So I’m not a native English speaker, should I focus on perfecting my English first before attempting to learn Japanese? I’m asking this question because I intend to learn Japanese with English materials (there are not many good materials in my mother tongue). Sorry if this question doesn’t really belong here.
9 comments
No, perfect English is not needed. At some point, there are concepts that do not map between Japanese and English.
I don’t think your English needs to be perfect. Just good. If you wouldn’t hesitate to learn any other subject through English, I don’t think you should hesitate to learn Japanese through English.
If you think there is something you can do to improve your English in the near future, I’d recommend you do that. But more because knowing English is extremely valuable, less because it’s required to learn Japanese. That also depends on how valuable Japanese is for you personally compared to English.
No, absolutely not. But if you’re worried, the English in something like Genki is not very fancy and wordy. Other textbooks might be a bit more wordy, especially at intermediate levels (though I’ve only had the chance to look at older textbooks that have fallen out of favour with the community, replaced with newer stuff that’s similar to Genki).
My suggestion to you is learn the basics off of that, and then build your vocabulary up to be able to learn Japanese using purely Japanese resources. For the record, although my English is alright, I quit textbooks with English explanations after Genki 1 and quickly got used to using Japanese-only resources for most things.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d still recommend going through Genki 2 if you like the teaching style. I’m just saying you can totally quit on English textbooks that early, though you may want to read up on something like Tae Kim’s grammar guide as well if you do.
languages are too different to be a barrier to your learning (confusing words/orders /grammar etc), however I imagine that there will be words you will learn, it is also a good way to learn English and refine the basics!
Most native English speakers don’t fully understand the parts of their own language so you should be ok. 👍
No its not needed. The first grammar books you use may be available in french, spanish and german too, but the english/japanese used in the beginner books is really simple. I know people who cant even speak english but are fluent in japanese and live in japan.
If you are intermediate, you shouldnt rely on your mother tongue anymore, try to look up japanese – japanese dictionaries, online explanations, or grammar books that are completly in japanese ( n2-n1 shinkanzenmaster for example ). I dont know your mother tongue, but for most languages there should be a somewhat complete online dictionary for looking up vocab.
English may just be the worst base language to know for learning Japanese. I pride myself for knowing the English language to the high level that I do and I can tell you that it doesn’t help much. It hinders more than anything really. I study Japanese in English but would refer to my mother tongue (Vietnamese) for grammar as it much more closely resembles it than English.
I’m not native too. I’m learning in my mother tongue and in english because there are plenty of materials in that language. It has improved my english naturally. So don’t worry 🙂 Sometimes I add a translation to my anki cards, because the english word has not enough sense for me.
Just Google the Words you dont understand. I had to learn a couple of latin words because there was no English translation, like 出身大学