Learning Japanese - Useful resources

[Ksiyas]

So, im going to start college soon. Im wondering... will college classes suffice? Do I need to purchase a lot of things aside from what school will want me to buy? Does someone have a list of what to learn first... I guess a better way to put that is, does anyone know the learning order for Japanese since there are seemingly many different styles to learn. kanji, kana, and apparently those themselves have different aspects to them. Its a lot to get into but i do want to get into it, just dont know WHERE to start, regardless on how long it will take. Oh, another useful thing would be a listing of schools with good Japanese learning courses.

 

I would be HAPPIER to learn on my own, without a college class depending on how many years that would add to my learning time. 

 

My main issue with learning the language right now is, I dont know how to begin(so if anyone can give like a ordered list, that would be amazing), which is why Im considering a college course, or is a course practically a requirement?

 

I think I mentioned the learning order is my main issue enough times right? so ill end this post here.

 

Any replies/PMs would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!

[zoom909]

I think that there are as many ways to learn as there are people learning.  So you are the ultimate judge of what/how to learn...

I think it is great if you can take a Japanese class, but not necessary if you just want to read manga/games/etc.  In that case, take one if you can, but don't worry about it if you can't.

 

My goal was to learn to read.  The flow I followed is:

 

1 pronunciation/roumaji

|

2a grammar/vocabulary (the language basics)

2b hiragana/katakana (the writing system basics)

|

3a integrate 2a and 2b together

3b start gradually learning kanji

|

4 start reading manga - discover what you still don't know

|

5 learn more advanced grammar/vocabulary/kanji

|

etc.

 

Any beginning readers, feel free to PM me as you get going--I can give you tutorials (but not for speaking/writing, you'd want someone from Japan for that I believe)

 

[Ksiyas]

I think that there are as many ways to learn as there are people learning.  So you are the ultimate judge of what/how to learn...

I think it is great if you can take a Japanese class, but not necessary if you just want to read manga/games/etc.  In that case, take one if you can, but don't worry about it if you can't.

 

My goal was to learn to read.  The flow I followed is:

 

1 pronunciation/roumaji

|

2a grammar/vocabulary (the language basics)

2b hiragana/katakana (the writing system basics)

|

3a integrate 2a and 2b together

3b start gradually learning kanji

|

4 start reading manga - discover what you still don't know

|

5 learn more advanced grammar/vocabulary/kanji

|

etc.

 

Any beginning readers, feel free to PM me as you get going--I can give you tutorials (but not for speaking/writing, you'd want someone from Japan for that I believe)

This seems to be a response at my post, regardless, THANKS! Really appreciate it.

[Arturia]

Heya, Wondering if anyone has a Pdf or a download of a book called "Japanese for busy people".. at the moment i am learning Japanese at a local school of mine and my teacher uses that book and gets photocopies of the book, But i want to try and find it online but i can not..Well if anyone has any info about it, Would be greatful Thank you.

[Nagisa_Fawkes]

I'm not sure it's the right place to ask, but it's the first that came to mind.

I've finally started raw VNs (yaaay), and with help of ITH and JParser, I can understand pretty much everything.

What I want to ask, how do I search for VN walkthroughs in japanese? Is there a japanese word for "walkthrough"?

[rainsismyfav]

type in 攻略(こうりゃく）.

[Bolverk]

type in 攻略(こうりゃく）.

 

Yup; I'll add that you should have use the orginal jp name, not the romaji. Just get the name from vndb.

Orginal jp name + 攻略

[Nagisa_Fawkes]

type in 攻略(こうりゃく）.

 

 

Yup; I'll add that you should have use the orginal jp name, not the romaji. Just get the name from vndb.

Orginal jp name + 攻略

Yup, that did the trick. Thank you ^^

[melo4496]

First time i'm posting on this thread but i'd like some sources for this if possible.

 

I'm trying to remember kanji by reading RTK but as RTK doesn't teach the pronounciation i don't feel like i've fully learned the kanji.

Does anyone have something to learn the kanji or at least learn their pronounciation individually as well? Maybe another book or website or just anything. Because I don't want to think in english while reading japanese i want to think in japanese while reading japanese. I just find this important when learning a language and helpful as well. 

 

I felt the same way. I searched for resources and found this. This book might be what you were looking for.

Japanese Kana and Kanji (torrent)

Here's a part of this book 

 

Edit:

Heya, Wondering if anyone has a Pdf or a download of a book called "Japanese for busy people".. at the moment i am learning Japanese at a local school of mine and my teacher uses that book and gets photocopies of the book, But i want to try and find it online but i can not..Well if anyone has any info about it, Would be greatful Thank you.

 

I used this link and it worked perfectly fine.

Edited March 23, 2015 by melo4496

[Nosebleed]

I posted this in another thread but I think it'll be useful here too, I added it to the OP

 

Basically I found this really useful android app that will help you review your japanese in pretty much any way you could want.

It's called Obenkyo:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Obenkyo&hl=en

 

It covers pretty much everything with tons of different exercises to help you memorize stuff in an interactive way and what's useful is the amount of costumization it allows. It also has a kanji list (ordered by school level/JLPT/RTK) with edict2 entries for each kanji. And it even comes with the entire Tae Kim guide so aside from memorizing the writing you can learn grammar and practice it.

 

I want to point out this is not an app to learn japanese, it is instead a really helpful study/review guide to go over the stuff you've learned wether it be through RTK or other books/methods.

 

Quoting from the other thread

You can set it to show onyomi and/or kunyomi and the order in which you're tested can be by School Level, by JLPT levels or by RTK chapters.

You can even delete the English word and just go by onyomi/kunyomi recognition (for full Japanese immersion).

You can also set how many kanji/words you want to review per test (from 10 to all the 2300 kanji in one go for all them lunatics).

 

So it's basically like a really costumizeable version of anki.

 

There's 3 types of exercises the app has to help you review kanji

1. Find the kanji - Shows you an English word and/or kunyomi/onyomi and you need to find the corresponding kanji among 6 options
2. Recognise kanji - Shows you kanji and you need to select the correct meaning in English and/or kunyomi/onyomi among 6 options
3. Draw kanji - As the name says, you draw the kanji corresponding to the word shown in English and/or kunyomi/onyomi (it might not be perfect, you might want to opt for pen and paper on this one)

If you're going to go with the RTK method, this is definitely a much more interactive way to review your studying.

 

But wait! There's more!

 

Reviewing kanji is not all the app allows, you can also review vocabulary which is really great if you're using the RTK method, it'll speed things up by showing you vocabulary, with the respective readings (can be disabled), that's related to the kanji you just learned.

 

It has 2 different exercises

1. Find the word - Shows you a word in English and/or hiragana/katakana and you need to select the right kanji compound
2. Recognize the word - Shows you a kanji compound and you need to select the right translation and/or pronounciation

But wait! There's more!

If you really are a textbook person, the app lets you actually check up on all of its kanji/word lists for actual reading purposes (if you don't want to do exercises).

 

You can click on any JLPT level and you'll see the list of kanji in that level with all the meanings and onyomi/kunyomi for that kanji as well as example words (with the respective pronounciations)

And if you select RTK order you can look at a kanji list by RTK chapters

 

(the kanji entries are the same in both, they're all taken from edict2).

 

This application basically covers all of your reviewing needs and it's great to couple with almost any guide, including RTK, for a much more in depth reviewing experience.

 

Other functionalities include:

 

Hiragana/Katakana tables with multiple types of exercises to memorize each kana individually

Number chart and exercises to help you memorize the numbers

Particles chart with exercises to help you memorize particle usage (really helpful for grammar)

And lastly it has the entire Tae Kim guide at the bottom if you want to simultaneously learn grammar.

 

I hope this app is useful for some of you, I for once was quite impressed by all the stuff it covers.

If you want something to improve your RTK experience, here you go.

 

[Ksiyas]

So, I got a job and will have a decent amount of spending money. With that said, are there things I should buy to get started on my long and arduous journey of learning Japanese or is there enough free resources that I should be able to get buy without buying things?

 

If there are free resources, what are they? If not, what are the things you recommend I buy? 

 

*NOTE* I am at zero Japanese skill minus the very small number of words i can audibly recognize thanks to watching anime. (Dont think that qualifies as skill lol)

 Thanks a bunch.

 

I will be looking it up myself as well, but Im sure its better to ask you guys who may have tried and tested materials from your learning endeavors. 

Thanks!

[Nosebleed]

If you've got money, the most logical and probably efficient choice is real Japanese lessons. Nothing beats being forced to learn and practice regularly after all.

 

But if time is a constraint for you or if classroom environment is not really your thing, it really depends on what kind of path you want to go down with.

There's plenty of choices you can make.

You can use only free resources, hell you can just use websites like imabi and kanji damage

But you can also use paid resources like the Genki books or RTK.

 

The problem with recommending a resource is that each person has different preferences on how they want to learn, I definitely wouldn't want to recommend you to buy something that will then be inefficient.

 

With that out of the way, please take my (or anyone else's) recommendation with a grain of salt.

 

I went with a grammar approach, meaning that I'm focusing primarly on Japanese grammar and almost 0 on vocabulary at first (though I had vocabulary previously built up from anime and other sources)

In my case it's a little different since I found someone to tutor me, but the structure we're using is pretty much similar to JLPT levels, meaning that we're starting wtih JLPT N5 grammar, then move on to N4, N3,  etc. (You can see what kind of grammar is involded in each level here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/aboutjlpt/)

 

If I had to point out a good resource for my method, it'd definitely be imabi which really goes into detail in every little grammar aspect and is divided by difficulty levels so I think it'd be a great reference to use for learning grammar.

 

Outside of that I also use Tae Kim to look up things but Tae Kim is a bit more vague on some parts.

 

Now to learn vocabulary I'm pretty much just using a hands on approach and reading VNs with hooking tools and noting down words I don't know and remembering their meaning in that context.

This isn't a flawless method but it's definitely more entertaining than reading textbooks.

 

Hope this helped~

[Ksiyas]

If you've got money, the most logical and probably efficient choice is real Japanese lessons. Nothing beats being forced to learn and practice regularly after all.

 

But if time is a constraint for you or if classroom environment is not really your thing, it really depends on what kind of path you want to go down with.

There's plenty of choices you can make.

You can use only free resources, hell you can just use websites like imabi and kanji damage

But you can also use paid resources like the Genki books or RTK.

 

The problem with recommending a resource is that each person has different preferences on how they want to learn, I definitely wouldn't want to recommend you to buy something that will then be inefficient.

 

With that out of the way, please take my (or anyone else's) recommendation with a grain of salt.

 

I went with a grammar approach, meaning that I'm focusing primarly on Japanese grammar and almost 0 on vocabulary at first (though I had vocabulary previously built up from anime and other sources)

In my case it's a little different since I found someone to tutor me, but the structure we're using is pretty much similar to JLPT levels, meaning that we're starting wtih JLPT N5 grammar, then move on to N4, N3,  etc. (You can see what kind of grammar is involded in each level here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/aboutjlpt/)

 

If I had to point out a good resource for my method, it'd definitely be imabi which really goes into detail in every little grammar aspect and is divided by difficulty levels so I think it'd be a great reference to use for learning grammar.

 

Outside of that I also use Tae Kim to look up things but Tae Kim is a bit more vague on some parts.

 

Now to learn vocabulary I'm pretty much just using a hands on approach and reading VNs with hooking tools and noting down words I don't know and remembering their meaning in that context.

This isn't a flawless method but it's definitely more entertaining than reading textbooks.

 

Hope this helped~

Your link gave me a 404. Other than that, it was helpful. Thanks!! 

Im going to try going the free route. If that doesnt work out. Ill try some paid books. 

 

That said, by your post, it sounds like having a good amount of vocabulary to start with is preferred? should i try and build up vocab? Like my spanish class, writting down the word and its meaning over and over (im fine with that by the way, dont mean it to sound like complaining)

 

Could you post some links to the paid books you mentioned if possible? Thanks again.

 

Nico x Maki for life!

[Mikimir]

Wait... the guide from Aaeru's link is dead. Does any of you know which anki deck he recommended to use? I don't remember : (

[Kelebek1]

I ran into this channel the other week, and I think they're by far the most useful videos I've ever found on YouTube. Ignoring all the <N2 stuff, but the N2 and N1 playlist of videos are great.

 

Specifically:

 

There's a whole bunch of other playlists too, for N3 if you really want, more for N2 and N1, including vocabulary, and a bunch done in English which are more simple than the above, with some basic vocab. Even have a

culture/vocab/grammar series, which is really interesting as someone who likes the pre-modern Japan, learnt a lot from that. They're all easy to follow and all really well explained, going through all the possible answers and saying why they're wrong and giving example etc. They're really worth a look imo.

[rainsismyfav]

Very nice channel~ I like it. So far she explains stuff pretty well, but I think you'll have to be able to follow her. People would need to be accustomed to her speed.

[Cyrillej1]

Ohh these are really nice videos to practice Listening too ^^  looks like there's many different teachers doing different lessons. Thank you!

[Deep Blue]

So many videos, it's hard to find something there but seems really interesting and i like how they teach in a silly way and always laughing or joking around , subscribed already

[Deep Blue]

here is something very usefull

 

[Amon]

People tend to lose an increadible amount of time simply by using unefficient tools and learning methods. Here´s the cure:

 

Memrise.com

 

The probably best tool to learn vocabs. It´s basically a spaced repetition system with some gamification. I always heard about Anki and tried it, but found it to be awful. Absolutely terrible, to be honest. Memrise on the other hand works fine. I´ve learned over 8.000 vocabs (and 2.600 general Kanji meanings) within 1,5 years. You can follow me there as Cynic. PM here for recommendations on courses to take.

 

Imabi.net

 

Excellent grammar site with a ton of example sentences.

[Zakamutt]

What's the difference between anki and memrise? I used anki for a while and it's fairly... addictive once you start a session to me. Then again I also get lost in eight-hour tvtropes (do NOT visit) binges.

[Yuri Hunter]

People tend to lose an increadible amount of time simply by using unefficient tools and learning methods. Here´s the cure:

 

Memrise.com

 

The probably best tool to learn vocabs. It´s basically a spaced repetition system with some gamification. I always heard about Anki and tried it, but found it to be awful. Absolutely terrible, to be honest. Memrise on the other hand works fine. I´ve learned over 8.000 vocabs (and 2.600 general Kanji meanings) within 1,5 years. You can follow me there as Cynic.

 

Imabi.net

 

Excellent grammar site with a ton of example sentences.

[Amon]

What's the difference between anki and memrise? I used anki for a while and it's fairly... addictive once you start a session to me. Then again I also get lost in eight-hour tvtropes (do NOT visit) binges.

[Zakamutt]

Anki has no input required. Memrise does. Can be done in Anki though

 

With Anki you have to judge your answers yourself. Memrise manages that for you. Ditto. Also, being able to pick hard/normal is pretty useful in Anki. Also, why is it hard to judge answers yourself lol.

 

Ankis repetition system is complicated. Memrise clear and easy. Memrise also tells you when to review what. Anki puts things in your review queue when they should be done. I don't understand why this is complicated, unless you mean how it handles SRS, which is just to optimize actual memorization

 

Creating content with Anki is a hassle. With Memrise I simply bulk-add from a spread sheet. Prolly true, considering what I've seen

 

Memrise motivates by giving points for right answers. Potential advantage if you like gamification

 

Memrise has several leaderbords and a friendlist to compete with others. Same

 

Memrise offers mems created by other users to enhance memorization. Anki offers whole decks made by different people, don't understand the difference here

 

Memrise content is easy to browse and share. Prolly a thing though it's certainly possible in anki

 

Memrise claims to work scientifically.. but they sometimes work like bloody amateurs. Using wrong terms, having no PM-system after years, adding green bubbles to the dashboard instead of fixing annoying issues... Why'd you need a PM system w

[Mephisto]

holy shit that nihongomori japan channel is fun to listen to for some reason. 

 

Even if you know what they're talking about it's fun to watch the videos.