

The downside of that is that music usually doesn't use typical language at all. The nice thing about music is that you can usually find the lyrics somewhere so you know what you're listening for, and then you can keep replaying something until you understand it. Music and video resources (yeah, anime, if you're into that) might be nice, too, and there are some podcasts like Slow News aimed at learners. Once your vocabulary is fairly strong, you'll probably benefit from a tutor or a language exchange. I don't know about the Michel Thomas Japanese course. Glossika is probably too hard at that point, but Assimil isn't. So you'll want some sort of audio program, since you aren't going to be able to understand native materials for a while. Japanese has a rough initial difficulty curve. That's a pretty steep introduction, and after all of that, you won't even really be started yet. These'll come with example sentences and possibly audio, which is nice. Once you start with any of this, you'll still probably need Anki for vocabulary.Īlso, you'll probably want one of the "Core" Anki decks, like Core 6k or Core 2k or Core 10k.
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The point of this is that you'll learn how to make sentences of your own so you can start talking to people. It'll give you a gentle introduction to everything, and you can start learning how to talk. Whether you go with kanji first or not, get a textbook, like Genki. Anki is free, and each notebook will cost you, what, a dollar? Your primary tools, though, are Anki and a notebook.

Those who want to learn vocab or at least readings while studying kanji will say that you should mark yourself wrong if you can't write the kanji and give at least two readings. Note that the order you'll get for the characters will tend from simpler to more complex rather than from common to rare.įor actually learning, use Anki, and write your answers down in a notebook before flipping the flashcards over. This approach, learning kanji first, essentially treats kanji like a really long alphabet (sort of), and so once you get through it, you're familiar with the different characters, so you can remember which two to put together to make a particular word. The degree to which you learn vocabulary as you study varies, from none with Heisig to pretty much as much vocab as you can handle with Kanjidamage, though if you learn readings as you go, you're going to progress more slowly. The point of these is that they teach you to recognize radicals and then build on the radicals you know. They'll say to get Heisig's book "Remembering the Kanji" or "Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course" or Kanjidamage (a website, not a book).

Some people recommend learning to recognize all of the kanji next. Now, that said, once you master kana, the standard way to approach Japanese is to do a couple of things. There's no need to put off reviewing characters you know. That's pointless with kana, since you can review the entire set several dozen times a day until you get it. The reason for this is that SRS software is designed to make your vocabulary review efficient. You don't need SRS software for kana, though. You can use Google image search to find some nice mnemonics for the kana. Then start reading words written in kana until you have no trouble remembering them. Learn five at a time until you master all of them. For learning kana, use a notebook and a pen or pencil.
