I want to learn Japanese!
That’s the spirit! The most important thing in learning anything is being keen to start, so let me help you along a bit!
If you’re thinking, ‘I never had a chance to learn Japanese at school!’ or ‘I’m <insert age here>, is that too old to be learning a language from scratch?’ Don’t worry! Learning a language –much like learning everything else in life– is a skill that just needs practice.
‘Wait, hold on! The Japanese alphabet looks pretty intimidating…’
Although learning a new syllabary (an ‘alphabet’!) can be scary, Japanese is deceptively simple with practice. Hiragana is used for Japanese words and is the base syllabary for Japanese (along with kanji). Katakana is generally used for words from another language and it is also used for things such as onomatopoeia.
Both of these types of syllabaries share the same phonetic sounds, so you won’t have to worry about how you pronounce them too much! Also, many characters in katakana take their shape from hiragana characters, so when you start learning these characters, you’ll see a lot of similarities!
Kanji (those difficult looking Chinese characters!) are used to write parts of Japanese such as nouns, and combine with hiragana to write adjectives and verbs. For a student of Japanese kanji are both a blessing and a curse. They’re quite tricky to memorise and write, but once you learn them, they make reading large blocks of Japanese easier as they break up sentences into distinguishable parts.
But like I said, Kanji take a while to learn! Take me for example. I’ve studied Japanese for many years on and off, and I know roughly 1300 kanji on sight. ‘Whoa! That’s heaps!’ you might think, but the joke is that a Japanese high school student should know 2000 kanji when graduating. In fact, there’s more than 10000 kanji but very, very few Japanese people would know all of them.
So for a non-native speaker, we don’t have to worry about knowing too many kanji as we can merely ask ｢この漢字はどういう意味ですか｣ (‘What’s the meaning of this kanji?’) without any trouble! Learning more kanji will come naturally in with time and practice!
What is essential for a native speaker is to know words and grammar, and with the aid of online dictionaries and other resources this has become easier than ever! And that’s the important thing, with resources and practice learning Japanese can be fun and challenging (in a good way)!
I’m pushing the point of having a physical copy of a textbook and workbook due to the fact that, when learning a language writing by hand aids in memorisation. It also teaches an essential skill in Japanese, which is the ability to count strokes in kanji and stroke order of characters. The stroke-count of a kanji helps learn how to find a particular kanji and plus it’s good manners to know the correct stroke order when writing kanji!
You can also rely on the accuracy of a published text and they usually have a good learning pace for beginners. Don’t forget that internet materials can sometimes be tricky for beginners to navigate, so a textbook is often much more organised!
Different countries usually have their own specific brand of language textbooks that they’ll recommend you if you’re studying at school/college/university/short-course, and there’s a excellent selection of books online with varying prices and levels of study from places like Amazon or the Book Depository. Below are these two sites with a selection of beginner textbooks!
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=japanese+beginner
http://www.bookdepository.com/search?searchTerm=japanese+language+beginners&search=Find+book
For top notch Japanese textbooks (but unfortunately with a steep price to match) I recommend Genki textbooks, and for a dictionary, Oxford’s Beginner’s Japanese Dictionary is a good choice.
When you generally learn Japanese, you’ll only need about 1-2 workbooks to begin with, then later you’ll need about 2 more for intermediate level. Advanced textbooks and workbooks come much later in the learning process and these types of workbooks are essentially for people who can read Japanese already and are wishing to further enhance grammar and kanji skills.
All of the sources I list below are free, but there are other sources not listed here which have small fees that are also good to use.
For beginners to Japanese there’s a plethora of resources to get you started on learning the language!
http://japanese-lesson.com/index.html
http://thejapanesepage.com/beginners
http://www.tofugu.com/guides/learn-hiragana/
http://www.tofugu.com/guides/learn-katakana/
These are great sites for beginner Japanese and getting yourself totally familiarised with hiragana and katakana.
Intermediate resources are scarcer than beginner materials due to the fact that grammar is getting more complex, but there’s still some great free resources about!
https://www.wanikani.com/
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
The first site is great for building vocab and kanji. The second source is excellent for learning grammar. There are also lots of apps to help with learning kanji and have excellent ways of learning, such as flashcards (an essential tool in learning kanji)!
This is the time when you start looking for your own sources of learning depending on your interest, whether it’s magazines or games in Japanese, Japanese news sites or novels, manga or anime, or anything really!
You could also start using Japanese online dictionaries to start learning more difficult words and reading the Japanese explanations and meanings of words!
https://kotobank.jp/
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/
For an online dictionary, you can’t go past jisho.org. It has all sorts of functionality such as words used in sentences and the ability to search kanji by roots!
http://www.linguanaut.com/english_japanese.htm
http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/japanese.php
It’s always important when practicing written and spoken Japanese to know some set phrases!
To enable Japanese on your computer for reading and typing, follow the instructions below!
http://www.declan-software.com/japanese_ime/ (For Windows)
It takes knowledge of hiragana, katakana and kanji to effectively type Japanese so try this out when you think you’re getting a hand of the basics!
Perhaps the trickiest thing on this page is practicing spoken Japanese. The best way to learn conversational Japanese is to live in Japan, but obviously this is out of the question for many people!!
Other options include having a friend learn with you, having classes with other Japanese learners or perhaps knowing someone who can talk Japanese. There are also excellent YouTube videos that aid with Japanese listening comprehension and speaking skills!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ox9NuTHYeRys63yZpBFuA
Also as time goes on, listening to Japanese movies, shows, anime and (some) songs can be good things to practice listening and comprehending Japanese.
If anyone has any questions and/or comments, feel free to send me an ask, and to those people starting to learn Japanese, 頑張って！
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