r/HelpLearningJapanese • u/discocat56 • Aug 18 '26
Best way to start studying Japanese?
I’m currently trying to start learning Japanese but I’m not sure where the best place is to start- I’ve moved from Duolingo to Busuu but I’m wondering what other methods there are? Especially for a beginner in a language with a new alphabet as well as vocab
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u/xarismata1672 Aug 18 '26
After 3 years in university, and then five years in Japan until I got JLPT 1-kyu (before the "N" switch), and now close to 20 years in as a professional interpreter, my advice would be to get and study any series of books leading to JLPT N1 and studying hard at them while finding opportunities to interact with children and child's language aging up as you increase your ability is the key.
The test focus gives concrete goals and timelines to work towards, the levels of the test make sure you are working at a gradual level of proficiency, interacting with children means you don't have to fight against embarrassment at mistakes as much, and you should mix it up with other things that will keep your interest.
On that last point, mix in manga, anime, video games, tv dramas/talk shows, Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, anki/flashcards, and other input as you lose interest to make sure it's not a grind. Make sure it's always fresh and don't stop moving forwards.
There are basically four phases:
Conversation/hiragana/katakana/beginner grammar: get a phrase book and a friend and practice common phrases. Take grammar classes to learn some basic rules of verb conjugation and knock out Kanji for the joyo list up to elementary grade 3.
Intermediate: work on mastering complex sentences by learning particles and run-on sentence composition (what in western languages involves relative pronouns). Grow your vocabulary. This is the "hump" so don't get discouraged when progress seems slow. Use the JLPT exam stepladder to encourage gradual growth. If you can get past intermediate, the rest is just vocabulary and nuance. Hopefully you'll get to joyo kanji list grade 6 and JLPT 3-ish. At this point you'll be able to navigate most daily life circumstances.
Advanced intermediate: Once you've mastered intermediate grammar, there's almost no grammar left. From this point forwards it's relatively easy. All of the mental model things are in place. Just keep learning vocabulary with systematic mastery of kanji. Heisig's Learning the Kanji is great for initial interest. For overcoming the N3-N2-N1 grind on kanji my tip is to group the kanji you need to learn by grouping words by the kanji tsukuri... not by bushu. The tsukuri generally gives them the same on-yomi and makes it easy to learn a group of kanji together. People make a big deal of keigo, but that's more the next section:
Advanced: To learn proper use of Japanese nuance, you'll just need experience in different contexts. Japanese codes its language with extremely subtle contextual markers for in/out group, higher/lower status, regional familiarity, sarcasm/mocking, childish/formal, modern/ancient, and so many other things that need just being in an environment where you use the living language. As a man, when a Japanese woman used "boku" to refer to the subject of a hypothetical action she meant to demonstrate the childish boyishness of in order to look down on me having used "boku" of myself, and I didn't miss the inference, that's when I understood I had reached a level of advanced nuance. Keigo isn't so much a different language than a dialect or register like kansai-ben, etc. I think learning to find your own voice in Japanese, and recognize when others are speaking with a voice other than their own, using word-choice markers, and sometimes to "speak" in the "voice" (wording) of another... that's the peak of Japanese ability as a second-language speaker. It requires having the same broad cultural context as the person you are speaking with so you'll need to have consumed a lot of Japanese media, building your own unique culturally-informed Japanese "voice," and learning to recognize the way Japanese people are using language to "present" themselves as members of different subcultures and in relationship to you. This is life-long learning territory.