I’ve recently started using the site, and following the detailed guide I learned the hiragana, and have started on using Wanikani. One thing I’m looking for some input on, and I couldn’t find this being discussed, is how best to type hiragana when giving a response. My concern is that typing using the roman alphabet, which the site converts into hiragana will reinforce my understanding of the sound, but that my knowledge of hiragana will fall away, as it’s only been recently learned? Wouldn’t I be better selecting the specific hiragana I want to use in my answer, or will this be too long winded, and of not enough benefit?
I haven’t found this to be the case… You’ll have to read hiragana when you’re doing lessons, whenever you get anything wrong and constantly to make sure you haven’t made any typos. There are other ways to input, but IME’s tend to want to convert everything to kanji - so you’d have to make a special effort to retain the hiragana, plus you’d have to switch back and forth from English to Japanese all the time while doing reviews; it’d be a pain in the arse.
I will say that it hasn’t helped my hiragana handwriting, and my katakana has suffered from extreme neglect. (I’ve recently started using an Anki deck of katakana-only words to bring it back up to speed.)
Yeah I guess my concern is that my Input isn’t really hiragana, as I’m typing the sounds basically in english and the site is converting them. But if users with a lot more experience on this site (I’m level 1!) don’t think this is a problem, then I’m probably worrying too much!
I reckon a bit of practise typing hiragana on a phone keyboard is a good way to supplement the wanikani input. Especially the ones where you swipe in each direction for the other vowel sounds… Not sure what it’s called.
There is a hiragana keyboard layout, but only about 5% of Japanese people use it on the PC. Most use roman character input converted to hiragana/kanji as well.
Otherwise, when you learn using a PC in Japan, you’d have to learn two different keyboard layouts at once.
As others have said, i wouldn’t worry about forgetting Hiragana because of Romaji input.
That being said, i like the Hiragana layout and have learned multiple layouts anyways. It’s just not so easy to install and use. It actually doesn’t really work on my Windows 10, only on Mac, some keys aren’t converted correctly. And there are only a few japanese websites to learn the layout, and it’ll take quite some time to learn. And you’ll have to switch between keyboard layouts all the time.
So, it’s a bit complicated.
but if you want to try it, you can select it in the properties of the Google Japanese Input under input mode (Kana), or in Microsoft IME, etc.
I would recommend not stressing about it too much as long as you don’t make a habit of reading sentences written in romanji, just keep practicing and you should be good to go! ヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ
