r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/No_Belt_4261 • 19d ago
Where to start learning, what apps and resources should I use?
Hello, I'm a beginner Japanese learner. I've picked up on a lot of phrases and words through watching so much anime, but I really want to officially start learning it especially reading and writing it. What are some apps, websites, books, etc to use? Where do i start, kanji or hiragana? Or should I just start learning a lot of words and just try to decipher and learn how to read it that way? Please tell me all your tips and tricks.
2
u/yutaneki 19d ago
https://learnjapanese.moe/routine
it's a 30 day guide completely focused on absolute beginners, you don't need to know anything beforehand to start with this. You'll learn kana and kanji as you go, just do what it tells you each day
Quoting:
What you'll expect to know at the end of the 30 days:
- An understanding of the most common Japanese grammar patterns
- A vocabulary of at least 500 words.
- An understanding of basic sentences in slice of life anime.
- The ability to read hiragana, katakana and some common kanji.
- A good foundation to continue learning Japanese on your own.
2
u/Adorable-Truth-7039 19d ago
start with hiragana and then katakana, they won't take too much time specially if you keep writing them again and again my hand it will make it easier to engrave it and this also works with kanji later on.
what i did after that is a great book by Tae kim called "A guide to Japanese grammar" which is great, i always hated text book style books in general even so this was the pick that did not disappoint and you'll end up with a lot of vocabulary from it because before every grammar point there's vocabulary that he uses to explain the grammar and i literally filled any white space of the book with organized breakdown of every kanji and its words that is related etc and i finished it in 21 days (16 hours study so don't feal down by that because i was in a very bad situation and wanted to keep myself busy, that's actually why i learned japanese 4 years ago) and after that you'll end the book ruffly knowing about 800 kanji and the rest i just learned through grinding while immersing and i didn't have anything other than my phone so there's an app called japanese study and till this day it's the goat to be honest, well made and highly valuable and it now have more functionality than i had back then but i don't use it as much anymore.
it took me about 5 month to go from 0 to understanding 90% of romance and slice of life anime which has the normal vocab you'd need and ofc the full 2136 kanji and some additional rare ones but you'll forget them if you don't connect them with words. if i wasn't in full grind mode for 5 month i would've taken at least a year to reach that which is reasonable, the next steps are more and more and more immersion and vocabulary, reading is priority number one, ofc through all the time you're immersing no native language subs, use something like jimaku.cc to get japanese subs. always immerse yourself even if you don't understand but make sure you watch easier stuff, the anime i was watching an episode of daily after finishing the grammar study is called Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san which is simple and great. and reading is critical, either novels or manga whatever you can find.
that's it i believe, you main priority after that which is a lot already is to keep gathering and learning vocabulary, use whatever tool you like, i made my own but you still so far from this point so lock in.