As someone who speaks 6 languages and is learning a couple more, what has worked for me so far is almost entirely ignoring grammar and only focusing on vocabulary at the beginning. When you have a vocabulary of enough words to get by a regular day you'll automatically pick up and learn grammar through other peoples phrasing, reading etc. Might not work for you but just throwing it out there
💯👏 totally agree, you can spend your entire life learning about the grammar of Japanese but if you Dont know what any of the words mean guess what your not going to be able to speak it amazes me how people Dont get this and spend way too much time on grammar
@@joshuaradloff1070 You need a high level of grammar to read and understand Japanese,which is not a thing in other languages,usually you need good grammar to speak and write while reading comes naturally using context and logic but in Japanese's case if your grammar is bad then knowing the entire dictionary won't save you.I am talking N2 grammar just to read shounen manga.I don't know what you or the original comment are talking about,please study grammar.
@@dererlkonig7428 Grammar is important, but the problem is people focus on it too much. Many people focus solely on grammar and not enough on vocab. I mean studying grammar once in a while is fine, but hyper focusing on it isn’t helpful for the most part. 😅
tell me u haven't studied japanese without telling me u havent studied japanese. you gotta learn the basic grammar of japanese first. but after that yeah i agree, u can do too much grammar.
I've written a similar comment under a different video, but as a Japanese teacher I'm so glad that more and more people, especially people who aren't certified teachers or exprenieced learners begin to realize that the school-like, textbook approach to learning languages just isn't gonna cut it. As you said Joey, what you need is tons of constant input and retrieval of the thing's you've input into your head. Also a tip, if you're having trouble with remembering vocabulary, try learning whole sentences instead. Our brain is really weird and has an easier time remembering new things as 'chunks', aka sentences, than single elements, aka words. Context really is a powerful weapon, so make sure you use it
Learning from textbooks, etc is a good starting point. Alot of people dont have the same cognitive processing as everyone else. I learnt Japanese at University and I think if I didn't have that foundation, I wouldn't of gone off on my own and been able to comprehend structures the same way if I did so outside of the teaching literature or classes. I wouldnt say 'it doesnt cut it', everyone's mind is different, but absorbing via context is (in my opinion) the mid-to-end game of learning Japanese, or any language. I am hoping engrossing myself long-term while on the JET program (moving in the next few months) will do more for me, than forcing myself with other contexts (Anime, games, etc) that I feel are less fun and helpful, but tedious and annoying.
@@MrFantastik619 True, textbooks can be helpful at the beginning to get started, and to some, even later. If you can realize what kind of learning gives YOU the best results you should continue doing what you're doing without a doubt. And of course, after grasping the basics, practice is a great way to learn, so have fun and make the most of your time in Japan!
I know context helps me a lot. I struggled even remembering the hiragana at first but when I started using them in the context of real Japanese words then it made it much easier.
Hello could you answer a question for me? So I'm new to Japanese and I've memorized katakana and hiragana and some basic kanji and I'm not sure what the next step is besides just memorizing the most common words in japanese because as far as I know there is no just stringing kana and making a word and understand that. So do I just memorize a lot of words and then I'll be on my way?
@@sumchinI'm no expert, but I have watched a lot of videos about learning Japanese and when combined with my experience, these are the steps I would give to a newer learner these days. Vocabulary/kanji will be the most important thing to memorize early on. Your comprehension of any Japanese will be limited by your vocabulary knowledge much more than grammar for a while. Don't worry about handwriting it though, just worry about reading and recognizing spoken words for now. I recommend starting with Refold's 1000 most common Japanese words Anki deck for building up your early vocab. Pay close attention to the native speaker audio and do your best to sound just like that. I did 10 new words a day, but you might want to do 5 depending on how much time you have to study. Plus, be a bit strict with yourself, you'll really want to nail down these words before moving on to future studies. You'll want to also start reading through a Japanese textbook/watching lots of Japanese grammar guides on UA-cam to start picking up the grammar. I recommend the Human Japanese digital textbooks or Genki is fine as there're guides on UA-cam for each lesson. You don't have to get everything right away, as you'll have to revisit grammar lessons a few times to really get it anyway. Looking at things that interests you about the language or something you heard when listening is a good way to link that grammar to the context in your brain. When you're about 500 words into the vocabulary lists, start listening to as much Japanese input as you can as you'll start to pick up on common phrases at this point. After a few months, you'll be in the Intermediate stage where you can read and speak basic sentences and know the common grammar. You might want to research some pitch accent information too. Here you'll want to try to learn to read all the jouyou kanji while studying the 6k vocab Anki deck. Around this point you'll probably benefit from a Japanese tutor who can help explain the more advanced grammar points as well as being someone with which to practice your speaking. Here, you'll really want to focus on the pitch accent. Reading websites like LingQ and Satori Reader are helpful at this point as well to start learning how to read native level material. As you come across certain words, add them to your own Anki deck to practice them throughout the next few days. The key is to stay as consistent as possible, if you stop, you'll have a hard time getting back in the rhythm of studying as it can feel a bit overwhelming for the first few weeks. I will say that there is a lot of memorization in Japanese to do, so studying at least an hour a day is required to start making noticeable progress, but people who want to see quick progress will need over 4 hours. Japanese isn't a language you can study for 15 minutes a day. It sounds overwhelming, but once I was able to carve out a consistent schedule for myself to study each day, I was able to adjust to it just fine after a while. It's also likely that you'll find your own methods from UA-camrs or your own experimentation that work best for you. Just make sure to review the basics on occasion as you'll sometimes forget simple things that you studied a long time ago.
0:00 Intro 1:24 Disclaimer 2:35 1.Surround Yourself 5:33 2.Understand your native language 7:47 3.Diversify your study materials 9:53 4.Don't be afraid to make mistakes 11:08 5. Study Actively 14:24 Conclusion: It's HARD.
I passed JLPT N1 last december after 2,5 years of learning Japanese. Totally agree with surrounding yourself with the language, all I did is watch anime with japanese subs everyday and read manga, books and games in Japanese. Also I used Anki with Migaku to make Flashcard from the japanese media I consumed. As for Kanji, the trick is to not learn how to write them. Before I began with immersing myself on a daily basis I completed an Anki Deck based on RTK in order to learn to recognize Kanji like Faces. The most important thing tho is to have fun in and with Japanese! In just a few months I will be taking the plane to Japan, Nagoya to start studying at Aichi Shukutoku University as an exchange student for a year. I'm really nervous but I hope it will be a good experience and I will be finally able to use my Japanese in daily life.
@@narianasands2127 surprisingly, even the highest JLPT isn't native-level. it "only" tests about 2,000 kanji, which is roughly the amount an average student in Japan is expected to know by the time they finish middle school (read: not even high school). N2, the second hardest exam in JLPT, "only" tests 1,000 kanji, which is about how much students are expected to know by the time they finish elementary school. An adult in Japan knows around 3,000 to 4,000 kanji. The hardest Japanese exam tests about 6,000, though supposedly it's quite difficult even to native speakers.
The same for me I've been learning for 6 months and already N2 just by reading Visual Novels and doing Anki im planning on taking the n1 this year and going to japan for uni
It's also important to think in your target language and just talk to yourself all the time in your target language. Like just for fun. Unless you're doing this, you still are thinking of the language as "study". But a language is something you use all the time subconsciously. So if you talk to yourself and think to yourself in the language, your brain stops putting it in the "study" compartment and puts it into the "language" compartment
Trueee. I've been doing this for the longest time with Japanese, and it really gives you confidence to speak with other people when you get the chance to
The active study thing is so huge. I study Japanese for months and months and months, really hard. Then I went to call the hotel in Japan that I was going to be staying at for a week to confirm my reservation. I choked up immediately, my mind went blank, and I could only manage the most basic things I needed to essentially tell them I would call back later. An hour later I signed up for italki because I realized that I couldn't speak Japanese at all. Lol I can answer all the questions in the textbook and I can write what I needed to to answer the questions in the textbook, but I couldn't do it as fast as I needed to to use it in speech. There were words that I knew that I had never really spoken more than once or twice before moving on in the textbook. I did italki with my amazing tutor for 2 weeks before I went to Japan and then I only needed to use Google translate twice when I was there.
@@ae831 you know, I definitely think that I would be getting more out of my lessons if I was better at the language, but I think I still get my money's worth just having someone there helping me along and motivating me to learn. Especially with my depression, it's really hard for me to convince myself to study. But I don't like letting down my instructor and she's just so damn nice. Lol
Italki literally is the gigachad of Japanese learning talking to teachers and reading textbooks outloud and doing practice conversations helped SO MUCH. Good luck on your journey
@@ae831 I couldn't say much when I started and you can try teachers for cheap to find someone that can speak English at first and teach that way. I'm telling you it works. I started in English only and now they only speak Japanese to me. It helps.
@@laurenabernathy5581 yeah, same here. I could speak a little pretty fast, but I'm about.. 2/3rds Japanese in a lesson? It's wild because I'm understand so much more now. My responses are a bit crap a lot of the time, but I feel like I've learned a lot every time I do the lessons. I feel challenged every time.
I sometimes get frustrated about my level after a year and a half of studying it but then I remember it took me more than 10 years to be completely fluent in English, which is, I think, a much easier language to learn. So people, don't give up, learning a new language is a long journey.
I highly recommend watching livestreams in whatever language you want to learn. Not only do you get to a hear a native speaker talk, you also get chat messages that react to what's's going on. So you can not only learn about whatever topic the streamer might be talking about, but also how they express anger/laughter/enjoyment/sadness when something good or bad happens And on top of that, if you choose a stream with low-medium amounts of viewers, you can actively participate as well and practice your writing
And if you’re going to interact with the streamer don’t bother if you’re gonna just use Google Translate. It’s cringe seeing people claiming they are learning Japanese but their entire messages are clearly just fresh out of Google Translate, and the streamer always can clearly tell.
I'm currently relearning Kanji, and no joke biggest cheat to learning kanji is mastering the tsukuri and hen, or in English the Kanji radicals. Just by first learning the radicals themselves and their intended meaning, names, and relations to the kanji, you can MULTIPLY the retention of said kanji's characteristics in your mind. This is more useful for more advanced kanji because the first ~200 kanji you learn don't have radicals, or become the radicals themselves, but eventually you hit the ceiling of kanji where you start having trouble memorizing kanji if you approach each one as unique and individual. but if you learn the radicals, it's just like writing with lego blocks. if you weebs out there like me got their spirits broken by kanji, try using Kanji Alive and it's list of kanji radicals to FIRST learn the important 50 or so radicals, and THEN try learning the N2 and N3 kanji, I promise you'll have success!
to add to joey's first point, another thing people overlook when "immersing themselves in a language" is that they think of all the complicated ways of demonstrating your understanding in japanese, but it can be just as simple as making a simple sentence of what you will do or already did that day in japanese. or using japanese adjectives or verbs on the fly. once you can easily pull out those parts of the sentence, then you can polish the grammatical structure of the sentence when you string it together!
Interesting, so with kanji, it's important to ensure one approaches it completely differently than one would go about learning both the kana syllabaries?
Kanji is the kryptonite in my Japanese learning journey cuz i can understand spoken japanese to an alright extent like watching japanese youtube videos on everyday non complex stuff but ask me to write the kanji for Benkyou and im scratching my head pulling my hair out and everything so thankyou for thid recommendation
@@Hondavid. I think you meant the 'study actively' part. Immersion (surrounding yourself with a language) can simply entail watching anime 24/7. You don't necessarily even need to use a particular language to be immersed in it.
Great advice, but I think what I and a lot of other people struggle with before all of this is maintaining the ability to stick to studying a foreign language for a long period of time. Like it's not learning Japanese itself, but just learning how to learn.
Personally I found it helps to commit yourself to the daily habit of learning rather than focusing on the long-term goal. You can easily lose motivation if you focus only on the results. You will become frustrated at lack of progress and get impatient. Instead, make a solid commitment to yourself that no matter what you will practice 15-30 minutes a day every day. At first this will be easy and you'll probably invest way more time into learning due to the novelty, but eventually it will start to become more of a chore (that's when remembering your long-term goal can be helpful) but 15-30 minutes a day really isn't that much and so it shouldn't be too hard for you to push yourself to maintain this habit.
In this sense I think Japanese is the second-easiest language to learn in the world, right after English. As soon as I had learned the basics, with the help of online dictionaries (including one for kanji), I started playing JRPGs, reading VNs, and watching anime and variety shows in Japanese, as my sole entertainment source. I didn't put any real effort into it, but fast-forward 4 years and I was pretty much fluent. I also learned English this way. It's very effective. It only really works if there's tons of (native) high-quality entertainment available in the target language though. That's part of the reason why I couldn't make it work with Chinese; there just wasn't enough variety, and I got bored midway (I still managed to learn how to read Chinese though, partly thanks to having already learned kanji).
@@VVayVVard I agree. Now with Polish even looking up words is a pain compared to using Yomichan. At least I have the Witcher books which also have great audiobooks, but its difficult to get the variety I had in Japanese.
in a simple sense, its the same process as learning your native language (id assume is english for you too). remembering how i learned english helps me figure out what to focus on
Another tip for all JP learners, definitely make sure the journey is just as enjoyable as the destination. Really enjoy what you learn (by making it a game of sorts) and don't make it feel like a hassle as you would when learning, say any school subject. For me, I feared learning kanji, but as I got progressively better and better, learning kanji became my favorite parts of the language. It's almost like a puzzle game when connecting word together even if you don't know what the whole word says. It's even a bit funnier when it's pretty literal. Like: 名古屋 (Nagoya, the city). The kanji are something like: "Named old shop" which is pretty silly. or 池袋 (Ikebukuro) meaning literally "Pond Bag"
As a korean, when I get questions on how I got very good at english, I usually go like: Don't focus too much on the grammar, watch youtube videos in englsh WITHOUT THE SUBTITLES, and listen to podcasts a bit often It just applies to learning lots of languages, and learning new stuff to a certain extent Edit) not without the subtitles, with subtitles with the language you try to learn first and then no subtitles
I did this subconsciously for two of the languages I know. I moved to Italy from Asia and picked it up mostly from TV. I know quite a few people like me from places like Germany and the Netherlands that speak English with a very American "UA-camr" accent because most of our input was YT growing up... fyi : try to avoid this if u plan to live in the UK I'm currently regreting life decisions ; P
@@chainsawkas7545 OMG yes lmao... they r mostly very calm about it... I just want to blend in though but this makes me stick out like a sore thumb... I have to explain I'm not American too which is a pain...
i'm from italy and i got better at english like this but now i'm trying to learn korean and it's a lot harder :c i think it's also because for english you already get the basics and grammar through schooll
@@Lavenderrrrrrrrrrrrrr learning french in school made me hate the language but now I'm thankful i understand it (I still can't speak it without sounding like an idiot).
I've been learning Japanese for a number of years now but I've been afraid of making mistakes throughout the entire time. I've been wanting to start trying to watch anime and videos without subtitles but I always chicken out but thanks to this video, I think I found the courage to start doing that. Thanks for the tips Joey!
Something that really solidified my English was reading and writing fanfiction in English. Find something you're really interested in and just use the language as a medium to getting to it, because at the end of the day that's what language is.
I actually started to understand my native language when I started to study japanese! It's really useful in a lot of aspects, like, you know, trying to learn some language improves your own skills and understanding of your own language. Also I can give one really useful advice: trying to make a journal in japanese. Like, write about your day and thoughts and so on BUT everything in japanese. It puts your brain to think, check your notebooks, textbooks, kanji and so on.
I actually write a lot at school in Japanese and sometimes I like to mess around by casually writing down my answer to a question in Japanese every once in a while to just get a funny reaction out of my teacher who acknowledges that I like learning languages a lot and doesn’t mind it so long as I put a little bit of English below the Japanese text to help her understand it, I also taught my teacher words like 分かりません(wakarimasen) “I don’t know/I don’t understand” (I’m sure you know basic greetings so I’m not gonna type them in) 手伝って(tetsudatte) “help me” or “I need help with something” Usually words and phrases you’d expect in a school environment when there’s a conversation between a teacher and a student
My personal additions to Joey's already reasonable and solid advice: Learn the kana A hint for the "surround yourself" point > If you have a target language maybe there already exists some of that language in your daily life? Here in the USA there are so many products with multi-lingual materials included with the item. One can already lean on those materials as real-world examples of the language as it pertains to stuffs you interact with frequently. If you have the time don't skip over those materials, but rather, take the opportunity to read or listen to them in combination with the sections in your native language. (As for Japanese in particular, if you have a Daiso nearby, there are plenty of items with Japanese written on them that are potential vocabulary-builders.) What stuffs do you already do all of the time? Are there existing materials about those same activities in the language you're trying to learn? If you have the time, seek out and leverage those materials. Put in the work to THINK in the target language. (Yes, I know not all thoughts in one's head are going to be packaged nicely into words in one's own language within which they are already proficient.) My anecdote > If you are thinking about a thing in words in your head start replacing those words with what little words you have already picked up. Working on the "thinking-in" instead of doing a process of "translating between" can aid a language-learner SO MUCH. Using a language is grounded in thinking in that language. Translating is a distinct skill and needs to be treated as such.
I know a lot of people usually already do this, but Anki helped me learn vocabulary so much faster. I don't always remember every word I've ever studied, but putting together a good base of common phrases and words allowed my brain to start putting together the puzzle pieces on it's own. I was able to learn new words from context without having to look up every new word.
Funnily enough, one of the ways I use to study Japanese regularly is reading doujinshi in Japanese. Sure, some of the words you learn like nakadashi (中出し）and chinpo (ちんぽ）are NOT gonna be words that you use on a daily basis. But the good thing about the setting of most doujinshis (especially the vanilla, incest, NTR ones) is that they usually feature students or adults as the main characters, and the words they use in conversation is not that far off from what actual students or adults would be saying irl. If you ignore the plots and just translate word for word, you'd be surprised by how many words you can pick up that are actually used in daily convo. Non doujinshi examples would be Takagi-san and Senpai ga Uzai, these manga have similar word use to a lot of romance-based doujinshis and are easy to learn from.
@@humanbean3 Doujinshi is, by definition, the Japanese term for self-published print works, such as magazines, manga, and novels. They may feature original or existing characters and plots, and may have different genres and themes, including erotic or fan fiction. I happen to have a Yu-Gi-Oh! doujinshi that I bought off of eBay a decade ago, centered around my favorite characters and fan pairing Yami Yugi (a.k.a. Atem) and Tèa/Anzu
As someone who's been learning for 12 years and is fluent now the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone is find something you enjoy in your target language and find things you want to do and use that as a way to learn. If you're not enjoying the learning process you won't learn anything. I also found it much easier to learn and remember kanji by learning words rather than individual kanji.
Its not possible to remember 30k words if you dont know individual kanji because the brain won't recognize it as meaning only random lines in figures. You actually need to learn kanji to get a close to native vocabulary
Tip for anyone who spends a ton of time on youtube: change your in-app language or account language to Japanese! Since you use it a lot, most buttons come naturally and you can learn what words mean over time. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that learning dates and time as well as numbers and their kanji has been really great through this method since all videos have that info!
@@lollybirdy LOL same sometimes tbh. Part of it is actively making yourself stop and figure out what stuff means though. I like to look at view counts since they always change, so you can learn numbers that way like I mentioned earlier! It’s just a matter of actively trying to use it to study which is hard to do
That's true but I don't know if that works with Japanese. Because the structure of the language is different I don't know if it works. But for other languages with entirely readable scripts that's a great advice
@@delta606 It works fine! :) the structure would be that way with anything you use to learn, so UA-cam would be no different. You may want to look up or translate parts of the site first to see what they mean and then practice reading them when you’re using UA-cam normally
I'm taking a Japanese class now, but I also do Duoling and keep a journal. I write the journal using the Japanese I learned from class so it sticks better. Different methods for studying are good to try and see what works.
Duolingo is a total waste of time. Get some flashcards and do Anki, look at the Tae Kim grammar guide or Cure Dolly or just the Wikipedia articles on Japanese grammar. You can learn in like a week what would take 3 months on Duolingo.
As someone who went through the entire Japanese tree on DuoLingo (legendaries as well) when I was already at the stage where I was reading manga due to reasons: DON'T USE DUOLINGO FOR JAPANESE. It's SO bad and SO slow you'll barely get to N4 (2nd lowest JLPT level) if at all, after finishing the whole tree. I have a folder full of screenshots, and videos filled to the brim with unnatural sentences, incorrect readings, words which do not make sense at all to teach to learners (like, literally 100k+ most used word tier), and a lot more. These are just the superficial issues with DuoLingo for Japanese. I could write a novel criticizing DuoLingo for Japanese. Besides, it wouldn't surprise me if Japanese is perhaps one if not the language with the most super high quality resources out there. There's no reason to rely on DuoLingo at all. If you don't know which resources to pick, here are a couple of the ones I'm 100% sure will actually help you get good at Japanese. Do your own research, and pick one for grammar and vocabulary, after that just grind non-stop: Anki, IMABI, WaniKani, bunpRo (with an R, not bunpo, which is pretty much duolingo), Genki, etc.. There's also this guide called "TaeKim's grammar guide", but the site is honestly an absolute mess a lot of people end up reading the "complete guide" which is actually incomplete, and then lose a lot of time. But if you can get past that hurdle, it's also pretty decent. The WaniKani and BunpRo combo is ridiculously effective, but they're both paid services. Anki and IMABI are both free, but are pretty complex for absolute beginners. Anki has a pretty steep learning curve if you want to make the most out of it, while IMABI doesn't mind throwing a bunch of grammar lingo at your face. With that said, IMABI is probably the best free grammar resource out there though. Also, don't postpone immersion waiting to "feel" ready. You'll never "feel" ready. Just dive in and keep consuming Japanese.
Duolingo gets weird pronunciation errors for Japanese. I hate listening to the audio lol. I don't think enough people realize how terrible it is due to how popular the app is. Gamification and the addictive nature is cool tho
Surround yourself! Exactly. I teach ESL and became fluent in Spanish through immersion while living in Spain. But I always tell my students if you can't live in a foreign country you have to create your own form of immersion.
I feel like most of these, with the exception of #2, are good advice for learning pretty much anything, to varying degrees depending on exactly what it is, of course.
The way how I started learning Japanese was doing Duolingo for the first month and a half, just to understand Hiragana and Katakana and afterwards I went to Busuu to improve my understanding of Japanese grammar and sentence structure. Then I started watching Japanese UA-camrs, Vtubers, and various other videos. And after a few months, I started to grasp a lot of how different Japanese is so different to English and that made me so excited to learn more.
I love the method of language learning you mentioned in an earlier video of yours, which is to pick up children's books and manga since the language is simple and easier to understand than say the Asahi Shinbun. Try to start learning the language like a child would and go from there.
12:00 When I was in the height of studying Japanese, I would just talk to my family that didn't know anything about Japanese and just translate right after what I was saying. Although it was more slang, a couple of words, or short phrases, it was something that got me to use it more.
I was born in Japan (raised in LA), Japanese was my first language, I went to Japanese Saturday school, and still have a long way to do. What I find really helpful is to ask my Japanese friends to fix my Japanese whenever I say something incorrectly, and whenever they say a word I've never heard before, I first ask them how it's written in kanji (a lot of times, I can figure out the meaning through that), put it in my Notes app (the word, how they used it in a sentence, definition, etc.), and review it later. This might sound excessive, but this is what has helped me ❤
This came at the right time...I have my uni japanese exam in 4 days...thanks for the great insights Joey! From a personal standpoint...the thing that helps me the most is just...writing down the words and characters as much as you can...this bas helped me to the point that I can instantly spell out the characters (in hiragana or katakana) as long as i can pronounce it/hear it correctly!
I have been wanting to learn Japanese since 2018 after a co-worker was talking about how trips to Japan. I stayed by buying books on writing Hiragana and Katakana and Kanji. I recently completed a 24-hour certificate program in Conversational Japanese (Self-Paced) from my local community college. I'm now taking Japanese lessons on italki, and I'm really enjoying it.
Great takes. Been learning English for ~20 years and Japanese for a couple of years (still have a long way to go) and all of these resonate. Thanks Joey, this reignited my passion for Japanese
I would definitely recommend learning katakana before hiragana, you get used to the sounds and syllables, and you can try and read some things and actually understand them! That feeling of progress can be very helpful
Number 2 is so true. I had to back and reteach myself grammar. Personally, even thought English was my preferred subject in school, I went through every school year not getting a full grasp the super basics like adjectives, and verbs, types of verbs, adverbs in particular, so as I'm learning the particles and new vocabulary, I'm learning which words are more than just what the are on the surface like a noun and stuff. It's still confusing but I'm getting better the more I practice of course. Personally, my favorite ways of learning are by breaking down sentences and learning new vocabulary, as well as trying to repeat after people who speak at random. I'm trying to listen more to improve my listening skills beyond the easy sentences. Also, it's important not to overdo it and not burn yourself out while studying, so you can have more steam for the next day or the next time you plan or think of studying.
My method of learning Japanese language is by reading Japanese preschool books. I know it look childish but this method are super fun and less boring unlike reading a bunch of adult textbooks with colorless illustration plus convoluted context. I take Shimajiro book (a preschool books published by Benesse based from anime with the same name) book for example, the book has a lot of colorful illustration and all the books are in hiragana and katakana and make it super easy to read. It was hard to read at first and after 10 times reading, my reading has improved a little. Btw, I bought a bunch of pre owned Shimajiro books from Japanese online proxy store called Buyee and instantly read the book once the package arrived. My conclusion, Japanese childrens book are super fun to begin with especially for people who want to learn basic Japanese.
I have study time and motivation time. Study time is actually actively trying to learn it (vocab mostly). Motivation time is watching anime, because recognising new words while watching something I love, helps keep me learning. And I also listen to japanese music while driving, trying to sing along (and failing miserably).
7:22 being proficient in two languages helps a ton, you don't make mistakes with trying to apply things from your native language to the one you are learning once you know how much languages differ from eachother
Good video! one of the things that has helped me was from some other polygots advice that passed away unfortunately. Lashou, RIP. Is that he said in one video that no one really can't master a language, you should try to be realistic with it. Languages are always going to be constantly evolving and things can change. Languages is a lifestyle when it comes to learning them. It's always gonna be something new to learn, hell even with your own native language. New idioms might come up, new ways of saying things. So really don't put too much pressure on trying to be perfect. Let that ideal go and just enjoy the process.
This video give me motivation to keep learning. I just started learning Japanese and I'm still trying to lock down the basics for Hiragana first before tackling Katakana and then the end game boss Kanji >
I just started working on japanese off and on and finally buckled down and have been practicing for an hour everyday for 1 hour and am having a blast. These videos help me a lot sense I also been working on spanish(taking classes).
Good advices. I want to add one more tho, that helped me a lot: dont neglect kanji. Its hard at first but after mastering the first 100-200~ kanji, learning the rest gets way easier. Knowing kanji reading gets more easy and also fun, also if you want to read light novels or books in japanese, there is no furigana to help you out there. Or just regular news online, or wikipedia pages... After a certain level kanji is essential, or you are just going to pile them up and give up on learning, because you have to learn too many of them at the same time, which is not fun.
I Liked the video. It was really nice to see Joey talk about learning japanese in his own opinion. My native language isn't english, but when I'm highly motivated to learn japanese (at least a bit), I do it so hard that my motivation burns out after a few days of learning it. The reason is that I'm one of those who need others to join my journey, to keep myself motivated. But where I live, not many is into something like that. So I'm basically alone on this. I'm an anime watcher, watched japanese youtube videos, tried learning japenese with the app, I have tried changing video game's language to japanese (kanji destroyed me). Since I enjoyed your video, I would like to see you try some apps or even video games, that could help improve learning japanese. I am a gamer, always been, and games really helped me to learn english, so knowing what game would be a good start to learn japanese - that might hook for good to not stop learning a new language. Thank you very much! I hope there will be a Part 2 including apps, games, etc. to surround in language.
as an avid otaku/weeb and Billingual speaking asian its quite eye opening to listen to Joey/anime man himself giving us advise as so far- its actually pretty easy....maybe because I'm already used to the 2 languages before japanese in awhile to speak yet so far-the thing is missing writing in japanese-the culture and language speaking sure Iam in a good progress yet writing is a challenge indeed
Agree 💯! This is how I learned Cantonese. I surrounded myself which wasn’t hard for me. Being mix English was the first language and only spoken. I married someone from Hong Kong, his parents spoke no English, so I just jumped right into it . I like learning other languages. Of course, back when I was learning it was cassette tapes ,books , that I put in reverse, what I mean is it was for Chinese learning English. I listen mostly to Cantonese songs, and then the movies the shows. And yes, I followed along the subtitles. Meaning, I would recognize a character, but I would not know how to pronounce it, or I knew how to pronounce a word, but I did not know how it’s written. I made a game of it. And of course, later we had five children, I surrounded them with Cantonese/Chinese. Kids are now 34,34, 30,26 and 21. All grew up with Cantonese and English. One of the twins to deeper interest and even studied Mandarin. Then my fifth child my only daughter also took Mandarin and one year of Japanese. Now I’m here to learn Japanese at 60, I’m familiar with some of it. But like you said, if you don’t know your own grammar in your own language, you going to make it difficult for yourself. You are right about everything you’ve mentioned. And if you can speak to a native speaker, even better. When my children were small, we would make a video for our kids, speaking Cantonese and showing the flashcards. I had my husband at the time do this, so they would have the correct pronunciation with no foreign accent. Also, I enjoy learning to write in Chinese. I would write to my in-laws… it took me a long time and then I would write little English words near the characters, my sister-in-law would translate should I got it wrong. Making mistakes is good. Besides, my in-laws got a laugh when I made those mistakes .Divorced 12 years and out of practice. Now I am here wanting to learn Japanese. I’ve been putting it off for a while. I have a new man in my life and want to surprise him. I understand a little bit and I also learned Samoan. Which is totally different. But the suggestions you were giving are on point. Now this begin Japanese.😊
That definitely applied to me learning German. I couldn't remember the gender of nouns. Then one day I said screw it and just made up the gender if I didn't know it. And suddenly I could talk.
Great video! I'm learning Japanese right now and am using a tutor through Amazing Talker. Also listen to Jpop, watch Anime and try to read as much as possible. I feel like the oba-san in my class since I'm the oldest, but am having a lot of fun and my tutor is very patient with me. The biggest problem I am having is THERE ARE SO MANY VERBS! LOL! Plus you have to get the proper tense. It's a tough road, but I am really enjoying it!
I totally agree that you def need to have a good understanding of your native language. I've been learning Japanese for 3 years and have had to go back to English grammar and really relearn what certain things mean. Great tip!
Thank you Joey! While teaching my partner my native language he asked many times why things work the way they do. I learned English at school, and the way they teach it is with this 'formula' style of teaching, almost like math without really explaining the 'why' of things. And for my native language Spanish, not even my teachers were able to say sometimes why we say things the way we do. I think finding the 'why' really helps when learning something, it helps connect things with one another and makes remembering those things much easier.
Learning Japanese is so much more easier today than when I started back in the 2000s. Anki and takoboto are free and have all of the JLPT N1 - N5 vocab + kanji laid out for you. You don't need to sentence or vocab mine anymore. You can literally just memorize a ton of vocab and kanji flash cards and get to a high level in a year with 3 - 4 hours a day of deliberate study, and by study, I mean learning 20 - 40 vocab a day via flash cards and lists l + listening to audio content. Even if you wanted to sentence or word mine shows, you can simply screen shot it on your phone and copy the text data with ease. Expensive 電子辞書 or mindlessly drawing radicals. If I were to tell anyone right now how to get good quick I would literally tell them to just learn hiragana and katakana and immediately start the JLPT official flash cards on Takoboto or a solid community deck on anki and skip learning to write kanji AT ALL
Im a native Dutch speaker and I learned a bit of japanese by myself. It's pretty hard but I just love the language so much. So even tho I take a lot of breaks since I only cab study it in my free time (and im not following classes) I will definitely continue doing so
Thank you for making this video. You have helped me regain the motivation to once again sharpen up my skills in one of my native languages. I told myself like two years ago I'd do it, but I slacked off before I could even really start. Hopefully, this time, that won't be the case.
Im japanese and watching this to learn english. Its so infomative cuz of the face cam, also reminds me of how difficult to learn. And there is a person who is similar situation with me! GL!!!
I've been learning japanese since 2021 and, as I deepen in the study, I find myself feeling like I know less and less of the language. It's really challenging but it is a wonderful experience. Being in a japanese language school has helped me a lot, without discipline I think that being an autonomous learner can be quite difficult.
I agree with this so much. As I learn more and try to read something a bit more difficult I realize how little I still know. But looking back at how much I have learned to this point feels good
Good advice, thank you. I've been learning for almost 2 years now. Most important for me as been learning Hiragana, Katakana, and main Kanji. Duolingo has helped but I find it's easy to cheat and frustrating if you're trying to use Duolingo for free. I listen to alot of Japanese music (mostly anime music) and watching my favorite anime (My Hero, D. Slayer, One Punch, Kengan Ashura).
I love this video, thanks Joe. I find it amazingly useful, not only for learning other language, but even for mastering your native language. I am Spanish and even now I do make mistakes and I do not know words from it, I am still learning, so no panic with learning Japanese, not when it is my fourth language and it is actively fighting with the space French occupies in my brain. Anyway, for me Japanese is the hardest language I have ever studied, after seven years I am still trying to find the magical moment when my brain is going to be able to think in Japanese but, until then, everything I am able to read a kanji just naturally is a small victory, since kanji for me is the most difficult part of studying Japanese...
I’ve been off and on learning Tagalog. I guess I realize that I don’t study actively. When I was in the Philippines I learned a lot very fast. But when I came back to the US, my skills dropped because I didn’t use it. I’ll have to take your advice and be more active about it. My wife is Filipino, I should refuse as much as possible to speak English. It’s a perfect opportunity.
I agree a lot with the reading aloud bit. Another benefit of it is that while reading gives you time to think and process the material, conversation does not, so by reading aloud it helps exercise your brain and mouth muscle memory so that you can snap-to and respond to things more naturally, rather than things feeling like, question, thinking time, answer.
Good methods, I would add to learn about the culture as a lot of vocabulary will make much more sense when you know how it relates to foreign concepts. Also to go along with not fearing mistakes, I'd say don't worry about forgetting words, it's the brains way of telling you which vocab to pay extra attention to.
one things that really helped me was literally talking to myself in japanese. whether I was in the shower or doing chores, just pretending to have a conversation or saying random dialogue in Japanese helped me immensely. By doing that I could also challenge myself to implement new grammar or vocabulary I had learned and test things out.
Comment on Tip #5: This applies to EVERYWHERE. I took an introductory psychology class a few months back, and active learning was *the* most emphasized topic in that course. Summarizing the material, listening and then rewording what you hear, and quizzing yourself on what you just learned are all huge things for not just learning a new language but learning literally everything in life. In a way, we do active learning all the time through stuff we're passionate about. We tell our friends about that one anime episode we loved, and guess what? You remember it better later because you summarized that thing you saw in your own words. It's a lot more intuitive to human nature than you may think, and that's why it works so damn well. I don't know, just thought that was kinda cool how universal some advice can be.
Refold has helped me out alot. Finally making some real progress instead of just repeating the basics over and over. Immersion and anki is working for me way better than school, text books, learning apps.
I really appreciate you mentioning point 2. Funnily enough, I grew up knowing Polish and had just HUGE problems with getting how English works. Hovewer Japanese sentence structure was SO EASY, because it was basically like my own language. So having watched anime with subtitles for many years and having similar sentence structure, without having a Japanese lesson ever, I would catch people speaking it on the street and simply understand them. With English it took me at least six years of lessons until I could read short texts, lmao. Really couldn't be further apart.
As a 20 year old in currently in university, I'm finding it hard to find the time or day to study it consistently. Also, I have my passion which is art and I love doing it and my uni work which I'm studying Fine Art. I'd say I'm basically turning my hobbie into a career. I have started learning Japanese in 2020 which was in covid times and I was doing good. Afterwards I stop because of my college work and I haven't start it since. I still haven't forgotten it, it's the matter of me actually starting it.
Studied japanese for 6 years, i get big roadblocks multiple times a year, its totally normal! Youll struggle sometimes and itll be a breeze sometimes, just keep going, maybe take a week off but make sure to get right back into it. Something that really helps me is forcing myself to speak it, i talk to myself a lot in japanese and think in japanese often.
One thing I would like to add about reading aloud. Together with the speaking skill, it increases the listening skill, because you get used to hearing words and grammatical constructions with different conjunctions etc. Then it will be easier for you to perceive these already familiar sounds in someone else's speech. In addition, at such moments you will feel an emotional uplift, seeing the results of your efforts. So yes, read aloud, friends! がんばって！
I think the second point is really important and couldn’t agree more!! Once I started mining sentences and breaking apart the grammar of content I was interested in, my Japanese really took off. Once I saw how the Japanese grammar related to the English grammar and the meaning it translated to, it became very easy to internalize and understand. For me learning just grammar points without the context is kind of futile as it doesn’t show me how it operates in real life. The differences between Japanese and English are astronomical so I feel like the hardest part for me was really internalizing or associating meaning with Japanese words and grammar. For example the ていく、てくる. Even if I learn what that means on it’s own it’s still hard to use that intuitively and understand the nuance it has. Simply telling me it roughly means “it’s getting or something is coming towards me/the speaker” doesn’t really make me understand it. I feel like that’s a very vague and ambiguous description. Once I saw how natives used it during conversation and saw what exactly it expresses in English it became easy to grasp. With languages that are similar you can generally go about it word for word but with languages that are completely different you need to basically start from scratch. I’ve found a lot the things we say in English Japanese just doesn’t have and vice versa. You really need to understand the culture and how Japanese express themselves, the entire organization of thought is different. You’re starving? No your stomach is empty, you’re eating out of stress or comfort? No your mouth is lonely lol. The good thing about Japanese grammar is that despite it being completely different than English, it’s very systematic and is very logical. It just takes an insane amount of exposure and real life conversing to grasp.
I got to see my first ever theatre play in Nihongo today. Made me sad that this sort of content isn't readily available, not even if you're willing to pay money for it. The only local bookshop selling Japanese language novels closed down last year, so the next one is a six hour train ride away.. I know there is plenty of anime out there on streaming services these days, even with Japanese subtitles, but I am craving some more "realistic / less dramatised" content for lack of a better word. Any recommendations on where to look? Great tips too! I personally set my phone and game consoles to Japanese since I can basically operate them with a blindfold on anyway, in order to fully immerse myself. Although I'm not sure it has been all that beneficial in my learning journey.. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your tips, Joey! I've been learning Japanese for half a year through Duolingo, a Japanese learning textbook and SOL animes. I hope someday I'll be "Nihongo jouzu" like you wkwk.
I started through a french text book teaching Japanese. I learned that the hiragana and katakana afterwards then the grammar. I am still learning on Duolingo and the difficult part of Japanese is still the grammar and remembering how particles work in certain sentences. So yes like you said in your main channel and this one, you cannot rush learning Japanese.
Surround yourself with the language is definitely the most effective one imo. I watch anime every night, became too lazy to read subtitles and accidentally learned Japanese. Tip 2 is exactly the opposite of what I did. I always thought learning a language this way is like running a program on emulator, learn like a baby is the way to go. Joey being successful with this is eye opening for me.
"accidentally learned japanese" I understand immersion is important but if you don't know any vocabulary and you aren't looking up words, it's almost impossible to learn Japanese through immersion
As someone who studied English for over 15 years, starting from primary school, and still struggled to speak and write correctly, learning through immersion is much more effective than simply memorizing grammar and vocabulary. For the past two years, I've been listening to the Trash Taste podcast, and although I initially understood literally nothing, I can now comprehend about 95% of the content. I've used the same approach to study Japanese for a year and a half, spending most of my learning time consuming content in Japanese. Started with anime, then progressed to galgames and manga, and now I can read light novels in Japanese. While learning grammar is necessary to pass the JLPT test, it becomes much easier to learn when you encounter it in context, such as somewhere in manga or light novels.
btw, Joey didn't mentioned but ai is so op for learning a new language and you should definitely use it, you can let ai correct your grammar mistakes and improve your writings, you can even try to practice daily conversation with ai.
I'm studying to improve my knowledge in the French language and i find that when learning languages Joeys 5 steps are spot on. I do plan on learning Japanese In the future, right now I can't submerse myself with 3 languages. Thanks Joey very helpful tips.
Bonne chance avec ton français alors :) Si tu as besoin d'aide pour pratiquer, n'hésite pas ! I'm also learning Japanese ! It's hard but i find it really fun to learn !
I'm a native French speaker, who learned 3 others european languages and just finished a beginner Japanese class. All those tips are amazing to learn any language! I would also add that learning some vocabulary before any grammar has been working a lot for me because I get super excited when I read a sentence and I recognize the words😂. I remember a lot better when I "feel" a word or a language. So cultural knowledge is very important for me in the sense that it can explain why that word is polite vs not this one. Also for school when studying gets boring, to learn a word, I make a whole scenario in my head, and say it out loud when it's time 😂 I'm talking shower kind of self-talk lol.
one thing i like to do when watching anime is pausing the screen and reading the Japanese text - for example, when the character receives a text message or there's a still of a news article. it makes me appreciate the setting more than just relying on the spoken words.
something that I don't see in these learning language videos is something I saw on youtube not long ago. This guy got into an accident and could only speak chinese, he forgot english, afterwards he speaks about how to learn a language, the biggest thing for him when he was learning is to change your inner monologue to that language. That's huuuge, and no one ever mentions that in other videos..so definitely try that too! I'm trying but I embarrassingly enough don't use my Japanese as much as I should but I'm going to be trying this method more.
Hey, here's the thing right? My brother and I are from Ukraine, when we were adopted we were both Russian speaking only. You wanna take a stab at how we became flueng english speakers? Watching powerpuff girls, Avatar the last air bender, courage the cowardly dog, ect. Ect; In the mornings before school. We are social creatures who can detect patterns. A textbook is "here is specific information for a specific kind of v/n/adj thing; now lets move on" and you never truly have enough time to absorb it because there's no experience to connect you.
Exactly textbook learning is just theoretical stuff, and guess what, you need to already know the language else it won't make sense if you don't unconsciously understand what you're learning from the textbooks. Immersion is the only qay to acquire a language.
I usually write the language a lot and repeat the audio. I watch kids cartoons in the target language to get an understanding on the tones. But Im doing all of this with mandarin, and so far it has worked, despite the fact that Im still a newbie :D. Im proud of my small progress. Btw, If you have disney+, there are some shows with different language audios and subtitles in those languages. Happy learning dudes!!!!!!!!
A fun way to learn a new language in my experience, is to play video games in that language. I started playing pokemon in Japanese and it's a fun way to practice reading or pronunciations. Also adds a fun little challenge of just trying to figure out what moves are what XD
In my case the most effective method to learn a foreign language was chat GPT. I prompted it to be my language teacher, talk in my target language, use fairly simple vocabulary and syntax, correct my mistakes and explain grammatical rules and my French improved much more within a few days than in a period when I was just reading books in it.
Also something important I think can help people is that not everyone learns stuff like this through daily action. I’ve actually found that, in my Japanese studies in particular, I learn faster and better if I dedicate HUGE parts of a day to learning Japanese and then just stick with passively reading stuff on twitter or in games for the rest of a week, when I have those bursts of inspiration to work and learn I get so much more done Experiment with methods and find what works for you. Make it fun and engaging, if it’s boring then try something else!
Im currently in the process of learning the lannguage by myself and it feels so cool to be able to read somethinng in japanese. Also I think being a Spanish native speaker and having English as a second language has helped a lot. Spanish with pronunciation and English to understand some words
I hated how I studied Japanese for years and then native Spanish speakers showed up in Japan with little to no studying and their Japanese sounded better than mine. Not fair.
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As someone who speaks 6 languages and is learning a couple more, what has worked for me so far is almost entirely ignoring grammar and only focusing on vocabulary at the beginning. When you have a vocabulary of enough words to get by a regular day you'll automatically pick up and learn grammar through other peoples phrasing, reading etc. Might not work for you but just throwing it out there
💯👏 totally agree, you can spend your entire life learning about the grammar of Japanese but if you Dont know what any of the words mean guess what your not going to be able to speak it amazes me how people Dont get this and spend way too much time on grammar
@@joshuaradloff1070 You need a high level of grammar to read and understand Japanese,which is not a thing in other languages,usually you need good grammar to speak and write while reading comes naturally using context and logic but in Japanese's case if your grammar is bad then knowing the entire dictionary won't save you.I am talking N2 grammar just to read shounen manga.I don't know what you or the original comment are talking about,please study grammar.
@@dererlkonig7428 Grammar is important, but the problem is people focus on it too much. Many people focus solely on grammar and not enough on vocab. I mean studying grammar once in a while is fine, but hyper focusing on it isn’t helpful for the most part. 😅
@@dererlkonig7428 bro thats literally true for any language
tell me u haven't studied japanese without telling me u havent studied japanese. you gotta learn the basic grammar of japanese first. but after that yeah i agree, u can do too much grammar.
I've written a similar comment under a different video, but as a Japanese teacher I'm so glad that more and more people, especially people who aren't certified teachers or exprenieced learners begin to realize that the school-like, textbook approach to learning languages just isn't gonna cut it. As you said Joey, what you need is tons of constant input and retrieval of the thing's you've input into your head. Also a tip, if you're having trouble with remembering vocabulary, try learning whole sentences instead. Our brain is really weird and has an easier time remembering new things as 'chunks', aka sentences, than single elements, aka words. Context really is a powerful weapon, so make sure you use it
Learning from textbooks, etc is a good starting point. Alot of people dont have the same cognitive processing as everyone else. I learnt Japanese at University and I think if I didn't have that foundation, I wouldn't of gone off on my own and been able to comprehend structures the same way if I did so outside of the teaching literature or classes. I wouldnt say 'it doesnt cut it', everyone's mind is different, but absorbing via context is (in my opinion) the mid-to-end game of learning Japanese, or any language. I am hoping engrossing myself long-term while on the JET program (moving in the next few months) will do more for me, than forcing myself with other contexts (Anime, games, etc) that I feel are less fun and helpful, but tedious and annoying.
@@MrFantastik619 True, textbooks can be helpful at the beginning to get started, and to some, even later. If you can realize what kind of learning gives YOU the best results you should continue doing what you're doing without a doubt. And of course, after grasping the basics, practice is a great way to learn, so have fun and make the most of your time in Japan!
I know context helps me a lot. I struggled even remembering the hiragana at first but when I started using them in the context of real Japanese words then it made it much easier.
Hello could you answer a question for me? So I'm new to Japanese and I've memorized katakana and hiragana and some basic kanji and I'm not sure what the next step is besides just memorizing the most common words in japanese because as far as I know there is no just stringing kana and making a word and understand that. So do I just memorize a lot of words and then I'll be on my way?
@@sumchinI'm no expert, but I have watched a lot of videos about learning Japanese and when combined with my experience, these are the steps I would give to a newer learner these days. Vocabulary/kanji will be the most important thing to memorize early on. Your comprehension of any Japanese will be limited by your vocabulary knowledge much more than grammar for a while. Don't worry about handwriting it though, just worry about reading and recognizing spoken words for now. I recommend starting with Refold's 1000 most common Japanese words Anki deck for building up your early vocab. Pay close attention to the native speaker audio and do your best to sound just like that. I did 10 new words a day, but you might want to do 5 depending on how much time you have to study. Plus, be a bit strict with yourself, you'll really want to nail down these words before moving on to future studies. You'll want to also start reading through a Japanese textbook/watching lots of Japanese grammar guides on UA-cam to start picking up the grammar. I recommend the Human Japanese digital textbooks or Genki is fine as there're guides on UA-cam for each lesson. You don't have to get everything right away, as you'll have to revisit grammar lessons a few times to really get it anyway. Looking at things that interests you about the language or something you heard when listening is a good way to link that grammar to the context in your brain. When you're about 500 words into the vocabulary lists, start listening to as much Japanese input as you can as you'll start to pick up on common phrases at this point. After a few months, you'll be in the Intermediate stage where you can read and speak basic sentences and know the common grammar. You might want to research some pitch accent information too. Here you'll want to try to learn to read all the jouyou kanji while studying the 6k vocab Anki deck. Around this point you'll probably benefit from a Japanese tutor who can help explain the more advanced grammar points as well as being someone with which to practice your speaking. Here, you'll really want to focus on the pitch accent. Reading websites like LingQ and Satori Reader are helpful at this point as well to start learning how to read native level material. As you come across certain words, add them to your own Anki deck to practice them throughout the next few days. The key is to stay as consistent as possible, if you stop, you'll have a hard time getting back in the rhythm of studying as it can feel a bit overwhelming for the first few weeks. I will say that there is a lot of memorization in Japanese to do, so studying at least an hour a day is required to start making noticeable progress, but people who want to see quick progress will need over 4 hours. Japanese isn't a language you can study for 15 minutes a day. It sounds overwhelming, but once I was able to carve out a consistent schedule for myself to study each day, I was able to adjust to it just fine after a while. It's also likely that you'll find your own methods from UA-camrs or your own experimentation that work best for you. Just make sure to review the basics on occasion as you'll sometimes forget simple things that you studied a long time ago.
0:00 Intro
1:24 Disclaimer
2:35 1.Surround Yourself
5:33 2.Understand your native language
7:47 3.Diversify your study materials
9:53 4.Don't be afraid to make mistakes
11:08 5. Study Actively
14:24 Conclusion: It's HARD.
Bless you
Number two made me realized it too late like 2 years after studying japanese
Thank you, I always love when someone posts the tldw of a video
mhm
ありがとうございます
I passed JLPT N1 last december after 2,5 years of learning Japanese.
Totally agree with surrounding yourself with the language, all I did is watch anime with japanese subs everyday and read manga, books and games in Japanese.
Also I used Anki with Migaku to make Flashcard from the japanese media I consumed.
As for Kanji, the trick is to not learn how to write them. Before I began with immersing myself on a daily basis I completed an Anki Deck based on RTK in order to learn to recognize Kanji like Faces.
The most important thing tho is to have fun in and with Japanese!
In just a few months I will be taking the plane to Japan, Nagoya to start studying at Aichi Shukutoku University as an exchange student for a year. I'm really nervous but I hope it will be a good experience and I will be finally able to use my Japanese in daily life.
N1 is native-academic. Did you mean N5?
@@narianasands2127 no, I meant the highest level of the JLPT
@@narianasands2127 surprisingly, even the highest JLPT isn't native-level. it "only" tests about 2,000 kanji, which is roughly the amount an average student in Japan is expected to know by the time they finish middle school (read: not even high school). N2, the second hardest exam in JLPT, "only" tests 1,000 kanji, which is about how much students are expected to know by the time they finish elementary school. An adult in Japan knows around 3,000 to 4,000 kanji. The hardest Japanese exam tests about 6,000, though supposedly it's quite difficult even to native speakers.
The same for me I've been learning for 6 months and already N2 just by reading Visual Novels and doing Anki im planning on taking the n1 this year and going to japan for uni
@@mapl3mage exactly, I'm the best example that N1 ≠ native level
There are still so many words I dont know and I almost can't talk, way to go!
It's also important to think in your target language and just talk to yourself all the time in your target language. Like just for fun. Unless you're doing this, you still are thinking of the language as "study". But a language is something you use all the time subconsciously. So if you talk to yourself and think to yourself in the language, your brain stops putting it in the "study" compartment and puts it into the "language" compartment
That's absolutely golden advice. What helped me the most was this. Bravo 👌
Trueee. I've been doing this for the longest time with Japanese, and it really gives you confidence to speak with other people when you get the chance to
One think that can work is singing in the language that you want to learn outloud and/or in your mind
@@La-hora-del-terror As someone who loves to sing, yes absolutely that literally helped me get the intonation down
I've been doing this ever since I was a kid and now it's just natural for me to think in English.
The active study thing is so huge. I study Japanese for months and months and months, really hard. Then I went to call the hotel in Japan that I was going to be staying at for a week to confirm my reservation. I choked up immediately, my mind went blank, and I could only manage the most basic things I needed to essentially tell them I would call back later.
An hour later I signed up for italki because I realized that I couldn't speak Japanese at all. Lol I can answer all the questions in the textbook and I can write what I needed to to answer the questions in the textbook, but I couldn't do it as fast as I needed to to use it in speech. There were words that I knew that I had never really spoken more than once or twice before moving on in the textbook. I did italki with my amazing tutor for 2 weeks before I went to Japan and then I only needed to use Google translate twice when I was there.
I wanna do that too but have been putting italki off for months cause I'm nervous about it being too difficult for my level..
@@ae831 you know, I definitely think that I would be getting more out of my lessons if I was better at the language, but I think I still get my money's worth just having someone there helping me along and motivating me to learn. Especially with my depression, it's really hard for me to convince myself to study. But I don't like letting down my instructor and she's just so damn nice. Lol
Italki literally is the gigachad of Japanese learning talking to teachers and reading textbooks outloud and doing practice conversations helped SO MUCH. Good luck on your journey
@@ae831 I couldn't say much when I started and you can try teachers for cheap to find someone that can speak English at first and teach that way. I'm telling you it works. I started in English only and now they only speak Japanese to me. It helps.
@@laurenabernathy5581 yeah, same here. I could speak a little pretty fast, but I'm about.. 2/3rds Japanese in a lesson? It's wild because I'm understand so much more now. My responses are a bit crap a lot of the time, but I feel like I've learned a lot every time I do the lessons. I feel challenged every time.
I sometimes get frustrated about my level after a year and a half of studying it but then I remember it took me more than 10 years to be completely fluent in English, which is, I think, a much easier language to learn. So people, don't give up, learning a new language is a long journey.
I highly recommend watching livestreams in whatever language you want to learn. Not only do you get to a hear a native speaker talk, you also get chat messages that react to what's's going on. So you can not only learn about whatever topic the streamer might be talking about, but also how they express anger/laughter/enjoyment/sadness when something good or bad happens
And on top of that, if you choose a stream with low-medium amounts of viewers, you can actively participate as well and practice your writing
Any streamers or lets players you recommend? (Both Vtubers or Non Vtubers)
@@Icarus975 ^
And if you’re going to interact with the streamer don’t bother if you’re gonna just use Google Translate. It’s cringe seeing people claiming they are learning Japanese but their entire messages are clearly just fresh out of Google Translate, and the streamer always can clearly tell.
@@Icarus975 For V-Tubers, Hololive or Nijisanji V-Tubers would be good tbh, with some exceptions of course.
@@Reforming_LL what are the exceptions
I'm currently relearning Kanji, and no joke biggest cheat to learning kanji is mastering the tsukuri and hen, or in English the Kanji radicals. Just by first learning the radicals themselves and their intended meaning, names, and relations to the kanji, you can MULTIPLY the retention of said kanji's characteristics in your mind. This is more useful for more advanced kanji because the first ~200 kanji you learn don't have radicals, or become the radicals themselves, but eventually you hit the ceiling of kanji where you start having trouble memorizing kanji if you approach each one as unique and individual. but if you learn the radicals, it's just like writing with lego blocks. if you weebs out there like me got their spirits broken by kanji, try using Kanji Alive and it's list of kanji radicals to FIRST learn the important 50 or so radicals, and THEN try learning the N2 and N3 kanji, I promise you'll have success!
to add to joey's first point, another thing people overlook when "immersing themselves in a language" is that they think of all the complicated ways of demonstrating your understanding in japanese, but it can be just as simple as making a simple sentence of what you will do or already did that day in japanese. or using japanese adjectives or verbs on the fly. once you can easily pull out those parts of the sentence, then you can polish the grammatical structure of the sentence when you string it together!
@@Hondavid. GREAT point
Interesting, so with kanji, it's important to ensure one approaches it completely differently than one would go about learning both the kana syllabaries?
Kanji is the kryptonite in my Japanese learning journey cuz i can understand spoken japanese to an alright extent like watching japanese youtube videos on everyday non complex stuff but ask me to write the kanji for Benkyou and im scratching my head pulling my hair out and everything so thankyou for thid recommendation
@@Hondavid. I think you meant the 'study actively' part. Immersion (surrounding yourself with a language) can simply entail watching anime 24/7. You don't necessarily even need to use a particular language to be immersed in it.
Great advice, but I think what I and a lot of other people struggle with before all of this is maintaining the ability to stick to studying a foreign language for a long period of time. Like it's not learning Japanese itself, but just learning how to learn.
Personally I found it helps to commit yourself to the daily habit of learning rather than focusing on the long-term goal. You can easily lose motivation if you focus only on the results. You will become frustrated at lack of progress and get impatient. Instead, make a solid commitment to yourself that no matter what you will practice 15-30 minutes a day every day. At first this will be easy and you'll probably invest way more time into learning due to the novelty, but eventually it will start to become more of a chore (that's when remembering your long-term goal can be helpful) but 15-30 minutes a day really isn't that much and so it shouldn't be too hard for you to push yourself to maintain this habit.
that's the hardest part for sure, I've been learning on and off for 3 years now and the only thing I've been actually consistent in is listening
In this sense I think Japanese is the second-easiest language to learn in the world, right after English. As soon as I had learned the basics, with the help of online dictionaries (including one for kanji), I started playing JRPGs, reading VNs, and watching anime and variety shows in Japanese, as my sole entertainment source. I didn't put any real effort into it, but fast-forward 4 years and I was pretty much fluent. I also learned English this way. It's very effective.
It only really works if there's tons of (native) high-quality entertainment available in the target language though. That's part of the reason why I couldn't make it work with Chinese; there just wasn't enough variety, and I got bored midway (I still managed to learn how to read Chinese though, partly thanks to having already learned kanji).
@@VVayVVard I agree. Now with Polish even looking up words is a pain compared to using Yomichan. At least I have the Witcher books which also have great audiobooks, but its difficult to get the variety I had in Japanese.
in a simple sense, its the same process as learning your native language (id assume is english for you too). remembering how i learned english helps me figure out what to focus on
Another tip for all JP learners, definitely make sure the journey is just as enjoyable as the destination. Really enjoy what you learn (by making it a game of sorts) and don't make it feel like a hassle as you would when learning, say any school subject. For me, I feared learning kanji, but as I got progressively better and better, learning kanji became my favorite parts of the language. It's almost like a puzzle game when connecting word together even if you don't know what the whole word says. It's even a bit funnier when it's pretty literal.
Like: 名古屋 (Nagoya, the city). The kanji are something like: "Named old shop" which is pretty silly.
or 池袋 (Ikebukuro) meaning literally "Pond Bag"
As a korean, when I get questions on how I got very good at english, I usually go like:
Don't focus too much on the grammar, watch youtube videos in englsh WITHOUT THE SUBTITLES, and listen to podcasts a bit often
It just applies to learning lots of languages, and learning new stuff to a certain extent
Edit) not without the subtitles, with subtitles with the language you try to learn first and then no subtitles
I did this subconsciously for two of the languages I know. I moved to Italy from Asia and picked it up mostly from TV. I know quite a few people like me from places like Germany and the Netherlands that speak English with a very American "UA-camr" accent because most of our input was YT growing up... fyi : try to avoid this if u plan to live in the UK I'm currently regreting life decisions ; P
@@Gummylongtail So if I'm moving to the UK, does that mean I need to watch a lotta harry potter and doctor who?
@@chainsawkas7545 OMG yes lmao... they r mostly very calm about it... I just want to blend in though but this makes me stick out like a sore thumb... I have to explain I'm not American too which is a pain...
i'm from italy and i got better at english like this but now i'm trying to learn korean and it's a lot harder :c i think it's also because for english you already get the basics and grammar through schooll
@@helen200211 in bocca al lupo amico mio !
Am I planning on learning Japanese? No
Am I still gonna watch this??
*YES*
Jatha Baun❤
This was exactly me, but I can use it for learning French and German bc im forced to learn in school
@@Lavenderrrrrrrrrrrrrr man i wish i learned french this way in school, 5 years of french classes and I'm less fluent than a toddler
@@Lavenderrrrrrrrrrrrrr learning french in school made me hate the language but now I'm thankful i understand it (I still can't speak it without sounding like an idiot).
@@megu6137 Well i suck at french too so dont worry i only know how to say hi and introduce myself thats all lol
I've been learning Japanese for a number of years now but I've been afraid of making mistakes throughout the entire time. I've been wanting to start trying to watch anime and videos without subtitles but I always chicken out but thanks to this video, I think I found the courage to start doing that. Thanks for the tips Joey!
Something that really solidified my English was reading and writing fanfiction in English. Find something you're really interested in and just use the language as a medium to getting to it, because at the end of the day that's what language is.
I actually started to understand my native language when I started to study japanese! It's really useful in a lot of aspects, like, you know, trying to learn some language improves your own skills and understanding of your own language.
Also I can give one really useful advice: trying to make a journal in japanese. Like, write about your day and thoughts and so on BUT everything in japanese. It puts your brain to think, check your notebooks, textbooks, kanji and so on.
I actually write a lot at school in Japanese and sometimes I like to mess around by casually writing down my answer to a question in Japanese every once in a while to just get a funny reaction out of my teacher who acknowledges that I like learning languages a lot and doesn’t mind it so long as I put a little bit of English below the Japanese text to help her understand it, I also taught my teacher words like 分かりません(wakarimasen) “I don’t know/I don’t understand” (I’m sure you know basic greetings so I’m not gonna type them in)
手伝って(tetsudatte) “help me” or “I need help with something”
Usually words and phrases you’d expect in a school environment when there’s a conversation between a teacher and a student
incredible advice. never realized how much it helped until years later
The understanding the native language one is so true. I had to relearn English grammar to fully wrap my head around other language’s grammar
My personal additions to Joey's already reasonable and solid advice:
Learn the kana
A hint for the "surround yourself" point > If you have a target language maybe there already exists some of that language in your daily life? Here in the USA there are so many products with multi-lingual materials included with the item. One can already lean on those materials as real-world examples of the language as it pertains to stuffs you interact with frequently. If you have the time don't skip over those materials, but rather, take the opportunity to read or listen to them in combination with the sections in your native language. (As for Japanese in particular, if you have a Daiso nearby, there are plenty of items with Japanese written on them that are potential vocabulary-builders.) What stuffs do you already do all of the time? Are there existing materials about those same activities in the language you're trying to learn? If you have the time, seek out and leverage those materials.
Put in the work to THINK in the target language. (Yes, I know not all thoughts in one's head are going to be packaged nicely into words in one's own language within which they are already proficient.) My anecdote > If you are thinking about a thing in words in your head start replacing those words with what little words you have already picked up. Working on the "thinking-in" instead of doing a process of "translating between" can aid a language-learner SO MUCH. Using a language is grounded in thinking in that language. Translating is a distinct skill and needs to be treated as such.
I know a lot of people usually already do this, but Anki helped me learn vocabulary so much faster. I don't always remember every word I've ever studied, but putting together a good base of common phrases and words allowed my brain to start putting together the puzzle pieces on it's own. I was able to learn new words from context without having to look up every new word.
I wanted to start learn japenese and was gonna start from monday . So then i can finally read the doujinshi that never get translated like ever
Funnily enough, one of the ways I use to study Japanese regularly is reading doujinshi in Japanese. Sure, some of the words you learn like nakadashi (中出し）and chinpo (ちんぽ）are NOT gonna be words that you use on a daily basis. But the good thing about the setting of most doujinshis (especially the vanilla, incest, NTR ones) is that they usually feature students or adults as the main characters, and the words they use in conversation is not that far off from what actual students or adults would be saying irl. If you ignore the plots and just translate word for word, you'd be surprised by how many words you can pick up that are actually used in daily convo. Non doujinshi examples would be Takagi-san and Senpai ga Uzai, these manga have similar word use to a lot of romance-based doujinshis and are easy to learn from.
@@papafreddy2123 i dont know what doujinshi is but i learned a new word 中だし, thanks 🤗
@@humanbean3 Doujinshi is, by definition, the Japanese term for self-published print works, such as magazines, manga, and novels. They may feature original or existing characters and plots, and may have different genres and themes, including erotic or fan fiction. I happen to have a Yu-Gi-Oh! doujinshi that I bought off of eBay a decade ago, centered around my favorite characters and fan pairing Yami Yugi (a.k.a. Atem) and Tèa/Anzu
@@ChildofChrist1983 i see. I just typed doujinshi in japanese and the kanji and whater fanzine means looks like its fanfic?
As someone who's been learning for 12 years and is fluent now the biggest piece of advice I can give anyone is find something you enjoy in your target language and find things you want to do and use that as a way to learn. If you're not enjoying the learning process you won't learn anything.
I also found it much easier to learn and remember kanji by learning words rather than individual kanji.
Absolutely. I was progressing quite rapidly when I began consuming Japanese media I liked.
Its not possible to remember 30k words if you dont know individual kanji because the brain won't recognize it as meaning only random lines in figures. You actually need to learn kanji to get a close to native vocabulary
Currently learning sign and Spanish due to my work and I can’t express how much this advice is good especially in materials and surroundings.
Tip for anyone who spends a ton of time on youtube: change your in-app language or account language to Japanese! Since you use it a lot, most buttons come naturally and you can learn what words mean over time. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that learning dates and time as well as numbers and their kanji has been really great through this method since all videos have that info!
I tried that once but I didn't really learn anything. My brain already knew what the button was for and just ignored the words ;-;
@@lollybirdy LOL same sometimes tbh. Part of it is actively making yourself stop and figure out what stuff means though. I like to look at view counts since they always change, so you can learn numbers that way like I mentioned earlier! It’s just a matter of actively trying to use it to study which is hard to do
That's true but I don't know if that works with Japanese. Because the structure of the language is different I don't know if it works.
But for other languages with entirely readable scripts that's a great advice
@@delta606 It works fine! :) the structure would be that way with anything you use to learn, so UA-cam would be no different. You may want to look up or translate parts of the site first to see what they mean and then practice reading them when you’re using UA-cam normally
Thanks Joey! Just started my Nihongo journey last week, hope i could learn it well enough this year!
I'm taking a Japanese class now, but I also do Duoling and keep a journal. I write the journal using the Japanese I learned from class so it sticks better. Different methods for studying are good to try and see what works.
Was it hard to start the habit? I've been a language learning junkie for a long time but I've never done a journal.
Duolingo is a total waste of time. Get some flashcards and do Anki, look at the Tae Kim grammar guide or Cure Dolly or just the Wikipedia articles on Japanese grammar. You can learn in like a week what would take 3 months on Duolingo.
As someone who went through the entire Japanese tree on DuoLingo (legendaries as well) when I was already at the stage where I was reading manga due to reasons: DON'T USE DUOLINGO FOR JAPANESE.
It's SO bad and SO slow you'll barely get to N4 (2nd lowest JLPT level) if at all, after finishing the whole tree. I have a folder full of screenshots, and videos filled to the brim with unnatural sentences, incorrect readings, words which do not make sense at all to teach to learners (like, literally 100k+ most used word tier), and a lot more. These are just the superficial issues with DuoLingo for Japanese. I could write a novel criticizing DuoLingo for Japanese. Besides, it wouldn't surprise me if Japanese is perhaps one if not the language with the most super high quality resources out there. There's no reason to rely on DuoLingo at all.
If you don't know which resources to pick, here are a couple of the ones I'm 100% sure will actually help you get good at Japanese. Do your own research, and pick one for grammar and vocabulary, after that just grind non-stop: Anki, IMABI, WaniKani, bunpRo (with an R, not bunpo, which is pretty much duolingo), Genki, etc.. There's also this guide called "TaeKim's grammar guide", but the site is honestly an absolute mess a lot of people end up reading the "complete guide" which is actually incomplete, and then lose a lot of time. But if you can get past that hurdle, it's also pretty decent.
The WaniKani and BunpRo combo is ridiculously effective, but they're both paid services.
Anki and IMABI are both free, but are pretty complex for absolute beginners. Anki has a pretty steep learning curve if you want to make the most out of it, while IMABI doesn't mind throwing a bunch of grammar lingo at your face. With that said, IMABI is probably the best free grammar resource out there though.
Also, don't postpone immersion waiting to "feel" ready. You'll never "feel" ready. Just dive in and keep consuming Japanese.
Duolingo gets weird pronunciation errors for Japanese. I hate listening to the audio lol. I don't think enough people realize how terrible it is due to how popular the app is. Gamification and the addictive nature is cool tho
Surround yourself! Exactly. I teach ESL and became fluent in Spanish through immersion while living in Spain. But I always tell my students if you can't live in a foreign country you have to create your own form of immersion.
I feel like most of these, with the exception of #2, are good advice for learning pretty much anything, to varying degrees depending on exactly what it is, of course.
The way how I started learning Japanese was doing Duolingo for the first month and a half, just to understand Hiragana and Katakana and afterwards I went to Busuu to improve my understanding of Japanese grammar and sentence structure. Then I started watching Japanese UA-camrs, Vtubers, and various other videos. And after a few months, I started to grasp a lot of how different Japanese is so different to English and that made me so excited to learn more.
Duolingo is terrible, there are some really good web pages out there to learn hiragana/katakana.
Literally all you need to learn hiragana and katakana is one of the images of a chart of the characters and about 2 days
I love the method of language learning you mentioned in an earlier video of yours, which is to pick up children's books and manga since the language is simple and easier to understand than say the Asahi Shinbun. Try to start learning the language like a child would and go from there.
12:00 When I was in the height of studying Japanese, I would just talk to my family that didn't know anything about Japanese and just translate right after what I was saying. Although it was more slang, a couple of words, or short phrases, it was something that got me to use it more.
In short, be a weeb but be smart about it
I was born in Japan (raised in LA), Japanese was my first language, I went to Japanese Saturday school, and still have a long way to do. What I find really helpful is to ask my Japanese friends to fix my Japanese whenever I say something incorrectly, and whenever they say a word I've never heard before, I first ask them how it's written in kanji (a lot of times, I can figure out the meaning through that), put it in my Notes app (the word, how they used it in a sentence, definition, etc.), and review it later. This might sound excessive, but this is what has helped me ❤
Thanks Joey, I always wanted your opinion on learning Japanese. Very helpful!
This came at the right time...I have my uni japanese exam in 4 days...thanks for the great insights Joey!
From a personal standpoint...the thing that helps me the most is just...writing down the words and characters as much as you can...this bas helped me to the point that I can instantly spell out the characters (in hiragana or katakana) as long as i can pronounce it/hear it correctly!
I have been wanting to learn Japanese since 2018 after a co-worker was talking about how trips to Japan. I stayed by buying books on writing Hiragana and Katakana and Kanji. I recently completed a 24-hour certificate program in Conversational Japanese (Self-Paced) from my local community college. I'm now taking Japanese lessons on italki, and I'm really enjoying it.
#2 is so true, learning Japanese has made me question and discover things about English I never had before or never really thought about.
Great takes. Been learning English for ~20 years and Japanese for a couple of years (still have a long way to go) and all of these resonate. Thanks Joey, this reignited my passion for Japanese
いいアドバイスでした！ありがとうございいますJoeyさん。もう一つのいい方法は自分に話すことです、友達がいなければこれこそが真の学び方です。
あと漢字はまだ学び中なので間違ったてたらすみませんでした。
ay i know these are basic kanji but im proud of myself for being able to read them all
@@thewirisM It feels just as good to be able to write them.
To be honest I had to use Google translate for this. No mistakes, it's even flawless when translating it to danish (my language) 💪
I would definitely recommend learning katakana before hiragana, you get used to the sounds and syllables, and you can try and read some things and actually understand them! That feeling of progress can be very helpful
Number 2 is so true. I had to back and reteach myself grammar. Personally, even thought English was my preferred subject in school, I went through every school year not getting a full grasp the super basics like adjectives, and verbs, types of verbs, adverbs in particular, so as I'm learning the particles and new vocabulary, I'm learning which words are more than just what the are on the surface like a noun and stuff. It's still confusing but I'm getting better the more I practice of course. Personally, my favorite ways of learning are by breaking down sentences and learning new vocabulary, as well as trying to repeat after people who speak at random. I'm trying to listen more to improve my listening skills beyond the easy sentences. Also, it's important not to overdo it and not burn yourself out while studying, so you can have more steam for the next day or the next time you plan or think of studying.
My method of learning Japanese language is by reading Japanese preschool books. I know it look childish but this method are super fun and less boring unlike reading a bunch of adult textbooks with colorless illustration plus convoluted context. I take Shimajiro book (a preschool books published by Benesse based from anime with the same name) book for example, the book has a lot of colorful illustration and all the books are in hiragana and katakana and make it super easy to read. It was hard to read at first and after 10 times reading, my reading has improved a little.
Btw, I bought a bunch of pre owned Shimajiro books from Japanese online proxy store called Buyee and instantly read the book once the package arrived. My conclusion, Japanese childrens book are super fun to begin with especially for people who want to learn basic Japanese.
I have study time and motivation time. Study time is actually actively trying to learn it (vocab mostly). Motivation time is watching anime, because recognising new words while watching something I love, helps keep me learning. And I also listen to japanese music while driving, trying to sing along (and failing miserably).
7:22 being proficient in two languages helps a ton, you don't make mistakes with trying to apply things from your native language to the one you are learning once you know how much languages differ from eachother
Good video! one of the things that has helped me was from some other polygots advice that passed away unfortunately. Lashou, RIP. Is that he said in one video that no one really can't master a language, you should try to be realistic with it. Languages are always going to be constantly evolving and things can change. Languages is a lifestyle when it comes to learning them. It's always gonna be something new to learn, hell even with your own native language. New idioms might come up, new ways of saying things. So really don't put too much pressure on trying to be perfect. Let that ideal go and just enjoy the process.
This video give me motivation to keep learning.
I just started learning Japanese and I'm still trying to lock down the basics for Hiragana first before tackling Katakana and then the end game boss Kanji >
I just started working on japanese off and on and finally buckled down and have been practicing for an hour everyday for 1 hour and am having a blast. These videos help me a lot sense I also been working on spanish(taking classes).
Good advices. I want to add one more tho, that helped me a lot: dont neglect kanji. Its hard at first but after mastering the first 100-200~ kanji, learning the rest gets way easier. Knowing kanji reading gets more easy and also fun, also if you want to read light novels or books in japanese, there is no furigana to help you out there. Or just regular news online, or wikipedia pages... After a certain level kanji is essential, or you are just going to pile them up and give up on learning, because you have to learn too many of them at the same time, which is not fun.
I Liked the video. It was really nice to see Joey talk about learning japanese in his own opinion.
My native language isn't english, but when I'm highly motivated to learn japanese (at least a bit), I do it so hard that my motivation burns out after a few days of learning it.
The reason is that I'm one of those who need others to join my journey, to keep myself motivated. But where I live, not many is into something like that. So I'm basically alone on this.
I'm an anime watcher, watched japanese youtube videos, tried learning japenese with the app, I have tried changing video game's language to japanese (kanji destroyed me).
Since I enjoyed your video, I would like to see you try some apps or even video games, that could help improve learning japanese. I am a gamer, always been, and games really helped me to learn english, so knowing what game would be a good start to learn japanese - that might hook for good to not stop learning a new language.
Thank you very much! I hope there will be a Part 2 including apps, games, etc. to surround in language.
Thanks for taking the time to make this video for us all. I'm a native English speaker on the path of learning Japanese.
as an avid otaku/weeb and Billingual speaking asian
its quite eye opening to listen to Joey/anime man himself giving us advise as so far-
its actually pretty easy....maybe because I'm already used to the 2 languages before japanese in awhile to speak yet so far-the thing is missing
writing in japanese-the culture and language speaking sure Iam in a good progress yet
writing is a challenge indeed
Agree 💯! This is how I learned Cantonese. I surrounded myself which wasn’t hard for me. Being mix English was the first language and only spoken. I married someone from Hong Kong, his parents spoke no English, so I just jumped right into it . I like learning other languages. Of course, back when I was learning it was cassette tapes ,books , that I put in reverse, what I mean is it was for Chinese learning English. I listen mostly to Cantonese songs, and then the movies the shows. And yes, I followed along the subtitles. Meaning, I would recognize a character, but I would not know how to pronounce it, or I knew how to pronounce a word, but I did not know how it’s written. I made a game of it. And of course, later we had five children, I surrounded them with Cantonese/Chinese. Kids are now 34,34, 30,26 and 21. All grew up with Cantonese and English. One of the twins to deeper interest and even studied Mandarin. Then my fifth child my only daughter also took Mandarin and one year of Japanese. Now I’m here to learn Japanese at 60, I’m familiar with some of it. But like you said, if you don’t know your own grammar in your own language, you going to make it difficult for yourself. You are right about everything you’ve mentioned. And if you can speak to a native speaker, even better. When my children were small, we would make a video for our kids, speaking Cantonese and showing the flashcards. I had my husband at the time do this, so they would have the correct pronunciation with no foreign accent. Also, I enjoy learning to write in Chinese. I would write to my in-laws… it took me a long time and then I would write little English words near the characters, my sister-in-law would translate should I got it wrong. Making mistakes is good. Besides, my in-laws got a laugh when I made those mistakes .Divorced 12 years and out of practice. Now I am here wanting to learn Japanese. I’ve been putting it off for a while. I have a new man in my life and want to surprise him.
I understand a little bit and I also learned Samoan. Which is totally different. But the suggestions you were giving are on point. Now this begin Japanese.😊
thanks joey you have helped me loads thx
The 5th may be something I need to try out more often.. and indeed mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of
That definitely applied to me learning German. I couldn't remember the gender of nouns. Then one day I said screw it and just made up the gender if I didn't know it. And suddenly I could talk.
Great video! I'm learning Japanese right now and am using a tutor through Amazing Talker. Also listen to Jpop, watch Anime and try to read as much as possible. I feel like the oba-san in my class since I'm the oldest, but am having a lot of fun and my tutor is very patient with me. The biggest problem I am having is THERE ARE SO MANY VERBS! LOL! Plus you have to get the proper tense. It's a tough road, but I am really enjoying it!
Thank you Joey, the 日本語上手 gods will bless me.
This is very true for language studies (and can be applied to other subjects).
The Japanese from 0 workbook series has also been really helpful so far to get started with on top of everything else.
I totally agree that you def need to have a good understanding of your native language. I've been learning Japanese for 3 years and have had to go back to English grammar and really relearn what certain things mean. Great tip!
Thank you Joey!
While teaching my partner my native language he asked many times why things work the way they do.
I learned English at school, and the way they teach it is with this 'formula' style of teaching, almost like math without really explaining the 'why' of things.
And for my native language Spanish, not even my teachers were able to say sometimes why we say things the way we do.
I think finding the 'why' really helps when learning something, it helps connect things with one another and makes remembering those things much easier.
Learning Japanese is so much more easier today than when I started back in the 2000s. Anki and takoboto are free and have all of the JLPT N1 - N5 vocab + kanji laid out for you. You don't need to sentence or vocab mine anymore. You can literally just memorize a ton of vocab and kanji flash cards and get to a high level in a year with 3 - 4 hours a day of deliberate study, and by study, I mean learning 20 - 40 vocab a day via flash cards and lists l + listening to audio content.
Even if you wanted to sentence or word mine shows, you can simply screen shot it on your phone and copy the text data with ease. Expensive 電子辞書 or mindlessly drawing radicals.
If I were to tell anyone right now how to get good quick I would literally tell them to just learn hiragana and katakana and immediately start the JLPT official flash cards on Takoboto or a solid community deck on anki and skip learning to write kanji AT ALL
Im a native Dutch speaker and I learned a bit of japanese by myself. It's pretty hard but I just love the language so much. So even tho I take a lot of breaks since I only cab study it in my free time (and im not following classes) I will definitely continue doing so
Zet hem op!
Thank you for making this video. You have helped me regain the motivation to once again sharpen up my skills in one of my native languages. I told myself like two years ago I'd do it, but I slacked off before I could even really start. Hopefully, this time, that won't be the case.
Cool, some useful learning tips for Japanese. Thanks Joey.
Im japanese and watching this to learn english. Its so infomative cuz of the face cam, also reminds me of how difficult to learn. And there is a person who is similar situation with me! GL!!!
I've been learning japanese since 2021 and, as I deepen in the study, I find myself feeling like I know less and less of the language. It's really challenging but it is a wonderful experience. Being in a japanese language school has helped me a lot, without discipline I think that being an autonomous learner can be quite difficult.
I agree with this so much. As I learn more and try to read something a bit more difficult I realize how little I still know. But looking back at how much I have learned to this point feels good
Good advice, thank you. I've been learning for almost 2 years now. Most important for me as been learning Hiragana, Katakana, and main Kanji. Duolingo has helped but I find it's easy to cheat and frustrating if you're trying to use Duolingo for free. I listen to alot of Japanese music (mostly anime music) and watching my favorite anime (My Hero, D. Slayer, One Punch, Kengan Ashura).
I love this video, thanks Joe. I find it amazingly useful, not only for learning other language, but even for mastering your native language. I am Spanish and even now I do make mistakes and I do not know words from it, I am still learning, so no panic with learning Japanese, not when it is my fourth language and it is actively fighting with the space French occupies in my brain. Anyway, for me Japanese is the hardest language I have ever studied, after seven years I am still trying to find the magical moment when my brain is going to be able to think in Japanese but, until then, everything I am able to read a kanji just naturally is a small victory, since kanji for me is the most difficult part of studying Japanese...
I’ve been off and on learning Tagalog. I guess I realize that I don’t study actively. When I was in the Philippines I learned a lot very fast. But when I came back to the US, my skills dropped because I didn’t use it. I’ll have to take your advice and be more active about it. My wife is Filipino, I should refuse as much as possible to speak English. It’s a perfect opportunity.
I agree a lot with the reading aloud bit. Another benefit of it is that while reading gives you time to think and process the material, conversation does not, so by reading aloud it helps exercise your brain and mouth muscle memory so that you can snap-to and respond to things more naturally, rather than things feeling like, question, thinking time, answer.
Such a great video. Thank you Joey!!
Good methods, I would add to learn about the culture as a lot of vocabulary will make much more sense when you know how it relates to foreign concepts.
Also to go along with not fearing mistakes, I'd say don't worry about forgetting words, it's the brains way of telling you which vocab to pay extra attention to.
one things that really helped me was literally talking to myself in japanese. whether I was in the shower or doing chores, just pretending to have a conversation or saying random dialogue in Japanese helped me immensely. By doing that I could also challenge myself to implement new grammar or vocabulary I had learned and test things out.
Comment on Tip #5:
This applies to EVERYWHERE.
I took an introductory psychology class a few months back, and active learning was *the* most emphasized topic in that course. Summarizing the material, listening and then rewording what you hear, and quizzing yourself on what you just learned are all huge things for not just learning a new language but learning literally everything in life.
In a way, we do active learning all the time through stuff we're passionate about. We tell our friends about that one anime episode we loved, and guess what? You remember it better later because you summarized that thing you saw in your own words. It's a lot more intuitive to human nature than you may think, and that's why it works so damn well.
I don't know, just thought that was kinda cool how universal some advice can be.
Refold has helped me out alot. Finally making some real progress instead of just repeating the basics over and over. Immersion and anki is working for me way better than school, text books, learning apps.
As someone who’s studying abroad to Japan this summer I’ll take these to heart, thanks Josh the Manga Lad
I really appreciate you mentioning point 2. Funnily enough, I grew up knowing Polish and had just HUGE problems with getting how English works. Hovewer Japanese sentence structure was SO EASY, because it was basically like my own language. So having watched anime with subtitles for many years and having similar sentence structure, without having a Japanese lesson ever, I would catch people speaking it on the street and simply understand them. With English it took me at least six years of lessons until I could read short texts, lmao. Really couldn't be further apart.
Seriously? Japanese grammar is nothing like Polish grammar. If anything it's more similar to English grammar.
Where did I say grammar? I specifically said sentence structure.
As a 20 year old in currently in university, I'm finding it hard to find the time or day to study it consistently. Also, I have my passion which is art and I love doing it and my uni work which I'm studying Fine Art.
I'd say I'm basically turning my hobbie into a career.
I have started learning Japanese in 2020 which was in covid times and I was doing good. Afterwards I stop because of my college work and I haven't start it since.
I still haven't forgotten it, it's the matter of me actually starting it.
Studied japanese for 6 years, i get big roadblocks multiple times a year, its totally normal! Youll struggle sometimes and itll be a breeze sometimes, just keep going, maybe take a week off but make sure to get right back into it. Something that really helps me is forcing myself to speak it, i talk to myself a lot in japanese and think in japanese often.
One thing I would like to add about reading aloud. Together with the speaking skill, it increases the listening skill, because you get used to hearing words and grammatical constructions with different conjunctions etc. Then it will be easier for you to perceive these already familiar sounds in someone else's speech. In addition, at such moments you will feel an emotional uplift, seeing the results of your efforts. So yes, read aloud, friends! がんばって！
I think the second point is really important and couldn’t agree more!! Once I started mining sentences and breaking apart the grammar of content I was interested in, my Japanese really took off. Once I saw how the Japanese grammar related to the English grammar and the meaning it translated to, it became very easy to internalize and understand. For me learning just grammar points without the context is kind of futile as it doesn’t show me how it operates in real life. The differences between Japanese and English are astronomical so I feel like the hardest part for me was really internalizing or associating meaning with Japanese words and grammar. For example the ていく、てくる. Even if I learn what that means on it’s own it’s still hard to use that intuitively and understand the nuance it has. Simply telling me it roughly means “it’s getting or something is coming towards me/the speaker” doesn’t really make me understand it. I feel like that’s a very vague and ambiguous description. Once I saw how natives used it during conversation and saw what exactly it expresses in English it became easy to grasp. With languages that are similar you can generally go about it word for word but with languages that are completely different you need to basically start from scratch. I’ve found a lot the things we say in English Japanese just doesn’t have and vice versa. You really need to understand the culture and how Japanese express themselves, the entire organization of thought is different. You’re starving? No your stomach is empty, you’re eating out of stress or comfort? No your mouth is lonely lol. The good thing about Japanese grammar is that despite it being completely different than English, it’s very systematic and is very logical. It just takes an insane amount of exposure and real life conversing to grasp.
I got to see my first ever theatre play in Nihongo today. Made me sad that this sort of content isn't readily available, not even if you're willing to pay money for it. The only local bookshop selling Japanese language novels closed down last year, so the next one is a six hour train ride away.. I know there is plenty of anime out there on streaming services these days, even with Japanese subtitles, but I am craving some more "realistic / less dramatised" content for lack of a better word.
Any recommendations on where to look?
Great tips too! I personally set my phone and game consoles to Japanese since I can basically operate them with a blindfold on anyway, in order to fully immerse myself. Although I'm not sure it has been all that beneficial in my learning journey..
Keep up the good work!
七転び八起き "fall 7 times get up 8" my new favorite that I learned lately. Liked this video.
Thanks for your tips, Joey! I've been learning Japanese for half a year through Duolingo, a Japanese learning textbook and SOL animes. I hope someday I'll be "Nihongo jouzu" like you wkwk.
これはすごい！I don't often hear people talk about your second point, very useful
I started through a french text book teaching Japanese. I learned that the hiragana and katakana afterwards then the grammar. I am still learning on Duolingo and the difficult part of Japanese is still the grammar and remembering how particles work in certain sentences. So yes like you said in your main channel and this one, you cannot rush learning Japanese.
Cool video. A lot of these tips can be applied to learning any language.
Learning vocab and nuances becomes very rewarding when you watch/hear jp media and able to understang even just 10% of it ❤❤
Surround yourself with the language is definitely the most effective one imo. I watch anime every night, became too lazy to read subtitles and accidentally learned Japanese. Tip 2 is exactly the opposite of what I did. I always thought learning a language this way is like running a program on emulator, learn like a baby is the way to go. Joey being successful with this is eye opening for me.
"accidentally learned japanese" I understand immersion is important but if you don't know any vocabulary and you aren't looking up words, it's almost impossible to learn Japanese through immersion
As someone who studied English for over 15 years, starting from primary school, and still struggled to speak and write correctly, learning through immersion is much more effective than simply memorizing grammar and vocabulary. For the past two years, I've been listening to the Trash Taste podcast, and although I initially understood literally nothing, I can now comprehend about 95% of the content.
I've used the same approach to study Japanese for a year and a half, spending most of my learning time consuming content in Japanese. Started with anime, then progressed to galgames and manga, and now I can read light novels in Japanese. While learning grammar is necessary to pass the JLPT test, it becomes much easier to learn when you encounter it in context, such as somewhere in manga or light novels.
btw, Joey didn't mentioned but ai is so op for learning a new language and you should definitely use it, you can let ai correct your grammar mistakes and improve your writings, you can even try to practice daily conversation with ai.
I'm studying to improve my knowledge in the French language and i find that when learning languages Joeys 5 steps are spot on. I do plan on learning Japanese In the future, right now I can't submerse myself with 3 languages. Thanks Joey very helpful tips.
omg i started learning french earlier this year but switched to japanese instead. bonne chance!
Good luck in learning French! I wonder what's most difficult in learning it... maybe grammar?
Bonne chance avec ton français alors :)
Si tu as besoin d'aide pour pratiquer, n'hésite pas !
I'm also learning Japanese ! It's hard but i find it really fun to learn !
I'm a native French speaker, who learned 3 others european languages and just finished a beginner Japanese class.
All those tips are amazing to learn any language! I would also add that learning some vocabulary before any grammar has been working a lot for me because I get super excited when I read a sentence and I recognize the words😂.
I remember a lot better when I "feel" a word or a language. So cultural knowledge is very important for me in the sense that it can explain why that word is polite vs not this one.
Also for school when studying gets boring, to learn a word, I make a whole scenario in my head, and say it out loud when it's time 😂 I'm talking shower kind of self-talk lol.
one thing i like to do when watching anime is pausing the screen and reading the Japanese text - for example, when the character receives a text message or there's a still of a news article. it makes me appreciate the setting more than just relying on the spoken words.
something that I don't see in these learning language videos is something I saw on youtube not long ago. This guy got into an accident and could only speak chinese, he forgot english, afterwards he speaks about how to learn a language, the biggest thing for him when he was learning is to change your inner monologue to that language. That's huuuge, and no one ever mentions that in other videos..so definitely try that too! I'm trying but I embarrassingly enough don't use my Japanese as much as I should but I'm going to be trying this method more.
Hey, here's the thing right? My brother and I are from Ukraine, when we were adopted we were both Russian speaking only. You wanna take a stab at how we became flueng english speakers? Watching powerpuff girls, Avatar the last air bender, courage the cowardly dog, ect. Ect; In the mornings before school. We are social creatures who can detect patterns. A textbook is "here is specific information for a specific kind of v/n/adj thing; now lets move on" and you never truly have enough time to absorb it because there's no experience to connect you.
I find it almost poetic that I fucked up the word; fluent. Almost.
Exactly textbook learning is just theoretical stuff, and guess what, you need to already know the language else it won't make sense if you don't unconsciously understand what you're learning from the textbooks. Immersion is the only qay to acquire a language.
I usually write the language a lot and repeat the audio. I watch kids cartoons in the target language to get an understanding on the tones. But Im doing all of this with mandarin, and so far it has worked, despite the fact that Im still a newbie :D. Im proud of my small progress. Btw, If you have disney+, there are some shows with different language audios and subtitles in those languages. Happy learning dudes!!!!!!!!
A fun way to learn a new language in my experience, is to play video games in that language.
I started playing pokemon in Japanese and it's a fun way to practice reading or pronunciations.
Also adds a fun little challenge of just trying to figure out what moves are what XD
Great video Joey! I'll share this the my senior students at the high school I teach at.
In my case the most effective method to learn a foreign language was chat GPT. I prompted it to be my language teacher, talk in my target language, use fairly simple vocabulary and syntax, correct my mistakes and explain grammatical rules and my French improved much more within a few days than in a period when I was just reading books in it.
Also something important I think can help people is that not everyone learns stuff like this through daily action. I’ve actually found that, in my Japanese studies in particular, I learn faster and better if I dedicate HUGE parts of a day to learning Japanese and then just stick with passively reading stuff on twitter or in games for the rest of a week, when I have those bursts of inspiration to work and learn I get so much more done
Experiment with methods and find what works for you. Make it fun and engaging, if it’s boring then try something else!
Im currently in the process of learning the lannguage by myself and it feels so cool to be able to read somethinng in japanese. Also I think being a Spanish native speaker and having English as a second language has helped a lot. Spanish with pronunciation and English to understand some words
I hated how I studied Japanese for years and then native Spanish speakers showed up in Japan with little to no studying and their Japanese sounded better than mine. Not fair.
2:34 let's jump right into it