Japanese - How do I start?

[Xenops]

I just wanted to say: studying Japanese sucks. Or let me rephrase that: studying FIGS languages feels like hills, and Japanese is Everest, but in overcast conditions, so you never see progress. I wish someone told my younger self just how foreign the language is. An example, kanji: yes there are multiple phonetic readings for most kanji, but did you know single words could have multiple kanji, with a nuance of meaning? And some words use kanji or hiragana, depending on the meaning?

Japanese is a journey, because the destination is very far away.

[Sizen]

I used Tae Kim, Human Japanese and Basic Kanji Book vol. 1 & 2 to start learning Japanese, but I can't really say how any of these compare to modern materials. I think the recommendations here are all probably better bets than what I did.

I want to write with as little Americanism as possible, and speak with as little accent as possible. In fact, the sooner I start replicating Japanese out of my own mouth and pen, the better.

Something I remember hearing early on in my Japanese studies is that you won't know how to say something until you've heard how a native would say it. I don't know how others feel about this, but I've definitely found that unlike with my experience learning French, the kind of correction I received by far the most when studying Japanese was not "you've got the grammar wrong" but rather "that doesn't sound natural". The sentences you will come up with will very often make sense grammatically (and Japanese people will tell you as much), but not be "acceptable" Japanese for reasons that will seem nebulous. For a while, this might just have to be boiled down to "that's just how it is", although some resources might offer linguistically questionable but still useful advice. Some of the questions I'd had about why certain things constituted natural or unnatural Japanese were only answered after taking Japanese linguistics and sociolinguistics classes in university.

All this to say, if I were to learn Japanese now, I'd get a private tutor as early as the advanced beginner phase specifically to push me with corrected writing assignments/conversations because it's hard to tell where you're going wrong otherwise. This is obviously not a requirement, but a good tutor would probably accelerate the learning process quite a bit.

[garyb]

I would say that pretty much anything aimed at beginners is going to feel too easy because you've got several languages under your belt, and most beginners won't be as lucky. That means you're going to have to be a bit more patient and expect to find stuff a bit too easy. If you keep dropping stuff because it's too easy, you're basically going to end up dropping everything.

I had the opposite experience. I was overconfident after studying lots of Romance/Germanic languages and figured "well I'm already a polyglot, how hard could Japanese really be?", and I was in for a rude awakening.

Yes, I don't think that knowing a few European languages magically makes Japanese easier, and I was tempted to say this in JLS's previous thread about learning in two years but I thought it might be a little harsh! Psychologically easier, perhaps: you're more willing to trust the process and accept things not seeming logical and not understanding language. And you'll have a better idea of which methods work for you, although I've also found that when tackling a different or harder language I've had to reconsider some of my beliefs on that...

Anyway I'm a beginner (just finishing Genki 1, so approaching N5) and this might just be my own preferences coming through so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. But as a beginner (and the question was "how do I start?") I prefer to have structure. I checked out Cure Dolly a couple of months in, but I found that after the first few episodes I just didn't yet have the context for many of the explanations to make sense, and I have a copy of the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar on my shelf but it's a reference not a course. They're both things that I'll come back to to check and improve my understanding, but I couldn't see them being that useful for someone completely new to the language. I wasn't too impressed by Tae Kim either, it felt like it wasn't quite a course or a reference, but if you're the sort of learner who doesn't like or need much hand-holding then that might be a good balance.

The main resources I'm using are Genki and WaniKani, which seems to be a very tried-and-tested combination and suits my preference for being guided. I generally read that after you finish Genki 1 and 2 you should be in a good place to start reading native materials, but even at that, it's a tough transition and graded readers and more advanced textbooks can help to make it smoother. As for kanji, I knew I'd have to tackle it sooner or later anyway so I started WaniKani early on, and I'm glad I did. I'm not in a rush with it though.

I'm happy with Genki so far. It does have flaws, but it's still better than any other language textbook I've used. It's nice that it makes the extra reading and writing lessons optional, so if these aren't your priority you can skip them. Many recommend going through Tokini Andy's YouTube series in tandem, where he gives more examples and better explanations of some grammar points. Another option could be the Tobira beginner book that came out a couple of years ago; from what I gather it's similar to Genki but attempts to address some of the weak points, although some say its presentation is very dense. I might have tried it if I had known about it before I invested in Genki.

I also used DuoLingo and Michel Thomas at the start. I don't think they were necessary since I would've encountered the same material in Genki etc. anyway, but like rowanexer with Pimsleur I found them to be a motivating way to build up some conversational knowledge quickly. These days I'm as anti-Duo as most people here, but I've only heard good things about its system for learning scripts like Hiragana (although I had already learnt that with the Tofugu guide so I can't comment) and the first couple of units were pretty good for learning some basic sentence structures and making them stick. After that, it started introducing a lot of new language without adequate explanations so I dropped it.

I'm also doing a moderate amount of listening, mostly Netflix series with dual subtitles from Language Reactor. At my stage I consider it to be an optional extra, but it's nice for consolidating things and hearing them in context as well as reading practice.

I like Sizen's recommendation of tutoring from quite early on, especially if speaking is important for you, and I'm very seriously considering doing that myself once I've finished the Genki books.

[leosmith]

how do I get started?

Given your situation, here’s what I’d suggest. I’m giving you the whole plan because only having part of the plan (the beginning) has sunk many a Japanese learner in the past.

Kana and Pronunciation. I like your first step – learn the kana. You may be doing this already, but learn pronunciation concurrently. Good kana books/programs have audio, teach you the single characters, then words, and have practice reading paragraphs, even though you don’t yet know what you are reading about. Read out loud, compare to audio, etc. Learn both hiragana and katakana.

Pimsleur. Next go to Pimsleur. It will give you good sentence level pronunciation, chunking, some basic grammar, and prepare you for beginning conversation. If you truly listen and repeat, you will be using correct pitch accent too, so no need to worry about that. You can put your Pimsleur sentences into Anki to give you something relatively easy to read/write. I’d probably only do one or two levels of Pimsleur.

These next items don’t really have an order – they can be done concurrently, and I recommend that if possible because you need to get all balls in the air at some point.

Grammar. Tae Kim(free) or Japanese from Zero(pay) are two good online ways to get a jolt of grammar. Try to put your kana reading skills to use when using them; ignore romaji.

Reading, Listening and Kanji. Find some relatively easy reading material that has audio, and use a reading tool to read it (language crush, lingq, readlang, lwt, etc). I think all of those sites have some beginning reading material on them. Reading tools are very helpful for languages that have Chinese characters; the pop-up definitions and TTS make life much easier. Speaking of Chinese characters, it’s pretty hard to read if you don’t know how to at least recognize them.

So I recommend learning some high frequency kanji. The free RTK pdf of the first 100 or so kanji will teach you the technique to allow you to Remember The Kanji (RTK). I don’t recommend doing the whole book at this point; just the first 100. After that, it’s better to learn them as you encounter them. RTK tells you to write out the character as part of the process. Definitely do this step if you want to be able to hand-write kanji. If you don’t, quite a few people say they ignored it with no ill-effects.

Listen to as much level-appropriate stuff as possible, and mix in a little real native material, like Netflix with Japanese subtitles. If you don’t understand anything, then don’t do too much, but it’s always good to keep your eye on your goal.

Writing. If you want to write really well, you will need to practice a lot. There are some sites that do free essay corrections. You could also use a teacher, ChatGPT, etc. For just practicing, there are plenty Japanese SM sites too. If you want to write by hand, you can post screen shots for natives to check. Alternatively, you can use OCR to copy/paste your handwriting, but you’ll miss comments about how legible your writing is.

Conversation. I like to use online teachers from Italki. My method is to do 60 min 100% Japanese conversation only classes daily. When I don’t know how to say something, I make a note of it. When the teacher says something that I don’t understand, I make a note. I put the new vocab and phrases in anki and review them before the next class. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you will improve if you do this.

Those are the basics. After that it’s just a matter of improving in all seven pillars of language learning.

Pronunciation – Have natives evaluate your speech. Learn a bit more about pitch accent if that’s your thing.
Reading – Continue to increase quantity and difficulty. If you don’t care about being able to write kanji by hand, you can make faster progress in your reading because you can do L2 to L1 kanji flashcards, which take only about 1/3 the time of doing them both directions. Most people do this shortcut now; I even did it myself for Mandarin. But being able to hand write anything you are able to say is a nice skill to have, and definitely obtainable with enough effort.
Listening – Continue to increase quantity and difficulty. You will eventually be spending all your time with real native content, and at some point will want to wean yourself off subtitles.
Grammar– Complete one or both of the resources you started earlier, then move onto more thorough, or more specialized resources.
Vocabulary – This grows naturally, but continue to stick new stuff that you encounter in your Anki deck for faster progress.
Writing - Continue to increase quantity and complexity, and get correction.
Conversation – Continue to do it on a regular basis.

[JLS]

Just want to say thank you all. Going to look at this more closely when able.