There is a common misconception that learning Japanese is hard. Do you know why Japanese is hard? It’s because the way Japanese is taught makes it so! Here are a few of my gripes; hopefully this will keep you from making the same mistakes I did.
The writing system
Everyone knows this problem: you don’t start learning kanji until very late into your education. Some textbooks don’t even start off using hiragana or katakana, instead relying on almost unintelligible romaji transcriptions. This inevitably slows learners down, as they later have to catch up on learning the new scripts *while at the same time* taking in increasingly more difficult vocabulary and grammar.
I get it. Japanese is completely different from most other languages, and teachers don’t want to overwhelm their students. They start you off easy, get you used to the sounds and flow of the language. Only then do they let you start learning how to read and write… Maybe I’m cynical, but I think this is based on the false premise that learners of Japanese are too stupid to handle everything at once.
I’ve met so many people who have lived in Japan for years but never bothered to learn the writing system. Imagine, spending a decade living somewhere where you can’t even read anything! If you’ve only learned things through basic conversation, of course you would think learning Japanese is hard.
I was fortunate enough to have a very strict Japanese teacher in university. She pushed us to learn hiragana and katakana in just a week, then threw us right into kanji. She knew we could handle it, and it definitely helped us in the long run.
Contrast that with what I’ve found to be a favorite textbook here in Japan: Minna no Nihongo, Romaji version.
Do yourself a favor and just skip anything with romaji. Please.
Let me give you an example why kanji helps. Some of the first kanji you learn are 日, meaning day, and 休, meaning rest. Even if you’ve never seen the word 休日 before, you can probably guess that it means a day off. If you’ve only studied Japanese through romaji, however, you’d have no way of connecting the sound kyuujitsu with its meaning, especially since jitsu is a relatively uncommon way to read the character 日.
When I don’t know the word for something, I string together kanji that are close in meaning to what I want, and you know what? A lot of the times I’m right. Sure, learning kanji might be hard, but not learning kanji is harder.
Verb forms
In my early Japanese classes, I very much disliked the way they introduced formal and informal language. Many textbooks start you off learning the -です/ます verb forms because it’s considered the polite way of speaking, and “if you’re ever going to visit Japan, you need to be able to speak politely.”
While I understand the intent… If you’re at such a beginner level, literally no one will hold it against you if you don’t speak “politely”. Even after achieving fluency, a slip-up in formality will very rarely be held against a non-native speaker.
There are also so many levels of formal speaking that learning just one form won’t get you very far. In fact, I would say -です/ます is the verb form I use least now. It’s too formal for your friends and too casual for your boss, leaving very little occasion for use.
The next form our textbook taught us was the -て form, which instantly threw me into a world of confusion. I didn’t understand what this form was for and I couldn’t remember how to conjugate the verbs properly. The reason I struggled so much? Only after we had learned the -て form did we FINALLY move on to plain form! Aka, the base form of a verb that you need to know in order to conjugate it. Imagine how frustrated I was, to struggle through memorizing a bunch of new verbs and their forms and to later find out there was actually logic behind it. I basically had to relearn all the verbs we had already covered.
How you SHOULD learn
There are pros and cons to every method of learning a language. As someone with experience with many different styles of textbooks, university classes, and self-learning, let me give you some advice.
Spend your first few days or weeks (however long it takes) just memorizing the basic hiragana and katakana scripts. Or, if you want, skip katakana until later since it’s not used as much anyway. Don’t even bother learning actual words; just practice how to write and pronounce everything.
Once you’re comfortable, move on to learning basic vocabulary and phrases. Learn the hiragana AND kanji together. Trust me, the early kanji are not difficult at all; if a Japanese first grader can do it, so can you! The sooner you get kanji into your head the better because there’s just so many of them. In addition, having a lot of kanji under your belt will enable you to guess the meanings of new words. Your reading level will skyrocket.
From there you can try simple sentence construction. As far as verbs go, focus on their plain form from the very start! Then move on to -て form, since it’s needed to conjugate verbs and allows you to form longer sentences. Other verb forms won’t be too hard to figure out once you’ve got these basics down.
Getting past the basics
The rest of your language learning will depend on your individual learning style, which is why it’s hard to give advice that will work for everyone.
The best form of studying for you will ultimately depend on your goals. For example, if you are learning Japanese for fun, you don’t have to bother learning how to write kanji by hand. If you plan to study or live in Japan at some point, you definitely should spend some time learning how to write; it helps with memorization and you’ll notice the subtle differences between similar kanji, which is crucial for passing the JLPT. But I wouldn’t make it a focus—we all use computers nowadays, after all.
If you’re curious about how I learned Japanese, or are currently having difficulties mastering a certain concept, please contact me! I am more than happy to help a fellow Japanese learner. Better yet, leave a comment so other readers can learn too.
Figure out your motivation for learning the language, form some concrete goals for yourself in the four basic skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking), and get to practicing as much as possible. And don’t forget to make it fun!
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