Learning a new language can have many beneficial benefits on a person, it can create new job opportunities for them, and at the same time it can be a great boost to their confidence and perspective. The ability to study Japanese in particular can be a really hard endeavor, but anime fans and gamers don’t know they have a big head start towards the goal of learning Japanese simply because how much they are exposed to it on a daily basis.
Just like I explained Here and Here, learning Japanese wouldn’t make you only able to read untranslated material, but you will have greater appreciation for the games and novels you already love. In this article, I will try to explain everything about the Japanese language from beginner to advanced levels, self study resources for foreigners, common misconceptions, and how to daily discipline and self motivation, all while having fun at the same time with whatever you are doing and learning many new things in the process.
Demystifying Misconceptions
- Anime and Video Games are not an indication of the true Japanese tongue: Anime shows are still made by Japanese people, but there are approaches to saying whatever you want, and not all of them are polite or respectful or fit for every context, so people worry you might be getting bad habits from talking like anime characters, however, they are still using Japanese through and through, and more mature material use formal pronunciations and various dialects close to true spoken daily Japanese.
- You have to be a Native to understand certain language gimmicks: That is true for every language, not only Japanese, It doesn’t mean you cannot study Japanese on your own. There are many resources available to explain cultural significance and references of proverbs and words, and the Japanese writing’s phonetic nature helps grasp many meanings of certain phrases by ear and context, even if you don’t really understand what they truly mean.
- Japanese takes a long time to learn: Yes and No, Japanese Language follow the 80/20 principle, which means knowing certain fundamentals about the language, can make the rest of the language easier, in fact, you can easily figure out the meaning of certain words or phrases you don’t know, just because they are written in familiar letters, pronounced in a certain way or placed at almost always the same position in every sentence. It just means the beginning will be really hard and take longer time, but the rest will be much much easier.
The First Step
Hiragana and Katakana: The Phonetic Lettering System and in my opinion still the hardest part of the language, simply because you have no reference point and no context for why you are learning them, only later you find out about their true extensive use in grammar and Kanji pronunciation. Also many foreign letters incorporated into the language are written solely in Katakana, and some times authors might use the Hiragana form of a word instead of its Kanji parallel.
My advice is to start by cultivating the ability to memorize letters and voices through connections with imagery (often called mnemonics), as it will be a much needed asset later for studying Kanji, which is universally based on converting real life images and concepts into written shapes. It doesn’t matter if you spend a whole month in this step alone or even longer, it will make everything much better for you later.
Helpful Videos: Hiragana and Katakana.
Helpful apps for daily Revisions: Hiragana Memorizer and Katakana Memorizer.
A Gamer’s Approach to study Japanese Hiragana and Katakana:
An alternative to normal lecture videos is to check Game Gengo ゲーム言語‘s helpful videos on Hiragana and Katakana through carefully prepared video game mnemonics and imagery.
The Complete Hiragana Video (Game) Textbook – ひらがな – Game Gengo
The Complete Katakana Video (Game) Textbook – カタカナ – Game Gengo
Build Your Grammar
When I first opened the popular text books (Genki, Minna no Nihonogo), I was at a standstill. Because the book asks you to memorize grammar next to vocab and Kanji, without actually understanding how words are written and why they look this way. In other words, I figured out that I am not able to just memorize kanji for its own sake, through rote memorization or repeated writing. I need to understand the meaning and context behind it first.
That’s why I have decided to separate and concentrate my entire efforts on one aspect of the language at a time, and gain full comprehension of it before moving to the next one. The approach I am going to tell you depends on knowing as much grammar as possible, and drilling it into your head, in order to make you able to look at each sentence and analyze the components you know and don’t know. It will make everything easier later on.
The end goal is speaking fluently and reading complete sentences, not following a certain predetermining logic for learning. You don’t remember your grammar lessons when you are reading English, and You don’t remember how you learned the words, you just know them by heart. So don’t obsess over what other people have used before, since many people are creating new methods for learning each day, and catered for foreigners and self study students, not class oriented lectures.
Helpful Resources:
Don’t Memorize Everything in The books, Just skim through at your own pace, a lot of things will have meaning later when you are studying in context. You mostly need N5, N4 levels of knowledge to gain a standing in the language, not all five levels until N1.
- Taekim’s Complete Guide to Japanese Grammer: Available for free on the author’s website, and It will help you gain a footing in the language, as it doesn’t require any knowledge of vocab or kanji. In addition to that, it cares a lot about introducing the language to foreigners, and comparing differences with English grammar, which helps break many cultural barriers for those uninformed. This guide contains most of N5,N4 grammar, with some advanced topics from N3-N1 that the author feels essential for the overall starting approach.
- A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar: Available on Amazon as a Part of a three book series (Basic, Intermediate, Advance) and by far the most comprehensive resource of its kind for Japanese Grammer. Also just skim through it once, It will have a big impact later on your studying if u give it the required time. If u are tired after Taekim, or don’t have money for other books right now, just skip to Kanji.
- Genki I, II or Minna no Nihonogo: There is no general consensus on which book is better, I personally prefer Genki but you might want to try both for yourself before getting into one. These books now won’t add many new things for you now regarding grammar, so you might not even need them after skimming the first two books, and also they are not free, so you might not be able to get into them even if you wanted to.
A Gamer’s Approach to study Japanese grammar:
An alternative to the textbook approach is to easily just Game Gengo ゲーム言語‘s comprehensive videos on Japanese N5 and N4 grammar, which are all you need right now if you are struggling on how to study Japanese beyond the beginner level.
The Complete JLPT N5 Grammar Video(Game) Textbook
The Complete JLPT N4 Grammar Video(Game) Textbook
Helpful Websites: Ichi.Moe for grammar patterns, Japanese Verb Conjugator for easier working with verbs.
Kanji and Vocabulary
Until now, you have been studying the language in isolation, you still don’t know how to form complete sentences or say the things you want to say in Japanese, in addition to reading comprehensive material and literature. This will all change with the The Kodensha Kanji Learner’s Course or the KLC method, making the regular use kanji (Jōyō kanji) easily accessible for every one.
The KLC approach uses a very different approach and arrangement from the normal one tied to each JLPT exam level. It allows you to read complicated Kanji and grammar sentences instantly, in addition to giving you many examples on how this kanji is used, all the important vocabulary that involves this kanji, and you will end up being a magician of using each specific kanji only after studying it for one day.
It’s hard to count the benefits of this approach as they are endless, but you can start by visiting the website: Key to Japanese, and studying more on the KLC book and its accompanying example books: The graded reading sets. The first volume of the example sets is completely free, so you might be able to instantly check out how this method of learning Kanji is organic and comprehensive, not only to Kanji and Vocabulary but to grammar as well.
This is the complete package for learning everything else that is to learn about the language, even advanced grammar can be easily learned through seeing it in many contexts, taken from papers and literature books around the world. Studying grammar by itself won’t make it stick, but memorizing sentences and patterns where it appears make it more approachable, the same for Kanji and Vocabulary too.
Other (More Fun Resources):
- Gamer Gengo’s Channel: Many guides and recommendations on Vocabulary and Kanji learning sources from Video Games.
- Visual Novels: This is a comprehensive guide on the best visual novels to play for learning, with comments on difficulty and type of vocabulary used. Around N3 knowledge of Japanese grammar is required. Tobira is a very recommend book to take you easily from N4 to N3 and help you bypass the intermediate phase.
- Game Grammer: Another Good channel to study Japanese through games oriented for that purpose.
Beyond JLPT levels: After studying everything from N5 to N1 levels and the 2000 regularly used Kanji, you are now on the level of a high school student in japan. You can use this thread after that to gain perspective on what to do beyond what you have now.
Note: Many aspects of the later levels of the language can be learned in any arrangement, and they are not dependent on each other, that’s why is stressed the 20/80 approach and emphasized focusing on earlier levels, because everything after that can be learned in context and not just from grammar books, even new grammar points will feel like new words that can be just googled and learned on spot.
Studying Tips and Helpful Gimmicks
- Unlearn everything you have learned in school, and start learning to gain concrete knowledge, instead of just memorizing for a short bit to Ace that exam. Don’t memorize Kanji and grammar, understand them and let them remind you of how they are pronounced and how they are used through repeated exposure to context and vocabulary.
- Don’t memorize stuff, instead read them and think about how you will remember them when you need them. Memorizing and Remembering are entirely separate lines of thought, and since you are self studying you don’t need to remember everything, you just need to know how its used and when.
- Always study everything in Context, its useless if u know a new word or grammar point but don’t know where or why its used. You will change into a person who always uses their mind when reading and studying, instead of borrowing from a fragile memory and you won’t have fun at all while doing that.
- Check other language learner‘s opinions on how they are utilizing their time and they are able to memorize or deal with hard to learn aspects of the language. Like common songs, short stories, proverbs and other cultural specific aspects. There are also specific books for proverbs and handbooks for collecting the most important verbs and kanji suited for different purposes. So if u are having hard time with one aspect of the language, check a more approachable book first.
- Always check the prologue of every book I recommended, and the How-to-Study KLC guide to be able to get into the mindset required by the book and avoid common mistakes.
- Make use of every video game and everything you are exposed to study Japanese learn even one new word or phrase. Japanese learning is a continuous life style of learning, and not a side trip. Unless you keep being exposed to the shapes of kanji and the context they are used in, you will never really grasp it, so the resources i listed are all oriented towards keeping you exposed as much as possible as language and naturally getting used to it, instead of memorizing it.
Other Specific References and Resources
- The Kodansha Kanji Learners Dictionary Revised and Expanded by Shigeko Miyazaki
- The Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya
- Remembering the Kanji 1 A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters by James W. Heisig
- Kanji Pict-o-graphix by Michael Rowley
- How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese A Vocabulary Builder by Charles De Wolf
- Handbook of Japanese Mythology (World Mythology) by Michael Ashkenazi
- Cultural Keys The History of Japanese Words and Phrases by Hiroshi Otsuki Bradley Grindstaff
- A Readers Guide to Japanese Literature by J. Thomas Rimer
- A Handbook of Common Japanese Phrases by Sanseido
- A Grammar of Spoken Japanese by Yahei Matsumya
- 101 Japanese Idioms by Michael L. Maynard, Senko K. Maynard
- Japanese Vocabulary for English Speakers English-Japanese – 5000 Words by Andrey Taranov
- Japanese Slanguage A Fun Visual Guide to Japanese Terms and Phrases by Mike Ellis
- Japanese 101 Common Phrases by Alex Castle
- Essential Japanese Vocabulary Learn to Avoid Common (And Embarrassing) Mistakes Learn Japanese Grammar and Vocabulary Quickly and Effectively by Akira Miura
- Making Sense of Japanese What the Textbooks Dont Tell You by Jay Rubin
- All About Particles A Handbook of Japanese Function Words
- The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs by Taeko Kamiya
- Speak Japanese in 90 Days A Self Study Guide to Becoming Fluent Volume One & Two by Marx