5 TIPS for learning Japanese

In this post I want to give you some advice on how to learn the basics of Japanese!
As you may know, I attended the Naganuma school, that allowed me to reach a lower intermediate level in only 4 months. While I consider attending a school a good choice for learning quickly and being able to practice a lot, I also think it is completely possible to reach an intermediate level as a self-learner too!

Many of you are now applying to Vulcanus in Japan, and some of you will get selected and will (hopefully) go to Japan in September.

Some of you readers may have nothing to do with Vulcanus in Japan itself, but you may be interested in travelling to Japan someday (of course when this pandemic is over, that — fingers crossed — will happen sooner or later). Some of you, instead, may be only interested in the Japanese language.

In any case, you might want to learn some basics of the language, and that’s where my post comes in handy.

All the resources (books, websites, apps…) I will mention are some of the ones (the worthwhile ones) that I personally used.

1. Learn the kana before anything else First and foremost, the most important piece of advice — that many underestimate — is to learn the basic syllabic alphabets of Japanese before . I want to write some posts about the Japanese writing system, so I’ll talk about them more in detail on that occasion. The kana alphabets are two, Hiragana (that is mostly used for grammatical functions) and Katakana (used to write foreign words). If you put them together, you’ll see they make up less than 100 characters, so learning them is feasible in one week. I suggest using apps like Obenkyo or DuoLingo. You must reach a point where you won’t need to use your own alphabet anymore to then be able to proceed on your Japanese learning journey.
2. Don’t focus too much on kanji you won’t encounter at your level I know, this may sound weird given the fact that I’m currently posting about kanji on my Instagram page (giuliainjapan, go check that out!). Kanji, are ideograms used to express concepts; one kanji may be associated with different words and may have more than one or two readings. Memorizing how to read and to write them is one of the main obstacles when learning Japanese. I actually think that spending countless hours learning hundreds of kanji as they are is not only pretty useless, but also counterproductive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying not to learn any of them, but I suggest doing so only after you encounter them (and not before). For example, learning the kanji 産業, that corresponds to the word さんぎょう (industry), is not useful if you are at a level where you won’t meet that word often! So at the beginning I suggest you start with the basic ones, like 見、月、日、上、中、聞 and so on while studying beginner-level grammar: you’ll be able to recognize them and remember them effectively, because they will be used often times in example sentences/dialogues/exercises! I remember memorizing them more than 1 year ago, and when I started my Japanese classes I realized I hadn’t forgotten any of them because I encountered them really frequently. On the other hand, I had forgotten all the most complicated ones, because I hadn’t really used nor read any of them. Learning them at the level I was at was not useful at all!
3. Practise a lot while studying the grammar I feel like the thing that helped me the most with finally being able to remember and properly use all the grammar I learned was the practice I did while attending the language school. If you are a self-learner, don’t limit yourself to passively reading the concepts, instead try to use them actively by writing sentences or trying to act out some fake conversations. That way you will really obtain a better understanding of how grammar plays its role. The books I used for studying Japanese grammar are Genki 1 and Genki 2, that are really easy to read and complete. For Italian learners that know nothing about Japanese, I also suggest the book Ti va di giappare? written by Davide Moscato. It is a small but engaging book, and I think Davide’s method of explaining things is really innovative. The only thing it lacks of are kanji and exercises. I suggest this book to get a first idea of Japanese in a fun and effortless way, and then getting Genki (or any other grammar books) to solidify your knowledge. Concerning web resources, I found the website Tofugu really useful whenever I quickly want to revise some concepts I’m not sure about.
4. Revise your vocab knowledge daily This is a fundamental step, because when you have learned hundreds of vocables it’s easy to forget some of them if you don’t revise them properly. I suggest using a SRS-based method for this task, like Anki (I talked a bit more about it here, go check it out if you’re interested).
5. Make some Japanese friends you can practice with This is one of the best things you can do to learn about the Japanese way of living and culture as well! I used Hello Talk to find some language partners, and the best part is that the friends I made there are all learning Italian, so we basically help each other and everyone is happy!

Another website I didn’t mention earlier is Jisho, the online dictionary I use pretty much daily whenever I encounter a new kanji or term.

If you found this post useful, if you want to tell me your advice on Japanese learning, or if you’d simply like to have a chat make sure to follow me and write me a DM/comment on my Instagram page (giuliainjapan)!