#lka;ghd;laj i'm so sorry i went fuckin wild on this answer

[sootbird]

Hi sootbird :) I was wondering how you study Japanese, like, what materials or books do you use, do you attend a class or are a disciplined self-study person? I've tried several methods and apps and such and so far, nothing really turned into a routine for me...

Hello!! To answer your question about my own personal Japanese study, I took five years of Japanese classes at my university and have a bachelor’s degree in it. Right now, I’m self-studying, because I’m still not where I want to be in terms of fluency. It takes a fair bit of discipline, but I think it’s fun and I’m a big nerd so I like to study it every day. ;;

I’m so excited you’re interested in learning Japanese!! It’s such a neat language. I’m not entirely sure how to advise self-study straight from the beginning, but I can try! I’m sure there are lots of resources online for learning Japanese (it’s a fairly popular language to learn these days), but I also have a slew of books that I can recommend to you. Some are books that I used at school in my classes, and others are books that I acquired on my own over the years. The textbooks tend to be more expensive bc they have a lot of material, but I do think they’d be useful for beginning self-study, because you do need some sort of foundation before you can branch out on your own. I do think that having materials made me feel like I was properly studying it and I think has encouraged me to keep up with my self-study!

Textbooks:

Nakama books

These are the textbooks I used in my beginning classes. Nakama 1 was for first year, and Nakama 2 was for the second year. I think they’re pretty good books, and you can rent them for a semester on Amazon it looks like.

Genki books

I haven’t used these textbooks, but I have friends who did use them in their Japanese classes, and I’ve heard good things about them. I recommend checking the reviews and seeing which book series (Nakama or Genki) you wanna go with. Of course, if you feel like splurging, you can always get both and cross-reference them.

Other books: These are other books that I use to supplement my study. AKA you don’t need them right away.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs -- Kamiya

A Dictionary of Japanese Particles -- Kawashima

All About Particles -- Chino

The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs -- Kamiya

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication -- Kamiya

The first step you wanna take before anything else is learning how to read and write the Japanese syllabaries. Japanese doesn’t use an alphabet like English does. Instead of the written characters representing individual sounds, they represent syllables. Let me illustrate this with an example: the Japanese word for “heart” is こころ. As you can see, there are three characters there. When written in Roman letters, it is spelled “kokoro.” Six letters in our alphabet, but only three Japanese characters. The syllables in that word are “ko,” “ko,” and “ro.” You can see how the writing system is syllable-based.

Japanese has two syllabaries. The first is called hiragana. The second is called katakana. The syllables represented by these two systems are exactly the same, but the syllabaries are used differently. Hiragana tends to be used more, and katakana tends to be used for loan words (words from other languages that have been integrated into Japanese). I’ll use “kokoro” as an example again.

Here is “kokoro” in hiragana: こころ

Here is “kokoro” in katakana: ココロ

The use of hiragana versus katakana is something you’ll get used to with experience, but it’s important to know BOTH syllabaries. I didn’t learn katakana well enough at the beginning and it haunts me to this day. Don’t rely too heavily on romaji (the writing of Japanese words in Roman letters) because the Japanese don’t use it. Only use it as a pronunciation tool at the beginning. I do use romaji on a romaji-to-Japanese keyboard I have on my phone, but that’s really just a matter of convenience and for quicker typing.

Learn both of the syllabaries and practice writing the letters as you go. I recommend using a fun pen! After that, the textbooks can tell you what to do next. (The textbooks do tell you how to learn hiragana and katakana as well at the start, if you need more guidance than the internet gives you.)

Here are some other important resources that will be a big help to you:

Dictionary app: A Japanese dictionary is gonna be really important and I find that it’s handy to have one on your phone. I don’t know about Android, but the App Store has a few of them. I use one that’s just called “Japanese Dictionary” and it’s got a red icon.

Online dictionary: If you can’t get your hands on a dictionary app or if you’re on the computer, you can use this great online Japanese dictionary called Jisho. I use it frequently when I’m on my computer.

Flashcard app: Flashcards are gonna be your best friend. I recommend getting a good flashcard app. The one I use is Anki, and I have it on my phone and on my computer. You can download it for free on your computer and I think it’s free for Android. I have an iPhone and I had to pay 25 bucks for the app but I’ve heard that there’s a free version on the App Store too? It might just have ads, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Anki is great because it will make note of the flashcards you’re having trouble with and give them to you with more frequency. There are also a lot of decks that people have uploaded to the Anki website, so you can find all sorts of community-made Japanese decks that you can import (I think you have to import a deck on the desktop version, but then you can sync it up to your phone). 

And finally, some things to keep in mind before starting Japanese. 

Japanese is generally agreed upon to be a pretty difficult language to learn (for English speakers at least). As a native English speaker, I would agree that it is kinda hard. The general sentence structure of English is subject-verb-object. In Japanese, that structure is subject-object-verb. Since the verb is at the end of the sentence, it can be tricky to switch your brain around to the order.

A lot of people will also tell you that kanji is a nightmare. Kanji are the third element of the Japanese writing system, and are characters borrowed from Chinese. In fact, Japanese did not have a written form until the 5th century, and all of it came from Chinese. Kanji characters however, have mostly retained their resemblance to Chinese characters. They more closely resemble traditional Chinese characters, and visually look like a step between traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

Anyway, they may look quite complicated and there are a lot of them. But you will learn to love them, and they’re so fun to write. This is a kanji-positive zone so if you ever get stressed about kanji come chat with me and I will reassure you.

Here is a book I am currently using to effectively memorize kanji, and I highly recommend it. It’s beginner-friendly.

So, you may get stressed out by Japanese and maybe by all the information I just gave you, but don’t worry!! It’s a very fun language to learn and anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it! I believe in you! Come back and ask me if you have any questions.

Thank you for the ask and I hope this helps!!