I Speak Japanese

Ive got a quick question, which is more important Katakana or Hirgana for learning first? See im just getting into the alphabet so I was getting confused on which comes first. Or is it Kanji you want to learn first?

Hiragana should be learned first.

what is the difference between Katakana and Hirgana?

@Msmagnificent
Katakana is for foreign words (i.e., names, etc) and hiragana is for words of japanese origin (i.e., chakuseki which means “sit”, would be spelled using the characters above, hiragana)

they’re both important, but when in Japan you’ll likely see more hiragana. alot of the time their mixed together which can cause confusion if you don’t know katakana.
like said before, hiragana is used for japanese originating words (watashi = I, shinbun = newspaper, denwa bango = phone number, etc..)
and katakana is used for foreign words (toide = toilet, tobaku = tobacco, etc…)

i’ve a question, on the list there are also shown kanji from which the characters originated, do we have to learn them?do people use it?

i’ve a question,like name banneza what character it means..

i speak japanese a littile bit!!!!you now the gifu city!!

I was going to use your website untill I noticed mistakes with your hiragana chart. Fu should be Hu. Wi and We should be in other sounds chart.

@anat167

You need to learn them only to the point of their pronunciation and what they mean. They no longer really hold meaning as to what they were derived for to hiragana. Since the “a” kanji is now used as part of many kanji/phrases - yasui (安い), anshin (安心）. I hope that makes it clear. Just learn the pure hiragana and kanji comes later.

@furanku Thanks for the comment. There are actually a few styles of romaji (the most common being the Revised Hepburn, Nihon, and Kunrei Romanization styles) and the chart above just shows one type. That’s actually why using romaji can be so tricky. Hope this helps to clarify what you’re seeing!

Enjoy your website, but just can’t get to it enough. This is a picky comment, but on your ” Learn Hiragana” page - you state “the hiragana is on the left” - while I am sure that you meant “in the middle”. Similar to how you said on “Learn Katakana`page.

Your webiste is quite well `constructed`& I am visiting whenever possible.

Thanx much

furanku :
I was going to use your website untill I noticed mistakes with your hiragana chart. Fu should be Hu. Wi and We should be in other sounds chart.

a few mistakes, so? this is a great site! it is one of the BEST and i mean BEST websites ive ever been to! This is JUST what i was looking for! im learning alot and my friends go Huh? everytime i say something Japanese! you guys rock! litsen to comments and fix the VERY little mistakes ur website has!
Yours Truly,
Caadori Husdon

ji is put twice the second one is suppose to be changed to di

@Gordon C.
it’s easiest to learn them bolth at the same time.if you try to learn them seperatly you will get confused because the characters make the same sounds.A good way to learn them together is to remember this: a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko sa shi su se so ta chi tsu te to na ni nu ne no ha hi fu ha ho ma mi mu me mo ya yu yo ra ri ru re ro wa wo n. that’s all the noises now you just have to learn the characters for them.a good way to do that is to go a(hiragana character)a(katakana character) and learn bolth two characters at once.

[quote]i’ve a question, on the list there are also shown kanji from which the characters originated, do we have to learn them?do people use it?[/quote]

Kanji it’s Chinese Simplified, one Kanji match word or number eg. 火 - fire, 八 - 8 , 六 - 6 , 日 - sun, day. You can read more on the wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji