Step 2: Katakana

Now it's time we moved on to Katakana. If your still not caught up with, that is perfectly okay as everyone goes within their own paces. For this lesson, we will also be using Tofugu for Katakana as this guide is on the assumption that you used the previous source from the Hiragana step since the method is pretty much the same concept.

The same thing! Except different!

This took me about 3 weeks, more or less to master. Of course I do have a few hiccups here and there, Katakana should be a matter of rinse and repeat regarding the mnemonics method. There is no real skill here except for memorization which should be simple enough. Sadly, the website does not come with any pronunciation so I made do with another source that gets the job done.

In case your wondering why Katakana is important when we already have Hiragana, there is a specific reason for that. There is a whole history to that (Which involve the Chinese naturally) so a more simplified reason will be given. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words or when the kanji is too difficult to word. Katakana is used for gairaigo and onomatopoeia words.

While Katakana is uncommon, it's still worth learning as its still used today in menu's and the such. Complicated? Well yes but you could say the same thing with the English alphabet as well. Why have capital and lower letters even though the words come out the same way?

Anyways, this should take a shorter amount of time to learn since, as mentioned before, it's a repetition of what we've been going through with Hiragana.

That concludes this lesson. The next step will most likely focus on the building blocks of the great terror... KANJI!

Until then, I'll see you in the next lesson.

Sources used: Koichi. "The Ultimate Guide To Learning Katakana - Tofugu." Tofugu. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Vidxr. "Learn Katakana Today #1: Pronunciation." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.