As with any language, the key is to practice consistently. Still with me? There are many books, tapes and methods for learning on your own (Inari liked this one until she went to college and started taking formal classes). As you see, just by learning the Kana is a huge step to breaking down Japanese. But, it is possible to write Japanese without Kanji and just Kana. In typical written Japanese texts, all 3 character sets are used together. In either version of Kana, there is a character for every syllable in Japanese, as opposed to English where individual letters are joined to make the syllables. The Katakana set of characters is used mostly for writing out foreign words using Japanese syllabary. Hiragana is used to write out word that are specific to Japan and there was no Kanji for. There are two versions of the Kana: Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji characters themselves were not enough to fully write out Japanese, so “Kana” was created to fill in the holes. Don’t get the wrong idea, Japanese is not “like” Chinese language. Known as “Kanji” these characters are mostly used to write down nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
![read manga online for free hiragana read manga online for free hiragana](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7b/4b/f1/7b4bf1e97a31b2be10bd833e05ec7d1a--tv-anime-manga-anime.jpg)
The largest character set in Japanese are actually characters derived or borrowed from Chinese characters. But if you are dedicated, says my girl Inari who is learning Japanese now, you can quickly begin to break down written Japanese. Beginner students to Japanese may have a great deal of difficulty try to read manga–you need somewhat of a foundation of Japanese grammar, a course or two. Obviously, this is not an easy language for English speakers. I know at least a few people who would like to learn Japanese, in a large part, due to reading manga. Have you ever seen a cool manga book and say “Hey, I want to read that! Nope, it’s in Japanese.”