I, of course, started with Kana. But then I proceeded to understand grammar, sentence structure as in SOV, or how verbs work and conjugate, and even particles. However, it served no purpose without vocabulary since I couldn’t make a sentence without knowing such. So I started learning some vocabulary and kanji to expand it, like animals (猫, 犬, 鳥…), daily life stuff (水, 母, 女…), and places I go (大学, スーパーマーケット…). I wonder if I’m doing it right. I know kana so learning kanji and sentence structure, as well as verb conjugation and particles seemed to be the correct thing but I don’t know in which order or if there’s even a correct order.
It may not be so efficient but I’m also trying gaming in japanese to see if I associate kanji faster as I’m constantly translating and learning. That’s just something on top of the daily reviewing of the kanji and vocabulary I’m trying to learn.
P.S. I know all kana, some verbs, some particles, sentence structure, and little to no kanji, probably 50 (daily stuff/vocabulary I thought would be useful as stated before), picked by me with no sources as to what’s better to learn first.
4 comments
i started with kana, then some really basic grammar from duolingo, then i went onto vocab/kanji via jpdb.io, but anki decks would work just as fine i guess, and then i moved onto harder grammar when i knew enough kanji to make it work. Imho the key is immersing yourself in the language, wether by gaming in japanese, watching movies/anime, or talking with people in japanese
I don’t know about “most efficient”, but textbooks is what I would turn to in order to get a structured learning plan that covers all your bases (grammar, vocab, …) and takes the guesswork out of what to do when.
I’m personally using the Genki textbooks for beginners, so there might be a little re-treading what you’ve already learned but I find them useful
you can’t fixate on one aspect, you have to advance everything a little at a time, all at the same time
there’s also no magical order, and even if there was it would be different for each person
evaluate what aspect is confusing and study that thing, while also pushing other aspects forwards