How I learned Japanese
Japan has such a unique culture and a lot of it is embedded in the language. To be able to form deeper human connections and that too fast enough, speaking a common language is important, and since most Japanese can’t speak English well enough, I decided to learn Japanese amongst several other reasons.
Out of curiosity, and also because Japanese people love to hear foreigners trying to speak their language, I crammed some of the words before and during internship e.g. Oishii which means ‘delicious’, or Otsukare-sama-deshita which means ‘thank you for your hard work’, or Osaki ni douzo which means ‘after you’ or ‘please go ahead’.
Then I got selected for the job and knowing few words was not going to be good enough for living in Japan. So in my fourth year of college, I did lot of research on Internet to find free sources to learn Japanese and ultimately following is what I did. I am pretty sure I could have done it in a much better way.
I discovered an app called ‘Memrise’, they have pretty cool web as well as mobile app and it is quite easy to use. There are many Japanese courses in there and I used it to learn Hiragana, Katakana and some Japanese Vocabulary. On hindsight it was not bad but I think I learnt at quite a slow pace using this. Mostly, it served me to quench my hunger to learn Japanese during my busy fourth year of college. And, I think if I spent some dedicated time learning Japanese, I could have learn the same things much faster using more traditional approaches like learning Hiragana/Katakana by writing/reading texts and stuff. However, it is good when you have some free pockets of time and all you have is your smartphone with you. One of the cool features about this is the free mnemonics on the famous courses are very helpful to remember the stuff.
I also came across another cool app called, Anki. It is basically digital flash cards and I downloaded some vocabulary and later kanji flashcards on it. The pace of learning is I think a bit faster here as compared to Memrise.
Luckily, I got opportunity to learn Japanese from a teacher for 1 month, in Bengaluru, in July 2017. The target of this 1 month course was to be able to become at least N5 level proficient in Japanese.
JLPT is an organisation which conducts Japanese language exam, and the language levels are divided from N1 to N5, N1 being the hardest.
The classes in Bengaluru were gruelling with about 10 hours a day study of the language for 6 days a week but on the hindsight it was one of the best decisions to do this study before coming to Japan. At the end of 1 month, we could score more than 95% in the JLPT N5 mock test exams :D
Before, joining this 1 month course, the teacher asked to self study so that I am able to read and write Hiragana and Katakana. This made sense as this is something in which she could not help me anyways, and I could focus on learning the actual grammar equipped with the knowledge of Hiragana and Katakana. She made us follow the textbook ‘Minna no Nihongo Shokyu 1’ (Shokyu means beginner) (Click on Browse button to preview the book!). This book corresponds to N5 level. The whole book is written only in Japanese! So, it is necessary to buy accompanying translations book. The internet says, this is one of the widely used Japanese language textbook (other being Genki) in the language schools.
Even after gruelling study of 1 month of Japanese in India, I could barely speak and listen any Japanese just after coming to Japan. It took my brain about three months to bring my learning into practice. After about 3 months in Japan, I could start to recognize many grammar patterns which people around me were speaking. Also, I took a dive and started to speak whatever Japanese I could speak even if I was not sure that I am using the right words.
After few months in Japan, I decided to expand my Japanese skills, so I bought Minna no Nihongo Shokyu II. I also bought the accompanying English translation & grammar notes book. After knowing some basic Japanese, it is easy to self study from this book. Studying from this book helped me pass N4 exam with very good marks. I also used an app called WaniKani to learn Kanji. This is probably the best app out there to learn Kanji. It is based on the concept of Spaced Repetition System (SRS) of learning.
Maybe motivated with the high score in this exam and also my hunger to learn more, I then started studied for N3 exam again using Minna no Nihongo Chukyu book. This book covers mainly grammar. Apart from WaniKani I did not study Kanji and vocabulary much. Hence, though I passed my N3 exam in July 2019 I did not get a very good score in Kanji and Vocabulary sections.
After that, I have mainly been studying Japanese by reading signboards, trying to read subtitles in Japanese and watching Japanese TV shows. My current level of Japanese is good enough to have a simple conversation with a Japanese person. Although I would like to improve more!
Benefit of learning language is only when you use the language! So, I try my best to speak the language even if there is a possibility of making a mistake. Imagine, toddlers being afraid of making a mistake while learning their mother tongue! Probably they won’t be able to speak until 10 years of age!
According to the number of times different aspects of language are used I will order their importance as follows:
Listening comprehension of the language > Speaking the language >> Reading the language > Writing Katakana and Hiragana >> Writing Kanji
Living in India, and especially self-learning the language can make, learning to listen and speak Japanese tough, but even learning the grammar and vocabulary can give a great head start when starting to actually use the language in Japan.
If you are also learning Japanese I would love to know in the comments how. Also, please let me know if you want to know in more detail any aspect of my learning Japanese journey.