Japanese For the Curious 101

Memorization Tips

Are you worrying about how you're supposed to memorize all of these hirigana and katakana symbols before you kick the bucket? Well, it can be rather easy! An important thing to remember is to only work with one system at a time. If you try to memorize hirigana and katakana at the same time, you might confuse the two and mix up symbols. Unless you are very confident, I strongly recommend that you only work with one at a time. Kanji, if you were wondering, is much more difficult to memorize: there are around 5,000 basic kanji characters. As you can see, learning kanji characters is on a totally different level of difficulty than memorizing 46 characters and their modifications. Even native Japanese students have a hard time with kanji, and they are taught starting from elementary school. It's best simply to write in hirigana and katakana, unless you want to read untranslated Japanese manga (comic books) and read the hirigana above kanji characters to learn the corresponding kanji. *Because little kids might not have learned all the kanji in a comic book they are reading, authors will add in tiny hirigana symbols above each kanji character to show how they are pronounced. I have listed a few tips to memorization below for you all:

Memorization through repetition - Start off by writing each of the vowels (first row) ten times, both in Japanese and in English. Do this as many times as you want, as long as it gets the job done. When you have finished with one row, start on the next. But hark! Don't do too many rows in one day, or you'll probably overload on information and won't remember them the next week. My suggested number is one row a day on leisure days (when you have a lot of free time), and one to two rows on days when you only have a few minutes to spare.

Memorization through visualization - The key words here are "flash cards"! Take index cards and cut them in half vertically so that you are left with two squares. Next, write one character on one side of each card. Then write the English pronunciation for each character on the other sides of the cards. Organize your "deck" so that they go in order from the vowels row to the last row. You don't have to make cards for the modified characters unless you want to. (You could just write dendens in one corner of cards with characters that can be modified and the resulting letter, if you want.) Practice with the flash cards whenever you have free time, first looking at the Japanese character and then the English equivalent. This is a good way if you are a visual learner.

Memorization through visualization 2 - Another way to memorize the charts with index cards is to write all the Japanese characters for hirigana/katakana on separate cards (cut like the ones in the above method, if you want to conserve paper). Then, on different cards, write the English equivalents. Organize the cards by row and then make two piles, one Japanese and one English. You can then practice matching each card with its equivalent. Work with five cards at a time so that you don't strain your brain.

Another thing: No matter which method you pick, or even if you create your own method, PRACTICE is the key to complete memorization!! If you just memorize the charts in two days, there's no guarantee that you'll remember them two months - or two years - from now! You have to refresh your memory by brushing up on your kanas every couple of months in order to really memorize them!! Unless you have a photographic memory, of course. Ganbare (Good luck)!!

Here are some examples of each method of memorization in case you don't fully understand them:

Memorization through Repetition:

Memorization through Visualization:

Memorization through Visualization 2:

I hope you gained the knowledge that you came here for!! If you have any further questions, feel free to e-mail me at Animefane1@hotmail.com. I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible!!

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