Getting started · 5 September 2026 · 5 min read
Hiragana or romaji: which should you learn first?
Almost every beginner asks this, and almost every experienced learner gives the same answer with the same slight impatience. It is worth explaining why rather than just asserting it.
What romaji is for
Romaji is Japanese written in the Latin alphabet. こんにちは becomes konnichiwa. It exists mostly for the benefit of people who cannot read Japanese, which on day one is you.
It is useful for exactly two things. It lets you start speaking on day one instead of day eight, and it makes a quiz fair while you are still learning the shapes. Both matter. Neither lasts long.
Why it becomes a trap
Three reasons, and the third is the one that catches people.
- Almost nothing beyond the first textbook chapter is written in it. Menus, signs, apps, subtitles, graded readers, exam papers. The moment you want real input, romaji stops being available.
- It hides distinctions the language actually makes. Long vowels, doubled consonants and the difference between similar sounds are all visible in kana and easy to blur in romaji. Learners who stay on it develop a pronunciation that is confidently slightly wrong.
- It builds the wrong reflex. Every time you read konnichiwa you practise decoding Latin letters, which you can already do. You are spending your reps on a skill you have instead of the one you need.
The cost of learning hiragana is about a week. The cost of not learning it compounds for as long as you keep studying.
So what is the actual answer
Learn hiragana in week one. Not eventually, not once you have got going: week one. There are 46 basic characters, they are consistent, each one is exactly one sound, and there is nothing to understand, only to recognise. It is the easiest part of Japanese and the one that unlocks everything else.
While you do it, keep romaji switched on alongside the Japanese so you are never locked out of a lesson. Then turn it off. The test is simple: when you can stumble through a hiragana word without the crutch, stop using the crutch.
Katakana next, and it is faster
Katakana is the same 46 sounds in different shapes, used for words borrowed from other languages. It takes less time than hiragana because you already know the sounds, and it pays off immediately: コーヒー, タクシー and レストラン are all words you already know, hiding behind unfamiliar shapes.
What about kanji
Later, and gradually. Kanji is the part everyone notices first and the worst place to start, because without kana you cannot read the readings, so every character is pure shape memorisation with nothing to attach it to. Learn a few a day alongside the words that use them, once the kana are solid.