Status

For the last week I've been pretty busy. I've only managed to do the first two rows of Katakana. And I don't really have a strong grasp of the K row.

Notes

あいうえお アイウエオ

ァ It looks vaguely like an a on its side. And it looks nothing like あ but rote memorization is slowly working.

イ This one looks like 人 to me and it's really hindering my ability to recognize it. I hope that goes away with practice.

ウ This looks like a heavily stylized version of うso it's really easy to remember.

エ This does not look like え . This looks like the Chinese word for work 工 which was a minor hindrance. But I started playing out this scene in my head: 你得工作吗? (Do you have to work?) To which I shrug and say: eh. So I get the sound and the appearance, but it's difficult to trigger this mnemonic, so it's not quick when I have to fall back on it.

オ Doesnt look like お but I'm fine with this one as it doesn't conflict with anything else for me. So rote memory is just fine.

かきくけこ カキクケコ

The first two are nearly identical and I have no problem remembering them. The last one is also pretty similar, so no trouble there. But ku and ke (クケ) are a real problem. I'm trying to remember ku as being simpler to write, much like く is simple to write and that ケ although not much like け could be a really sloppy version of け.

Plans

I'm still not taking a lot of time each day for study, because I still have a lot of other stuff to do. But here's my plan for the next week.

I'm going to grab a few words from a frequency list and practice writing some of the vocab from the Genki book. Mostly I'll be firming up my Hiragana recall and trying harder to jam the Katakana into my brain. I need to make a little bit more time for it.

The words I get from a frequency list I'm going to use for finding sentences. Then I'm going to try replacing pieces of those sentences so I can start building some comfort with the grammar. I'll be able to play with these sentences while driving and play with writing katakana/hiragana while compiling.

Still not doing any real studying-only study time though. Too many other obligations. My next leisure study activity I hope to introduce more of is Monster Hunter Double Cross on 3Ds. That should do wonders for Katakana practice.