Current Events > Anyone learning Japanese?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Its one of the most grueling endeavors Ive ever done. Im studying for JLPT N4 and Im not sure I have a chance in hell of passing. All yall kanjis look alike!! Coming from an Arabic language native speaker and someone who has decent command of English, Japanese is fun but it really comes out like a backwards alien computer programming language.

Very slowly.

20 years ago in high school and I found Hiragana and Katakana very easy. Didn't get far trying to memorize kanji though. Is that your experience?

I havent even mastered American yet

Yes, I'm at conversational level but yeah Kanji is hard. Once I move to Japan next week I hope to improve a lot more.

i probably should be because i'll be visiting in 2026

lazy tho :(

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

20 years ago in high school and I found Hiragana and Katakana very easy. Didn't get far trying to memorize kanji though. Is that your experience?

I find Hiragana easy but some of the Katakana letters look the same. I'm using Wanikani for kanji. It's a Mnemonic based learning tool with a lot of silly tips you can use to memorize them. There's 60 levels and I got to level 4 so far. I'm using a combination of Minna No Nihongo and Bunpro for grammar; both great, but my conversation skills are severely lacking. I really want to stay with a host family in Japan.

SpiritSephiroth posted...

Yes, I'm at conversational level but yeah Kanji is hard. Once I move to Japan next week I hope to improve a lot more.

That's awesome! I aspire to get to a decent conversational level. I always get brain freezes when I try talk with my tutor or people on italki.,

falayyou01 posted...

That's awesome! I aspire to get to a decent conversational level. I always get brain freezes when I try talk with my tutor or people on italki.,

Don't be scared. Throw out everything you know, it feels good. Even if people don't understand the practice you get is invaluable. Did it with my ex-girlfriend too who was Japanese and a lot of my female friends.

Watch J-drama and movies and listen to Jpop. I do this and have picked up SO many nuances that no course or textbook can teach you.

SpiritSephiroth posted...

Don't be scared. Throw out everything you know, it feels good. Even if people don't understand the practice you get is invaluable. Did it with my ex-girlfriend too who was Japanese and a lot of my female friends.

Watch J-drama and movies and listen to Jpop. I do this and have picked up SO many nuances that no course or textbook can teach you.

Awesome tips, thanks! I'm watching Sousou no Frieren right now and Pluto and I'm learning a lot for sure. I'm also playing Persona 3 Reload in Japanese. I agree that anime/casual lingo is totally different from the textbook. I want to learn Japanese at least to N3 level before I go to Japan, just so I can hold my own with locals, at least somewhat.

I did it at uni for a year.

Really enjoyed it, but steep learning curve on the kanji, balanced out by easy grammar and vocabulary.

SpiritSephiroth posted...

Watch J-drama and movies and listen to Jpop. I do this and have picked up SO many nuances that no course or textbook can teach you.

Yeah, when I was learning French, in London, I could pick up French AM radio stations. it helped.

I'm trying to purge myself of the little I do know.

Turducken posted...

I'm trying to purge myself of the little I do know.

Why? You'll get to play all those hidden gems that were never translated if you master it. Isn't that a reward in and of itself?

I should so I can play Japan only games or talk to people a little bit next time I go over there. I found a site that helped you learn cuz it had ROMs of Japanese only games with easy text or raw no-sub videos of kids cartoon shows that taught you grammar and shit but I cant find it anymore. It was a cool resource

After I got back from Japan, I memorized all the hiragana, katakana, and 100 kanji. Then I just kind of stopped and forgot all of it because lack of consistency kills foreign language learning.

falayyou01 posted...

Why? You'll get to play all those hidden gems that were never translated if you master it. Isn't that a reward in and of itself?

Because it doesn't make me feel very shagoy...

Ive been studying it, I got JLPT N1 about three years ago but I kind of fell off on improving my skills. Ive been wanting to jump back on it. Lately Ive been lazy and just been watching subbed anime again without really trying to understand the spoken Japanese.

Listening is the toughest part, IMO.

Itachi157 posted...

Ive been studying it, I got JLPT N1 about three years ago but I kind of fell off on improving my skills. Ive been wanting to jump back on it. Lately Ive been lazy and just been watching subbed anime again without really trying to understand the spoken Japanese.

Listening is the toughest part, IMO.

100% agree. They talk super fast and theres so many verb conjugation forms and vocab that you lose sight of the bigger picture sometimes. N1 is super impressive though! 2000 kanji is no small feat!

Turducken posted...

Because it doesn't make me feel very shagoy...

You mean sugoi ?

falayyou01 posted...

Its one of the most grueling endeavors Ive ever done. Im studying for JLPT N4 and Im not sure I have a chance in hell of passing. All yall kanjis look alike!! Coming from an Arabic language native speaker and someone who has decent command of English, Japanese is fun but it really comes out like a backwards alien computer programming language.

I am using a combination of Pimsleur and Wani Kani to learn. Speaking isn't so hard but the reading is super hard.

Edit: I'd add that I'd recommend pimsleur for learning literally any language. It's really good.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I am using a combination of Pimsleur and Wani Kani to learn. Speaking isn't so hard but the reading is super hard.

Edit: I'd add that I'd recommend pimsleur for learning literally any language. It's really good.

Hmm, Ill check that out, thanks! Ive been struggling with listening.

falayyou01 posted...

Hmm, Ill check that out, thanks! Ive been struggling with listening.

Pimsleur makes listening super easy. They start you off with a conversation, teach you all the parts, then make you listen to the conversation again. As lessons go on, the conversations start off using the vocabulary from the previous lessons and you'll just understand it. There's a free subscription trial or you can permanently buy the first course. Courses after the first one require a subscription.

I found out about pimsleur when I was looking for something I could listen to in my car.

falayyou01 posted...

You mean sugoi ?

No, I don't! I told you, I'm trying to purge it away! The first step is to scramble the letters up. You're messing it all up!

falayyou01 posted...

100% agree. They talk super fast and theres so many verb conjugation forms and vocab that you lose sight of the bigger picture sometimes. N1 is super impressive though! 2000 kanji is no small feat!

Im not sure what the current meta among online Japanese learners for kanji is, but back when I started (about a decade ago now that I think about it) the general consensus was to not take time to study kanji individually, but rather learn actual vocabulary words (which usually consist of multiple kanji, usually two or three) and gain familiarity with kanji that way. It worked decently for me. Its rough at first but as you learn more vocabulary, you see the same kanji popping up in different words and youll get a sense of what the individual kanji mean that way. Obviously if a kanji is a word on its own, youll study that one individually.

It was also encouraged to start reading native material right away and not spend too much time on learner materials beyond the basic building blocks to be able to read (grammar, some basic vocab). The way you get the vocab to study is to mine them from native material like manga or games and study them in a program like Anki, or make flash cards, or whatever works for you. Id suggest easier manga starting out.

all in all these methods worked decently for me. Im not a Japanese master by any stretch of the imagination but it got me up to N1.

oh and for listening its tough no matter what. I would suggest easy anime like something SOL, then work up to harder stuff.

Turducken posted...

No, I don't! I told you, I'm trying to purge it away! The first step is to scramble the letters up. You're messing it all up!

!!

I'm studying through Duolingo. Duolingo fucking sucks for trying to learn any new language. Kanji is fucking wrong on alot of courses. I'm very lazily doing through the courses, and everyone on it only cares about their score and not learning anything.

Itachi157 posted...

SOL

I've got this book of the 2000 most used Japanese vocab words which I'm working my way through. I've heard the recommendation of learning vocab instead of kanji from others too, so that's what I'm trying to do. Can you recommend some good very basic beginner manga to start with for vocab and sentence patterns?

falayyou01 posted...

I've got this book of the 2000 most used Japanese vocab words which I'm working my way through. I've heard the recommendation of learning vocab instead of kanji from others too, so that's what I'm trying to do. Can you recommend some good very basic beginner manga to start with for vocab and sentence patterns?

Yeah that is a good thing to go through to have some basic knowledge to aid you in starting to read. No matter what its going to be a bit painful at first starting manga, but with that it should make it not TOO bad.

My recommendations would be Yotsuba&! (this first) and Ika Musume (this second as its a small step up in difficulty) for being about as easy as it gets for manga. It helps that Yotsuba is genuinely great and entertaining. Once you go through these two Id just try any shonen manga that looks interesting. I did To-Love-Ru and then Nisekoi. Neither were too hard.

Eventually once you read enough manga you might want to move to visual novels.

Itachi157 posted...

Yeah that is a good thing to go through to have some basic knowledge to aid you in starting to read. No matter what its going to be a bit painful at first starting manga, but with that it should make it not TOO bad.

My recommendations would be Yotsuba&! (this first) and Ika Musume (this second as its a small step up in difficulty) for being about as easy as it gets for manga. It helps that Yotsuba is genuinely great and entertaining. Once you go through these two Id just try any shonen manga that looks interesting. I did To-Love-Ru and then Nisekoi. Neither were too hard.

Eventually once you read enough manga you might want to move to visual novels.

Great, thanks! The ultimate aim is to eventually be able to play RPGs but I understand that could be a 7 year or more long endeavor, what with work pressure and life stuff. I really want to play Langrisser V in Japanese, even though I know its already been translated to English here somewhere on gamefaqs. I played part IV and loved that game.

AnimeGokuIAM posted...

I'm studying through Duolingo. Duolingo fucking sucks for trying to learn any new language. Kanji is fucking wrong on alot of courses. I'm very lazily doing through the courses, and everyone on it only cares about their score and not learning anything.

Yeah, the streak and league mechanics made me prioritize the easiest and fastest ways to gain points. I ended up stopping when I realized I was barely advancing in the main course. I learned an okay amount while I was advancing. I used keyboard input the entire time (selecting the bubbles makes it too easy to guess my way through and not learn), but them forcing the hearts mechanic on all platforms made progress take too long.

I took Japanese classes for 8 years only to realize years later I had been going to the Spanish class by mistake so .

I tried to write but these kanjis (,) came out before I tried to do it.

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Anki is what I used for my kanji. It helps a lot. If you get a kanji wrong it will spam it at you until you freaking learn it and it won't forget. And if you're pretty good at recognizing a specific kanji it'll slowly fade it away to the point you never see it then bring it up again. If you remember alright you won't see it for a long time, but if you get it wrong? Get back to seeing that kanji again a lot more often. It's a solid system. You'll always know what's your weakest and strongest kanji with this system.

I'm on day 690 of duolingo

So no

badjay posted...

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Anki is what I used for my kanji. It helps a lot. If you get a kanji wrong it will spam it at you until you freaking learn it and it won't forget. And if you're pretty good at recognizing a specific kanji it'll slowly fade it away to the point you never see it then bring it up again. If you remember alright you won't see it for a long time, but if you get it wrong? Get back to seeing that kanji again a lot more often. It's a solid system. You'll always know what's your weakest and strongest kanji with this system.

I remember using this for a few days and I could see the usefulness. But then my phone died and had to get a new one, and never ended up redownloading the packages. Really should do that this weekend and get back on it.

It helps living there.

Just gonna tell you though, JLPT isnt indicative of actual Japanese language. It is just a gatekeeping method to keep dirty foreigners away from Nipponmen jobs. The kanji used, the phrases, it isnt a reflection of the real world.

And if you think thats stupid, wait until you see their English tests.

_____Cait posted...

It helps living there.

Just gonna tell you though, JLPT isnt indicative of actual Japanese language. It is just a gatekeeping method to keep dirty foreigners away from Nipponmen jobs. The kanji used, the phrases, it isnt a reflection of the real world.

And if you think thats stupid, wait until you see their English tests.

JLPT isnt special or rare Japanese in any way. Its just ordinary Japanese. I see the grammar points that pop up on N1 all the time in actual native material. And the reading passages are all actual editorials and opinion pieces from Japanese publications. The only thing thats kinda unnatural on it is probably the listening portion.

falayyou01 posted...

!!

Achi ike

Itachi157 posted...

JLPT isnt special or rare Japanese in any way. Its just ordinary Japanese. I see the grammar points that pop up on N1 all the time in actual native material. And the reading passages are all actual editorials and opinion pieces from Japanese publications. The only thing thats kinda unnatural on it is probably the listening portion.

Im not saying it is special. It is unnatural. It isnt bad to study, but Im just saying, dont expect to hear real Japanese people speak like that if you go to Japan.

Source: me who lives there

This isnt a dig at you, its just a heads up

Lol no

I love languages but there are others that I'd prioritize above Japanese

Itachi157 posted...

JLPT isnt special or rare Japanese in any way. Its just ordinary Japanese. I see the grammar points that pop up on N1 all the time in actual native material. And the reading passages are all actual editorials and opinion pieces from Japanese publications. The only thing thats kinda unnatural on it is probably the listening portion.

It has been a while since me and my wife took N1, but we both recall a ton of stuff being on there that we never use in real life and we live and work in Japan in a Japanese language speaking environment (we don't use English at work).

Also I am pretty sure there is a video of Yuta asking some JLPT1 questions to random people on the street in Tokyo and they got a bunch wrong.

badjay posted...

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Anki is what I used for my kanji. It helps a lot. If you get a kanji wrong it will spam it at you until you freaking learn it and it won't forget. And if you're pretty good at recognizing a specific kanji it'll slowly fade it away to the point you never see it then bring it up again. If you remember alright you won't see it for a long time, but if you get it wrong? Get back to seeing that kanji again a lot more often. It's a solid system. You'll always know what's your weakest and strongest kanji with this system.

Damn, that sounds like a good tool. Thanks for sharing this

NeonOPPAl posted...

Damn, that sounds like a good tool. Thanks for sharing this

Yeah I used Anki for Japanese and Chinese study. Everything else is just a scam. You can get better material for free on Anki than any paid app offers.

I'm surprised so many people don't know about Anki, but when I studied japanese in college it was recommended by my prof and other students enjoyed it. It's one of many teaching methods it's basically advanced flash cards and most of it has been created.

I've fallen off of japanese so I hardly know anything beyond the most basic conversational stuff, but we grinded out 3000 kanji in over 2 years with anki. Fuck the kanji tests they were the most brutal, but NOTHING compared to real world Japan when I finally went. You probably learn more kanji WRITTEN than most people know. They know how to read it, but writing it? They don't give a fuck they just type the sound out on their phones or computer and select the one that looks right. This is why I hated my exams, I never realized how futile they were, and if you screwed up stroke order...

Anyway, worry about reading and understanding kanji more than anything. TBH the art will probably eventually die off and nobody knows how to write the damn things or even recall the kanji unless it's a major one.

badjay posted...

TBH the art will probably eventually die off and nobody knows how to write the damn things or even recall the kanji unless it's a major one.

I don't recommend spending time to learn how to write kanji because there are better uses of your limited learning time, but this is incorrect. Most people know how to write 1000-2000 kanji no problem. I work in academia and I would say most people are in the 2000-3000 range. Again I don't recommend wasting your time learning writing, but most Japanese know how to write the kanji you use day to day. And you will be filling out forms by hand if you live in Japan and if you have to look up the kanji every time it will get annoying.

ssjevot posted...

I don't recommend spending time to learn how to write kanji because there are better uses of your limited learning time, but this is incorrect. Most people know how to write 1000-2000 kanji no problem. I work in academia and I would say most people are in the 2000-3000 range. Again I don't recommend wasting your time learning writing, but most Japanese know how to write the kanji you use day to day. And you will be filling out forms by hand if you live in Japan and if you have to look up the kanji every time it will get annoying.

How many kanji and how much vocab would you say you'd need to play the average JRPG? Understandably there'd be quite a few kanji outside the standard 2000, but like, how many to get the gist of most sentences?

falayyou01 posted...

How many kanji and how much vocab would you say you'd need to play the average JRPG? Understandably there'd be quite a few kanji outside the standard 2000, but like, how many to get the gist of most sentences?

Depends on the game. Dragon Quest games all use only kana or have furigana on all the kanji. Whereas Shin Megami Tensei is going to be in the 3000 range (you're going to see stuff like , , , , , , etc.). There are also a lot of kanji outside the standard list that everyone uses on things like Twitter and LINE, and therefore you should just know , , , , , , , , etc.

The lists you study also have some useless stuff on there, but it's a political list made by the government, not a frequency list. So you're stuck with junk like and .