Hey, I'd like to know if there is a simple way to learn the Hiragana and Katakana characters via Skritter _before_ getting into writing real words. The add-word-to-que function doesn't seem to work... I am very disappointed about this as this would be the most basic tool for learning Japanese...

If there is already an option, please let me know, maybe I'm too stupid, maybe it's too hard to find.

This comes up a lot:

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=45730813
http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=41254432

Okay, seems Skritter's service has lost some of my enthusiasm... japanese without katakana and hiragana you shouldn't offer it without them.

I'm glad I'm also stuyding chinese which would make up for that...

I hope you bring up those japanese characters fast :)

I memorized hiragana and katakana a year and a half ago, and I kept up with it for a long time, but since there are 142 of Kana symbols combined, it's really easy to forget/misread them sooner or later.

It's really too bad that Skritter can't be used for Kana. I think Skritter would be perfect for mastering those two alphabets for both the short and long term.

I seem to remember the guys saying that hiragana and katakana are too cursive for Skritter, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

In the meantime, Anki!

I don't get it why there are thousands of chinese characters but no technical way to implement those 100+ hiragana+katakanas. some of them are even nearly the same like hanzi. エ　ロ　カ　ル　ハ to name some.

The katakana would not be as much of a problem as the hiragana, though it would take a bit of work to put them in (the method for adding additional strokes is a bit time consuming!). The hiragana are fairly cursive, and the system was not built for that kind of curvature. So basically, katakana would take a while, and hiragana would take a very long time indeed, because we'd have to remake or change quite a bit the underlying stroke recognition system.

It's still on the list to make a tweak to the system so that hiragana and katakana can be practiced as simple flash cards, so that at least they can be studied as part of the Skritter system. Can't say when exactly that will be done!