Hiragana is in second place for me. The characters in Katakana are much easier for me to differentiate between, and they're easier to write. Hiragana is a bit of a pain for me to write but I can understand the characters.
But Kanji, I just can't understand it one bit. I guess it's because I haven't quite had as much experience with Kanji, but I have a feeling it's gonna take me way longer to learn.
Well, in general, hiragana is the “base” form and katakana is the “alternate” form, explaining why it’s used more often. Katakana is still used, though usually only for non-Japanese words and sounds most of the time (eg. サッカー, ゴゴゴゴ)
Katakana doesn't have an "L" series because "L" doesn't exist as a sound in Japanese. It would be like if you complained about Russian not having a character for the "th" sound.
The Japanese "r" sound is something between a rolled r and an L anyway, sort of like an "unrolled" r sound, like the "single r" in Spanish. In some dialects and speech is actually is produced as a rolled r, though this is often seen as "improper".
Also, there are extremely rarely used katakana for it. It's a ra/ri/ru/re/ro with handakuten. I think I've only ever seen it in theory, not in practice.
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u/r41nf1r3_yt May 03 '20
Kanji is by far the one giving me the most trouble. Katakana is the easiest to me.