Should You Start Learning Japanese in Hiragana or Romaji?
Whether it’s best to learn Japanese script first or begin with the English alphabet depends on your language goals
Japanese is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
The primary reason for this difficulty, aside from the lack of shared vocabulary is the need to learn not 1 but 3 (yes 3!!!) new writing systems.
The 48 phonetic hiragana characters and 48 katakana alone would be a challenge, but then there’s 2000 or so kanji to master with nearly infinite pronunciations to memorize.
It’s no wonder people throw their hands up and say, “Japanese is impossible!” and take up Italian or French instead.
For those hardy souls ready for the challenge (it actually isn’t all that difficult), the question becomes, how do I get started?
And it’s on that question of how to get started learning Japanese where there is a loud and insistent debate from the halls of academia and across social media.
Should you start your Japanese language journey with hiragana, katakana, kanji, or romaji?
The choice has to be made from the first lesson because that will decide your textbook…
