Learn a Language

With all that information behind our backs, how should we start learning the language?

Phonetics & Alphabet¶

First of all, you should become familiar with phonetics and basic writing system. For a lot of languages it just means learning an alphabet and being comfortable with basic reading.

In this phase you should pay a lot of attention to sounds. Do not use your native language for sounds transcription. Ideally, listen to the video of a native speaker saying all the sounds and try to repeat them as close as possible. If you spend here a lot of careful time, I can guarantee that your accent will be much less noticable in the long ride and unlearn bad habbits is difficult the more advanced you get.

Once you learned the basic sounds and very slowly can read some words, you should work on reinforcing the foundation. Try to spend some weeks repeating the stuff you learned and introduce at least 30 mins of reading per day. Make it more enjoyable by reading things you like, maybe some quotes from games or movies.

For Japanese I used this website to add furigana to my favourite songs and read one or two per day.

First words¶

I think this stage is the most complicated part of your entire language journey. You need to be consistent and not drop the language in the first month of studying when you don't literally anything, so its very difficult to find a comprehensible input.

To break through I suggest to find some lists or even better Anki decks with the most basic 300 words. Focus on decks that contain a lot of verbs, basic nouns, question words and all extremely common stuff. Do not waste time on useless stuff like all existing food, family members of 3 degree relation etc. Imagine things that you will find literally in every single language interaction.

I did my own deck by myself at this point by finding most common 300 words and creating a deck with them finding my own cool pictures. I think creating cards by yourself helps to reinforce the memory but you can of course existing one, usually highly recommended keiki 2k, but I suggest where you can learn the first 300 words.

First Input¶

After building the good foundation now you need to shift nicely to the input. Biggest mistake you can make is to postpone this step. Remember, you are trying to natureally acquire a language, for that you need to absorb loads of input.

Imagine yourself as a 3yo that is watching some cartoons and understanding only very contextionalized scenes. Your goal is to watch so many cartoons as possible while keeping it enjoyable. For that you need to learn tolerating the anbiguity and having a great time anyways. Make sure to pick something not too complex with possibly simpler language and a lot of visual cues. As the first one maybe the title you already watched some time ago and would not mind to rewatch. Slice of life works the best in my opinion. I recommend watching Yuru Yuri S1-S3. Watch how to watch anime guide.

At the same time you should not neglect the reading and make your first attempts into it. Pick some manga with furigana and try to read at least couple of pages per day, here you can start mining your first cards. Find the sentence that contains one unknowm word and add it to Anki while learning that word. Read my Anki guide for details. My first read was Demon Slayer. Then I read Demon Slayer V2, Kimi no Todoke V1-V4 and Takagi san V1-V4. Out of them Takagi san was definetely the easiest. If you like this, give it a shot. Watch how to read manga guide.

At the same time I suggest you to make yourself a bit more comfortable with grammar by watching the entire N5 grammar book by Game Gengo (do it couple of topics per time, do not watch the wehole thing in one siting). And try to notice these patterns while you are immersing. This step is very important don't white noise the points, try to start noticing these patterns. If you noticed some pattern while immersing, just google it and find some explanation and make a mantal note on that. This way of acquiring grammar is the most natural in my opinion. If you don't understand what kind of grammar point is it, just ask people on TheMoeWay, they are always nice to help. You can also of course ask Claude if you don't want to interact with people, but at this point I think you should join some kind of learning community so you get motivated by all people that are trying to achieve the same goal as you.

In this phase you should watch at least 60 episodes and read at least 5 volumes. Do not worry about mining to many words, the most important here is to achieve a basic comfort in the language.

Mining Intensifies¶

At this point the only thing is left is just to incrementally improve. After put effort you need to manage yourself to create a certain routine that helps you to mine words into Anki, read and listen. By repeating doing that you will eventually achieve the passive fluency. After basic foundation you can basically peak any content you are really pessionate about to keep motivation highand do that.

Do not be scary to try a lot of things and drop stuff quick to find the proper content. The less advanced you are, the more important it is to find a good comprehensible stuff. First year I would definetely recommen to replay, rewatch, reread stuff you already did in your native langauge.

Its that simple, but of course very difficult. You need to push forwards regardless of what is happening in your life, do not give up, manage your expectation and dedicate a lot of your time throught long period of time.

My biggest advice would be to keep things basic and simple. Do not bother with crazy setups and some new popular tool that came out. This will not really change anything and if existing things already work, just stick to them.

Getting Closer to Advanced Level¶

After getting pretty much comfortable with the language, you should challenge your limits. Watch new stuff, explore not-translated content and enjoy your comprehension of another language. Explore new YouTube channels, streamers, games etc.

Speaking¶

After acquiring passive fluency, you now can practice speaking. Join some japanese discord, VR chat and just dont be shy. Just put a lot of hours and you will be speaking in no time.

Endgame¶

Language is a lifelong learning. Read more, listen more, study the culture, make some native friends. Congrats!