This is a tale of my experience learning Japanese and how you can make the best of it to enhance your own experience.
What makes me in the position to make such a bold statement as to how to learn Japanese?
I’ve started learning Japanese in the second year of high school. That was sometime between the end of 2001 and the start of 2002. In short, I could safely say I started learning Japanese on my 13th birthday in October, which means that at the time of writing this article, soon turning 22, I will have been learning Japanese for close to 9 years.
In all of those years, I have not mastered Japanese, a short way of meaning both that no learning solution has been adequate up to date, and that I have learned Japanese in a very slow-paced, organic fashion.
The reason I can make such a bold statement about learning Japanese is that I’ve tried, with both success and failure, probably all the ways one could think of for learning a language.
Within these, you’d find courses, text books, dictionaries, kanji books of all sorts, online interactive courses, Rosetta Stone, etc.
I’ve spent a significant amount of money on these solutions and I can say none is quite adequate as a complete solution. Read on to find out about the biggest traps and losses of time while learning Japanese.
You should learn Romaji, but not too much
If you dive in Japanese learning material, you’ll eventually meet some people that will tell you to never use romaji. In fact, they will straight on tell you learning romaji along with Japanese is just an inhibitor to your learning process.
While absolutely true, the reality is you still have to learn romaji anyway. Japanese written in our alphabet is called Romaji. The word Sushi is typical example of romaji used in daily English. The thing is, unlike the imported word Sushi, actual romaji, which can represent any Japanese content, is specifically pronounced in a Japanese way.
While learning romaji certainly won’t help you learn to pronounce Japanese, it’s used a primary way to input Japanese on computers. You would be depriving yourself of an easy way to write Japanese if you were to completely forgo learning romaji. Additionally, learning to pronounce Japanese in romaji can also help to learn pronouncing English the Japanese way, or the wrong way Japanese use for imported words. Considering the surprising amount of English-imported words in Japanese, nearly all new vocab since WW2, romaji will also help you get a fundamental understanding of how Japanese import English words in their language.
This could seem rather useless, but on the contrary, it will help you learn English-bound Japanese vocabulary faster, and it will help you understand Japanese people pronouncing foreing items in Japanese right in your home country. For example, I could not have guessed the sushi chef meant Carlton university when he asked me if I studied at Karuton university. It might seem like an easy thing to get, but it takes training to perceive such a word in fast regular native conversational speed, which is execeptionaly fast in comparison to the pace of English speech.
Don’t learn Japanese with romaji
While you should definitely learn romaji, one of the common pitfals of learning Japanese you should avoid like the pest is learning Japanese with romaji.
All this will do is hamper the speed at which you can learn actual written Japanese, which is composed of linguistic concepts simply impossible to represent in romaji. Many, many things are ambiguous in romaji and could lead you to learn bad pronunciations and ways to write a word in kana (the ensemble of Japanese scripts), further slowing your intake of the language.
Keep in mind you could always learn Japanese with romaji and only learn to speak, doing so won’t prevent you from learning Japanese but it will take you a lot more time to eventually learn all of Japanese. I should know, it’s the path I took and it’s a major stick in your wheel.
Avoid kanji books
Quite frankly, Kanji books, and practically all of their form, are just like dictionaries.
Trying to learn Kanji like that is like trying to learn French words one by one with no context other than a definition.
Kanji, in Japanese, aren’t just an alphabet and should not be learned by heart. They form literal vocabulary in context and learning them by heart is the most innefficient way to learn them.
Let me repeat myself here. Kanji are not an alphabet, no matter what people say to you, they are words and parts of words.
There are a few basic kanji you can remember that will help you understand and properly look at more complex kanji, but just like there is no trick in learning vocabulary other than to use it, there is no trick in learning Kanji.
The best way to learn kanji is to learn them via their primary function, a reading device.
The best textbooks you will find will gradually introduce kanji right in the text and tell you about them and their associated use in context, just like you would learn English by reading.
Additionally, Japanese is much easier to read with kanji, because they bring precision and structure to the text. Without kanji, Japanese would be an excessively ambiguous language to write. While learning Japanese, you’ll discover that reading without kanji is an extremely confusing and painfully structure-less experience.
Learn without translating
One of the most common mistake while learning languages is the act of translating.
For instance, learning words by comparing them with their equivalent in your own language is the most innefficient way to learn fluent speech.
What you have to do is learn to identify things and speak about things by thinking in Japanese. This is why reading is also so important in order to learn katakana and hiragana, Japanese’s two phonetic alphabets, because you have to memorize the sound they represent, and not the English romaji equivalent they represent. Reading will force you to do so because their is no other way to enhance your reading speed. You might read like a child at first, but regular practice will solidify your memory of these phonetics. The same goes for kanji and their meaning.
In the same regard, visual language learning solutions like Rosetta Stone provide an excellent way to learn many concepts in a native way, rather than by translating. By doing so, you’ll be learning to speak just like you learned as a child, breaking the oft said barrier to language learning that is adulthood.
However, Rosetta Stone and the such should not mean forgoing a good grammar study. Just like in any language, grammar is fundamental to mastering a language. Some people, notably Rosetta Stone, will try to sell you their lack of grammar tools by saying no child learns grammar to learn a language. That is correct, and grammar is in no way a natural aspect to language learning, so you shouldn’t go overboard with it, but literate people, including educated nations’ children, learn grammar.
Grammar is not a learning tool
Contrary to most beliefs, grammar will not help you learn to speak. The natural occurence of grammar does not exist. Languages are rather defined by a list of exceptions and accepted uses in varying contexts, which humans refer to as grammar.
Because grammar is so intricately unnatural by definition, learning it won’t really help you since languages don’t follow any given logic perfectly.
Rather, the best learning tool is context and use cases. Again, this stresses the importance of reading, which will provide you with an array of valid and often well written use cases of the language. Trying to understand the subtleties of a language’s grammar and structure won’t help you learn to speak fluently and write correctly.
As a proof of the preceding statement, ask yourself this question: have you ever thought about the grammar of what you were reading just now, or what gossip you were telling your friend over the phone yesterday?
Chances are you answered no, because the use of grammar is not a natural occurence of a language. It is simply humans’ attempt at defining our languages.
Every language has two grammars
When referring to grammar as the set of rules and exceptions defining a language, it’s observable that every language has two grammars.
One of them is the formal, correct, or written grammar, and the other is the incorrect, or spoken grammar. The problem with text books, or even Rosetta Stone, is that they only focus on correct grammar.
However, speaking remains an essential aspect of any language and forgoing learning the bad spoken grammar can mean you’ll never be able to understand spoken Japanese.
So, in your oh so important curriculum of reading practice, you should also add listening of spoken language, like Japanese television shows. If you’re an Anime fan, you could watch Anime and read Manga, although many manga use a speech-like grammar, so be aware that reading traditional texts is also essential here.
This will help you train your ear to the spoken language, as well as help your pronunciation greatly. Many university students I met who took Japanese courses were impossible to understand because of their thick accent and major pronunciation mistakes. Out of these students who happened to actually speak well, all of them actively watched Japanese anime and drama. Lots of them also listened and sang Japanese musics. In fact, if you’re into music, singing can be a really good way to learn to pronounce. Additionally, you will be exposed to faster speech and lots of native pronunciation variations by doing so.
In other words, if you don’t include a correctly spoken curriculum to your Japanese learning, you’ll always be a lousy speaker.
No, it’s not correct if you speak a language with an accent from another language. It just proves you didn’t learn the language as you should have.
I heed this warning especially to English speakers, who, because of the difference between Japanese and English sounds, will find a greater deal of difficulty to pronounce the language than say, a French speaker.
Also watch out for non-native university teachers teaching you the wrong pronounciation. Heck, native English teachers even make mistakes while teaching English, which explains the proliferation of such words like Template being pronounced as tem-pleyt instead of tem-plit.
Japanese luckily does not suffer from such ambiguities, so simply having a native speaker say it for you should be enough.
Conclusion
In the end, there’s nothing like practice and exposure to a language, but I hope my advice will help you choose the best material and avoid the worst.
As always, just remember exposure to real written and spoken Japanese material is your best bet at advancing your skills.
To help you in your quest, I advise you to pay a visit to jisho.org and smart.fm. Kodansha also makes excellent books like the Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary and Japanese for Busy People. Rosetta Stone is also a good place to start, and all the speech is from native Japanese, unlike many other audio-based solutions like Rocket Japanese and JapanesePod101, both of which you should avoid. You might also want to check the Rikkai-chan browser add-on which can help you read Japanese online, although it’s only useful if you’re already fairly comfortable with the language. Books like Japanese for Busy People, notably the kana version of the first tome, will be better as initial reading material.
None of these will provide a complete guide to the language. Instead, use them in conjunction along with native material like books and television shows and you’ll be on your way to speaking and reading fluent Japanese.
Hello. I have studied in Japan for 1 year and have extended my stay 1 more year. It was only today that I found out how horrible my Japanese ability was.
I was always looking for the English equivalent to Japanese words and grammar points.
Today my teacher said not to think in English but think in Japanese, but for me, it seems like I HAVE to know what the English equivalent is in order to piece a Japanese sentence together… Everyone around me seems to have an ability to turn their native language thinking off and switch over to Japanese, but I do not know how to do this.
I can understand people just fine. I think my listening is probably the best and only thing I have right now, but it seems like I never learn from the way people speak. (I am really starting to think I may be mentally handicapped because I am a really REALLY slow learner compared to everyone else)
Is there any way for me to be able to just turn off my native speaking brain and switch over to Japanese? I watch anime, I listen to music, I have Japanese friends. I can Understand them (except for the some vocabulary and grammar points I didn’t learn), but when it is my turn to speak, its like… I HAVE to think English mode before applying it in Japanese speech.
This problem is really bumming me out and I get really discouraged after each class. I get really frustrated and grumpy/sad when I cant understand things, so this is how I feel after each class because there is ALWAYS something that I cant understand.
Any suggestions or help would be really appreciated. Thank you for any help.
-Jonah
Hey Jonah,
First of all, let me reassure you that there is nothing wrong with you. This behaviour is perfectly normal and quite a few people experience it when trying to learn a language, especially when it’s their first time learning another language.
The problem isn’t your ability, it’s how you think. However, that’s easier said than done. If you could simply command your brain to start thinking in such a way as “in Japanese”, you wouldn’t be asking for help would you?
The foundation of the problem lies within the way we usually learn stuff. In school, when learning a language, most academic programs proceed by introducing concepts in relation to what you already know; in this case, from English to Japanese. However, by doing so, and by learning everything you know that exact same way, your brain has been conditioned to learn everything by association to linguistic concepts.
The way you learned mathematics is by conceptualization through language. The way you learned history is through language. The way you learned pretty much everything starting from 6 to 7 years old is through language.
This has proven effective in most academic areas but not in the acquisition of a language. Why? Because all you really know is the English definition of Japanese, not the actual language itself. In fact, one of the hardest things to translate from one language to another is humour, the issue being that many linguistic concepts simply cannot be transliterated between languages, therefore some degree of information is necessarily lost, and the essence of what could be funny is also lost.
As to worsen your situation, this means that English alone cannot entirely define the Japanese language. To some degree, there are concepts you have to learn in Japanese that do not exist in English. And same goes for English. Japanese cannot entirely define how English works. These concepts that you are missing are key to your ability to speak and understand Japanese in a natural way. This happens with every language.
A way to learn these concepts is by understanding their situational definition. One way to do this is by watching anime, but in order for you to get the concepts at all, your brain has to change the way it works with new information related to languages. To put it simply, you have to recondition your brain to prevent it from using English when trying to understand Japanese. You have to understand things by concepts, and not by translation.
For example, when I think of “ringo” in Japanese, I do not think of an apple. I think of the fruit itself. The very word “ringo” brings up a visualization of the apple fruit in my head. That’s the essential of what you have to go for. More complex concepts can also be visualized this way. For example, if you are seeing “aisatsu”, you could visualize a man greeting another one. Whenever you’re stuck on a word in Japanese that you think to know, try to visualize what it could be first. Don’t try to think about its English equivalent.
But again, that’s easier said than done, but fortunately there are things that can help.
First is the way your brain works when learning. Smart.fm have figured out a few of these. On top of the Ebbinghaus Curve, Smart.fm also uses various ways to make you learn a single object. Each of these ways target a specific way your brain processes information and memory, which essentially forces you to remember every item you learn beyond knowing their English equivalent. For example, if I tell you what is “a” in hiragana, one part of your memory is working to find the equivalent. However, if I reversely ask you what is “あ” in romaji, another part of your memory is working, despite the question being essentially the same. The same thing happens if I ask you the question once with a choice of answers, where the faculty being exploited is comparison, and if I ask you the same question with a blank space to write on later on. One trick I have found with Smart.fm is to try and be as quick as you can, leaving your brain no choice but to rely on concepts, which are direct, instead of comparison to your native language, which requires finding the equivalent first before even checking for the concept and meaning.
Secondly, some software like Rosetta Stone teach you by concepts through images and sound, with no translation at all. Although this is good, it can be tedious and error prone for more complex concepts. Simply put, it’s a shame not to use your acquired ability to conceptualize as an adult. Learning a language like a kid is a process that requires years of consistent exposure to a language in order to work properly, and since Rosetta Stone features absolutely no translation, there’s no way to confirm what you think is 100% correct. You could however complement Rosetta Stone with explanations from dictionaries or an assistant teacher. The key here is to try and change the way you acquire the language.
Thirdly, once you’ve got good enough foundations in the language, acquisition can be performed in a much more natural way. For example, watching anime. However, do not watch it with subtitles. By watching it with subtitles, you’re directing all your brain’s attention on the written words that happen to be English. Worse, translations are often approximate at best, meaning they’re not a good way to understand what’s happening in the Japanese language. And even worse, you’re giving your brain a very good excuse to stop thinking about what something meant. After all, all you have to do is read what’s on the screen when in doubt. Not good! You’re only re-enforcing your brain’s natural tendency to rely on linguistic concepts from another language to understand Japanese. By watching without subtitles, you’re forcing your brain to process the information directly. Also, try not to pause. If you don’t understand something, skip it. Pausing to understand will most likely only prompt you to search for a definition, which means you’re again referring to English as your way of understanding the language. Rather, by not pausing, and by at least trying to understand what’s going on, you’ll be forcing your brain to try and understand situations by using things it already knows. At first it will be difficult, especially if your foundation knowledge is poor, but eventually, some concepts will start to creep up in your mind. Using the new things you could get out of the anime, more complex concepts will then start to be easier to understand, and you’ll gradually learn them all. As an added benefit, listening without watching subtitles will both direct more of your attention on the visuals, furthering your understanding and conceptual association of what you see with the Japanese language, and make your sense of hearing the different Japanese syllables more acute. Every time you won’t get a word because you couldn’t hear it properly, since you won’t be able to go to subtitles in order to know what it meant, your brain will heighten its hearing acuteness in order to better process further sounds. It’s all a natural process of simply wanting to know, and the key is really into forcing yourself to try to understand. Therefore no pause, no subs, no rewinding. A good idea however is to re-watch the same episodes and series you have already watched, or better, the ones you watched with subtitles. Since you will already understand the context, many of the words and phrases will be much easier to understand.
However, be aware that this only works if you have a certain basis of the language. You cannot throw yourself into a TV show of another language if you can’t make out even a single word. Children learn while watching TV shows because they have already acquired, through demonstrations by their parents and observation of their entourage, some basic linguistic concepts that allow them to further their understanding.
My first language was French and I did not know a word of English until 11 years old, at which point I received a PlayStation and got Spyro The Dragon and Gran Turismo. Desperately trying to understand, I decided I would learn English and asked my father to help me. We have English at school here but I wasn’t interested until then. Living in the National Capital Region of Canada, I can tell you this whole English thing was highly advantageous to me. We’re pretty much obligated to know both French and English here in order to work (yes, me and my friends speak French and English concurrently and interchangeably). Anyway, all to say that I have learned English through watching English TV shows and by getting a few bases at school and with my father. I kept on furthering my knowledge of English, and just like French, I keep on furthering it today with literature and what not. And hey, you’ve read my blog, you know how far I’ve come. Let’s say you can go as far with Japanese, just by being persistent in tricking your brain.
Right now, to learn Japanese, and god knows I wish I had this tool back when learning English, I use a combination of Smart.fm and anime. I communicate only average in Japanese, but when it’s something I know, native Japanese think I’m a fluent speaker. This stems directly from how I learned Japanese; through concepts. Because I’m not translating at all, I just happen to know how to express myself in Japanese on some given subjects, it looks like I’m a fluent speaker. You could say it’s partial fluency, and my perfect accent really helps.
On the accent part, I could say that time and practice is what it takes to get rid of an accent, and will to actually change the way you pronounce things. I speak all of my three languages with a native accent. Usually, French people know I’m a native French speaker, English people mistakenly think my first language is English, and Japanese people think I know how to speak Japanese fluently.
Well, I realize this is a huge comment, and I hope it at least gave you some insight on what to do to solve your problem. By the way, for Smart.fm, check out the Partner Series on Japanese, they’re what I use. They mainly build your vocabulary and ability to read Japanese. Smart.fm is not a good place to learn linguistic concepts, although with enough bases and vocab, you might be able to simply figure out what it means, like I did with “yori”. A good place to learn bases is TextFugu, or any Japanese text book for English speakers.
Hope this helps.
Good luck!
Wow, my comment has almost as much words as my article. Maybe I should fuse those together or something XD
As someone who tried to learn a language back in school, and someone who tried to learn a programming language, and ran into the same “thinking in English” problem, that comment was about as useful as 2 of your original blog posts
. You’ve really given me some hope in being able to learn a language, since this was a problem I couldn’t formulate into words before now, because I simply didn’t understand the problem. I’m totally bookmarking this 