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Hi guys,
How important is it to learn the order of the hiragana alphabet like how we learn the order of the English alphabet when we sing the ‘A-B-C’ song? Or is it only important for looking up a physical dictionary
You should learn it in order. Think of it as three stages:
1) The first lot of 46. The first five vowels あ, い, う, え, お through to ん.
2) The dakuten. Which are some symbols from the first 46 with a ” or small circle next to them.
3) Combo/double symbols. These are a combination of two different hiragana.
I haven’t read people learning the hiragana out of order and I don’t see any advantages to it. If anything, it will make it harder. Stick to the recommended way which is what I have posted above in the three stages.
With hiragana, I think learning them “in order” makes it easier to recognize the patterns that some things follow. The hiragana charts early in TextFugu will help you out there, because later you’ll need to know what group a kana belongs to for some conjugations, like knowing that the あ-sound in the same column as む is ま.
There’s also something strangely pleasing about saying them in order, e.g. ま、み、む、め、も. (But maybe that’s just me.)
There is an order. It comes up about as often as alphabetical order comes up for us – which is, to be honest, not very.
The mnemonic I learnt from Wikipedia for remembering the order of the columns is “Ah, Kana Symbols. Take Note How Many You Remeber Well” (and then tack ん on the end, though since no word in the dictionary starts with ん, that’s not really something you have to remember). The rows, of course, go あ-い-う-え-お, which shouldn’t be too hard to remember.
If the dictionary I have to go by is indicative, then daikuten and glides don’t change the order – that is, び is sorted as though it’s a ひ, and しゃ is sorted as though it’s しや.
When I began learning Japanese I tried to do my hiragana following an “American” order (a-e-i-o-u), but I found it difficult to keep this up, as every Japanese hiragana board I’ve ever seen goes in the Japanese order (a-i-u-e-0). I gave up shortly and I don’t regret it!
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