Hiragana and Katakana: The Japanese Syllabaries

Hello everyone, and welcome to this Blog!
This is my first Blog post here, and so I thought I'd start by providing you with a nice little tip from my experience with learning the Japanese syllabaries Hiragana and Katakana, in addition to some information about these writing systems. Japanese is the first Asian language I decided to learn, and the one I have the most experience with among the other languages I study.

A syllabary is a writing system that consists of symbols that represent syllables. The Japanese language is written with two syllabaries, called Hiragana (ひらがな) and Katakana (カタカナ), in addition to characters from Chinese origin, called Kanji (漢字) in Japanese. These syllabaries contain all the sounds of the Japanese language.

The Hiragana syllabary is used in children's books, since it's the one children first learn, and in any word that isn't commonly written with Kanji. You will also see Hiragana for the function words or 'particles', and for other words that use uncommon or outdated Kanji.
The Katakana syllabary is used for writing some names, like vegetable, plant, and animal names, for example; it's also used for writing words borrowed from other languages, and names from other languages.

When I first became interested in learning Japanese, after doing a little research, I knew the first thing I had to do was to learn to write the syllabaries. And I had to start with the Hiragana.
The Hiragana is the first writing system taught to children in Japan, and so, it is the first one we learn when we start learning Japanese as a second language as well.
I went online and downloaded a chart that showed the Hiragana and Katakana characters, and decided on a daily goal to accomplish learning them. This was my first step in my introduction to the Japanese language.

I would take five Hiragana characters and get familiarized with them before proceeding to learn five more.
I didn't exactly learn five characters daily, but by setting the five at a time goal, I managed to learn in about a week. I did the same with the Katakana, and I have to admit the Katakana was a bit harder for me, since there are a couple characters that are almost identical! Like for example マ and ム ('ma' and 'mu'). At first I saw them as a sort of upside-down version of each other, and I kept getting them mixed up. (I have to admit I sometimes still do.)
But keeping a five at a time goal, I managed.

This is my little tip for you to learn the syllabaries: set a goal, a small one, and work for it day by day. Five characters a day is a good amount, perfect actually (and you'll see why on my next post) so this is what I recommend. For Kanji, I'm currently doing six at a time.

This is something I want to do with this Blog. I love helping others, and I love the process of learning new languages, so I want to provide my readers here with something they can find useful in their learning, sharing my experiences learning, giving them what has worked for me and what I'm trying new to continue learning. I'm going to be posting lesson type posts here, in which I not only talk about my experience learning, but also provide something to help readers learn. From student to student.

In my next Blog, I will provide you with the full Hiragana syllabary, and the five you should start with. I'll make follow up posts, and include some reading practice for you.

See you here!