I’ve been learning Japanese for a while, and I’m hitting a wall with Katakana vocabulary.
Some words are easy to recognize right away, such as オリンピック (Olympic), ジョギング (jogging), サービス (service), etc. Others I can figure out because part of the word is familiar, like カラーテレビ (colour TV) or インスタントコーヒー (instant coffee).
But then there are the ones that completely flabbergast me. I only understand them after pasting into a translation tool, for example リラックス (relax) or トラック (track), or today's word that prompted me to post this: アドバイス (advice). When I first see them, I just can’t connect the Katakana to the English origin.
How did you get better at reading and recognizing these kinds of loanwords? Did you practice with specific lists, or is it more about exposure and repetition?
Any アドバイス advice would be appreciated!
by Cuong1507
15 comments
Just keep reading. You will have succeeded when you just understand the word as it is in katakana and no longer are making the connection back to the root word.
Pro tip: If a word is in katakana, it is a Japanese word. It has already made the jump, and broken the bonds from whatever language it came from (not always English, btw).
The best way to handle this is to change your mindset from “what English* word are they trying to say here”, into “let’s learn this new Japanese word”.
As with everything, read more
At N2 i ran into ノースリーブ. Said it out loud like 10 times before I used the dictionary.
Accept that katakana words are normal vocabulary that you need to learn. Not all of them come from English (e.g., アルバイト) and not all of them retain their original meaning (サボる).
Say it out loud and understand that not only will some words be adapted in ways that are unfamiliar, some aren’t even English origin words
Treat these as other words you’re learning
The more you read the easier it will be to guess, because usually they have very clear and recognizeable patterns. Just wait until you get to wasei eigo and abbreviations, those will be a pain.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2015522924
Do this deck. Can be done in 10 days easily.
While you are learning these by repetition, also read them out loud.
It will perhaps be funny to pronounce them in Japanese, but key point is if you pronounce アドバイス like “advice” Japanese people will have no idea what you are saying!
They sort of get easier, although I do still have to look up one or two in the dictionary each week (currently prepping for N2). Then you also start coming across the romaji abbreviations like NG and OL….
I don’t know. I just kept doing it and after a while it was obvious to me.
your mileage may vary but, in addition to just reading more, I found that changing my computer’s system language to Japanese significantly improved my ability to read katakana loan words since they’re very common in computing. I used to find reading katakana loan words like playing a game of mad gab, but over time it’s become much more automatic.
What is your difficulty with リラックス or トラック or アドバイス? These all seem like straightforward borrowings to me, without anything elided or radical changes in meaning. The real difficulty for me is when there’s a ー and you don’t know whether it’s hiding an “r” or simply an original long vowel.
In any case, try saying the words out loud if you see a new unfamiliar katakana word that isn’t immediately obvious to you.
What helped me a lot was drilling kana charts. So basically like the typical chart you will find in a text book like Genki will have a chart on the first page or the cover of the text with all the hiragana and katakana.
Replicate those charts as many times as possible while saying the kana as you say it. When you can do it with easily by hand without reference you will know it perfectly.
Next read the unknown word’s kana by kana, say it in pieces, then fully slowly, then fast. Lastly not all katakana is based from English so be mindful
Sorry, no shortcuts that I can think of, but listening more will also help your subverbalization of katakana words, and it will help you understand them better from the Japanese perspective.