Since sometime ago, I've gone to some Japanese classes. Later on, it was just due to timing problem or that I'm giving excuses to myself that I've not gone to continue. Nowadays, I ended up having to study on my own. Believe me, this really is not easy at all.
After few months or even a year, I've totally forgotten some of my Hiragana and most of the Katakana. Now I have to continuously write the same word over and over, test myself over and over again without looking at those damn charts.
*Image source: textfugu.com
The Hiragana that I forgot the most is always the 'ne', 'nu' and 're'. I either mixed them up or just totally forgot, somehow. So not fun that I've got to write a lot of time for a single word just to remember the strokes and the word.
*Image source: textfugu.com
When it comes to Katakana, this is even worse. I remember up to the 'M's but I keep forgetting some here and there. Those that studies Japanese says this is easier to remember compared to Hiragana but somehow, for me, I remembers the Hira more than the Kata. Beats me why.
I found a lot of sources where one can do self study for the basics, but of course, you'd need some guidance and reference here and there as you proceed. Sites like these helps me a lot for practice in remembering the words itself:
- Japanese-Lesson - You can download lots of worksheets for practice writings from this site. Learning the words doesn't just end at Katakana as you have Kanji to learn as well.
- Meguro Language Centre - This site here gives you optional either self learn or even distance learning, where you can setup a schedule to learn with some native speakers via Skype, e-mails and so on.
- Textfugu - This one is mostly self learn site, but yes, definitely in a very disciplined and hard way.
Of course, if you'd want to test yourself and depends on what you want to do it for, you can always test yourself at the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) that is held sometime in the year depending on your level. For me, it'd be best for me to take up this test so that I can do freelance translations :D Of course, it's look nicer for my resume too, don't you think so?
For those that is interested in Japanese, just some heads up on how long you'd need to take up to learn from Hiragana to Kanji, just purely on words, not conversations or grammars. Even I still have a long way to go for this...
Total Hiragana in modern Japanese : 46 words
Total Katakana in modern Japanese : 46 words as well
Total Kanji : maybe bout 50,000 ? But oh relax, commonly used ones are about 2,500 words. Japanese Ministry of Education specified 1,945 Kanji as the jōyō kanji (Kanji letters in common use).
Here's an example of how Kanji is :
It's your typical Chinese words but with mixture of Hiragana inside. Kanji is used when the word is kinda long written in Hiragana. Also, some of the words may not be exactly the same, I'm not sure since I've not much of knowledge in Chinese words. This is how long a person would take to learn Kanji...
*Source from Japanese-lesson
I'm not gonna give up in my Japanese, that's one thing for sure despite it took me quite sometime to finish this up :P
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