For context, I’m American born Chinese (I speak Cantonese conversationally) and my wife is Japanese. We’ve been together for about 4 years now and I’ve picked up some random phrases and words in Japanese but that’s about it. I’ve put off learning the language but it’s now time. I would love to be able to have conversations with my wife’s family when we visit Japan without her translating between us, and I’m wondering what the best method for learning conversational Japanese is. I’m not very interested, at least right now, in learning kanji, the written word since that’s not really my goal. Again, the idea is to just to be able to chat with my in-laws. I know this will take time and effort but I’d appreciate any advice this sub has for me. Where should I begin? I’d be willing to find a private tutor if that’s recommended, or any other means for getting me closer to my goal.
8 comments
I recommend you learn kanji. You probably will want to eventually anyway and it will open up a ton of learning resources. What’s the point of learning Japanese if you can’t read a sign?
And good thought on the private tutor, italki.com is a good site to find one.
Most dictionaries and learning resources use hiragana and katakana rather than romanizations, so at the very least you’ll want to learn those. Past that though your best bet for spoken Japanese would be to get a private tutor
If you do nothing else, learn kana at the very least so you don’t completely shut yourself out of all the good written learning resources.
Honestly, you already have one of the best resources…your wife. I live in Indiana, and have been studying for a few years. I do have a Japanese teacher, but we only really meet one a week for an hour or so. And that really isn’t much time practicing. Indiana doesn’t really have a big Japanese community, and the closest is probably and hour away from me. What I wouldn’t give for a Japanese acquaintance or friend who I could speak to on a regular basis.
Unless you are trying to surprise her, it seems like a no brainer
Get a teacher on iTalki. You’ll progress much faster (quantity and quality) than trying to do it on your own. There’s a lot of very qualified teachers with affordable rates there, and some of them focus on conversation specifically.
Otherwise, I think the shadowing class at https://www.mikurealjapanese.com/store is pretty great. You’ll need to have learned at least kana first. All of her lessons have accompanying vocab and transcriptions.
Thank you all for the advice and reccos. Sounds like kana goes hand in hand with learning how to speak Japanese which definitely makes sense. Really appreciate all the resources linked here as well. I’m sure this sub will be a wealth of knowledge throughout this process.
Have you tried talking to your wife????
Native Cantonese speaker here, if you can speak but not write Cantonese, just about the only advantage over other English speakers you’ll have is being bilingual and being able to retain kango(Chinese loan words) reliably(though only if you were educated in Cantonese). IMO the main advantage of knowing Cantonese is knowing the kanji, for obvious reasons.