Learning Japanese: A Basic Guide

Introduction

Maybe you're thinking about learning Japanese. And why not? It's an extremely cool language to learn. Maybe you want to understand anime, read manga, or just have a genuine interest in the historical and literary value of the Japanese language (haha, for the two or three of you).

Anyway, it doesn't really matter why you want to learn Japanese. If you decide you want to, then by all means, do it! I won't lie and say it's easy (although a few parts are). Quite the opposite, it's an extremely difficult language.

But if you're really interested in learning it, and getting to a proficient level, it's definitely possible. I'm a living and breathing example.

Basics

Now there are a lot of really high quality websites for learning the Japanese language. The About Page for Japanese Language is a good place to start.

But to be honest, unless you're really dedicated and have long lasting enthusiasm (which I really hope you are, but let's be honest) you'll give up with internet Japanese lessons.

My personal recommendation is taking classes in person. For me, this is the only way to go. Nothing can beat that person-to-person attention you'll get with real classes. If you're really serious about it, classes will be worth the extra money you put in. There are a lot of nuances in the Japanese Language that are very important to learn well and understand.

Of course, if you're attending school and they offer classes, by all means, TAKE THE CLASSES!

The Easy(er) Part: Speaking and Listening

In the beginning, speaking and listening are probably the easiest parts of the Japanese language. The Basic Pronunciation isn't too bad, especially if you've studied other languages before (Spanish vowels are comparable). There's a bit of tonality (same spelling but meaning changes depending on tone) but there are only two tones and it's not extremely prevalent.

Reading and Writing

The writing system is split into three parts: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. When reading and writing, all three of these parts are used in conjunction. This is really frustrating when you're first learning (unless you already know Kanji from Chinese). Eventually though, you come to notice that it would be much, much harder to read Japanese if everything was written with Hiragana (which would mean it's written as it sounds).

I remember first learning about Kanji in class and asking the teacher something along the lines of "So you're telling me, depending on what we put after it, the pronunciation changes? Is this a joke?".

It does sound really strange first, but of course I learned it anyway. Later on she told us to read a paragraph with Kanji, and with just. We were all shocked because the Kanji makes it so much easier and faster to understand. So just stick it out! It will all come together eventually.

Resources

Since I am learning Japanese at my university, i don't have a lot of other quality resources besides my school books and teachers. However, I look at new things all the time and if I think they're worthy of your time and energy, I'll definitely put them here.

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