# Tips for learning: Order to Learn the Scripts



## sput

If I am beginning to learn Japanese, which form should I learn first? Also, in Japan, what are the different uses between each of the forms and which is used most commonly?

Thanks a ton, 
Sput


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## Captain Haddock

Well, you can find a pretty good description of the Japanese writing system in a lot of places online, like Wikipedia. To put it briefly:

- Normal Japanese is a mixed script that uses all three together, so they're "equally common" in daily life. 
- _Kanji_ are used for nouns and the roots of verbs and adjectives. 
- _Hiragana_ is used for particles, verb/adjective endings, and words that have no kanji.
- _Katakana_ is like italic letters in English, it's an alternate style of kana mostly used for loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis.

It's pretty essential that you learn hiragana right away, and katakana next, so that they become second nature to you, and you're not hampered by a reliance on _romaji_ (Japanese transcribed in Roman letters). Learning hiragana and katakana isn't as hard as it looks, you can do it in a week or two if you want to.

Then learn the kanji. Some people advocate learning these by themselves; others say you should just learn them as you learn vocabulary. As an alternate point-of-view, the guy at www.alljapaneseallthetime.com learned Japanese in 18 months by memorizing the kanji _first_. (!)

Most textbook systems will introduce kanji at a slow and steady pace. How you decide to do it should depend on why you're learning Japanese, and what your goals are.


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## youtin

Most people (including Japanese) learn them in this order, and I think it's effective :

1. Hiragana
2. Katakana
3. Kanji

Pre-school children's books (which are very useful when starting to study any language) are usually written purely in hiragana. As the target audience's age progresses, the books use katakana, and then increasingly more kanji. Also, publications (like manga) that are geared towards the younger people usually have kanji with furigana (the reading of the kanji written in hiragana) on top so readers don't have to miss anything if they don't know kanji.

The guy who said he learned Japanese in 18 months by starting out with kanji seems incredible...(thanks for the link, Captain Haddock! sidenote-Btw, my real name is Tintin  ) I might try out his methods for learning Korean, though they seem to be too extreme and not very realistic for most people (I think).


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## vmunoz

I agree with previous postings, it really depends on why are you studying Japanese. I spent two years in Japan and at first I was really worried about kanji, and tried to learn. Actually, hiragana and then katakana was the right thing to do, and focus on verbal communication. Then you learn more and more kanji as you need.


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## sput

Thanks for the responses guys; helped a ton! =)


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## TheWonderfulShoe

I have been studying Japanese for 2 years...I found that hiragana first was easiest, and then as you learn about culture and basic language, add katakana for emphasis and foreign-based words, and finally add in some kanji little by little as you continue...


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## maree

I finished learning the Hiragana a couple of days ago. It took me a couple of months, but I didn't work that intensly on it either. A tip for learning is to learn about ten at a time and then trying to write as many words as possible (even Norwegian words if I couldn't come up with any Japanese) with the hiragana you already know. I began with a, e, i, o, u, and then added the consonants two groups at a time. in that way, if there was one I had a problem with remebering, i just wrote all of them down in a system, and i finally remembered the last one. Ok, this sounds complicated


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## Terrybu

It looks to me like they're all fairly equally used.


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## Musical Chairs

sput said:


> If I am beginning to learn Japanese, which form should I learn first? Also, in Japan, what are the different uses between each of the forms and which is used most commonly?
> 
> Thanks a ton,
> Sput



I don't know why you would not start with hiragana. This is what kids start learning first, and it's the most simple one I think, though katakana is pretty simple too.

Kanji is used most commonly in every day life (newspapers, TV, instructions on things, books, etc).


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## gty12

Hiragana is used for normal japanese words (ie.verbs)
Katakana is used for foreign words (ie. your name)
Kanji is used to simplify hiragana words and/or for harder words not said in hiragana.


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## Flaminius

> Hiragana is used for normal japanese words (ie.verbs)


Perhaps you meant to say hiragana is used for verb endings?  Verb stems/roots are written in kanji most of the time.


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## gty12

Perhaps I Did Flaminius or Perhaps I Didn't


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## ortak

Hello everybody

I'm a new member, I really liked that website. I hope I will learn many things here. Now, I want to ask sth about Japanese.. As I know, there are three alphabetical groups in Japanese : Kanji, Hiragana and Katagana. The point I want to learn that which one should I start to learn. Kanji is the most crowded family as I know. I'm really confused about the way I can follow. What should I do to learn it better and what it is the correct order?? 

How many characters I have to learn to make a proper reading?? When I can start to learn the grammer. I know that grammer is not so difficult in Japanese, but of couse I'm confused now...

If you share your information, I will be very pleased.. Thanks )


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## wathavy

Hi, welcome to the forum, Ortak.
You have gotten already a basic idea about the Japanese characters, that is good.
I may recommend you to learn the Katakana first. Then the hiragana is almost the same but slightly complicated than Katakana. Kaji would be the last one before you learn basic phonetics with some basic words.
As you noticed, except some rules on verb tense and other dynamic forms change, grammers are not too difficult.

Daily conversations should be quite easy for beginners  I guess.

Good luck!


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## ortak

wathavy said:


> Kaji would be the last one before you learn basic phonetics with some basic words.
> 
> Good luck!


 
Thanks wathavy indeed. I will take into account what you've said.. 
So what I understood from your sentence which I've quoted, there are some basic words to be formed of  the Hiragana and Katagana except Kanji.. I hope I can manage to learn and later the words of course. Thanks again...


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