This guide will probably be a never-ending project. It will keep on evolving and the content will be added every time, so bookmark this page for the future you 🙂
Note: I’m not sponsored by any of the apps or other resources that I recommend, it is just my personal opinion. If I would get a sponsorship, this would be clearly mentioned!
Introduction
I have been learning Japanese now for a couple of years and I can remember that especially in the beginning I wished to find an all-inclusive and all-explaining guide. I am not sure if this page will become exactly that, but I will do my best (頑張ってね!). This guide will be evolving with me and my own learning process. Here, you can find all of the resources I use or have used (and reviewed), tips on how to start out with discovering the Japanese language, and more. I hope it will be of some help to you!
I am still learning myself and I’m far from fluent, so this is just some advice and not binding at all. In the end, the only thing that matters is that you choose the right method and resource for you. I will only provide information to help you along, the rest you will have to do yourself.
How to Start Out
Step 1: Listening & Exploring
If you are completely new to Japanese, then start out by exploring the language! You can read through this guide and then design your own study plan. In the beginning, listening to the language is very important. This way you will get familiar with its sound. You can do this by listening to Japanese news on YouTube or a random native video. This could be boring because you won’t understand anything from the start, but your brain will get familiar with the new sounds. Of course, it is more fun to watch some movies, TV shows, or anime! There is a chance that you are already a big fan of Japanese cinema and that this is the reason why you want to learn the language. Or maybe you have a Japanese partner and are already familiar with the sound of the language but now want also to understand it. Then listening to the language is still important (do this as much as possible!) but you can move on to the next step of exploration…
Before you buy expensive textbooks or invest in various apps, start out with fun, free, and easy resources that are already available to you: YouTube and Duolingo. You will notice in this guide that I will recommend using YouTube often, this is because the website could be viewed as one huge free educational resource: The Academy of our time. I cannot imagine learning without it anymore. There is a multitude of YouTubers who are focused on content for beginner learners and they will often provide you with good recommendations and advice.
Then there is Duolingo. Yes, I know that this is not the best app for serious language learners and that many people abandon it after a while. However, it is entirely free (you really don’t need the pro version to get through all of the available content) and it will get you through some basics of the language (hiragana, katakana, and the basic sentence structure). The sound options are great, the app is eye-pleasing and it works as a game with various challenges and motivational nudges. When you feel like it doesn’t work for you anymore, just abandon the app and move on.
Step 2: Learning Hiragana & Katakana
Writing Systems
There are three writing systems in Japanese: Hiragana （ひらがな）, Katakana（カタカナ）, and Kanji（漢字）
You need all three of them to read comfortably and be fluent in the language.
I would always recommend starting out with learning hiragana and katakana first (and no… hiragana is not more important than katakana, you need them both). And of course, try to avoid using romaji (even in the beginning!). Romaji can hinder your learning and teach you incorrect pronunciation.
You should be comfortable in reading words and small sentences in hiragana and be able to read in katakana without looking things up too often. However, mastering katakana can be a bit tricky because it is used less frequently in beginner content; therefore, you would need to practice it more often on your own.
After mastering the kana (hiragana and katakana), you can start out by studying kanji. Don’t wait too long before you take on this challenge. I wish that I had started earlier.
Step 3: Studying Kanji: A Lifelong Process
First of all, learning kanji is a lot of fun; you can view kanji study as a puzzle. Kanji have their own specific meanings, some of them are very beautiful and poetic. But they are also very useful; they make the reading process easier in the long run. Reading only in Hiragana would be awful! The sentences would be too long, and you wouldn’t know where one word ends and the other starts (because there is no spacing between words in Japanese).
You can check out my recommendation of apps to see which apps I use to learn kanji. A more detailed article on kanji learning will be added soon.
The most important advice on kanji study is to learn them in context. Do not try to memorize all the meanings and readings for every kanji. That would be an impossible task. Instead, focus on learning vocabulary, preferably with simple sentences. The first 80 kanji that you would need to learn for JLPT N5 is a good start. These ones you should memorize; pay attention to the stroke order, different readings, and meanings. I would recommend writing them out and learning them until you are able to comfortably produce them from your head. This would make the step towards further kanji study less difficult because then you will already be familiar with how stroke orders work and other peculiarities about kanji.
Step 4: Grammar, Reading, and Study Plan
Grammar
See my article on how to study Japanese grammar.
Which Resources Should You Use?
See my list of online language learning resources for Japanese, which contains all the websites and YouTube channels that I use or have used in the past. It may help you find some new content to watch and read. I have also combined all the apps in one list; check this out here.
You need to find the right balance between a multitude of resources; this is the difficult part! You don’t want to keep using a resource that you don’t like because you will lose your motivation, yet you also don’t want to invest in various resources and then keep on switching between them or worse… looking for new ones. That will be ineffective as well and way too expensive (trust me I know…).
Making a Study Plan
Every study plan is personal. Mine will not automatically work for you. It all depends on the specific goals that you have and the time that you can spend. The learning resources are less important in my opinion compared to a functional study plan. Especially at the beginning of your learning, almost all study resources will get you through the basics. However, you need a study plan that could become a daily routine. Consistency is the key to successful progress in language learning. Figure out what your goal is for learning Japanese. Then think about how much time you have to spend on language learning daily. This should be realistic! What is the minimum that you could do every day? It is better to do a little bit every day than to spend a couple of hours learning once a week or even once a month. Obviously, some days you could do more than others, but you should set a minimum goal for every day. Examples:
- Daily study for 10/20/30 minutes
- Daily flashcards
- Daily reading of one/two/three pages (the more you read, the better of course; however, in the beginning, reading in Japanese is very difficult, so reading just one page should be enough for your daily learning progress).
Pick a resource that is effective for you and stick to it every day. On days when you have more time, do some more learning.
Immersion
Your learning plan and goals should consist of many immersion activities (reading, listening, and watching native content). This is the part that really helps you to learn the language over time. Immersion is not just the act of passive listening to a podcast or watching anime. This can also help you advance, but it will take a much longer time. Immersion should be accompanied by sentence mining and making flashcards, or taking notes. Actively searching for unknown vocabulary and grammar.
Reading
I think reading is the most effective language-learning activity. Reading in Japanese can be daunting, but I would recommend starting to read as soon as you can. See here for tips and resources for starting out with reading in Japanese.
NOTION and Language Learning
I have created my own Japanese Language Learning Database in Notion. Check my YouTube video out on how it works and how I use it, this way you can try to create this template yourself. But you can also purchase my template for 3 euros through here.
The template includes only my Ultimate Mining Resource page (see video for more information) and NOT the daily language learning tracker that you see on my Notion home page.
MariaTheMillennial 