Hiragana or katakana first? Start with hiragana. It is the more frequent of the two syllabaries, it carries the grammar of every sentence, and it gets you reading real Japanese far sooner. Katakana comes right after, and it goes quicker once hiragana is already in place.
Almost every beginner asks this, and for a good reason: the two sets look interchangeable. Same sounds, same count of signs, same neat grid of vowels and consonants. But their jobs in the language are very different, and that difference is what settles the order for you.
序Hiragana or katakana first: why hiragana wins
Three reasons, roughly in order of weight.
- Frequency. Hiragana is everywhere. In an ordinary Japanese sentence, most of the signs that are not kanji are hiragana. Katakana shows up in smaller doses, mainly for a specific class of words.
- Grammar is written in hiragana. Particles (は, が, を), verb endings, and the little connecting words all run on hiragana. Without them you cannot read a full sentence, even if you know every kanji in it.
- Furigana. When a text prints the reading of a kanji in tiny signs above it, those signs are hiragana. Knowing them lets you sound out kanji you have not studied yet.
Put simply, hiragana is the backbone of written Japanese. Until you have it, the rest stays unreadable. For the wider picture of how all three systems fit together, read Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji: Where to Start, and for the full row by row method, our guide to learning hiragana walks through the whole set.
時When should you pick up katakana?
You do not need to master hiragana before you move on. As soon as you can read it without much hesitation, even slowly, you are ready to add katakana. Because the sound grid is identical (a, i, u, e, o, then ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, and so on), you are only learning new shapes, not new pronunciations.
あ ・ ア
a ・ a
same sound, two ways to write it
That parallel is exactly why katakana feels faster once hiragana is in place. Every new shape hooks onto a sound you already know, so you are matching rather than memorizing from scratch. A useful signal that you are ready: when you can read a short hiragana word like ねこ (neko, cat) or すし (sushi) without pausing to hunt for each sign, your reading has become automatic enough to start adding the second set.
並Should you learn them side by side?
You can, but it is not the smartest move at the very start. Learning あ and ア on the same day, before either is solid, just breeds confusion between the two. Give hiragana a head start of a week or so, long enough that the shapes stick, then layer katakana on top.
Once hiragana feels comfortable, though, running katakana alongside vocabulary and grammar works nicely. You meet the new signs inside real words instead of on isolated charts, and that context anchors them much better than a table ever will. Our method for learning katakana leans on exactly that idea.
Hiragana first, on its own, for a week or two. Then katakana, which moves quickly because the sounds are already yours. Learning both from day one adds nothing and blurs the two together.
形What actually separates the two
It helps to see why they exist as separate sets at all. Hiragana grew out of cursive, flowing versions of Chinese characters, so its shapes are round and soft: あ, の, ま. Katakana came from clipped fragments of characters, so its shapes are sharp and angular: ア, ノ, マ. The look tells you the job at a glance.
The division of labor is just as clean. Hiragana handles native Japanese words and all the grammatical glue. Katakana handles a narrower band of words, and that is what makes hiragana the priority: you meet it in every sentence, while katakana waits for its moment.
語Where you will actually meet katakana
Knowing what katakana is for makes it easier to learn, because you start noticing it in the wild. It mostly marks words that came from outside Japanese, plus a few special cases:
- Loanwords. コーヒー (kōhī, coffee), パン (pan, bread), コンピューター (konpyūtā, computer). Reading these feels like a small guessing game, since many trace back to English or other European languages.
- Foreign names. Your own name, most likely, gets written in katakana.
- Sound words. Onomatopoeia and animal sounds often appear in katakana: ワンワン (wanwan, a dog barking).
- Emphasis. A word written in katakana can stand out the way italics do in English.
None of this is grammar, and that is the point. You can read a great deal of Japanese with hiragana alone, then add katakana to unlock menus, packaging, and the pile of borrowed words modern Japanese runs on.
間How long does each one take?
At a steady pace, say one or two rows of five signs a day, plan for roughly this:
- Hiragana: one to two weeks to read it reliably.
- Katakana: often less, about a week, since you are reusing the same grid of sounds.
The real variable is not talent, it is consistency. Five minutes a day beats one long weekend session, because memory is built through short, repeated passes spread over time. That is spaced repetition doing the quiet work, and it is why a daily habit outlasts an ambitious plan you abandon by Thursday.
問Common questions
A few things come up almost every time.
Is katakana harder than hiragana? Not really. Same grid, same number of signs. Katakana can feel trickier only because you see it less often, so you get fewer accidental reviews. Hiragana sticks partly because you cannot avoid it.
Can I skip katakana for now? For a little while, yes. You will still hit a wall fast, because loanwords are everywhere in daily life. Treat katakana as the very next step, not an optional extra.
What about kanji? Kanji comes after the kana, and best of all through vocabulary rather than as a separate mountain to climb. You learn each character inside the words that use it.
Do I need to write the kana by hand? Not to read Japanese. If your goal is menus, subtitles, and apps, reading alone carries you a long way. Writing a sign a few times does help it stick, so save the pen for the shapes that keep tripping you up rather than drilling every one.
Is romaji a shortcut past all this? Only at the very first minute. Leaning on romaji slows you down fast, because real Japanese and nearly every serious resource are written in kana. The sooner you read the signs directly, the sooner the rest opens up.
道The right order, in one line
Hiragana, then katakana, then kanji through vocabulary. That order maximizes what you can read as early as possible, and it keeps you off signs that are still too shaky to be worth the frustration.
At Hibi, you start with the kana and then meet them again inside real everyday words, with spaced repetition picking the right moment to show each one again so you do not have to track it yourself. Hibi is launching soon on the App Store, and you can see what it is about on the Hibi page. The takeaway is simple: start with hiragana, and move a little each day.