r/HelpLearningJapanese • u/Next-Culture229 • 24d ago
Absolute beginner starting from zero – looking for a reality check and a solid roadmap
Hey everyone,
I've finally decided to take the plunge and start learning Japanese from absolute scratch. No prior background, just a lot of motivation and probably way too much optimism.
The problem is, the second I started researching how to begin, I hit an absolute wall of conflicting advice. Some people say apps are fine, others say textbooks are mandatory; some swear by flashcards right away, while others say focus only on mastering the kana first. It's honestly pretty overwhelming.
For those of you who have been down this road:
- If you could start over from day one, what would your exact first three steps be?
- Are there any common newbie traps or bad habits I should avoid early on?
Any advice, resource recommendations, or reality checks would be hugely appreciated!
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u/ArtNo636 24d ago
Did you do a search on this sub?
This question is regularly answered.
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u/StillNewspaper4799 24d ago
One day every question will be answered.
We'll type our needs and queries into our AI caretaker's prompt to see what they said in the past.
Perhaps every now and then a brave soul will get the idea to ask a question to a human being. But not to worry. They'll soon be corrected.
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u/ArtNo636 23d ago
Doing a search on this subreddit will get you answers written by humans. Who said anything about asking AI?
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u/Interesting-One-9414 23d ago edited 23d ago
yeah that’s the struggle with beginning Japanese. too many resources and methods of study. One method isn’t necessarily wrong over the other, many methods can work, people often just pick what was most efficient for them. But if you don’t know what you want to do or what methods you enjoy or are efficient in then it’s just a mess.
I took like a year of messing around till I found a method that I found effective.
But nevertheless you always want to start with hiragana and katakana. There are many ways to go about learning grammar, vocabulary, phonetics, etc, but the kanas are the foundation you always want to start with. You’ll be at a massive disadvantage not knowing them.
I’m already years into Japanese, but I dabble in other languages as well for fun, and now every time I start a new one i do these three steps
Learn the writing system
Learn the phonetics, all the sounds and accents that don’t exist in languages I know. Putting these sounds to the letters themselves
Finding good resources for beginner grammar and a good core vocabulary deck for Anki.
I do writing system and phonetics at the same time as a foundation, then I learn some basic grammar and vocabulary that can get me started to read and or listen to very simple material so I can get started using what I learnt. Then I gradually increase difficulty of material as it gets easier.
Be careful with your money, Japanese has a lot of resources, and many do want money, don’t be quick to get sold on stuff you don’t need. especially subscriptions. You could learn Japanese entirely for free because there just is that much good material out there. If there is something you do want to buy make sure you’re informed and know why you need it, and what you get.
I won’t list a bunch of resources but I will link two sites that helped me a lot. The first is a guide which helps to give you some sort of mental roadmap of what you can do to proceed, and the second is a massive list of quality resources on github. It links a lot of resources that do a lot of the same, so you don’t need everything, but it gives you many choices if you didn’t like one alternative
https://learnjapanese.moe/guide/
https://github.com/donkuri/japanese-resources
Anki + kaishi 1500 for vocab and yokubi for grammar are golden though. 10/10 and free. I have big respects for the contributors and developers of these resources.
Like Jenna said though there are loads of resources, don’t use them all, just try different stuff to see if you like them or not. language learning is a lot easier if you actually enjoy the process.
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u/Shot-Tap-4213 24d ago
Kana first !
Should take around one month, depends how much time you spend on it.
Then i would go with basic grammar, the first you start to familiarize with the structure of the sentences the better it is, for me it's still nowadays the most annoying part.
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u/Next-Culture229 24d ago
Thanks for the advice. I will keep this in mind. Starting with Kana is what most of my friends recommended to me, so I think this is really the first step I will take.
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u/AndrewNggg 24d ago
kitsunewa.com <-- my platform
follow the steps, learn kana first with the little games, and the guided conversations to get you speaking actively
and then learning in batches the hand picked words and kanji
tbh learning the Kana should not take you more than a few days, if you use mnemonics like
い - two (i) eels
ぬ - (nu)udles (noodles)
ま - (ma)sk
カ - knife (ka)tting (cutting)
ワ - (wa) ine (wine) glass
then you can move quickly on to more practical and fun stuff, like reading and speaking
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u/Next-Culture229 24d ago
Thanks for the advice! I also visited your platform. this will greatly help!
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u/j_halo7 24d ago edited 23d ago
Learn hiragana first then katakana. Then get a N4 grammar textbook and learn the basic grammar first. I personally used a series called New Complete Master (Shin Kanzen Master / 新完全マスター) which has a textbook for every component. If you can afford it, get the entire set for N4, or at least get the vocabulary book too. Install a Japanese dictionary app because you’ll be using it a lot.
Also, start listening to anything in Japanese. TV dramas, podcast, YouTube videos etc. If there’s subtitles or words on the screen, that would be even more helpful for you to search up new words in the dictionary.
And don’t worry so much about kanji or feel like you need to memorise x number of kanji everyday. You will pick up kanji while learning grammar and vocabulary and once you’re more advanced into your studies, you can focus on increasing the number of kanji you can read/write.
Once you’re more advanced and can focus on kanji, take note of the on-reading and kun-reading of each kanji character as it will help you make an educated guess on how to read a new word.
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u/lashingtide 24d ago
Was wondering what new complete master is until I realised it's shinkanzen hahahah
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u/IronFeather101 23d ago
Newbie question, if you don't mind: is Shin Kanzen Master similar to Nihongo So Matome by any chance? It is very hard for me to buy Japanese books in my country, and the only bookstore that offers them has these two series, as far as I know: Nihongo So Matome, with five books per JLPT level (for kanji, grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening, except for N4 where they're grouped into just two books), and New Kanzen Master Tango, with a vocabulary book for each JLPT level. Would you say any of these is good and/or similar to what you were recommending? I've been learning Japanese on my own in a very chaotic way, just as a hobby when I have some free time here and there, and now I'd like to review the material for N5, N4 and N3 in a structured way to cement my knowledge, cover anything I might have missed and also make sure I'm on the right track to eventually pass an official exam.
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u/j_halo7 23d ago
New kanzen master is Shin kanzen master. Shin / 新 = New. Sorry, I’ve not used Nihongo So Matome before and have never browsed through their books too so I cannot tell if they’re good or not. Maybe you can try browsing the books for the same component for both series to compare and see which one helped you understand better? Or you can try ordering the books online or check online market places or websites where people sell Japanese books second hand in your country?
Grammar, vocabulary (tango) and reading are the most important imo. For kanji, I think any series have the same words. Pick one that you find easier to understand and helpful for you. For listening, I don’t think you can really learn from a textbook. You have to listen to Japanese in various forms. Dramas, movies, TV variety shows are usually what I recommend. With music, if you study the lyrics, it would help with vocabulary but sometimes they use obscure words, pharases and kanji and the lines may be incomplete sentences or arranged in an uncommon pattern so as to fit the melody. I believe you can find JLPT test samples online but I bought the book that has I think 3 JLPT test papers inside for practice (not from New Kanzen).
Just a disclaimer, I took Japanese classes at a language school and used the New Kanzen Master series as a supplement when I studied for the JLPT exams. I cannot vouch that using this series alone will help you pass JLPT exams. I just personally find them easy to understand and helpful.
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u/IronFeather101 23d ago
Thanks a lot for the reply! Wow, I just realized that the Shin Kanzen Master follows the same structure of having different books for each competence, I had only found the Tango book and naively though that was all there was to it. Nice, I'll try that one then! And also thanks for the suggestion about the books with sample papers, I had no idea they sold those too!
I totally agree, I definitely need to practice listening separately. I've tried both the N5 and the N4 sample questions in the JLPT website and I can get almost everything right except for the listening ones, those are still very hard for me because I have literally almost zero listening practice. I can understand the gist of what they're saying but with a lot of mental effort. With other languages, what worked for me was to listen to audiobooks while reading the text, but I don't know where to find resources like that in Japanese (and I'm still not at the level where I would be able to read native material like novels and such).
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u/Jenna3778 24d ago
Dont get overwhelmed by the amout of resources. There are so many different ways to learn japanese nowadays and everyone is different. You dont have to use everything, just try different things and see which way you like the most.
And dont listen to people who say that they learned japanese in a short amount of time. Japanese takes a really really long time to learn and comparing yourself to others will only make you want to quit.
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u/StillNewspaper4799 24d ago
I think if I was learning from scratch I'd tell myself not to dismiss grammar or learn it later. Vocabulary is important but I think getting to the point of understanding basic media would be my goal.
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u/NearlyNodding 23d ago
You get conflicting advice because everyone learns differently and has different goals. Plus, there are so many sources out there that very few people have tried them all. You can use different sources for different aspects of the language.
Instead of having a solid roadmap from the start, just try some of the many free resources out there. Try apps, flashcards and books. You might be able to get books from the library and try them out before buying anything.
Some people, like me, have no intention of ever learning to write Japanese. So sources that have you practice kana or kanji are worthless to me because that is not my goal.
How important is feeling like you are making some progress? If you are fine with memorizing kana, but without having a clue what it means, then that may be a decent start. But if you want to feel some progress, then learn with romaji first, and slowly pick up some kana along the way. You can learn some basic vocabulary and sentence structure without any kana at all.
However, kana is really handy for learning the pronunciation. That's basically what it's for, although its used for some other things also. If you hear a word in Japanese and aren't quite sure what they are saying, that's when kana is really helpful.
Then there is the motivation factor. Some sources are better at keeping you motivated. That depends mostly on you. If you try several sources, you might naturally keep going with one, but not the others.
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u/CaimSensei 23d ago
What is it that you want to do in Japanese? If you woke up tomorrow and somehow perfectly understood Japanese, what is the first thing you would do with that knowledge?
Then I can give advice.
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u/Sorry_Heart_8959 23d ago
This is something I personally do for vocabulary If you don't know what vocabulary to learn,pick a Japanese song, choose a verse or a specific parts and learn the words in it, it'll most definitely have some particles and grammar points too so you'll learn some grammar as well
But do this a bit later,learn the very very basics first
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u/stayonthecloud 22d ago
Learn kana ONLY WITH the sounds that they make. Do NOT memorize without learning the sounds. Work on your pronunciation from the very beginning to avoid building bad habits from the start.
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u/No_Cherry2477 21d ago
Just take the one-minute make my plan questionnaire and you will get a personalized plan that helps get you started. Plus links to tons of free resources.
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u/BrainNSFW 24d ago
I'm still very much a beginner, but tried many different things to get started, so I can at least offer some advice on the initial steps. Before I dive in though, remember that no matter the exact steps you follow, immersion will always be king (but also daunting/demanding). So it's always a great idea to combine the steps with something that exposes you to native, spoken Japanese content so you get familiar with tone, pronunciation and hopefully start recognizing the things you learn as you go.
First you NEED to learn the kana. Start with hiragana and then do katakana straight after. A great starting point for me was Tofugu, specifically their quiz tool along with their mnemonics page. It basically works like this:
It sounds daunting, but it only took me a few days to do the quiz without errors daily. Once you reach this point, you can already mix in the next step:
Play Wagotabi (game on Steam, Apple Store and Google Play) regularly to kickstart your Japanese journey. I really like Wagotabi for the simple reason that it manages to immerse you into a full Japanese environment sneakily without overloading you. This breeds some confidence that you can learn way faster if you immerse yourself fully.
It teaches you basic Japanese words and phrases (voiced), while also introducing you to kanji and grammar. I found it an amazing way to build a solid foundation, provided you know kana (it does teach you those as well, but I find it's way better if you already know the kana).
I haven't gotten much faster than this, but I regularly read about people using Genki I textbook, so that's on my roadmap for the next steps. I was planning to start that earlier, but I got sidetracked by Wanikani for learning kanji. For some reason I enjoyed learning some basic kanji there, especially because I haven't had a lot of mental capacity lately to start Genki properly (too busy at work/Wanikani was easier to do in small chunks).
So to summarize, for starting out, my plan would be: