Flashcards, anyone?

The first thing I did was start learning Hiragana.

Brief rundown of writing systems:
Hiragana = for phonetics of japanese words/words there are no kanji for. Softer, prettier, more complicated.
Katakana = for phonetics of foreign words. Blocky and sharp.
Kanji = the big, complicated guys. Stand for words, not sounds. Schoolchildren are required to learn 1,000, and 1,900 is considered fluent. Yikes.


So, baby steps. I will learn to communicate, even if I have to look like a third-grader spelling everything out phonetically.

POINT OF EXCITEMENT: Japanese is entirely phonetic. Spelled just like it sounds, none of these ridiculous pronunciation of german-french mishmashes that English has in abundance. Maybe not so hopeless after all?

Google searches will find you kana charts easily. Learning is more than memorizing off of a chart, though, so writing them is actually a huge help. Get some graph paper and write the characters in four-block squares. Strokes go top-to-bottom, left-to-right. I had a surprisingly easy time with hiragana, but katakana kicked my ass. For some reason, I just can't commit it to memory. Maybe because it's not as pretty. Or I haven't been practicing as much as I should. OR BOTH.

Anyway, something I've found really helpful is this simple little site designed with a flashcard mechanic to help you remember the writing systems. You can choose to go from english to japanese or vice versa, clicking on the appropriate translation in the buttons below. You can also set your proficiency level (level 1 is the first 10 characters, 2 is the next 10, on and on until you get to "all") and see a letter grade based on your correct answers.

I can get a perfect score on the hiragana game, but haven't even tried the katakana one. When I do manage a perfect on the utmost level, though, I'm going to reward myself somehow. Like wearing an "I'm number one!" blue prize ribbon on my jacket for a few days.

It's not flashy and it's not complicated, which actually works best, I think. I do drills once in a while, especially to work on the three or four characters I constantly get mixed up. It's a good tool, and, like any links I post in the future, is going up in the link sidebar to the left. (To the left, to the left...)

T minus 107 days.

for serious.