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Article on studying Japanese.

I’m sure that you already know few, simple words of Japanese and you’re now itching to know so more. But as with so many other things, an insurmountable-like wall approaches, which is in this case studying. So the main focus on this article is how to learn Japanese painlessly. While we feel that encouraging people to study languages for fun, one still shouldn’t take learning them too lightly. It will still require plenty of time and dedication. So if you feel that you are ready to take on this challenge, please read on.

First off, we’ll start with your current level of Japanese and your aptitude for learning Japanese.

There are basically two ways of studying and people often fall into one of the two groups depending on which way works better for them. First of all, there are those who “live” with the language. These people usually do (relatively) bad when trying to study a list of words or phrases, as a list it doesn’t quite seem to come naturally or relate to the real world. It also takes a longer time to learn the language basics, but once learned, it comes more naturally and you get the “feel” for what the person is saying, even when using grammar or phrases that one has come across only a few times. Also these people have a tendency to play it by ear when translating, as for them, it’s far from exact science (which it isn’t anyway).

The second group learns by the book. This often includes reading grammatical teaching material and word listings and referring to them often. Learning this way is by far the fastest and most efficient way for them. While using the language at first will be mostly rigid at best, once they get comfortable with the language, they’ll have a large, ready arsenal of words and phrases in their use.

Now obviously majority people fall somewhere in between. From what I’ve seen, some seem to have serious problems when studying languages. Most of this probably attributes to a lack of interest in the subject (yes, you all remember your French classes, don’t you), but sad truth is that there are those who simply aren’t very good at languages even if they have the determination to learn. It’ll most likely mean more hard work and trouble learning no matter how hard they try. My friendly advice for them would be to drop the whole idea altogether and spend their time on something they are truly good at and improve themselves that way. And if not, I’ll wish them good luck in their endeavours.

Those of you who feel that you belong to the second group, I’d suggest you go pick up your books and word lists and go memorize. I’m afraid there’s little else I can offer you, as this is most likely the best way for you to study. But I’m sure that it won’t hurt to read through this article, even though it may mostly apply to the first group only. As for me, you probably already guessed that I belong to the first group. That settled, we’re now moving on to the main point of this article:

Tips on how to study Japanese painlessly (roughly in the order of easiness/trouble/level):

When watching anime, try to replay the words that were said earlier so you get the feel for it. The chances are that you’ll soon notice a recurrence and perhaps the English translation will take a piggyback ride with it and you’ll have learned a new word/phrase.
When listening to music, take the lyrics out so you can read them at the same time. Once you’re skilled enough, you can take out the English translation only and fill in the gaps in your knowledge. But for now, try reading the romaji only so you can get acquainted with the difference between spoken and written Japanese. If something seems vaguely familiar, check out the English translation. If it was what you thought it was, you’re making progress, since next time you might not have to check it again.
Pick some easy sentences that you are likely to remember and make a long list of them. Avoid simple ones or word listings, which you are likely to forget. Even if you do remember them, you’ll most likely still miss them in a conversation since the words were used in a completely different way than you originally thought. Therefore getting sentences with a translation will not only give you feel for the words, but also a rough idea on how the grammar, prefixes and suffixes work. There are a few sites, which follow just this principle. An excellent one is http://maktos.jimmyseal.net/jip.html, which certainly deserves to be checked out. More links can be found from our links section.
Try translating songs. Now this isn’t even close to as hard as it sounds, that is, if you choose your songs right. Most songs have simple lyrics and plenty of translations available (some more correct than others so better watch out!). Sites such as www.animelyrics.com have some good translations, but also several rotten ones to ruin the otherwise nice basket. There are some other quality sites too, such as www.corichan.com, www.mognet.net and plenty of others out there too. Once you have your romaji and the translated version in front of you, you can start from scratch and start translating, making good use of your online dictionary or dictionary program (manual paper ones are old fashioned and terribly slow for alphabetically-handicapped such as myself). You can check out the hard words that you just can’t solve from the translation, or struggle with them until the nightmares of your night’s studying will surely make you remember.
The second approach is to skim quickly through the English translation and try and figure out which unknown words mean what, but avoid jumping over many words since that way you’ll only fool yourself. This is also a great way of learning when on the move, using a palm or a pocket pc (or even just a printout) and after some practising, you can listen to the song while reading the translation and make sense of every word sung. Please note, that even though it may seem a waste of time since you don’t have the time to memorize anything, it’s actually quite an effective way of learning new words and reviewing old with minimal effort. You’ll notice it after a while, unless you belong to the second group mentioned earlier. Also note that palms and pocket pcs have free Japanese dictionary programs available and make excellent tools for studying, as you’ll essentially have everything you need in one portable package.
Once in a while, avoid studying entirely. While not studying at all won’t help you learn anything, it may help keep your mind fresh and active when it comes to future studying. You also might get a new perspective on the language and your language skills you’ve already attained.
Play those “Learn Japanese today!” type of educational audiotapes. They are great when relaxing, as they will send you fast asleep. You might even learn something, but this I do not guarantee. The educational videos available can be of more use, but in my opinion apart from being low-level, they also advance far too slow and you’ll just feel like you’re wasting your time.

Here are some of my points of view on the following:

Teachers and Japanese classes.

Please note that I haven’t taken any Japanese classes so therefore my opinions may be a bit biased, if not just plain wrong. However, I feel that real life teachers and Japanese classes are far from needed. You can do well alone, just by following the tips above. There are some undeniably good points in taking part in classes. You’ll practically be forced to learn all the basics properly, leaving you with a solid foundation to build your future studies on. The teacher will follow the course logically and one step at a time, and therefore you’ll avoid feeling blue from the weight of all the new words you don’t know. Also you’ll be able to ask anything that bothers you and finding the answer won’t take hours of searching. And for us lazy ones, it may also force us to actually study which will result in making faster progress than what you’d usually achieve. Many do not even have the chance to take part in Japanese classes, and for those I can assure that you can still study Japanese if you really put your mind to it. Depending on the person, it may not even hinder you one bit.

Teaching material & Kanji books. (ie. books you borrow or buy irl)

Self-studying from in front of the monitor screen can be tiresome at best. It’s great to have a physical book to look at once in a while. When out and aboutm lying in bed or otherwise feeling like you can no longer use that devilish machine that consumes all of our time. It’ll also most likely be in a more logical order, complete and mostly free of errors, unlike so many unfinished online sites. It really does depend on your preference on the matter, but it’ll probably be good to have at least one grammar book and one kanji book if nothing else. They’ll be useful when you need to review something particular and often saves you time by not having to google. I’d still suggest leaving simplified Japanese learning material alone, as you can find similar from the net for free which'll soon become useless anyway, once your Japanese skill level has surpassed it. I myself have Barron’s “Japanese Grammar” By Carol and Nobuo Akiyama, which is an excellent 241 page long small grammar book that can take a beating too. For kanji I have a P.G. O’Neill’s “Essential kanji” which will be the last kanji book you’ll ever need (but not necessarily the first one). It contains 2000 most used Japanese kanji and their readings, but only few, short examples. I believe this is the one that is used in most universities. I also have Barron’s “Japanese Idioms” which contain Japanese idioms that come with long and useful example sentences. Even if you feel you don’t need to learn all the idioms, the example sentences will come in handy. With a rather cheap price and around 400 pages, it makes fine reading.

Some additional suggestion:

Whatever you do, don’t get stuck with one single word, grammatically difficult clause or a problem you just can’t find an answer for. You most likely won’t need it quite yet anyhow. And if you do, you’ll surely be reminded plenty of times in the future. It’s best to leave the problematic items at the back of your head until you stumble on the correct answer. Like that you can save a lot of time you’d otherwise spend just searching for stuff and invest it on learning easier, but equally important things.

Having a kanji version of the text helps a lot. By searching with the kanji, you can quickly see what the general idea behind the word is even if the ending suffix escapes you.

Alt-tabbing between a dictionary and your anime/text can be quite useful when learning new words. Check out some good hotkey scripting tools such as http://www.autohotkey.com/, where you can automate the pausing of the video and activation of the dictionary and much more.

Additional tips and additions are welcomed. Just pm me (Flipin), for any corrections or suggestions.

This more or less concludes the article “Tips on learning Japanese”. There will no doubt be future revisions and additions, so there’s no harm in checking this again once in a while. I hope some of the tips gave you some new ideas on how to learn Japanese and that you’ll have a great time doing so.

Content by Flipin