Hiragana or Katakana?

[g0b]

What's used more often?
What's easiest to learn?
What's a good way to learn them?
Which should I learn first?

Hehe, just a few questions there! :blush:

[Homerduff]

- It depends on the type of text. For example in texts about a soccer game, you will stumble on a big amount of katakana words because a lot of English loan words are also used in Japanese.

As for hiragana, it doesn't mather what the text is about. It is used together with Kanji to construct typical Japanese grammaire constructions and certain words. Also texts that are supposed to be for little children, will have Kanji with furigana on top of them; this is a small hiragana script that will make it easy to read Kanji without knowing any Kanji readings at all.

- As for reading/recognizing, it must be hiragana because there is more difference between all symbols. As for writing, katakana is probably easyer because the symbols are more symplistic.

- repeat, repeat, repeat. Write them down out of your head, and try to recognize them.

- I think it makes more sense to start with learning hiragana, but you should learn both.

[g0b]

Thanks for the speedy reply! What I hope to do is learn the most frequently used alphabet first so I can decipher Tokyo street signs, typical day-to-day visuals etc to aid learning, then fill in the blanks (thus learning the other alphabet while improving on the one I started with)

So basically, what's more common - Katakana or Hiragana?

[kenasto]

＞What I hope to do is learn the most frequently used alphabet first so I can decipher Tokyo street signs, typical day-to-day visuals etc

In this case, Katakana. You see Katakana everywhere. Japanese language is changing to using Katakana more and more. I read that more than 20% of nowadays Japanese words are in Katakana.

[g0b]

So 80% is Hiragana + Kanji? So surely I'll see Hiragana more? ^^

[kenasto]

Not sure how many percent is Hiragana, but most of the Hiragana are not complete words or expressions. They are either part of the grammar or part of a Kanji/Hiragana combination. Less words are written completely in Hiragana only than in Katakana.

Anyway, if you are using an efficient way of leaning, it won't take you long to learn both Hiragana and Katakana anyway. Studying 1 hour a day you can do it in a few weeks, if not less. So you don't need to worry much about which one to learn first.

[g0b]

Thanks, as we speak I'm translating ^^

ハードゲイ

Youtube ハードゲイ episodes and translate the Katakana... heh, funny and educational!

[nice gaijin]

ideally, you should study all three to progress towards literacy, starting with either hiragana or katakana (I prefer the former). I used to think that katakana wasn't used all that much (It wasn't very common in my learning materials), until I actually went to Japan and saw for myself.

[magevampjoe]

Nice_Gaijin is correct. Learn Hiragana first, but you do need to learn katakana as well as kanzi. Even on average websites in Japanese, the amount of katakana is a lot, it is hard to read if you don't know much katakana. I'm having to learn it, becuase I stupidly left it out when I started learning Japanese.

[Mikawa Ossan]

I personally learned katakana first, and I think there's some merit to this approach, as it gives you a good introduction into how the phonemes and whatnot work in Japanese. It's also fun to learn how to say English words with Japanese pronunciation, so the fun factor is motivational!

[Ryuk]

I learned hiragana first. I think it's better that way because for the majority of sentences, hiragana is used more than katakana (for day-to-day stuff anyway). Plus hiragana looks swish, although katakana looks like teh matrix O_o

[yumeitsumo]

I also learned Hiragana first. I agree with Ryuk. It is "swish" and katakana is like "teh matrix". And I do use hiragana more.

[Slayer4U]

Can you guys write out the examples of Hiragana and the Katakana words? How to differentiate them?

[Derfel]

Looking at how different they are, you would need help to learn how not to differentiate them, not vice versa.

[Ryuk]

Well in general katakana is more angular and sharp, for example: カタカナ
Whereas the hiragana is much more flowing: ひらがな

Katakana is used to writing out "borrowed" words and other non-Japanese words from other languages. Same sounds as hiragana (apart from a few such as vu, etc.) but they look different. Really you need to know both.