How I Learned Japanese is a question many aspiring polyglots ask, and at learns.edu.vn, we offer a comprehensive guide to achieve fluency. Discover proven methods, effective resources, and expert advice for mastering Japanese, transforming you from a beginner to a confident speaker. Embark on a journey of linguistic discovery, enhancing your understanding with Japanese learning tips and language acquisition strategies.
1. Zero Knowledge of Japanese: The Beginning
Welcome to the exciting world of learning Japanese! This initial phase is specifically designed for individuals with little to no prior knowledge of the language. Perhaps you know a few basic greetings like “konnichiwa” or a single word here and there. These first steps are crucial as they lay the foundation upon which you will build your future skills. The more thoughtful and deliberate your steps at this stage, the smoother your path to fluency will be.
Thorough completion of this section is paramount to avoiding the dreaded “intermediate wall,” a common obstacle that derails many learners. Instead of rushing, take your time with these foundational steps. What may seem slow now will translate to greater speed and efficiency later on.
1.1. Learn to Read Hiragana
Estimated Time: 1 day to 1 week
Hiragana serves as the Japanese equivalent of the alphabet. It is one of the three essential Japanese writing systems you must master to achieve reading proficiency. The other two are katakana and kanji, but hiragana forms the starting point for everything else.
The ability to read hiragana is a prerequisite for most beginner-level Japanese textbooks and learning resources. This skill is typically the first thing taught in a traditional classroom setting. Surprisingly, I agree with the traditional approach. It is an excellent place to start.
Most traditional Japanese classrooms dedicate an entire month to learning how to read and write hiragana. This approach is unnecessarily time-consuming. Instead of repeatedly writing each hiragana character to memorize them, consider using a guide that utilizes mnemonics and worksheets designed to help you learn and recall hiragana much faster than you might expect.
Do it: Learn How to Read Hiragana
It is important to note that this guide will teach you to read hiragana, not to write it. This distinction is intentional. While handwriting Japanese is a skill worth learning eventually, focusing on it now will significantly slow down your progress with minimal initial payoff. Typing is the primary form of writing in modern communication, accounting for 99% of written Japanese. Therefore, you will learn to type hiragana (as well as katakana and kanji) instead.
This focus on typing, coupled with mnemonics and worksheets, will enable you to learn to read hiragana in just a day or two, rather than a month.
Remember: You’re not in a class. You don’t have to move at the speed of the slowest 10%. There is no speed limit.
To successfully complete this section and move forward, you must reach the point where you can read all the hiragana characters. Even if you’re a bit slow, being able to recall each character, including the contractions, without resorting to cheating is sufficient. You’re about to gain plenty of practice, and your reading speed will naturally increase as you progress.
Note: It’s recommended to read “Japanese Pronunciation, Part 1” (described below) before you begin learning hiragana. This will provide a foundational understanding of Japanese sounds and how they relate to the writing system.
1.2. Basic Japanese Pronunciation
Estimated Time: n/a
Good pronunciation skills start with hiragana. While hiragana alone won’t teach you everything about pronunciation, it is the key to understanding how and why Japanese words sound the way they do. It will also help you establish the foundation needed for a native-sounding accent. Mastering hiragana will take you approximately 80% of the way there.
To cover the remaining 20%, we have prepared a guide that covers the basics of Japanese pronunciation. Before you begin learning to read hiragana, you should read the guide up to the “Japanese Sounds and Your Mouth” section.
Once you have finished learning how to read hiragana, go through that section again, but this time also read about the “Important Differences.” This section will cover all the sounds that do not exist in English, giving you a significant head start. Ensure that you can pronounce all the hiragana characters correctly before proceeding further.
With pronunciation, it is best to invest your time and effort early on. Don’t neglect it simply because it’s challenging. As things become more difficult, it is crucial to have spent time speaking and hearing these sounds, enabling you to learn all the nuances and exceptions that lie ahead.
Okay, now please go back to learning how to read hiragana. Work until you can read and recall everything, and then move on to the next section.
1.3. Learning to Type Hiragana in Japanese
Estimated Time: 1-2 days (or less)
Prerequisite: Able to read hiragana
Now that you can read and pronounce hiragana (remember, slow is okay!), it’s time to learn how to type it on your computer or smartphone.
First, you need to install a Japanese keyboard. Fortunately, you don’t have to buy special hardware or a dedicated computer to do this. Thanks to a type of software called an IME (input method editor), you can add a Japanese keyboard to almost any computer, phone, or operating system. Just follow the instructions in this guide to add them to your devices:
Read: How to Install a Japanese Keyboard
After installation, it’s time to learn how to actually type. Use the following guide and focus solely on the hiragana section (since that’s all you know how to read right now):
Read: How to Type in Japanese
Assuming you can read hiragana, typing in hiragana is surprisingly straightforward. Once you feel confident in your typing abilities, including mastering trickier aspects like contractions, the small tsu, and dakuten, move on to the next section. It’s time to address the elephant in the room for every Japanese learner: kanji.
1.4. Understanding the Concept of “Kanji”
Estimated Time: n/a
In our Japanese learning method, you’re going to learn to read kanji characters very early. As soon as you can read and type hiragana, it’s time to start tackling kanji.
Here is our reasoning:
- The most difficult thing about learning Japanese is kanji. At least, that’s what people say. But trying to save it or brush it off until later isn’t going to help you learn Japanese. Almost everything uses kanji, making it one of the most important aspects of learning this language. Your learning quality of life will drop drastically if you choose to ignore it.
- A lot of a beginner’s time when using a textbook is spent looking up kanji and vocabulary. This takes your focus away from the grammar you’re trying to learn and makes progression slow and frustrating. Learning (some) kanji and vocabulary first makes learning grammar a lot faster and, more importantly, easier. Think of it this way: you’re losing a little time now to save a ton of time later.
- Kanji leads to vocabulary, vocabulary aids communication, and grammar is like the glue that holds vocabulary together. Without vocabulary there’s nothing for the grammar glue to stick to and everything gets messy. It makes grammar abstract and difficult to learn, when it doesn’t have to be.
- Like hiragana, we have a way for you to learn kanji that’s way more effective than the traditional methodology (rote memorization). Thanks to that, it won’t be as difficult as everyone says. It may even *gasp* be a pleasure to learn! Maybe.
This kanji-vocabulary-first route will get you to the point where you can use Japanese quickly. It feels slow at first, but soon you will rocket past your fellow Japanese learning compatriots. You’ll also be able to get over that “intermediate wall” easier and quicker than if you were to use a traditional method. This lowers your chances of burnout and giving up all together.
If you’re on board with this philosophy, you need to start at the very beginning: understanding what kanji is and how it’s used. For that, we have another guide for you to read:
Read: On’yomi vs. Kun’yomi: What’s the Difference?
Once you understand how Japanese kanji readings work, you’ll be ready to learn some actual kanji.
1.5. Beginning Kanji & Stockpiling Kanji Knowledge
Estimated Time: 1-3 months
Important note about this section: You should start to learn katakana (the next section) at the same time as this step. “Beginning Kanji & Stockpiling Kanji Knowledge” will take 1-3 months. In fact, you can complete all of the steps up to “The Beginner of Japanese” while you work on this one!
Okay, so it’s time to actually learn kanji. Let’s define what “learn kanji” means before you get started. That way you know what is expected of you.
- When I say “learn kanji” I mean learn the kanji’s most important (English) meaning(s), and their most important (Japanese) reading(s). As you know from reading about on’yomi and kun’yomi, some kanji have a lot of readings. And, unfortunately, English meanings are just translations and can’t always match the Japanese meaning one-to-one. That means there can be many correct English meanings for a single kanji that you’ll need to deal with. We’ll narrow those down so you only learn the most important meanings and readings first—the ones used 80-90% of the time. The remaining meanings and readings will come via vocabulary and other practice.
- As you learn kanji you will also learn vocabulary that use those kanji. Not only will this help solidify those kanji concepts in your mind, but it will also be where you learn the remaining kanji readings. Plus, as you know, this vocabulary will be used to give you something to glue together with grammar later.
- By the end of this guide, your goal is to know around 2,000 of the most important kanji as well as 6-7000 vocabulary words that use them. With this groundwork you should be able to read almost anything—or at least have the tools to easily decipher the rest on your own.
Your goal should be to learn 20-30 kanji and ~100 vocabulary words that use those kanji (and only those kanji) each week. If that seems like a lot, don’t worry: there is a method for memorization that will speed things up considerably. Please read up on the Radicals Mnemonic Method. As a bonus, you will learn some important foundational knowledge about how kanji works in here as well.
Read: Learn kanji with the radicals mnemonic method
In this guide you will learn how to narrow down kanji meanings and readings to the most important ones. You will learn how to use radicals and mnemonics and how to create an effective routine.
You should be able to use these techniques to create a weekly study plan on your own for free, as long as you put in the work. But, if you would like all of the above (and then some) in one, complete package, we recommend the kanji learning program, WaniKani.
We’ll be referencing it going forward, but just know that creating your own content and schedule is totally fine and doable. You’ll just need to make sure you maintain your pace to keep up. Or, for some of you, make sure you slow down so you don’t burn out!
Once you begin learning vocabulary in WaniKani (or your own system) read the Basic Japanese Pronunciation Guide from the Pronouncing Vocabulary section all the way through to the end. You will learn about long and short vowel sounds, double consonants, dropping sounds (all common stumbling blocks for beginners), and more. You will also learn about pitch accent. Although it may be difficult now, just knowing pitch accent exists and how it works in Japanese will give you a leg up.
Read: Basic Japanese Pronunciation Guide
Okay! Make sure you get started now. Do the work, don’t just plan to do it! Sitting down and starting is the hardest part.
1.6. Learn to Read Katakana
Estimated Time: 2 days to 2 weeks
Prerequisite: Able to read hiragana
Learning katakana is about the same as learning hiragana, with a few Shyamalanian twists. We have yet another mnemonic-based guide for you, and chances are you’ll be able to read katakana within the next few days if you’re willing to put in the work.
You should get to the point where you can read all of the katakana, however slowly, by the time you start unlocking vocabulary in WaniKani (or by the time you start vocabulary in your own kanji method). Although katakana words won’t show up a lot right from the start, there are enough to make it worthwhile. It’s also a good way to spend your extra time while the number of kanji you’re learning is still quite low.
Do it: Learn to Read Katakana
Note: Katakana tends to give learners more trouble than hiragana. This is because it seems to be used less than hiragana and kanji, especially at the beginning stages. Later on, katakana will appear more frequently, but for now simply being able to read katakana is enough. There will be plenty of opportunities to get better at it—just know that reading katakana may not come as quickly as it did with hiragana. And that’s okay. Hiragana and kanji are just more useful right now, so spend your limited time and energy there.
Once you can read each katakana character—no matter how slowly—move on to the next section about typing katakana.
1.7. Learning to Type Katakana
Estimated Time: 1-2 hours
Prerequisites: Able to type hiragana, able to read katakana
Katakana is similar to hiragana in many ways, and thanks to this, learning how to type it should be fairly easy. There are a few differences to figure out, but you will be able to apply your hiragana knowledge to it and progress quickly. Jump to the katakana section of our typing guide and get started.
Read: How to Type Katakana
Note: Make sure you keep working on your kanji! If you’re using WaniKani, just do your reviews as they become available. It’s important to make this a habit. Because WaniKani is a spaced repetition system there must be spaces between reviews. Longer and longer ones, in fact (though it will depend on how well you’re doing). Do your reviews on time and you’ll get through this initial “slow” phase in a week or two. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to your entire Japanese-learning career, so try to be patient. The waiting time is critical to testing your ability to recall information.
1.8. Learning to Type Kanji
Estimated Time: 1-2 hours
Prerequisite: Able to read 20-30 kanji
Before starting this step, make sure you can read a handful of kanji. Twenty or thirty will do just fine. If you’re using WaniKani, this is when you start unlocking vocabulary or are around level 2.
Okay, are you done?
Typing in kanji is a little more complicated than typing in hiragana or katakana, but it still follows similar rules. Learn how to type in kanji using the kanji section of our guide then read to the end. There are some additional tips and tricks in there (punctuation, symbols, etc.) that may come in handy.
Read: How to type kanji
Now you know how to type everything there is to type in Japanese (that is, unless you count kaomoji)! If you can type in English, typing in Japanese is surprisingly easy. With practice, you’ll be able to type it as naturally as you type in your native language.
To continue using this typing knowledge, you’ll need to know more kanji and vocabulary. Once you get there though, you’ll be ready for “The Beginner of Japanese” section!
Before moving on, you should reach level 10 on WaniKani (or around 300 kanji and 1,000 vocabulary words using your own method).
This is an important time in terms of pronunciation too. Make sure you consciously mimic the vocabulary audio. Think about pitch accent as you do it. This work will prepare you for sentences later.
With this kanji knowledge (and good pronunciation, to boot!), grammar is going to come quickly to you. You won’t be spending your grammar study time looking up every other word. Instead, you’ll be able to focus solely on grammar, and you’ll know the contents of 80% of every sentence you see for the first time. When you say these sentences out loud, you won’t be tripping over your tongue because you’ll already be intimately familiar with Japanese sounds and pronunciation. The time you put into kanji, vocabulary, and pronunciation will begin to pay off.
Put your head down, trust in this, and do the work each day.
Go on, get to it, and come back here when you’re done.
2. The Beginner of Japanese: Entering a New Phase
Being a beginner of anything is great. Everything is new, everything feels like real, tangible progress, and even if you’re bad at something, you can’t really tell because you don’t know enough yet anyway.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
At this point, you have a strong base of kanji and vocabulary. If you are using WaniKani, you should be at level 10 or above. If you are doing kanji on your own, or using another resource, you should know the most common meaning and reading of around 300 kanji and 1,000 vocabulary words. If you are using a resource that only teaches you the meaning of a kanji (and not how to read it), that doesn’t count. You need to be able to do the whole thing, not just the easiest 20%.
With this assumption about your knowledge in place, we’re going to go through some options for how you can learn Japanese grammar. This includes using a textbook as well as creating your own grammar program from scratch. We offer some of our own material as well. Most likely, you’ll end up doing a hybrid of the above. No matter what you choose, your foundation of kanji, vocabulary, and pronunciation will make everything much easier. Without it, even the best Japanese textbook will be a frustrating experience.
2.1. Using a Spaced Repetition System For Vocabulary
Estimated Time: 2-4 hours + ongoing
You will learn a lot of vocabulary purely from your kanji studies. As long as you have a good kanji system in place, you shouldn’t worry too much. However, you will definitely need to learn all of the words that do not use kanji too. In the beginning, this will largely be grammatical things, and words that don’t use kanji, from your textbook. Later it will be vocabulary you pick up from signs, manga, and other real life sources.
It’s time to learn how and when to introduce vocabulary words from outside your kanji studies into your study routine. The most important thing is to have a good system in place.
You need to be able to record and store these words so that you can study them later. You also need a good system to handle and process these words. It’s a waste if you record them once and never look at them again.
At your currently level, most of the new words you encounter will probably be hiragana or katakana-only words. Once you start reading more and more Japanese, the number of new words you encounter will increase, so being able to keep track and add these to your routine becomes even more important. For now though, your goal is to develop a habit of collecting, processing, and studying vocabulary that is unfamiliar to you. This should become second nature.
2.1.1. Collecting Vocabulary
Most likely, you will find most of the vocabulary that you want to learn in your Japanese textbook (we’ll cover that really soon!). As I mentioned earlier, these might be words that don’t have kanji, or maybe they’re words that you didn’t learn in WaniKani. There are a lot of words out there and no one resource will teach you all of them.
Once you’ve found some words that you want to learn you need to collect them. How you do this doesn’t matter as much as actually doing it. Put them in a spreadsheet, a tool like Evernote or OneNote, or just write them down on a piece of paper. Make sure wherever you put these new words is easily accessible and make a trigger for yourself that essentially says “if I see a vocabulary word I want to learn, then I add it to my list.”
There are plenty of list-apps and pieces of paper out there, so it’s going to be difficult for me to say what you should use. I’m partial to Evernote and have my own processes built up there. And Airtable is a great spreadsheet app for people who don’t think in math. But maybe you like physical pocket-sized notebooks, to-do lists, your smartphone camera (with a special folder for future processing), or something else.
Whatever you use, make sure it’s easy for you. Figure out what makes sense and make it work. If this step doesn’t happen, everything else will fall apart.
2.1.2. Processing
The next step is processing. I’d recommend you create a habit where every day, week, or month (it depends on how much new vocabulary you want to introduce to your routine) you go through this list and put them into your SRS of choice. What is an SRS? I’m glad you asked.
2.1.3. Adding the Words to Your SRS
If you’ve been using WaniKani, you’ve been using a “Spaced Repetition System” (a.k.a. SRS) this whole time! But you’ll want to use something else for the vocabulary you find out in the wild. For this, we wrote a guide. In it you’ll learn how to collect vocabulary and add them to your SRS.
Read: Spaced Repetition and Japanese: The Definitive Guide
One additional piece of reading I’d recommend is this article on Keyword Mnemonics. For the non-kanji vocabulary you want to learn this is a surprisingly simple (and effective) mnemonic method which will allow you to learn more vocabulary in one sitting, and be able to recall it for longer.
Read: Keyword Mnemonic Method for Learning Japanese Vocabulary
As I said earlier, you won’t be working with a ton of vocabulary at the start. For now, let your kanji studies give you most of your vocabulary. Then, when stray street vocabulary does start coming up, send it through the vocabulary process you’ve built.
Make this a habit.
Habit generally means 3-6 weeks of doing something regularly. And you should start now, because in six weeks you’ll be needing to utilize this habit a lot more.
2.2. Beginning Japanese Grammar
Estimated Time: It’s a mystery
It’s (finally!) time to start learning grammar. If you followed this guide to the letter, you’re probably 2-4+ months into your Japanese studies. If it’s more than that, don’t worry about it. We all go at our own speeds and the important thing is that you kept moving forward. You should know around 300 kanji and 1,000 Japanese vocabulary words, and your pronunciation should be getting better, or at least you’re being conscious about improving it. Now it’s time to kick Japanese grammar’s butt.
Let’s start by internalizing a philosophy. Carry this with you for the rest of your life:
When learning something new, you should already know 80% of it.
This means that each new thing you learn should be a 20% (or smaller) incremental step. A +1 from where you are, rather than a +20 or +100.
Most people go into a textbook with zero knowledge and wind up spending a large chunk of their time looking up words they don’t know. How much of a sentence is vocabulary? Depending on the length, it’s easy to answer “more than 80%.”
So when you’re learning grammar with a textbook, coming into it with prior vocabulary knowledge brings you to that 80%. Leaving you just the grammar, which you can then point your laser-like focus towards. Instead of constantly flipping to the index to look up a word or kanji and deal with context switching when you finally get back to the lesson, all you have to worry about is learning the grammar and nothing else.
That’s the +1 we’re talking about.
Let’s assume for a moment that your Japanese vocabulary knowledge doesn’t get you to 80% (or more). If that’s the case, there are a few possible reasons:
- You don’t know enough vocabulary: If you don’t know a lot of the words in a sentence before studying with it, then you don’t understand 80% of the sentence before you start. In this case, go back to your kanji/vocabulary studies for a while and reconsider the level of the resource you’re using. Another solution would be to pull the vocabulary from the resource, study them with your SRS method, and then come back once you’ve learned them.
- You don’t know enough grammar: Imagine you’re looking at a sentence that contains three separate grammar points. If you’re being taught one of the three, but you don’t know the other two, you’re dipping way below that ideal 80%.
- The sentence is very short: If a phrase only has three parts (ex. “[vocabulary] + [particle] + [vocabulary]”), and you don’t know one of them, you’re going to be at 66%. In cases like this, you can make an exception. Knowing 66% of a three piece phrase, or 75% of a four piece phrase is acceptable. This will be very common in the beginning.
That’s the philosophy we’re working off of going forward, so double-check that you have that base of kanji and vocab before continuing with this guide. Your failure rate increases dramatically if this foundation is weak!
2.3. A Beginner’s Japanese Textbook / Program
Estimated Time: 1-3 months
It’s time to take our philosophy and apply it to a beginner textbook. All the things that would have normally tripped you up (the things teachers and textbooks have a tough time explaining, due to the curse of knowledge) should now be less difficult to deal with. And with kanji and vocabulary already in your tool belt, learning grammar should be much more interesting. You won’t be spending 90% of your time and energy on looking up kanji and vocabulary you don’t know. Instead, you’ll just be doing it.
With this base knowledge, choosing a specific textbook or program to follow becomes less important, but there are still many “good” textbooks and many “bad” textbooks out there. Most will teach you the same content one way or another, so pick one that you feel fits your learning style.
To help you with this choice, we wrote a guide:
Whatever you end up choosing, get started right away. It’s so easy for people to get trapped in a “preparation loop” where they spend all of their time planning and getting ready, only to stop before any actual work gets done.
At this point you will focus on working through your textbook of choice. Try to progress through the entire thing from beginning to end. Doing this will create a strong foundation of Japanese inside of you, something you can use to base other knowledge off of.
Once all of the basic, foundational grammar is in place you’ll be able to really accelerate and work toward fluency.
It will take around 2-6 months to get through most beginner Japanese textbooks. Though, this does depend on how much time you have to spend on your studies and what grammar method you choose. You can even go through a couple different textbooks at the same time, if you want. What one textbook doesn’t teach well, another probably does. That being said, if you don’t feel like you understand a concept, or you want to know more, there’s plenty of ways to get your questions answered. I recommend not skipping questions—instead, follow your curiosity! Learning is supposed to be fun, though school may have “taught” you otherwise.
Read the next section as you start your textbook studies. You’ll eventually run into something you don’t know that your textbook doesn’t explain. You might as well be ready for it.
2.4. Answering Your Japanese Language Questions
As you’re going through your textbook, you’re going to run into things you don’t understand. Or, you’ll find you don’t know 80% anymore. It’s not necessarily a failure of your textbook, it’s just that many of them were designed for teachers to use in a classroom. They expect someone to be there to answer questions for you. Or, there just isn’t enough paper in the world to cover everything.
Not to worry. When you run into something you don’t understand you can look it up. No matter what kind of question you’re asking or answer you’re searching for, we wrote up a guide that will tell you how to find anything Japanese language related:
Note: You should continue to use WaniKani (or whatever kanji learning method you chose) as you continue on. You should keep going until you finish, and/or you reach the end of this guide. It is important to keep your kanji-vocabulary knowledge ahead of your grammar knowledge at all times. If you don’t, that 80% ratio will tick down until your studies no longer feel sustainable or fun.
2.5. Alternative: Learning Japanese Grammar On Your Own
Estimated Time: 1-3 months
By gathering all that kanji and vocabulary knowledge you’re making it possible to learn grammar
