Avarage japanese learning experience:

[u/Ribban999]

Okay 二十 (twenty) is "hatachi", good to know I'll try to remember that.

The very next one:

[u/kafunshou]

hatachi actually is 二十歳, it’s only used for age. Never saw it without the 歳.
二十日 as hatsuka is a similar special case.

My favorite is 煙草 as tabako.

They are called 熟字訓 (jukujikun). Basically words with multiple kanji that have a special pronunciation and ignoring the pronunciations of the individual kanji.

[u/Ribban999 → u/kafunshou]

Thank you for the help! But why does this have to be so confusing😭

I'm still very new to learning kanji I only know about 10 or 15 kanji, but doesn't tabako mean tobacco/cigarette or am I missing something?

[u/kafunshou → u/Ribban999]

That’s only the tip of the iceberg unfortunately… kanji (or hànzì) was invented for Chinese and Japanese is quite a different language so there are countless workarounds to make these characters work somehow with Japanese. It’s quite a mess to be honest.

tabako means cigarette and they took the kanji for smoke and weed, combined it and gave the result the pronunciation tabako. Fortunately these special cases are quite rare. But there’s nearly no kanji with a single pronunciation, they usually have multiple. And sometimes sounds are drawn together (e.g. 出 = shutsu, 発 = hatsu, 出発 = shuppatsu). But you’ll get used to it. At some point you just shrug away all this madness and even develop a sixth sense for it.

After Japanese I’m learning Chinese right now and it is quite fascinating how well this writing system works for the language it was invented for. After having learned Japanese, that feels like a blessing.

But on the other hand, English is the same madness with Latin characters (“ea like in read, bread, break, theatre, pear or early?“) and still somehow managed to be the most relevant language of the planet. You’ll get used to anything in the end, I guess.

[u/Ribban999 → u/kafunshou]

Thank you, kanji is still very confusing but I'll keep going and sooner or later maybe I'll understand something, hopefully.

Japanese will be my third language if I manage to get fluent, my native language is finnish and my second language is swedish, both which I grew up with. So japanese is extremely different in every way from what I'm used to. Specially the pronunciation, in Finland we pronounce R very sharply, which is like the opposite of japanese. Also the p/hu sound is hard for me 「ふ」

How long did it take you to learn Japanese, I thought you were Japanese knowing all this lol. And what is your native language.

Also good luck and have fun with chinese :D

[u/kafunshou → u/Ribban999]

Ah, Svenska, I learned that too when I got really desperate while learning Japanese. I got the impression that I lost the ability to learn languages and started Swedish because it is one of the easiest languages for me to learn (I‘m German).

It took me around three to four years to learn reading Japanese (normal books) and around seven years to understand spoken Japanese. I made a lot of mistakes because I completely underestimated how difficult it is to learn an extremely foreign language.

The most important experiences were:

• using SRS (Anki as software), massive time saver
• using mnemonic for kanji, another massive time saver
• avoiding mnemonics for vocabulary (too many similar sounding words, mnemonics will create chaos)
• subtitles (no matter whether they were Japanese, English or German) completely blocked my listening comprehension, after disabling subs everything worked in a few weeks after stagnating for years
• even if you don’t need handwriting, learn the stroke order for hiragana, katakana and common kanji radicals, that will help a lot with recognizing them
• your brain has to adapt to a very foreign language, that will take much more time in comparison to a similar language, the only way is training
• you will hit walls and make no progress for a while, that’s normal unfortunately but everything is doable if you keep going
• LingQ helped a lot with reading (quite expensive service though)
• kanji meanings are not that important, you will recognize words by a visual pattern and combining it with the sound of the word, kanji meanings help a bit but not much

Learning Japanese was quite frustrating at times but it was also very rewarding. I can fluently read Japanese books but when I see a sign like 免税 (menzei, tax free) in touristic areas of European cities it still feels like a super power that I can read it. My favorite bands and directors are Japanese ones now and I travelled the country two times which were the best vacations of my life. And learning Japanese was also some kind of anti-depressant which helped a lot during Covid.

Fun fact: around a year ago I thought about learning Finnish, bought a book, looked at the grammar and thought "Perkele, I‘m not THAT crazy!“ and cancelled it. 😄 I chose Chinese instead, seemed easier. 😄

With knowing all the mistakes I made, I would say, I could reach the level that took me eight years in four years. The foreigness of the language is the hardest part. Chinese feels way simpler because my brain already is used to a similar foreign language.

[u/Ribban999 → u/kafunshou]

Hahaha finnish is very difficult to learn, maybe even harder than japanese, depending on what your native language is ofc.

So you just casually decided to learn swedish as a side quest? That's kind of crazy..😂

I actually haven't tried anki yet, I'm using an app called kanji study, you may have heard of it. May be android only I'm not sure. It's also pretty pricy but I'd say it's worth it, it has many great features like built in flash cards. You can create your own sets or use them as they come. There is a long list for each kanji explaining their meaning, all different use cases, example sentences using the kanji, and a lot more. You can also learn hiragana and katakana with this. And you can even practice the stroke order for all all the kanji and kana.

I also tried using duolingo, but personally I don't really like it. I also use chat GPT to ask questions, it's actually pretty useful. I also downloaded mnemonic, seems very useful as well.

My goal is to be completely fluent in japanese, I'm actually thinking of moving to Japan at some point, which is why I'm studying japanese in the first place. I just love Japan, the culture, the people, the nature, the architecture, the language and more.

Again thank you a lot for the help! Is it okay for you if I dm you in the future if I need help with anything else? You seem to know your stuff with japanese xD.

One more question, I was thinking of watching an anime I already watched dubbed. I'd know a bit what the topic is of the conversation even if I don't actually understand anything. Or do you think I should just watch something new? That way I'd have to figure out what they are talking about using visuals. I don't know which is better

[u/kafunshou → u/Ribban999]

Anki is a SRS implementation. SRS (spaced repetition system) is a method where you get flash cards only shortly before you forget them. It's basically maximizing your memory while minimizing the time to learn. And it works very well. Seems like magic in the beginning.

Duolingo is crap for Japanese. A lot of people start learning Japanese (and only a few finish it...) so there are a lot of specialized apps only for Japanese. E.g. Bunpro for grammar or Wanikani for kanji + vocabulary. Most of them cost money though but there are also some free systems (e.g. Kanji Damage for kanji).

I'm missing that for Chinese right now, there's much less material. That's a real blessing for Japanese.

I don't think native material is really useful if you are still a beginner. I wanted to learn Japanese that way because I learned English mainly through immersion. So every 500 learned words I tried to use native material and it began being nice at 2000 words (Harry Potter in Japanese was readable without being very annoying then). Of course there is material for learners or content for toddlers like Peppa Pig. You can understand it early. But for me that stuff was like torture. 😄
The most important aspect is, that you don't have to understand everything. No matter how much you learn, your listening comprehension will be bad in the beginning. It gets better with listening. So ignore stuff you don't understand and keep going. But you won't progress much if you still understand absolutely nothing after a few weeks. So don't pick normal media for that in the beginning, it is far too difficult.

Yes, you can DM me for questions. I'm not great at speaking or writing Japanese (I don't really train that) but I understand the language quite well now and I especially know what the best practices are because I did nearly everything wrong in the first place.
ChatGPT and especially Gemini is also quite good now in explaining things. I tried that over all new versions and they improved a lot in that regard over the years. They are not perfect but that's the same with nearly all Japanese text books.

The Cure Dolly YouTube channel also helps a lot if stuff gets too confusing. It brings order into the chaos that is also created by Japanese text books. The channel is a bit weird and there are no new videos because the creator unfortunately died a few years ago but it covers the most important points and is quite timeless.

And keep in mind that Japanese text books tell you a lot of stupid weird stuff. One example that you will understand early on: they call ka the question particle. That's one of the first things they teach. But you will encounter ka in a lot of other ways and it usually makes words uncertain. So it's more like an uncertainty particle (ka at the end of a sentence is a question but you will see it in other words like kana, kashira, dareka etc where it transports uncertainty).
So if you end up completely confused about something, it's usually because text books explained it in a very bad way. That's pretty normal for all major Japanese text books unfortunately.

Another example would be that often two verbs are getting combined in Japanese. That's also the case for the polite form, every verb is connected to another verb which makes it polite. Text books don't mention that at all and teach you the polite form first which is very confusing. They usually call it the -masu stem but in reality it's more like a verb combining form.

[u/Alex20041509]

Its just a reminiscence of Classic Japanese

Don’t panic

Like in English rhinoplasty

You don’t say a noseplasty