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Forums - How can I memorize Japanese characters better?

Top > 日本語を勉強しましょう / Let's study Japanese! > Anything About Japanese

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Specifically I am learning hiragana and katakana, and I am having trouble remembering characters well. Any tips?

6
1 year ago
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i took 5 characters and dedicated a day to 5 new characters each. making words with the hiragana/katakana characters that you (already) know helps a lot too.

you should try not to cram and learn in a pace that's comfortable for you. repetitive writing, flashcards, mnemonics, help as well.

15
1 year ago
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Yuzuki03
Level: 129

I just recently "finished" learning hiragana and then katakana, and mnemonics is what helps me remember them. Just hit the 🧠 next to the kana and you'll usually find a hint that helps you remember/recognize them, or make up your own. Feel free to msg me for ideas. All practice will help me recall them faster.

9
1 year ago
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ゼルダちゃん
Level: 214

I really liked using Duolingo’s Japanese course to learn kana. It was one of the only good parts about the course, but it’s still really helpful. If you don’t have Duolingo maybe you should try reading the mnemonics like Yuzuki03-san said and writing them out on a piece of squared essay paper. Every time I see a character, I say its sound out loud and that helps to remember it better. Hope this helps!

6
1 year ago
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Seefeder
Level: 244

It helped me to write it very often down and saying the pronounciation while doing that. And I try to memorize also the Japanese characters which aren't asked in the quizzes.

7
1 year ago
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What I do is kinda like a Mr. Squiggle thing. I see the symbol and imagine it as a picture with a sorta scenario. This might not work for you, but it works for me .

6
1 year ago
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gillianfaith
Level: 1187

Try Quick Draw in the Games menu in Renshuu! It's great for practicing characters and you can customize the difficulty anywhere between it teaching you the character, to remembering it with hints, to writing it from memory.

6
1 year ago
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アルゼン
Level: 1243

Take a look at the "Kana Charts" section in Resources: there you can listen to them and see how to write them. For writing practice I recommend using "Worksheets" (also in Resources), there you can make a 20x20 grid, or a paper with one or multi characters. For example like this:

To familiarize yourself with them little by little, learn short and easy words such as colors, あお, あか, しろ, みどり, etc., or whatever you like. Write them and read them out loud. Or write names, I remember that was the first thing I learned, how to write my own name using the kanas.

6
1 year ago
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ロウ (Row)
Level: 704

Whenever you see kana, try to read them. When you're exposed regularly, they will become second nature. Don't worry about being able to get them all correct on a test before reading them in the wild. Using them is how you will finally be able to remember them.


Eventually, you should take a piece of paper, and try to draw every hiragana (or katakana) in order, like あいうえお, etc. Basically try to draw a kana chart. Draw every one you can remember and leave spaces for the ones you don't. This is a good way to figure out which kana you have trouble remembering You can also just try to remember some of them whenever you feel like it, like when you're bored try to draw なにぬねの, from memory, from example. (Make sure to check afterward and see if you got them correct)


10
1 year ago
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If you look really hard and long at a specific kana, you will sometimes notice it looks like a face maybe. Or a road, or even fish swimming in a pond. Those are called Mnemonics. For instance, to me, "u" (う) in hiragana looks like half of a sad face.

3
1 year ago
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.Melody.
Level: 582

Writing by hand over and over and over again. Not 100 times in a row but rather several times a day. It doesn't need to be some kind of fancy exercise, a simple sほっぴんglist works as well. If you've got a friend (or find somebody to practice here), you can also send small messages this way: へllお あんな! Lえt's pらcticえ ひらがな。

It also helps to read. Take any random kana text and try to recognise as many kanas as possible, even if you don't understand yet what they say.

7
1 year ago
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さみBabyPooh26
Level: 108

You should use mnemonics to help remember…go to this website…https://www.tofugu.com/japanes...

5
1 year ago
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- Lılƴ♡ -
Level: 88

Keep on learning non stop 🤣

3
1 year ago
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Yuzuki03
Level: 129

Take a look at the "Kana Charts" section in Resources: there you can listen to them and see how to write them. For writing practice I recommend using "Worksheets" (also in Resources), there you can make a 20x20 grid, or a paper with one or multi characters. For example like this:

To familiarize yourself with them little by little, learn short and easy words such as colors, あお, あか, しろ, みどり, etc., or whatever you like. Write them and read them out loud. Or write names, I remember that was the first thing I learned, how to write my own name using the kanas.

Good ideas! I've been studying less than a month, and haven't written w/ pen and paper, at all basically. Well, a few free-form chicken scratch notes. Poor hiragana! I need to start writing, though, bc I know it'll really help to memorize, but what is the best approach?

For the worksheets, do you space the kana in the "characters to study" box, and if you don't will it make words?

Also, I'd love to see people's writing, to get some realistic idea of form, style and size.

3
1 year ago
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Icepick87
Level: 375

I've mainly practiced hiragana and katakana when I started through the Learn Japanese to Survive series, but also a couple other places to practice on typing them. At some point I discovered Renshuu, but that sat untouched for a while. They're the easiest to learn, TBH. The best way I've figured them out was through mnemonics, which places like Tofugu have PDFs for hiragana and katakana. All you need is to drill on that for a while so you can read both of those scripts by the time it comes to learning vocab, kanji and particles.

0
1 year ago
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ロウ (Row)
Level: 704

I've mainly practiced hiragana and katakana when I started through the Learn Japanese to Survive series, but also a couple other places to practice on typing them.

That's what I used to learn them!!! I forgot about that. Those are good

0
1 year ago
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Robo Tanuki
Level: 539

My really boring reply... It just takes time. It took me a while, but make sure you have the writing mode turned on, and you'll get there in the end. In a month, youll be fine.

One day it just clicks, and for me, I can read kana (not kanji) completely fine unless it's in a weird font.

0
1 year ago
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Olive11
Level: 7

My method is to try to familiarize myself with all the kana and get like a 10% understanding of them, then really go back and work through them, I really enjoy renshuu's quick draw, and the mnemonics, you can also watch videos, or print out free worksheets.

Hope this helps

0
1 year ago
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Yuzuki03
Level: 129

I've mainly practiced hiragana and katakana when I started through the Learn Japanese to Survive series, but also a couple other places to practice on typing them. At some point I discovered Renshuu, but that sat untouched for a while. They're the easiest to learn, TBH. The best way I've figured them out was through mnemonics, which places like Tofugu have PDFs for hiragana and katakana. All you need is to drill on that for a while so you can read both of those scripts by the time it comes to learning vocab, kanji and particles.

Thank you. Actually, I can identify hiragana and katakana now. What I'm wondering about is how to best approach writing them on paper, bc I also want/need to take lesson notes. I have written some notes, but ofc it wasn't great, and I don't remember stroke order that well. I guess I just have to practice writing on worksheets, and get by with my chicken scratch notes until I improve...?

1
1 year ago
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Yuzuki03
Level: 129

My method is to try to familiarize myself with all the kana and get like a 10% understanding of them, then really go back and work through them, I really enjoy renshuu's quick draw, and the mnemonics, you can also watch videos, or print out free worksheets.

Hope this helps

Yes, ! I do use the quick draw and it's helping me to slowly remember stroke order, but yeah, I need to print some worksheets and start writing kana with a pen. Good luck to us!


3
1 year ago
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