Learning Japanese starting from German or English?

10 comments

1. Borrowed words are much more likely to be from English, as well as available content. German grammar feels closer to Japanese than English grammar.

   I’d go with English primarily but tie in German when it makes sense to you or when content is available

2. There will be far more resources in English.

3. I’m in the same boat as you are. Although I wouldn’t call myself fluent in english, comprehensionwise I didn’t encounter any problems until now.

   I started off a bit more than one year ago with the Duolingo Course (EN/JP, since there was no DE/JP one) and learned the kanas that way and got into some of the vocab. I realized that I did learn vocab but I felt like the progress was a little slow. Also some of the grammar explanations were … Just kind of unclear, although they did a big overhaul on the JP Course, or so I’ve read, but I didn’t check it out since.

   I then swapped to learning vocab through Anki and grammar through various site google offered me. Some that come to mind would be JLPT-Sensei, Maggie sensei, or learnjapaneseaz.com. I would go by the Anki cards, first the kanas again, doesn’t hurt to keep those in mind, and then a simple JLPT N5 deck which was completely english. It was a mix of just single words or example sentences and whenever a saw some new construct in those, I would call for Google sensei read up on the topic, note down the usage and add a little note to the Anki card I first saw it in. Sometimes I saw words that I haven’t seen before and I would add a German translation to the card.

   I started with 10 new cards a day, which was fine at the start, but sooner than later I had around 1 hour long reviews each day, which I didn’t like, so I toned it down to 6 and now I am at around 20-30 minutes a day. Anki reviews only that is.

   I had quite a lot of passive vocab from years of watching anime subbed, which helped a lot during N5. I’m now almost through a N4 Deck and it’s not a rarity to see new words/kanji, that I already understand from hearing even now.

   I quite often found myself thinking that some examples work a lot like German, some a lot like English and it definitely helped with understanding to have 2 sets of existing rules you can use as a reference.

   If you want the most basic of basic grammar up to some tenses, conjugations, conjunctions and so on I would recommend the YT Channel “Japanisch Erfahren”. As you might have guessed it’s a German one and although the videos are rather … Simply made, I find his way of teaching quite helpful.

4. As a native French speaker, I believe it is better to learn Japanese from English. Despite having mentioned that you are already fluent in English, it might still improve your English skills. Since they are tons of available resources out there you should not have any trouble trying to find what is right for you.

   That being said, I believe that you could still give free apps/resources in German a shot to know if you are on the right track. I don’t know what is available for German speaking people, so Google might be more of help than I.

   I also want to point out that despite German sentence structure being supposedly more similar to Japanese should not really affect your decision. I believe that when learning Japanese one should approach the language like a baby without any prior knowledge of grammar from other languages. It’s fairly easy on a beginner level but things can become quite tricky later on. For instance, the particles は and が confuse a lot of people because they don’t really see the difference. Sure, you can look some in depth details of what they do in English, but you also have to not rely on definitions things that… don’t really have proper definitions in other languages? Unless I’m mistaken, even Japanese people can’t really tell how は and が are different, they just *know* how to use them, I think.

5. take classes if at all possible. the language you learn from doesnt matter too much. theres good material in german and english. but especially in the beginning, having a teacher to ask stuff, point out mistakes, and give you deadlines is absolutely invaluable. even if its just vhs courses (volkshochschule). those arent too expensive compared to private lessons. most universities also offer at least beginners courses in japanese.

6. One of the people who makes [Migaku Tools](https://www.migaku.io/) (a collection of Anki add-ons and tools for language learning) is a German who learned Japanese to fairly a high level within a few years. He passed the N1 JPLT in under two years, starting from scratch, which is really crazy fast.

   He was previously fluent in English, so like you, Japanese was his third language. Also like you, he was learning Japanese on the side, outside of his university classes in Germany.

   You can view his Japanese progress videos on [YouTube here](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvJmlufoN1ObTY6-399HCA). He responds to social media so you can probably ask him for tips.

7. I’m German myself. I would recommend to mainly use English as there are many more resources, but to occasionally double check pronunciation/grammar with a German source. Sometimes a concept is easier explained through German.

8. One prerequisite when I started studying Japanese at university in Germany was to have a firm grasp of English, simply because all good teaching material is in English. It’s true that some things in Japanese are more similar to German than English but if you’re fluent (or at least decent) in English, you should have no trouble at all making the connection yourself without the material telling you (similarities are also not frequent enough to be very relevant).

9. German here also. Just echoing what most of the comments say – I’ve been self-studying with a friend for about 15 months now, first went through a Langenscheidt course (Japanisch in 30 Tagen) which felt VERY rushed but probably gave a good basic overview on grammar.

   Then we shelled out for Genki I+II and are currently about halfway through the first volume. It does feel different with English as a base, but we’re both pretty fluent and so far, it’s not been a problem. We do discuss unclear points in German though, and we’ve bought a [German-based grammar book](https://www.amazon.de/dp/3936496455/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_VGNSYAQVK8BE5DEPN975) that I find pretty helpful when we need to confirm stuff we’re not sure about.

10. A lot of resources are in English, but don’t feel like you have to stick to only one language.