Self-Learning Japanese
I've been trying to learn a new language with a different writing and grammar, something different than any Proto-Indo-European languages. My first take at this was learning japanese a few months ago with Duolingo, but I had little to no success. Don't get me wrong, Duolingo is great for learning a few very basic words and to kickstart you on the basic writing of a language, but it won't get you much further than that for months.
So I asked tips for two colleagues of mine that speak a rather decent japanese to help me out and give tips and searched the web for a few recommendations and I ended-up with a bunch of tools that can help me get to a basic level at my own. They are:
- Wanikani for learning words, kanji and vocabulary in a fun and fast way. It might seem slow at the start, but trust me, it isn't.
- Jlab's beginner course in Anki is a GREAT Anki deck and extension to nail japanese N5 and some N4 stuff.
- Duolingo, the bird is still better than nothing and it will eventually slip in new content in a way none of the previous ones do, so it is good to do it as well.
- Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese grammar, grammar is not the most important thing to learn a language, but it helps speeding up the process if you understand what you're doing.
- Jisho dictionary, essential to learning a language.
Wanikani, Duolingo and Anki are things you should do everyday! Tae Kim and Jisho Dictionary should be tools you use when you need to understand a word, kanji or concept in the language, kind of a self-service learning class.
Other than those tools I tend to watch anime and japanese movies with english subtitle, but focus on hearing. I'm also planning to change the games I play and my computer and phone language to japanese to have some kind of "immersive" experience in it, but I don't think I can just yet.
That's all I'm doing at this start and I do plan to eventually enter a beginner class in the next year or so.
Happy learning and じゃあね!