This isn't just a Japanese learning guide, this is a general language learning guide. You can apply the method of this video to basically every other language.
Well, the section about learning Hiragana and Katakana isn't that useful for learning French. Joking, you're entirely correct. Immersion is, as the video says, how humans learn language naturally.
Fr I've been doing this unintentionally to an extent with German before even watching this. But I thought this was the normal way of learning languages lol
Nah, I don't think so. You can barely immerse yourself ask there are not no good European Portuguese movies or entertainment. It's hard to do immersion unlike Japanese with so many contents to consume
For starting anime without subtitles I reccomend rewatching the ones you have already seen! You won't be so overwhelmed and it helps with context clues for learning words.
That's exactly what I thought of doing, I first understood English watching Naruto's dub (my mother's tongue is French). How cool would that be to learn a yet a new language using it!
@@redline841 Well, I can tell you sometimes there's a real disparity between someone's writing skills and speech skills when it comes to learning a foreign language. My first language is French, and when I first learnt English, I picked up things and got really decent at written English fast since I was reading/playing games in English. But there was still a big difference between those skills and my oral skills, truth is, I'm still in the process of "acquiring" a more natural spoken English. So, this person's experience might be similar to mine in that fashion. But I do agree, his written English is quite good already.
@@arfanik9827 At the very least, Y'all don't seem to be struggling. I do get it tho, I'm also a native Hindi speaker, and I lack the speaking skills even though my writing and reading skills are good enough.
Principles: The decisive factor of learning the language is input. Memorization and explicit grammar practice is secondary. 1. Learn Hiragana and Katakana. 2. Learn basic grammar, but don't feel obligated to master it. 3. Commit multiple hours of input a day, whichever the method. Tips 1. Passive listening to save time. 2. Tolerate not understanding everything. But having some context helps extract more information. 3. SRS (Spaced Repetition System) to learn a few words a day. Use "Mining" to add words you encounter to an Anki card. 4. Listen to Japanese for a few months before worrying about reading, unless you don't worry about accents. 5. Wait until you're very comfortable understanding Japanese to start speaking it. 6. Build confidence by usingJapanese in everyday applications, such as in notes or by conversing with Japanese people online. 7. Tone down the kanji and vocab memorization, focus on input.
Thank you for this, really helpful when I want to remember without having to watch the whole video Keep commenting and liking this post so we can all remember 👍
The real key though is that the input must be comprehensive else it will get you nowhere, usually it can be deduced from the context or already known words. Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann both explain in perfectly
7. I think it's important to clarify that you should only avoid them as a beginner. It's important to eventually pick up written input and kanji is essential in that.
@@alexprus7953 Yea, kanji killed my motivation to learn Japanese. Attempting to learn it directly after katakana/hiragana is suicide and most people will drop the language this way. I think best way to learn, from my experience, is learn hiragana and katakana well, and then from there do alot input and just generally be able to understand basic phrases/sentences. Best way to do this is as the video says, just watch/listen to what you enjoy and you will eventually pick a few things up, as long as the context is contextual (which is why watching stuff is your best option, put pictures to the words). However, after you've gotten past this beginner stage of hiragana/katakana and being able to understand basic phrases and words, kanji does become very important. It's why there's such an emphasis on N1-5 in Japanese learning, so if you don't bother with learning Kanji you are just handicapping yourself out of a big part of the language (an entire writing system in fact).
Exactly, I learned English at 14 just because I was playing games in English and watched videos in English. I didn't understand shit, I just watched it because it looked interesting and here I am switching between my native language and English without even realizing it.
@@Haru_Shirosaki a combination of basic grammar learnt at school and consuming a lot of content at home idk how or when but at some point it just clicked
hello. you have my support in your english learning as well. also, please be warned, people are making fun of japanese people by calling you guys weebs and then banning others who defends the person who is being harrassed.
Verb conjugation was extremely easy for me. Just gotta remember ichidan (most iru/eru) and godan verbs and the endings. Found it much simpler than Spanish class
these are general rules for learning any language for that matter not only Japanese. that's how I learned English completely by myself in my room. my next destination is to learn Japanese the same way! this is awfully underrated bro.. solid editing and script writing skills with actually useful knowledge to share, more people need to find your channel.
@@hatsushikun2722 Yeah I think that’s the case with most people because they start consuming content in English from a fairly young age. For me I made the decision consciously when I was a little older so I had to go through a lot of the language learning struggles mentioned in the video.
this is how i learned arabic as a kid (arabic cartoons on tv) & korean when i grew up and was into kpop & immersed myself in all korean entertainment. from live shows, radio shows, variety shows, dramas, etc. I can’t say i’m fully fluent but if i got dropped in korea i could get by, and i’d understand about 80% of what is said to me.
this is super helpful and validating because ive been using this method (kind of) by installing a jp keyboard on my phone and searching simple words i know like "ねこ" and watching whatever Japanese videos come up. it's basically interacting with UA-cam the way a child would.
Install Duolingo. And also switch the word to it's accordingly kanji, first on Google translator Since some words in hiragana has more than one kanji. Neko? 猫. Inu (dog) 犬。kanjis are actually easy to remember When you see them often or are easy to distinguish. I thought it would be harder while using Duolingo Most of the phrases I learned were easy or moderate too, but a few was very hard Some I don't even understand why, I just memorized the answer.
I'm learning Japanese, but with my grandfather getting hit by kamikaze aboard the uss franklin in ww2 I think she might have a heart attack if she hears me 😂
when it comes to grammar i HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend cure dolly. she explains grammar so well and makes it feel so natural and logical, it's incredible!!
@@justalameusername1736 I'm pretty sure the reason her voice sounded like that was just because she was an old woman, though she might have put effects on it. I'm not sure.
@@justalameusername1736 yea...her voice put me off learning from her channel, but EVERYONE says she's the GOAT so I'm thinking of giving her another shot
Thanks for the video Trent. As an American who was abruptly transferred to Japan for work very last minute with minimal Japanese experience, I've had a huge amount of imposture syndrome going out and doing things basically faking it while I pick up a few words here and there by having really awkward conversations or being force fed japanese media. It feels good to be reminded that, no, thats actually how people are basically designed to learn. Input, even passive input hearing people talk around me and trying to figure out the context, has been insanely helpful.
A tip for immersion a friend gave me, rewatch stuff you know well in another language without subtitles, or with subtitles in the language you are learning.
I'm sorry if I sound dumb but I don't get how just listening/reading anything at all will help you just learn the language... it may as well be a baby's talk because I don't know the language obviously so I don't know what words mean what etc😣it's so frustrating and with a bad memory just makes it worse
@@Lavendrea I have never endeavored to learn Japanese, but I know some words and phrases just from watching a lot of anime. Even if I was watching without subtitles, I could figure some stuff out through repetition and context. Even watching a little Chinese allowed me to understand a few words. If they're repeated often enough, you'll pick them up. What we were saying about watching stuff or reading is to watch or read something you're already familiar with. If you understand what's happening from the get-go, your brain can spend more time looking for repeating words that it can understand from context. If it's a new story to you, you will get frustrated you don't know what's going on. One thing I used to do was watch a show without subtitles, then watch it again with them. That way, I could quickly confirm if a word I was hearing meant what I thought it did.
@@Lavendrealearn the basics and then if you feel comfortable enough, you can try to watch some stuff in the language. You'll probably be able to learn a bunch of words just from context clues or from the word being repeated over and over again in certain situations/around certain things/in a certain tone of voice. That's basically how I learned English and I'd say that I'm pretty good at that language by now (guess that anyone reading probably wouldn't necessarily have guessed that English is my second language before I said so).
I think this is the basic order of things you need to do to learn a language 1: learn basic alphabets, basic phrases and their sounds 2: listen for hours 3: learn speaking 4: learn reading 5: learn writing
@@Vnxelt no, he did mention that anki will help a lot with understanding (basically listening to podcast and stuff will make you understand the language easily when spoken) but you will need to learn pronunciation correctly or else you will take a weird accent which resembles your first language it's the 3rd thing in the order I mentioned
If i reach step 3 and master speaking in Japanese, Thats already enough to understand things in conversation right? I want to learn Japanese to understand what people are saying better. Do you think thats a good goal point for now?
This is literally how I learnt english as a child-teen without even noticing it. Every dang videogame I wanted to play was in english so I just kinda read it and heard it so much I ended up becoming proficient at it. I wonder why I never tried the same with Japanese...
Fr i did the same thing, I started with a bit of duolingo then I practicted with chatting ingames and watching videos. Now english feels like my native language even though it's not, my native language is supposed to be french 💀
Except there are only 26 letters to learn for to read English, not 3000 kanji with 4+ readings with fonts that don't show up well on any games made before PS2. The two aren't remotely equivalent.
I learned English by spending a lot of time on UA-cam watching american videos and reading comments in English; I actually wanted to do the same with Japanese but it feels a bit more daunting. I am trying to get some basic understanding of grammar at the moment before starting, I gotta say that Kanji is the main issue for reading in Japanese, lots of stuff to memorize visually because every word is a symbol. I guess it takes more patience when you are a westerner and you are so used to the English alphabet.
@@HyakuniYakumo This was true for me too. What actually brought me to native level was watching american anime/game videos from native speakers. Im doing the same rn, learnt the most basics of grammar, as well as Hiragana and Katakana. I recommend inmersing in media which only requires listening and no reading. Or very basic reading. For example, I recently started playing Pokemon ORAS in Japanese and to my surprise it's almost completely in Hiragana and Katakana, I can read most of it, which is great!! Best of luck, my friend, hope you can learn Japanese eventually
You see, I am not learning Japanese but this has been in my recommended 4 times despite me never seeing this channel. So here I am now,subscribed and watching
As a bilingual American this is by far the best explanation on learning language as an adult I have ever watched. We tend to over-complicate language, so if your goal is to understand and be understood at a basic level, there is plenty of hope for you if you put in the consistent time and effort.
This video makes me think of this one channel i found, Comprehensible Japanese, and she basically has a bunch of videos where she talks in japanese with a lot of contextually relevant images/video. She has different levels but in her beginner videos she basically talks the way a parent would to a baby, ie saying the word for hair and pointing to her hair. Honestly its a really good channel
This is pretty much exactly how I did it! I started learning 2.5 years ago now, and I passed the N3 a year ago (I have never received formal classes in Japanese and I started entirely from scratch following guides like The Moe Way). I moved to Japan just a few weeks ago and honestly? I'm absolutely blown away by how much I know and how I can get by. I've been into my city multiple times alone just having a wander around, stopping in bars and things to chat with the locals and they treat me like a regular person who's just passing through. Incredible feeling! I've managed to make a handful of local "friends" who I occasionally meet up with which is super nice, and I got a date with a local girl next week who literally speaks Zero English! Trust me guys, it's absolutely doable and very worth it. If you ever decide to move to this country, dear god you will need it. There is no way in hell I'd have been able to do some of the more formal stuff without knowing the language (think bank accounts etc...)
rewatching / re-reading / re-consuming your content over and over and over also helps a lot, cause the more you listen, the deeper ingrained it gets , the more reality you're able to understand what you did the last time, to spend more time on things you didn't pick up before. without trying. just active listening :3
"Tolerating ambiguity" is a very good point in which I have not directly thought about when I also give advice to people wanting to or already in the process of learning Japanese. Usually, a common theme is that people skip native Japanese material because it's "too difficult" in some fashion, claiming that when they "understand it" is when they'll watch it. But as you've stated, that completely ignores the whole point of a learning process, as in order to get to that level of more comprehension, you have to spend time clawing your way at it even though most of it can be pretty incomprehensible at first. It's kind of like a baby not understanding what 99% of things are still being said except for a few keywords, but throughout time with that input they get to adult-level understanding. Very good insight, Trenton!
I realized this by accident. I watched anime with subtitles for years without learning any Japanese. But then suddenly I realized I was starting to learn some words and phrases. Not because I turned off the subtitles, but because I picked up a Rubik’s cube and started solving it by habit while watching. I could no longer rely on the subtitles 100% because my eyes were on the cube. I started to learn to tolerate missing some of the subtitles. I keep telling myself that I’m going to turn the subs off completely because I’ve gotten too good at reading. This video has convinced me it’s time.
A lot of things that have to feel ambiguous for a while are sentences which communicate a meaning with a very different structure to their english (or whatever your native langauge is) counterpart. This is true for a lot of idiom like sayings or stuff like ki ni naru or ki ga suru. With these you literally just have to encounter them enough times to the point where you internally go "oh I know what that means ive seen that a hundred other times" and you start to "feel" the meaning like you might feel a baseball swing you practiced a million times.
As someone who has tried (and thus far not succeeded due to not putting in the time from other life things getting involved) learning a language- I think it's also important to remember that the brain and our mind aren't just some "floaty conceptual thing in our head" there IS a physical process behind learning, you LITERALLY need a bigger brain and entirely new connections in your brain to learn ANYTHING, language included, it WILL happen, but it's like exercise, and for that matter it's exercise for the most energy intensive part of your entire body- You WILL be exhausted by it, but it WILL pay off. Your body is working for you in the background, not against you, but it's important to realize that you won't just "solve" a language, there is a logic IN the language, yes, but you will not LEARN or ACQUIRE it by trying to apply your logic to something that is LITERALLY BY DEFINITION, completely foreign to you. It'll happen, and it will come naturally, but natural does NOT mean easy in a lot of cases. The very nature of learning is adaptation, and in order to adapt you first need to TRY to do something that you can't do in the first place, so your brain gets the message that there are no workarounds, and if it wants to get past this block, it better start ordering some extra neurons, wrinkles, and start routing some new neural pathways, because this ain't moving, so we gotta build around it. The confusion from not understanding something is LITERALLY the signal that sends a work order to your brain to start expanding so it can process something that it's never processed before. Understanding is the goal, not the action needed to achieve it.
This video was put together really well and made the long journey of learning Japanese feel way less daunting and complicated. I'm glad UA-cam put it on my homepage, so here's your "I'm surprised this channel doesn't have more subscribers" comment. Definitely wanna stick around for more of these videos, so thanks for making this one.
@@AlexIsVeryBoredI work in a warehouse but I don’t usually talk to people or have the hardest job just a lot of walking so could I just pick a Japanese podcast tour my phone in my pocket and just listen? If so, what podcast should I listen too?
What sort of level are you at now? I've been learning a similar amount of time, always doing my Anki but almost never doing the immersion cos of lack of time. As you'd expect I don't understand 90% of what I hear in immersion
This is probably the most comprehensive video on learning Japanese that I've seen to date. The way you've made all of this information accessible in such a clear and digestible format is simply perfect. If I could, I would like this video ten thousand times over ^^ Thanks for bringing the Japanese learning process to the world. I would love to see more videos detailing the exact methods you used / you would recommend in detail. Thank you so much for spreading this valuable information and helping others on their language-learning journeys!
That's hands down the best approache imo, I did exactly that for English (I'm native French). You learn from start of middle school to end of high school, about 7 years, and I'm now fluent in English. It's been about 4 years of immersion of Japanese, with classes in university too and I'm about N3/B1 level, I think by the end of the school year I may be able to push for N2 (08/2025) ! Keep it up !
@@zeldrias This method will help you pass the N5-N3 easily, all bases are covered for those N’s if you just immerse. N2-N1 is nearly the same, except you may need to formally study half of N2 and N1 grammar if you want to complete the JLPT as soon as possible. You will still be able to pass all the JLPT if you immerse and no study though, I checked the JLPT grammar list and I realized that I encountered at least half of N1 and a good majority of N2 and this is just from immersion.
Thanks man. I've been learning Japanese on and off for about a year now and I've never once thought to play a Japanese audio (besides songs) in the background even if I don't understand it. That's really helpful for someone like me who usually don't have time to spare for extended learning sessions
This is a great overview of the process. The hard part for most people is being aware of this process and then being consistent until the point where the language is a natural part of your life.
Awesome video! You made learning Japanese feel so much easier than I imagined. Your positivity and practical tips are super motivating-thank you for the inspiration! I really appreciate it. TYSM 🙌😊
7:14 I’m Russian who learned English using this method and now I’m trying to learn Japanese the same way… and seeing «пончик» was pretty unexpected 😂😂😂
I'm a brazilian that learned english by the same method and then learned a bit of russian because I have russian friends so def seeing пончик was strange lmao
I’m doing this method with Spanish. It can absolutely be a grind but the method works. Figure out your goals, find your why, put in the effort, and it’ll come with time. Excellent video!
I've been doing the same thing with Spanish using a website called Dreaming Spanish which is built exactly around this baby immersion method (not tryna shill just wanted to put it out there as I've been finding it helpful)
@@mikeymadness3074 The method in this video helps with that too. Just input, input, input until you internalize "problema" is grammatically masculine, no matter what letter it ends in. This method also helps a lot with the subjunctive mood.
All great advice! I'm actually doing this method for Chinese (中文). Another cool trick I've learned, not sure how common this is in Japanese media, but in Chinese media they often have double subtitles, so Chinese and English on top of each other. Whenever I find media with 2X subtitles I feel like I'm leaving so much! 😂 Just be careful though because sometimes subtitles of either language don't match up right, so you have to pause a lot and look stuff up. Also try using something like Google vision where you can automatically grab characters on the screen instead of having to draw them out or remember how it's pronounced. I'm studying Japanese next because I want to suffer. 😁 So watching this video was helpful to know that I'm doing things correctly.
I'm an American who's currently learning Japanese. I am NOT a fan of anime (aside from like 3 exceptions). I'm learning the language because real world Japanese social and cultural dynamics fascinate me. My mass "input" is actually Japanese dubs of western media (Rick and Morty, Marvel Movies, Spongebob, etc.) and that stuff is just as in-depth and natural most of the time as eastern media, AND it's familiar enough to me as a westerner to where I don't feel overwhelmed. So be sure to dig through and find what works for you in things you already like! My keystone so far has been, hilariously, the Japanese dub of the "Steamed Hams" Simpsons scene. I already pretty much knew the scene by heart in English, but I learn something new every time I watch the dubbed scene, it's great.
i see someone else has recommended yt and i 100% agree with them so i’ll go ahead and give you 3 people that i watch regularly. 1st Yuka_jp is probably the best since she is very easy to understand and uses lots of daily vocabulary. The next 2 are more personal ones so im not sure if you would get enjoyment out of them, but じゅえりー and masaru are good too. However they are fishing channels so the vocabulary is less common and more niche.
originally weeb meant to be fascinated by Japan and its culture, otaku is the word that we associate with anime fans, somehow the two words got mixed up and people use one for the other so you are actually a weeb
11:33 this is actually a concept that should be more obvious but took me a while to understand. i was in japan earlier this year and amongst other things I went to see the haikyuu movie that (still) isn't available online. haikyuu is one of my favorites and I knew that I wouldn't be able to watch it back home, so I went to see it a few times, and there were no subtitles (obviously). with very basic understanding of Japanese, context clues and vague memories of the manga, my understanding of the movie sat at around 50% the first time I viewed it, and was closer to 75% by the seventh time. it was so helpful not having subtitles. it does such tremendous change. because the translation isn't in front of me, I had to listen and watch closely to discern what was happening. i do know a bit of Japanese but not even on a toddler level, I can only read hiragana/katakana and make basic conversation. it was such a cool experience getting better at understanding the movie every single time! i tried it with other anime and it also helped me with understanding some sentences better because subs are never perfect and sometimes some cool words or slightly different phrases/intentions can be missed. this is a great video! and it definitely motivates me to try harder with learning Japanese properly.
Here's what I did: I changed subtitles on anime to Japanese closed captions. If I can't hear it, I can read it. If I can't read it, I can pause it and look for a word I don't know in a dictionary. It worked for me because I am Korean and I am already familiar with Japanese Kanji in the form of Hanja. I have to admit that my background gave me a head start. But before I tried this in Japanese because I'd already done the same thing with English content with Korean subtitles, and it worked. I changed Korean subtitles to English closed captions, and later removed it altogether. What's funny about all this is that I parted ways with translated subtitles for two different non-native languages not because I wanted to be a polyglot or sth, but because I couldn't bear letters cluttering the screen when I wanted to immerse myself into the whole screen. ADHD brains will make you do tomfooleries like this.
@@knpark2025 that's so cool! i'm bilingual but I don't know any asian languages, so kanji is really intimidating haha. i'll try watching with japanese subs! thank you for the great advice!
I noticed this when I tried watching an older Japanese movie a few times, it was never translated to English so no subtitles. It was called "Ganso Daiyojohan Daimonogatari" (in english, The Great Ancestral 4.5 Tatami Story), and it's based on one of Leiji Matsumoto's earlier mangas. Barely understood it the first time I watched it, but ended up understanding a bit more the second time and context clues gave me more to work with the second time around. Still a bit hard to parse some of the dialogue because you got the main character speaking a generalized Kyushu dialect and another main character who's a yakuza who uses less everyday sounding language from the sound of it. More recently, I caught a clip from Anpanman and found myself understanding most of it, so I can at least mostly understand the simpler dialogue used in shows for young children atm hehe.
When I first started learning English on UA-cam, I only watched videos with subtitles in my native language. And then I changed to English subtitles. After a few months, I gradually felt more comfortable with turning off the English subtitles and then continued watching content in English without it. I think the same is true for learning Japanese with media. First with subtitles in your native language, then you change to the target language and finally you'll be comfortable to watch anything without subtitles.
I completely forgot the shadowing method after graduating bachelor omg I’m glad you explained what worked the best for you but mentioned still other methods for us to explore, thank you!
Love the video, agree with a lot of stuff. One thing I'd like to add, as I've seen many people talk about this. As a dad with a 3year old and a teacher, kids get so much feedback about what they're learning. When they start off learning, you hold a Banana and say "Do you want a banana? Banana? Ye?" They learn the word "Banana" the rest does not get inputted in. By the time they're making sentences, you are correcting them A LOT. They're vocab and ability to put long, complicated sentences together doesn't really start until they're at school and in a learning environment. I found by picking ONE video of Japanese, that's about 10 minutes long. And watching that video 1000X. Looking up the words, looking up the grammar patterns until every word, sentence, syllable makes perfect sense, then move on to another video. You'll find the next video to be much easier 'cos there's similar vocab and patterns. Do the same with and move on.
Yeah but if you add bunch of adjectives, verbs, and a complete sentence like most English, and don't wait for feedback from the listener whether they understand or not it's not very good immersion. Like "May I offer the baby the browning banana that's about to go bad." How much you think the baby will pick up from that? I'm gonna emphasize Comprehensive input. There has to be signals that the baby could understand to comprehend like the gesture to the banana and the immediate association with the repeated word. Most media out there is like being taken on a roller coaster blindfolded, you may get the feeling and the emotion being conveyed as you feel like you are falling but you don't know anything more than that you're being pushed around by something. Maybe when I watch my favorite shows again when I finally understand it I might get a sense of deja Vu and gain the full experience...
I mean, I think that's why the original commenter suggested watching something over and over until it's comprehensible. That won't work if you did a week of Duolingo and the first chapter of Genki, but if you've got enough of a foundation to comprehend even a little bit of something, you should try to do it and then study the thing more closely to see if you were right or not. It's one good way to try and mimic feedback if you're in a situation where you can't actually get human feedback. The people I usually see complaining about input not being perfectly understandable are usually around JLPT N4 or through the Genki textbooks. That's certainly not enough to understand most sentences on a first try, but it definitely gives you the toolkit to do something like this video and this commenter are describing and glean some value from something that appears too hard at first glance.
all these methods are exactly how i managed to learn english! i just used to watch youtube videos without understanding anything until at some point i started to understand what was being said, our brain really does learn with patterns! currently trying to do it again but with japanese this time but its a bit more hard than it was with english
I’m actually not a weeb I’m just an Asian without being able to speak Japanese.I can’t connect with my grandparents or family because of the language barrier. Edit: nice video tho
I really appreciate your efforts! Been studying at different intensities and using different methods for years but not in a comprehensive manner. I hope that people are able to understand why/how you've organized all this information so that it is actually productive when applied. It's too easy to become hyper focused on one aspect, especially with so many specialized videos out there (many of them excellent). Again I appreciate your efforts to democratize this information.
I came across your video right after I decided with my mom that we'll be traveling to Japan as a graduation trip. I'll be back in 4 years to tell you how it worked for me.
I've been at it for about 9 years (10000+ hours) now. Started with just watching anime with subtitles, playing visual novels and changing game voices to Japanese when possible. Eventually I started being able to tell when the subtitles were inaccurate or took some creative liberties, which I found annoying so I started paying more attention to the audio instead. I'd start watching raws because I didn't want to wait for the subtitles to come out. Nowadays I can understand the majority of spoken Japanese without having to put up much effort, and mostly do audio immersion through livestreams and music instead. The last 8 months is when everything's really been coming together for me, as I've been putting in active effort. I skimmed basic grammar for like an hour, realized I know essentially all of it, and basically learned how to speak overnight. I finally got around to properly learning katakana and then dug my teeth into kanji because I decided I wanted to be able to read Japanese. I mixed SRS (Wanikani) with immersion (LingQ, changing game text language to Japanese, etc) and I've gone from around 50 know kanji to somewhere around 800 in 8 months and I can for the most part guess the ones I don't know. If you did SRS for vocabulary paired with immersion from the beginning, you could get to where I am a lot faster (like 4-6 years), so don't let the 9 years scare you too much. The most important thing is to find some way of learning that you can do just for fun, because you're not going to be able to keep up with it for years if you don't enjoy it. Also, do *not* try to study or memorize grammar. Just skim through it briefly, if anything. You should let your brain figure it out naturally, but having the basic grammar concept at the back of your mind _can_ make it easier to notice patterns in the wild.
that's kinda impressive that you wen't so long without reading japanese. Were you reliant on the audio part when reading VNs and subtitles or how did you proceed before the last 8 months?I immediately got the Kanji out of the way when i started but that's because i just love reading and it was fun to me. Was careful to get enough audio input for my accent though. Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Japanese grammar is so different than English how did you naturally absorb it so quickly? Do you fully understand it enough to talk about complex topics or just enough basics to get by? Sorry no hate but unless you already know a language with a similar grammar to Japanese it feels genuinely impossible for you to know ALL Japanese grammar rules without actually looking into it and studying it. Even with English grammar some rules you can’t naturally pick up or really understand unless taught. You can mimic what you see but that doesn’t equal understanding what you’re doing.
@@RaspBerryPiesno, just takes so much more time, for example if you try to learn Spanish their grammar will be easier because both have a lot of similarities and you might learn it (grammar) in just months, with japanese that could take even two or three years, the point is even if the language has a extremely different grammar you're still able to learn it just realizing the patterns
i was gonna write a long-winded paragraph thanking you for the video, but decided ill just comment this to try and boost it in YT algorithm. that editing timeline looked like a real headache, and as someone who puts a lot of time into editing, i want you to receive the attention you deserve for putting in as much effort as you have into creating this video for others. thank you.
Your guide is probably the best of the best, and I can relate to that a lot. English wasn’t my first language, and I found learning english at school to be boring and slow. Being a kid at that time, I liked watching UA-cam, especially English speaking ones, which I then mimicked the way they spoke, learning their accents as well as some grammar that I previously didn’t know of. Using methods like this actually helped change my accent from sounding like a foreigner to a native!
There's a really good UA-cam channel called Comprehensible Japanese with this native Japanese lady who takes Krashen's idea of comprehensible input and basically treats the viewer like they're her child. She shows you things like objects or pictures and speaks very simply as if she were explaining the thing to a native Japanese baby or toddler. Other times she'll tell very simple stories as if she were telling a very simple story to a native Japanese baby or toddler. It's a pretty useful channel as a starting point.
Great stuff, my initial thoughts were aligned with how you described learning should go with just trying to let it come by passively listening first and then apply more structure as you go. Thank you.
11:43 Well most people watching an anime are watching it for the sole reason of enjoying the show, and not learning japanese in itself, but if you actually want to learn japanese then you have to not really be following the show too much and focusing more on what the characters say and trying to understand some meanings, that's the difference.
this video has helped a lot as someone who has been trying to amp up my learning the past 2 years (started at about 14~ and im 16 now) i tried to start as soon as I realized I wanted to be serious about learning, but really I’ve been shooting myself in the foot by not immersing myself as much as I could 😭 i will say though, just from casually listening to vocaloid every single day and watching lots of videos by natives, ive definitely realized most my learning hasn’t come from dictionaries or learning apps, and this video has really inspired me to start taking that leap that ive been afraid of- watching stuff without knowing much of what’s happening also…. that vr clip with the hamburger joke made me smile so hard, i remember the first time i made a joke in Japanese and the person i was talking to laughed, it really feels like a milestone in a weird way hahaha トレントンさん、動画を作ってくれてありがとうございます！💮💕
I highly recommend Cure Dolly's Organic Japanese course on YT for general Grammar. I like it better then Tae Kim's guide personally. Her lessons are strongly geared towards encouraging immersion as soon as possible but with the solid foundation of the language's basic structure. Her whole YT channel is a great resource for learning Japanese imo. My favorite immersion method right now are voiced visual novels because they the provides a double whammy of reading and listening!
@@Bruniinha1011 The one I'm currently using, Nekopara Catboy Paradise, I got off Steam. It's free! I also got the original Nekopara Cat Girls game (all age version) on sale for like $5 but I haven't played it yet. For other games and where to find them I would check on places like r/visual novel, r/otomegames and sites like The Moe Way (which is all about learning Japanese using VNs. I was introduced to Cure Dolly through them and they have a discord for learners)
@@Bruniinha1011steam, also suggest text hooker like textractor and textbook page to link yomitan or jp dict to the text. That actually makes one understand the sentence, instead of mindlessly listening to stuff. Read it, listen to it, and comprehend it in bite sized chunks, and enjoy a story at same time.
I mean… WOW all recourses are just awesome and video covers all the potential questions that newbie could ask. You really did a great job🎉❤ And keep it up!!!
I agree everything except for using anki. The problem of anki is that when facing several words with the same or similar meanings, it can confuse you a lot. And it may waste you quite some time without knowing the context, just watching flashcard meanings. So to me I think just using input is good enough, looking up the words whenever you don't know the meaning, and cannot guess or tolerate not knowing the meaning of that word.
I found putting all my tech in japanese to be a big help. My phone being switched to Japanese also switches all the applicable apps to it too. Now of course, I only consider myself N4 currently, I still switch back to English on my devices when there's important information I need to digest. But most of the time, looking at my phones notifications and seeing something as simple as "Samが写真を送信しました。" I'm gonna eventually nail something new into my head.
this is really more a gimmick than anything, you'll learn a few words and it can subconsciously trick yourself into thinking you're doing more immersion than you actually are
This method brilliantly worked when I was learning Spanish. I immersed myself in a Spanish speaking country, I'm shy so unintentionally I listened way more. 3 months later someone asked me how did I learn Spanish so quickly! It dawned on me then that I was actually understanding most of what was said. I was over the moon, grammar is still my enemy but for some reason I can hear if it sounds right or not, just no clue why I know. Super excited that I've started my learning Japanese journey
When I learnt Swedish I watched a lot of Swedish videos on YT together with my dad and then later on (a little over two years ago) I moved to Sweden and actively use Swedish ever since, continually improving my language skills. Let's see how my journey to learning Japanese will look. And your assertion at the beginning that I'm a weeb is 100% accurate XD
I work night shift and my job doesn't require me to pay super strong attention to what I'm doing, so listening to japanese podcasts the entire time is definitely something I can do. I appreciate the spreadsheet, I'll certainly be making use of that!
This video is a fantastic push for me as a learner because after a couple years of attempting to learn it on and off i couldnt figure out a comprehensive way to do so. But this is something i feel i should've thought of before (the immersion aspect). Thanks for bringing this way to my attention.
I havent even finished the video and im already almost done mesmerizing one of the alphabets.... Great tips! I wish i found this channel and video much much sooner!!!!
Thanks a ton, that was super helpful! Seriously, I appreciate all the time and effort you put into spreading the message. Fun fact: I grew up in Japan, learned Japanese as a little Italian girl-go figure! Japanese is my second language after Italian since Italian is my native language. English is actually my fourth language, and let me tell you, it took a while, but I’m finally getting the hang of it.
This is the best video on learning Japanese that I've seen! This video basically summarizes (very well might I add) what I've learnt about language acquisition! I'm a mathematical physicist and don't have the time to actively learn, so I try to follow passive methods more. Great vid!
It took me about a year to pass N2 using the Refold method and stuff Matt talked about on his channel. I pretty much just watched Japanese TV and UA-cam at least 2 hours a day while making N+1 sentence cards and studying the bits of grammar I didn't understand just from the immersion. I also used Nativshark which helped me build some extra cultural knowledge and vocabulary as a beginner I wouldn't have learned just from media input. Personally, I didn't see much improvement from passive listening as a beginner, and it was really boring when I tried. It was a lot more useful once I knew about 2k words and could follow basic sentences without subtitles. Until that point, I just got my immersion with active listening and reading along with the Japanese subtitles. I did listen to all the Harry Potter audiobooks which was a lot of fun.
This video is totally helpful, even for N2 level myself, I learned something new and worth trying in your video here. Thanks for making this video! I'll planning to recommend your advices to my friends
I've been trying to learn another language off and on again for years but I always felt overwhelmed, especially with speaking. Watching this video makes me want to try again.
I’m balancing my Japanese hobby with a preexisting anime hobby, so rather than rush into immersion I’m easing my way out of English subtitles more slowly. Some slice of life rewatches in the mix was a good way to start, and now I’m having a great time with JP-subbed Pokemon. Podcasts, manga, grammar, and SRS have been really helpful along the way too.
Any slice of life recommendations? Not sure where you are, but it’s summer in USA right now, and late nights in the summer are when I binge anime, no other time of the year. It’s been a tradition since middle school.
@@yulimartorrealba5851 kinda you need to know some words or watch something with picture to make connections but that's basically it in second grade I stopped watching everything bulgarian and just switched to english and that's how I am now at C1 level without any other learning
I am a Japanese-Japanese living in Japan. Thanks to this video, I can now speak Japanese fluently and I even got a girlfriend. I am grateful for this video.
As someone whos native english speaker who is actually learning spanish from *mexico* because my family majority from mexico, i also do that too, i listen to the music, I watch tik toks or videos in spanish to be familiar with the wording and speak to people in spanish when i need to or when i want to like my family or friends. the biggest help for me is music and ill try to sing it in spanish. Though Im still a baby spanish speaker, your advice is gonna help with me a lot both Spanish and Japanese :3 (Everydah im reminded mexico and Japan are little besties since they barrow each other's culture like banda)
0:24 easy, people just play it for multiple nights while not watching. Multiple views per person, and no one actually watched, just listened (then fell asleep)
Great video, the most helpful video on Japanese I've seen yet. Everyone is looking for a shortcut, it takes a few good pointer like those you gave in your video and hard work.
You sneaky dude... I was listening the video while working and for real thought that the video was ending. I said "wait... that's all?" and then I realized... You got me for a second haha
I just came back from a 4 week trip from japan and I feel like this trip really got me confident with the language. I don't feel as uncomfortable speaking the language (even though I made so many mistakes, but they got the gist of what I wanted to say) and hearing the language really was just really helpful to understand what daily life japanese is. I also learned some vocabulary, not much, only a few words, but I still see it as a win. I also made some friends there. I think it was a great experience and I will definetly return. The trip really motivated me to learn the language more. At some point I also started using japanese as a reflex (for example: when I wanted somebody to repeat what they said, I asked them in japanese, even though I was talking to a british tourist in english) using and thinking a little bit in japanese was a really great feeling ^^
THIS VIDEO POPPED UP RIGHT AFTER I FINISHED DOING RESEARCH ON STEPHEN KRASHEN'S FUNDAMENTALS AND COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT THEORY FOR MY SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/TAALVERWERVING CLASS WOAHHHH
Don't know if you'll see this, but exactly 82 days ago I stumbled upon this video and it was the spark I needed to seriously attempt studying Japanese again. This method of learning through anki and immersion had changed my perspective on how to approach language learning and has made my time studying/learning Japanese a lot more enjoyable. In previous attempts I wasn't even able to get past the first few chapters in Genki I. Anyways, today I've read my first manga volume fully in Japanese (僕の心ヤバイやつ) and suprisingly I was able to comfortably read it without needing a dictionary, although having watched the anime a few months back did help in certain parts that were unclear to me. I tend to prefer reading because the kanji helps me figure out meaning of newer words and I've seen quick improvements on my reading comprehension, especially the grammar, so admittedly I haven't done much listening, but I'm thinking of waiting for my vocabulary to grow a bit. Thank you for inspiring me to take this journey.
I'm actually not an american , european nor a weeb ,I'm from Egypt , English is my second language , Arabic is my first and I have been studying Japanese for 3 months and I really like your guide , Hope this gets more likes and views.
Immersion learning is a method where learners are surrounded by the language they are trying to learn, using it in everyday situations to become fluent. While it can be very effective, there are several potential problems that might arise: １．Lack of Structured Learning: Immersion often lacks a structured curriculum, which can lead to gaps in understanding grammar and other foundational aspects of the language. ２．Overwhelm: Learners might feel overwhelmed by the constant exposure to the language, especially if they don't have a solid base to build on. ３．Miscommunication: Without adequate instruction, learners might pick up incorrect language usage or slang, leading to misunderstandings. ４．Cultural Differences: Immersion also involves cultural aspects, which can be confusing or challenging if learners are not prepared for the cultural context. ５．Motivation: The constant challenge of immersion can be discouraging for some learners, especially if they don't see immediate progress. ６．Access to Resources: Immersion requires access to a rich environment in the target language, which may not be available to everyone. Addressing these issues often requires supplementing immersion with formal language instruction and support.
@@rileytanag6070 Well, better late than never. I only found out about immersion learning a year after I started, and I was so happy when I discovered this method. I was able to progress unlike before.
check out my video about learning to speak Japanese :)
ua-cam.com/video/EFnc-OktAdQ/v-deo.html&t
thank youuuu
this was a solid video, thamk you penguin man
Try polish and then say its hard :)
even more great info thanks even more
also can u put memrise for ios people because anki is 25 USD for ios and memrise is free for ios app and website
This isn't just a Japanese learning guide, this is a general language learning guide. You can apply the method of this video to basically every other language.
Well, the section about learning Hiragana and Katakana isn't that useful for learning French.
Joking, you're entirely correct. Immersion is, as the video says, how humans learn language naturally.
Fr I've been doing this unintentionally to an extent with German before even watching this. But I thought this was the normal way of learning languages lol
Yeah!
Nah, I don't think so. You can barely immerse yourself ask there are not no good European Portuguese movies or entertainment. It's hard to do immersion unlike Japanese with so many contents to consume
Yeah most of this advice seems helpful for me learning Mandarin too
Bro spawned in and decided to drop the best Japanese learning guide💀
He did XD
@@kirapatatochips fr
I would like to learn Chinese
@@LEBJJthen do what he said for Chinese it's literally the same process
I made your comment reach 1k likes 🥶
For starting anime without subtitles I reccomend rewatching the ones you have already seen! You won't be so overwhelmed and it helps with context clues for learning words.
on my way to rewatch re zero for the 15th time
@@EvansKazooCovers ive been wanting to do that this is actually perfect youre right
@@EvansKazooCovers Im watching JJK rn and its such a different experience without subtitles
Finally, i have a reason to watch My Oni Girl again
That's exactly what I thought of doing, I first understood English watching Naruto's dub (my mother's tongue is French). How cool would that be to learn a yet a new language using it!
僕は日本人なのでこの方法を使って英語を覚えてみます！
日本語字幕を入れてくださってありがとうございます！
I'm so happy that you are studying Japanese. I'm also struggling with studying English in Japan. Let's do our best together!
Casually drops the most impeccable written English as usual. 95% of the people who say this always have clean sentences
Bro you've got the hang of it already!
You have better grammar than most Americans already 🤣
@@redline841 Well, I can tell you sometimes there's a real disparity between someone's writing skills and speech skills when it comes to learning a foreign language. My first language is French, and when I first learnt English, I picked up things and got really decent at written English fast since I was reading/playing games in English. But there was still a big difference between those skills and my oral skills, truth is, I'm still in the process of "acquiring" a more natural spoken English. So, this person's experience might be similar to mine in that fashion. But I do agree, his written English is quite good already.
@@arfanik9827 At the very least, Y'all don't seem to be struggling.
I do get it tho, I'm also a native Hindi speaker, and I lack the speaking skills even though my writing and reading skills are good enough.
Principles: The decisive factor of learning the language is input. Memorization and explicit grammar practice is secondary.
1. Learn Hiragana and Katakana.
2. Learn basic grammar, but don't feel obligated to master it.
3. Commit multiple hours of input a day, whichever the method.
Tips
1. Passive listening to save time.
2. Tolerate not understanding everything. But having some context helps extract more information.
3. SRS (Spaced Repetition System) to learn a few words a day. Use "Mining" to add words you encounter to an Anki card.
4. Listen to Japanese for a few months before worrying about reading, unless you don't worry about accents.
5. Wait until you're very comfortable understanding Japanese to start speaking it.
6. Build confidence by usingJapanese in everyday applications, such as in notes or by conversing with Japanese people online.
7. Tone down the kanji and vocab memorization, focus on input.
Thank you for this, really helpful when I want to remember without having to watch the whole video
Keep commenting and liking this post so we can all remember 👍
The real key though is that the input must be comprehensive else it will get you nowhere, usually it can be deduced from the context or already known words. Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann both explain in perfectly
7. I think it's important to clarify that you should only avoid them as a beginner. It's important to eventually pick up written input and kanji is essential in that.
Best tip see Japanese baby cartoon for children of 3 year of age for 2 months
Very great for a head start
@@alexprus7953 Yea, kanji killed my motivation to learn Japanese. Attempting to learn it directly after katakana/hiragana is suicide and most people will drop the language this way.
I think best way to learn, from my experience, is learn hiragana and katakana well, and then from there do alot input and just generally be able to understand basic phrases/sentences. Best way to do this is as the video says, just watch/listen to what you enjoy and you will eventually pick a few things up, as long as the context is contextual (which is why watching stuff is your best option, put pictures to the words).
However, after you've gotten past this beginner stage of hiragana/katakana and being able to understand basic phrases and words, kanji does become very important. It's why there's such an emphasis on N1-5 in Japanese learning, so if you don't bother with learning Kanji you are just handicapping yourself out of a big part of the language (an entire writing system in fact).
this is basically how every non native english speaker learned english
i learned english only because i know danish and they are both germanic languages.
Pretty much yes, I'm a spaniard and I learned the colours in english before I ever did in spanish XD
Exactly, I learned English at 14 just because I was playing games in English and watched videos in English. I didn't understand shit, I just watched it because it looked interesting and here I am switching between my native language and English without even realizing it.
@@Haru_Shirosakilmao same, I watched a lot of stuff in English as a kid and now, boom, in fluent 😭
@@Haru_Shirosaki a combination of basic grammar learnt at school and consuming a lot of content at home idk how or when but at some point it just clicked
日本人です
日本語訳もつけてくださりありがとうございます!!
この動画をシャドーイングして頑張って英語の勉強してます :)
Good luck on your English learning journey!
英語学習の旅がうまくいきますように！（スペルが間違っていないことを祈ります）。😅
すごい！文脈もスペルも正しく書けてる！
Hi I'm an english person and to hype you up, english is one of the easiest language in the world so, good luck!
You got this! One the best ways to learn is with music 🎶 Much love from the states!
hello. you have my support in your english learning as well. also, please be warned, people are making fun of japanese people by calling you guys weebs and then banning others who defends the person who is being harrassed.
"beating their head against the wall trying to remember verb conjugation tables" hit me right in the heart, I had to cry for a few minutes.
@@niqqiart Yeah… also, I hope you know that Kamiya Juu seems happy and well in a company.
Verb conjugation was extremely easy for me.
Just gotta remember ichidan (most iru/eru) and godan verbs and the endings. Found it much simpler than Spanish class
idk what you're talking about, was pretty straightforward for me, you're just learning it wrong
guys calm down I was joking
@@niqqiart I know, but I wasn’t making any jokes or anything though. Nice V-Tuber avatar, it’s pretty.
**gets dropped off in the middle of Sapporo** learn, adapt, survive
😂
OMG, that’s exactly where I am in life right now. In Sapporo, keeping my head above water with Japanese, learning to adapt and survive.
@@kyounokuma I wish you the best of luck. Nice place though
@@kyounokuma are you going to Hokudai?
@@ghostcula Nope. Just living here. Permanently.
these are general rules for learning any language for that matter not only Japanese. that's how I learned English completely by myself in my room. my next destination is to learn Japanese the same way!
this is awfully underrated bro.. solid editing and script writing skills with actually useful knowledge to share, more people need to find your channel.
Learning english was not something I actually did consciously. I just woke up one day and I knew how to speak english.
@@hatsushikun2722
Yeah I think that’s the case with most people because they start consuming content in English from a fairly young age. For me I made the decision consciously when I was a little older so I had to go through a lot of the language learning struggles mentioned in the video.
Same!!
this is how i learned arabic as a kid (arabic cartoons on tv) & korean when i grew up and was into kpop & immersed myself in all korean entertainment. from live shows, radio shows, variety shows, dramas, etc. I can’t say i’m fully fluent but if i got dropped in korea i could get by, and i’d understand about 80% of what is said to me.
Same
日本語が日本人かと思うくらい上手いからすごく説得力がある😊
this is super helpful and validating because ive been using this method (kind of) by installing a jp keyboard on my phone and searching simple words i know like "ねこ" and watching whatever Japanese videos come up. it's basically interacting with UA-cam the way a child would.
That’s actually genius!
Sounds exactly like how I learnt English lol
That's really genius!!
that's actually amazing. you are letting the algorithm to take over and find video that fit your topic.
Install Duolingo. And also switch the word to it's accordingly kanji, first on Google translator
Since some words in hiragana has more than one kanji. Neko? 猫. Inu (dog) 犬。kanjis are actually easy to remember
When you see them often or are easy to distinguish. I thought it would be harder while using Duolingo
Most of the phrases I learned were easy or moderate too, but a few was very hard
Some I don't even understand why, I just memorized the answer.
You forgot the other 1/3 of people who want to impress their grandma.
I'm learning Japanese, but with my grandfather getting hit by kamikaze aboard the uss franklin in ww2 I think she might have a heart attack if she hears me 😂
i’m wanting to impress my parents😭😭 (wait grandma too actually)
Gma aint gonna be impressed by my javhd ability 😂
@@kachow5830 did you have a stroke typing that.
@@korton0 iykyk
when it comes to grammar i HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend cure dolly. she explains grammar so well and makes it feel so natural and logical, it's incredible!!
Her Japanese course is so good 😭
her voice and virtual character sucks tho
@@justalameusername1736 I'm pretty sure the reason her voice sounded like that was just because she was an old woman, though she might have put effects on it. I'm not sure.
@@justalameusername1736 yea...her voice put me off learning from her channel, but EVERYONE says she's the GOAT so I'm thinking of giving her another shot
@@madrabbit695she has subtitles c:
Thanks for the video Trent. As an American who was abruptly transferred to Japan for work very last minute with minimal Japanese experience, I've had a huge amount of imposture syndrome going out and doing things basically faking it while I pick up a few words here and there by having really awkward conversations or being force fed japanese media. It feels good to be reminded that, no, thats actually how people are basically designed to learn. Input, even passive input hearing people talk around me and trying to figure out the context, has been insanely helpful.
i was fluent by the end of this video, thank u trenton
A tip for immersion a friend gave me, rewatch stuff you know well in another language without subtitles, or with subtitles in the language you are learning.
I'm reading my way through Harry Potter in Polish. Since I know it well, it does make it easier.
I'm sorry if I sound dumb but I don't get how just listening/reading anything at all will help you just learn the language... it may as well be a baby's talk because I don't know the language obviously so I don't know what words mean what etc😣it's so frustrating and with a bad memory just makes it worse
@@Lavendrea I have never endeavored to learn Japanese, but I know some words and phrases just from watching a lot of anime. Even if I was watching without subtitles, I could figure some stuff out through repetition and context. Even watching a little Chinese allowed me to understand a few words. If they're repeated often enough, you'll pick them up.
What we were saying about watching stuff or reading is to watch or read something you're already familiar with. If you understand what's happening from the get-go, your brain can spend more time looking for repeating words that it can understand from context. If it's a new story to you, you will get frustrated you don't know what's going on.
One thing I used to do was watch a show without subtitles, then watch it again with them. That way, I could quickly confirm if a word I was hearing meant what I thought it did.
Time to watch shrek in japanese
@@Lavendrealearn the basics and then if you feel comfortable enough, you can try to watch some stuff in the language. You'll probably be able to learn a bunch of words just from context clues or from the word being repeated over and over again in certain situations/around certain things/in a certain tone of voice. That's basically how I learned English and I'd say that I'm pretty good at that language by now (guess that anyone reading probably wouldn't necessarily have guessed that English is my second language before I said so).
0:08 no I’m Japanese
Japanese-Japanese or American whose great-grandma was Japanese?
@@francis7336You forgot naturalized Japanese.
If you became a Japanese national, you'll need the language.
@@xwarrior760 Good point!
@@francis7336What a stretched way of saying just Japanese lmao.
@@xwarrior760It's hard to be naturalized, it's better born with one japanese parent lol
THERE, I CLICKED ON THE VIDEO. ARE YOU HAPPY UA-cam?
That's crazy 😭
Nah pls watch 20+ ads now
this seems legit, see ya in a bit when im fluent >:)
I’m jumping on the train let’s get it!
Same
keep the fire burning y'all don't stop til you make it
Watashi mou ikimashou arigatou nekou ikouuu
YAYAYAYA ME TOO NOW!!! letz see when i return to dis..
I think this is the basic order of things you need to do to learn a language
1: learn basic alphabets, basic phrases and their sounds
2: listen for hours
3: learn speaking
4: learn reading
5: learn writing
In this video is it basically just listening to japanese and use anki as the methods to learning japanese?
@@Vnxelt no, he did mention that anki will help a lot with understanding (basically listening to podcast and stuff will make you understand the language easily when spoken)
but you will need to learn pronunciation correctly or else you will take a weird accent which resembles your first language
it's the 3rd thing in the order I mentioned
@@LimitBreakerID thank you!
Fully agree. Learning the writing system first is insane, i do not understand why so many language courses approach it this way.
If i reach step 3 and master speaking in Japanese,
Thats already enough to understand things in conversation right?
I want to learn Japanese to understand what people are saying better. Do you think thats a good goal point for now?
This is literally how I learnt english as a child-teen without even noticing it. Every dang videogame I wanted to play was in english so I just kinda read it and heard it so much I ended up becoming proficient at it.
I wonder why I never tried the same with Japanese...
Fr i did the same thing, I started with a bit of duolingo then I practicted with chatting ingames and watching videos. Now english feels like my native language even though it's not, my native language is supposed to be french 💀
Same lol
Except there are only 26 letters to learn for to read English, not 3000 kanji with 4+ readings with fonts that don't show up well on any games made before PS2. The two aren't remotely equivalent.
I learned English by spending a lot of time on UA-cam watching american videos and reading comments in English; I actually wanted to do the same with Japanese but it feels a bit more daunting. I am trying to get some basic understanding of grammar at the moment before starting, I gotta say that Kanji is the main issue for reading in Japanese, lots of stuff to memorize visually because every word is a symbol.
I guess it takes more patience when you are a westerner and you are so used to the English alphabet.
@@HyakuniYakumo This was true for me too. What actually brought me to native level was watching american anime/game videos from native speakers.
Im doing the same rn, learnt the most basics of grammar, as well as Hiragana and Katakana. I recommend inmersing in media which only requires listening and no reading. Or very basic reading. For example, I recently started playing Pokemon ORAS in Japanese and to my surprise it's almost completely in Hiragana and Katakana, I can read most of it, which is great!!
Best of luck, my friend, hope you can learn Japanese eventually
Almost every piece of advice in this video gels with what I've learned as a language teacher over the last six years. You can trust this guy
i was gonna say that he hit major points that my language acquisition professors taught us when we were becoming teachers.
This is basically how i accidentally learned English with my phone as a kid
Me too
Omg, same😂😂😂 like I used to watch western cartoons all the time despite not knowing English. And boom suddenly I'm good at English 😂😂😂
this happened to me too, i kind of just learn it out of nowhere when i was i bit younger
so you were one of dem ipad babies
@@Chryseis-G Me too
You see, I am not learning Japanese but this has been in my recommended 4 times despite me never seeing this channel.
So here I am now,subscribed and watching
Same except I am learning Japanese so how I feel like I'm being watched
Same.
As a bilingual American this is by far the best explanation on learning language as an adult I have ever watched. We tend to over-complicate language, so if your goal is to understand and be understood at a basic level, there is plenty of hope for you if you put in the consistent time and effort.
This actually encouraged me to start learning Japanese again. Thanks Trenton! Don’t ask why I want to learn it.
要点絞ってて、めっちゃわかりやすかったです〜。日本語学びたい人はまずこの動画を見ることをお勧めします。ちなみに私は日本人で、英語をイマージョン学習で習得しようとチェレンジしてます。
That’s good to know. Best of luck with learning English!
good luck with learning it!!
Howdy
Have fun learning! I should do my best to learn Japanese as well! I've been putting it off for a few years 😅
i can help
This video makes me think of this one channel i found, Comprehensible Japanese, and she basically has a bunch of videos where she talks in japanese with a lot of contextually relevant images/video. She has different levels but in her beginner videos she basically talks the way a parent would to a baby, ie saying the word for hair and pointing to her hair. Honestly its a really good channel
Recently discovered her channel and I love her
Channel name?
@@buddyplayz4208”Comprehensible Japanese”
@@buddyplayz4208 Comprehensible Japanese :>
@@smolson8471 ty
This is pretty much exactly how I did it!
I started learning 2.5 years ago now, and I passed the N3 a year ago (I have never received formal classes in Japanese and I started entirely from scratch following guides like The Moe Way). I moved to Japan just a few weeks ago and honestly? I'm absolutely blown away by how much I know and how I can get by. I've been into my city multiple times alone just having a wander around, stopping in bars and things to chat with the locals and they treat me like a regular person who's just passing through. Incredible feeling!
I've managed to make a handful of local "friends" who I occasionally meet up with which is super nice, and I got a date with a local girl next week who literally speaks Zero English!
Trust me guys, it's absolutely doable and very worth it. If you ever decide to move to this country, dear god you will need it. There is no way in hell I'd have been able to do some of the more formal stuff without knowing the language (think bank accounts etc...)
Damn bro you living the dream. Don't forget to update us on how the date went
I am leaving "like" like this... I didnt want to spoil those 69 likes , bcoz you went/are going to a date lol
casually living the dream life of a weeb out there, crazy
enjoy that shit man some people will never get there 😭
0⁰
What is "the more way"?
This is honestly the best video ive ever seen on talking about how to learn Japanese
rewatching / re-reading / re-consuming your content over and over and over also helps a lot, cause the more you listen, the deeper ingrained it gets , the more reality you're able to understand what you did the last time, to spend more time on things you didn't pick up before. without trying. just active listening :3
"Tolerating ambiguity" is a very good point in which I have not directly thought about when I also give advice to people wanting to or already in the process of learning Japanese. Usually, a common theme is that people skip native Japanese material because it's "too difficult" in some fashion, claiming that when they "understand it" is when they'll watch it. But as you've stated, that completely ignores the whole point of a learning process, as in order to get to that level of more comprehension, you have to spend time clawing your way at it even though most of it can be pretty incomprehensible at first. It's kind of like a baby not understanding what 99% of things are still being said except for a few keywords, but throughout time with that input they get to adult-level understanding. Very good insight, Trenton!
I realized this by accident. I watched anime with subtitles for years without learning any Japanese. But then suddenly I realized I was starting to learn some words and phrases. Not because I turned off the subtitles, but because I picked up a Rubik’s cube and started solving it by habit while watching. I could no longer rely on the subtitles 100% because my eyes were on the cube. I started to learn to tolerate missing some of the subtitles. I keep telling myself that I’m going to turn the subs off completely because I’ve gotten too good at reading. This video has convinced me it’s time.
Casual Japanese is so contextual anyway, you'll do better in society habitually anticipating others' thoughts.
A lot of things that have to feel ambiguous for a while are sentences which communicate a meaning with a very different structure to their english (or whatever your native langauge is) counterpart. This is true for a lot of idiom like sayings or stuff like ki ni naru or ki ga suru. With these you literally just have to encounter them enough times to the point where you internally go "oh I know what that means ive seen that a hundred other times" and you start to "feel" the meaning like you might feel a baseball swing you practiced a million times.
the only not boring and actually informative japanese guide learning I’ve ever seen 😭 thanks
As someone who has tried (and thus far not succeeded due to not putting in the time from other life things getting involved) learning a language-
I think it's also important to remember that the brain and our mind aren't just some "floaty conceptual thing in our head" there IS a physical process behind learning, you LITERALLY need a bigger brain and entirely new connections in your brain to learn ANYTHING, language included, it WILL happen, but it's like exercise, and for that matter it's exercise for the most energy intensive part of your entire body-
You WILL be exhausted by it, but it WILL pay off. Your body is working for you in the background, not against you, but it's important to realize that you won't just "solve" a language, there is a logic IN the language, yes, but you will not LEARN or ACQUIRE it by trying to apply your logic to something that is LITERALLY BY DEFINITION, completely foreign to you.
It'll happen, and it will come naturally, but natural does NOT mean easy in a lot of cases.
The very nature of learning is adaptation, and in order to adapt you first need to TRY to do something that you can't do in the first place, so your brain gets the message that there are no workarounds, and if it wants to get past this block, it better start ordering some extra neurons, wrinkles, and start routing some new neural pathways, because this ain't moving, so we gotta build around it.
The confusion from not understanding something is LITERALLY the signal that sends a work order to your brain to start expanding so it can process something that it's never processed before.
Understanding is the goal, not the action needed to achieve it.
This video was put together really well and made the long journey of learning Japanese feel way less daunting and complicated. I'm glad UA-cam put it on my homepage, so here's your "I'm surprised this channel doesn't have more subscribers" comment. Definitely wanna stick around for more of these videos, so thanks for making this one.
thank you, I appreciate it
I've been studying 2 hours per day for the past 6 months. You are guaranteed success as long as you consistently put in the time.
Is there any specific media you stick to? I mainly read everyday for at least 30 minutes.
@@sada4483 My favorite immersion is just listening to podcasts and watching UA-cam videos.
@@AlexIsVeryBoredI work in a warehouse but I don’t usually talk to people or have the hardest job just a lot of walking so could I just pick a Japanese podcast tour my phone in my pocket and just listen?
If so, what podcast should I listen too?
What sort of level are you at now? I've been learning a similar amount of time, always doing my Anki but almost never doing the immersion cos of lack of time. As you'd expect I don't understand 90% of what I hear in immersion
ohhh so like just play anime crossing while listening to podcasts and anime for 12 hours a day
This is probably the most comprehensive video on learning Japanese that I've seen to date. The way you've made all of this information accessible in such a clear and digestible format is simply perfect. If I could, I would like this video ten thousand times over ^^ Thanks for bringing the Japanese learning process to the world. I would love to see more videos detailing the exact methods you used / you would recommend in detail. Thank you so much for spreading this valuable information and helping others on their language-learning journeys!
Appreciate the time spent in creating this and linking all of the resources - bless you !!
That's hands down the best approache imo, I did exactly that for English (I'm native French). You learn from start of middle school to end of high school, about 7 years, and I'm now fluent in English. It's been about 4 years of immersion of Japanese, with classes in university too and I'm about N3/B1 level, I think by the end of the school year I may be able to push for N2 (08/2025) !
Keep it up !
Immersion is such a powerful yet somewhat underrated method in the language learning space.
yeah, although this approach is not enough by itself sufficient for JLPT, as grammar is so important for those, especially for the higher levels
@@zeldrias This method will help you pass the N5-N3 easily, all bases are covered for those N’s if you just immerse. N2-N1 is nearly the same, except you may need to formally study half of N2 and N1 grammar if you want to complete the JLPT as soon as possible. You will still be able to pass all the JLPT if you immerse and no study though, I checked the JLPT grammar list and I realized that I encountered at least half of N1 and a good majority of N2 and this is just from immersion.
Thanks man. I've been learning Japanese on and off for about a year now and I've never once thought to play a Japanese audio (besides songs) in the background even if I don't understand it. That's really helpful for someone like me who usually don't have time to spare for extended learning sessions
This is a great overview of the process. The hard part for most people is being aware of this process and then being consistent until the point where the language is a natural part of your life.
Awesome video! You made learning Japanese feel so much easier than I imagined. Your positivity and practical tips are super motivating-thank you for the inspiration! I really appreciate it. TYSM 🙌😊
7:14 I’m Russian who learned English using this method and now I’m trying to learn Japanese the same way… and seeing «пончик» was pretty unexpected 😂😂😂
How about a girl in Russian subway? 10:35
same brooo, ахах ору 😂
I'm Russian as well 🫡
сразу полез в комменты искать таких же 😂
I'm a brazilian that learned english by the same method and then learned a bit of russian because I have russian friends so def seeing пончик was strange lmao
I’m doing this method with Spanish. It can absolutely be a grind but the method works. Figure out your goals, find your why, put in the effort, and it’ll come with time. Excellent video!
I just started doing lessons with Language Transfer trying to learn Spanish
I've been doing the same thing with Spanish using a website called Dreaming Spanish which is built exactly around this baby immersion method (not tryna shill just wanted to put it out there as I've been finding it helpful)
Good luck y'all, Spanish grammar has to be the hardest thing ever as a native Spanish person
The most annoying thing about spanish is probably the many ‘exceptions’ that they throw at you.
La problema ❌
El problema ✅
😭😭😭
@@mikeymadness3074 The method in this video helps with that too. Just input, input, input until you internalize "problema" is grammatically masculine, no matter what letter it ends in. This method also helps a lot with the subjunctive mood.
I love how honest you are about learning the language and your humor is really fun too - great vid - thank you
All great advice! I'm actually doing this method for Chinese (中文). Another cool trick I've learned, not sure how common this is in Japanese media, but in Chinese media they often have double subtitles, so Chinese and English on top of each other.
Whenever I find media with 2X subtitles I feel like I'm leaving so much! 😂 Just be careful though because sometimes subtitles of either language don't match up right, so you have to pause a lot and look stuff up.
Also try using something like Google vision where you can automatically grab characters on the screen instead of having to draw them out or remember how it's pronounced.
I'm studying Japanese next because I want to suffer. 😁 So watching this video was helpful to know that I'm doing things correctly.
I'm an American who's currently learning Japanese. I am NOT a fan of anime (aside from like 3 exceptions). I'm learning the language because real world Japanese social and cultural dynamics fascinate me.
My mass "input" is actually Japanese dubs of western media (Rick and Morty, Marvel Movies, Spongebob, etc.) and that stuff is just as in-depth and natural most of the time as eastern media, AND it's familiar enough to me as a westerner to where I don't feel overwhelmed. So be sure to dig through and find what works for you in things you already like!
My keystone so far has been, hilariously, the Japanese dub of the "Steamed Hams" Simpsons scene. I already pretty much knew the scene by heart in English, but I learn something new every time I watch the dubbed scene, it's great.
@@Reforming_LL Will do, thanks!
i see someone else has recommended yt and i 100% agree with them so i’ll go ahead and give you 3 people that i watch regularly. 1st Yuka_jp is probably the best since she is very easy to understand and uses lots of daily vocabulary. The next 2 are more personal ones so im not sure if you would get enjoyment out of them, but じゅえりー and masaru are good too. However they are fishing channels so the vocabulary is less common and more niche.
originally weeb meant to be fascinated by Japan and its culture, otaku is the word that we associate with anime fans, somehow the two words got mixed up and people use one for the other
so you are actually a weeb
Did you watch Attack on Titan? That's my favorite
@@arjix8738 I'll be honest, I do kinda prefer the term "otaku" more, lol.
3:24 "He was killed by a car" 💀
😂😂😂😂
I thought he was killed by a sandwich..
Car-Kun strikes again.
Wait, 車 exgists as a family name, so there’s a chance that he was killed by a person called Kuruma.
11:33 this is actually a concept that should be more obvious but took me a while to understand. i was in japan earlier this year and amongst other things I went to see the haikyuu movie that (still) isn't available online. haikyuu is one of my favorites and I knew that I wouldn't be able to watch it back home, so I went to see it a few times, and there were no subtitles (obviously). with very basic understanding of Japanese, context clues and vague memories of the manga, my understanding of the movie sat at around 50% the first time I viewed it, and was closer to 75% by the seventh time. it was so helpful not having subtitles. it does such tremendous change. because the translation isn't in front of me, I had to listen and watch closely to discern what was happening. i do know a bit of Japanese but not even on a toddler level, I can only read hiragana/katakana and make basic conversation. it was such a cool experience getting better at understanding the movie every single time! i tried it with other anime and it also helped me with understanding some sentences better because subs are never perfect and sometimes some cool words or slightly different phrases/intentions can be missed. this is a great video! and it definitely motivates me to try harder with learning Japanese properly.
Here's what I did: I changed subtitles on anime to Japanese closed captions. If I can't hear it, I can read it. If I can't read it, I can pause it and look for a word I don't know in a dictionary. It worked for me because I am Korean and I am already familiar with Japanese Kanji in the form of Hanja. I have to admit that my background gave me a head start. But before I tried this in Japanese because I'd already done the same thing with English content with Korean subtitles, and it worked. I changed Korean subtitles to English closed captions, and later removed it altogether. What's funny about all this is that I parted ways with translated subtitles for two different non-native languages not because I wanted to be a polyglot or sth, but because I couldn't bear letters cluttering the screen when I wanted to immerse myself into the whole screen. ADHD brains will make you do tomfooleries like this.
@@knpark2025 that's so cool! i'm bilingual but I don't know any asian languages, so kanji is really intimidating haha. i'll try watching with japanese subs! thank you for the great advice!
I noticed this when I tried watching an older Japanese movie a few times, it was never translated to English so no subtitles. It was called "Ganso Daiyojohan Daimonogatari" (in english, The Great Ancestral 4.5 Tatami Story), and it's based on one of Leiji Matsumoto's earlier mangas. Barely understood it the first time I watched it, but ended up understanding a bit more the second time and context clues gave me more to work with the second time around. Still a bit hard to parse some of the dialogue because you got the main character speaking a generalized Kyushu dialect and another main character who's a yakuza who uses less everyday sounding language from the sound of it. More recently, I caught a clip from Anpanman and found myself understanding most of it, so I can at least mostly understand the simpler dialogue used in shows for young children atm hehe.
@@MadameSomnambule so amazing how that just works. I'll have to check out that movie!
When I first started learning English on UA-cam, I only watched videos with subtitles in my native language. And then I changed to English subtitles. After a few months, I gradually felt more comfortable with turning off the English subtitles and then continued watching content in English without it.
I think the same is true for learning Japanese with media.
First with subtitles in your native language, then you change to the target language and finally you'll be comfortable to watch anything without subtitles.
I completely forgot the shadowing method after graduating bachelor omg I’m glad you explained what worked the best for you but mentioned still other methods for us to explore, thank you!
Love the video, agree with a lot of stuff. One thing I'd like to add, as I've seen many people talk about this. As a dad with a 3year old and a teacher, kids get so much feedback about what they're learning. When they start off learning, you hold a Banana and say "Do you want a banana? Banana? Ye?" They learn the word "Banana" the rest does not get inputted in. By the time they're making sentences, you are correcting them A LOT. They're vocab and ability to put long, complicated sentences together doesn't really start until they're at school and in a learning environment.
I found by picking ONE video of Japanese, that's about 10 minutes long. And watching that video 1000X. Looking up the words, looking up the grammar patterns until every word, sentence, syllable makes perfect sense, then move on to another video. You'll find the next video to be much easier 'cos there's similar vocab and patterns. Do the same with and move on.
Yeah but if you add bunch of adjectives, verbs, and a complete sentence like most English, and don't wait for feedback from the listener whether they understand or not it's not very good immersion.
Like "May I offer the baby the browning banana that's about to go bad." How much you think the baby will pick up from that? I'm gonna emphasize Comprehensive input. There has to be signals that the baby could understand to comprehend like the gesture to the banana and the immediate association with the repeated word. Most media out there is like being taken on a roller coaster blindfolded, you may get the feeling and the emotion being conveyed as you feel like you are falling but you don't know anything more than that you're being pushed around by something.
Maybe when I watch my favorite shows again when I finally understand it I might get a sense of deja Vu and gain the full experience...
I mean, I think that's why the original commenter suggested watching something over and over until it's comprehensible. That won't work if you did a week of Duolingo and the first chapter of Genki, but if you've got enough of a foundation to comprehend even a little bit of something, you should try to do it and then study the thing more closely to see if you were right or not. It's one good way to try and mimic feedback if you're in a situation where you can't actually get human feedback.
The people I usually see complaining about input not being perfectly understandable are usually around JLPT N4 or through the Genki textbooks. That's certainly not enough to understand most sentences on a first try, but it definitely gives you the toolkit to do something like this video and this commenter are describing and glean some value from something that appears too hard at first glance.
all these methods are exactly how i managed to learn english! i just used to watch youtube videos without understanding anything until at some point i started to understand what was being said, our brain really does learn with patterns! currently trying to do it again but with japanese this time but its a bit more hard than it was with english
I’m actually not a weeb I’m just an Asian without being able to speak Japanese.I can’t connect with my grandparents or family because of the language barrier.
Edit: nice video tho
I wonder if your grandpa fight during WW2...
Never ask what DigitalAanimations's Grandfather did during 1937 - 1945...
do what he said you to do and in 1~~2 years that won't be a problem anymore
say just hai and sou sou sore
You can't blame people for fighting for their country when they were young and fed propaganda. Yanks do it all the time.
I really appreciate your efforts! Been studying at different intensities and using different methods for years but not in a comprehensive manner. I hope that people are able to understand why/how you've organized all this information so that it is actually productive when applied. It's too easy to become hyper focused on one aspect, especially with so many specialized videos out there (many of them excellent). Again I appreciate your efforts to democratize this information.
I came across your video right after I decided with my mom that we'll be traveling to Japan as a graduation trip. I'll be back in 4 years to tell you how it worked for me.
Bet. I wish the best for you man. I too am learning Japanese. I’m sure you’ll be great.
Good luck on your journey!
@@drakehashimoto685 Thanks :)
@@ThatOneAnimePerson Thank you!
Good luck fam ❤
Leaving this 🍡 here to get the update ❤❤❤
This video is everything I've been looking for and more, omg. Thank you so much for taking the time to this!!
how’s the progress?
I've been at it for about 9 years (10000+ hours) now. Started with just watching anime with subtitles, playing visual novels and changing game voices to Japanese when possible. Eventually I started being able to tell when the subtitles were inaccurate or took some creative liberties, which I found annoying so I started paying more attention to the audio instead. I'd start watching raws because I didn't want to wait for the subtitles to come out. Nowadays I can understand the majority of spoken Japanese without having to put up much effort, and mostly do audio immersion through livestreams and music instead.
The last 8 months is when everything's really been coming together for me, as I've been putting in active effort. I skimmed basic grammar for like an hour, realized I know essentially all of it, and basically learned how to speak overnight. I finally got around to properly learning katakana and then dug my teeth into kanji because I decided I wanted to be able to read Japanese. I mixed SRS (Wanikani) with immersion (LingQ, changing game text language to Japanese, etc) and I've gone from around 50 know kanji to somewhere around 800 in 8 months and I can for the most part guess the ones I don't know.
If you did SRS for vocabulary paired with immersion from the beginning, you could get to where I am a lot faster (like 4-6 years), so don't let the 9 years scare you too much. The most important thing is to find some way of learning that you can do just for fun, because you're not going to be able to keep up with it for years if you don't enjoy it. Also, do *not* try to study or memorize grammar. Just skim through it briefly, if anything. You should let your brain figure it out naturally, but having the basic grammar concept at the back of your mind _can_ make it easier to notice patterns in the wild.
that's kinda impressive that you wen't so long without reading japanese. Were you reliant on the audio part when reading VNs and subtitles or how did you proceed before the last 8 months?I immediately got the Kanji out of the way when i started but that's because i just love reading and it was fun to me. Was careful to get enough audio input for my accent though. Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Sorry, but what is SRS?
@@ronniejamesdio6889 Spaced Repetition Software
Japanese grammar is so different than English how did you naturally absorb it so quickly? Do you fully understand it enough to talk about complex topics or just enough basics to get by?
Sorry no hate but unless you already know a language with a similar grammar to Japanese it feels genuinely impossible for you to know ALL Japanese grammar rules without actually looking into it and studying it. Even with English grammar some rules you can’t naturally pick up or really understand unless taught. You can mimic what you see but that doesn’t equal understanding what you’re doing.
@@RaspBerryPiesno, just takes so much more time, for example if you try to learn Spanish their grammar will be easier because both have a lot of similarities and you might learn it (grammar) in just months, with japanese that could take even two or three years, the point is even if the language has a extremely different grammar you're still able to learn it just realizing the patterns
i was gonna write a long-winded paragraph thanking you for the video, but decided ill just comment this to try and boost it in YT algorithm.
that editing timeline looked like a real headache, and as someone who puts a lot of time into editing, i want you to receive the attention you deserve for putting in as much effort as you have into creating this video for others. thank you.
Your guide is probably the best of the best, and I can relate to that a lot. English wasn’t my first language, and I found learning english at school to be boring and slow. Being a kid at that time, I liked watching UA-cam, especially English speaking ones, which I then mimicked the way they spoke, learning their accents as well as some grammar that I previously didn’t know of. Using methods like this actually helped change my accent from sounding like a foreigner to a native!
There's a really good UA-cam channel called Comprehensible Japanese with this native Japanese lady who takes Krashen's idea of comprehensible input and basically treats the viewer like they're her child. She shows you things like objects or pictures and speaks very simply as if she were explaining the thing to a native Japanese baby or toddler. Other times she'll tell very simple stories as if she were telling a very simple story to a native Japanese baby or toddler. It's a pretty useful channel as a starting point.
Do you know any channels like this but for chinese?
@@ChristopherArmendarez-Wi-xc4gwJust google comprehensible Chinese or Comprehensible Input Chinese and will find a lot of channels like that 👍
@JessicaDeBeltran Do you know any channels like this but for korean?
@scarlett_0001 not personally but google "Comprehensible Input Wiki" and check out the channels that they list there
@JessicaDeBeltran I'll try that out tysm 😊
Holy hell. Actual most useful UA-cam video I've watched for learning Japanese. Thanks so much omg
Great stuff, my initial thoughts were aligned with how you described learning should go with just trying to let it come by passively listening first and then apply more structure as you go. Thank you.
19:36 This moment made me smile. The way he laughed at that was so wholesome
11:43 Well most people watching an anime are watching it for the sole reason of enjoying the show, and not learning japanese in itself, but if you actually want to learn japanese then you have to not really be following the show too much and focusing more on what the characters say and trying to understand some meanings, that's the difference.
Learning Japanese lets you enjoy shows better so it pays off in the long run even if all you want is enjoyment.
this video has helped a lot as someone who has been trying to amp up my learning the past 2 years (started at about 14~ and im 16 now)
i tried to start as soon as I realized I wanted to be serious about learning, but really I’ve been shooting myself in the foot by not immersing myself as much as I could 😭
i will say though, just from casually listening to vocaloid every single day and watching lots of videos by natives, ive definitely realized most my learning hasn’t come from dictionaries or learning apps, and this video has really inspired me to start taking that leap that ive been afraid of- watching stuff without knowing much of what’s happening
also…. that vr clip with the hamburger joke made me smile so hard, i remember the first time i made a joke in Japanese and the person i was talking to laughed, it really feels like a milestone in a weird way hahaha
トレントンさん、動画を作ってくれてありがとうございます！💮💕
Oh nice, fav vocaloid song? Mine is probably 愛して愛して愛して (slightly basic but eh)
19:33
a hamburger! I have to eat it! raaaaaaah!!!!
Now this is one of my favourite videos ever. Thank you, kind sir.
I highly recommend Cure Dolly's Organic Japanese course on YT for general Grammar. I like it better then Tae Kim's guide personally. Her lessons are strongly geared towards encouraging immersion as soon as possible but with the solid foundation of the language's basic structure. Her whole YT channel is a great resource for learning Japanese imo. My favorite immersion method right now are voiced visual novels because they the provides a double whammy of reading and listening!
I've heard a lot of good things about Cure Dolly as well!
I will put the link in the description with the other resources :)
Where do you find these voiced visual novels?
@@Bruniinha1011 The one I'm currently using, Nekopara Catboy Paradise, I got off Steam. It's free! I also got the original Nekopara Cat Girls game (all age version) on sale for like $5 but I haven't played it yet.
For other games and where to find them I would check on places like r/visual novel, r/otomegames and sites like The Moe Way (which is all about learning Japanese using VNs. I was introduced to Cure Dolly through them and they have a discord for learners)
@@Bruniinha1011steam, also suggest text hooker like textractor and textbook page to link yomitan or jp dict to the text.
That actually makes one understand the sentence, instead of mindlessly listening to stuff. Read it, listen to it, and comprehend it in bite sized chunks, and enjoy a story at same time.
DLsite too, or the seven seas 😉
I mean… WOW all recourses are just awesome and video covers all the potential questions that newbie could ask. You really did a great job🎉❤ And keep it up!!!
this is probably the most helpful learning japanese video on all of youtube omg. thank you for this.
I agree everything except for using anki. The problem of anki is that when facing several words with the same or similar meanings, it can confuse you a lot. And it may waste you quite some time without knowing the context, just watching flashcard meanings. So to me I think just using input is good enough, looking up the words whenever you don't know the meaning, and cannot guess or tolerate not knowing the meaning of that word.
I found putting all my tech in japanese to be a big help. My phone being switched to Japanese also switches all the applicable apps to it too. Now of course, I only consider myself N4 currently, I still switch back to English on my devices when there's important information I need to digest. But most of the time, looking at my phones notifications and seeing something as simple as "Samが写真を送信しました。" I'm gonna eventually nail something new into my head.
this is really more a gimmick than anything, you'll learn a few words and it can subconsciously trick yourself into thinking you're doing more immersion than you actually are
Back in the 90s they had multiple Japanese language teaching shows on PBS.
I watched all of em and thats how I learned.
What are the shows called?
@@BestTrader-hp2sd bros lying. You always know when they don’t reply lol
Spent like 5 minutes looking and found a show called Irasshai. I think its what he is referring to.
@@XxTrueGamesxX thanks man we gotta lookout for each other.
This method brilliantly worked when I was learning Spanish. I immersed myself in a Spanish speaking country, I'm shy so unintentionally I listened way more. 3 months later someone asked me how did I learn Spanish so quickly! It dawned on me then that I was actually understanding most of what was said. I was over the moon, grammar is still my enemy but for some reason I can hear if it sounds right or not, just no clue why I know. Super excited that I've started my learning Japanese journey
Felicidades por aprender nuestro idioma!
Saludos desde Paraguay 🇵🇾
Gracias por estudiar español. 🎉
Ala bestia felicidsdes
I'm a native Spanish speaker and I don't really know much about grammar either 💀
@@G12DG12D-jy6ym fr
When I learnt Swedish I watched a lot of Swedish videos on YT together with my dad and then later on (a little over two years ago) I moved to Sweden and actively use Swedish ever since, continually improving my language skills.
Let's see how my journey to learning Japanese will look. And your assertion at the beginning that I'm a weeb is 100% accurate XD
I like how you just appeared in the algorithm and dropped a banger of a video lol.
Very entertaining and well put
I work night shift and my job doesn't require me to pay super strong attention to what I'm doing, so listening to japanese podcasts the entire time is definitely something I can do. I appreciate the spreadsheet, I'll certainly be making use of that!
Same. I'm also using pimsleur
This video is a fantastic push for me as a learner because after a couple years of attempting to learn it on and off i couldnt figure out a comprehensive way to do so. But this is something i feel i should've thought of before (the immersion aspect). Thanks for bringing this way to my attention.
I havent even finished the video and im already almost done mesmerizing one of the alphabets.... Great tips! I wish i found this channel and video much much sooner!!!!
Thanks a ton, that was super helpful! Seriously, I appreciate all the time and effort you put into spreading the message. Fun fact: I grew up in Japan, learned Japanese as a little Italian girl-go figure! Japanese is my second language after Italian since Italian is my native language. English is actually my fourth language, and let me tell you, it took a while, but I’m finally getting the hang of it.
This is the best video on learning Japanese that I've seen! This video basically summarizes (very well might I add) what I've learnt about language acquisition! I'm a mathematical physicist and don't have the time to actively learn, so I try to follow passive methods more. Great vid!
Not a weeb, although I like some anime. My childhood was in Japan and I'm bugged that I don't speak Japanese.
It took me about a year to pass N2 using the Refold method and stuff Matt talked about on his channel. I pretty much just watched Japanese TV and UA-cam at least 2 hours a day while making N+1 sentence cards and studying the bits of grammar I didn't understand just from the immersion. I also used Nativshark which helped me build some extra cultural knowledge and vocabulary as a beginner I wouldn't have learned just from media input.
Personally, I didn't see much improvement from passive listening as a beginner, and it was really boring when I tried. It was a lot more useful once I knew about 2k words and could follow basic sentences without subtitles. Until that point, I just got my immersion with active listening and reading along with the Japanese subtitles. I did listen to all the Harry Potter audiobooks which was a lot of fun.
This video is totally helpful, even for N2 level myself, I learned something new and worth trying in your video here. Thanks for making this video! I'll planning to recommend your advices to my friends
I've been trying to learn another language off and on again for years but I always felt overwhelmed, especially with speaking. Watching this video makes me want to try again.
I’m balancing my Japanese hobby with a preexisting anime hobby, so rather than rush into immersion I’m easing my way out of English subtitles more slowly. Some slice of life rewatches in the mix was a good way to start, and now I’m having a great time with JP-subbed Pokemon. Podcasts, manga, grammar, and SRS have been really helpful along the way too.
Any slice of life recommendations? Not sure where you are, but it’s summer in USA right now, and late nights in the summer are when I binge anime, no other time of the year.
It’s been a tradition since middle school.
@@sheneedsyrruup I recommend My little monster, skip and loafer and The dangers in my heart :)
@@floatint2137Thank you 🫂
@@sheneedsyrruupTeasing Master Takagi-san has been my go-to for learning!
6:33 help thats exactly how i learned english without even noticing
Me too lol
It doesn't matter if I don't understand anything about what I'm hearing?
@@yulimartorrealba5851 kinda you need to know some words or watch something with picture to make connections but that's basically it in second grade I stopped watching everything bulgarian and just switched to english and that's how I am now at C1 level without any other learning
and also games in english (Minecraft)
Facts, but I'm at B2@@lighthillness5487
This video helped me get back into learning after slacking for the entirety of summer. Thanks man!
I am a Japanese-Japanese living in Japan. Thanks to this video, I can now speak Japanese fluently and I even got a girlfriend. I am grateful for this video.
As someone whos native english speaker who is actually learning spanish from *mexico* because my family majority from mexico, i also do that too, i listen to the music, I watch tik toks or videos in spanish to be familiar with the wording and speak to people in spanish when i need to or when i want to like my family or friends. the biggest help for me is music and ill try to sing it in spanish. Though Im still a baby spanish speaker, your advice is gonna help with me a lot both Spanish and Japanese :3 (Everydah im reminded mexico and Japan are little besties since they barrow each other's culture like banda)
0:24 easy, people just play it for multiple nights while not watching. Multiple views per person, and no one actually watched, just listened (then fell asleep)
Great video, the most helpful video on Japanese I've seen yet. Everyone is looking for a shortcut, it takes a few good pointer like those you gave in your video and hard work.
You sneaky dude... I was listening the video while working and for real thought that the video was ending.
I said "wait... that's all?" and then I realized... You got me for a second haha
I just came back from a 4 week trip from japan and I feel like this trip really got me confident with the language. I don't feel as uncomfortable speaking the language (even though I made so many mistakes, but they got the gist of what I wanted to say) and hearing the language really was just really helpful to understand what daily life japanese is. I also learned some vocabulary, not much, only a few words, but I still see it as a win. I also made some friends there. I think it was a great experience and I will definetly return. The trip really motivated me to learn the language more. At some point I also started using japanese as a reflex (for example: when I wanted somebody to repeat what they said, I asked them in japanese, even though I was talking to a british tourist in english) using and thinking a little bit in japanese was a really great feeling ^^
THIS VIDEO POPPED UP RIGHT AFTER I FINISHED DOING RESEARCH ON STEPHEN KRASHEN'S FUNDAMENTALS AND COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT THEORY FOR MY SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/TAALVERWERVING CLASS WOAHHHH
Don't know if you'll see this, but exactly 82 days ago I stumbled upon this video and it was the spark I needed to seriously attempt studying Japanese again. This method of learning through anki and immersion had changed my perspective on how to approach language learning and has made my time studying/learning Japanese a lot more enjoyable. In previous attempts I wasn't even able to get past the first few chapters in Genki I.
Anyways, today I've read my first manga volume fully in Japanese (僕の心ヤバイやつ) and suprisingly I was able to comfortably read it without needing a dictionary, although having watched the anime a few months back did help in certain parts that were unclear to me. I tend to prefer reading because the kanji helps me figure out meaning of newer words and I've seen quick improvements on my reading comprehension, especially the grammar, so admittedly I haven't done much listening, but I'm thinking of waiting for my vocabulary to grow a bit. Thank you for inspiring me to take this journey.
I'm actually not an american , european nor a weeb ,I'm from Egypt , English is my second language , Arabic is my first and I have been studying Japanese for 3 months and I really like your guide , Hope this gets more likes and views.
wooo another Egyptian! I have been learning Japanese for a year or so
They speak Arabic in Egypt? I always thought they had like an Egyptian language of their own.
@@108wee Yes , We speak Arabic (Egyptian Dialect)
@@108weethey speak pharaoh language
please stay in egypt
Immersion learning is a method where learners are surrounded by the language they are trying to learn, using it in everyday situations to become fluent.
While it can be very effective, there are several potential problems that might arise:
１．Lack of Structured Learning: Immersion often lacks a structured curriculum, which can lead to gaps in understanding grammar
and other foundational aspects of the language.
２．Overwhelm: Learners might feel overwhelmed by the constant exposure to the language, especially if they don't have a solid base to build on.
３．Miscommunication: Without adequate instruction, learners might pick up incorrect language usage or slang, leading to misunderstandings.
４．Cultural Differences: Immersion also involves cultural aspects, which can be confusing or challenging if learners are not prepared for the cultural context.
５．Motivation: The constant challenge of immersion can be discouraging for some learners, especially if they don't see immediate progress.
６．Access to Resources: Immersion requires access to a rich environment in the target language, which may not be available to everyone.
Addressing these issues often requires supplementing immersion with formal language instruction and support.
tldr you sound like a bot
@@carlmarker9257LOL
bro this video needs more recognition its so well made i wish i had this 2 years ago when i started
@@rileytanag6070 Well, better late than never. I only found out about immersion learning a year after I started, and I was so happy when I discovered this method. I was able to progress unlike before.