Why is it so hard to learn katakana?

[Jonapedia]

@Belthazar

@banditraider

You haven’t mentioned them specifically, but if you’re having issues with シ (shi) ツ (tsu) like the previous poster mentioned, this diagram might make them feel more intuitive.

A similar trick works for ソ／ン, but for ソ, you need to focus on the very start of the stroke for そ (goes across and curves down), whereas for ン, you need to focus on the end of the stroke for ん (goes down and then curves up).

Just as additional information for anyone who’s interested, especially if these katakana are difficult for them: all of these kana except for ン share origin kanji with their hiragana counterparts:

Do I Need Katakana In the Beginning?

I don’t know if this helps, but it’s you look up the source kanji on the Wikipedia ‘Kana’ page, you’ll realise that there are a lot of overlaps between hiragana and katakana sources. That means it might take you less effort, especially if you know those kanji already (or at least something similar). Here’s an example: つ and ツ both come from 川. If you know the correct stroke order, you’ll realise つ is just a linked-up version of ツ with the bumps smoothed out. That’s one of the commonly confused …

Here’s a related post on the same thread that includes diagrams from Wikipedia on kana origins that might help making the similarities easier to see:

Do I Need Katakana In the Beginning?

This is interesting, and I haven’t given a thought to the origin of kana in a long time. I am going to spend a little time with kana. Here is the image of origins from wikipedia [image] also this chart shows regular character, cursive script, and hiragana [image]