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is learning hirigana really necesarry for vns?


spademan

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Hey right now im in the midst of trying to teach my self how to read some japanese, with the hopes of being able to read raw vns,lns,etc in a year or two. So far after looking online I see alot of guides that tell me to learn hirigana and kana first but are they actually needed??? I mean when i look at my chart and try to learn them, they just seem like letters which is fine, and i could be wrong, but it seems like they have no english meaning to them???  I know for a fact that i need to learn kanji since a majority of things are written in it but this  leads me to my question: can i just skip hirigana and just try to learn kanji?  

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Hiragana are useful because some words aren't written in kanji.  That's just the start though.  Hiragana makes up all the declensions and conjugations of the kanji.  Using a verb as an example, the past pluperfect ending would all be written in hiragana, so not knowing how to read it would destroy all chronicity of the language. 

 

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Yes, hiragana is the very foundation of the Japanese language as they represent every single sound in Japanese. Hiragana and Katakana are the first things you're taught in any Japanese class and without them you won't be able to learn anything else.

Without hiragana you will not know how things are pronounced or read in Japanese. Hiragana is more vital to know than kanji when you're starting up because kanji pronounciations are written in hiragana so there's no point in learning kanji without learning hiragana first. Most things in Japanese are not actually written in kanji, they have a kanji as a base for the word but then have a suffix written in hiragana that gives it a specific function.

Hiragana is also used for literally everything related to adjectives, conjugations, particles, tenses and all sorts of specific phrases and expressions that have grammatical functions.

"But can't I just romanize stuff" you ask.
Yes, you could, but because there's several ways to romanize words, and because Japanese has 3 different alphabets (hiragana, katakana and kanji) who all do different things and are meant to work together, if you romanized them all everything would look the same and you'd essentially be scratching your head trying to comprehend even the simplest of sentences.

 

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Why would you not need hiragana?

神様とふたりで浜辺
見上げたにはこれまでの人生される。人生最後時、浜辺されている神様足跡ひとつしかなくて……
神様どうして、私一番辛をひとりにしたのですかでも神様いましたけしておをひとりになんかしていないよ――

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yea you do. like, all the conjugations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. are done in hiragana. besides, ud need it to differentiate kanji meanings with furigana.

also, its not hirIgana, but hirAgana. mkay? also, if u learn katakana and the basic way to adapt engrish words to jap, u already know a bunch of words, just be careful with fake cognates.

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Hiragana is far easier than kanji, so it's a good starting point. I would say, if you can't do hiragana, then you shouldn't trouble yourself with kanji. Both have different learning approaches though. With a decent memory you can learn hiragana pretty well, or with a lot of repetition. I learnt it with manga magazines when I was 16, but that is a good age to learn anything. Also, as with other non-Latin alphabets, it's easier to know common syllables that repeat a lot than the more uncommon ones.

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Just now, spademan said:

I mean you can use laptop without battery.

anyway thanks for the replies, I see the error in my way of thought, and back to the hirAgana charts I goooo!

Honestly, Hiragana take no more than 2 hours max to learn with an SRS method of flash cards.  For all the foundation they give, sure you could start learning without them, but that two hours time spent learning them will save you hundreds down the line while actually learning the language.

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16 minutes ago, Abyssal Monkey said:

Honestly, Hiragana take no more than 2 hours max to learn with an SRS method of flash cards.  For all the foundation they give, sure you could start learning without them, but that two hours time spent learning them will save you hundreds down the line while actually learning the language.

This. If 5 year old Japanese kids can do it, you can too! You can play maybe a good 90% of all short-medium length VNs with mastery of kanji and hirigana and minor assistance of machine translators/softwares.

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2 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

Why would you not need hiragana?

神様とふたりで浜辺
見上げたにはこれまでの人生される。人生最後時、浜辺されている神様足跡ひとつしかなくて……
神様どうして、私一番辛をひとりにしたのですかでも神様いましたけしておをひとりになんかしていないよ――

https://vndb.org/v473

Link related...

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1 minute ago, Funnerific said:

Footprints in the Sand is an old poem to begin with. Actually featured several times in the VN I linked, but I suppose you can expect to see it elsewhere just as well.

Well yeah thought so that it wasn't originally from Iroseka but :sachi: 

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short answer = yes

long answer short = yes

super edit: can you study them in 2 hours (the whole kana hira/kata)? no, that's not possible, is not hard but the average time to study them is 1 week minimum. 

super edit*: I need to say this because maybe people don't realize when they write things saying "learning japanese is really easy it should take you 1 hour max, if it takes you more than that you are hitler" or "studying japanese is harder than a phd than im doing right now in theoretical physics" those comments which are obviously exaggerated don't do anything except discourage the person who wants to learn the language even if they don't intended to do so, that's what they do.
Know this, learning a language takes a lot of time and perseverance. Don't feel bad if you don't learn it like the rest of the people, don't mesure or compare yourself with them, every person is different and it will take different times to learn the same things. 
If you have perseverance you will learn it, just don't give up!

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17 hours ago, Vongalaxy said:

Dont let all these fools fool you, learning hiragana is absolutely not necessary to read a untranslated vns. I find it more efficient to just go to a casino to win big and use the money to hire groups of translators to translate raw vns 24/7.

You should always listen to people with a Makina avatar. :makina: 

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