Learning Japanese: The 4 things you need
Are you considering Learning Japanese? Take it from me, It's is a difficult language to learn and a huge undertaking. My own efforts saw me give up and label myself a failure after 7 years of on-off basic learning. No suprises there - what you can get out of something is proportionate to what you put into it, and I admit I never really gave it the dedication that it required.
I have determined that there are 4 fundamental aspects that everyone needs for success for learning Japanese:
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| Takachiho gorge, Miyazaki Prefecture |
The Language
Japanese is a fascinating language. The way that the language itself is structured most of the time is actually quite simple and logical. It doesn't have anywhere near the amount of odd nuances that English has.
It's the written form that makes Japanese difficult, and the fact that there are basically 4 'alphabets' in use:
- Hiragana - ひらがな
- Katakana - カタカナ
- Kanji - 漢字
- Romaji - Romaji
I won't go into explaining each one, but noting that Romaji is the English (well, Roman) alphabet. Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic, which means every character relates to a sound, making basic reading and pronounciation a little easier, unlike english for instance. 'Live' and Live' and two different words with different meanings and pronounciations.
One wonders just how much easier Japanese would be if it was all in Romaji! Well its not. It never will be, and in fact wouldn't even work due to kanji having different meanings as well as probably some issues related to known context. A language scholar would be able to eloquently explain this im sure. So lets promptly discard that wishful thinking.
Learning reboot
I would like to give some insight to my own Japanese language journey, the struggles I've had so far, and some insightful lessons learned from my failures.
If you've had difficulties learning Japanese, you are not alone. I'd appreciate if you would leave a comment to let me know i'm not alone either!
I would like to emphasize that my journey is still very much at the beginner end, and this isn't going to be a post promising advice on 'how to pass JLPT N1 from zero in X amount of months' This is about reality. Most of us adults don't have a lot of time and simply do not learn and absorb information quite like we used to when we were young.
It really hit home a few weeks ago when my wife showed me the below photo, dated 7 years ago of me doing some Hiragana writing practice on Genkoyoshi paper (below) 7 years of on-off learning and I have very little to show for it.
Everyone who has successfully learned a language will have their own recommendations on how to go about it, and given that different learning styles work for different people, there is no right or best solution. I feel I'm in a good position to provide some guidance, as only by struggling and failing I've been able to identify what not to do, and to take the step back to gain perspective of the only things that could be considered solid univeral advice, and those are these 4 fundamentals that you need.
- Motivation
- Goals
- Time
- Resources
Finally lets dive in and look at those in some relatable detail.
1. Motivation
As you may know from a previous post, myself and my family plan to move to Japan 2 years from now. I've been suggesting it for years, but Tomomi's stone-wall response every single time has been ‘you need to learn Japanese’
Right-o.
So every year, around the time of our annual holiday to Japan, my motivation would peak, i'd do some study, learn some new words and practice on the in-laws. After getting home that motivation would dwindle to just about nothing. Moving always seemed like a far away idea that may never come to be, so why continue? Not to mention having to get back into the swing of normal daily life and responsibilities. Whimsical notions are often quickly forgotten.
With moving to Japan now on the horizon, learning Japanese is almost a necessity, and necessity is a strong motivator indeed. To learn a language you need lots of motivation, bag fulls of it. Not in fits and spurts, but sustained and relentless. If the motivation is lacking, expect the results to be lacking. No surprise for my lack of progress to date then.
2. Goals
Next thing you need are goals. Goals help track progress and fuel that newly found motivation.
Goals need to be achievable, at good intervals and not entirely out of reach (lest they have a negative impact on your motivation) By all means have a grand goal, but you need smaller ones to tick off on the way, to measure progress and gain that sense of achievement that will only fuel your motivation further.
Small wins matter!
My ‘grand’ goal all along was to be able to speak Japanese. Not necessarily deep and meaningful conversations or discussing quantum physics, but just to be able to get ideas across, speak with family, and for my personality to come through. Personalities can easily get lost when speaking other languages and its something to be mindful off when regurgitating phrases out of a textbook.
It may not be a measurable goal, but as a grand end-goal it doesn't have to be. I'll know when i'm there. I recall reading in Chris Broad's book 'Abroad in Japan' that he had that type of moment after speaking to his then newfound friend Natsuki at a bar for hours, only realising afterwards of what he had just achieved - lengthy conversation in Japanese without even thinking about it.
The JLPT inevitably comes up in these conversations so lets touch on that. Personally I could not care less about the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Tests for those not familiar) Its a Japanese standard for Japanese language ability. For a lot of people though JLPT is important, as many jobs have a minimum requirement of N2 or N1 certificate (N1 being the highest, N5 the lowest) I have no intention of being a salary-man so I am not going to worry about studying for the JLTP.
That being said, JLTP are measurable goals for progress, and likely the main reason anyone sits an N3/4/5 exam at all. Afterall, a lot of study materials are focused on JLTP levels, and making your way up the levels is a well-structured and well-paced way to study.
For those curious, You can try practice questions here: https://www.jlpt.jp/e/samples/forlearners.html
Before I move to Japan, being around N5 level is my absolute minimum goal. N4 would surpass my own expectations; modest goals really. I will gauge this based on the study materials I have completed, along with how I do on practice tests. All self assessed of course, as only you should be the judge of your success.
3. Time
You need time to commit to study. Ideally you want to work it into your routine so it makes it harder to procrastinate, to avoid the age old 'I'll do some study later', and then never do. Then it gets pushed back to tomorrow, and before you know it, you're not studying anymore.
For JLPT they say, with no prior kanji knowledge you need up to 600 hours for N5, 1000 hours for N4. So lets say I hit N5 level before the years end, that leaves me around a year for N4, so up to an extra 400 hours, that's over an hour a day every single day.
Herein lies one of my challenges. I have a newborn baby at home, and with my wife on full time baby duty means im working full time, and doing all of the chores too - housework, shopping etc. Trying to squeeze in study is definitely a challenge, and so this is where goals and motivation combine to make you commit and find the time. At time of writing im averaging 20-30 minutes per day - an obvious disparity versus the aforementioned required hours.
My current focus is that I am actually studying, and doing it every day. Small wins matter, remember?
The irony is not lost on me that the time writing blogs is time that I could be studying...
4. Resources
To supplement the motivation, goals and time, are resources. By resources I mean things available to use, to help you.
I have probably the best resource you can have, and that's being married to a Japanese speaker. Many are not fortunate enough to have this resource, and probably why many who self-study get great with reading and writing but struggle with speaking and listening.
Over the years it hasn't been the boon you might think, as Tomomi has not wanted to use Japanese at home, preferring to hone her already excellent English instead. Thankfully now that's changed and we are starting to inject a bit of vocab into our daily life.
Quite regularly I string sentences together in my head and throw them out there for critique, and i'll either get a strange look (means I got it right, but thinking why on earth am I talking about it raining outside when it's clearly not, or i'll get corrected and we move on.
Now she has started throwing sentences at me. Even something simple like 'kyou no gohan wa nan desu ka' at full native speed is difficult to understand, especially out of the blue, but I recognize a few words - kyou (today) gohan (food) and nani (what) and desu ka (indicates question) along with the context that it's late afternoon, she must be asking me what's for dinner.
The more words that you know, the easier listening becomes, as you can almost figure out what people are talking about or at least some context, even if you don't fully comprehend every word and the grammar.
Onto study materials. The internet has revolutionised so many things, and language learning is no exception. You will not struggle to find articles and guides, online course and youtube lessons. There's almost too much.
Textbooks and study related books have been around forever, and are still widely used. I recently bought some; Genki I and its workbook, Remembering the Kanji, along with some other N4/N5 vocabulary books. I will give my thoughts on these once I've worked through them enough to give them fair comment.
Apps are the real revolution for language learning and there are no shortages of options.
I used Duolingo for a while but it wasn't to my liking. Currently im using Renshuu daily and it is brilliant. I want to write a whole post just about it. Human Japanese is another one.
Apps are convenient. And convenient helps with a lack of time, because you can grab 10 minutes here and there rather than trying to find a few hours to sit down and study, to make sure you are still doing something.
Previously I had used only apps. Perhaps I was naive to think apps would take me far - they still might. They certainly have their place, and I think that they may best serve as a gap filler in between proper study - Textbooks and/or classes.
Speaking of classes, I've signed up for a online zoom class starting in August, run by the Japanese embassy in NZ. Classes are weekly over a 10 week term, starting with 'Beginner 1' then onto 'Beginner 2' and lastly 'Intermediate'. Advanced classes are in-person. Its affordable ($120) and not a huge time commitment. Ill report back with how this goes.
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| My Japanese is only marginally better than his. |
Final thoughts
My main focus was always speaking, so I initially leaned more toward vocab and being able to string together basic sentences. Sure, A wa B isn't a particularly difficult concept to learn, neither is Kore wa Pen desu. Beyond that it can be trickier to absorb by listening and speaking alone, as you need to be working at a much much slower pace to start with to piece things together and truly comprehend them.
I've realized that its probably not even possible to be able to speak Japanese well without being able to read. I think this is because reading helps you learn the grammar and sentence structure, as it's different enough from English. You just need a lot of exposure to it, and slowly you'll be able to work it into your head.
On my learning 'reboot' I started again with syllabaries in earnest, and now I can read kana (Hiragana & Katakana). I truly appreciate now that every learning resource starts with kana, as it is the foundation. It certainly is a feeling of accomplishment to be able to read the basic question in books and apps, even if it feels slow and ponderous.
Writing isn't important to me at this stage. It's one of those things that I anticipate will be easier later on, after plenty of exposure. Try not to get bogged down with things that will slow you down. I've heard it said multiple times for Kanji - don't go on a side mission to memorize them enmasse, when that time can be spent more productively, as later on you'll pick them up just as parts of words, and then its a simple case of joining the dots of comprehension.
That's about where I am. Really i'm still very much just a beginner. Its just been a long time since I started, and with learning languages, it never really ends.
Ill be doing progress reviews every couple of months, and in an upcoming video we will have a closer look at some of my study materials.
If you've got any tips or want to share your experiences please leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you.
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