So currently im at the brand new phase and I’ve been contemplating for awhile to learn the language but i decided to just leap the edge and start learning it.
What are the best ways to learn i do struggle to process alot of information in one go but I don’t know when to stop so I frequently find my self forgetting info
Another reasoning to learn the language is because long term goal is to spend a year or more living in japan
Tldr: most effective way to learn japanese in short bursts. I don’t mind the idea of the tutor and i have been considering that but i was hoping to also find groups that have a similar goal
3 comments
I’m in a weekly Japanese class. I can send you the teachers info. It’s through zoom if you’re interested
First off, it’s important to have realistic expectations.
Japanese is *hard* to learn if you only know Indo-European languages. It requires more than four times as much time investment as e.g. Spanish in order to get to a point of very basic utility.
Furthermore, concentrated study is more effective than spread-out study. Studying three hours a day for a year is much more effective than studying one hour a day for three years, but a little bit of study is always better than no study at all!
Now, an important thing to understand from the beginning is that learning a language is *not* like learning mathematics. When studying a language, your goal is *not* to memorise all the grammar and all of the words. The goal is to *acquire* the language, so that you know it subconsciously. The only way to do this is to repeatedly be exposed to the language, seeing the same words and grammar constructs over and over again. Memorising words and grammar is a necessity in the beginning because you need to do that in order to understand sentences and start acquiring the language. Memorisation can absolutely help you acquire the language faster, but it isn’t the goal in itself.
The good thing to take away from this is that once you reach a certain level, the studies will stop feeling like studies. When you reach the point where you can start reading books or playing games or watching shows in Japanese, you can make it a part of your relaxation and enjoyment too, while still becoming better at the language. However, it’s hard to do this in the beginning, so for the initial parts of your journey in learning the language, it *will* feel a lot like studying.
Now, as for how to start off.
Start by learning hiragana and katakana. This is important. Do it immediately. You can get a decent grasp of hiragana in a few days, and then start using it. There are plenty of online and mobile apps for this. It’s okay if you don’t master it 100 %. It’s okay if you forget hiragana once in a while – keep using them and you’ll learn them in short order.
DuoLingo is decent for learning the very first words and grammar points as you start out. However, it is *not* a good primary tool for learning the language. My personal recommendation would be to use it for half an hour per day for a few weeks, and then ditch it and move on to other things.
Grammar guides are good. I recommend [Sakubi](https://sakubi.neocities.org/) and [Tae Kim’s Guide](https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar). Remember, the goal is not to learn the grammar guide by heart. Read the entirety of Sakubi, forget 75 % of it, and then use it to look up the grammar points whenever you come across some grammar that you don’t understand. Soon enough you won’t need to look it up any more.
So where do you actually find Japanese to read and listen to if you can’t really read the language yet? Well, there are a few options.
First off, always have a tab open with either https://jisho.org/ or another dictionary of your choice. Look up every word you’re in doubt about.
Personally I recommend to start an [anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) vocabulary deck as soon as possible. I recommend starting out with something like the [Tango N5 Omega vocabulary deck](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1679429599), which provides a good foundation of about 1000 words. It will be hard to begin with, especially when you aren’t used to kanji or the way Japanese forms sentences. Don’t be afraid of looking up everything you’re confused about! For example, one of the first cards in the Tango N5 deck has a flashcard with the sentence 「山田さんですか。」「違います。田中です。」Now, the translation says “Are you Yamada-san?” “No, I am Tanaka.” But the actual Japanese phrasing is more like “Yamada-san is?” “Differs [polite form]. Tanaka is.” And the word you’re supposed to learn from this sentence is 違う (chigau, to differ), which appeared in the sentence as 違います (chigaimasu, to differ [polite form]).
Now, how do you learn the kanji, then? Some people can get a lot of benefit from just learning the kanji by themselves, while this method doesn’t work at all for other people. Personally, I did the [RRTK 450](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1561461108) deck, which teaches you the 250 most common kanji, along with the parts and components that they consist of. I personally hate studying kanji by themselves (and therefore I don’t do that anymore), but I think I benefitted a lot from learning how the kanji consist of smaller components, and how those components fit together. If you’re up for more after doing RRTK 450, I recommend using one of the bigger RRTK decks, or using WaniKani which teaches both individual kanji *and* words.
Note that there is almost never any benefit to memorising the readings of each kanji by itself. Memorise the readings of words instead.
Once you’ve got a very basic vocabulary down, start reading and listening! Do this as soon as possible. In the beginning, this will be very hard, but it’s one of the best ways to learn! I personally recommend using Satori Reader, which provides stories with translations, grammatical explanations, and can even read the stories out loud. Also, the podcast [Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drTGtJEvRCA&list=PLbsmSVzhiwvA8VNMAW_cuDqujRQULBjFd&index=1) on youtube is *excellent* and you should start listening to it soon, even if you can’t understand half of what’s being said. It helps train your ears to recognise the sounds of Japanese.
And that leads me to a warning about a pitfall: Japanese sounds interact in a different way than English sounds, so it might be hard to discern the sounds from each other to begin with. For example, *re* and *de* can often sound alike, and *んr-* sounds will almost always sound like *んd-* until you learn to distinguish them. *g-* sounds can often be softened to sound like *ng-* instead, or even like *n-* to the untrained ear. This will result in you hearing words wrong *a lot* until your brain learns to distinguish them properly.
Finally, training pronunciation! This is *less important* than the others, to begin with, *but* it’s far easier to get right if you get it right from the beginning! Japanese words fall into different pitch accent patterns and it would be wise to try and get them right to begin with, so you don’t have to go back and relearn the words later. There are a few pitfalls for English speakers in particular where your brain will experience a word as having a different pitch accent than it actually has. Japanese people can still understand you if you use a wrong pitch accent, but it will sound similar to when a foreigner speaks English with weird intonation and pressure on the wrong syllABLE. A good way to train pronunciation is to simply ‘shadow’ the voices on the flash-cards and in Satori Reader, playing a sentence several times and mimicking the pronunciation and pitch patterns.
As someone who went through a phase of being frustrated and stuck for a period of time, my best advice is fine what works for you, both in method and pacing. It is ok if an app or textbook recommended by many people does not work for you and you ended up coming up with your own way instead. As long as you are consistent and it works, that’s what’s important. For lessons I found my current teacher via italki and highly recommend trying a couple of teachers using trial lessons before selecting someone.