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Studying Japanese

Hey,
I'm learning (slowly) Japanese at home and was wondering if anyone had any good resources available. I have learnt Hiragana and Katakana in basic and I'm learning now grammar and beginners phrases.

Reply 1

BWCW

Awesome - good luck, Japanese is a challenging but really amazing language to learn. :smile:

Good job with the first two alphabets - they will be a massive help. Learning grammar will now be a huge help - I've never used them personally, but I've heard good things about Genki and Minna no Nihongo. This is an amazing treasure trove of grammar, from the very basics up to very advanced structures. The layout is a bit dodgy in places, but the content (including some really good examples) are unbeatable, I think. This site is also useful, but maybe when you have a bit more experience - it's a pretty big database of grammar points with user-added examples. It sorts them by JLPT level though which is useful - JLPT 5 is the lowest level, so working through those grammar points is a good start.

For vocab, I use Anki - it's a really good web application/phone app where you can download flashcards that you can use to learn and reinforce vocab (though it works brilliantly for kanji and grammar too). There are loads of amazing decks that other people have made and you can download to use. Lots of them are tailored to specific levels too, and some have audio files to help you with listening and pronounciation.

There's tonnes of websites out there as well for learning basic phrases and vocab, as well as some great Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Actually, this site (there's a Facebook account too) is amazing for loads and loads of example sentences for lots of different vocab and grammar, with a focus on 'real' Japanese i.e. how Japanese people really speak. Again, the pages can be quite confusing as they don't have that an intuitive layout, but the content is brilliant.

Aside from that, I'd say trying to surround yourself with Japanese material really helps - listen to Japanese music, watch Japanese news, films and TV shows, listen to Japanese radio. This will help you familiarise yourself with Japanese.

Good luck! 頑張って！

Reply 2

roarchika

Guide to Japanese <3 the self-learner's bible to be honest. I also recommend memrise.com for the JLPT vocab - jlptbootcamp have courses up there (and jlptbootcamp is an amazing resource in and of itself). If you're interested in learning kanji I use the Kodansha Kanji Course and have no complaints whatsoever with it :smile: