Kana chart August 21st 2009

Well, as of this morning, I can write out the entire Kana chart from memory!

This was done using Windows Journal on a Toshiba Tecra tablet PC, so it’s slightly rougher than even my usual scrawl, and I’ve sneakily not saved the grid pattern that made everything all neat and organised. We will call it even.

I also blanked on a couple of characters – including ones I thought I’d learned weeks ago! But they eventually dropped into my brain…

But yay!

Next week – Kanji! Of course, instead of a couple of hundred characters, I now have to memorise a couple of thousand… should only take me a few years!

My Kana handwriting, as of 19th August 2009

My kana (Hiragana and Katakana) handwriting as of Wednesday 19th 2009. I have managed to swap ら　and　り (third column from the left, top two characters), and I’ve only written the Katakana (bottom group) that I know so far.

These are charts of all the kana (well, minus the ones I don’t know), in the equivalent of alphabetical order. Down the right are the vowels – a, i, u, e, o. Then each column has the same vowel with a different consonent. So reading the top row right-to-left gets you: a, ka, sa, ta, na, ha, ma, ya, ra (or “ri”, given my lapse in concentration), and wa. And then there’s ん – “n” – all on it’s own at the end – it’s the only consonant that isn’t followed by a vowel.

I suppose this isn’t so bad, given I’ve only been at this for a month or so. But I do wish it looked a little prettier. And I hate the way my か　and　カ come out. Perhaps in time.

Hiragana Practice

I don’t remember learning to read English – as far as I am concerned, it’s as natural as breathing or walking. Actually having to learn to read is actually quite fascinating. To begin with, I actually got quite annoyed with the arbritrary nature of the characters – why does this character (さ) sound like “sa” while this almost exactly similar character (き) sounds like “ki” , and there’s even a reverse one (ち) that’s “ti”, only really it’s “chi” (that last sentence may look a tad crap if you don’t have Japanese language rendering set up). There’s characters that are exactly the same except for a little loop at the end “Re”, “ne” and “wa” are only distinguished the tails at the end: れ ね わ.

But of course, English is exactly as arbritrary – it’s just that I’m used to it. Why do “a” and “d” make such different sounds? And “d” and “b” are only reflections of each other. “q” and “g” are the same except for the loop. And so on. So I’m beginning to get some sympathy, not only for those who have to learn English as a foreign language, but also for those people who have dropped through the cracks of the education system and are illiterate adults. To learn to read from scratch is incredibly hard, especially if everyone around you learned as kids. Obviously, I don’t have the social stigma aspect – this is something I’m picking up for fun, not a crucial skill so ubiquitous that society assumes you must be a moron if you can’t do it.

Hiragana is one of the two phonetic scripts (a syllabary rather than an alphabet), which means I can now very slowly sound out certain words – not that I understand many yet, although I can recognise “tofu” (とうふ） when I see it (and laboriously say it out loud). It rather makes me feel six years old, only without the vocabulary. I’m even filling in those practice sheets with big letters.

Literacy is one of the things that defines me – reading is so effortless, that I do it for pleasure. It’s rather strange to have it taken away from me, even temporarily.

From Monday, I’ll also be taking up Katakana, so I’ll be functionally illiterate in two languages at once!