want to develop any bad habits!

Don’t Use Romaji

Speaking of bad habits, let’s talk about romaji. Romaji is an unfortunate, unsightly crutch. Using English characters to represent the Japanese language will encourage you to speak with an English accent. And that’s bad. Very bad. There are even different “forms” of romaji (arigato, arigatou, arigatō), and that’s just confusing. Either don’t use romaji at all, or get yourself off it as soon as you can.

One of the first steps you should take in learning Japanese is getting katakana and hiragana down pat. If you can do that, you’ll never need to touch romaji ever again. And that’s a good thing.

One of my biggest gripes with the textbook we used in college was that it was chock full of romaji. Even in the third volume, everything was still in romaji. This really slowed down my reading speed and it wasn’t until I actually started reading real Japanese media on my own that I started to see great improvement. Check out the Tofugu Japanese Language Resources Guide for textbooks that don’t suck.

Sticking with romaji will really slow down your reading ability. If you get used to reading Japanese strictly in romaji, you will be very slow at reading Japanese in hiragana/katakana. The quicker you get used to reading in real Japanese, the better.

Use an SRS

SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System. They’re basically smart flashcards that track your progress for you. My favorites are Anki and iKnow. I use Anki for making my own flashcard decks, and I use iKnow for general vocabulary. SRS is really helpful because it automatically pays attention to which cards you get wrong and which ones you get right.

For example, if you keep missing one card, then the SRS will bring it up more frequently to give you more practice with it. And then if there’s a card you consistently get right all the time, the SRS will place it on the back burner and bring it back when it is ripe for review.

I use Anki when I want to make my own flashcard decks. I use video games, manga, and TV shows as material for getting new vocab words and phrases. As I’m going along, I make note of the words or phrases that I don’t understand and then later I put them into an Anki deck. That way, I can review the words and phrases that were difficult for me and speed up my comprehension. It really helps me focus and make the best use of my time.

Programs like Anki and websites like iKnow are very helpful for setting up a systematic schedule of study. They keep track of what you need to focus on studying first, and what you can save for another day. Anki also has a great community and a lot of premade decks you can download and check out before delving into the adventure of making your own. Using regular old flashcards is fine, but you’re really wasting a lot of time by not using an SRS.

Make Japanese Friends

While not as important as the other tips on this list (in the very beginning, at least), having real life Japanese people to talk to is very helpful, especially if you are self taught. And besides, what fun is learning a language if you have no one to talk to?

Having someone to send emails back and forth with, call, or webcam with can be a great learning asset. It prepares you for the real world of speaking Japanese, and you’ll have a native to immediately correct any mistakes you’re making. One of the online services that Koichi really likes is Lang-8. You can check out his review of it here.

Just make sure to let your new-found Japanese friends know that you actually want them to tell you when you mess up. A good amount of Japanese people are very shy and hesitant when it comes to correcting people and telling them they are wrong. This of course depends on the person. Our language partners in Japan had no problem telling us when we screwed up.

I made a lot of good friends when I studied abroad though, and I talk to most of them weekly. I still email with my home-stay sisters on a regular basis and talk to my other Japanese friends on Facebook. They help keep my Japanese skills sharp as well as improve my writing and reading comprehension. The Firefox plug-in Rikaichan can be a very useful tool for deciphering cryptic Japanese on the internet. Check it out!

Be Consistent

Don’t study Japanese for five hours on Monday, not touch it again for a week, and try to make up for it by studying ten hours next Tuesday. You need to be consistent. Study Japanese every day if you can. Figure out how much time you can set aside each day and develop a schedule. Studying a little bit each day is way better than studying for long periods erratically. Keeping a consistent schedule will help you learn faster and retain information better.

Out of everything on the list, this is what I personally have the most trouble with. There’s just too many video games to play and people to hang out with for me to stay focused all the time. Don’t be like me! Set up a schedule for yourself and stick to it!

Have Fun While You Learn

Most important of all, just have fun with it! You’re not going to want to do something if you’re not enjoying yourself and you’ll retain a lot more information if you’re having a good time. And once you find a study method that works for you, stick with it, but don’t overdo it.

For example, if you’re really enjoying a study session with your favorite manga, stop a little early. Quit while you’re still having fun. That way, you’ll be looking forward to getting back into it. Don’t study until you’re completely stressed out and frustrated – who would want to come back to that?

Study with your friends and learn with manga, TV shows, and video games you actually enjoy. As you start to have fun with it, you’ll actually start to look forward to studying. Suddenly studying seems less like a chore and more like an adventure! (Whee!)

Put It All Together

On days when I’m not slacking off, I try to get a solid 2-3 hours of real study time in. I really like the Core Japanese decks on iKnow, so I make use of those quite often.

Lately, I’ve been reading the manga Yotsuba&! and making Anki cards out of the words and phrases that are new to me. I usually start from the beginning of the manga every session just to practice reading with the new phrases I’ve learned because it’s good review.

When I’m not actively studying, I like to have Japanese TV playing in the background. I have a two monitor set up on my computer, so when I’m surfing the web, I’ll have my browser up on one and a Japanese playlist up on the other. My playlist is comprised of some of my favorite dramas and a handful of variety shows.

When I’m not at home, I try to listen to Japanese music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Imaginary Flying Machine lately, but it’s always good to listen to music where the lyrics are audible and easy to understand.

Listening to Japanese all day really gets your brain into “Japanese mode.” On days when I really immerse myself in Japanese media I’ll often find myself thinking and even dreaming in Japanese. Fun!

There’s also a lot of mobile apps that you can use to study Japanese on the road. Some of my favorites include Kotoba! (awesome free Japanese dictionary), Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese (super awesome for grammar and structure), and Kanji Study (great for studying kanji on the go).

With Japanese, anything is possible

And there you have it. Just keep these simple tips in mind and you’ll have no problem overcoming the obstacle of conquering the Japanese language. I’ve been studying for 3+ years now and I still make good use of these basic tips each and every day. Now get out there and JFDI.

So tell me, what are your best tips for someone starting to learn the Japanese language?

P.S. Does the Japanese language give you the ability to fly? Like us on Facebook.

P.P.S. Want to learn more ways to become a Japanese expert? Follow us on Twitter.

Why Pay?

To sum it up in one word: efficiency. You can’t pay to inject Japanese into your brain with a syringe, but you can pay for things that will help to make the things you already have to do easier (and more importantly, more efficient). Most Japanese learners go through the same kinds of things, and the same kinds of hardships. Why not flash a Jefferson or two to not have to go through some of the more unnecessary ones?

The following are a few of my favorite paid resources for helping you to learn Japanese faster. A couple I use a ton, and one of them is new (to me). The thing that makes these resources unique, I think, is that they definitely aren’t good for learning Japanese if they are the only thing you’re using. These will all help you to supplement your Japanese learning along with something else (or some other things) – they won’t be able to single handedly teach you Japanese, unfortunately.

1. MyGengo Translation Service

MyGengo is the “new” resource. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it before, though I haven’t (in the past) thought of it as much of a way to help with Japanese learning (and only thought of it as purely a translation service… which is pretty much what they are).

There are times in Japanese study where you either 1) can’t for the life of you figure out what something means and 2) can’t for the life of you figure out how to say something in Japanese.

Now, I do think struggling and working really hard to figure out translations is a super important part of learning Japanese. If you, for example, just put every Japanese sentence you come across into MyGengo, you’d never learn a thing. 99% of time you should persevere and figure it out yourself. Only the other 1% of the time should you pay for translation. Here’s how it works:

First, you’ll have to create an account (I tried putting my test translation in first, then submitting it, and when I created an account it deleted the thing I put in to get translated and I had to re-submit, dang!).

Then, you choose what language you want to translate from and to. Japanese to English is 3 cents per character. English to Japanese is 5 cents per character (at least for the standard level translation, which should be all you need). If you stick an essay in there, then it might get pretty expensive, but I’m thinking this could be useful for single sentences or short paragraphs, mostly for when you’re really really stuck.

After you put what you want translated into the system, you just wait a bit (mine took a couple hours to be completed, pretty quick if you ask me), and then get your translation. I translated four of Shinnosuke’s Tweets (he’s the other guy in Cat Island, Part 1) just to try it out and it worked well. Gotta say, I was a bit impressed.

So, if you’re having trouble with one sentence … or if you need to translate something really bad (and can’t figure out how to), give MyGengo a try. The four tweets consisted of 125 characters (and around 8 sentences, I’d say) and cost $3.75 to translate. If those were 8 sentences I couldn’t translate on my own, that’s $3.75 of well spent money, I’d say. Afterwards, you can compare the translation and the original, and try to figure out what you couldn’t figure out before (and hopefully learn something from it). The worst thing you can do when studying is get stuck. This will help so you don’t ever have that problem.

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2. Lang-8 Premium

Lang-8 is one of those sites that I just can’t stop loving. You can (and should) use it for free. It allows you to write journal entries in the language you’re learning, and get them corrected by native speakers (for this article, let’s assume that’s Japanese). In theory, you’d help out by correcting people’s English too (or whatever your native language is). It’s all about helping each other and language exchange. If you’re upper beginner / intermediate or above, you should be using this site every day. It’s seriously awesome.

There’s also a premium version of Lang-8 you can pay $5 a month for (or $45 for the year). When this first came out, there weren’t too many features. Now, though, I think it’s definitely worth that tiny monthly payment. $5 is barely enough to buy lunch, after all.

There are many other features you get with premium, but I have a few favorites (that make it worth while on their own, I think).

1. Emphasize / Prioritize Your Entries

By paying $5 per month, your entries get a special background color and show up higher in people’s feeds, meaning they get more corrections and get corrected faster. Time is worth paying for, I think, and this is something that will give you more time to study Japanese. You’ll be able to write more entries in the same amount of time (and get them corrected faster) and you’ll get higher quality corrections (in theory) because more people will correct your entries. This is my favorite feature of premium Lang-8, I think. It just saves you time and helps you to learn Japanese more quickly.

2. Personal Journal Search

If you take #1 to heart and write a ton of entries, you’ll start finding that it’s hard to find them all. With language learning, being able to go back is pretty important, I think. This just makes that easier. If you need to take a look at a specific correction that you learned something from (but apparently don’t remember it), this feature is awesome and helps a ton.

3. Journal and Correction Data Download as a PDF

If you’re the type of person who likes things on paper, this feature is great. It lets you get your journal entries and corrections in PDF format, allowing you to print them out and study with them. It also just makes it easier to study what you’ve done on Lang-8. Whether you like studying on paper or not, I’m a big fan of this one. Things suddenly become easier when you print them out in the special Lang-8 PDF version of your journal entries.

If you’re really serious about your Japanese studies, and want to learn way, way faster, use Lang-8. If you want to be faster than fast at learning Japanese, pay for Lang-8 Premium. Totally worth it.

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3. Evernote Premium

If there’s one service I use more than any other on my computer/iPhone/iPad … it’s Evernote. It’s one of those applications you don’t think you’ll need even if you start using it for a while. But then, if you keep using it, you’ll start realizing what you’ve been missing all this time. I use it to keep track of photos, articles, parking spaces, apps to try, and everything else in between. Ways you can use Evernote are literally just limited only by your imagination.

I wrote an article a while back about how to use Evernote to learn Japanese. You can use Evernote to keep track of vocab words, sentences, and so much more. The premium version of Evernote ($5 per month or $45 per year) takes Evernote and supercharges it for you. Here are the premium features I use for Japanese studies (though I use it for so many other things too, making it an incredible value for me).

1. Local Storage On Your Mobile Device

This is the most useful thing on Evernote Premium (especially when it comes to Japanese). You can put PDFs, text, and whatever else you want into Evernote on your computer and then sync it with your phone. With local storage (regular Evernote stores everything in the cloud and makes you pull it from there on your phone) you’ll have everything ready to go. I’m working on a post about “Japanese on the go” and this plays a huge role in what you can and can’t do. This is especially helpful when you have an AT&T iPhone, and can’t rely on having any reception anywhere away from wifi.

2. Allows different file formats

Standard Evernote allows for images, audio, ink, and PDF, which is pretty much all you need (I love saving Japanese audio files and Lang-8 PDFs), but sometimes it’s nice to have other file formats as well. It doesn’t come into play too often (most of your Japanese studying stuff is going to be in one of those formats), but if you need to put Word files, or something like that, you’ll wish you had it.

3. Access To Note History

Also nice is the ability to see your note history. If you’re using Evernote to study Japanese, you’re probably changing things, moving things around, and taking notes on things. With note history, you can see those changes. I don’t use this all the time, but I’ve found it really helpful quite a few times.

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What Premium Services Do You Use?

I’ve only listed three things, and I’m sure there’s plenty more out there. What pay services do you use to supplement your Japanese study? Try to keep it down to below $10 payments – We’re looking for things that just help you to get an advantage over everyone else, and no more. I’m curious what you’ll come up with! You folks are pretty smart that way ; )

P.S. It doesn’t cost any money to Follow Tofugu On Twitter!

P.P.S. Then again, perhaps you’re the Facebook type….

On TextFugu, I recently rewrote and improved the “reading and writing hiragana” chapter (feel free to check it out, it’s free), improving it a lot. The idea was to create a step by step process that anybody could use to learn hiragana so that they could move on to the “good stuff.” There were a few goals with this:

1. Make learning hiragana simpler.
2. Create a step-by-step process that anybody could follow.
3. Take the “mystery” out of learning hiragana (especially hard for self-learners).

After coming up with everything and writing it down, I thought it would be useful for readers of Tofugu as well, so I’m posting up a slightly modified hiragana how-to guide for all of you to enjoy as well. If you’re just starting to learn Japanese, or haven’t started yet, this is one of the first things you want to do. There’s no better time than now, right?

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Before You Get Started

For this guide, I’ll be combining several resources. The idea is to take from the best and ignore the rest, organizing for you a great set of resources that will help you to learn how to read and write hiragana (and ultimately allow you to learn Japanese). Before you get started, there are a few preliminary steps I think you should take. They’re optional, technically, but they’ll really help you learn hiragana a lot more effectively and quickly, in the long run.

1. Read about the various Japanese alphabets.

If you knew there was more than one Japanese “alphabet” (okay, fine, they aren’t technically alphabets, but that doesn’t matter much), then maybe you can skip this step. If you didn’t know this, then you should do some reading so that you understand more about what it is you’re about to learn. If you don’t do this, it would be like learning the English alphabet without knowing the letters spell words. With so many Japanese “alphabets” this reading is pretty important.

There’s two ways you can do this:

1. Read some really in depth articles about hiragana, katakana, kanji, and romaji on wikipedia (this is the more complicated option).
2. Read about the Japanese “alphabets” on TextFugu (simpler, quicker, but not as in depth).

I don’t know which one you want to do, but to be honest either is probably fine. Personally, I’d go with the simpler one (#2), just because you only need to know some background info, not become a PhD in Japanese linguistics.

After you’ve gotten the background info on the various Japanese writing systems, you can move on to the next step.

2. Learn The Pronunciation

For me, I think learning pronunciation and understanding how the “patterns” of hiragana work are important to do before you learn to read and write. If you spend some time on this first, you can then associate this with the reading and writing that you learn a little later. Learning the pronunciation of hiragana before you learn hiragana will help you build a foundation of better Japanese pronunciation, help you to understand how the Japanese language works, and ultimately speed up your hiragana learning in the long run (I think it will, anyways).

1. Hiragana pronunciation can be looked at on TextFugu as well (another free chapter)

After you’ve gone through this, you’ll be ready to start learning the reading and writing parts of hiragana.

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The Hiragana How-To Guide

Before you start, I want you to think back to your days of when you learned how to read/write own native language. This will help you to readjust any unrealistic expectations. Most likely, it took you years to get comfortable with English (or whatever you grew up with). Despite this, you’re going to be able to learn hiragana much faster. It’s going to be hard, and you should expect to be perfect in one, two, or even three weeks. It’s a process, and the more you practice the better you’ll end up getting at it, just like anything (as long as you practice the right things, whoops).

1. Download A Hiragana Chart

I’ve actually made a hiragana chart that you can download right here. I think it’s pretty simple, printable, and easy to use. Feel free to use it, give it away, or whatever else you want to do with it. It’s a totally free hiragana chart.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-chart.pdf"]Download Hiragana Chart[/ilink]

You’re going to be using this a lot, so print it out (if you have a printer) and make it handy.

2. Let’s Take A Look At Some Words You Know Already

Despite what you might think, reading and writing Japanese (at least when it comes to kana) is actually really easy. In order to illustrate that, I thought we could look at some words you already know, starting with the word “sushi.”

For the most part, all hiragana characters (or kana) consist of a consonant (a letter that’s not a vowel) and a vowel. If you look at your hiragana chart, you’ll see that there are things like “ka, chi, mu, ra, hu, ji” etc. Although there are some “weird” ones, like “shi, chi, tsu” etc., that are two consonants plus a vowel, you can probably see the basic pattern emerge. Other than this, the only exceptions are “n” (a single consonant) and “a, i, u, e, o” (which are just vowels on their own).

So, knowing that kana pretty much consists of a consonant sound and a vowel sound, let’s figure out how to spell “sushi” in hiragana. It’s quite easy.

The word “sushi” consists of two separate kana: SU + SHI. Take a look at your hiragana chart and see if you can find the kana for both of these (su & shi). What are they? Just for the sake of letting things sink it, go ahead and copy the characters “su” and “shi” in order to write the word “sushi” out. All you have to do is copy them off the chart, we’ll be really learning them in a bit.

This image is taken from the hiragana chart we’re using, and I’ve circled the correct characters. Now, on the sheet they aren’t in the correct order, but when you write out す (su) and し (shi) together, you get すし (sushi). Writing in hiragana really is that simple. It’s amazing, right?

Now, unfortunately, there is a kanji for this word as well (寿司 = すし = sushi), but you don’t need to worry about that at all right now. We’re focusing on hiragana for the time being. Let’s take a look at another word, karate.

This word is often mispronounced as “karadee,” but if you use your knew found knowledge of hiragana pronunciation you’ll realize how karate is actually pronounced. Let’s write it out in kana.

Take the word “karate” and break it up into its individual kana parts (I’ll give you a hint, there’s three parts). Find those three kana on your hiragana chart and write the word out. Pronounce the three individual kana to find out the correct pronunciation of the word karate. Did you get it right?

When you write “karate” out in hiragana, it comes out to からて. This is the hiragana for KA + RA + TE. Totally different from “karadee” that most people end up saying everywhere else.

After taking a look at these, are you starting to understand how hiragana is used to write things in Japanese? Do you also understand how kana in hiragana are pronounced (consonant + vowel, etc)? Good, let’s move on to the actual process of learning to read and write hiragana.

3. Learning to Read & Write

Before you get started, you should make sure that you have a Smart.fm account. This is what we’re going to use to drill the individual kana to help you learn them. We’ll be using it quite a bit in this guide, so it’s best you get an account now so you’re ready.

First 10 Hiragana: あいうえ、おかきくけこ

1. Study your first ten hiragana using Smart.fm – あ、い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ. You’ll have an option of studying these either 5 at a time or 10 at at time. I’d recommend choosing 5 for now, until you get better. Here’s a quick screencast going over how you should use Smart.fm to study your hiragana.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7keQJIpJXZE']

Essentially, you want to…

1. Write the kana down every time you get it right (or wrong)
2. Use the pronunciation audio that’s available to you on Smart.fm
3. Only study 5 at a time
4. Let Smart.fm tell you when you’ve learned something (usually it’s pretty good at that)

2. Go to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana, and only drag the first ten hiragana (a-column and ka-column) into the right spaces. By only doing these ones, you’ll have to find the right hiragana amongst all the other hirgana (helping you differentiate them) and secondly force you to remember what they look like. Try this twice (refresh to restart) and see if you can do it faster the second time!

3. After you feel good about the first 10 kana on Smart.fm, it’s time to put some of that into practice. Complete this worksheet and try to cheat as little as possible.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-1-10.pdf"]First 10 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

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Hiragana 11-20: さしすせそ、たちつてと

Of course, it’s important that you review the kana you just studied while you’re learning your new kana, so we’ll make sure to do that here.

1. Start by writing out the ten kana that you know and try to do it from memory (starting with あ and ending with こ). If you had to peek it’s not the end of the world. Write out the romaji next to / below / above them for reference.

2. Now write out the ten new kana (sa-column and ta-column) along with the romaji. These are the kana you’re about to study.

3. Go ahead and open the Smart.fm Master Hiragana list again. Since you finished the first 10 kana on there, you should be able to do the next ten now. Do them in groups of five, just like before until you’ve completed up until と (to). Remember to follow the steps from before where you write out the kana each time you get it right or wrong.

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading the kana.

5. After you feel fairly decent about the first twenty kana (especially the new stuff) complete this worksheet to really solidify that knowledge.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-11-20.pdf"]First 20 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

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Hiragana 21-30: なにぬねの、はひふへほ

You’re actually past the halfway point for the “main” hiragana now! Just keep going, you’re making good progress!

1. Write down your ten new hiragana on your piece of paper with the other hiragana, so you can have them for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm, and complete the next ten hiragana (na-column and ha-column). As always, be sure to write down the individual kana every time you get it right or wrong, so you can practice writing. If you need help with stroke order, you can always use the stroke order guide on the hiragana chart page.

3. After feeling okay about the next ten, complete this work sheet, which helps you practice reading and writing the individual kana.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-21-30.pdf"]First 30 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading this kana (you should be pretty good, actually!).

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Hiragana 31-46: まみむめも、やゆよ、らりるれろ、わを、ん

You’re almost there! In terms of the “main” hiragana, this is the last of it. After this, you’re just learning things you already kind of know (like dakuten and combo hiragana), which means you’re pretty much all the way there. Just a few loose ends to tie up after this.

1. Write down your new hiragana on your piece of paper, along with the romaji, for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm and finish out the hiragana until ん (n). There’s more than this on Smart.fm, but that’ll come soon enough. Make sure you’re writing down the hiragana you get both right and wrong. Once you’ve finished it up until ん, move on to the next step.

3. Go to RealKana, and this time only check columns な, は, ま, や, ら, & ん. You’re learning more this round, so I want you to focus it a little more on recent kana. Here’s an image to show you what to check (make sure you uncheck the katakana columns in the katakana tab too, if you need to).

Go through these a couple of times until you feel comfortable with them.

4. Complete this worksheet, which focuses on ま through ん columns.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-ma-n.pdf"]Hiragana ま – ん[/ilink]

5. Head on back to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana. In theory, you should be able to complete the puzzle now (rather than just little bits of it). How fast can you get it done? Record your times and see if you can get done in under three minutes.

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Dakuten: がぎぐげご、ざじずぜぞ、だぢづでど、ばびぶべぼ、ぱぴぷぺぽ

In theory, these should be easier than what we’ve been doing so far. You already know the main characters (which dakuten use) and all you have to do is know what little symbol to put next to them (hint: usually it’s a quotation mark). That being said, I’m going to give you more things than normal to study in this section. You should be better at studying hiragana by now, and you should also know the symbols above (minus the dakuten part). I won’t say this section is easy, but it should be easier.

1. Start up Smart.fm and work through the dakuten hiragana. You should finish on ぽ (po). As always, keep writing these things out as you do them whether you get a card right or wrong.

2. Complete this worksheet. This worksheet’s goal is to help you remember what a column will change to when dakuten are added to it. Focus more on remembering that “S” goes to “Z” or “T” goes to “D” rather than focusing on individual kana.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dakuten.pdf"]Dakuten Practice[/ilink]

3. On RealKana, let’s practice dakuten hiragana as well as the original kana from which the dakuten came. Check the か, さ, た, は, が, ざ, だ, ば, & ぱ columns. Here’s an image to illustrate:

Make sure you uncheck any katakana columns that might be checked as well. Go through the drills like this until you feel pretty comfortable telling them apart. Can you write them out on your own now? If I said things like…

What do “K-sounds” turn into?

Answer: “G-Sounds”

What do “H-sounds” turn into (two answers here)

Answer: “B & P Sounds”

What do “D-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “T-Sounds”

What do “Z-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “S-Sounds”

Could you answer all these questions? If not, be sure to drill RealKana a little bit more so you can learn the differences. Really, just learning these differences is the secret to learning dakuten, so if you can do that, you can do dakuten :)

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Combination Hiragana: きゃ、しゃ、ちゃ、にゃ、ひゃ、みゃ、りゃ、ぎゃ、じゃ、ぢゃ、びゃ、&　ぴゃ Columns

Sometimes, certain kana can be written smaller. When placed next to another kana, it can modify the way it sounds. Don’t worry, though, because the modifications actually make a lot of sense. For example:

き + small ゃ = きゃ (which sounds like kya). It’s almost like saying KIYA, but you drop the “i” sound. KYA!

There are other “combo-hiragana,” but these are the main ones, and the most important for you to know right now. Combo-kana will get a little crazier once we hit katakana, but for now it should be fairly straight forward, especially after you drill them for a bit.

1. Fire up your good buddy Smart.fm again. By now, you should be through the dakuten, and ready to study the combo-hiragana, starting with きゃ, きゅ, and きょ. Since you already know all the characters being used (you just have to remember that the y-column kana are “small”) feel free to study ten at a time. The goal is to get to the end of this list, actually and finish out everything that Smart.fm has to offer. Like I said, though, these should be one of the easiest sets (even though its the longest) for you, and drilling through it should be more about reviewing kana you already know.

2. Let’s practice writing them. Remember, the やゆよ for these are small ゃゅょ. If you don’t write them small, they are just regular sized, and pronounced normally. It’s the difference between:

きや (kiya)　vs　きゃ (kya)

Those are two different sounds and you can’t switch them out with each other. The difference is important! Use this worksheet to practice:

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/combo-hiragana.pdf"]Combination Hiragana[/ilink]

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At this point, you should feel fairly good about almost all the hiragana. You don’t need to be perfect, nor do you need to be at 100%. That’s definitely not expected at this point. It’ll take a while before you read hiragana nice and fluidly, but luckily there’s going to be plenty of opportunity to practice as you continue to study Japanese (now in hiragana!). Well done!

Where To Go From Here?

Well, there’s plenty of things to do, but I’d round out your hiragana reading & writing career with some lessons on hiragana’s long vowels and the small tsu. That right there will make sure you know just about everything you need to know about hiragana, then all that’s left is more practice.

By learning hiragana, though, you’ve opened up a ton of new resources from which you can study Japanese. If you don’t know hiragana, you’re really limited in what you can do. If you do learn it (like you just did, in theory), there’s so much more available to you now, whether it’s various Japanese textbooks, blogs, websites, or whatever. Hiragana will open doors for you.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I hope you found it useful as well. If you’re thinking of learning Japanese, this isn’t a bad place to start, and I think this guide lays everything out pretty simply and easily. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

P.S. If you wish this tutorial was 140 characters or less, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you want to read a more in depth guide to learning hiragana, you’ll want to check out the first six chapters of TextFugu (all are free).

Images: Header 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Although the hiragana and katakana charts were designed to use with TextFugu, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t use it with any other Japanese learning resource out there. Share it with friends, family, teachers, students, colleagues, classmates, online communities, torrent sites, whatever. You can take these charts and do what you will with them, as long as it doesn’t get weird (I know you love how curvaceous the hiragana is, Gakuranman). Anyways, just click on the images to go to the download page.

Hiragana Chart

Katakana Chart

Enjoy these charts – put them on your wall, write on them, lick them… whatever needs to be done. And, of course, if you have no idea what any of these wild and crazy symbols mean, you should check out TextFugu. In fact, the hiragana chapters are in the free zone, which means no excuses!

]]> http://www.tofugu.com/2010/01/07/hiragana-chart-katakana-chart-ready-for-download/feed/ 41 http://www.tofugu.com/2009/12/30/how-to-pronounce-the-japanese-r-sound/ http://www.tofugu.com/2009/12/30/how-to-pronounce-the-japanese-r-sound/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:21:42 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=2057

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas (if that’s what you celebrate), full of Christmas Cake and KFC. Yum! Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra raaaa!

One of the things that almost every Japanese learner has trouble with (if they’re a native English speaker), is the Japanese “R” sound. More specifically: Ra, ri, ru, re, & ro. Often times, it just ends up being a straight-up “R” sound, which is wrong, or some weird hybrid version of the sound that “L” makes when it’s on the toilet. It’s kind of sad, but very few people have “cracked” the Japanese “R” sound. A good 90% of people have trouble with this, and I’m going to flip that statistic on it’s head. After going through this lesson, 90% of you will be able to pronounce the Japanese R sound perfectly.

How To Do The Japanese “R”

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2wzUuGm7yw']

Until a linguist friend told me about these steps, I was able to do the “R” sound, but it was difficult to explain in a way that most people could understand and see results. How did you do? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Better? The same? Worse (I hope not).

Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra!