Wanna Learn Japanese? Me Too.

Maybe throw some kanji in there too.

Okie dokie, I can write these (Hiragana with dakuten " and handakuten °) along with a full hiragana chart but not by memory yet. Learning has kinda slowed due to divided attention of school papers, emails, and the holidays, but I'm not going to quit! I will get this!!! It's interesting to me how "ji" and "zu" are repeated. I found another chart where they were "di" and "do" we're used instead and got confused. Which is right? I'm pretty sure they're said a little differently (like a mix of the two) but for now I'm going with this chart and will pick it up for sure later. There are other characters with dakuten or handakuten but those are hardly used except in translations to other languages so not really necessary to learn right now. (I hate saying not necessary, but they really aren't for reading Japanese. Not for a beginner, at least.)

Now on to learn these weird things! Apparently they have names??? Does anybody know if this is a correct version? I've seen at least 3 different versions of the "additional sounds" charts, and have no idea which is correct and which is not...

Finally finished learning these the other day! It took substantially longer, but I blame that on my laziness... Anyways, I can write the chart out by memory now, but I want to be at the point where recall is immidiate. I've found that drilling in a variety of ways—changing up the order to read a, ka, sa, etc. instead of a, i, u, etc. doing the entire chart that way and doing random lines throughout the day—helps. I also want to make some flash cards to see if I can name letters on their own, but more importantly, write the letter with the English as my only clue.

Anybody else find learning Katakana to be harder than Hiragana, literally just because they're less "swirly" which equates to less fun/motivating in my mind? Or is that just me?

My interest in Japanese started when I began watching anime in about 2012. At that point I had no interest in the language itself, but the stories. Now that that’s changed and I’m planning to visit Japan in 2 years, I figure I better learn the language! Watching Japanese as a child triggered a love for the sounds and phrases of the language, and I want to see how far I can take it. I started learning the Japanese Hiragana alphabet one line a day, 5-6 days a week, reviewing every day and was quite surprised at the progress I made! Still reviewing daily, I had all 46 characters in 10 days not learning new material one day a week as a break. I wrote one line on my wrist with a thin sharpie and reviewed whenever I had a spare moment in the day writing and saying them either mentally or aloud.

Hi. I'm here to blog about learning Japanese.