Learn Japanese: A Ridiculously Detailed Guide
Sitting down and starting is the hardest part. Just keep in mind that because of this, some steps may seem counterintuitive. They may even seem slow compared to other methods, but everything has been carefully selected to get you to the finish line faster and more efficiently. If you follow the instructions in this over the top, step-by-step guide, you will reach your goal of Japanese fluency. A few things to point out My 1st language is English and my second language is Māori (I can sort of follow along and understand). Try to only answer questions within your knowledge of the subject.
- You will learn how to use radicals and mnemonics and how to create an effective routine.
- The time you put into kanji, vocabulary, and pronunciation will begin to pay off.
- All you need to do is follow each step, do the work, and progress.
Asking “How do I learn Japanese” without reading the FAQ, no matter how different your situation is, will result in your post being removed. Similarly, questions regarding scheduling, study plans and https://www.topforexnews.org/software-development/hire-mariadb-developers-and-dedicated-sql/ material covered previously will be removed. Basically, if a post’s question or topic is not covered in the wiki or can’t be found by searching, then it stands a better chance of not being removed.
If you’re new to learning Japanese, please read the Starter’s Guide in wiki. (Expand to see link)
I recommend not skipping questions—instead, follow your curiosity! Learning is supposed to be fun, though school may have “taught” you otherwise. With this kanji knowledge (and good pronunciation, to boot!), grammar is going to come quickly to you. You won’t be spending your grammar study time looking up every other word. Instead, you’ll be able to focus solely on grammar, and you’ll know the contents of 80% of every sentence you see for the first time. When you say these sentences out loud, you won’t be tripping over your tongue because you’ll already be intimately familiar with Japanese sounds and pronunciation.
How you do this doesn’t matter as much as actually doing it. Put them in a spreadsheet, a tool like Evernote or OneNote, or just write them down on a piece of paper. It’s time to learn how and when to introduce vocabulary words from outside your kanji studies into your study routine. The most important thing is to have a good system in place. You will learn a lot of vocabulary purely from your kanji studies.
People all across the platform are believing that you have to dedicate more than half your day to studying in order to learn, but https://www.day-trading.info/what-does-issuing-bonds-mean-2020/ that isn’t true! You can study for a minimum of minutes, with a maximum of 2 hours. Anything beyond that will just exhaust you…
Getting Started
For times like this, reference books are quite good. If you’re only going to buy one, I’d recommend the “Basic” book from the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series. It is the best Japanese language reference book out there, in my opinion.
Now you know how to type everything there is to type in Japanese (that is, unless you count kaomoji)! If you can type in English, typing in Japanese is surprisingly easy. With practice, you’ll be able to type it as naturally as you type in your native language. Before starting this step, make sure you can read a handful of kanji.
JLPT Levels
Most likely, you will find most of the vocabulary that you want to learn in your Japanese textbook (we’ll cover that really soon!). As I mentioned earlier, these might be words that don’t have kanji, or maybe they’re words that you didn’t learn in WaniKani. There are a lot of words out there and no one resource will teach you which moving average is best all of them. Typing in kanji is a little more complicated than typing in hiragana or katakana, but it still follows similar rules. Learn how to type in kanji using the kanji section of our guide then read to the end. There are some additional tips and tricks in there (punctuation, symbols, etc.) that may come in handy.
You don’t have to move at the speed of the slowest learner in your group. All you need to do is follow each step, do the work, and progress. But seriously, it’s ridiculous how much more you learn when you’re having fun. Once you know the basics, even if I understand 40% , I still get a lot out of it, especially from anime that has clear pronunciation. Bonus points for anime I have already watched, it makes things to understand.
Making a habit out of using multiple explanations and resources for one thing will feel like it’s slowing you down at first, but it’s much faster overall. We’ll list some really good reference books at the end of the Beginning Japanese section, so make sure to take a look. It’s time to take our philosophy and apply it to a beginner textbook. And with kanji and vocabulary already in your tool belt, learning grammar should be much more interesting. You won’t be spending 90% of your time and energy on looking up kanji and vocabulary you don’t know. It will take around 2-6 months to get through most beginner Japanese textbooks.
Once you’ve finished learning how to read hiragana, go though that section again, but this time read about “Important Differences” as well. This section will cover all of the sounds that don’t exist in English, giving you a head start. Make sure you can pronounce all of the hiragana characters correctly before moving on. In other words, things like textbooks and traditional studying methods are a really useful complimentary resource.
For now though, your goal is to develop a habit of collecting, processing, and studying vocabulary that is unfamiliar to you. At this point, you have a strong base of kanji and vocabulary. If you are using WaniKani, you should be at level 10 or above.
According to Ethnologue, Japanese is the 9th largest language in the world by number of speakers with 122 million speakers in 25 countries. Census estimates that there are approximately 443,000 native speakers of Japanese in the United States alone. See this comment but note that the JLPT does not account for speaking and writing. However, it does highlight that Japanese, same as any other language, requires commitment to learn. As you’re going through your textbook, you’re going to run into things you don’t understand. It’s not necessarily a failure of your textbook, it’s just that many of them were designed for teachers to use in a classroom.