Nope. Language doesn’t have simple tricks to instantly improve understanding. Your example isnt a trick, it’s just basic level grammar study.
If you want to learn Japanese you need to put in the time, study grammar/vocab, read, listen, etc… You get better and understand more the more time you put in. Just do the work, there are no shortcuts.
You might enjoy Cure Dolly’s series. Turn on closed captioning if you have trouble understanding her speech.
Here is an entire collection of simple tips and tricks to instantly improve your Japanese: [https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/](https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/)
Hey guys, any tips on how I can click my fingers and lose 5kg while we’re at it? Also bring my childhood dog back from the dead if there’s time.
Edit: Alright, point taken. Let me make it for my flagrant cynicism with an actual instant tip for loose **[RENDAKU RULES.](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/rendaku/)**
Kunyomi readings usually do rendaku, unless…
* this or subsequent characters already have dakuten (Lyman’s Law), * the preceding character is a particle or honorific prefix, * the kanji is one of a certain set which do not usually rendaku even when read as kunyomi.
Onyomi readings usually do not not rendaku, unless…
* the reading starts with ‘h’ and follows ん, つ or ち, * the kanji has two onyomi readings and one is the rendaku’d version of the other * the kanji is one of a certain set which do usually rendaku, even though they are onyomi.
Many things that would be a separate word in many western languages are *not* a separate word in Japanese. Instead, information often is encoded in verb endings. And this is not just past tense but also intentions, imperatives, negation and more.
When learning grammar, do **not** think about 「 *$thing ga suki desu* 」 as 「 *I like $thing* 」.
Instead, think of it as 「 *$thing is pleasing* 」 – because otherwise, the *ga* as the subject marker makes no sense. In that regard, *suki* works more like *gustar* in Spanish or *gefallen* in German. The $thing acts as the subject of the sentence.
Due to particles making grammatical function more clear, word order is comparatively flexible compared to English. For example, ‘Tarou is standing there’ can be 太郎がそこに立っている, but it can also be そこに太郎が立っている, and the order often depends on what you want to emphasise.
SOV is standard and preferred, but not quite as ironclad as it is in English (although Old English used to work this way as well). The only thing that basically cannot be altered is that the verb will always come at the end of a clause.
And here’s another tip: there are no tips that will ‘instantly improve your understanding of Japanese’. Your example is not a tip; it is one of the most *bog-standard* points that *everyone* learns at beginner level.
What I gave was just a little extra on top; not mandatory, and most people will realise it sooner or later, but by no means something that will ‘instantly improve your understanding of Japanese’. It’s a little fun fact, not some kind of hidden secret truth.
I remember when I was stumped on certain grammar or some such someone suggested the concept of reading the sentence backwards so it makes more sense translated into English and it helped me a lot. It’s pretty fun to this day too, kind of makes it sound like caveman speak lmao
Of course this only works for written sentences and I would advise against leaning on it unless necessary as getting away from translating in your head at all as soon as possible is the better tip there.
>any more tips like this?
I’ll give you 3. Feel free to use them to your advantage or save them for later use.
* kanji. They can be divided into 6 categories (known as rikusho):
* 4 main ones: keisei moji (the widest category, characters with phonetic and semantic component, like 泳, 掘), shoukei moji (visually represents the meaning of a word, like 木, 月), shiji moji (abstract concepts, like 上 and 下), kaii moji (compound ideograms, like 峠)
* 2 smaller ones: tenchuu moji (characters that gained extended meanings, like 楽 which means music but also took on the meanings of fun, pleasure), kashaku moji (characters borrowed mainly to represent words phonetically without regard for meaning, like 来(來), which swapped meanings with 麦(麥)
* If you have trouble remembering a kanji, you can also look up its naritachi (how they’re formed, what they’re supposed to represent).
* compounds. They often fall into one of 8 categories:
* 2 characters with similar meanings (e.g. 低下, 移動), or opposite (e.g. 上下, 左右, 内外, 強弱)
* a prefix that accompanies another kanji (e.g. 未来, 無礼, 真白), or a kanji accompanied by a suffix (e.g. 変化, 団子, 理性)
* former acts as ‘subject’ and latter as ‘predicate’ (e.g. 骨折(骨が折れる), 国営(国が営む)), former modifies the latter (e.g. 大人(大きな人), 小指(小さな指)), latter acts as ‘object’ *or* complements the former (e.g. 読書(書を読む), 山登(山に登る), 降車(車を降りる))
* same kanji twice (e.g. 時々, 人々, 別々)
General language learning tip but try to use the language in some way every day. The ideal way would be to get the basics down (I.e at least Genki 1) and go use it in real life immediately. Obviously this isn’t feasible for a lot of people, but I feel like immersion does help.
Meh some very childish comments in here, I hope they’re from immature teenagers and not full blown adults. Anyway, here’s some basic tips I’m using, keep in mind I started 6 months ago so my knowledge is very limited:
If you just started learning kana, what helped me remembering voiced sounds, the ones with the dakuten, is thinking that it adds a “sweetening” effect to the original rougher sound.
I could list many others but I’d say just follow Cure Dolly, the approach she uses in many of her explanations is probably what you’re looking for.
If you struggle to remember Katakana it’s probably because you don’t use it often. Try playing Pokémon Red in Japanese. Pokémon names are written in Katakana so there’s plenty of opportunities to iron out the Katakana you keep forgetting.
One tip from someone who’s been studying for ten years and has a degree in linguistics:
There is too much information. Accept this, and streamline how you study. Personally, I recommend you don’t study kanji at all, although this is quite a controversial opinion, but it cuts out a HUGE amount of extra information clogging up your language acquisition.
Because of the way Japanese developed over time, you will get cognitive overload trying to memorize the meanings, onyomi, kunyomi, semantic radicals, phonetic radicals, stroke order, etc. This results in many things: slow learning, constant sense of failure, low sense of achievement (i.e. “I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere”), associating learning with pain and disappointment, rapid loss of motivation, and more.
Do NOT be a perfectionist. What benefit do you actually experience from simultaneously studying 上 –> あがる、あげる、うえ、ジョウ etc. –> give, raise, go up, up, etc.? “You have a better chance of reading it when it comes along…” Well guess what, it’s gonna take you so long to memorize all of that that you’re gonna quit before you ever get to reading it. Or if you do get to it, you would have already learned all those individual words, so you wasted the time that you spent studying that that chunk of kanji bullshit when you could have just studied the words to begin with and you would have known the readings and the meanings and which one went to which that much faster.
Think of it like this: you have to put one joint together at a time, because you’re going to hurt yourself trying to build a house simultaneously. You can put together a hundred joints in a day and keep going, but you can only make one house and you’re exhausted by the end of it, I guess… Maybe the analogy doesn’t work great, but that doesn’t matter. Basically, vocab word –> meaning/reading is hella simpler and easier on your brain than all the kanji stuff.
If that makes you feel weird, you have to remember that the way a language pedagogy is designed is a great deal influenced by how native children are taught. This is one of the largest fallacies within language learning. Adults learn language very differently; adults are much more efficient and second language learners and first language learners have different pools of knowledge available to them. In this case, Japanese children already know all of the words (the meaning, pronunciation, etc), the only thing they do not know is how to write it. As such, if your only objective is to learn how to write, then absolutely focus on kanji like Japanese kids do. However, in the case of L2 acquisition, your primary goal is to simply be able to communicate. If you don’t already know the words, there is no reason to individually study kanji. You should first focus on learning words and their meanings.
Do: 上がる–> あがる/上になる 上げる–>あげる/自分が誰かに何かを渡すとか(use jps for definitions, christ it helps so much) It’s so much faster to memorize one or two new things than three or four. Like, exponentially. Fot me, it’s quicker to combine reading and meaning, but if you’re an actual beginner, you can definitely separate it all the way out.
But hey, I hear you ask, how do I decide what to study?
May I introduce to objective-based lesson planning?
Basically, 1) figure out what you actually want to accomplish, 2) take into consideration your limitations (such as your time constraints, the amount of energy you have, the resources you have available, and your own learning style, etc), and 3) figure out what is actually feasible for you to accomplish.
How I do this with Japanese? Well, currently I live in Japan, so I need to be able to speak spontaneously, fluently, and as accurately as possible. As such, I’ve decided to make my grammar practice almost entirely spoken, in addition to “free talk” during my commute about my plans for the day. For writing practice, I would reflect on the Japanese conversations I had with my coworkers, and rewrite it with better grammar and better choice of vocab, so that if I ended up on that subject again, I would be able to talk about it much more fluently.
Previously, when I lived in America, I focused on being able to read extensively, so when I studied vocab, I primarily studied with the vector of the kanji to both the meaning and the reading of that vocab. This meant that every time I saw that vocab word in a novel or in an article, I knew how to read it and I knew what it meant. These days, I can read normal web novels almost completely fluently. However, this means that I am slower to remember those words when I’m trying to use them in conversation. But that’s okay! Because as your circumstances change and your objectives change, your methods will also change. I simply have to change the order: meaning –> Japanese (kanji and the reading).
Now you might be tempted to say, oh you didn’t really learn those words because you don’t know forwards and backwards every single element of those words. This is bullshit, do not fall for this sort of puritanical bullshit. I am accomplishing my goal. I feel accomplished enough that my motivation continues for another day, and maybe the next day I’ll be able to learn a little bit more about that word. Your methods should always be pointed towards your goal, because with each step that you grow closer to your goal, the more you will love the language. You want your method to be as efficient as possible, so that you can move on to other goals. But remember, you have to stay within the limits of your own situation and your brain. You can try to study all the kanji, but you will soon notice that such methods are unsustainable.
Just read.
Kanji are not words.
Kanji are a writing system. They have one or more possible pronunciations, and some associated meanings which may or may not be relevant to the word you’re reading.
Words using kanji are made up of one or more kanji and sometimes some kana. If a word is only one kanji, it may or may not have some or all of the meaning associated with said kanji. But for instance, 生 the kanji can refer to life, like in 生きる, but 生 the word does not mean life.
Kanji *are not* words.
Not a shortcut but, depending on your level you need to understand what category each word belongs to and how it can connect to other parts of the sentence .
I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with word order and particle placement. As a comment above said, the order isn’t as strict as other languages but I always live by the rule that the main action comes last. That being said, something that has helped me is thinking of the sentence like puzzle pieces, some of them have a concave side and others a convex so only certain category of words can be connected to each other. For example adverbs can be placed before verbs but adjectives can’t. But in japanese many words can change category for example 帰り（かえり）is a noun and 帰る is a verb. はやい is an adjective and はやく is an adverb. So we can form the next sentences:
1.はやく帰った 2.早い帰りだった They are essentially the same in meaning but the category of the words is different
Read.
Idk if this is necessarily an instantaneous shortcut, but try thinking in Japanese. Like, I’m one of those people that has to narrate out all my thoughts in my head, like to the extent that sometimes if I’m actively thinking my tongue moves inside my mouth as if I was talking out loud. So I try to do a lot of that thinking in Japanese. Ok, so maybe it isn’t instantaneous like you were asking, but I do end up spending a lot of time thinking “how would I say this thought I’m having in Japanese?” And the more you do it the easier it gets
always keep in mind that japanese does not have such pronouns as **”which”, “what”, “that”, “how”…**, and thus sentences are structured differently from english (or other similar indo-european languages such as russian etc.)
For any beginners that haven’t figured this out yet… When you have a question about what the difference is between two words, Google it IN JAPANESE: “[word 1] [word 2] 違い”. If you don’t understand the Japanese answer, throw it into DeepL to get the gist of it. (Please do not use Google Translate except for handwritten kanji input. DeepL is way better at translating.) Similarly, if you don’t know what an expression means and you suspect it might be a common phrase or a meme or something, you can search “[expression] 意味” or “[expression]とは”.
Just listen a lot of the same conversation
I spent several years trying different ineffective approaches to studying before figuring out the painfully simple study pattern that works best for me:
**Study gets you practicing, but practice is where the learning happens.**
It’s useful to study grammar concepts so that you can quickly learn how they work. However, once you’ve read how they work, I find it’s not effective to memorize and drill the concept in isolation. Instead, I practice and drill with example sentences containing the concept and focus solely on being able to understand the sentence.
Doing things this way, it takes like a week at the *very* longest to internalize any grammar concept, and there’s the added benefit that I don’t have to get stressed over recalling complicated rules. All I ever have to do is understand what’s written in front of me.
here they are: [https://attain-onlinejapanese.thinkific.com/bundles/JLPT-Englishcouse](https://attain-onlinejapanese.thinkific.com/bundles/JLPT-Englishcouse) They cost 14 bucks/month, so they don’t seem \*that\* expensive, but I’m curious did…
23 comments
Nope. Language doesn’t have simple tricks to instantly improve understanding. Your example isnt a trick, it’s just basic level grammar study.
If you want to learn Japanese you need to put in the time, study grammar/vocab, read, listen, etc… You get better and understand more the more time you put in. Just do the work, there are no shortcuts.
You might enjoy Cure Dolly’s series. Turn on closed captioning if you have trouble understanding her speech.
[https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj)
Here is an entire collection of simple tips and tricks to instantly improve your Japanese: [https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/](https://guidetojapanese.org/learn/)
Hey guys, any tips on how I can click my fingers and lose 5kg while we’re at it? Also bring my childhood dog back from the dead if there’s time.
Edit: Alright, point taken. Let me make it for my flagrant cynicism with an actual instant tip for loose **[RENDAKU RULES.](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/rendaku/)**
Kunyomi readings usually do rendaku, unless…
* this or subsequent characters already have dakuten (Lyman’s Law),
* the preceding character is a particle or honorific prefix,
* the kanji is one of a certain set which do not usually rendaku even when read as kunyomi.
Onyomi readings usually do not not rendaku, unless…
* the reading starts with ‘h’ and follows ん, つ or ち,
* the kanji has two onyomi readings and one is the rendaku’d version of the other
* the kanji is one of a certain set which do usually rendaku, even though they are onyomi.
Many things that would be a separate word in many western languages are *not* a separate word in Japanese. Instead, information often is encoded in verb endings. And this is not just past tense but also intentions, imperatives, negation and more.
When learning grammar, do **not** think about 「 *$thing ga suki desu* 」
as 「 *I like $thing* 」.
Instead, think of it as 「 *$thing is pleasing* 」 – because otherwise, the *ga* as the subject marker makes no sense.
In that regard, *suki* works more like *gustar* in Spanish or *gefallen* in German. The $thing acts as the subject of the sentence.
edit: changed *$thing pleases me* to *$thing is pleasing* because it fits the grammatical role of *suki* as an adjective better. See HeirToGallifrey’s comment [below](https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/12z9vp6/any_simple_tipsoutlooks_that_will_instantly/jhsg847/)
Here’s a tip: that example is only half-true.
Due to particles making grammatical function more clear, word order is comparatively flexible compared to English. For example, ‘Tarou is standing there’ can be 太郎がそこに立っている, but it can also be そこに太郎が立っている, and the order often depends on what you want to emphasise.
SOV is standard and preferred, but not quite as ironclad as it is in English (although Old English used to work this way as well). The only thing that basically cannot be altered is that the verb will always come at the end of a clause.
And here’s another tip: there are no tips that will ‘instantly improve your understanding of Japanese’. Your example is not a tip; it is one of the most *bog-standard* points that *everyone* learns at beginner level.
What I gave was just a little extra on top; not mandatory, and most people will realise it sooner or later, but by no means something that will ‘instantly improve your understanding of Japanese’. It’s a little fun fact, not some kind of hidden secret truth.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/kosoado/
I remember when I was stumped on certain grammar or some such someone suggested the concept of reading the sentence backwards so it makes more sense translated into English and it helped me a lot.
It’s pretty fun to this day too, kind of makes it sound like caveman speak lmao
Of course this only works for written sentences and I would advise against leaning on it unless necessary as getting away from translating in your head at all as soon as possible is the better tip there.
>any more tips like this?
I’ll give you 3. Feel free to use them to your advantage or save them for later use.
* kanji. They can be divided into 6 categories (known as rikusho):
* 4 main ones: keisei moji (the widest category, characters with phonetic and semantic component, like 泳, 掘), shoukei moji (visually represents the meaning of a word, like 木, 月), shiji moji (abstract concepts, like 上 and 下), kaii moji (compound ideograms, like 峠)
* 2 smaller ones: tenchuu moji (characters that gained extended meanings, like 楽 which means music but also took on the meanings of fun, pleasure), kashaku moji (characters borrowed mainly to represent words phonetically without regard for meaning, like 来(來), which swapped meanings with 麦(麥)
* If you have trouble remembering a kanji, you can also look up its naritachi (how they’re formed, what they’re supposed to represent).
* compounds. They often fall into one of 8 categories:
* 2 characters with similar meanings (e.g. 低下, 移動), or opposite (e.g. 上下, 左右, 内外, 強弱)
* a prefix that accompanies another kanji (e.g. 未来, 無礼, 真白), or a kanji accompanied by a suffix (e.g. 変化, 団子, 理性)
* former acts as ‘subject’ and latter as ‘predicate’ (e.g. 骨折(骨が折れる), 国営(国が営む)), former modifies the latter (e.g. 大人(大きな人), 小指(小さな指)), latter acts as ‘object’ *or* complements the former (e.g. 読書(書を読む), 山登(山に登る), 降車(車を降りる))
* same kanji twice (e.g. 時々, 人々, 別々)
General language learning tip but try to use the language in some way every day. The ideal way would be to get the basics down (I.e at least Genki 1) and go use it in real life immediately. Obviously this isn’t feasible for a lot of people, but I feel like immersion does help.
Meh some very childish comments in here, I hope they’re from immature teenagers and not full blown adults. Anyway, here’s some basic tips I’m using, keep in mind I started 6 months ago so my knowledge is very limited:
If you just started learning kana, what helped me remembering voiced sounds, the ones with the dakuten, is thinking that it adds a “sweetening” effect to the original rougher sound.
To remember kanji pronunciations, radicals can help you a lot because they can be sound elements that carry a sound in different kanji that utilize that radical: https://learnjapaneseonline.info/tag/kanji-sound-radicals/
Here you can find a cool tip to help you distinguish transitive verbs by looking at their endings, for example a 出る from a 出す if you often can’t distinguish one from another: https://learnjapaneseonline.info/2016/12/27/mastering-transitivity-pairs-remembering-japanese-transitive-and-intransitive-verbs-the-easy-way/
I could list many others but I’d say just follow Cure Dolly, the approach she uses in many of her explanations is probably what you’re looking for.
If you struggle to remember Katakana it’s probably because you don’t use it often. Try playing Pokémon Red in Japanese. Pokémon names are written in Katakana so there’s plenty of opportunities to iron out the Katakana you keep forgetting.
One tip from someone who’s been studying for ten years and has a degree in linguistics:
There is too much information. Accept this, and streamline how you study. Personally, I recommend you don’t study kanji at all, although this is quite a controversial opinion, but it cuts out a HUGE amount of extra information clogging up your language acquisition.
Because of the way Japanese developed over time, you will get cognitive overload trying to memorize the meanings, onyomi, kunyomi, semantic radicals, phonetic radicals, stroke order, etc. This results in many things: slow learning, constant sense of failure, low sense of achievement (i.e. “I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere”), associating learning with pain and disappointment, rapid loss of motivation, and more.
Do NOT be a perfectionist. What benefit do you actually experience from simultaneously studying 上 –> あがる、あげる、うえ、ジョウ etc. –> give, raise, go up, up, etc.? “You have a better chance of reading it when it comes along…” Well guess what, it’s gonna take you so long to memorize all of that that you’re gonna quit before you ever get to reading it. Or if you do get to it, you would have already learned all those individual words, so you wasted the time that you spent studying that that chunk of kanji bullshit when you could have just studied the words to begin with and you would have known the readings and the meanings and which one went to which that much faster.
Think of it like this: you have to put one joint together at a time, because you’re going to hurt yourself trying to build a house simultaneously. You can put together a hundred joints in a day and keep going, but you can only make one house and you’re exhausted by the end of it, I guess… Maybe the analogy doesn’t work great, but that doesn’t matter. Basically, vocab word –> meaning/reading is hella simpler and easier on your brain than all the kanji stuff.
If that makes you feel weird, you have to remember that the way a language pedagogy is designed is a great deal influenced by how native children are taught. This is one of the largest fallacies within language learning. Adults learn language very differently; adults are much more efficient and second language learners and first language learners have different pools of knowledge available to them. In this case, Japanese children already know all of the words (the meaning, pronunciation, etc), the only thing they do not know is how to write it. As such, if your only objective is to learn how to write, then absolutely focus on kanji like Japanese kids do. However, in the case of L2 acquisition, your primary goal is to simply be able to communicate. If you don’t already know the words, there is no reason to individually study kanji. You should first focus on learning words and their meanings.
Instead of: 上 –> あがる、あげる、うえ、ジョウ, raise, rise, up, above, high, etc.
Do: 上がる–> あがる/上になる
上げる–>あげる/自分が誰かに何かを渡すとか(use jps for definitions, christ it helps so much)
It’s so much faster to memorize one or two new things than three or four. Like, exponentially. Fot me, it’s quicker to combine reading and meaning, but if you’re an actual beginner, you can definitely separate it all the way out.
But hey, I hear you ask, how do I decide what to study?
May I introduce to objective-based lesson planning?
Basically, 1) figure out what you actually want to accomplish, 2) take into consideration your limitations (such as your time constraints, the amount of energy you have, the resources you have available, and your own learning style, etc), and 3) figure out what is actually feasible for you to accomplish.
How I do this with Japanese? Well, currently I live in Japan, so I need to be able to speak spontaneously, fluently, and as accurately as possible. As such, I’ve decided to make my grammar practice almost entirely spoken, in addition to “free talk” during my commute about my plans for the day. For writing practice, I would reflect on the Japanese conversations I had with my coworkers, and rewrite it with better grammar and better choice of vocab, so that if I ended up on that subject again, I would be able to talk about it much more fluently.
Previously, when I lived in America, I focused on being able to read extensively, so when I studied vocab, I primarily studied with the vector of the kanji to both the meaning and the reading of that vocab. This meant that every time I saw that vocab word in a novel or in an article, I knew how to read it and I knew what it meant. These days, I can read normal web novels almost completely fluently. However, this means that I am slower to remember those words when I’m trying to use them in conversation. But that’s okay! Because as your circumstances change and your objectives change, your methods will also change. I simply have to change the order: meaning –> Japanese (kanji and the reading).
Now you might be tempted to say, oh you didn’t really learn those words because you don’t know forwards and backwards every single element of those words. This is bullshit, do not fall for this sort of puritanical bullshit. I am accomplishing my goal. I feel accomplished enough that my motivation continues for another day, and maybe the next day I’ll be able to learn a little bit more about that word. Your methods should always be pointed towards your goal, because with each step that you grow closer to your goal, the more you will love the language. You want your method to be as efficient as possible, so that you can move on to other goals. But remember, you have to stay within the limits of your own situation and your brain. You can try to study all the kanji, but you will soon notice that such methods are unsustainable.
Just read.
Kanji are not words.
Kanji are a writing system. They have one or more possible pronunciations, and some associated meanings which may or may not be relevant to the word you’re reading.
Words using kanji are made up of one or more kanji and sometimes some kana. If a word is only one kanji, it may or may not have some or all of the meaning associated with said kanji. But for instance, 生 the kanji can refer to life, like in 生きる, but 生 the word does not mean life.
Kanji *are not* words.
Not a shortcut but, depending on your level you need to understand what category each word belongs to and how it can connect to other parts of the sentence .
I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with word order and particle placement. As a comment above said, the order isn’t as strict as other languages but I always live by the rule that the main action comes last.
That being said, something that has helped me is thinking of the sentence like puzzle pieces, some of them have a concave side and others a convex so only certain category of words can be connected to each other.
For example adverbs can be placed before verbs but adjectives can’t. But in japanese many words can change category for example
帰り（かえり）is a noun and 帰る is a verb.
はやい is an adjective and はやく is an adverb.
So we can form the next sentences:
1.はやく帰った
2.早い帰りだった
They are essentially the same in meaning but the category of the words is different
Read.
Idk if this is necessarily an instantaneous shortcut, but try thinking in Japanese. Like, I’m one of those people that has to narrate out all my thoughts in my head, like to the extent that sometimes if I’m actively thinking my tongue moves inside my mouth as if I was talking out loud. So I try to do a lot of that thinking in Japanese. Ok, so maybe it isn’t instantaneous like you were asking, but I do end up spending a lot of time thinking “how would I say this thought I’m having in Japanese?” And the more you do it the easier it gets
always keep in mind that japanese does not have such pronouns as **”which”, “what”, “that”, “how”…**, and thus sentences are structured differently from english (or other similar indo-european languages such as russian etc.)
For any beginners that haven’t figured this out yet… When you have a question about what the difference is between two words, Google it IN JAPANESE: “[word 1] [word 2] 違い”. If you don’t understand the Japanese answer, throw it into DeepL to get the gist of it. (Please do not use Google Translate except for handwritten kanji input. DeepL is way better at translating.) Similarly, if you don’t know what an expression means and you suspect it might be a common phrase or a meme or something, you can search “[expression] 意味” or “[expression]とは”.
Just listen a lot of the same conversation
I spent several years trying different ineffective approaches to studying before figuring out the painfully simple study pattern that works best for me:
**Study gets you practicing, but practice is where the learning happens.**
It’s useful to study grammar concepts so that you can quickly learn how they work. However, once you’ve read how they work, I find it’s not effective to memorize and drill the concept in isolation. Instead, I practice and drill with example sentences containing the concept and focus solely on being able to understand the sentence.
Doing things this way, it takes like a week at the *very* longest to internalize any grammar concept, and there’s the added benefit that I don’t have to get stressed over recalling complicated rules. All I ever have to do is understand what’s written in front of me.