What Is the Best Way to Learn Japanese

How to Speak Japanese: The Faster Fashion to Learn Japanese


And then you want to learn how to speak Japanese? If you're an English speaker, you may exist intimidated past the "number of hours" it takes to larn Japanese.

You lot may also want to know how to learn the Japanese language faster.

Can it be done? The curt answer is: yes.

Learning Japanese has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. Since learning Japanese, I have a deeper passion and appreciation for Japanese culture. Understanding the linguistic communication has allowed me to explore the culture in means I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

At present here's the affair. Japanese is considered one of the about difficult languages to acquire. It has a different writing organisation than English, a completely different grammer structure, and relies heavily on cultural context and understanding.

That said, you tin hands learn the Japanese language – including context clues – with the post-obit steps. This is the best way to learn Japanese if you're serious about speaking Japanese now.

I've outlined seven steps so you'll know how to learn Japanese without all the trial and mistake many language learners feel. No more "Japanese takes 2,000 hours before you tin can utilise information technology in the real world."

You can speak Japanese sooner than you lot imagined.

Here are all the steps for learning Japanese for beginners.

Stride one: Observe Your Passion for Learning Japanese

I'thou going to be honest with you here. Are you passionate nearly learning Japanese? Practice you have a solid reason "why" you're learning it?

Without this, when the going gets tough, you lot won't know why yous should stick with information technology.

Starting now, set your intention for learning Japanese. Figure out why you're passionate well-nigh Japanese specifically.

Are you lot learning Japanese because…

  • …you desire to travel to Nippon and enjoy the civilisation on a deeper level?
  • …yous take family unit who speaks Japanese and you want to accept conversations with them?
  • …you want to brand Japanese friends?
  • …yous want to find a chore or study abroad in Nihon?
  • …you lot desire to bask and appreciate Japanese entertainment, fine art, and literature in its original language?

Peradventure your reason is you love anime and want to stop watching poorly dubbed versions and soak in the original Japanese show. Maybe your dream is to go to Nippon and guild ramen from all around the state, trying every region's variety. (That's seriously my dream.)

Whatever your reason, notice your "why" and write it downward. Surround yourself in your why. Change your phone and laptop background to a moving-picture show of a big basin of ramen. Add information technology to your vision board.

Whatever you have to do to meet it every single 24-hour interval and remember why y'all started, do it.

Step 2: Immerse Yourself in Japanese at Home — Create Your Ain Piddling Tokyo

You lot don't need to move to Japan to learn Japanese. You do, even so, accept to surround yourself in it. The best fashion to exercise this for any language is to create a home immersion surroundings where you can't help but be exposed to the language at every turn.

While it can be hard to figure out how to do this at first. It gets easier once yous know what resources to use and what to do.

Here are some tips:

  • Make your smartphone piece of work for you. Switch the language settings to Japanese. Y'all can practise this on your computer, too. If that'due south too hard for you to do at this level now, that'south okay! Download Japanese language apps, games, etc., so you're exposed to it. Facebook is a smashing app for the initial switch because information technology's still piece of cake to navigate while having bilingual exposure.
  • Start watching Japanese shows, movies, anime, documentaries, etc. Netflix has tons of Japanese shows now, so it's a great place to start. My favorite show to start with? Terrace Firm.
  • Listen to Japanese podcasts, music, and radio stations. You tin heed to Japanese NHK News, for example. Or, try a fantastic linguistic communication learning podcast like JapanesePod101. Japanese music artists like One Ok Rock and Utada Hikaru tin at present be streamed on many platforms. YouTube is another nifty selection for finding something to heed to! You also might like to read Japanese manufactures using a tool such as LingQ.
  • Observe Japanese speakers where you live — information technology'due south easier than you call back. You may be surprised that, fifty-fifty in relatively small towns, you can find Japanese communities. If you have a Japanese-owned company or factory near you lot — similar Toyota — chances are, at that place are at to the lowest degree a handful of Japanese native speakers you could see.

Stride 3: Notice Native Speakers and Speak from Mean solar day One

As I mentioned earlier, there may be a community of Japanese speakers in your surface area that you don't even know about. You demand to find someone who you tin can talk to in Japanese, and speak from mean solar day i. This is the well-nigh important, productive linguistic communication learning step you tin accept to reach fluency. Without actually speaking Japanese, you won't get very far in your studies. Trust me — I know from years of studying yet being too agape to speak Japanese.

Even if you tin't find a linguistic communication exchange partner in your area, don't let that stop you from speaking. There are tons of ways you tin can find native Japanese speakers to chat with:

  • italki is a language exchange platform, where you lot can find Japanese speakers looking to larn English and take turns practicing with each other. They likewise have reasonably-priced tutors, so you tin pay for lessons as well.
  • HelloTalk is another costless platform to await for Japanese speakers for language exchanges.
  • Meetup.com or CouchSurfing work well if you live in a relatively large urban center.
  • Tandem. This is another online, gratis platform y'all tin can use to observe linguistic communication exchanges. When I was looking for a linguistic communication exchange partner, Tandem initially gave me the all-time/fastest response from active Japanese users.
  • Hop on social media! Yes, that'south right. Social media can exist a nifty way to larn a linguistic communication. In that location may be Facebook groups for your area, or yous tin use Japanese hashtags on Instagram to observe users in Japan. Read their Japanese captions for practise, and reply back with what you know.

Footstep 4: Utilize Language Hacks to Learn Japanese Fast

Benny Lewis, the founder of Fluent in iii Months, has tons of astonishing language hacks. Here are a few that work best for Japanese:

  • Use a Spaced Repetition System (SRS), similar Anki. Anki is hands-down my favorite because y'all tin can find pre-made Japanese decks, or create your own with the vocabulary you're learning. I highly recommend the NihongoShark Kanji Deck and NihongoShark Japanese Core 2000 Principal Deck.
  • Focus on the fourscore/20 rule. The 80/xx dominion says y'all'll get 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts. What that means is y'all need to focus on the twenty% of the language (vocab, grammer, etc) that you'll use the most to yield lxxx% of your speaking. The best fashion to do this? Start with the 101 core Japanese words and piece of work from there.
  • Use mnemonics. Because Japanese is then unlike in many ways than English, this is crucial. Coming up with associations to retrieve the words and meanings will assist speed up your learning time.
  • Use the Pomodoro Technique to written report in minor chunks of time for better focus.
  • Tell yourself: "Simply xv minutes." If yous're struggling to motivate yourself to report, tell yourself "I'll just study for 15 minutes." This little hack works great. You're not committing yourself to a ton of time, then you'll be more than likely to push yourself to practice it. And once you get started, you'll usually detect a groove and keep working anyway. Fifty-fifty if you don't… y'all still studied for 15 minutes! Consistency is key.
  • Join Add1. If you lot're someone who needs community and accountability to stick to your studies — and let's confront it, most of us demand that even if we don't want to admit it — then consider joining Add1. It'll push yous to stay committed and achieve your Japanese language goals in merely xc days. Don't believe me? Cheque out my ain story of leveling upwards my Japanese with Add1 and see how far I've come up.

Step 5: Use Conversational Connectors and Fillers to Add Fluidity to Your Spoken language

We apply conversational connectors all the fourth dimension in English language. It makes our speech sound more natural and fluid. Yet, they're an oftentimes-overlooked surface area in language learning.

Conversational connectors are phrases like "And you?" that deflect the chat dorsum to the speaker. They're too phrases like "really," "cheers for asking," "to exist honest," "if I'm being frank," etc.

Every language has its own unique version of these as well. For instance, in Japanese, i of the most common conversational connectors is その時 (sono toki) which means "At that time." It's non really a phrase we use oft in English, merely it's used as a connector when telling a story or explaining a situation.

You can likewise make utilize of filler words to sound natural and buy you time as you think of how to say something. In English, we say "um," "well," etc. In Japanese, you can utilize あの。。。 (ano…, "um"), なんか。。。(nanka, "what was it…"), and じゃあ (jaa, "well so"). Those are merely a few examples. See if you tin pick up more when listening to your favorite Japanese dramas!

Pace 6: Focus on the Easy Parts of Japanese First

So many people retrieve Japanese is incredibly hard, but the honest truth is, you already know some Japanese.

Yous probably already know Japanese greetings similar konnichiwa and sayonara. You also probably already know seismic sea wave, karaoke, sake, samurai, and more. Retrieve virtually that: y'all've already been speaking Japanese without trying!

Japanese is really easy to acquire because:

  • Japanese has no gendered words! Different Spanish and other similar languages, Japanese words never accept a gender.
  • Kanji actually help you when you're stuck. Kanji represent whole words in English language. (For example, 水 is the kanji for "water.") How does that help? Well, even if you don't know how to read the kanji, because y'all recognize information technology'south English language meaning you'll have a contextual clue for understanding the entire word.
  • Japanese kana is ever read exactly the same style. At that place are no exceptions. Once yous learn how to read the kana, they are always pronounced the same.
  • Japanese contains tons — and I mean tons — of loan words. They're hands spotted because they'll be written in katakana, the writing system used primarily for foreign words adapted for Japanese. Words like ピンク (pinku, "pink"), ビール (bi-ru, "beer"), and インターネット (inta-netto, "net"). So yous already know even more words than you lot think you do.
  • Japanese isn't tonal. Unlike Chinese, you will rarely utilize pitch to differentiate a word. Information technology makes it so much easier to selection up proper pronunciation and understand others when listening.
  • Japanese grammar is relatively straight-forward. Although it's pretty unlike from English, information technology has fewer exceptions to the rules. When you learn how a grammar pattern works, information technology will most probable always exist that fashion.
  • Verbs don't take to agree with the subject and in that location are only two irregular verbs. That'south right — once you lot learn to conjugate, there are but two verbs yous accept to spotter out for. Those are する (suru, "to do") and 来る (kuru, "to come up"). And they're and then often used that you'll master those irregularities fast.

That's only touching the surface. And then don't be fooled that Japanese is too hard!

Pace 7: Don't Avoid Kana and Kanji

The terminal communication I have for you: don't avert the writing systems. Aye, there are three (hiragana, katakana, and kanji). Yeah, in that location are 2,000 "essential" kanji and they have time to learn. But hiragana and katakana are easy to pick up — you could primary them in a day. They're just the Japanese alphabet and each 1 represents a syllable.

And as for kanji, focus on the language hacks we mentioned! Learn the kanji that get with your 80/20 core vocabulary first. That's about 100 kanji, considered enough to pass the beginner level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Examination. Then, use Anki to acquire the rest equally yous go.

I know, I know. I told you to focus on speaking from twenty-four hours one. And you should. But because Japanese has a unlike writing arrangement, it'southward hard to immerse yourself and learn proper pronunciation without at least learning the kana and about 100 kanji. And like I said in the concluding stride, kanji actually help you identify the pregnant of words when you get stuck.

Accept the time to acquire the basics. It'll aid y'all go further, farther, faster. (Retrieve similar Captain Marvel!)

Become Confident in Japanese, Fast

There you have it! The all-time style to speak Japanese, right at present. If you follow these steps, you'll be having conversations in Japanese in no time. Y'all'll wow anybody with how fast yous've picked upward the "hardest" linguistic communication!

Keep a positive, open mindset that Japanese is piece of cake and you tin can do this, and you lot will. Yous got this. ファイト! (Faito, "Fight!" or "Do your best!")

Finally, if you lot're looking for a place to start studying Japanese, check out JapanesePod101. They have courses ranging from accented beginner to advanced, with lots of fun topics and lessons.

What other tips practise you have for learning Japanese fast? Share them in the comments!

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Caitlin Sacasas

Content Writer, Fluent in 3 Months

Caitlin is a content creator, fettle trainer, zero waster, linguistic communication lover, and Star Wars nerd. She blogs almost fitness and sustainability at Rebel Heart Beauty.

Speaks: English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish

View all posts past Caitlin Sacasas

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Source: https://www.fluentin3months.com/how-to-learn-japanese/

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