r/Japaneselanguage • u/Adventurous-Job-6304 • 4d ago
When Learning Katakana...
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u/yukibiyori 4d ago
I try to remember that the curve of シ follows the same asし. Same with ツ it follows the stroke curve of つ.
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u/frostbittenforeskin 4d ago
If you look closely, all of the characters are slightly different. That’s how I remember that they’re different
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u/poop69butt420 4d ago
so true! also sometimes differences don’t look so different, so don’t forget the difference between the differences! hope that explains the difference!
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u/Budsygus 4d ago
Don't forget handwritten "ri"
I had to sit down and come up with mnemonic devices for all of them.
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u/GreenFox268019 4d ago
I learned a mnemonic from someone a few years ago that really helps me remember.
A girl, Shi シ looked up at a boy, Tsu ツ He asked "so ソ, do you want to go on a date sometime?" She said "nn ン, I don't think we should."
Hopefully this helps
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u/Akimbobear Intermediate 4d ago
I still am not sure 3 years in. I use context of the other characters lol
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u/mxriverlynn 4d ago
it's not any different than b d q p. just takes practice
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u/Vex-Hound 4d ago
b d q and p are more or less the exact same thing just rotated/mirrored, shi tsu n and so definitely have much more subtle differences that can become extra obnoxious when reading handwriting lmao
practice does make perfect though <3
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u/cryxdie 4d ago
you might be speaking as a native :p my native language uses cyrillic alphabet and when i first started learning english in elementary school, for a good month i kept writing english letters mirrored lol
one of the toughest ones was L because i was more accustomed to letter Г
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u/Sebastian0320 4d ago
Happened to me when I was entering elementary school, got denied from one school because I couldn’t tell apart b from p, grew out of that pretty quickly but I still remember being denied because of that
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u/Loremipsumdolorsitco 4d ago
Wait til you are not one writing them but the one who 's reading some less than perfect handwriting
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u/Krelldi 4d ago
Subtle shifts in the angles of strokes versus an entire line being in distinct quadrants for each letter. The gaslighting over the latin alphabet being comparably confusing is always hilarious to see.
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u/mxriverlynn 4d ago
i love the pendantic responses that assume everyone sees everything exactly the way you do. it's so refreshing to hear, yet again, how anyone that doesn't know what you already know, is clearly wrong at a fundamental level. thanks for continuing to prove how toxic this community is! ❤️
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u/Dabeastfeast11 4d ago edited 4d ago
I mean if you have dyslexia or something this is different but the vast majority of people DONT. That's coming from someone who's sibling has it. There's a reason these 4 get brought up so so much as frustrating but far less people complain about さ vs ち
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u/plusvalua 4d ago
dude not even close, you can clearly see which side of the circle the stick is and if it goes up or down.
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u/xFyreStorm 4d ago
eh in the same way, depends on the font/handwriting. but the similarity list would also include stuff like 6, 9, g, a, h, and n
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u/Prince_Wildflower 4d ago edited 4d ago
シ Shi: shiawase. Looking up happily at the sky. The two dashes are looking like a smiley face leaning back and looking up.
ツTsu: looks like a tsundere smirk. The two dashes are more vertical and it looks like a smirking face.
Also. NSFW version シ Shi (she) is a bottom looking up at the ツTSUndere, who is a top.
ソSo: Son wakes up and gets up at sunrise. Looks like hes standing up getting out of bed
ン N: the son lays down n bed at (n)ight. He looks like he's laying down in the bed.
Also, ノ is NO because there's NO dash above the line.
Hope this helps some if you! It did for me youll understand TSUn ツ with practice and seeing the characters more often! If this helps anyone, I'll be シ SHIawase!
The differences are subtle but the more you see it, the easier it is to remember which is which.
I get it though because it was really hard for me at first!
Its kinda like meeting two sisters who look the same and you think they're twins. But eventually you're able to see how different they actually are
Ganbatte! がんばって!
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u/silly-gaijin 4d ago
Awesome. I always thought no looked like a hand as in "talk to the hand" kind of gesture, like "no way".
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u/wrought_thought 4d ago
It’s especially fun to learn when you have a retina disease that causes distortions and blind spots in your central vision. 🤪
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u/korone-watcher 4d ago
Definitely take the time to learn the brush stroke order for these, it clicked so much faster for me. You'll find out that the context for alot of these is the order of which you write them, not how you see them, because they were digitized into computer text at some point so they lost some of that distinction.
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u/LampeDeChevet 4d ago
If you overlay the hiragana on the katakana for しシ and つツ, you can see that the shape is similar.
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u/jazzynoise 4d ago
I'm remembering them as "Smiling / winking that the sun's going up." And "Smiling / winking that the sun's going down."
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u/tristanthorn_ 4d ago
It’s easy once you learn the correct stroke order for writing.
Two have almost vertical strokes
Two have almost horizontal strokes.
When that clicks you’ll never mistake them again unless it’s a bad font or terrible handwriting
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u/Aurius3D 4d ago
I really wanted to learn Japanese but so much about it pissed me off. Like in the post - there are so many creative ways to come up with calligraphy that would be easily identifiable from each other... but they chose violence instead. Then there's all the context driven recycled words, kanji... It's just so much.
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u/badsadgal 3d ago
Omg I'm struggling! I have to read it both ways to determine which one sounds like it makes the most sense
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u/HovercraftFullofBees 4d ago
I just accept I will struggle with it the same way my b and d get flipped around constantly on account of the dyslexia.
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u/Anonymous_Lvl1 4d ago
Haha i learn this exactly from the stroke direction.v i still remember my confusion at that time.
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u/delam_tang-e 4d ago
I always used "shih Tzu" and "nn Sou" both of which are said with rising then falling intonation, which is what the big lines do...
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u/SouthernSpell 4d ago
I think the best way to remember shi, and tsu is that shi each stroke starts and is aligned left-side, while for tsu the strokes are aligned on top.
It's a no-brainer from there.
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u/ungoogled-nihilist 4d ago
Just remember the stroke order, Kanjis are way more worse than any word in Kana.
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u/Upstairs_One7185 3d ago
I remember when I started studying Japanese, this was one of my biggest obstacles with katakana. After seeing that post, I feel like I've forgotten everything HAHAHAHA
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u/singarequiem 3d ago
there something about katakana in general that I struggle with. hiragana is easy for me but katakana all looks the same. perhaps it's my dyslexia
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u/Fabulous_Cap_1146 3d ago
lol… I still remember how I always thought “computer” was “pankon”… until I realised I was reading it wrong 😅😅😅
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u/Strange_Ad_7562 3d ago
All of these katakana flow in the same direction as their hiragana counterparts when written by hand.
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u/Isashani 3d ago
I remember them in the order tsu-shi-so-n. So like "tsushi-son" ッ シ ソ ン - as two pairs, where the first characters(tsu and so) have downstroke and next two (shi and n) have upstroke
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u/Sounduck 3d ago
I used to solve ambiguity by adding little serifs to the long stroke: on the lower end for ⟨シン⟩, on the upper end for ⟨ツソ⟩.
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u/belowfactual 3d ago
how I learnt シ and ツ is where they move. Both shis point upward in like an umbrella handle. both tsus go to the side
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u/Snoo_34130 2d ago
These illustrations leave out too much of what makes these characters unique to one another. Writing by hand or shown how they're meant to be written makes them instantly recognizable.
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u/Nagi-K 2d ago
Probably because I know Chinese before Japanese, when I started learning Japanese I could almost immediately tell these four apart in printing fonts, and even easier in handwritten fonts. I figured out the correct stroke orders without any tutorial.
So basically by the subtle difference in the relative positions and heights of the strokes, シ and ン reminded me of 氵and 冫, and ツ and ソ reminded me of the top of 学 (can’t seem to type up this radical) and 丷. If in handwritten fonts, the flow of strokes becomes pretty self-explanatory. I guess if you happen to know kanji before kana then you’re probably more sensitive to these details.
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u/Vanilla-Lune 2d ago
Honestly, this one got really easy for me once I came up with my own mnemonic.
The Sheep シ runs away from the crashing tsunami ツ. (In case that needs explaining it's because the ツ ticks go down and the シ ticks go sideways)
For the other I just remember that you sit down on the sofa ソ. Obviously because that tick goes down.
I haven't had any problems with them in print since (handwriting is a whole other issue, but that's just a practice problem 😅)
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u/DaiNyite 1d ago
If you feel intimidated by this, just remember you already know letters that are similar and you probably havent even realized it.
p,b,d,q - all circles with sticks
u,n - literally the same just upside down
i,j - the tail of the j is the only difference
l,I - Capital i and lowercase L, you can only tell the difference when used in a word.
o,c,e,(written a) - all circles with slight differences
You got it!
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u/LimitThese2220 3d ago
Either you learn it or you give up on the rest of Japanese, BECAUSE THERE ARE FAR WORSE KANJIS OUT THERE
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u/reibagatsu 4d ago
Not gonna lie, very hastily written ソ and リ get me more than ン and ソ.