I just discovered that Japanese is the language the US Foreign Service Institute ranks as number one on the list of languages most difficult for English speakers to learn, with Chinese, the other language I study, coming in a close second. So here I am thinking I must have been out of my mind.
I spent yesterday trying to suck down as many hiragana as I could. I hit on a good method: write sentences. Phrases like わたし の はは わ くのいち です。 That way I learn to associate them with sounds. If I can't remember a kana, I try and remember where it lives in one of the phrases I remembered. I find them much harder than Chinese characters, strangely, because they don't have the internal logic that Kanji have--no pronunciation, no radical and no meaning. No handy way to remember them. Where I can understand why, say, 頭 means head and is pronounced Tou, there seems to me no organic reason why ま should be Ma. So I have to find ways beside thinking to learn them. Thinking doesn't help.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Did you try the original chinese character list that I gave you?
サムさん、いい ひらがなの べんきょうの しかた ですね。
わたしの はは は くのいち です。
わたしの ちち は さむらい です。
。。でも もし これが ほんとう だったら、すごい かぞく ですね。。。^0^
I see. but Kanji also has original chinese character. so if you know it, i think it will be easier for you to remember.
enjoy it. you remembered 26 large and small alphabets and chinese character already. so learning hiragana is not that difficult fo you (^o^)/
I like the way you learn hiragana. Perhaps I would use the daily conversational phrases to apply the same method. I think it is more useful for you. Also you have to use them after memorizing (or input). Sufficient amount of output is necessary for language learning.
sam san! don't give up! man, you know you love languages and you want your japanese to be as awesome as your chinese! to be honest, i find japanese rather strange to speak simply because the grammar is quite weird... however, since you have some Chinese background, why not try to type all words in Word and type space, then, it will give the real spelling containing kanji. This way, it will help to memorize. for example, senshuu, last week, its kanji is pronounced "xian zhou", which means previous week literally. anyways, i found that method helpful.
Post a Comment