Japanese is said to be one of the most difficult languages to learn for native speakers of western languages, and cited as proof are the average number of hours to proficiency, the tales of anyone who’s given up trying, and the limited abilities of many who started learning as adults.

But what this line of reasoning misses some important points:

  1. Most language teaching methods are very ineffective.
  2. Length of time to mastery is not the same thing as difficulty.

Compared to most languages, Japanese grammar is fairly simple and regular. There are only a few conjugations and almost all of the verbs are regular. The issues that most westerners have is simply that it’s very different. Part of being different is that the syntax isn’t the same, and the brain must learn to accept that syntax on its own terms instead of through the lens of other languages. But the other part is that the body of idioms, colocations, and cultural influence is entirely different. We speakers of European languages often take for granted just how similar our languages are. From Portugal to Russia, our methods and manners of expression have commingled for centuries based on the same bodies of literature and law, and all share the influences from Latin and Greek. If you have the grammar and vocabulary of another European language, then it’s saying what you want to say is natural–because you can say it pretty much how you would in your native tongue.

But Japanese isn’t so similar to what we know. We have to empty our cup to accept something new, and we have to accept that just a lot to expose ourselves to in order to gain fluency. If you enjoy the process, that just means there’s more fun to be had exploring (and there’s certainly more media available for that process than any other langauge save English.). Children don’t waste time feeling aggravated by their limited understanding of advanced grammar or cultural nuance, but instead they just absorb whatever they come across. So should we.

But if we accept that Japanese is different, how do we go about learning it?

First: Get a grammar map

It would be a very dry experience to use a grammar reference as a primary learning experience, but there are some very accessible grammar references that can be illuminating as a study for beginners who have questions early in the process. Since Japanese is so regular, we can keep a simple syntax reference at hand and expect that it won’t steer us wrong.

  • Richard Webb’s “80/20 Japanese” cheat sheets and textbook are excellent references: https://8020japanese.com/grammar-cheat-sheet/
  • Tae Kim’s “Guide to Japanese” has been evolving since it was a Usenet post in the 1990s, and it remains justifiably respected. It’s been split into a grammar reference and explanatory guide. Unfortunately, the current state of the website leaves the sidebar as the primary navigation
    • http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/
    • http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/complete/
  • If you can get stomach the presentation style that treads right through the uncanney valley, “Organic Japanese” is a YouTube channel with a treasure trove of explanations that are an excellent balance of being concise and understandable without sacrificing correctness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvH9vH60Ig

Dictionaries

The best general dictionary is, hands down, Denshi Jisho: https://jisho.org/

Also useful are dictionaries of translations which are useful for either deciphering an unfamiliar stucture or ensuring that there is precedent for the way you’ve translated something.

  • https://tatoeba.org/eng/
  • https://www.linguee.com/english-japanese

Textbooks/Courses

There are three primary textbooks used by self-study learners:

  • Genki is a proper college textbook that contains a structure and sufficient information within to make it useful outside of class. https://omgjapan.com/products/genki-complete-5-book-bundle
  • Japanese From Zero is aimed specifically at the independent learner. The book and its associated video lessons favors a casual, conversational style over the rigor and rigidity of a university textbook. It’s available as a series of books or as an online course, and both are supported by a large body of video lessons as well as a community and staff instructors. https://www.yesjapan.com/
  • Minna no Nihongo has a very high reputation as a college textbook. However, using it for self-study requires a focused and self-motivated student. For example, from the beginning its Japanese examples are written in hiragana/katakana rather than in romaji. https://omgjapan.com/pages/minna-no-nihongo

Video Courses

Between 1984 and 1995, The Japan Foundation published a video course in two parts, “Let’s Learn Japanese: Basic 1” and “Let’s Learn Japanese: Basaic 2”. It presented grammar through drama and skits rather than lecture.

It feels very dated, but it was very genuine and highly effective.

It is unfortunately out of print. Finding available sources is an exercise left to the reader.

SRS

Since there is memorizaiton involved, many people deliberately used spaced reptition techniques to aid in memorizaiton. Spaced repetition is the practice of repeating information in graduated intervals to help store information in long term memory. It is remarkably effective–as close as it comes to hacking your brain.

Fortunately, there are flashcard programs that automate this process. Anki is a very popular tool for this purpose. https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Writing/Reading

Hiragana and Katakana

Japanese has two different phonetic writing systems, and both are necessary. That sounds crazy on its face, but if you consider that the Roman alphabet has uppercase and lowercase letters then it doesn’t sound so bad. Japanese at least has the decency to use them for different purposes (usually). Some people use mnemonics for learning t hem, but if you drill writing them and then drill reading them with flash cards, then you can have them down in a few days.

Just like the alphabet has extra little flourishes on a serif font that you wouldn’t expect to reproduce in handwriting without a quill pen, so too does Japanese writing have extra little flourishes that you shouldn’t worry about reproducing unless you are writing with a brush. If you are practicing with a pencil or ballpoint pen, yours should look like the “sans serif” equivalent.

Hiragana practice sheets: http://japanese-lesson.com/resources/pdf/characters/hiragana_writing_practice_sheets.pdf

Katakana practice sheets: http://japanese-lesson.com/resources/pdf/characters/katakana_writing_practice_sheets.pdf

Studying Kanji

Kanji are the Chinese characters used by Japan for most vocabulary. They seem daunting because people will tell you that there are thousands of them, but the truth is that those thousands are not thousands of unique characters. Just like many words are made up of a small number of letters, so to are many kanji made up of a small number of “radicals”. Once you learn to recognize those, remembering the kanji becomes much, much easier. There is still the issue of alternate pronunciations, but if you managed English spelling you can do that.

The best resource currently available for studying kanji in a radical-focused method is WaniKani: https://www.wanikani.com/

Machine translation

Machine translation is not at all reliable for going between western and eastern languages, but there are times when it can be helpful as a starting point to decipher or express something.

  • The most obvious is Google Translate, but it has very limited ability of literal, formal speech: https://translate.google.com
  • DeepL is surprisingly good at understanding natural speech and providing fairly natural translations: https://www.deepl.com/en/translator#ja/en/

References for further study

  • For cases where you know how to say something in English and want examples of how to communicate the same idea in Japanese, there is “Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication” by Taeko Kamiya https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770029837/
  • For cases where you encounter Japanese grammar and want examples of how that might be expressed in English, there are
    • Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770029837/
    • Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789007758/
    • Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789012956/

Additional reading:

  • “Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770028024/
  • “Common Japanese Collocations: A Learner’s Guide to Frequent Word Pairings”: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568365578/
  • “Japanese Core Words and Phrases: Things You Can’t Find in a Dictionary” by Kakuko Shoji https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568364881/
  • “How to Sound Intelligent in Japanese: A Vocabulary Builder” by https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568364180/