The best way to learn Japanese

August 27, 2023

Pop quiz:

“What’s the best way to learn Japanese?”

I hear that question a lot.

And there’s usually a lot of different answers.

Sometimes, I see a lot of arguing about it too

But I think people tend to disagree because advice comes from personal experience most of the time. So most things people tell you are things that they think worked or are currently working for them.

Makes sense there would be a lot of different advice out there in that case. People are different, and everyone has things that do and don't work for them.

Personally, when taking advice, I find that it’s helpful to see the advice giver's ability and decide if their level is where you want to be. You can then decide if or how much you want to follow it from there.

Anyway, whenever I see someone who’s really put in a lot of work and has improved their Japanese ability a lot, I see the same trend of the following 3 things:

1. They have a comprehensive core resource
2. They have a stash of native materials and/or ways to get lots of natural exposure to the language
3. They show up consistently

For now, let's just talk about the first one on that list.

The core resource should do a whole slew of things for us, but one might argue that the focus could be…

Grammar. *shudders*

And that's because, well, learning grammar is important! 😅

Because, simply put, we often don't understand when we don't understand grammar.

If you've ever seen a sentence and known all the words but can't figure out for the life of you what it's actually saying, then you have experienced this as well. Honestly, it still gets me to this day sometimes.

So it's important to make sure you get that base covered. But that's not the only thing a core resource should teach you.

Idealistically, it should show you everything you'll need to know to go out into the wild with as few barriers between the learning environment and the real environment as possible.

With that in mind, an effective resource also has:

1. Vocab that people actually use
2. Native audio
3. Information on the writing systems and how to learn them
4. Context so you know what to say when (this is necessary because English and Japanese are, probably obviously, so fundamentally different)

Vocab is more tools on your tool belt for expressing yourself (when combined with grammar), and knowing how things are said will help you be able to pick that up when you hear it out in the wild.

↑ That means having audio spoken by real native speakers who aren't slowing down their language to make it easier to understand is vital. Resources that overpronounce their examples just leave us learners lost when we try to use what we've learned.

Oh, and we'll also need to know what the 3 Japanese scripts are and how they function together.

In a future newsletter, I'll go further in-depth about the other 2 things that I've noticed people who have really made strides in their Japanese do.

By the way, as far as core resources go, NativShark does all the things mentioned above. So if you’re using that, you have #1 on the list covered and don't need to worry.

Also! You should now get #3 on the list covered in case you haven’t already today~

→ Study Now ←

P.S. For what it’s worth, here are some examples of Niko and I speaking Japanese. Maybe ask a native friend to see what they think as well:

Niko's Japanese journey

Me on NSLBJP

Weekly writing prompt:

We got some feedback in the community recently about including some weekly writing prompts, so we're adding them here!

We'll give a certain situation you might find yourself in and then ask you for what Japanese you might say.

You can answer or get help in the community and see what other people said as well by going here.

This week's prompt:

You just landed in Tokyo and went through customs on your first trip to Japan! You want to drop your stuff off at the hotel before doing anything else, but Google Maps is really confusing because there are just too many trains. You walk up to a help desk and say…

Post your answers here and let's talk about them!

Feel free to ask for help if you want to say something specific as well~

Some new Japanese

I learned a lot about the verb こく in a recent lesson. Here's a beautiful example sentence:

Gonna be honest, I had no idea こく was used this way, and many of the other ways shown in the lesson. The first sentence in the lesson was hilarious by the way 🤣

You can go check out that lesson here.

If this sentence is too hard, all you need to do is keep hitting the Study Now button, and you'll understand it when you get there. The above sentence comes from this lesson in Phase Three.

NativShark goodie bag

The content team released 4 new Phase Three Units this week~

New Phase Three Units

Unit 89

Contains the lesson:
回文: Palindromes

New Podcasts Episodes:

The Konnichiwa Podcast

From Shibuya with Love - Spotify

Thanks for reading all the way to the end
Ty

Be sure to check out the follow-up newsletter to this one ^^