How to Learn Japanese: My Top 6 Tips
Japanese is effectively the sole language of Japan, and almost all of the 128 million natives speak it. Although there are a number of dialects and accents around Japan, the essentially monolingual status that prevails here is quite rare, experts say. Several principal languages are widely spoken within the borders of most countries. According to Nagoya University linguistics professor Ken Machida, there are between 6,000 and 7,000 living languages in the world today, which, if evenly distributed, would break down to about 30 per country. Outside of Japan, 2.98 million people in 133 countries are studying the language at 13,639 institutions, according to a 2006 survey by the Japan Foundation. This number, up 26.4 per cent from the previous survey in 2003, does not include people teaching themselves or taking private lessons. According to Nagoya University linguistics professor Ken Machida, there are between 6,000 and 7,000 living languages in the world today, which, if evenly distributed, would break down to about 30 per country. Outside of Japan, 2.98 million people in 133 countries are studying the language at 13,639 institutions, according to a 2006 survey by the Japan Foundation. This number, up 26.4 per cent from the previous survey in 2003, does not include people teaching themselves or taking private lessons.
Let's now see how to learn Japanese effectively! Here are my top 6 tips.
1. Create a study plan for yourself and set short and long term goals that are clear, realistic and measurable.
You can’t learn Japanese overnight. But planning well in advance makes your journey easier. The study plan also helps you to monitor your performance and manage your available time. Divide the entire study content into smaller chunks to learn step by step, create a list of all the topics you want to master and figure out when and how you want to start with each one. Avoid being overambitious. Do not stress or burn yourself out with pressure. Have complete clarity about your personal goals and why you are learning Japanese. Get them written on a plaque and ensure to place this at a place you see the most in your home, near the clock for example.
2. Make time for a regular study schedule to improve your Japanese
There will be some days of low energy with no interest in studying as compared to some days where you are enthusiastic and full of energy you can study vocabulary and grammar for hours. In reality, it is critical to research on a regular basis. Every day, try to learn Japanese in shorter bursts but more often. You can click via Japanese grammar lessons – online and for free – at deutsch-lernen.com/learn-Japanese-online/. For example, you could do one lesson and the exercises every day. If you study Japanese for one hour a day instead of five hours once a week, your language skills can develop faster.
3. Avoid all possible disruptive factors when learning
Ensure you have no distractions around you to disturb you. Turn off your phone and let your friends know that you are not available for the next hour. Even though it may sound a little rude, eventually you will realise the importance and see that your study sessions become more efficient.
4. Make it a habit to learn Japanese words with their correct article
Articles are very popular in Japanese, as you’ve probably heard. As a result, always consider the right article when studying vocabulary. It’s “das Haus” rather than just “Haus” (English: home). That will save you a lot of time later if you do it right from the start. I’d also suggest learning the plural form right away. That would be “das Haus” and “die Häuser” in this instance. (The English equivalents are “the home” and “the houses.”)
5. Create some helpful study tools for yourself
Start to write a journal or a diary so that you can capture the new words and phrases that you hear being used in day to day conversations. Label all the objects in your home with their respective Japanese words so that you do not have to translate the name of the object in your native language before you can get to its respective Japanese name. Memorize vocabulary using Mnemonics. Use spaced repetition system apps such as Memrise, Anki. You could choose to use the existing Flashcards in the Japanese language or make your own decks. Visual learners could actually sketch around something relevant to the word learnt so that it gives them an approximate reference to know what that word stands for. Learners could colour code things such as:
Nouns – blue
Verbs – red
Adjectives – green
6. Students are used to highlighting texts from school days in textbooks.
The same can be applied in the case of vocabulary, words or phrases, conversation fillers or connectors and commonly used flow words that will be able to to help a learner make his or her conversation with the Japanese speaker smoother, by highlighting all relevant and important information can be seen immediately seen at the first glance.
Finally,
Japanese is a mora-timed agglutinative language with straightforward phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and lexically important pitch-accent. Word order is usually subject–object–verb, with particles indicating grammatical function, and sentence structure is a topic–comment. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic effects, as well as to ask questions. In addition to kanji, the Japanese writing system mainly employs two syllabic (or moraic) scripts, hiragana and katakana. Latin script is used sparingly, such as for imported acronyms, and the numeral system mostly employs Arabic numerals alongside conventional Chinese numerals.
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