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votes
Place to learn Japanese
So,this has been on my mind for a long time and i have tried some available/widely known methods to learn japanese language.So far iam not satisfied with my results.Can someone suggest me some ways that worked for them preferably for free/cheap.The main problem is the letters or characters.i can comprehend and manage to speak a very basic levels of the language mainly from consuming media from japan,some duolingo and such.....
any and all advice is appreciated
Help me out guys
Hello, I'm not someone interested in learning Japanese per se, but more of a linguistics fan. I'm curious why you two say that romaji will betray you? From @Nadya's joke I can gather that it is not consistent, but from an information standpoint why is it so much worse than katakana and hiragana?
I know Chinese, so I can imagine kanji can be worse for "betraying" Japanese learners in some senses.
Thanks for the detailed reply. Your analogy with Chinese pinyin is interesting because even Chinese lacks a 1-to-1 mapping between characters and syllables but it is a complicated relation sometimes (This aspect is probably a far worse issue for Japanese romaji). I guess my question was if you had to start Japanese orthography over again, say using romaji + kanji only for writing, with all a different set of ideosyncracies and ambiguities that come with romaji rather than kana, then would Japanese functionally retain the same complexity? In this thought experiment, you can even use alphasyllabaries so you have set two- to three-letter combinations for each kana, with alternate pronunications for the letters and letter-combinations like we have in English, and proper vowel length markers.
I totally get your main point about how just relying on romaji can be a crutch that doesn't let you engage deeper with Japanese language and culture. I was just wondering if the exceptions and misleading nature of a fully fleshed out romaji system would have necessarily present an orthographic limitation on the Japanese language. Again, I'm not advocating for this (nor for pinyin-only Chinese).
I haven't studied Japanese, but I can say from studying Chinese that a lot of learners mispronounce certain words because of pinyin. It's not as much of an issue bc pinyin maps better onto Mandarin phonology (and because, unless you're learning from someone very Taiwanese who uses zhuyin, there's not really a better alternative), but tons of my classmates struggled with pronouncing pinyin "e" like the e in English "egg" (even in words like 的).
Yes, to better understand how Japanese works I'm proposing a new kana system that is romaji and designed with Japanese speakers in mind. I think pinyin does that for Chinese speakers (Wade-Giles and definitely Yale for example are better designed and gets closer to the actual sounds for the unintiated English speaker), where the letters really don't correspond to English or IPA at all, but is good enough for a native Chinese kid to fully learn and express virtually all sounds uniquely. So would a "romaji for Japanese speakers" be enough or do the existing kana system really do something that roman letters can't do? Is it just betraying to an unintiated English-speaking beginner who just wants to read the letters like they are reading Spanish? Could someone with the correct orientation and mindset fully use letters instead of hiragana and katakana?
When I mentioned alphasyllabary I would mean fixing the forms of the letter combinations for Japanese morae/syllables instead of having free letters like in a proper English alphabet. For example "ka" would be bound together as a unit, "k" and "a" would not exist on their own. Perhaps "ka" = か = カ for example. What would be wrong with this? Kana with dakuten can be implement via other letter combinations like "ga" for example.
Thank you so much this and i want to say i appreciate you for taking your time to help out.
i will be checking out your suggestions.
Personally, I like using Anki, because I can have it on my phone, which means I can work on vocabulary whenever I'm waiting when out and about.
Excuse me, but here on Tildes we don't accept personal insults even when they're not around to hear it. How dare you call me out like this!
But seriously, this is a really good piece of advice. I slowed down way too much on my SRS program and as a result it's probably been a year since I last logged into it. Don't be me, invest the time and effort into yourself!
This is something I also try to advocate in language learning as well. I think my biggest contribution to expanding my vocab greatly was "drowning myself" in Anki vocab. I downloaded a list of words in a book and would just spam those words in SRS to get some exposure. Then as I read the book I get more context. Now going almost three years strong with daily Anki, adding on average about ten cards per day. Trick is to think of Anki as just "extra exposure" and keep your main "studying" elsewhere (mainly reading novels for me).
Of course you tweak the Anki settings to even better suit this approach, like setting a low leech suspend count and raising the "new interval".
Don't get me wrong, I'm agreeing with you! I slowed down so much that I ended up falling off the wagon altogether. It was like a feedback loop of laziness. That's why I'm urging OP and anyone else to try to do as much as they can.
So I wrote a giant sheet of tips for our first-years that I'm just going to paste here in its entirety since it does cover quite a lot of tools. Hot takes incoming.
Study tools:
WaniKani (Website)
The most important tool. Spaced Repetition System kanji learning with a strong emphasis on radicals and mnemonics. Trust the method, pay the small fee, show up, love kanji. (They have recently thrown a brick through the cathedral window by including kana-only vocab and diluting the entire purpose of their tool, so that's extremely disappointing, but if you can ignore all the random disconnected speed bumps, the kanji and kanji-reinforcing vocab is still there and is a genius architecture)
https://www.wanikani.com/
Torii SRS (Program)
Another Spaced Repetition System with the core 10k vocabulary words. Good for extra practice if you’ve run out of WaniKani reviews, and a good provisional set of vocabulary while you wait to learn enough kanji.
https://torii-srs.com/
Bailey Snyder’s jconj (Website)
If you practiced recognizing your kana in rapid-fire drills like realkana.com, then this is the same thing but for basic conjugations. Do a few whenever you think of it and make it second nature.
https://baileysnyder.com/jconj/
Pimsleur Japanese (Audio)
Good but expensive and the program hasn’t changed in like 30 years. Buy a cheap copy off eBay on CD or cassette, then pick up a player at a thrift store and you’ll have their whole library for what they want to charge for 2-3 months of access. Won’t teach you much grammar or vocabulary, but will improve your speaking confidence.
Tokini Andy (YouTube)
All Genki chapters, in order, explained. Great teacher.
Cure Dolly (YouTube)
A genius of Japanese grammar and pedagogy, the late Cure Dolly was an odd one. If you can handle her style, you’ll be greatly rewarded. Start with her numbered Organic Japanese series and at least hold out until you understand what a zero-ga is.
Unlocking Japanese by Cure Dolly (Book)
She wrote books too, and if you can find a copy, this one’s absolutely worth reading.
Japanese Short Stories for Beginners by Lingo Mastery (Book)
Japanese, then Japanese with English translation, then vocabulary list and comprehension questions. It’s a simple and effective formula using a limited set of kanji, and it will make you feel confident as you read and reread faster and faster.
Moonwalking with Einstein (book)
This book examines how memory champions do things like memorize thousands of places of pi. It’s a good primer on how and why mnemonics work, how SRSs work, etc. Read only if you’re bored and want a more conceptual understanding of what you’re doing with WaniKani, Torii SRS, and jconj.
Various tips, your mileage may vary:
Just to add, Genki is one of the most widely used learning system among schools and the books are fairly cheap if you want a hardcopy, and if you're not terrible scrupled then you can easily find pirate versions online, including the audiovisual extras. If you do end up using it I would suggest actually purchasing the workbook because writing really helps you understand the language.
Adding onto this: Pay extra for the 3rd edition. The 2nd edition is fine, but this isn't one of those cases where the publisher is just bumping editions every year for more money. They only release a new edition like once a decade and they went to WORK on the 3rd edition. It's packed with quality of life improvements in the organization and printing, some points are moved around to make the progression more sensible, and the vocabulary is updated. The biggest thing I noticed moving from 2nd to 3rd edition was that in 2nd I had to flip through and orient myself to find things, whereas in the 3rd edition every page function is so visually distinct I can just instantly jump to exactly where a piece of information is.
Also TokiniAndy teaches from the 3rd edition, so that alone makes it worth it.
Wow the Bailey Snyder conjugation practice site seems like a great tool! Wish I would have known about this earlier. Thanks for posting!
I would say it depends on what your current level is, and what your objectives are. Do you want to become completely fluent, or just able to converse with people, do you want to live in Japan or just have a nice vacation there?
If you're at the beginner level, I would try watching some beginner youtube courses of which there are plenty, just to get a hang of the language, while at the same time studying Hiragana and Katakana. Once you have the basics down, I would recommend that rather than focusing on trying to memorize kanji, you focus on trying to comfortably speak and interpret the language. The best way of doing so would be to actually going to a language school in Japan, but language exchanges are a decent substitute. Several years ago I had success finding language exchange partners on Mixxer, but I can't attest to if the platform is still actively used nowadays. Many people in Japan use HelloTalk though I've never tried the platform myself. Whatever platform you use, your goal should be becoming comfortable speaking the language and listening to others.
Once you reach this level of basic conversational fluency, my recommendations would be consuming Japanese media and building up your vocabulary. Unfortunately by Japanese media I don't mean anime, but rather Japanese youtubers, dramas, variety shows, podcasts, comedians, etc. This will help you both learn how people really speak to each other in various situations, but also build up your knowledge of Japanese culture so you can better interact with people upon coming to Japan. For building up vocabulary, I would highly recommend that you try to become completely proficient in the N3 vocabulary list (there are flashcard tools on Memrise or Anki that work well). Don't fall into the trap of just trying to study a bunch of individual kanji (unless you really care about being able to write Japanese by hand for some reason) or trying to jump ahead to the advanced N1 vocabulary. I guarantee you that if you could comfortably use all of the N3 vocabulary and grammar in natural conversation, you'd be more fluent than 95% of Japan living foreigners I've met. Finally, even though I don't find the majority of anime to be particularly useful for learning, manga is actually a great way to get comfortable reading Japanese. There are plenty of manga that use ふりがな which will make the reading experience a lot easier as you're getting started, particularly in the ones more targeted towards middle or elementary schoolers.
Finally we get to the really advanced Japanese. This is the level where if you're not planning to move to Japan long term, it's really not worth the time of effort. The first thing I would tackle at this stage is Pitch Accent. This is the reason that every Japanese person you speak to on the phone can tell you're a foreigner. I won't go into the specifics, but Dogen on youtube has a pretty famous series explaining it in depth. This is where I would also start working through those N1 vocabulary lists and building up your lexicon with words that make you sound significantly more sophisticated. I would also start reading actual books at this stage. Light novels are fine if that's your interest, or you could try picking up a Murakami novel as his style is a bit easier to read. What's really important at this stage is finding ways to be immersed in Japanese so that you can start thinking in Japanese rather than English. The easiest way is living in Japan, but otherwise consume as much Japanese media as you can.
Hope something in that was helpful to you and I can try to answer any questions if you have them.
This is great advice. I would like to add that as long as you can consistently and sustainably do so while learning, read/watch what you want!
If you are interested in it, reading is the fastest way to acquire vocabulary words! To make sure that consuming content is as satisfying and painless as possible, I recommend that you use pop-up dictionaries like 10-ten and yomichan. Yomichan does require some setup but it should be well worth it to have a definition in a click or so; and you can also integrate yomichan with Anki to create flashcards for words that you encounter.
Personally, I have been studying the language by myself for a little less than a year (Probably less, I am really inconsistent) and have read a novel, some manga here and there, and some light novels, albeit with the help of popup dictionaries but gaining large amounts of vocabulary. I began with a N5-N4 vocabulary flashcard deck and the Tae Kim Grammar site and blitzed through it in about three months, along the way beginning to read NHK easy articles and a bit of a web novel, again with the help of popup dictionaries. What has been your experience?
lots of good advice in this thread!
for learning kana, i recommend this approach. take a look at these youtube videos:
learn hiragana in 1 hour
learn katakana in 1 hour
they are an hour long each, but you can watch them a bit at a time. they give a good overview of the different writing systems, talk about each character along with pronunciation and some mnemonics for remembering them or distinguishing them from other confusing ones, as well as some basic vocabulary
after that, do some kana drills using https://realkana.com/. I recommend doing a column at a time so you don't overwhelm yourself. Once you get comfortable with the first column of characters, add another one, and so on, until you've got them all down
along with kana drills, it would also help to practice writing them. there are tons of youtube videos about this (for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwaf6V91WnA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLRbuk19piw)
more general tips:
other notes:
personally, i could never find an effective way to use anki and ended up wasting a ton of time on it. i think for learning basic vocabulary (eg りんご＝🍎) srs systems can work well, but once you get to words with multiple usages or more abstract meanings, it starts to fall apart. this is where reading a lot can help: you get to see words how they are actually used. if you do use an srs, make sure there is audio so you can reinforce the correct pronunciation
I actually think SRS works best at the beginning as you said, and also when you get to rarer words. Some words you would only see every ten books or so! It can really speed up getting exposure to those rarer words.
As for multiple usage and meaning, I think SRS works best when thought of as a groundwork for those words. Yeah, even if I learn a word well through SRS, it's reading and exposure that will eventually teach me how it's used. I treat Anki as just extra exposure, and it can multiply the gains you get from only reading, especially if you are adding the words you encounter with context. I downloaded word lists for books and put those in a deck while reading the book.
that’s a good point about jump-starting rare words and priming for stuff you’re about to read. a funny example of that was when 電報 popped up in my deck and i had a bit of a 🤨”when will i ever need this word” reaction. sure enough, it popped up in whatever i was reading the next day… (of course, i had to look it up just now because i haven’t seen or used it since lol)
i did use anki for quite a long time, but eventually hit a point where i thought, “i could waste 30mins doing this boring thing, or i could have fun reading an actual book”, so i went in the more fun direction
i’m actually curious what your deck looks like, if you don’t mind sharing
Heh. I think it makes some sense with "electric report" -> telegram, but I think I've seen it enough before to make that association. Could be pretty much anything else as well.
That's definitely valid! I try to keep my Anki usage pretty low relative for my consumption. I can usually kick out those 100-150 reviews in a focused 20 minutes. So if I try to read/listen a few hours per day, I find it's worth it without sacrificing my other time. There's definitely a gamification aspect to it, where I get excited to "collect all the words" when starting a new book, that keeps me going xD. I guess it also keeps the habit on days I don't feel like doing any Japanese related stuff. But if Anki is not working for you, I don't think you're missing out on that much by just reading more. Some days it definitely takes a toll.
I'm not sure if my deck would be very useful; it's a big collection of subdecks divided to the VN and Novels I've read (mostly acquired from jpdb.io and koohi.cafe). Basically it would be just over 10k of random words (minus words included in WK, that I already did) for anyone else. I keep my cards very simple with just the kanji on front and meaning/reading on back. I think just getting a 10k common words deck would be more useful :).
Japanese was my "COVID Project" for nearly two years. I went from zero knowledge of the language to passing JLPT N2 in about two years. Here's how I did it.
Some things to note:
Studying Japanese was one of the most fun and challenging languages I've ever taken on. I've helped half a dozen or so friends establish their own study plans at a varying level of time/monetary budgets. If you have any questions feel free to DM me I am more than happy to answer more questions.
Yeah you've got some great advice in this thread already. I'm going to emphasize figuring out what your goals are. Do you want to be able to listen/watch Japanese media with no subtitles? Do you want to be able to read authentic texts or play an old game that has only Japanese text? Do you want to be able to speak well enough for getting by on vacation? Knowing your goals will help you figure out how to focus your time among the four aspects of the language (speaking, listening, reading, writing). If your goal is to be as fluent as possible then I agree with the sentiment that there's no substitute for using the language every day and being immersed in whatever ways you can.
I think it's also important to figure out how you yourself learn best. For me I really need to understand the nitty gritty of the rules behind the language. I studied for two years at the university level and that was really helpful for getting answers to those types of questions, and for being in an environment where I was using it daily. Unfortunately that's not a free option (unless you get a job at a university). But some universities do have language clubs that meet weekly and are actually open to the public as well, so that may be worth looking into. It may also be helpful to look for multiple language exchange partners as everyone speaks differently even if they're speaking the same dialect.
And as you go on I would pay attention to the aspects you're struggling with the most so you can give them extra focus. Listening was actually the one I had the hardest time with, so I needed to spend more time with listening examples and conversations, etc.
Oh! I found Quizlet to be helpful for learning vocab, at least in the context of the Genki textbooks. I was also able to make my own lists of words that related to fields of study I was in, so that was helpful. But I've never used Memrise and didn't really get into Anki, so I can't speak to a comparison.
And don't sleep on learning about different aspects of the culture. It would be a weird combo to speak Japanese well but know nothing of the culture, history, or current affairs.
If you don't mind me jumping in on this, I absolutely love storytelling. Most of my vacation goals were inspired by a specific writer or story about a traveller, but in the case of Japan, I have a really deep interest in both the religious aspects, the mythology, culture and traditions... what I want is of course to be able to communicate with locals if and when I'm ever able to go, but also I want to be able to read the things around me, to know what they say or what they are or what their story is. Can you clarify how this might influence how and what I learn?
What I'm doing currently: I'm just starting out and have made some headway in hiragana and a little less in katakana, I find that a combination of flashcards and mnemonics work for initial learning, and then once I've memorized about 5 or so I start practicing writing them regularly as well - and I've started using tadoku.org's offering of free level 0 books to practice my (still very spotty!) reading.
For sure, though I'm definitely not an expert on Japanese, linguistics, or language pedagogy. I would say getting a strong foundation of hiragana and katakana is fundamental. I started learning that stuff for probably at least a couple months before I even started my Japanese class which made everything else easier. I definitely would encourage you to keep practicing writing as well. It's supposed to really help you remember what you're learning.
As far as getting information from being able to read things around you, kanji is also going to be essential. I replied to another post in here about kanji resources, but I would also look to other user's suggestions there. I learned kanji mostly within the context of the Genki textbooks which from what I've gleaned seems to be a rather scattershot approach. From what I've heard/seen from others, its better to get familiar with the radicals and develop from there. Which I know Wani Kani has been good for in the past, but I'm not up on the best tools atm.
I hadn't heard of tadoku but that seems like it could be good and makes sense especially if you're interested in stories. I think I would have a hard time with a system that encourages you to not look stuff up, just because of how my brain works, but I understand that it's more about keeping the flow and interest and not getting side-tracked probably.
There's another post in here from someome talking about how understanding kanji can have a positive effect on piecing things together in other aspects of the language. I remember one of my instructors talking about how once you get a large enough number of kanji down you can start to infer the meanings of words you don't know.
I think reading is one of the most complex aspects of Japanese and that's because of kanji. You could have no reading skills and probably get by OK in Japan if you're good at speaking/listening and outgoing enough/not afraid to ask questions. You could also learn all the kanji superbly but if you can't hold a conversation and are there by yourself it can be very isolating.
So yeah, I dunno. That's why I say it depends on what your goals are. I only have the experience of learning it in school with some additional self-tought time, so I can't really speak to the best ways of going about it outside of that experience.
I appreciate your response. You've given me a long-term idea of what I should be thinking about, which is great! I know it's likely going to be a few years at least before I can go, so I've got time, motivation, and guidance. Thank you!
It's a challenging language but also super rewarding. And Japan is a lovely place to visit. Stay motivated (and/or disciplined)! がんばって!
ありがとうございます!
(corrections welcome)
If it's help with memorizing the kanji that you are after, I quite like James W. Heisig's method as presented in his book Remembering the Kanji. It basically assigns a core meaning for each character and radical, and suggests a little image or a story for each of them, which works as a mnemonic. You build these stories on top of each other as you progress through the kanji.
I'll give you an example. Very early on, the book tells you that 日 is the kanji with the meaning sun, and that it kind of looks like a sun. A little later, it tells you that 十 has the meaning ten (just turn it 45 degrees an you get the the Roman numeral X), but that it can also have the meaning needle (you can perhaps imagine the kanji as something piercing something else).
Some time after those two, you come to the character 早, whose basic meaning is early. The book notes that it is composed of the kanjis for sun and needle on top of each other, and further notes that it looks a little like a flower, the needle being the stalk of the flower. Hence, it suggests that you think of a sunflower, which is an early riser in the garden, as it follows the sun.
Some pages later, you learn the symbol for magic wand, and then see it on top of the "sunflower" when you get to the symbol 卓, which has the assigned meaning eminent. Here, the book suggests that you think of the world's most eminent magician, who clearly must be so good that they are using a sunflower as a magic wand.
And so on and so forth it goes. For some people, this is total nonsense. For me, it is the type of narrative chaos that I naturally use to learn any language anyway, so it works really well for me. Or it would, if I ever kept at it, but that's another problem.
Note though, that the method doesn't teach you vocabulary, only abstract meanings of individual characters, and some of those meanings can be debated. It doesn't teach you pronunciation. Neither is it concerned with character compounds. Its sole aim is to relatively quickly get you to a point where you are familiar with the shapes and general meanings of about 2200 basic kanji. The book suggests that this takes "a few short months". After this process, learning vocabulary should be easier, because you are familiar with the writing system.
Heisig also has Volumes 2 and 3, and as I understand it, they teach pronunciation and some additional characters. I've never looked at them, but Wikipedia has some information.
You can find Anki decks for Heisig, and Kanji Koohii is a whole website built around this system. I haven't used it for years, but at least back in the day, it used to have a lot of user generated stories, which is helpful as Heisig's book gives full stories only for the first 600 or so kanji, and some of the user generated stories are more memorable anyway.
I have Heisig's book and also the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, which I would recommend OP (and anyone else) look into as well. I also tried Wani Kani. Sometimes when a mnemonic was too complicated or too outside of how my brain would naturally piece things together, I didn't find them helpful. So trying out myriad options is a good call I think. The user-generated stories sound like a great resource!
One of the things I love about the Kanji Learner's Course is that, imo, it is very well organized. It lays out a lot of relevant information about each kanji in a consistent way and in a concise space. I guess it's more of a "reference" than a "course," but it would probably be a really good supplement for Wani Kani or other programs that educate you about radicals and ramp up to more complex kanji.
Some of the indices in the back, like the "Stroke Count Index" can be super helpful for example if you're trying to look up a kanji and can puzzle out the number of strokes but not necessarily the stroke order. It also has an index of radicals and different kanji readings.
Gotta also recommend "2000 Most Common Japanese Words in Context." A book of vocab used in context of sensible sentences which helped new and learned vocab stick in my brain (I was using it as a supplement to a course that used the Genki textbooks).
I would look for all these different book resources that people are throwing out at your local public library or university library (many have "community borrower" cards so you can check out resources even if you're not a student!) and hopefully you can try them out before you buy!
After @userexec's excellent post in this thread, I took a quick look at Wani Kani. From what I gather, its basic philosophy is quite similar to Heisig's, but it also teaches vocabulary. Is that a fair assessment? How do you think the two compare?
This reminds me that I have used and liked the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, which uses the SKIP indexing system that its author Jack Halpern invented. I find it quite brilliant, as you don't need to be familiar with all the radicals, just how kanji are drawn or how to count strokes.
Yes I'd say that's a fair assessment. You learn radicals which you use to build kanji, and you memorize those kanji using mnemonics built from the radicals.
Where WaniKani goes further is that you're also learning the onyomi as part of the mnemonic, and then the vocabulary you learn are all built from the kanji you've learned so far, with additional related mnemonics for their kunyomi readings that build on the original mnemonics.
What a lot of people don't realize coming to WaniKani (and frankly what I think the staff at WaniKani have even forgotten), is that the vocabulary aren't supposed to be "useful." If they are useful that's a bonus, but the point is that you get X number of vocabulary for each kanji covering both the onyomi and kunyomi readings, and these vocabulary lock in your memorization of the kanji. You may get hit with a word like "commonality" 共通点, and you probably don't need to know that word. But the point is you see 通 somewhere in a context you haven't seen it before, and if you've suddenly forgotten its onyomi, you also know 3-4 words like "commonality" that use it and can recall any of those to mentally look up the reading. The vocabulary are there to make your knowledge self-healing as you forget things, and it works.
Initially WaniKani was just this structure. Radicals make kanji, kanji make vocabulary, vocabulary reinforces kanji, kanji reinforces radicals. Presented in an SRS it was a tight feedback loop and really rapid virtuous cycle. Just bananas how well the design worked. Now they've gone and thrown in kana-only vocab that have absolutely nothing to do with anything and just kinda bomb your review queues with distractions from entirely outside that loop, so I'm not sure they even understand the point of their own tool anymore. I still think it's the best tool for learning kanji out there, but based on their actions recently (not the only off-the-wall, senseless change) I'm not sure if it will remain something I'd recommend.
I just saw this in an email from WaniKani:
"Summary Page & Kana-Vocabulary Opt-In
We haven’t forgotten about these and we’re actively working on them. We’ll share more news when we have them!"
No more information on that but I guess they're working on making kana vocabulary optional?
At last some news on it! These two things are my main gripes, and with those back to normal I'll go back to shilling for WaniKani as usual without needing to pair it with a rant.
I have a hard time thinking learning 2200 kanji the heisig way is an effective method. I think you have to be quite superhuman to manage those in a few months. It's such a load you don't probably have the energy to start learning anything else at the same time. Then you realize you've been grinding 6 months, and you practically still know zero Japanese. That can be terribly demotivating.
Anecdotally, I have a few friends who finished Heisig but then the gap was just too much to be able to engage with real content. You still have to start at really basic level, where you won't see those advanced kanji in a long time. Personally I did Wanikani, and then graduated to native content. You learn kanji itself as well, but you also learn the radicals, readings and words to reinforce them.
It can give you a great base, but maybe it only works when you would pretty much be able to study full-time? I've seen some Heisig-light versions, where you do this only for the 600 or so common kanji (all you really need to kickstart your learning). If I had to start my JP learning from the beginning, this is probably what I would try to do.
All in all I think listening is a much more important focus to develop your language ability. It will help you with kanji as well.
I like the method in theory, but it's so hard to keep at, and even then it's very hard to utilize that kanji knowledge to learn it and reinforce it fast enough (you will start forgetting it fast, since you don't engage with native content).
There's some great advice here. I want to add something that not a lot of have mentioned: Podcasts! I think listening is one of the best ways to get the language "in" you. It really made me more comfortable in real life situations. Here's a few links that review some popular podcasts. Podcasts for learners are a great way to bridge that gap between native content. I only listened to 100% in Japanese podcasts.
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-language-learning-podcasts-for-beginners/
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-language-learning-podcasts-for-intermediate-learners/
My favorite ones are Nihongo con Teppei and American Life. I just got my N1 and think listening podcasts really were a huge help!
i have been looking for good podcasts as well thank you for your suggestion.
As someone pointed out earlier learning through media consumption may down the road lead to wrong ways of using the words and character(anime) like way of speaking.So hearing proper speaking methods should be helpful.
Thank you
Have you looked at languagereactor and Anki?
no i have not,thank you for the suggestion
I think you've got quite a lot of good advice here, and I'd like to add one resource. I think that jpdb is one of the best dictionaries out there. There's different pages for vocabulary and kanji (along with stroke orders, and many other details). It also has lists of vocabulary for various media (video games, movies, books, etc.), which you can learn using the integrated "flash-card/anki" system (though I haven't used that feature much yet, to be honest).
I can wholeheartedly recommend the jpdb's SRS system. I actually switched to it from Anki and it works much better for me. On the technical side its algorithm is a lot less punishing for missing days, sometimes Anki made me want to start all over again if I missed too many. Additionally I find it much easier to hit target learning rates.
Its really killer feature though are the built in decks from real literature. Research has shown that creating a need for knowledge speeds up its acquisition so studying a deck alongside reading the text its derived from is immensely helpful. Additionally it makes it super easy to copy-paste text in and automatically build a deck (with frequency sorting) which I like to use with NHK Easy. Just copy-paste in an article and you immediately have a custom deck tailored to a specific topic covering only words you haven't learned yet. It even breaks out kanji you haven't yet studied and presents them before the vocabulary using them.
Wow,i did not expect such detailed replies.it is really great to see a group of strangers taking their in their busy life for someother stranger in another corner of the world and i want to say everyone of you guys made my day,THANK YOU.
I will have read all the comments and your great advices.Iam excited to start my jp learning.
also iam stoked to see @Moomtinuum ,friend your comments in low level ama thread yours comments there gave me the final push to start this.
Once again thank you everyone this was my first post in tildes and iam touched.
Thanks to you as well for asking! I got a ton of new bookmarks out of this! I'm just beginning myself so this was a great list of resources! I also have one minor suggestion, raindrop.io is a fantastic way to keep track of resources over multiple devices, with both folder and tagging abilities, as well as a notes section - I literally just copy/pasted people's explanations on what the use their suggested resource for and why they like it - so that when I get to the level it'll be helpful at, I have others lined up with information on what they'll be helpful with and why!
For spoken practice, www.mylanguageexchange.com can be a good place to start conversations and trade english for japanese expertise.
Anki is what I know re flash cards.
Personally, I've found the app Human Japanese to be extremely helpful and insightful. Even though I had already learned a lot of beginner 101 level before I picked it up, I found that it filled in the gaps and built upon itself very nicely, plus goes over some points of culture and etiquette. That said, only the first few chapters are free, but it's definitely worth taking a look at to see if you enjoy the format! The only thing that the app falls a bit short in is how it quizzes you, but that's where a layered approach comes in.
I have used a variety of apps and methods. So far, the long term ones that stuck have been the Japanese Kanji Study app (by Chase Colburn) for basic level kanji and stroke order plus a searchable dictionary (I also purchased add-ons for this app, fwiw), HJ for reference, and a free Anki app. Anki can be very effective if you can keep up with it every day, which I've been bad at doing lately but that's it's own thing.
I personally found Memrise to be unhelpful after a while (though maybe I was using it wrong), and I used DuoLingo for over a year straight and don't recall much of the content; that said, I used DL's Japanese course during the beta so your mileage may vary.
To start, I definitely think priority one is to study the Kana so that you can at least "sound out" the language without any romaji if the text has furigana (the little hiragana/katakana that show up above the more complex kanji). For that, I recall pulling up a chart and practicing the stroke order and sound on paper until each was engrained into my memory, but if you prefer digital, then both Kanji Study's free version or the full version of Human Japanese will go over them, though Kanji Study is a lot more self-directed and you'll have to tweak quiz parameters to get it just right for you.
Hope this helps! がんばって！
I learned hiragana and katakana exclusively through Duolingo. The app isn't great about teaching the why of things (such as grammar) but it's a nice, gamified flash card alternative that is designed to easily take over some of your social media or mobile game habit. It's good at that, and I've done it daily for 1100 days now.
I've been meaning to start supplementing it with a proper textbook instead of just picking up vocabulary from anime or whatever. I've heard a lot of people recommend Minna no Nihongo but haven't checked it out, which I think should probably be my next step.
I will preface by saying I am far from an expert. But I went to Japan a few years ago and wanted to brush up on basics, and used Kanji Study to do so. I was really pleased with how it works and managed to learn a fair bit in a short amount of time - kept going with it afterwards but eventually other stuff got in the way.
I can't speak to how well it will help at a higher level. It seems like it's more about the basics, teaching you hiragana and katakana and then many many kanji.
I know this is quite old now, but I finally found a link full of resources for beginners to start learning to read Japanese, including a number of sources of guided readers for people who don't have a huge vocabulary yet. Be warned it's a bit old.
https://community.wanikani.com/t/resources-for-starting-to-read-japanese-content/31644
There have been some amazing answers already, but if you're looking for something more organic and community driven, I suggest reading this guide. It is partly written by me and is centred around a Japanese learning community on discord. If you need anything or want to ask some questions, maybe consider having a look!
Good luck!
Sorry for commenting on an old thread, but I just wanted to recommend Renshuu! Maybe not the best if it's all you're doing, but it has a great community and lots of fun games, quizzes etc. there's a website and an Android/iOS app.