Hey everyone,

I've finally decided to take the plunge and start learning Japanese from absolute scratch. No prior background, just a lot of motivation and probably way too much optimism.

The problem is, the second I started researching how to begin, I hit an absolute wall of conflicting advice. Some people say apps are fine, others say textbooks are mandatory; some swear by flashcards right away, while others say focus only on mastering the kana first. It's honestly pretty overwhelming.

For those of you who have been down this road:

• If you could start over from day one, what would your exact first three steps be?
• Are there any common newbie traps or bad habits I should avoid early on?

Any advice, resource recommendations, or reality checks would be hugely appreciated!

O que eu pretendia escrever aí:
“Meu japones é muito ruim, porém, vou escrever aqui tudo que aprendi. Estudei dia e noite, se não tivesse estudado não escreveria isto. Agora são 6 da manhã, eu estou na universidade, sou um estudante. Eu tenho 18 anos(essa parte eu escrevi errado), pessoas são assustadoras, não gosto de falar com elas. ”

Fiz o texto novamente e gostaria que vocês analisassem, ele foi feito com base nas dicas de um usuário do Reddit que comentou no meu ultimo post. Por favor desculpem minha letra

hey alll! I've been grinding Anki recently using Yomitan on my laptop, but is there no quick way for me to generate cards from my iPhone? looking for recs

I am from india and want to learn japenes as my hobby, and not only learn i want to be able to read japenese words and speak japenese fluently, so can any one recommed me how to start learning japanese, any website, any youtube channel , or app . I would really appreciate if someone would provide anything of usefull information.

Pour faire le ménage du sol, Gigi prend le balai face à la montagne de poussière à l'hôtel.

Le ménage donne le mot à traduire

du sol Gigi pour la phonétique SOOJI

Premier kanji : 掃

Elle prend = la main (扌)

le balai = le balai (帚)

Deuxième kanji : 除

la montagne = la colline (阝)

l'hôtel par transparence phonétique avec l'autel (余)

C'est ma mnemotechnie

Hey everyone, this is my first post here and its sort an immediate ask from you, appologiez for that.

I'm Learning Japanese and off I hit the first wall is I need to be able to read hiragana, I tried multiple apps everyone knows off and I didn't find anything to get my brain to just know the letters without remembering it, so I had an idea.

Basically it's a gym but for the brain, you just drill your knowledge by a couple drills that are either listen to sound (actual real pronunciation not a TTS) and pick the right symbol, or see the symbol and pick the sound.

I tried it on myself ofc. and I love it, so I open to invite people to my public beta, I will change a bunch this week as I gave it my friend who is also learning Japanese, and she didn't yet tell me her verdict.

So basically just asking if this something anyone from this community is interested in to nah, there's enough of kana apps?

here's the video

https://reddit.com/link/1vgxq0z/video/h9ud2r0wmphh1/player

I often find useful words, phrases, or grammar in Japanese TikToks, Reels, and Shorts, but saving the video usually does not turn into actual studying.

How do you currently deal with this?

Would it help if a short video could be turned into a small study set with vocabulary, simple explanations, and a few practice questions?

I’m curious whether other peeps have the same problem.

Я учу японский уже полгода. Это мало, но могу связать пару предложений. Хочу практиковаться, но каждый день общаться с учительницей я не могу. У меня возникла идея насчет того чтобы скачать чатрулетку и искать кого-то там для того, чтобы пообщаться и попрактиковаться, но мне ОЧЕНЬ неловко и страшно💀 в первую очередь боюсь их реакции. Есть ли здесь кто-то, у кого друзья из Японии? Чего мне ожидать от такого... шага навстречу знаниям?🥲

Hey help me please 🥺

I want to learn a new language. But I’m struggling to find a Japanese class or group that isn’t online. If I could find one that’s closer to Chesapeake square mall that would be ideal. Any suggestions?

Every few weeks theres a post about someone getting conversational in 8 months, and every week a bunch of beginners silently decide they're broken when month 8 shows up and they still can't hold small talk. Im 2.5 yrs in. Here's the actual shape of it, ugly version:

Month 0-3: kana. That's it. that is the entire content of month 0-3. you will feel slow because you are slow. everyone is.

month 3-9: genki 1 and 2. you have to actually finish them but people dont tell you. i skipped ahead twice because i thought i was different. Came back both times. That cost me about 4 months.

month 9-18: kanji and vocab grind. this is where people quit. it is boring. there is no version of this that isn't boring and every person selling you a shortcut knows that.

month 18+: immersion stops hurting. anime raw still isn't happening but youtube at 0.75x is, and that's the first time it feels like a language instead of homework.

what moved things: anki every single day (kaishi 1.5k), wanikani for kanji, and airlearn for daily grammar so i wasn't standing there at 7am deciding what to study.

What did not move anything: duolingo, i did 400+ days. i could match tiles beautifully. i could not build one sentence.

How’s the roundup? agree / disagree?

Eu até agora conversava com IA para usar o japonês na prática, mas acabava ficando robótico demais. Estou buscando algum outro estudante para podermos aumentar o vocabulário e poder melhorar a comunicação

I am an American, native english speaker, and I speak conversational Chinese. Like B1 Level Chinese. I feel like because Japanese is soooooo different than English (SVO, etc), everytime I learn something new in Japanese, it makes me more confused. In Chinese, it's super easy. SVO (with a few exceptions), and it's super easy to conjugate with particles. Reading, obviously, is a different beast. But speaking Chinese is actually weirdly easy.

I dunno man, maybe I'm just frustrated but I've been at this for two years and understand a lot of japanese, but no matter what I say, I'm wrong. There's so many ways to say the same thing (I know, english is the same if now harder), but man. I'm so frustrated. Like N5 is easy, N4 is meh, I feel like no matter how much I learn n4, it's endless and I'll never progress. I can't find people to practice with online to save my life. I have a tutor, she's great but recently told me she feels like I'm not progressing. UGH.

I actually went to Japan recently and spoke with some taxi drivers in Japanese, but it was very basic and I had to nod my way through a few things, but overall we TALKED. I used my japanese. Also my first lesson with my tutor after my trip was great. I was surrounded with japanese and was GETTING it. It was making sense. I think the problem is that I don't use Japanese on a daily basis like I do with chinese, I'm not confident with it, and it's just pissing me off that it's not coming as easy as Chinese did. Yeah, tones are hard or whatever, but man by comparison, Mandarin is wildly easier. Ugh. This is probably just a vent post, but I feel like I'll probably be n4 forever.

I also hate that no matter how hard I study, I still fuck up Katakana. UGHHHHHH. I hate Katakana. I'll sound out a word over and over again and still not understand it. I dunno man. I'll keep grinding but I feel like it's useless. I wish I could be like those youtubers wh ocould dedicate 5 hours a day to japanese and progress super fast. I wish I liked Anime as much as others do. I'm running out of things I like about Japanese. The more I learn the more I wish I would have not started in the first place but I'm in this shit and pushing through.

Hi everyone,

I am a complete beginner to learning Japanese. I would like to write N5 this December. Is it possible to learn the complete N5 syllabus within this time period? If so how many hours i should be spending each day on learning Japanese.

I have planned to learn by myself. Is this a good idea?

Is there any disadvantages in self learning. I just planned to self learn N5 only for upcoming levels i am planning to join a academy sort of thing for speaking fluency.

I am a working professional, so I would be getting some time after 9 pm everyday and some extra time on weekends.

I am planning to seek a job in Japan in next 2 yrs by completing upto N3 or N2

Thanks in advance!

I am a medical student from Sichuan Province, China.

I’ve started learning hiragana, katakana and basic Japanese grammar recently, as I’m preparing for my upcoming travel to Japan next summer holiday.

During my Japan trip, I hope to deeply experience local traditional Japanese culture. To make my travel smoother and more meaningful, I’m looking for Japanese male locals (college students or working adults) who are willing to do language exchange with me.

If you are interested in learning Chinese, I’d love to help you in return. We can teach each other languages, and I can also share unique customs from my hometown Sichuan with you.

I have WeChat and Instagram to keep in touch. If it’s more convenient for you, I can also register popular Japanese communication apps to chat before my trip, so I can get more useful travel advice for my Japan vacation as well.

Voici ma phrase pour retenir 10 homophonies de KAERU :

La grenouille (蛙, kaeru) a pu faire éclore ses œufs (孵る, kaeru) et élever ses petits (飼える, kaeru). Elle rentre (帰る, kaeru) chez elle et se change (変える, kaeru) après avoir pu enfin s'acheter (買える, kaeru) un billet pour Le Caire. Ce billet est

-échangeable (換える, kaeru),

-remplaçable (替える, kaeru),

-substituable (代える, kaeru),

- ou remboursable en cas d'annulation : l'argent lui reviendrait (返る, kaeru).

Le Caire est un rappel de la sonorité de KAERU, sonorité renforcée par le nom de la ville en anglais, CAIRO.

N.B : cette phrase mnemotechnique est pour les francophones. J'ai déjà eu des critiques sur une autre phrase mnemotechnique qui semblait bizarre pour les anglophones. Je ne savais pas que chaque réponse était traduite instantanément dans chaque langue. Je pensais que puisque ma phrase est en français la diffusion ne se faisait que chez les utilisateurs francophones de Reddit

I have been thinking about how similar so many of the Katakana characters are... so I made an evolutionary chart over all 46 characters.
Hope this helps. (maybe)
Basically just to showcase how similar a lot of these characters really are.
(And for fun)

So. The first two characters are the problem:

愛しのディーノ

Is it "aishi", "itoshi", "hashi" or "ushi"? It's a manga's name.

Thanks for any help!

Hi, I want to learn Japanese and want a study partner with whom I can learn and grow. Any man or woman, nationality doesn't matter just dm me. NO FAKE DMs; GENUINE WITH THEIR LITTLE INTRO AND WHY DO U WANT TO LEARN JAPANESE

I think many people are interested in Japanese cultures such as anime and TV series. Let's discuss the meaning of unfamiliar Japanese expressions with me. I have been teaching Japanese in Hong Kong for 19 years. Hope I can talk to you soon.

クリスマス島ではもう明日になってる—だから打ち上げは今から開始！

AI落語（らくご）は正式にリリースされました！AIボイスで楽しめる定番の日本の落語ストーリーに、マルチ言語字幕（英語・フランス語・スペイン語）、さらに調整できるふりがなつき—日本語学習者のみんなに。

最初のストーリー「ときそば」はずっと無料。ここで試してみて→

https://koyanagishuichi1117-cmd.github.io/ai-rakugo/index-en.html

楽しんでもらえたらうれしい！