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How To Learn Japanese Katakana in

Under 1 Hour. Part 2
Written by The Junkie
4-5 minutes

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Hello Junkie!

I assume you’ve learned your Hiraganas and are coming from

“Learn Katakana in Under 1 Hour Part 1. If you haven’t, I suggest
starting here first:

How To Learn Japanese Katakana in Under 1 Hour. Part 1

Alright, want to learn to learn the Japanese Katakana FAST?

Alright, lets start under these conditions.

1. You actually try.

2. You don’t aim for perfection. Only slow learners do that. (You’ll
perfect ‘em all once you start reading and writing.)

3. You skip the slow one character-at-a-time tutorials.

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 4. You immediately jump into reading and writing right after you learn
the alphabet. Otherwise, you’ll forget it as fast as you’ve learned it.

Ready? Good. This will take you an hour or less to get all the
characters in your head so you can read and write Japanese. Will it
be slow and awkward at first? Of course; just like your first kiss. But
that’s how language goes and there’s no way around that.

..And hey, if you want to learn & speak Japanese with a

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In part 2, we’re focusing on the final groups of Katakana. And,

we’re starting from step 3 because we’ve covered the first two
(getting a katakana sheet & writing out all the romanized
characters.)

Step 3.1. Memorizing the last 5 groups.

So, going group by group, starting with the first one, you’re going to
memorize JUST the English/Romanized parts. This is not hard at
all because all mostly follow the A, I, U, E, O pattern. There are a
few exceptions that are bolded below.

Sit down, take the first 5 groups and memorize them. We’ll do
the first 5 for the sake of simplicity.

Say them out loud. Close your eyes. Write them down.
This will take you a minute or three at most.

1. HA, HI, HU, HE, HO

2. MA, MI, MU, ME, MO

3. YA, YU, YO

4. RA, RI, RU, RE, RU

5. WA, WO, N

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 Quick test: Can you repeat these 25 sounds without looking at this
page? Yes? Good. Now, lets line them up with their Japanese
Counterparts.

Step 4.1: Get acquainted with the stroke order for these
characters.

Alright, get a pen and paper and write down the 5 groups you’ve
memorized. Make sure to give yourself space to write in the
corresponding katakana characters.

Done? Use this Katakana Chart, to see the stroke order and write
the character. Forget perfection. We’ll get to that later.

So, now, your Romanized characters should be matched up with

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 their Katakana equals. And if you left space between the letters as
requested, it should look like this. Once again, don’t worry about
perfect; we just need to get the job done.

Step 5.1 Write ‘em out.

Well you didn’t expect to learn them just by reading an article did
you? Now that you’ve memorized the English/Romanized sounds
and got some writing experiece down, we need to start practicing
the katakana characters for each group.

So, once again, write down all 5 groups down the left side of a
page like this.

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 Now, this is where the magic happens. Write the Katakana
characters you just learned across the sheet for practice. It
should look like this, if not messier than mine.

This entire guide should take you 1 hour if not less. Most of the
time would go into writing these characters out, I assume.

Now, that you’re done, I recommend you jump into learning

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 words, reading them and writing them down. Otherwise, you’ll
forget these characters as fast as you’ve learned.

Questions? Thoughts? Comments? Leave them below.

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