Learning new scripts: characters, kana, hangul

A new script looks like the hardest part of an Asian language and is often the quickest win. Hangul, kana, Thai letters and Vietnamese tone marks are closed sets: a few dozen symbols, learned once. Chinese characters and kanji are a different kind of task, an open set you keep adding to for years.

So the plan has two halves. Learn the small scripts fast and early, and start the large ones early but slowly, alongside real words.

How long does each script take?

The times below are Kungfucius's estimates for an adult studying 20 to 30 minutes a day. They describe the point where you can read aloud slowly without a chart, not the point where you read comfortably.

Script	What there is to learn	Realistic time to decode	What stays hard afterwards
Korean Hangul	14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels, plus doubled and combined letters, arranged in syllable blocks	A day or two	Sound changes between syllables, reading at speed
Japanese kana	46 basic hiragana and 46 basic katakana for the same sounds	One to two weeks	Katakana loanwords, which you see less often and forget faster
Chinese Pinyin	Initials, finals and four tone marks in Latin letters	One to two weeks	Producing the sounds and tones correctly, which takes months
Chinese characters	Around 2,500 to 3,000 for most everyday text	Years, at a few new characters a day	Everything, pleasantly
Japanese kanji	2,136 on the official jōyō list, most with several readings	Years	Choosing the right reading in each word
Thai script	44 consonant letters, vowel signs placed before, after, above or below, four tone marks	Three to six weeks	Tone rules, and the absence of spaces between words
Vietnamese alphabet	29 Latin letters, with marks for vowel quality and for tone	A few days	Hearing and producing the six tones the marks stand for

Details for each are on the pages for Hangul, kana, kanji, Chinese characters and Pinyin.

Two things in the table deserve a comment. Hangul really is that quick, because it was designed in the 15th century to be learned by anyone. And Vietnamese is not a new script at all, yet it belongs here: the marks are part of the spelling, and a learner who skips them is reading a different language.

Why romanisation is a crutch to drop early

Romanisation means writing the language in Latin letters: rōmaji for Japanese, the various romanisations of Korean and Thai. It is useful for about a week. After that it slows you down, for four reasons.

• You read it with your own language's habits. Korean eo and eu are single vowels, and an English eye turns them into something else. Hangul shows them as what they are: 어 and 으.
• The systems disagree. The same Korean or Thai word turns up in several spellings, so the romanised form is never a stable picture of the word.
• Information goes missing. The official Thai system for names and signs marks neither tones nor vowel length, both of which change meaning.
• Nothing real is written in it. Menus, subtitles, chat messages and textbooks beyond chapter three all use the script. Every week spent in romanisation is a week of reading practice lost.

Kungfucius's rule: romanisation for Japanese and Korean goes in the bin by the end of the second week. A course that still prints rōmaji in lesson twenty is not being kind to you.

Pinyin is the one exception, because it is not only a learner's aid. It is the standard way to show pronunciation in dictionaries and the usual way to type Chinese. You keep it for life. What you drop is the habit of reading Chinese only in Pinyin, since Mandarin has so many syllables that sound alike that Pinyin text without characters quickly turns into a guessing game.

Vietnamese shows the opposite danger. Learners drop the marks because the letters look familiar. But ma, má, mà, mả, mã and mạ are six different words, among them ghost, mother, tomb and rice seedling. The marks are not decoration.

Should you learn kana or kanji first, and other questions of order

Kana first, always. Kanji are explained, looked up and glossed in kana, so there is nothing to gain by reversing the order.

Language	Order that works
Korean	Hangul in the first days, then final consonants and sound changes, learned through words with audio
Japanese	Hiragana, then katakana, then kanji from the first weeks of your course, each one inside a word
Chinese	Pinyin and tones for one to two weeks, then characters through words, then the common radicals once you know a few dozen characters
Thai	Consonants in their three classes, then vowels, then the tone rules, with audio throughout
Vietnamese	Letters, vowel marks and tone marks together with pronunciation from the first day

For Chinese, the order of radicals and characters is explained on the page about radicals: learn characters through real words first, and add the components once you have something to attach them to.

There is one honest exception to "start the script immediately". If you have only a few minutes a day for Chinese, Kungfucius would spend them on listening and speaking with Pinyin and leave characters until the budget grows. Hangul and kana have no such excuse.

What is the best way to learn Chinese characters and kanji?

Not by copying each one a hundred times. Three habits do most of the work.

Learn components, not strokes. Most characters are built from a part that hints at meaning and a part that hints at sound. 媽 (妈) mā, mother, is 女, woman, plus 馬 (马) mǎ, horse, which is there for its sound. Once you see parts, a new character is three familiar pieces and not fifteen lines.

Learn characters inside words. A character alone has a vague meaning and, in Japanese, several readings. In a word it has one job. Japanese learners in particular should learn readings through vocabulary and not as lists of on'yomi and kun'yomi.

Review with spacing, then read. A spaced repetition tool keeps the first thousand or so alive. After that, graded reading does more than any deck, because each character keeps returning in new company.

Handwriting versus typing

For the small scripts, write by hand. Hangul, kana and Thai letters stick better, in Kungfucius's experience, when your hand has formed each one a few dozen times, and it costs an evening or two.

For characters, the answer is a compromise. Write the first few hundred by hand, with correct stroke order, because that is how you learn to see the structure. After that, most adult learners can let recognition lead and type the rest.

Typing needs only recognition: you enter the sound and pick the character from a list. That is how most people write Chinese and Japanese today, and it has a known side effect. Chinese has a phrase for it, 提筆忘字 (提笔忘字) tí bǐ wàng zì: you pick up the pen and forget the character. If native speakers allow themselves this, you may too, unless you plan to sit a handwritten exam or live somewhere that hands you paper forms.

Install the keyboards on your phone and computer in the first week: Korean, Japanese with rōmaji input, Chinese with Pinyin or Zhuyin input, Thai, or Vietnamese Telex. Typing five real messages teaches more than admiring the chart.

Tools for learning scripts

• Anki: free flashcards for kana, Hangul, Thai letters and characters. Use decks with audio.
• Pleco: the Chinese dictionary, with handwriting input and character breakdowns.
• WaniKani: a fixed path through kanji and vocabulary using components and mnemonics.
• Duolingo: weak as a course, but its kana and Hangul sections are a painless way through the first week.
• Paper and a pen: still unbeaten for the small scripts, and compatible with every operating system.

What to do this week

1. Pick your script and set a date: two days for Hangul, two weeks for kana or Pinyin, a month for Thai.
2. Install the keyboard and type something to a real person.
3. Switch your course or app to hide romanisation as soon as the setting allows.
4. For Chinese or Japanese, learn your first twenty characters inside words, and name the parts of each one.
5. Read one real thing a day in the script: a sign, a menu photo, a song title. Slowly counts.