How I'd Learn Japanese If I Started All Over Again

Firstly, why would you want to learn a language like Japanese?

You have to remember two different types of alphabets. Don't get me started with Kanji.

The meaning of words can change by pitch accent. The counting system is different depending on the item in question.

It's not the same grammatical order as English. The language changes if you're talking to a family member, your boss, your friends, a customer, your dogs.

Did I make you reconsider?

Don't be afraid, if you can get past the obstacles, learning Japanese is quite fun.

In saying that, I can't speak fluently and definitely not calling myself an expert. You should probably check out guys like MattVsJapan.

Admittedly, I've been learning off and on for four years. Accumulatively, I might only be a few months in serious learning.

But, here's the 5 steps I'd give myself if I theoretically lost all of my Japanese abilities tomorrow.

Step 0: Why?

I'm here to ask you,

"Why do you want to learn Japanese?"

It could be as simple as wanting to go to Japan for a holiday. Maybe live there one day. Watching anime without subtitles. Converse with the Japanese people.

I ask 'why' to gauge how likely you're going to stick to this journey of language learning. It's not going to be overnight or months. It may take years, if you're willing to pay the price.

Japanese's difficulty is one of the harder languages to learn if you speak English due to how its structured.

Let your 'why' help you in times of lacking motivation. If you don't have a strong enough 'why', the likelihood you will stay long enough until you see results is low.

Then, why are you studying Japanese, Denzil?

It's quite a hard question for me to answer, now. I think I had a why, but it slowly evolved to become what is.

If I had to give an answer, it's the positive feedback loop when I understand something in Japanese, having a deep respect for their culture and wanting to go back since my first time in 2019.

In terms of language learning goals, here's an exercise to attempt.

Try to not understand what I'm writing in English.

Impossible, right?

Even if you wanted to, you couldn't because your brain automatically interprets the meaning of my words. That's the sort of point I want to get with my Japanese, and perhaps the equivalent of an Asian person's broken English when outputting.

Step 1: Learn Your Kana

Back in Grade 7, I had the grace to study Hiragana (平仮名) for a whole term. Later in Grade 10, I forced myself to learn Katakana (片仮名) to complete the two alphabets and keep up with the curriculum.

Phonetically they both sound the same. What symbol is used to represent each sound is what differs.

A lot of people may be discouraged to learn Japanese because,

"You'll have to learn two separate alphabets."

To that I say, is it not the same with lower and upper case letters? Again, throughout this journey of learning a foreign language, do not hate the game.

How will I remember each symbol, then?

Imaginative memory (I'll discuss this more in 'Learning Kanji').

Look up, "How to learn Hiragana", or "Katakana." Like how I learnt my Hiragana in Grade 7, each symbol will have its own story to remember by.

For example, あ looks like 'a'ntenna. い looks like a group of 'i'eels. う looks like someone p'u'lling something.

The mistake I made was not using stories with my Katakana. I used pure memory and a technique that primary school children use:

'Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check.'

Look at what you want to write, say it aloud, cover it, try recalling by writing it down, then check if you wrote it correctly.

I highly suggest using handwriting when learning these characters. Knowing how to write will help with what it looks like through muscle memory.

At most, it should probably take you about a week if you're serious.

Let me remind you, you feel overwhelmed with having to remember 46 Hiragana and Katakana characters due to unfamiliarity.  It would be completely unreasonable to not know your Kana if you studied it over and over again.

Also, do NOT rely heavily on Romaji.

It should be used to help you type in Japanese and initially with the pronunciation of Kana. If you're learning the reading of a Kanji or word, read from the Kana, not the Romaji.

A special note, learn from my mistake and ingrain into your brain the difference between シ and ツ .

I don't know how many times I get those two mixed up.

Step 2: Learning Kanji (Ongoing)

You thought there were a lot of Kana?

Wait until we get to Kanji...

I think in high school Japanese class, Kanji was the bane of everyone's existence.

It's not like English where you can sort of work out the spelling of a word by how it sounds. In Japanese, you cannot base the looks of a Kanji by how it sounds.

Especially in school, I'd defend Kanji much to the sulking of my classmates.

I'll use an example sentence.

母は大きい家を持っています。

(My mother has a large house.)

Let me write with just Kana.

はははおおきいいえをもっています。

Specially note は how it can be pronounced 'ha' or when used as punctuation 'wa'.

The importance of Kanji is separating words and making them easily readable.

Originally, I studied Kanji separately from vocabulary. From a book called Remembering The Kanji by James Heisig.

His method of learning was using memory from the imaginary. Attaching a story to an abstract symbol like learning Kana. Then throughout the book, he would build up Kanji by using previously learnt symbols as radicals. Radicals being the smallest unit that makes up a Kanji.

Now, I mostly study Kanji within the context of vocab. It's meaningless to study a symbol when I don't use it as a word.

Also, there are two schools of thoughts around Kanji, you recognise it like someone's face or individual radicals. I'm taking this idea from MattVsJapan: when you see someone's face, you see it as a whole. Not picking at individual features to let you know, "That's John."

Think of 男, meaning a man. It's made up of two radicals, 田 for rice field and 力 for power. Now, you can either see,

"Oh, rice field + power means, a man."

Or, you just recognise it as a whole as "Oh, 男 means man."

So, learn Kanji from vocab study and active immersion. This is an ongoing process because there's like over 2000 Kanji. To not fret, think of them as symbols for words.

Like, you probably know over 2000 words in English, so why is it different with Japanese?

Step 3: Prime Your Consumption Of Media

The ultimate goal is consuming Japanese media as the main source of learning the language.

Your output will be helped by the amount of input you do.

However, so we're not going in blind, I suggest doing the following.

Step 3.1: Review Basic Grammar

How the rules that govern the formation of language is what's called grammar.

Having a basic understanding for how sentences are formed and what they mean will help when immersed in the language.

I recommend Refold's grammar primer which can be found here.

For a more deep dive into grammar, I read Tae Kim's A Guide To Japanese Grammar which can be found here.

With grammar as well, do NOT use it for formulating sentences. What ends up having is you form grammatically correct sentences, but it'll sound unnatural.

Only through enough immersion will you get a feel for what sounds the most natural to express your intended meaning.

Step 3.2: Review Vocabulary Using Anki Cards

Vocabulary is the bank of words at one's disposal to use.

What is Anki?

Anki is a Spaced Repetition System (SRS) and it will become your best friend when learning new vocabulary.

Essentially, think of flash cards. You will be given a card with a new vocab word. Once you can recall the meaning of the card, the system will automatically show you the card when you are most likely to forget it.

If you've ever taken practice tests, recall of information tends to be the strongest reinforcer for learning and memorising new things.

To start, I recommend checking out Refold's 1k deck here.

(I swear I'm not sponsored by them.)

Even look up 'Japanese 2K Vocab Anki Deck' and you'll get some results.

The end goal is actually sentence mining, but I don't do that at the moment. So, it might be a separate article.

Step 4: Find A Target Language Media

If learning vocab words and basic grammar are the supplements you take before going to the gym, consuming Japanese media is working out.

Your choice of media will be your golden ticket to become proficient in learning Japanese.

We'll use the input model that babies use to learn language. If you surround yourself with the language long enough, you give the brain enough input to construct a language model to interpret meaning.

As a beginner, you have not surrounded yourself enough in the language. Let's change that by consuming media that's in Japanese

First to consider what vocab you will need to learn.

Consuming a Japanese slice of life anime will not have the same vocab as a Sci-Fi genre, or a Japanese news station.

What words do you want to learn that you will use?

Or to make it easier, literally watch stuff that you already like in Japanese. We want immersing to be as fun as possible to continue the positive feedback loop.

Personally, I like slice of life anime, Ghibli movies, Makoto Shinkai stuff.

Or if I'm in the car, I'll put on a random Japanese podcast to listen to Japanese while commuting.

Think: Anime, News, Radio News, YouTube, Manga, Light Novels, Podcasts, dramas, tv shows.

There's never been a time to learn a language with access to native speaking content with the internet.

(If more people ask, I might drop a recommended list of anime to learn from that I use in my community.)

The only caveat is you cannot use English subtitles when consuming the media.

Why?

If you quickly glance at the English subtitles, the meaning is automatically transferred to you. Rather than interpreted from the Japanese.

There's a term in the language learning community called 'language ambiguity'.

Essentially, you will have no idea what the fuck is going on. Which is fine. Focus on  getting the meaning, rather than following the plot. That is for your enjoyment. This is for your language learning.

Step 5: Be Consistent

Show up everyday ready to learn and consume Japanese content.

Whether it's consistently reviewing Anki cards and never missing a day of reviews. Or, allocating half an hour of immersion.

If you do it long enough, it becomes a matter of time until you start understanding bits and pieces.

And, language is very much

Use it or lose it.

I have a mate who is forgetting his Hiragana and Katakana because it has been a while since he had to either write or read them.

You might reach a point where there is no turning back.

You have made practising Japanese ingrained into your routine, that it will never be missed a day.

Start small. I learned 5 new cards a day, then ramped it up to 10. And I'll watch one 20-minute episode of an anime every day.

Principles To Live By

No Output

A change I would want to see in high school curriculums. Do not start outputting Japanese when you haven't had sufficient input.

To minimise the mistake in output, we must focus on the input. I like this rule Tae Kim said in his book,

"If you don't know how to say it in Japanese, don't even say it at all."

Input is also important in understanding how the language sounds. Particularly with Japanese, you can hear the 'foreign accent' if words are pronounced using the phonetics of the English language.

(Another common experience you'll hear is when people start outputting is them sounding like the characters from the tv shows they watch.)

Still, I violate this rule sometimes when I have Japanese people come through the golf shop I work at. I'll try striking up a conversation in their native language even though it's the equivalent of talking like a toddler.

There's also the mistake of believing English can be translated word for word to Japanese.

Some examples I can think of are expressing having a headache.

頭が痛い --> (my) head hurts --> I have a headache.

Try outputting too early, and it'll be hard to reverse mistakes due to habit.

SO DON'T DO IT.

Listen More

An area of weakness when it comes to learning Japanese is the listening component. Because we have a different phonetic system we refer to, the sounds of the Japanese language might seem undistinguishable.

Then, you have small quips like in English. For example, 'I want to' becomes 'I wanna'. Because you're using the English language model, the brain automatically translates 'I wanna' to 'I want to'.

Then like words, there are words with multiple meanings that need to be put into context for one of their chosen meanings. This is not an issue when doing active input, a little when using SRS.

I sometimes close my eyes when listening to a sentence so as to read it separately.

It is like using homonyms. I can say the word night or knight, but you won't know unless I'm using it in context. However, because you know that night is used more than knight, subconsciously, the proclivity to go with night is much higher.

And, with more time immersed in the language, you can start distinguishing sounds into their separate words because the brain has gotten enough input to use a language model to interpret.

Here's Your Study Plan

1. Learn Hiragana and Katakana.
2. Review basic grammar.
3. Get Anki and download your 1k/2k common word decks.
4. Choose the media you want to consume Japanese from.
5. Consistently immerse in the language
6. Do not output for a long time, only until you start understanding most of the stuff you're consuming.

The only difference I would make in my journey is heavily focussing on consuming media. Making a consistent effort in implementing systems that make it as easy as possible to consume Japanese media and doing your SRS card reviews.