How Long Does It Take to Learn Hiragana and Katakana?

How long does it take to learn hiragana and katakana?

Learning hiragana takes about a week for the 46 basic characters and one to three weeks for all 104, at 15 to 30 minutes a day. Katakana takes about the same again, another one to three weeks, and often a little longer to feel natural.

Reading both at a comfortable speed takes more: weeks to a few months of regular reading. With 15 to 30 minutes a day, you can expect to recognise every character long before you read fluently.

So can you learn hiragana in a week? You can meet every basic character in a week. Keeping them a month later depends on review, which is what the rest of this page is about.

What you are actually learning: 104 characters per script

"46 characters" is the number you hear most, but it's only the start. Our hiragana chart and katakana chart each have 104 entries:

The good news is that only the first 46 are new shapes. The 25 marked characters reuse shapes you already know. The 33 combinations are two characters you already know, written together. That's why the second and third parts of the chart go much faster than the first.

Two more marks: small っ and ー

Two small marks aren't among the 104, but you need them to read ordinary words. Each takes minutes to learn, not days.

• Small っ (ッ in katakana) is a smaller version of つ. It isn't said as tsu. In romaji, it doubles the consonant after it: ちょっと (chotto, “a little”) and ベッド (beddo, “bed”). When you say the word, you hold a tiny pause before that consonant.
• ー, the long-vowel mark, makes the vowel before it longer. Katakana uses it: コーヒー (kōhii, “coffee”). Hiragana usually adds a vowel letter instead, as in お母さん (おかあさん, okāsan, “mother”), whose reading おかあさん has an extra あ.

Japan's official guidelines write double consonants in loanwords with a small ッ and long vowels, as a rule, with ー.

Extra katakana for foreign sounds

Katakana also has a few extra combinations for sounds that come from other languages. Examples are the ティ in パーティー (pātii, “party (social gathering)”) and the ファ in ファイル (fairu, “file”). Japan's official guidelines for writing loanwords list them (外来語の表記). They aren't among the 104 on our charts; you pick them up as you meet the words.

Recognising, recalling and reading at speed

"I've learned hiragana" can mean quite different things, and they take different amounts of time.

1. Recognising: you see a character and, after a moment, know its sound. This is the fastest stage to reach and the one the estimates above describe.
2. Recalling: you hear or think of a sound and can produce the character, or pick it out from look-alikes. This is harder, because recognition can lean on small visual clues that recall can't.
3. Reading at speed: you read whole words without decoding them character by character. This only comes from reading lots of real words. It keeps improving long after you "know" the chart.
4. Writing by hand: you write each character from memory, with the right stroke order. This takes extra time on top of the estimates above. Many learners read first and learn to write as they go.

A quick way to check where you are: read the three words below.

If you have to put テレビ together one character at a time, you're at stage 1. That's normal for the first few weeks. The point of practice after that is to move from stage 1 to stage 3, not to learn more characters.

How long to learn katakana, and why it often takes longer

Katakana has exactly as many characters as hiragana, and it follows the same chart. Yet many learners find it takes longer to feel natural. We know of no study that measures this, but a few reasons are likely:

• You see it less often. Hiragana writes the grammar of Japanese (particles and verb endings), so it appears in almost every sentence (what is hiragana?). Katakana is used mainly for loanwords, foreign names and emphasis (more in what is katakana?). In beginner material you simply get fewer repetitions of it.
• The shapes are simpler, so they share more features. Katakana is made of short, mostly straight strokes. That makes several characters very close to each other (see the next section). Hiragana's curves give you more to hold on to.
• Reading a loanword is a second puzzle. Even when you can sound out a katakana word, you still have to find the English (or other) word inside the Japanese sound. That's a separate skill from knowing the characters, and it takes a while.
• It usually comes second. Most courses, ours included, teach hiragana first. So katakana gets less early practice and has to compete with shapes you've just learned.

None of this means katakana is harder to learn. It means it needs a bit more deliberate review, especially of the look-alikes, and plenty of loanwords to read.

The look-alikes that slow everyone down

Most of the time lost on kana goes on a handful of groups that look alike. These are the groups our kana path drills separately:

The most famous pairs are シ/ツ and ソ/ン. The difference is in the long stroke and where the short ones sit:

• シ and ン: the short strokes sit on the left (シ has two, stacked), and the long stroke is written upwards from the bottom left.
• ツ and ソ: the short strokes sit along the top (ツ has two, side by side), and the long stroke is written downwards from the top right.

Tap any of them to see how it's written. The word シャツ (shirt), in the word table above, has both シ and ツ in it, which makes it a useful test.

Look-alikes are best practised the other way round: you're given the sound and have to pick the right character out of its group. Recognising シ in a familiar word is easy. Choosing between シ and ツ with nothing else to go on is what proves you know them.

For memory tricks and study techniques, see how to memorise hiragana and katakana. This page is about how long it takes; that one is about how to do it.

A realistic plan: a row or two a day

The simplest plan that works is a stage a day: learn one or two rows, then review everything you've learned so far. On our free kana path, each script is split into ten stages of 8 to 15 characters. Then come look-alike practice, a different typeface, first words and a test.

After that, katakana follows exactly the same shape (with textbook print instead of the handwriting style). Then come four stages of loanwords (83 words). At a stage a day, that's roughly two weeks per script, and about a month for both, plus four days of loanwords. That's where the estimates at the top come from. Two stages a day halves it; a stage every other day doubles it. All three are fine, as long as you keep reviewing.

A few things make the plan work:

• Each stage opens when you've learned 80% of the one before. You don't have to be perfect to move on; the rest keeps coming back in review.
• Review every day, even on days you add nothing new. Everything you learn goes into Smart Review, which brings it back just before you're likely to forget it.
• Start reading words early. The word stages come straight after the rows for a reason: reading real words is what builds speed.

Skip what you know, then prove it

If you already know some kana, you don't need to start at あ.

• The placement test asks four questions from each learning stage. Get three of the four right and that stage is marked as learned. The test stops after two stages in a row you don't pass. You start at the first stage you didn't pass, and the ones you skipped still come up in review. It's free with an account.
• The test per script asks 20 questions drawn from all 104 characters, and you type every answer. You pass with 90% (18 of 20). It doesn't lock anything. It's an honest check of whether you know the whole chart, including the combinations, not just the rows you practised last.

A good rule: take the test when a stage a day starts to feel easy. If you pass, move on to the next script. If you don't, the characters you missed are the ones to review.

Questions about learning hiragana and katakana

Can you learn hiragana in a day?

You can meet all 46 basic hiragana in a day, but without review, many of them will be gone a week later. Tofugu's mnemonic guides promise "hours or days, not weeks or months", and its hiragana guide says some readers learned to read them in a few hours. That's possible for a first pass. Plan on daily review for a week or two to make it last.

Can you learn hiragana in a week?

Yes, you can learn to recognise the 46 basic hiragana in a week at 15 to 30 minutes a day. All 104, with the marked characters and combinations, usually take one to three weeks.

How long does it take to learn katakana?

Learning katakana takes about as long as hiragana: one to three weeks for all 104 characters, at 15 to 30 minutes a day. It often takes a little longer to feel natural, because you see it less often.

Is katakana harder than hiragana?

Katakana isn't harder to learn, but many learners find it slower to stick. Its straight strokes make more look-alikes, such as シ and ツ, and you meet it less often in beginner material.

Should I learn hiragana or katakana first?

Learn hiragana first. It writes the grammar of every sentence, so you'll use it from day one. Katakana comes next, for loanwords and names. Hiragana vs katakana explains how the two differ.

Why is hiragana so hard to memorise?

Hiragana is hard to memorise mainly because of the look-alikes and too little review. Characters like ね, れ and わ blur together until you practise them side by side. How to memorise hiragana and katakana has techniques that help.

Do I need to learn to write them?

You don't need to write kana by hand to start reading, but it helps. Writing every character from memory, with the right stroke order, takes extra time on top of the estimates on this page. Tofugu's hiragana guide says learning to write can double or triple the time. Many learners read first and learn to write as they go.

Sources

• Character counts: KanaMastery's hiragana chart and katakana chart (104 entries each, without small っ or ー), and the stages of our kana path. The placement test, the unlock rule and the per-script test: as they work on the site.
• Extra katakana for loanword sounds (ティ, ファ), small ッ and the long-vowel mark ー in loanwords: Agency for Cultural Affairs, 外来語の表記, 留意事項その2 and its section on double consonants and long vowels (Cabinet Notice No. 2, 28 June 1991, notice text).
• Small っ and long vowels in hiragana: Agency for Cultural Affairs, 現代仮名遣い, 第1.
• "Hours or days", a few hours for some readers, and writing doubling or tripling the time: Tofugu, Learn Hiragana: The Ultimate Guide and Learn Katakana: The Ultimate Guide.
• Word readings: JMdict, © Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, CC BY-SA 4.0. The full list of sources is on our attributions page.
• Time estimates: our own, as explained above. No official or peer-reviewed figure that we found.
• Reviewed by two independent reviews; the points about look-alike strokes, small っ and ー, loanword sounds, katakana usage and the time estimates are waiting for a native speaker's check.