I'm in the process of learning Hiragana (& soon katakana & kanji) but I'm getting very confused?
This question may be a bit dumb but I'm just very confused. Learning Hiragana is very easy & understand that its the alphabet & that Katakana is for foreign words etcetc. But my question is when putting the words together to make a sentence how am I able to tell what it translates to in english? Do I just study a lot of vocab words and see how it's written and if it matches up with the symbol? I don't understand why this is confusing me too much, I may be overthinking it -__- but how would i know which hiragana or katakana symbol to use to write dog (for an example) or house in Japanese? I hope I didn't lose anyone I'm just in a block rn & I really want to learn Japanese!
It's no different than taking some random Latin letters, like 'c', 'a', and 't', and combining them to make "cat". In that sense, it is mostly about memorizing the vocabulary.
However, most of the time it comes down to context. Many words in Japanese share the same sounds, so it can often lead to misunderstandings if the context is not known. In writing, the proper use of kanji instead of just kana provides an exact meaning.
First learn all of the kana, both hiragana and katakana. Make sure you can easily identify and match each kana to its sound. Then focus on learning words just by their sound and kana. For example, dog is Learn to be able to construct a simple sentence using only kana, such as (I like dogs). Once you're familiar with the different components of the sentence,
then you can start to learn their kanji:
Notice that and don't change. This is because they are particles, not words. Particles are very important in learning the grammatical structure, so study them well.
Overall, learning the kanji for a word mostly comes from extensive practice, but if you at least know how to sound the word it will make your learning experience much easier.
Personally, I have an app that lets me search in English and Japanese and it helps me greatly in my own learning. This is the app: https://itunes.apple.com/...64053?mt=8. If you don't have an iPhone, I'm sure there's something out there you can use.
Thank you so much! I've been asking around for help & your answer has most definitely helped me out the most!
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