Sup guys, Tenka (Aka Ponzorz) here - I said I’d write a post about how I self studied Japanese, sooooo I guess this is it. I learnt Japanese from Zero to Fluent in about 2.5 years, and this is my method. It’s probably not the most interesting (I didn’t watch any anime… lol… I only started watching Anime these past 1, 2 years - back then I only read a few Manga, and that was in English) and it’s hard, but maybe it can shed some light on to a study regime you can set up for yourself.
Before reading, keep in mind that there is never a single best way to study Japanese, and the most important thing about studying a language is not what textbook you have or what shows you watch - it’s always that you keep yourself going and push yourself to carry on.
I had a pretty set way I studied Japanese, so I’ll talk about that here, and since I gained proficiency I have found a lot of other methods to help people who are learning Japanese - and I’ll draw on those experiences too to inform people in this post.
Ikuzooooo.
[ Learning the Writing System ] This is step one. Japanese has three sets of difference characters. Most people don’t get it at first, but I’ll just try to explain each one below.
Hiragana （あいうえお - this is the Japanese vowels a-i-u-e-o in Hiragana） - This is the most basic one, you can use this to write everything you need to - but only knowing this one would be like some ponyo/sousuke level writing… aka like a five year old. As a person learning Japanese for a second/third/fourth/99th language though, Hiragana is definitely a solid start.
Katakana （アイウエオ - this is the Japanese vowels a-i-u-e-o in Katakana） Everything that can be written in Hiragana can be written in Katakana - it’s like two different versions of the same alphabet.
However, Katakana is mostly used for ① Foreign vocabulary/Proper nouns that can’t be written in Kanji, and ② Emphasis/Nuance. ① is “Borrowed Words”, ie. Words in Japanese that originated from another language, will be written in Katakana. For example, Camera (“Kyamera” キャメラ), and “Naruto” is ナルト <- This is Katakana. The second situation of emphasis/nuance is more difficult to explain, but just think of it this way: Writing “Baka” in Katakana, can give off a different feel to if it were written in Hiragana.
Kanji - Kanji is very, very, very, important. Most people beginning their Japanese studies won’t know very much Kanji, which is totally normal - and they will probably hate it at some point. But, writing Japanese without Kanji islikereadingenglishwithoutspacesinbetweenthewords. It kills the reader and if you are serious about studying Japanese, learn yo’ Kanji. Kanji are chinese characters that make up portions of a verb in Japanese, or a lot of nouns can be written completely in Kanji. Hiragana is used to support Kanji and used to fill particles and prepositions and subject markers etc, in a sentence, as those things do not have a designated Kanji - or it is not commonly used. It probably sounds confusing as hell right now but you’ll get it really quickly once you start learning. Every Kanji has a reading, so it may be hard to learn the different readings for each Kanji but it gets easier as you go, I swear.
I started learning the writing system slowly and piecemeal, just writing the seperate kana on paper and getting more or less used to them and memorising the readings. I talk about how I learnt this in the next section, but in the meanwhile… I thought of another method.
This may be off topic but I learnt how to read Korean Hangul in like an hour by playing an online “drill” game, so I think from that experience it may be a lot faster to learn Katakana and Hiragana that way.
I found some drillers where you see the kana and just type in the romaji (ie. english version of Japanese lol):
http://kana.icann.se/
http://kagan.mactane.org/software/kana-drill.html
Try those!
( A bit about watching Anime - I think if Anime/dramas is what you’re interested in, definitely watch it. Just gonna put it out there, doing that alone probably won’t get you fluent. But it’s important because it keeps you interested, and it’s about immersion and keeping in contact with the language. :D Don’t spend 90% of your “Japanese study” in anime, but if it’s what you enjoy, go for it and it will help.
I recommend Slice of Life anime over Shonen - why? Because you’d use SoL anime dialogue more. FYI No one seriously uses “Dattebayo/-ttebayo” in Japanese, ever, “Bankai” is zero help if you want to make conversation, and most Shonen protagonists and villains speak in such an informal/brash way I’d only recommend if you want to get in to a fight. ;9 <3 )
[Actually studying the grammar and the vocab]
Because there is not much point in knowing the writing system without actually understanding what all those squiggly characters mean, it’s best to press on and learn some vocab and grammar.
First, I’ll talk about the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). JLPT is a benchmark exam for Japanese, it has 5 levels from 5 -1. 5 being the easiest, and 1 being the hardest. You don’t have to worry about sitting the exam or anything, but it’s just a really solid curriculum to base your Japanese studies off.
I started studying off
Tim’s Takamatsu -
this website is practically my godsend. I printed out everything, had it bound in to a book - you’ll see that most of the tutorials here are in Romaji. How I studied was I scribed in the Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji (Where applicable) under the Romaji. This helped me memorise and write Hiragana and Katakana really fast, get used to using basic Kanji, and learn all the basic grammar and vocab up till around N3 level. This took me about 3 months. Then I’d say it’s all downhill once you hit N3 level.
Even after I was through with Tim’s Takamatsu, I bought Schaums Outlines of Japanese Grammar just to help me solidify stuff. It’s not the best book nor the most interesting book, but it helped.
http://www.tanos.co.uk/ is a fantastic website to look at all the vocab/grammar you need for each JLPT standard, and strive to learn them and gradually progress from 5-1. I printed off the grammar lists from Tanos, and learnt all the ones I wasn’t sure of.
I also listened to a lot of podcasts, like Japanese 101. This helped me with listening skills, and I also learnt a lot of vocab and grammar. I find the stuff you learn from podcasts really memorable, compared to what you’d learn by reading off grammar books all the time. It’s a nice change.
Extra Materials for Basic Grammar etc - these are awesome, kudos to the people who made these - print it, stick it up in your room! I wish I had found them when I was studying. (T_T) http://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/sheets/basic-japanese/
http://cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/digital-cheat-sheets/cool-japanese/
http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/japanese-particles-cheatsheet1.pdf
There links below are more explanatory stuff rather than “cheat sheets”. It’s like Tim’s Takamatsu - so I would use them to supplement each other.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/grammar_guide.pdf
http://thejapanesepage.com/grammar.htm
http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/JVerbList.asp
This is probably one of the most important parts of my Japanese studying journey. Don’t give up if you’ve made it this far! :D You can do it!
[Advanced Japanese]
Okedoke, so how do you get from N3 to N1? You’ve gotten yourself this far, so just keep doing what you’ve been doing the whole time and don’t give up. Keep referring back to the JLPT standards to see what you need to still learn, in terms of grammar, and go for it.
N2, N1, levels require a lot of Kanji readings and Vocab Knowledge. How I tackled this, was by flashcards. I played a game on my phone called “Japanese Flash” (on iOS) and it was the only “game” I had on my phone for almost a year. Anki, or any other flashcard system will work the same. I find flashcards the most effective way for me to pick up vocab/kanji readings the fastest - the hardest thing about it is persevering. I’d play the flashcards on the bus, at home, in bed, in the shower jks , some days I felt like I was going to throw up from flash carding… but it’s a bump you’ve gotta get over. It gets better as you pick up more readings, and you’ll find you’re able to correctly guess heaps of Kanji combinations as you go.
I had the book “A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar”, and the beginners version of that book, to help me through all the difficult grammar. Plus google.
http://www.imabi.net/ is a fantastic website too, with basic - advanced Japanese grammar. I wish I found this earlier as well. (T_T)
[Notes about my particular circumstances] So hitting N1 took me about 2.5 years. I do realise this is probably not what most people want to do - spend so much time manically studying Japanese, I had tunnel vision for a long time and it was literally what I spent my spare time doing, so hear me out.
I think at that point in my life, I was a stupid teen and I really hated my own situation, resented it, and I wanted to leave my city so bad and go somewhere - anywhere. In short, I was pretty desperate. For a lot of rebellious and otherwise personal reasons, I decided to go to Japan. (Eg. My family is Chinese, and I’ve been fed loads of nationalistic shit since toddlerhood about how Chinese people hate Japan blah blah don’t go there blah blah all Japanese are bad blah blah which I refused to believe and I wanted to see Japan with my own eyes since I was sure I would be able to make friends since I think there are nice people, as well as terrible people, eeeeverywhere in the world in any place.)
I needed a scholarship in Japanese, so that’s why I studied madly. Otherwise, I’d never be able to have the $$ leave and I felt like I’d have been trapped in a city I don’t belong in, forever. Yeah… >_> I had serious attitude issues, pls don’t judge me. I love my city now that I’m back, and I ought to have given the people around me more credit. .___.
That aside though, I want to talk about Kanji. I realise in this guide, I never talked much about learning to familliarize with or write Kanji. I suppose the easiest way to explain this would be, well I’m Chinese in origin so that wasn’t much of an issue to me, but that would not only be misleading, but discouraging to a lot of people who don’t have a chinese background. There is no easy way learning how to write Kanji, you have to put in the legwork - that’s all there is to it. I never had an education in Chinese, English would be my first language as I passed my years from toddler onwards in Middle Earth and various other places, but I suppose one could say that I did my Kanji learning prior to learning the rest of my Japanese. Strict parents = learning at least X amount of Kanji/day before I could leave the house to go run around outside, and I distinctly remember one summer when I was around 11, my Kanji knowledge sky rocketed as a result of being forced to stay inside and learn it all summer.
I wrote a Kanji 20+ times till I memorised it, and that’s probably how I got my foundation. Once I’d started studying Japanese, I still had to get used to how Kanji was used in the Japanese language system - a lot of stuff is written differently, and my Kanji wasn’t perfect to begin with so I had to learn a heap of new ones, and since all the readings were completely different to what I was used to, I had to learn those too (hence flash carding). I think my Chinese probably got better as a result of studying Japanese, lol…. I’m serious. >_>
[Culture and the community]
Firstly, I’d recommend http://www.tofugu.com/ . It’s an excellent website discussing a lot of things to do with Japanese culture, studying the language, book reviews, applying for JET program - anything.
Don’t forget that studying a language is studying a culture. There are a lot of intricacies to the Japanese culture that need to be picked up on to use the language effectively, so do your best to immerse yourself in the culture and have fun. :D I’d suggest you do some reading on Honne and Tatemae - I wrote a huge post on that somewhere but I won’t put that in this post. There’s also a lot of intricacies to doing translation work, and it’s heaps of fun - though maybe a slightly different ball game - and I can talk about that if people want to know more, but not here.
The community of Japanese language studiers is one of the best I could ever ask for. I’ve met so many lifelong friends from studying Japanese, and after all has been said and done and running away to Kyoto and whatnot, I guess I can’t truly look back and say that I regret it. Once you hit a certain level, you know that everyone who is standing by your side has gone through the same things and put themselves through the same sweat, blood and tears to get where they are now. It’s also immensely rewarding to be able to help out those who are walking the same path as you. It’s a grand adventure that if you can put in the work, I feel like it will give immeasurable quantities of adventure and fun and chilled bottles of pocari sweats right back to you.
I’m studying something completely different (Law), so I really miss Japanese sometimes. That’s why I’m doing stuff like translation work every week, etc, it gets pretty lonely. ;w; but anyway, I’ll leave it there, this post is so long, sorry!
Feel free to ask me any questions and thank you for reading up till now. To anyone who wants to study Japanese (Or any other language) , I just want to say go for it! Don’t doubt yourself, you definitely have what it takes. :D Just do itttt.
Ganbare yo!
-Tenka
