Learning hiragana?
 

I'm trying to learn hiragana and katakana but I usally do best learning from book, however I am having a hard time finding a good book on hiragana and katakana.. Does anyone have any ideas on a good book?

Thanks.

I like Nakama1. It's what we were using in school.

Woah, that book is high $$. Haha but I will look at buying it I will read some other reviews and might buy it. From what I have been reading about it I hear it is good.

I dont think you need a book that costs money.
I think you can lots of resources on the net,
some webs are especially for beginners like you.

I have a question for Retrogamer77,
What's that book called Nakama1, is it your textbook?

Yea, it's a textbook that we used in class last year. From all of the books I have seen I think Nakama does very well at explaining things. As far as internet resources I'm very cautious. I've been to sites and been able to point out things that are wrong, even as only a first year student! My sensei laughed when I showed her. :p

I printed out the Hiragana chart from Wikipedia, and would memorize, write, and read for about a week at a summer camp. I know them all rather well now. Haven't had time to learn all the Katakana yet.

i used internet to learn them, the good thing about it is that some sites alow u to see how to write them since they have animations, i think its better than a book that way, of course u can do both.

I am currently learning Kanji, I already pretty much memorized hiragana.

I would just print out some sheets. It's how I learned.
Hiragana and Katakana are easy to learn, you shouldn't need to spend a dime learning them.

Yea, If you're just going for learning the Kana and Kanji then there's probably no need to buy a book. You can look it up online anywhere. The only reason I have a book is because I studied in class.

MIT has a ton of course material online for 1800 of their courses, and that includes Japanese ^_^

Here's a link to the study material for the Beginning Japanese 1 class:

MIT OpenCourseWare | Foreign Languages and Literatures | 21F.501 Beginning Japanese I, Fall 2004 | Study Materials

For some reason, the pictures/text for the Japanese doesn't work on my comp, but if you go to the page for the individual character and click on the picture icon, you get a movie of someone drawing it w/ the right stroke order.

Anyway, it's a place to start. By the way, the book I used was Japanese The Written Language (JWL) by Professor Eleanor Jorden and Mari Noda. I thought it was pretty good^_^ We had the "Field Test Edition" so it had a few mistakes, but the real edition is out now and I expect it's quite a good book.

I want to see your NAKAMA very much.
the textbook we are using is 1990 version.
it's too old and you cant find words like oshare.

It explains grammar well ...In fact good textb.

Mmm...I could try to scan a few pages though I don't know how well they would turn out. :mtongue:

Thank u.
I really want to see it.
Is there a e-book version?

Our textbook becomes difficult now,
for it is Advanced Japanese.
Now i am learnin japanese grammar that is written in English.
It is interesting to read japanese textbook in English version.

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so, i am expectin Nakama.
Yoroshiku onegaishimasu...

i use a program called befor you know it, its free to download. i also downloaded al the lists that are on the internet of byki and i got katakana and hiragana. very simpel software that works pretty well. you learn to read and write it.

i'm using a book by a company called "tuttle"^^ it's working real good!

also, the website called nihongonaru is really great and helps a super bunch!
good luck!

I think my way was most fun. Just print out a basic list with both hiragana and roumanji, and get like a manga or something in Japanese and just translate the whole book by looking at the chart.

Like.

にっぽんはいちばんてす。

Then refer to your chart.

Nippon wa ichiban desu.

And then if you want you can translate it(or if you can, some phrases are harder than others).

Japan is the best.

It's best to use manga cause they come only in Kana, although the Katakana is there, it's pretty insubstantial.

You can also just write out a chart again and again until you get it lodged in your noggin.

I'm a fan or repitition.

I've never read a manga that didn't have Kanji in it. :confused:

All you need is a basic hiragana chart. Anything more than that is unnecessary. Since it sounds like you already have a book, study more from it. I write in all hiragana/katakana/kanji just a fluent and fast as I write English letters just because I practice writing them so often. Just reading and studying them is going to do you no good.

I learned hiragana and katakana within a month by taking a Japanese book/manga and writing down the romaji on a piece of paper. Then I would put the book away, look at the romaji, and on another sheet of paper write all the romaji back into hiragana. It gets your mind working both ways and gets your hand practicing the characters. If you're having a hard to remembering and you need little clues to help you out ( for instance, the character 'ki' (き) looks like a key.) There's a pretty nifty book that has hints like that, along with boxes to practice your writing in. I know it sounds very elementary, but I teach fifth graders Japanese and that's what I use: 'Kana Can Be Easy'.

Good luck with learning your characters!

there are many manga that have kanji with furigana above the characters, so even with kanji it's readable (this is usually geared towards younger Japanese readers. Books like Doraemon, for example.)

Well I know about those. Lol. That's how I'm helping with practicing my Kanji. But that's what I meant. There are still Kanji in them. I meant that I've never seen a manga with ONLY kana and no kanji. I suppose they exist though.:rolleyes:

Sorry....That's what I meant. Like...the furigana thing. But I got it from Naruto....and a Ribbon one, it was all like that, but Kanji is so weird you can't learn it like you can Kana.