The fact that you couldn’t take upon yourself to do even 5 minutes of research, I highly doubt you’re going to put in the thousands of hours required to learn the language. Do yourself a favor and turn away now.
If you do stick around, come back and ask for help once you’ve put in at least a little bit of work.
I find it funny how people are on attack mode already, Reddit is way more useful than conventional means and having input by real learners is also way easier than reading a wall of text.
Anyways, the subreddit has links already so I advice you look them, for you’ll be downvoted by sweaty Japanese learning redditors
Born in Japan living with the Natives. i know, i just hope this way is a possible option.
I’m going to personally recommend Busuu (language learning app/website), in tandem with the Genki grammar books. Busuu has been great for me, as I have found their program to be pretty good at getting me to N5, better thank Genki has. That said, all resources are incomplete. Language is too large and complex to ever be fully covered by any one resource, and there is no definitive resource for learning, so try out multiple.
For reviewing stuff, Anki is the standard for flashcard based spaced repetition systems. It is a very powerful tool. It has a small learning curve for creating your own cards, but there are also many very high quality decks out there. In addition, while it is only a small learning curve (maybe an hour of fiddling around) to make functional cards, the depth is insane, and you could easily spend a hundred hours programming card formats in Anki.
Do not make my mistake and purchase the physical Genki books. They are designed for classroom use, and so it is not at all friendly for self studiers, despite their marketing saying otherwise. You’ll be flipping back and forth through the book constantly for the grammar, vocab, and kanji practice. It would have been much much easier for me if I simply had it in PDF format, especially since I’ve got a digital drawing tablet for my PC, making it easy to bookmark the various sections, and to easily draw directly on the page with that tablet. Was pretty cheap as well, so I highly recommend it for writing practice. Saves you money on paper and ink, and allows you to select actual calligraphy fonts so your kana and kanji can look beautiful. Something not possible with a regular pen and paper.
For kanji specifically, I recommend Japanese Kanji Study, by Chase Colburn on Android. No iOS or PC version currently. It has my favorite system for learning to write kanji, but also has a learning curve to make it work best for you. But, I’ve memorized more kanji vocab with that app than any other resources I’ve tried. It’s so good I installed an android emulator on my computer just to use it with my drawing tablet. I know the creator hangs out in this subreddit sometimes, so if you see this, I would kill for a native PC version! Probably too much to ask for, since I think it’s just a team of one, but if it happened I would be sooooooo happy, and more than willing to purchase the add-ons I have already purchased again. It’s that good.
Anyway, good luck OP. Learn hiragana and katakana first, and then I recommend spending the next week dipping your toes into many different resources to see what type of workflow gets you the best results.
Edit: AHHH, I forgot to say this. If your goal is to eventually sound as native as possible, DO NOT speak yet. Spend time gathering a base knowledge, and you can even spend time on output, but Japanese is a pitch accented language, and it is far easier to develop good pronunciation and accent if you avoid speaking until you have a good base and can study pitch accent alongside vocabulary. You can still practice output, but it should be writing only. Tons of resources these days for pitch accent study. But, speaking before you can study it often leads to developing bad habits with stuff accent that are extremely difficult to undo. You’ll notice most people who speak your native language as a second language will have strong accents, regardless of how good their vocabulary or grammar understanding is. Not so out of place in English speaking countries, but somewhat out of place when Japan is the only country speaking Japanese. There are different dialects with different pitch accents and such, but there is an officially recognized “standard Japanese” that you can the learn pitch accent of. But again, I mentioned goals. If you’re not concerned about sounding as native as possible, then you don’t really need to study it. It’s extremely rare that it would cause a problem with comprehensibility. But, if you do want that, it’s going to make it much easier to do if you wait to speak after you have enough of a base to study pitch accent.
Download Kana to help you learn Hiragana and Katakana, seriously it’s unbelievably good. You can select all the Hiragana and Katakana in groups of 10s and you’ll know it all in a few days.
Check out Refold of the moe way for input based approaches. If you like textbooks, read Genki.
I started listening to Japanese Pod 101 absolute beginner series, which is hands down the best way to dive into the language. It is not cheap, so be sure that you’re ready to make the commitment
The best way? Probably move to Japan and enroll in language school while making friends and dating Japanese. I think that’s the best way.
There is no best way. Take it from me, I’d rather not spend countless hours using aniki but instead just by using the language. Although just learn the most common words and grammar points would be your best bet but it’s all up to you
No surprise by the amount of douchebag responses. Oh Reddit. Lmao
13 comments
Given you made this post, I think you should give up.
But giving you the benefit of the doubt, read https://learnjapanese.moe
The fact that you couldn’t take upon yourself to do even 5 minutes of research, I highly doubt you’re going to put in the thousands of hours required to learn the language. Do yourself a favor and turn away now.
If you do stick around, come back and ask for help once you’ve put in at least a little bit of work.
I find it funny how people are on attack mode already, Reddit is way more useful than conventional means and having input by real learners is also way easier than reading a wall of text.
Anyways, the subreddit has links already so I advice you look them, for you’ll be downvoted by sweaty Japanese learning redditors
Born in Japan living with the Natives. i know, i just hope this way is a possible option.
[Here’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/s5mtva/comment/ht1lo0x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) my advice. There’s also the [starter’s guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/wiki/index/startersguide/) and u/personwoaname has provided a link to TheMoeWay.
Good luck.
-Learn hiragana/katakana
-Buy a textbook
I’m going to personally recommend Busuu (language learning app/website), in tandem with the Genki grammar books. Busuu has been great for me, as I have found their program to be pretty good at getting me to N5, better thank Genki has. That said, all resources are incomplete. Language is too large and complex to ever be fully covered by any one resource, and there is no definitive resource for learning, so try out multiple.
For reviewing stuff, Anki is the standard for flashcard based spaced repetition systems. It is a very powerful tool. It has a small learning curve for creating your own cards, but there are also many very high quality decks out there. In addition, while it is only a small learning curve (maybe an hour of fiddling around) to make functional cards, the depth is insane, and you could easily spend a hundred hours programming card formats in Anki.
Do not make my mistake and purchase the physical Genki books. They are designed for classroom use, and so it is not at all friendly for self studiers, despite their marketing saying otherwise. You’ll be flipping back and forth through the book constantly for the grammar, vocab, and kanji practice. It would have been much much easier for me if I simply had it in PDF format, especially since I’ve got a digital drawing tablet for my PC, making it easy to bookmark the various sections, and to easily draw directly on the page with that tablet. Was pretty cheap as well, so I highly recommend it for writing practice. Saves you money on paper and ink, and allows you to select actual calligraphy fonts so your kana and kanji can look beautiful. Something not possible with a regular pen and paper.
For kanji specifically, I recommend Japanese Kanji Study, by Chase Colburn on Android. No iOS or PC version currently. It has my favorite system for learning to write kanji, but also has a learning curve to make it work best for you. But, I’ve memorized more kanji vocab with that app than any other resources I’ve tried. It’s so good I installed an android emulator on my computer just to use it with my drawing tablet. I know the creator hangs out in this subreddit sometimes, so if you see this, I would kill for a native PC version! Probably too much to ask for, since I think it’s just a team of one, but if it happened I would be sooooooo happy, and more than willing to purchase the add-ons I have already purchased again. It’s that good.
Anyway, good luck OP. Learn hiragana and katakana first, and then I recommend spending the next week dipping your toes into many different resources to see what type of workflow gets you the best results.
Edit: AHHH, I forgot to say this. If your goal is to eventually sound as native as possible, DO NOT speak yet. Spend time gathering a base knowledge, and you can even spend time on output, but Japanese is a pitch accented language, and it is far easier to develop good pronunciation and accent if you avoid speaking until you have a good base and can study pitch accent alongside vocabulary. You can still practice output, but it should be writing only. Tons of resources these days for pitch accent study. But, speaking before you can study it often leads to developing bad habits with stuff accent that are extremely difficult to undo. You’ll notice most people who speak your native language as a second language will have strong accents, regardless of how good their vocabulary or grammar understanding is. Not so out of place in English speaking countries, but somewhat out of place when Japan is the only country speaking Japanese. There are different dialects with different pitch accents and such, but there is an officially recognized “standard Japanese” that you can the learn pitch accent of.
But again, I mentioned goals. If you’re not concerned about sounding as native as possible, then you don’t really need to study it. It’s extremely rare that it would cause a problem with comprehensibility. But, if you do want that, it’s going to make it much easier to do if you wait to speak after you have enough of a base to study pitch accent.
Download Kana to help you learn Hiragana and Katakana, seriously it’s unbelievably good. You can select all the Hiragana and Katakana in groups of 10s and you’ll know it all in a few days.
Check out Refold of the moe way for input based approaches. If you like textbooks, read Genki.
I started listening to Japanese Pod 101 absolute beginner series, which is hands down the best way to dive into the language. It is not cheap, so be sure that you’re ready to make the commitment
The best way? Probably move to Japan and enroll in language school while making friends and dating Japanese. I think that’s the best way.
There is no best way. Take it from me, I’d rather not spend countless hours using aniki but instead just by using the language. Although just learn the most common words and grammar points would be your best bet but it’s all up to you
No surprise by the amount of douchebag responses. Oh Reddit. Lmao