I'm still trying to get the hang of Hiragana and was curious if it is common to take long to get used to it (p.s. Japanese is the first language i've tried to learn that does not use the latin alphabet)
Russian took me forever don’t really know why. kana also took me a bit longer but if you keep at it and go at your own pace you should be alright. Some people say it should take a week or two which I tend to agree with I just have few learning disabilities so my brain kinda works against me at times. Useful tip you want to make sure you use kana while you’re learning vocabulary just to make it stick.
Thanks to duolingo, I got used to reading hiragana (I literally don’t think I’ll ever forget it) in about a month! Very recommended Quick draw is helping me get used to katakana more and more since I learned it after hiragana. I think it wont take too long… 頑張って！
Depends on what you mean by getting used to. Idk if it's normal, but 8 months in sometimes I still mix up or forget some kana (like ぬ and め, forgetting タ). Didn't take time to fix it tho, hoping this issue will be cured by itself at some point. As for me, the ability to read anything (written in kana, of course) comparatively comfortably came at around 2 week point for hiragana and a lot later for katakana (maybe 1 to 2 months). Best advice I heard is "stop trying to perfect every little aspect of your Japanese and focus on growing on a widespread range". Hope it helps!
Pretty sure it took just reading through all the kana once for me to remember, aside from the very similar looking katakana. That said it was pretty long ago so I'm not certain... but definitely for the longest time I didn't really revise anything so I'm pretty sure picked it up really quickly.
Right now though I can read anything in kana perfectly fine, I can't recall the form of all the katakana off the top of my head for writing, even though it's been so long. And I think sometimes I blank on some hiragana too...
Japanese was also my first non-Roman alphabet that I learned, and I think it took me a few months? To feel confident with both hiragana and katakana. It really depends on your study style and how well you memorize things though
I used these video games to learn kana, and I didn't play them every day so it took me a while to learn them, unfortunately I didn't bother to record when I started (Back then I didn't realize that most people learned kana in a week or two, but I also was learning to write them too so I think in the end I got a good grasp on them before learning.) After I started learning Japanese for real I would try to write down a certain group of kana from memory, and then all of them from memory. That's what really made them stick. Now I can easily write any hiragana from memory without delay, not quite as fast with katakana, so I've been practicing a little
It took me about 3 weeks to learn them, 5 kana a day, and then about a week after to memorize them. I feel confident in both hiragana and katakana although there are only a few in katakana that are basically never used, that when I want to write them, I sometimes forget, but I can recognize them when I see them. Oh n a side note, I wrote down the whole alphabet, katakana and hiragana, about five times every day so that I would get used to them. It definitely helped but was very time consuming
I'm still struggling with some kana from time to time and you can probably see it from my level, it's been long time since I learned and "memorized" the kana. And also, I more or less regularly see some fully grown-up Japanese that misread a kana for another. So, if you're worrying about taking time or still misreading some of them, you shouldn't.
But what you can do is create a schedule with only hiragana word or katakana word. Trying to learn those will help you a lot with "solidifying" the kana in your head. And later sentences too at another level. Also, reading hiragana/katakana word is different from remembering the kana individually. Remembering them can be done in a relatively more or less short time (that's why you can hear some people saying they learned kana quickly). But as soon as you are finished with your kana training, you will forgetting them. And the one you don't see often will be forgotten first. Except if you continue to see them, ie: in word or sentences. So even, if you're not completely finish with of the kana, it can be a good thing to start learning word. And even if some of them are still problematic, don't worry too much. Like I said and like the others said, it's pretty to sometime misread some kana.
Also later, you will have the problem of the font :v. And even, for Japanese, it's sometimes too much. In the pro version of renshuu, you can enable a setting where the font change each day (which is by the way another good exercises to remember the kana because it force your brain to recognize variation of the kana). And one of these font, I swear, is just awful. It's a real font but just... uh. I even show it to a Japanese friend and when I said that one particular kana was that kana, he didn't believe (it was き and さ but the さ look like a き). And when I finally manage to prove him that it was indeed that kana and that font was real, he just said one thing: キモ. Which is like a strong version "It's disgusting" x)
So yeah, don't worry even if it takes time or some of them are not perfectly mastered :3. And just continue what you're doing, it will be better with time.
I used a website called Tofugu and memorized both alphabets in around a day, but I sometimes still mix up shi (シ) and tsu (ツ). It also depends on how you study and how much time you have available. Don't stress yourself and go at your own pace.
I have a unique perspective because I've talked to hundreds of renshuu users, but the answer is...from one day to a number of months. We all have different lives, health, time, stress, motivation, plus 100 different things. So while some people can knock them out in a day or two, I encourage people to not set themselves against that benchmark.
Quick draw is helping me get used to katakana more and more since I learned it after hiragana. I think it wont take too long… 頑張って！
