@@hippopotomostrosesquippeda5804 I would feel the same if it weren't for the glorious animation I would miss out on, particularly for fight scenes. But for a lot of anime with just average animation I agree
“Simple, I made it a habit” That is the single most important thing about learning any language. Congrats on passing N2 🎉 It’s interesting seeing other people’s approach to learning this language. I personally followed a more input focused approach and my daily motivation was to simply include my end goal into my daily learning. Yes, I used to use anki daily and study grammar daily and kanji but it was all worth it when that same day I could just read manga or watch anime in full Japanese. From not knowing almost anything, to what I know today…I learned most of it simply by exposure. Nowadays I no longer study the language… I just consume whatever I want (with a japanese only dictionary)
Thanks! I can tell you've been through the journey because I definitely get where you're coming from. I applaud you for using a japanese dictionary only as well, for me it's been hard not to go down a rabbit hole of unknown words with each new definition
@@jozendesu Going down that rabbit hole still happens to me every now and then not gonna lie. But on the bright side, it's helped me to not translate so much in my head :D and of course, the more you use that kind of dictionary the less it will feel like you have to look up words within a definition :)
Making it a habit is not just language, but sports, math, sience and basically anything else as well. For me getting the grammar early is so important. Once you know the structure so many words just make sense or you at least know it's function when learning a new one.
@@MrHaggyy 100%. This is why I often say learning a language taught me so much more than just the language. It taught me how to properly learn other things. I also started out learning grammar structures and kanji up to n1, but when I finished I realized I was very limited in my knowledge at the time. It is important knowing the basics, but you also have to make a habit out of it and also do a lot of exposure while still learning the basics. Everything always compliments your knowledge of the language after all :)
I keep on seeing people saying they “studied grammar” but I’ve yet to really see someone explain how/where they did so? In comparison kanji seems relatively easy to start learning due to all the resources there are but I’m not sure where to start grammar wise
@@bonadeo007 it’s basically a whole other “language” you would use for elders or people in more power, I just pretend it does exist, same with the Kansai dialects 😭
As someone whos been self studying japanese for almost a year now. Kanji is not really the last boss, grammar is actually the most difficult part in japanese.
One thing that helps me understand kanji is think about arabic numerals we use. You see 1 and you read in ur head “one” you see 1st and you don’t think “onest” you read “first”. This is a oversimplification but it is essentially how chinese characters work in japanese. They are units of meaning and in seeing the meaning youre like oh obviously thats this word. I dont reccommend ignoring kanji and i also dont reccomend focusing on it. It’ll be much more helpful to learn them as they go along and try to understand how they fit in and eventually youll get a feel for them as you go on. Most importantly mistakes are beautiful and dont stress about perfection. A language is a vast ocean of meaning and culture. Stressing about not being able to remember a single lone word wont do you any justice just move on and I promise itll make its way back to you. Like the video says and many others its about making it a habit and a part of your life. Believe that you can learn because trust me you can it just takes some time. Its about the journey not the destination.
I have this book, bought it in 1985, when I did a few years of Japanese evening classes. I learned hiragana and katakana and a beginner vocabulary as well as basic grammar, and was able to form simple sentences. Then I learned about 1000 characters with the system presented to facilitate reading. I never had much opportunity to actually speak Japanese, so after three years or so I gave up, much to the dismay of my evening class teacher, as I was the only student in year 3. It got in the way of my ju jitsu classes. Now, about 40 years later, I have picked the study of Japanese up again. And even though I haven't used Japanese in 40 years, and I have forgotten much of the spoken language, thanks to the mnemonic method in this book "remembering the Kanji" I still recognize most of the primitives, and hundreds of kanji, and it is now all coming back really fast. This time around I have a teacher that I see weekly, and a 6 week Nihon trip planned for 2025 when I retire, keeping the motivation high. So For what it's worth, the book is a keeper. I forgot many details, but the foundation is still there.
+it comes from Middle Chinese, but the phonological shifts changed a lot. 塊 used to be “クヱ･Kwe” for 呉音, but it became ケ･Ke, while the 漢音 for it was “クヮイ･Kwai,” but became カイ･Kai. Kwai is basically the same as the modern Mandarin pronunciation, which is Kuai.
I don't know how you guys fell, but for me, Kanji is the best part of lerning japanese. Because it's kind of satisfying to shorten theam up. Like: 火(ひ) [hi]=fire 山(やま) [yama]=mountain combined: 火山 (かざん)[kazan]=Vulkan That's why i love it!
I love WaniKani. I've been learning for three months and already memorized several hundred Kanji and vocab. It uses the same system you talk about but it's already done all the work for you. Every time I get an answer right I get a little dopamine boost. It's just as addictive as watching UA-cam
The way it organizes the repetition for us and the friendly design really helps indeed. It makes me actually want to use it more and get the numbers higher. Anyone can do something similar with paper cards in decks too, just demands a bit more dedication
Bro, thank you for that book recommendation. I actually learned a lot about the atomic habits. "The goal is not to learn an language, the goal is to follow a *system*. To make you later archive it". Thank you.
this is one of the best videos i’ve seen as far as helpful tips, what to expect, and creating and maintaining a solid reason for learning japanese. really grateful your video was recommended to me! i’m at about 4-5yrs of trying to learn (mostly duolingo) and i feel like i haven’t really gotten to a conversational level yet. this video was both informative and inspiring, ありがとうございます!
You need to get away from duolingo and work your way through traditional textbooks, then start reading stories, novels, manga or whatever, watch anime and films. Duolingo is way too limited and will not take you to fluency, or anywhere close. Just my opinion….
@@andreascarl9636 definitely been feeling that lately. Aside from Genki, are there any books you'd recommend for developing comprehension and fluency? Thanks for the help!
Many years ago, I took a few years of Japanese in college. Recently I started to study Japanese again. I really was enjoying Duolingo Japanese, but got upset when I realized that I couldn’t understand the most basic Japanese story at all. So I got a beginning Japanese book called Tobira beginning Japanese 1. It’s an alternative to Genki. I think it’s a great book. But it gives the pitch accent for the vocabulary words - - which is great, but rather intimidating if one has never studied pitch accent. (note: you can get a very nice basic introduction to pitch accent online, after which you will realize if you buy the Tobira textbook that it doesn’t differentiate between two of the four pitch accents; so you really only get three pitch accents in this book.). I’m having trouble motivating myself to study pitch accent, so I haven’t been studying Japanese for a while. I need to address this issue. But you can certainly ignore the pitch accent information if you buy this Tobira textbook. It has some good audio materials and looks quite comprehensive. Try it!
Beautiful video. It explains why you should, why you should listen to specifically you, and how you should. It follows a logical path, while also injecting some emotion into it by mentioning your story, and satisfyingly finishing it at the end. This video also made me realize how important tone and word choice is; watching this video made me feel good. It felt comforting, and you had an aura of safety not only due to your positive tone and word choice, but also due to the occasional joke and your own experiences as a beginner.
Well, at some point every language is. I am German and even for us average german people the grammar CAN become disgustingly difficult if you dig into it.
Depends how you define difficulty. Learning a language is one of the most linear skill, meaning that as long as you keep studying, you will 99.99 percent be able to learn the language. It’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to NOT learn a language if you put in enough hours. However, if you’re saying that it takes a lot of time and effort and THATS why it’s hard, I have to agree.
@@shade_299as a Japanese I studied German for about a 6 months and this is the only thing I remember Auf der heide blüht ein kleines blümelein~ und das heißt~ erika~~~!
@@dnjfqor4585 As a native german speaker, I'm glad I don't have to learn it. Japanese seems to me very efficient, while german is way more detailed and precise. That makes our grammar a mess and even though I use it every day, I could not tell you a single thing about our grammar.
I'm a native Spanish speaker. I taught my friends and they never told me it was hard. I asked them when we started to finish. They said it wasn't ever that difficult. 😂
I'm 14 right now, and I'm trying to learn Japanese and Korean possibly Chinese, all of their cultures inspire me and I'm learning the language so that I can travel there someday. Thank you Jozen for posting this video. ❤
I'm 16, and I'm from Russia. All, that I can tell you - is that you have to break only one barrier, and that's knowledge. If you are also from the county, that doesn't use English as the main language to speak, you can fully understand me. To speak the language, we don't use our brains. Now, while I'm typing this text, all I'm thinking now is about filling the text. I don't think, how literally I'm typing, don't think about which text construction I have to use in this context. I just know the language. Now there's no russian words in my head, but in reality I have to think in russian in most cases, because it's just fast. My brain is wired for this from birth. Now I started to notice that sometimes I don’t use russian in my thoughts. It means, that I've broken the knowledge barrier. Using English in my life is not difficult, I was stopped transiting anything in russian to know. I'm just using other language "as it".
@@wondarkus thank u for ur comment bro. I'm russian as well and I learn English, so I can confirm all what u said. I think the best way to become more fluently in any language is definitely formation thoughts in a language that u learn. because it really matters how much time ur brain needs to formulate a thought. nobody wanna wait for long till u say something.
This year I decided to study again Japanese, and to be honest using chatGPT for translations and explanations has helped me a lot. I also made some Japanese friends on twitter (or X) to practice the language. Come back next year and let us know your improvement!
dude, me too! i'm also 14 and obsessed with japanese culture lol. always wanted to try and learn but until recently i never had the courage. will be starting soon and i wish you good luck on your journey!
@@wondarkus this applies with me and Hindi, I'm from India and my first language is Hindi but after moving to north India where most people speak Hindi my Hindi has drastically improved to the point where while typing this I am thing in a mix of English and Hindi
I appreciate your motivation. I've been going in and out of learning probably since about the same age but for 15 years I just couldn't properly approach the Kanji beast. BUT this year I'm finally going to visit Japan and I want to be able to understand the locations and at least some menus (trying for speech as well but we see lol) The main reason I've always wanted to learn was due to so many of my favorite series just never getting an english translation. So here's to the hope I finally learn
Learn some as you go forsure so you get use to seeing them. Maybe like very early on don't worry about it too much but as the other person said.. "yikes"
I liked and subbed. What I liked was the free kanji apps to write with. In the video. I enjoyed the openness of the UA-camr, the narratoration, and all the relevant systematic information to
I'm using renshuu (it's free) which provides fun minigames (even kanji shiritori lol), anki-style decks, grammar references, rosetta-stone-like quizzes (in some cases) and more BUT what I don't get, is how remembering 2000 stories would be easier than remembering 2000 pictures; I think one should just stop seeing kanji as characters but rather as pictures. You already can remember that amount of pictures easily: how many memes do you know?
Thanks for providing resources for people to check out! For your second point, I'm sure some people have an easier time that way but humans have been telling stories forever, and in my experience I found remembering stories quite powerful
I have another tips is you try to speak what you learned and use it in real life and another tips is watch videos about the language you're learning try to understand what they're saying if you found a word that you don't understand do a research and practice that word if you can understand English why wouldn't you can understand Japanese too? I've been de motivated so often until i found this video so i tried to give it a chance again now i can speak with Japanese people but it's still a formal and i need to improve more but thank you UA-cam for recommending this video to me.
What I recommend for starters is to watch movies in original language and with original language subs Of course once you learnt the basics already That boosted my foreign language levels in new heights
I feel like isayama based Aot off of learning Japanese. The normal titans are hiragana. The abnormals are katakana. And the Titan shifters are kanji. The humans take down the normals and a normals until they run into the colossal Titan (kanji) then the humans realize they can use the Titan shifters to take down the other titans.
I'm not an expert, I've only been learning Japanese for around 6 months, but I think I have made a lot of progress in that time. I can read a lot of light novels and visual novels pretty easily now. I haven't studied radicals nor have I used Anki at all. All I did was read light novels and visual novels from the very beginning with a dictionary, and googling the grammar points that I did not understand. I think it would be more efficient to spend time reading native Japanese material rather than studying radicals, because if you read enough you will remember the words no matter what. I think Anki can be useful, though it's boring as hell so I prefer to read. By the way, English is not my native language and I also learned it this way.
Agreed, but I do think direct study like Anki alongside immersion (like reading, as you said) would be the fastest way to learn. Unless if you’re Chinese, you could just do ONLY reading.
Thank you for sharing your experience and tips! So useful! I feel pumped to start my new habit of learning Kanji every day. The 🈷️ is up in the 🈳️ tonight
Important note... don't overdo it in the beginning. The fail point for a lot of language learners is trying to go too fast and getting burned out. Think of learning a language like filling an empty swimming pool with water one cup at a time per day (minus the evaporation part). It will be empty at first but consistency will eventually fill it up. I started at 6 words per day and now I am up to 12. I am 1/2 way though the N5 content and I am surprised at how much I understand in many of the anime that I watch.
I learned english, all by myself, I didnt use apps, and school didnt help me because I learned english last summer, just by watching yt in English, and playing games in english, and then I would think about the words to not forget them, and then did the same but to not forget how to build phrases, I'm gonna try that to japanese but I feel like that I'll need more than a year...
They’re both extremely hard. Japanese kanji is hard in the pure amount of different pronunciations, homonyms etc… Chinese kanji (or hanzi) is hard in the amount of synonyms, homonyms and pronunciations in general for the language.
lolli i really casually started larning japanese but ignored kanji and katakana.... and now that i've tackled kanji i'm actually having so much fun. 1- it was intimidating and 2- i didn't have much time, but now i'm glad i did ....... haven't exactly studied katakana but i'm learning thru inferences LOLLL
I am a Japanese-Japanese living in Japan. Thanks to this video, I can now speak Japanese fluently and I even got a girlfriend. I am grateful for this video. Thank u
Really enjoying your videos, man. I've hit the kanji wall many times in my Japanese learning journey, but I think this video has inspired me to get back on that horse and really give it another go.
I'm not that scared of Kanji (I learn Chinese) but I have to agree that it is the most challenging part since it looks complex. Especially if you are learning Chinese as a second language like me your whole life, it can be confusing to adapt to a new pronunciation system.
In my experience, kanji's hard, but it helps a ton at the entry level to understand sentences. Even if you don't understand the exact grammar, knowing some of the kanji can give you a very educated guess on what the sentence is supposed to say.
Using the Colossal titan when talking about kanji is spot on. I personally noticed the similarity between kanji and Chinese when I watched a Chinese anime
I learned Mandarin for 3 years and my approach on learning and memorizing the characters was very similar to how you explained using stories to memorize kanji like "bright".
Do consider that every day you spend learning only kanji is a day you spend not learning vocabulary… after 3 months I’ve learned around 2000 words, and can already read and understand a good bit of material, with the help of the dictionary of course for words I don’t know. Reading is not only about learning new words, but maybe even more importantly it teaches you grammar structure simply by being exposed to it, so I’m pretty happy with my progress. I’m not sure I’d recommend studying kanji by themselves… after all, the most common kanji show up inside words and you end up learning then anyway and their different spellings. You also start getting a feel for which spelling to use for a kanji you know, though I can’t explain how, it’s vibes. That said, I have considered at this stage doing a little bit of kanji study, because as the video says I think it does make learning words easier because you can build on top of that previous knowledge, dunno.
The Kanji isn't my problem. It's sentence structure and particles. I'm using Anki and a Yomitan dictionary set inside my Anki. It's doing wonders for me.
I manually made my own Anki decks. Currently sitting at 130k flash cards (but like 30k of them are German, so only 100k are Japanese-related 💀) (kill me. But not really because it worked 💀). I don't really use it to review anymore. I just use it to look up hard words or synonyms from time to time just for fun when I don't have access to internet. (btw I'm still adding more shit everyday 💀) I'm actually surprised that I'm not depressed, lmfao. It's actually pretty fun adding new cards daily, ngl.
ik this is a stupid question, but i randomly got bored and decided i wanna learn japanese. it’s been 11 days since then and my only use of learning is duolingo. is it normal i’m not good at all? like i remember words and everything, but i don’t remember how to spell them in hiragana, and i can’t even spell them with english letters. i just know how to pronounce them and form sentences with the stuff i learned EDIT: 1 month later i fully memorized the hiragana alphabet. i can read them in a sentence but i read it kinda slow. we’re making progress slowly but surely💪🏼
It's normal to not be good at all, but just remember that language, especially Japanese, is not supposed to be easy. Let it be difficult and interesting, never give up!!
That’s totally normal. DUOLINGO is a very bad app to learn. I recommend you Busuu or renshuu. It’s way more better and useful. I learned a lot in a month with Busuu!!!
Thank you for the video, I’m trying really hard to learn Japanese, because not only will it allow me to watch anime without subtitles, but it can lead to so many other job opportunities as well, so I’m going to use this video to help me perspire, as a kid though i know it’s gonna be difficult with school and homework though 😅 (I’m thirteen)
I learned Kanji just by learning new words with the kanji attached to them. I would then go on to find it in a new word and learn a bit more about the Kanji that way. I didn't need to ever sit down and study Kanji and instead I could just read and watch anime etc and look up unknown words as I go. I can't handwrite but I don't care, since I don't need it.
Going from English dub to learning Japanese to avoid subtitles is a level of dedication I have never seen before in my life.
😂😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 bro take it seriously
I can't bring myself to watch English dubbed anime. Subs only, at least until I finish learning the language, that is
I'm from spain, and in my case I wanted to learn both english and japanese. So I start learning japanese in english lol My brain's gonna explode
Sort of same. Can't bring myself to watch dub, but sub is really just reading basically, just read manga at this point
@@hippopotomostrosesquippeda5804 I would feel the same if it weren't for the glorious animation I would miss out on, particularly for fight scenes. But for a lot of anime with just average animation I agree
“Simple, I made it a habit”
That is the single most important thing about learning any language.
Congrats on passing N2 🎉
It’s interesting seeing other people’s approach to learning this language. I personally followed a more input focused approach and my daily motivation was to simply include my end goal into my daily learning. Yes, I used to use anki daily and study grammar daily and kanji but it was all worth it when that same day I could just read manga or watch anime in full Japanese.
From not knowing almost anything, to what I know today…I learned most of it simply by exposure. Nowadays I no longer study the language… I just consume whatever I want (with a japanese only dictionary)
Thanks! I can tell you've been through the journey because I definitely get where you're coming from. I applaud you for using a japanese dictionary only as well, for me it's been hard not to go down a rabbit hole of unknown words with each new definition
@@jozendesu Going down that rabbit hole still happens to me every now and then not gonna lie. But on the bright side, it's helped me to not translate so much in my head :D and of course, the more you use that kind of dictionary the less it will feel like you have to look up words within a definition :)
Making it a habit is not just language, but sports, math, sience and basically anything else as well.
For me getting the grammar early is so important. Once you know the structure so many words just make sense or you at least know it's function when learning a new one.
@@MrHaggyy 100%. This is why I often say learning a language taught me so much more than just the language. It taught me how to properly learn other things.
I also started out learning grammar structures and kanji up to n1, but when I finished I realized I was very limited in my knowledge at the time. It is important knowing the basics, but you also have to make a habit out of it and also do a lot of exposure while still learning the basics. Everything always compliments your knowledge of the language after all :)
I keep on seeing people saying they “studied grammar” but I’ve yet to really see someone explain how/where they did so? In comparison kanji seems relatively easy to start learning due to all the resources there are but I’m not sure where to start grammar wise
Kanji is the final boss 😱
Nah. Kanji’s the boss at the end of each level 😂
Keigo's the REAL final boss 😱
@@Wonderhoy-erwhat is keigo? 🤔 I'm fighting with katakana. 😢
@@bonadeo007 it’s basically a whole other “language” you would use for elders or people in more power, I just pretend it does exist, same with the Kansai dialects 😭
As someone whos been self studying japanese for almost a year now. Kanji is not really the last boss, grammar is actually the most difficult part in japanese.
9:19 bro got so into learning japanese he forgot his original goal
got lost in the sauce
Like Zoro 💀
It was just filler
打ｍんｂろ😂
The dream of every anime watcher:
Wachting the anime not the subtitles
This dude doesn't blink and that's why he can stare at Kanji all day.
One thing that helps me understand kanji is think about arabic numerals we use. You see 1 and you read in ur head “one” you see 1st and you don’t think “onest” you read “first”. This is a oversimplification but it is essentially how chinese characters work in japanese. They are units of meaning and in seeing the meaning youre like oh obviously thats this word. I dont reccommend ignoring kanji and i also dont reccomend focusing on it. It’ll be much more helpful to learn them as they go along and try to understand how they fit in and eventually youll get a feel for them as you go on. Most importantly mistakes are beautiful and dont stress about perfection. A language is a vast ocean of meaning and culture. Stressing about not being able to remember a single lone word wont do you any justice just move on and I promise itll make its way back to you. Like the video says and many others its about making it a habit and a part of your life. Believe that you can learn because trust me you can it just takes some time. Its about the journey not the destination.
Awesome words, thanks a lot
Btw the first fact u said have blown my mind lol
Ok I needed this
relating that back to 1st, 2nd, etc makes a lot of sense!
I have this book, bought it in 1985, when I did a few years of Japanese evening classes. I learned hiragana and katakana and a beginner vocabulary as well as basic grammar, and was able to form simple sentences. Then I learned about 1000 characters with the system presented to facilitate reading. I never had much opportunity to actually speak Japanese, so after three years or so I gave up, much to the dismay of my evening class teacher, as I was the only student in year 3. It got in the way of my ju jitsu classes.
Now, about 40 years later, I have picked the study of Japanese up again. And even though I haven't used Japanese in 40 years, and I have forgotten much of the spoken language, thanks to the mnemonic method in this book "remembering the Kanji" I still recognize most of the primitives, and hundreds of kanji, and it is now all coming back really fast. This time around I have a teacher that I see weekly, and a 6 week Nihon trip planned for 2025 when I retire, keeping the motivation high. So For what it's worth, the book is a keeper. I forgot many details, but the foundation is still there.
Kanji becomes much easier because I'm chinese and Kanji is Chinese words. The difference is pronunciation
+it comes from Middle Chinese, but the phonological shifts changed a lot.
塊 used to be “クヱ･Kwe” for 呉音, but it became ケ･Ke, while the 漢音 for it was “クヮイ･Kwai,” but became カイ･Kai. Kwai is basically the same as the modern Mandarin pronunciation, which is Kuai.
I learned Chinese also it makes kanji easier to learn faster.
Agreed, kanji is so extremely easy if you know Chinese to a intermediate-expert level.
@@Nightmare2.03 I don’t know Chinese, but I love Chinese characters, so I keep coming back to learn them, even though Japanese grammar is hard.
@@danielantony1882 I agree! Also, keigo is giving me a REALLY hard time too. 😭
I don't know how you guys fell, but for me, Kanji is the best part of lerning japanese.
Because it's kind of satisfying to shorten theam up.
Like:
火(ひ) [hi]=fire
山(やま) [yama]=mountain
combined: 火山 (かざん)[kazan]=Vulkan
That's why i love it!
Then try memorising N2 or n1 level kanjis . It's not simple as that. Ofc we can memorize such as the words u mentioned
You didn’t just motivate me to learn Japanese but you also gained a new subscriber! Thank you!
I can't describe what it is... But the way you talk is just... entrancing :)
This is such a lovely video with invaluable tips!
I love WaniKani. I've been learning for three months and already memorized several hundred Kanji and vocab. It uses the same system you talk about but it's already done all the work for you. Every time I get an answer right I get a little dopamine boost. It's just as addictive as watching UA-cam
The way it organizes the repetition for us and the friendly design really helps indeed. It makes me actually want to use it more and get the numbers higher.
Anyone can do something similar with paper cards in decks too, just demands a bit more dedication
Bro, thank you for that book recommendation. I actually learned a lot about the atomic habits.
"The goal is not to learn an language, the goal is to follow a *system*. To make you later archive it".
Thank you.
You seem like such an honest person, and also so motivated and disciplined that it really inspires me ☺️
i don’t often comment, but this video was great, keep going bro
thanks, means a lot! definitely will try to make more content worth your time
this is one of the best videos i’ve seen as far as helpful tips, what to expect, and creating and maintaining a solid reason for learning japanese. really grateful your video was recommended to me! i’m at about 4-5yrs of trying to learn (mostly duolingo) and i feel like i haven’t really gotten to a conversational level yet. this video was both informative and inspiring, ありがとうございます!
You need to get away from duolingo and work your way through traditional textbooks, then start reading stories, novels, manga or whatever, watch anime and films. Duolingo is way too limited and will not take you to fluency, or anywhere close. Just my opinion….
@@andreascarl9636 definitely been feeling that lately. Aside from Genki, are there any books you'd recommend for developing comprehension and fluency? Thanks for the help!
Many years ago, I took a few years of Japanese in college. Recently I started to study Japanese again. I really was enjoying Duolingo Japanese, but got upset when I realized that I couldn’t understand the most basic Japanese story at all.
So I got a beginning Japanese book called Tobira beginning Japanese 1. It’s an alternative to Genki. I think it’s a great book. But it gives the pitch accent for the vocabulary words - - which is great, but rather intimidating if one has never studied pitch accent. (note: you can get a very nice basic introduction to pitch accent online, after which you will realize if you buy the Tobira textbook that it doesn’t differentiate between two of the four pitch accents; so you really only get three pitch accents in this book.). I’m having trouble motivating myself to study pitch accent, so I haven’t been studying Japanese for a while. I need to address this issue. But you can certainly ignore the pitch accent information if you buy this Tobira textbook. It has some good audio materials and looks quite comprehensive. Try it!
Beautiful video. It explains why you should, why you should listen to specifically you, and how you should. It follows a logical path, while also injecting some emotion into it by mentioning your story, and satisfyingly finishing it at the end. This video also made me realize how important tone and word choice is; watching this video made me feel good. It felt comforting, and you had an aura of safety not only due to your positive tone and word choice, but also due to the occasional joke and your own experiences as a beginner.
As a Japanese kid I can confirm Japanese is hard 😂
Well, at some point every language is. I am German and even for us average german people the grammar CAN become disgustingly difficult if you dig into it.
Depends how you define difficulty. Learning a language is one of the most linear skill, meaning that as long as you keep studying, you will 99.99 percent be able to learn the language. It’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to NOT learn a language if you put in enough hours.
However, if you’re saying that it takes a lot of time and effort and THATS why it’s hard, I have to agree.
@@shade_299as a Japanese I studied German for about a 6 months and this is the only thing I remember
Auf der heide blüht ein kleines blümelein~ und das heißt~ erika~~~!
@@dnjfqor4585 As a native german speaker, I'm glad I don't have to learn it. Japanese seems to me very efficient, while german is way more detailed and precise. That makes our grammar a mess and even though I use it every day, I could not tell you a single thing about our grammar.
I'm a native Spanish speaker. I taught my friends and they never told me it was hard. I asked them when we started to finish. They said it wasn't ever that difficult. 😂
the best series of all time is how you got into it... good job
I started using the rosetta stone app as soon as you said the name and now I already know more than what I've been studying for the last 2 months
I'm 14 right now, and I'm trying to learn Japanese and Korean possibly Chinese, all of their cultures inspire me and I'm learning the language so that I can travel there someday. Thank you Jozen for posting this video. ❤
I'm 16, and I'm from Russia. All, that I can tell you - is that you have to break only one barrier, and that's knowledge. If you are also from the county, that doesn't use English as the main language to speak, you can fully understand me. To speak the language, we don't use our brains. Now, while I'm typing this text, all I'm thinking now is about filling the text. I don't think, how literally I'm typing, don't think about which text construction I have to use in this context. I just know the language. Now there's no russian words in my head, but in reality I have to think in russian in most cases, because it's just fast. My brain is wired for this from birth. Now I started to notice that sometimes I don’t use russian in my thoughts. It means, that I've broken the knowledge barrier. Using English in my life is not difficult, I was stopped transiting anything in russian to know. I'm just using other language "as it".
@@wondarkus thank u for ur comment bro. I'm russian as well and I learn English, so I can confirm all what u said. I think the best way to become more fluently in any language is definitely formation thoughts in a language that u learn. because it really matters how much time ur brain needs to formulate a thought. nobody wanna wait for long till u say something.
This year I decided to study again Japanese, and to be honest using chatGPT for translations and explanations has helped me a lot. I also made some Japanese friends on twitter (or X) to practice the language. Come back next year and let us know your improvement!
dude, me too! i'm also 14 and obsessed with japanese culture lol. always wanted to try and learn but until recently i never had the courage. will be starting soon and i wish you good luck on your journey!
@@wondarkus this applies with me and Hindi, I'm from India and my first language is Hindi but after moving to north India where most people speak Hindi my Hindi has drastically improved to the point where while typing this I am thing in a mix of English and Hindi
I appreciate your motivation. I've been going in and out of learning probably since about the same age but for 15 years I just couldn't properly approach the Kanji beast. BUT this year I'm finally going to visit Japan and I want to be able to understand the locations and at least some menus (trying for speech as well but we see lol)
The main reason I've always wanted to learn was due to so many of my favorite series just never getting an english translation. So here's to the hope I finally learn
This is a super high quality video for 500 subscribers! Hoping to see more success for you soon.
I came here to say how much I enjoyed your wit and personality in this video! You’re smart, funny and engaging all at once. Kudos to you 🎉
I’m pretending kanji doesn’t exist
Yikes
Learn some as you go forsure so you get use to seeing them. Maybe like very early on don't worry about it too much but as the other person said.. "yikes"
Nah you should try learning some, maybe one a day to start. It’s rewarding and useful.
Yikes
😂😂😂
I liked and subbed. What I liked was the free kanji apps to write with.
In the video. I enjoyed the openness of the UA-camr, the narratoration, and all the relevant systematic information to
I'm using renshuu (it's free) which provides fun minigames (even kanji shiritori lol), anki-style decks, grammar references, rosetta-stone-like quizzes (in some cases) and more
BUT
what I don't get, is how remembering 2000 stories would be easier than remembering 2000 pictures; I think one should just stop seeing kanji as characters but rather as pictures.
You already can remember that amount of pictures easily: how many memes do you know?
Thanks for providing resources for people to check out!
For your second point, I'm sure some people have an easier time that way but humans have been telling stories forever, and in my experience I found remembering stories quite powerful
I think your photographic memory is good that is why you don't get it, I also have good photographic memory
ANOTHER RENSHUU USER OMGGGG ME TOOOOOO
I'm using Renshuu too! I loved it instantly, and took a lifetime subscription 😊
THIS APP IS HEAVEN!!!! 素晴らしい！(^｡^)
I have another tips is you try to speak what you learned and use it in real life and another tips is watch videos about the language you're learning try to understand what they're saying if you found a word that you don't understand do a research and practice that word if you can understand English why wouldn't you can understand Japanese too? I've been de motivated so often until i found this video so i tried to give it a chance again now i can speak with Japanese people but it's still a formal and i need to improve more but thank you UA-cam for recommending this video to me.
What I recommend for starters is to watch movies in original language and with original language subs
Of course once you learnt the basics already
That boosted my foreign language levels in new heights
Why don't you blink 😭
also thanks❤
BLINKED HERE! 6:52
7:46 here too
@@musicgg6874 thanks
@@rgaber0000 oh thanks
2:48
Me learning hiragana : Yayy let's go!
Me learning katakana : oh ok..
Me learning kanji : 💀
Im just starting my journey and my motivation is the feeling of understanding a different language just hits different
I feel like isayama based Aot off of learning Japanese. The normal titans are hiragana. The abnormals are katakana. And the Titan shifters are kanji. The humans take down the normals and a normals until they run into the colossal Titan (kanji) then the humans realize they can use the Titan shifters to take down the other titans.
Solo Leveling at the beginnin👀
This video really helped me, i wanna learn japanese by my own and all of this was helpful, thank u so much
I'm 2 minutes into the video and I must say, I was surprised to look at your subscriber count because that editing is amazing. Keep up the good work !
WHY IS EVERYONE 14 WHEN THEY START LEARNING JAPANESE (I just memorized the Hiragana alphabet, I’m 14)
LMAO FR 😭😭 (im also 14 💀)
I'm eleven 😀
I was 20
私は12歳です🌚
Ya I'm also 14
I'm not an expert, I've only been learning Japanese for around 6 months, but I think I have made a lot of progress in that time. I can read a lot of light novels and visual novels pretty easily now. I haven't studied radicals nor have I used Anki at all. All I did was read light novels and visual novels from the very beginning with a dictionary, and googling the grammar points that I did not understand. I think it would be more efficient to spend time reading native Japanese material rather than studying radicals, because if you read enough you will remember the words no matter what. I think Anki can be useful, though it's boring as hell so I prefer to read. By the way, English is not my native language and I also learned it this way.
Agreed, but I do think direct study like Anki alongside immersion (like reading, as you said) would be the fastest way to learn.
Unless if you’re Chinese, you could just do ONLY reading.
Really helpful, thanks 😄
This is such a well-put together video. Thanks for sharing your experience
Really informative and great production level!
Thank you for sharing your experience and tips! So useful! I feel pumped to start my new habit of learning Kanji every day. The 🈷️ is up in the 🈳️ tonight
漢字は難しいのは分かっていますが、習った言語は外国語ではありません
( LANGUAGE ISN'T FOREIGN ONCE YOU LEARNT IT )
-Me ❤
Important note... don't overdo it in the beginning. The fail point for a lot of language learners is trying to go too fast and getting burned out. Think of learning a language like filling an empty swimming pool with water one cup at a time per day (minus the evaporation part). It will be empty at first but consistency will eventually fill it up. I started at 6 words per day and now I am up to 12. I am 1/2 way though the N5 content and I am surprised at how much I understand in many of the anime that I watch.
TEAM THOSE WHO WANT TO LEARN FOR ANIME 😅👇
I do
Me to
I do. Right now, It's so rewarding that I can read most of them. Like 55%
@@lilacanime5439hey 👋 can ya tell me what resources did ya used to learn Japanese.....🥺
@@lilacanime5439 please give me tips
I think this video was recommended to me because I needed it
great vid bro keep going!
thanks!
@@jozendesuthe intense sound after you say “Kanji” makes me laugh. Too funny. Great video! I’m in the frustrated stage trying to overcome it
EXTREAMLY helpful video thank you man made me think about the way i was learning a bit more
I learned english, all by myself, I didnt use apps, and school didnt help me because I learned english last summer, just by watching yt in English, and playing games in english, and then I would think about the words to not forget them, and then did the same but to not forget how to build phrases, I'm gonna try that to japanese but I feel like that I'll need more than a year...
People telling kanji is hard: -_-
People who learn chinese: -_- ?
They’re both extremely hard. Japanese kanji is hard in the pure amount of different pronunciations, homonyms etc…
Chinese kanji (or hanzi) is hard in the amount of synonyms, homonyms and pronunciations in general for the language.
確かに！そのとうりです！ 教師として勉強になります！
そのとおり(通り)です！
You are so underrated! Thanks for the tips.
bro looks through my soul
lolli i really casually started larning japanese but ignored kanji and katakana.... and now that i've tackled kanji i'm actually having so much fun. 1- it was intimidating and 2- i didn't have much time, but now i'm glad i did
....... haven't exactly studied katakana but i'm learning thru inferences LOLLL
So I’m guessing the hardest part is reading/writing as appose to speaking
I am a Japanese-Japanese living in Japan. Thanks to this video, I can now speak Japanese fluently and I even got a girlfriend. I am grateful for this video. Thank u
Love this. You need more subscribers
Really enjoying your videos, man. I've hit the kanji wall many times in my Japanese learning journey, but I think this video has inspired me to get back on that horse and really give it another go.
this guy needs more subs! great editing and informations !
I'm not that scared of Kanji (I learn Chinese) but I have to agree that it is the most challenging part since it looks complex. Especially if you are learning Chinese as a second language like me your whole life, it can be confusing to adapt to a new pronunciation system.
In my experience, kanji's hard, but it helps a ton at the entry level to understand sentences. Even if you don't understand the exact grammar, knowing some of the kanji can give you a very educated guess on what the sentence is supposed to say.
Arigathankyou gozaimuch! I learned a lot.
Lol
えー？🤨
@@jstunknowns 彼はおもしろい🤣🤣
日本人の意見ですが、小学校一年で習うところからどんどんレベルアップしていくのがいいと思います
それは効果的に本当ですけど、漢字が知らない時の悔しさと扱いたくなければ早々に習うこともいいと思います
This was incredibly informative. Thanks much, broda. You bouta blow up. (Love the Jackals jersey)
Solid video, and congrats on N2
Using the Colossal titan when talking about kanji is spot on. I personally noticed the similarity between kanji and Chinese when I watched a Chinese anime
underrated channel found.
Need to find the Rosetta Stone for blinking.
Thank you! I will learn I promise
this is a great and *actually helpful* video! can’t wait to see more awesome content from your channel! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
i’m trying to reach n3 next year and my biggest wonder was how i was gonna do kanji, this helped a lot!
I'm gonna give it another shot
this is really helpful! thank u :D
It is enough to be able to read simple kanji. In compulsory education in Japan, it takes about 10 years to learn slowly.
Really paved the foundation for learning a new language in an entertaining way 🔥🔥🔥
Shout out MO!!
Shout out Bambi!
You deserve a amazon link for promoting the book.
My mind gets blown every time i see KANJI😂
I’m learning Japanese being fluent in mandarin, and seeing kanji, I realized it was LITERALLY Chinese characters
I'm not planning to learn Japanese at the moment but I love your energy. I wish you could explain German as well
I learned Mandarin for 3 years and my approach on learning and memorizing the characters was very similar to how you explained using stories to memorize kanji like "bright".
That MSBY Jackals Shirt at 7:21 >>>>
Thanks for the video, also, I am impressed that you don't blink that much, which is nice!
Do consider that every day you spend learning only kanji is a day you spend not learning vocabulary… after 3 months I’ve learned around 2000 words, and can already read and understand a good bit of material, with the help of the dictionary of course for words I don’t know. Reading is not only about learning new words, but maybe even more importantly it teaches you grammar structure simply by being exposed to it, so I’m pretty happy with my progress. I’m not sure I’d recommend studying kanji by themselves… after all, the most common kanji show up inside words and you end up learning then anyway and their different spellings. You also start getting a feel for which spelling to use for a kanji you know, though I can’t explain how, it’s vibes.
That said, I have considered at this stage doing a little bit of kanji study, because as the video says I think it does make learning words easier because you can build on top of that previous knowledge, dunno.
Thank you for motivation!
Use RTK, anki, sentence mine and most importantly immerse for multiple hours a day and you might be intermediate within a couple years.
The Kanji isn't my problem. It's sentence structure and particles.
I'm using Anki and a Yomitan dictionary set inside my Anki. It's doing wonders for me.
I manually made my own Anki decks. Currently sitting at 130k flash cards (but like 30k of them are German, so only 100k are Japanese-related 💀) (kill me. But not really because it worked 💀). I don't really use it to review anymore. I just use it to look up hard words or synonyms from time to time just for fun when I don't have access to internet.
(btw I'm still adding more shit everyday 💀) I'm actually surprised that I'm not depressed, lmfao. It's actually pretty fun adding new cards daily, ngl.
ik this is a stupid question, but i randomly got bored and decided i wanna learn japanese. it’s been 11 days since then and my only use of learning is duolingo. is it normal i’m not good at all? like i remember words and everything, but i don’t remember how to spell them in hiragana, and i can’t even spell them with english letters. i just know how to pronounce them and form sentences with the stuff i learned
EDIT: 1 month later i fully memorized the hiragana alphabet. i can read them in a sentence but i read it kinda slow. we’re making progress slowly but surely💪🏼
It's normal to not be good at all, but just remember that language, especially Japanese, is not supposed to be easy. Let it be difficult and interesting, never give up!!
That’s totally normal. DUOLINGO is a very bad app to learn. I recommend you Busuu or renshuu. It’s way more better and useful. I learned a lot in a month with Busuu!!!
私たち日本人は、日本語のなかでも難しい漢字を覚えても、
いくら日本語を日本人として覚えても越えられない壁があります
それは'方言'です
方言は文字上では基本発生しません
ですがリスニング（聞き取り）の時に多くの違いが生まれるのです
海外の方々が見る日本語は'標準語'と呼ばれるものです
ですが日本の北にいってみればアクセントも異なります
一日本人として皆さんにアドバイスを送ります!
日本語は文字は書いて覚える か 見て覚える
会話はとにかく実践をして覚える
この二つを覚えていれば、基本は覚えられるでしょう!!!
Immersive translate would be great to help in revision of Japanese. It really helped me get better
Thank you for your tips!
The same purpose for me. Watching anime without subtitles and also because I love Japan culture. Thanks for the tips
at around 16 cards a day, youll get all anki cards in a year. im taking it at 8 a day for 2 years which is what you should aim for
Thank you for the video, I’m trying really hard to learn Japanese, because not only will it allow me to watch anime without subtitles, but it can lead to so many other job opportunities as well, so I’m going to use this video to help me perspire, as a kid though i know it’s gonna be difficult with school and homework though 😅 (I’m thirteen)
you're so reall, like im learning japanese just to watch one piece without subtitles too 😭😭
Jozen refuses to be caught blinking
well, I saw it once at 6:21
I just wanna learn it so I can play old Nintendo games that were only released in Japan like mother 3
Thank you! 👍🏽✨
I learned Kanji just by learning new words with the kanji attached to them. I would then go on to find it in a new word and learn a bit more about the Kanji that way. I didn't need to ever sit down and study Kanji and instead I could just read and watch anime etc and look up unknown words as I go. I can't handwrite but I don't care, since I don't need it.