I don't normally post here, but I wanted to tell someone that I have finally mastered all of the Hiragana on the website I was using to study. (some 46 symbols, don't know if there is more)

Now that I got that bragging out of the way I can move on to learn katakana.

If you think hiragana was hard, wait until you get to kanji!
You're gonna have to memmorize over 2000 of those bad boys!

2000 characters are just for well off.

But to be master of it.. heh you need more than just 2000 words.

2000?
hoo boy
that should be interesting
Well if other people can do it....

Once you're able to read hiragana and katakana, go read some real Japanese comics.

hello...
i'm malaysian and i had learn hiragana and katakana too when i was 13
years old..now i'm 16 and i had forgot some of hiragana and katakana because
i didn't practise it...
so,i think u must always use and practice what u've learn...don't be like me
o.k.
> hiragana is easy than katakana
and kanji drove me crazy...it's hard to learn kanji<

How much do you remember?

I know how hard it is to juggle languages especially written I've forgotten cursive(english language) not all but most I think I'm going to learn korean or vietmanese next I'm not sure wich one mabie some one will help me decide

practice makes perfect ( it's true if you don't study you forget I forgot most of my hawaiian but the bigger you vocabulary the harder it is to forget thats how I remember soo much cross refencing) sorry for the misspelled words

Why do Japanese people use Kanji? They should jsut stick with hiragana and katakana in my opinion Not to be offensive but seeing Chinese characters in the middle of a Japanese sentence makes it seem kind of weird

NO WAY MAN, it would be so annoying to read japanese without kanji. They help differentiate synnonims and what not. Not to mention make the language look unique with its beautiful blend of kanji, katakana, and hiragana. I guess to fully appreciate the magic of kanji you must know them.

Yeah, since there are no spaces between words in Japanese, if everything were written in hiragana/katagana, you wouldn't be able to tell where it is the end of a word. Characters help you write faster and its a good way to find out a person's intelligence as well.

Plus, Japan is the only country in the world that have characters that can be read in more than one way. Japan has some characters that don't exist in China. And Chinese have simplified their character set because of Mao's education reforms so that the farmers can learn to read too. Japan has kept its original "kan" (the Chinese dynasty that invented it) character set.

Japanese language is unique and interesting and is something that should never be lost.

you can find all Japanese Kanji in traditional and simplified Chinese

hey Ive been studying japanese for like maybe 6 months in college and learning hiragana and katakana is easy part it more like memorizing a code for letter in the english alphabet to me. and I myself learned katakana by accident I was supposed to be studying hiragana but I messed up. I think kanji is important cause writing in full hiragana and katakana is time consuming and wastes paper.

My instructor hated it when I used kanji when writing because she didnt want me jumping ahead of the class. you know? I still dont know it all but its useful and make sense. likef or isntance they got one symbol for tree. put two of them next to each other it means woods put 3 together it makes forest. You look at names like mitsubishi for example and instead of doing mitsubishi in hiragana they describe mitsubishis logo in kanji 3 diamonds.

I think its pretty important and im new at this.

To be more precise... prior to World War II, Japanese used ALL Traditional Chinese characters.

After World War II, Japanese had their own reform and they simplified some characters, but not to the extend of mainland China and their Simplified Chinese characters.

So in modern terms, I would say Japanese Kanji is somewhere in between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Also there are some Japanese Kanji that doesn't exist in Chinese Hanzi, they are called Gokuji and there are only a few of them (10 - 20?)

really? Wow I had no idea.

I agree with watashi5000.