The Japanese alphabet consists of two main scripts, collectively known as the 'kana'. These are the hiragana and katakana scripts. Mastery of these two syllabaries is essential for anyone who wishes to develop a true understanding of the way basic Japanese is writing in japan.
Of course, trying to learn the Japanese alphabet isn't necessarily an easy task. This is where the use of alphabet mnemonics and other related Japanese alphabet memorisation techniques come in handy. You see, you can learn certain kana by associating them with specific ideas and text of sorts. Let's take the character for 'no' for example. Whilst normally this character may not bear any real resemblance to anything, if you associating it with a 'nodding alien' for example, the Japanese kana for 'no' becomes easier to remember.
By making a number of these mnemonic associations, you'll be able to quite easily associate the Japanese alphabet with much easier to remember images and visual mnemonics. Japanese is a difficult language to learn, particularly for English speakers or speakers of any of the romantic languages. This is because Japanese has every little in common with such languages, and an almost entirely new order of communication must be learned.
For instance there are a number of sounds in the Japanese alphabet that are quite unique to japanese. The difference between the 'r' sound in Japan and English is quite vast, and many foreign speakers often confuse this letter with sounding like something it doesn't. It's important to educate yourself in the correct way to pronounce the Japanese alphabet characters, as opposed to just memorising them.
With a good solid foundation in the Japanese language, you'll be able to develop further skills that will go towards greatly assisting you in life, and mastering the language. Know that memorising something such as the Japanese alphabet will take a lot of time and patience, however with perseverance will pay off.
Like attempting to study any language, learning an entirely new order of strokes and writing system won't necessarily be easy, but given the right amount of time, the right amount of practice and with enough devotion, learning the Japanese alphabet will become second nature to you once you've been exposed to the writing techniques enough. Memorisation and repetition are incredibly important.
So know that, like with all things, the Japanese alphabet can be mastered, but it is recommended that you practice it at least once daily, and try and prevent yourself from reading what's known as the 'romaji' characters, as they don't help to build up your confidence in reading Japanese character's specifically. Give it time and practice, and you will soon reap the rewards.
Author Resource:-
John Hubert maintains a site teaching the Japanese alphabet through mnemonics. It is recommended you also check out the section on learning hiragana.
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