Learn Hiragana and Katakana

1. It's a phonetic syllabary. This means, once you learned Hiragana and Katakana it will be much easier to master perfect pronunciation. Some Japanese texts come with "Furigana", i.e. transcriptions of the kanji with small hiragana letters. You can read such texts right away!


2. You have a secret script at your hand. And you will get a sense of achievement quickly. Unlike Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana are quite easy to master. Believe me, it feels great when you can write words and sentences with an exotic script nobody else can read. I use it often for private notes in the office that nobody else should read. :-)


3. It is pretty useful if you plan to travel to Japan. You will not be able to read a newspaper but many signs in Japan, commercials, etc. use hiragana and katakana. There are times when it is quite useful to know how "otearai" (toilet) looks like in hiragana.


4. You can impress your Japanese friends or business partners. Japanese people often react with true appreciation when a foreigner takes the long way to learning their language. If you know the basic greeting formulas in Japanese, they will applaud. If you can write something in hiragana or katakana... WOW!


5. You can read what's written on the beer can.

Here are two direct links to free exercise worksheets you can print out and use to practice Hiragana and Katakana. The worksheets are from the online vocabulary learning tool Comprehencia. Check it out if you haven't, yet! It's a great tool to expand your Japanese vocabulary. They have JLPT datasets and more.

• Hiragana worksheet (pdf)


• Katakana worksheet (pdf)

Fell free to share these worksheets, use them on your websites, add them to your blogs, Squidoo lenses, etc. -- they are absolutely free (and really useful!!). Just add a link to the vocabulary learning tool at Comprehencia.com in return. Well, here it is. :-D

How to use the worksheets:
Print out and then practice, practice, practice...
One tip I cannot stress enough is this: make sure that you draw all strokes in the correct order and in the correct direction. That's why all strokes have numbers in the worksheets. Get used to stick to these rules. It will pay off greatly when you start learning the kanji, later.