How to Read and Write Japanese Fast

wikihow.com/Read-and-Write-Japanese-Fast

Reader Approved
Japanese characters are so beautiful and complex that it can feel overwhelming when you try
to tackle the task of reading and writing Japanese quickly. Just because there are over 50,000
kanji characters doesn't mean you need to learn them all. Most native Japanese speakers only
know the two phonetic scripts and around 6000 kanji characters. While it may still take years to
quickly read or write Japanese, you can learn basic Japanese relatively quickly if you know
how to prioritize your studies.

Part 1
Reading Japanese Fast

1. Start reading Japanese texts written for children. Instead of diving into a complex text
that will require a vast command of the kanji, begin with books that will help you to grasp
the hiragana and the katakana first.
You can start with translated versions of books like Disney or The Very Hungry
Caterpillar. This way you can easily compare the translation to the original text to
help grasp the sentence structure.

1/9
 Look for books by Mari Takabayashi while you learn hiragana. Her children's
books are written entirely in hiragana, but will challenge your mastery of the script.
Guri and Gura are also a very famous series of Japanese children's books that you
can try as you become more advanced. They can help to build your basic
vocabulary.
Try manga. Once you feel comfortable with children's books, try moving up to
some manga as a gateway to more advanced reading.
2. Focus on basic Japanese grammar and sentence structure. Japanese can seem
confusing to read at first because there are no spaces between the characters.
Japanese sentence structure follows subject-object-verb format, as opposed to the
subject-verb-object structure that English uses. Whereas an English sentence
might be "I drink water", the Japanese equivalent would translate literally to "I
water drink" (私は水を飲みます).
Japanese distinguishes parts of a sentence with particles - for example, は or が
often denotes the subject, を indicates an object, で indicates the location of an
event, に indicates direction or time, and so forth. These particles are placed
directly after the words they refer to.
3. Tackle one subject at a time. It can be frustrating to get past the first page of a book in
Japanese, but stick with it. As you go through a text, many words will be repeated later in
the document. The more you read and encounter the same words, the faster your
reading will go as they become more familiar. [1]
Choose subjects you like. If you are interested in music, get books that are at your
Japanese reading level for that subject. If the topic interests you, you stand a
much better chance of pushing through the reading and picking up more of the
language.
4. Don't spend time learning to speak the language. If your goal is simply to learn to
read and write Japanese fast, you will only slow yourself down if you get an audio
learning course or take a class where you will practice conversational Japanese. It is
possible to learn the language without having to speak it. Since kanji uses characters to
represent meanings, it doesn't matter whether you know how to pronounce the words
out loud. All that matters that you know what a symbol means and how to correctly use it
in a sentence.
Instead of practicing speaking, spend all your study time building your kanji
vocabulary, learning grammar, and practicing writing.
5. Turn on Japanese subtitles. Try putting on a television show or movies in your native
language, and turn on Japanese subtitles. As you begin to build your reading speed and
vocabulary, you can mute the volume so you have to read the Japanese subtitles. It
might be difficult to keep up at first, but you can use the images on the screen to help
you gather the context along with the words.
6. Build your vocabulary by studying the Jōyō Kanji. Most of the words in Japanese
are kanji characters borrowed from Chinese. The Jōyō Kanji are a list of 2136 Chinese
characters that the Japanese government promotes as most useful to understanding the
language.[2]
2/9
 Keep a kanji blog as you learn. It can take many months or even years to learn
kanji. Having a blog makes it easy to look back and review the words you have
learned.[3]
Be patient. It will take a good deal of time and repetition to learn Kanji.

Score
0/3
Part 1 Quiz

Why should you study the Jōyō Kanji?

Part 2
Writing Japanese Fast
1. Memorize the hiragana script. Hiragana is the phonetic script used in the Japanese
language. Since it accounts for every sound used in the language, it is possible to write
everything in hiragana.
There are 46 characters in the hiragana script.[4] Each of them represents a vowel
(a, e, i, o, u) or a vowel + consonant (k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w).[5]
Use hiragana script to write participles and expressions, or words that are
uncommon and might not be known by your reader.[6]
Make flashcards of each of the hiragana characters with the phonetic sound they
represent on the backside. Practice by going through them once or twice a day by
saying the phonetic sound that goes with each character. Then try looking at the
phonetic sound and writing the corresponding hiragana character.
2. Study the katakana script. The katakana script is composed of 46 symbols that create
the same phonetic sounds and the hiragana script but are used for words that originated
from another language. This can be useful when you want to talk about things like
America, Mozart, or Halloween.
Since there are no long vowel sounds in the Japanese language, all long vowels in
katakana are denoted by a long dash "⏤" following the character. For example,
"ケーキ" is how you say "cake." The dash indicates the long "a" sound.
The hiragana and katakana scripts can be learned in just a couple weeks if you
practice them for a couple of hours each day.
3. Study the characters in a handwritten font. Just as the letter 'a' appears different on
computer fonts than when it is handwritten, many typed Japanese computer fonts
appear different than the handwritten fonts.
Memorize. A good way of learning is to spend about a half hour to an hour a day
memorizing and writing characters.
Quiz yourself. To test if you're remembering hiragana and katakana, try to write a
certain group of sounds from memory. If you can't do it, go over it again. Make a
chart of all the Japanese sounds, then try to fill them in with the corresponding
hiragana or katakana scripts. Keep trying daily until you can do all 46 for each
script.

3/9
 4. Use kanji, but only when you need to. Learning kanji can help to shorten your writing
significantly, but it is used sparingly, even by native speakers. You often need to be sure
that the reader is going to recognize the kanji you use. If you know how to say a word,
but do not know the kanji, you can spell it out phonetically using hiragana.
5. Practice the proper stroke order.[7] Stroke order may not seem important, but it can be
necessary to distinguish one character from another, especially with kanji. Additionally, it
actually helps you write much faster, whether it's hiragana, katakana or kanji.
Write characters top to bottom, left to right.
Make your horizontal strokes before vertical strokes.
Make shapes in the middle doing strokes on the sides.
Dots or smaller strokes should come last.
Learn the proper angles for each stroke.
6. Practice writing sentences. You don't need to start off with anything complex, but
writing in Japanese will improve your writing speed and help you memorize the stroke
order of the characters.
Write in hiragana unless some of the words are imported. You can choose to
either write it horizontally (in which case you'd write left to right, as in English) or in
the more traditional vertical fashion (in which case you'd write top to bottom, right
to left).
Write nouns, adjectives and verbs using kanji. Most of the words in Japanese are
kanji characters that have been borrowed from the Chinese language.[8] Once you
start writing kanji, make sure that you're using the proper kanji, since some kanji
have the same reading, but different meanings.
7. Do not write in romaji. While it may seem easier to simply use romanization to capture
the syllables, romaji is not used by Japanese people and your writing may just end up
confusing the reader.[9] Since there are many homonyms in the Japanese language,
romaji is not a very efficient way to write or read.
8. Write in semi-cursive or cursive to write faster. Once you have mastered the stroke
order, you can begin to write characters in semi-cursive or cursive. Practice writing
sentences and words while removing the brush or pencil as little as possible from the
page. Since you have learned the proper stroke order, you can simply apply less
pressure in between the strokes and produce characters seamlessly.
Just like in other languages, certain characters can be simplified slightly in the
writing to write quickly.[10] While you don't want to make your characters illegible,
usually the context of the writing will help the reader to understand a sloppily
written character.

Score
0/3
Part 2 Quiz

The katakana script is used for:

Part 3
4/9
Using Basic Japanese
1. Say hello. こんにちは means "hello" in Japanese. You pronounce it Konnichi wa.
おはようございます means "Good morning." You pronounce it like, Ohayo
gozaimasu.
こんばんは means "Good Evening." Pronounce it like, Konban wa.
お休みなさい means "Good night." Pronounce it like, Oyasumi nasai.
さようなら means "Goodbye." Say, Sayonara.
2. Say thank you very much. ありがとうございます means "Thank you very much" in
Japanese. You pronounce it Arigatou gozaimasu.
If someone thanks you, say you're welcome. どういたしまして means "You're
welcome." Pronounce it, Do itashimashite.
3. Ask how someone is doing. お元気ですか means "How are you?" You pronounce it
Ogenki desu ka?
If someone asks how you are doing, let them know you're fine. 元気です means,
"I'm fine." Pronounce it genki desu.
4. Introduce yourself. 私の名前は means, "My name is..." Pronounce it Watashi no
namae wa.
5. Learn directions.[11] It's important to know how to get where you're going.
ますぐ(masugu) means straight.
右(migi) means right.
左(hidari) means left.

Score
0/3
Part 3 Quiz

How do you say "good evening" in Japanese?

You're helping people by reading wikiHow

5/9
wikiHow's mission is to help people learn, and we really hope this article helped you. Now
you are helping others, just by visiting wikiHow.

World Possible is a nonprofit organization with a mission to connect offline learners to the
world's knowledge. They work to ensure that anyone can access the best educational
resources from the web anytime, anywhere, even if they do not have an internet connection.

Click below to let us know you read this article, and support wikiHow’s donations to World
Possible on your behalf. Thanks for helping us achieve our mission of helping people learn
how to do anything.

Yes, I read the article

Community Q&A
What is the easiest way to learn kanji?
wikiHow Contributor
You need to know general stroke order in order to get a head start on learning kanji.
Once you have that down, you can look up online guides, or you can search for ''"kyoiku
kanji"'', which is the order of kanji taught to Japanese children and language-learners.
Not Helpful 3 Helpful 49
I am attempting to decipher an artist's name, from the early part of the 20th century, or
possibly late 19th century. Is there a way to take a picture and translate?
wikiHow Contributor
The Google Translate app allows you to take photos of an item, and will translate it to
your desired language.

6/9
Not Helpful 0 Helpful 13
Is katakana or hiragana used more in Japan?
wikiHow Contributor
Hiragana is used most often, and is often used in combination with kanji. Katakana is
used only for imported words, such as names or things that don't really have an official
Japanese term (e.g., the word "cake", which is written as ケーキ).
Not Helpful 7 Helpful 38
Is it easy to learn Japanese?
wikiHow Contributor
No, it is actually one of the hardest languages to learn. Don't let that stop you from
learning the language, though!
Not Helpful 14 Helpful 58
Is the an easy technique to remember Hiragana characters?
wikiHow Contributor
There is no universal trick for all characters; however, if you can attach a picture or
meaning to the characters then they become easier to remember. Use simple words with
one or two characters at most.
Not Helpful 4 Helpful 24
Can I write in Japanese if I am writing right-to-left?
wikiHow Contributor
Typically, right-to-left writing is used for when you're writing vertically instead of
horizontally. If you're writing horizontally, stick with left-to-right, as otherwise your words
will most likely be read backwards.
Not Helpful 8 Helpful 36
Why is the "hiragana" in the picture written as "heragana" in Japanese in Section 3?
wikiHow Contributor
The author of the text likely is an English speaker, and in the English language, the
"eeh" sound is mostly written with the letter e, not i. The correct and official way of
writing this word would be "Hiragana."
Not Helpful 5 Helpful 19
What are the techniques to learn hiragana and katakana most easily?
wikiHow Contributor
All you have to do is to be dedicated, focus, and remember that practice makes perfect.
Not Helpful 6 Helpful 13
What is the easiest way to learn sounds and numbers?
wikiHow Contributor
For numbers, make a long set of digits such as pi into your iPhone password. Then
whenever you feel you have the relevant number down, add a few new ones and learn
those ones. If more than one number, make it computer password too, or other
passwords. For sounds, you can relate the sound to a picture, as pictures are easy to
remember.
Not Helpful 15 Helpful 17
Will it help if I enroll myself in a class to learn Japanese?
7/9
 wikiHow Contributor
Learning any language in any form will be time consuming, but it can be much easier if
you take a class. Having an instructor to help you can be very beneficial, so yes, I would
recommend enrolling in a local Japanese course.
Not Helpful 0 Helpful 1

Show more answers

Ask a Question
Submit

Quick Summary
The quickest way to read Japanese is to begin with children’s books. Focus on the sentence
structure and grammar of the language, which may be quite different from your native
language. Work on one subject at a time, and don’t spend time learning how to speak
Japanese if your goal is to read and write it quickly. The quickest way to write Japanese is to
memorize the hiragana script and study the katakana script. Write using a combination of
hiragana and katakana characters, and use kanji only when necessary.

Did this summary help you?

Tips
Japanese apps can help you as well.
Try to study in an environment that does not distract you.
Find your 'time'. Some people find it best to learn in the morning, others at night just
before they go to sleep.
Study 'little' and 'often' for a desired effect.
Check out your local bookstore or library for books.
Be very patient. Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn as an English
speaker.
Try to find a Japanese/English romanized dictionary; they can be handy. However, do
not rely on using roman characters to read Japanese!
Seek out someone who is proficient in the language, perhaps even a native speaker!
They would most likely be very happy to assist you.
Joining a Japanese class might help you to become fluent faster, but will also focus a lot
on speaking the language.

Sources and Citations

1. ↑ http://www.tofugu.com/videos/how-to-read-japanese-faster/
2. ↑ http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/jouyou-kanji.html
3. ↑ http://www.fluentin3months.com/2k-kanji/

8/9
Show more... (8)

9/9