Topic: Learning Japanese?

For those who learned Japanese, would you kindly share your method(s)? Are there any creative and/or engaging resources you can share with a prospective speaker and reader?

I appreciate your time.

@JTMnM What ever you do don't forget your kanji. If your speaking/listening is behind your writing it is beyond frustrating (my issue). Read, read, read. Manga, news papers, anything. I hit up book sales from the local Japan school all the time. I don't care what it is, I grab it and slog through it. I personally feel that just listening to Japanese can make you lazy, same with watching subtitled works. Most beginners use text books like Genki or Nakama and Tobira is more advanced. Taking the JLPT also imo sets a hard goal to shoot for. Don't get cocky, you know both less and more than you think you do. Use your words. A lot of people switch back to their native language when they don't know the exact word for something (So very guilty of this) but try not to do that. Think of how children speak, they describe things using the words they know until someone understands. It will force you to think in Japanese and make you face what you do and don't know. Join a meetup or group, and use it. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.

Also life is not anime...don't run around mimicking that stuff.

@Ryu_Niiyama Noted (especially that last part! LOL!). I'm planning to import the Seiken Densetsu Collection. I'll be definitely getting some practice in then, but I need to build a foundation first. I'll take a look at the textbooks you suggested. Thank you for sharing.

lol
I'm not sure how much you know about Japanese at this point, but I think you have a long road ahead before you'll be able to properly play Seiken Densetsu Collection. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that those games include Kana/Furigana as an option (Furigana is the practice of using Kana characters as a reading aid for those who haven't yet mastered the Kanji, and this is done by placing small Kana symbols over Kanji characters).

The Pokémon games (namely, the main series games from X/Y onwards) allow you to play the game with either Kana (for beginners), or with Kanji, which may be a good starting point if you know at least some Japanese (before moving onto games with more complex dialogue).

I've very recently started learning Japanese. I've been meaning to start for a long time and I sometimes took a quick look at some Hiragana and Katakana. Now I've actually started and in two weeks I learned both Hiragana and Katakana. Of course, that's the easy part. I'm currently still writing every Kana every day just to make sure I don't forget any. I've also played games like Pokémon Silver in Japanese since I know exactly where to go and what to do but I can practice reading even though I can barely recognize any words. (As a sidenote, I noticed that my Silver's battery has died. ) I was thinking of taking my first step towards learning Kanji soon. I know next to nothing about grammar or Japanese words yet but I'm hoping to learn along the way.

It's a shame schools here don't offer Japanese lessons. It's a lot harder trying to learn without a teacher. I like studying languages but this is the first one I'm studying alone. I can speak 5 languages to varying degrees so far. I'm willing to make Japanese my sixth.

I've been occasionally listening to audio books, but I haven't made much progress yet. I've been lazy so far and have only listened to one lesson every couple of weeks or so.

Maybe one day I'll pick up the pace and try to learn phrases more often. Maybe I'll try to learn to read and write at some point too, but I can be lazy with these sorts of things.

I think @Ryu_Niiyama has left a really lovely, solid comment, so I'd mainly echo that.

You'll probably find different philosophies in pretty much every aspect of learning the language, and trying to work out what you feel is 'right', or even just 'right for you' can be a headache.

Some people will advocate a super hands-off "I learned Japanese in three days by watching every Naruto episode" type approach. Some might tell you to do nothing but accumulate text-books and flash cards until you're trapped under piles of paper. And neither of those approaches even touches on actually speaking the language.

I suppose it's the difference between 'exposure' and 'study'. Both are important, really. If you never study enough to understand the basic grammatical structures and vocabulary you're dealing with, a lot of exposure will likely just wash over you. But if you don't have a decent amount of exposure, you're unlikely to develop your understanding of rhythms, moods, melodies, and other quirks and nuances of communication in your target language. You're also unlikely to reinforce the things you 'know' you've learnt, but have to fumble around to remember. I'd think of targeted study on a specific language point as 'planting the seed', and then hearing it repeated frequently in a natural context as 'watering it'. Watering barren soil is unlikely to bring much forth from the earth. But not watering at all is leaving a flower out to die.

In terms of balancing 'hands off' and 'hands on' approaches (and using more plant metaphors), one image I've always found useful is to imagine the textbook/'formal study' material as the 'trunk and branches' of one's knowledge, with the bits and bobs picked from personal hobbies/interests as the 'leaves'. Or something like that. I do think you fundamentally need that core structure of hard-learned grammar and vocabulary to build from. But just as a tree whithers without its leaves, a student's motivation may also shrivel up if they never study anything their personally interested in.

Plant analogies aside, some more concrete advice would be to get the two syllabic character sets down ASAP (this was something I was unnecessarily intimidated by at first). Also, take an interest in Kanji fairly early on, but don't feel you need to beat yourself over the head with every single one you meet. As you learn more, you'll become familiar with various components they're built from, which goes on to make then significantly more mentally digestible.

If you have the option, taking a class or going to meetups can help you bring the language into the wider world, and the former comes equipped with an inherent learning structure -and a teacher - which can help keep your studies organised and well-informed. I had weekly classes for a couple of years, which helped me find my feet in the early stages.

As for games, I have found it one of the most gratifying and also frustrating experiences ever. I probably hold the World Record for the slowest time to complete Detective Pikachu, and at times it felt like I was dragging my feet through half-set toffee, but it was also often immensely satisfying, and I also took a huge amount away from playing it. You're obviously involved in a game (especially a detective game) in a way that you're not when watching TV; your knowledge and actions actually matter. I'd be wary of jumping into full scale games too early though, as there's a risk of sucking the fun out of something you love if you're confronted by wall upon wall of seemingly l insurmountable text. But there's definitely a place for them in the grand scheme of things.

In terms of textbooks, I'd recommend Genki as the beginner's text books go, as it's well constructed and has a subtle but pervasive sense of humour that adds warmth and memorability to the whole experience. And it makes you drop romaji pretty early on, which is good. The only other one I've tried is Japanese for Busy People, and I thought that as dry as the paper it was printed on.

But mainly, be sensible, try things out, and come to your own conclusions. I think that's a lot more important than being 'passionate'. A lot of people simply burn out after expecting their 'passion' to drive them through what is quite a long and fumbling process. Take pride in what you've learnt, and make sure to give yourself enough reason to keep learning. I'm sorry if that sounds a bit patronising, but it's probably one of the most 'given up on' languages, simply because people 'wanted to have learnt Japanese', only to then realise that they didn't really want to go through the humbling process actually learning it. So I think being able to enjoy the learning process in its own right is important, and well as finding new and interesting reasons to keep going (rather than just telling yourself several months down the line that you 'have' to do it because you 'promised yourself').

Anyway, I'm rambling ad nauseam. Sorry! I just think it's an interesting subject, and there's a lot to say! : )

with katakana/hiragana, try find creative ways to remeber what they are such as す which is su, and it looks like a seedling that soon to be a flower.

at least thats how im learning. also, with kanji, good friggin luck with that. i honestly wouldnt know.

I use Textfugu as my main self-learning tool for Japanese. It's not a free source but you can try out the first season for free to see if you like the format of it or not. To me, it's an amazing site because the way Japanese is taught there is pretty different than what you might find in a Japanese textbook - but I mean that in a good way. The site is casual, it's so easy to learn from, and it's very encouraging. The site is set up so between every chapter, you get little check ins so you can review your progress and really pin point why you're learning Japanese, what you're struggling with, etc.

Not only that, but learning Kanji on that site is so easy because one of the important things they emphasize is only teaching you things that are going to be useful - so along with learning different Kanji, they provide common and useful vocabulary words that you'll come across with the Kanji you're studying. And as you're going through the lessons, they'll integrate the Kanji you've learned so you're always practicing and using what you've learned. After all, the best ways to learn is by applying what you've been taught.

They also have another extension site, so to speak called Tofugu, which is where I learned Hiragana and Katakana within only a few days.

I learn Japanese vocab through the following website:

https://www.memrise.com/

I've been learning for a few months using Genki 1 book and workbook, then I switched to using japanesepod101 which to me is working better and has been allowing me to remember things much easier.