Learn Katakana

My little sister is coming to visit me in Japan soon, and wants to learn Katakana.

I learned Katakana back in 2012 with this video https://youtu.be/Mri5USM_6dY?si=3nEmXFqBOAid_hL6

Other recommendations for learning Katakana?

Could be biased but I kind of like ours: Kana Practice | Bunpro

6 Likes

I learned all the kanas (first hiragana, then katakana) using the mnemonic-based guides from tofugu (for katakana: Learn Katakana: The Ultimate Guide), their approach was very effective with me and I was autonomous in reading kanas (although very slow at first but that’s how you start) wayyyy earlier than I thought I would be. They’re the same team that built wanikani.

3 Likes

I just bruteforced it with this game.

I don’t think you can start with katakana in the adventure mode, but you can go to free play and just add the new kana little by little if she doesn’t want to also learn hiragana.

Slightly off topic, but I don’t know why English-centric Japanese learning tools always start with hiragana. Katakana is infinitely more useful in daily life and will probably get you understanding like 20% of the stuff you find around you when you actually visit Japan and are walking around Tokyo.

Hiragana requires knowing vocabulary which is important, but that’s not gonna happen overnight. Always bugged me. Anyways, carry on

5 Likes

I don’t think there is something more effective then this deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1027153995
Basically tofugu mnemonics within an Anki deck

1 Like

I’m gonna make her an i+1 deck of words she would know like
ハハハ
ハート
ドアー
アート
ココア
タコ
タバコ
コーラ
コーン
and so on…
But I’ll double check she’ll actually use it first. I’m thinking an emoji, audio and katakana feild. I wish I heard more natural katakana pronauciation. When I read each letter as just the dictionary sound,Japanese people can’t understand such a forced acent.

1 Like

I did it
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1105464713?cb=1739080977087

I went カタカナ->English
アイス(クリーム)->Ice Cream not aisukuriimu, so you can keep it in your anki deck as vocab cards.

Cons:
1 It’s my voice and I haven’t learned pitch accent.
2 I didn’t include all daikuten and small letters.
3 card 21 contains a joke which you might find annyoing :stuck_out_tongue:
4 I won’t teach you how to write or type Katakana. You need to learn Katakana order to type 9 key, or romanji for qwerty. I didn’t include a stroke diagram either.
this deck is to teach n00bs how to sound out Katakana. 以上です

3 Likes