Coming home from my Japanese lesson on Thursday, I suddenly realised that what I thought was just a pull in my sweater of learning had actually unravelled, without my knowledge, and an entire arm had fallen off. Apart from the need to get a serious mender on the case, I also thought I’d pose the question: for me, why is katakana so ridiculously hard to master?

I’ve wondered this for some time. In fact, since the date that I began to learn Japanese, I’ve struggled with, and continue to struggle with, カタカナ・katakana. In the beginning, learning Japanese from a home study guide was difficult, and I think I was so happy that I’d managed to master one syllabary that I totally bypassed katakana and launched straight into the obligatory ‘hellos’, ‘goodbyes’ and ‘thank yous’.

Of course, to my detriment, this was a bad idea, and I realise now that I’m paying for it. All that said though, there is just no shifting the glass ceiling. In fact, my katakana sledgehammer has become so blunted that the ceiling remains steady, no matter how hard I hit it.

I’ve read a lot, and listened to many sources on katakana learning. When I visit bookstores, I see entire shelves devoted to the learning of katakana, and after listening to a number of podcasts focusing on Japanese language, I hear people repeating my views on the difficulties that they face. This gives me little comfort however, as not only is this problem difficult, but, as many people face it too, it is now totally impossible.

The problem is, now that I’ve got so far into learning Japanese, I feel like I can’t backtrack, like there’s this huge canyon that has opened up behind me and katakana, with all its right angles and weird pronunciation combinations is at the other side, laughing manically. If I believed that my conscious did sit on my shoulders, then hiragana would be the angel and katakana would be this hugely fat, grotesque devil, chuckling away to itself and throwing all my botched attempts at learning it, at my head.

I now have a private tutor, who has boosted my Japanese learning beyond all comprehension. I seem to pick up things like I never did before, and, apart from the one missing arm, I feel that my sweater of learning is pretty well woven together. So my katakana skills should pick up also, right?

Wrong..

Every time we practice reading, my eyes see the katakana characters coming up ahead, and instantly my brain goes into meltdown. It’s like someone has tasered my head. I’ve been given room-full’s of practice examples, study assistance, CD recordings etc. etc. etc. all designed to assist me with katakana, but I just can’t get it. And now, because I know I can’t get it, I’m telling myself that I’m never going to get it. The ever decreasing circles are getting bigger and bigger and bigger..

The thing is, when I think about it, it should be easy. In the majority of cases, katakana is used for loanwords that have been taken from other languages and are now used in Japanese. As you can probably imagine, the vast majority of these come from English, with a large minority from other European languages. You see, European languages are my bag. In fact, there couldn’t be anything baggier than that particular bag, period. So really, picking up these words should be easy, right?

But then, maybe that’s the exact reason why they are so bad. You see, I think I probably make the fatal mistake that all beginners of Japanese make: they try to see the English word prior to reading the actual characters. So, for example, テレビ is pronounced ‘teh’-‘reh’-‘bee’ and レストラン is pronounced ‘reh’-‘stow’-‘ran’; so no prizes for guessing their meanings, but the problem is, all this second guessing is getting me nowhere as the loanword is, and can only ever be, an approximation of the word from which it was derived. In that sense then, I’m totally missing the point. It’s like looking for a lighthouse in a tragic storm, but there’s only a cigarette lighter available. On top of that though, I don’t particular class myself as a beginner anymore – so why in the name of all things Japanese am I still finding it so hard?

I guess for now, I have my condition under control. At the moment, it’s flat-lining; it’s not getting any worse, but it’s certainly not getting any better. And so, as I continue to attempt to master the ‘unmasterable’, what next for my sweater..?