Hello, I came with an issue of telling the difference between these four katakana symbols. For me visually speaking ツ and シ look the same and ソ, ン. Especially when these symbols are not in the same sentence I keep calling everything "tsu" ( smile with two strokes) and "n" (one stoke smille). It's frustrating.
My question is there any way to make it less confusing? Thanks.
I feel your pain. Even though I tell myself that the difference is obvious, I find myself making the same stupid mistakes over and over. I mostly rely on context.
If you subscribe to renshuu pro, you can experiment with different fonts to see if that makes any difference in your recognition ability. I think it is helping me, anyway. It’s a roundabout path, though. The different fonts often make me even more confused.
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1 year ago
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What helped me was writingpractice, writing them in the correct stroke order over and over helped me recognize the difference much better, since i have vivid memories of writing them over and over.
What helped me was writingpractice, writing them in the correct stroke order over and over helped me recognize the difference much better, since i have vivid memories of writing them over and over.
This is good advice. Even vivid memories fade over time, but if you keep reading, with enough practice you can transition over to automatic recognition. My problem is that I took a long break between steps one and two.
Ah reminds me of the time when I started learning. I made these mistakes a lot too.
Here's some tips from my observation:
1. use context. When the characters are seen in text or sentences, usually you'll be able to tell what doesn't make sense by elimination.
2. It is harder when the characters are standalone. However, visually, computer fonts are made to tell them apart, like the previous method. Handwritings will be harder. The other way is to actually mentally draw a box to box up the characters, like when one is practicing writing with grid paper worksheets.
Once you mentally drew a box, you"ll be able to see that:
Tsu ツ, has all 3 brush strokes touching the top side of the box.
Shi シ, has all 3 brush strokes touching the left side of the box.
So ソ, has all 2 brush strokes touching the top side of the box.
N ン, has all 2 brush strokes touching the left side of the box.
This is the method that worked for me, and I hope it will be useful to help you too.
Hey there! I have also been struggling with these 4 katakana but I do have a few tips:
For シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), you can differentiate them by the direction the “eyes” (two small strokes) are facing.
For シ (shi) the “eyes” are looking at someone else, possibly a girl. Who is it looking at? She - Shi シ。As for ツ (tsu), they are looking at You - Tsu ツ。
For ソ (so) and ン (n), I have yet to think of a well thought out tip, but for ソ (so) I have this: When you are in a conversation, have you ever elongated the “o” when you are saying “so”? For example: Sooooo, what did you do yesterday? Typically, when you say this long “so”, your pitch goes down. When I see ソ (so), the single “eye” stroke is going downwards, just as your pitch in the elongated “so”.
For ン (n), I think of a pencil/pen when it is on its side. The single “eye” stroke is going in a direction almost perpendicular to the bottom “smile” stroke to create the tip of a pen. This pen is going to help you accomplish notes.
Yes, these may be a bit far off, but it has immensely helped me in telling the difference.
For those, I think about how they are written in hiragana. The direction of the hiragana strokes are always perpendicular to the katakana smaller marks
ん ン (stroke goes down through the top)
し シ (same, stroke crosses through the two hash marks)
つ ツ (stroke goes from left to right through the two marks)
そ ソ (the weakest example of the four, but it still works)
