Please understand I love Japan and Japanese language, and Japanese culture and I mean no disrespect. I don’t think my language or culture is great or anything. I’m completely humbly trying to learn a foreign language that I very much love and respect and all that.
Was こ、こう、っこ a good idea?
Just wondering.
What, exactly, is “こ、こう、っこ”?
I’m sorry - I’m a newbie. Maybe I can’t explain it, but words end with “ko”, “kou” or “kko” or “kkou”… it’s fine. I mean, I’m sure it’s a brilliant thing. It’s just really, really, really hard to remember.
Belthazar is on level 60… so, you probably don’t even remember how hard it is. Just understand how cool you look to a newbie.
I wouldn’t say it is hard just something you have to get used to using.
Many words in any language are going to share some similarities. You would run out of possible sounds you could make if every word was distinctly different.
If we compare Japanese to English is having the distinction between R and L important? In Japanese no in English it is very important.
Like all the different intonation on words that a spelled the same but are nouns vs verbs in English.
i.e. to produce something and buying produce.
You are learning a new language so there are going to have bumps in the road. Keep working hard and I’m sure you will have it down in no time. 頑張って
Edit: More info added.
I’m thinking like しょう しょ maybe?
Yes, you’re right…
I’ll just keep working at it.
You can do it! 
To be able to differentiate this stuff is super hot super hot super hot
Good luck mate.
I kinda liked the way TextFugu taught the hiragana, it made me understand from an early start the difference between short sounds, long sounds, and the small tsu sounds. I also practiced out loud around the house like a maniac for months while learning new words in Anki.
As with all things, practice makes perfect. @fastriver I’m sure you know this by now, but you can play audio when you learn words in WaniKani, both during lessons and during reviews. I recommend doing that for every word, and it’ll make it a lot lot easier to distinguish between these different hiragana versions.
Just in case you didn’t know:
You’ll eventually reach a point where かこ, かこう, かっこ, かっこう will seem so different from one another you’ll wonder how you could ever have confused them.
The distinction between long and short vowels, and gemination vs. no gemination, are both things that beginners of Japanese do tend to struggle with. Usually in clearly enunciating them in spoken language, but I guess it’s normal to struggle with them in any form. Never seen someone single out these specifically, but yeah.
I want to reach that point! Thank you everybody.
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