Consider yourself lucky. We live in an age where learning a language is not as daunting of a task as it was even just 20 years ago. It’s strange, though, that with all of this modern technology at our fingertips, it seems like there’s a higher percentage of people who fail to complete their endeavor to learn Japanese. Perhaps that’s a sign of contemporary attitude, the product of declining patience resulting from too much convenience, or it could just be that there remains a constant factor of people who have the dedication to push through their studies, regardless of how many more people try these days.

In any event, the Internet Age has brought with it an amazing array of tools to help us complete our language learning task. I’ll introduce three primary tools, and three additional supplementary tools to help you in your studies.

Primary Tools

Language Sources

In order to learn a language, we need to see the language, so we need a source to study from. Traditionally, that source has been a textbook. More recently, it could also be a native speaker. For the time being, I hope you’ll accept Diffism as a source of language. Beyond those sources, there are also DVDs, MP3s, manga, and the entire Japanese internet, including but not limited to blogs, news sites (with video!) and user-created content like Wikipedia.

The most important characteristic of the language source is its communicative worth, context, and comprehensibility. I’m inclined to even rank those in that order specifically.

Dictionary

A really good dictionary will take you far in your studies. More important that the simple word-for-word translation are the example sentences. A good dictionary is well thought out, and example sentences are relevant and provide meaning in context. Even better dictionaries are compiled with data based on in-depth corpus research.

My personal favorite is the Kenkyusha, also known as ‘The Green Goddess’. While you can buy it for the eye-popping price of $500 on Amazon.com, you, like me, may prefer to use the free online content at Weblio.jp. I recommend grabbing most available example sentences that you find worth in and plugging them in to your Spaced Repetition Software, introduced below.

Spaced Repetition Software (SRS)

Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) does exactly what you would expect it to – It spaces content for you to study at increasing intervals. You can think of it as digital note cards that someone else manages for you so you don’t have to worry about what to study at any given point in time.

There are a couple of free options available, but the one that I recommend is Anki. It has a bit of a learning curve, for example setting up a deck that automatically produces readings for the kanji you input, but once you’ve got it set up, it’s an indispensable tool.

Setting up Anki

1. Download the latest version.
2. Install it and open up the program.
3. Go to File > Download > Shared Plugin
4. Download the ‘Japanese Support’ plugin and follow the installation instructions
5. Go to Settings > Deck Properties and make sure that you’re using the Japanese deck model.

Although there is a high learning curve to the program, it’s the best option available and you’ll soon feel comfortable with it.

So how do you use Anki? Well, assuming that you’re here to listen to my instruction, allow me to suggest that you only populate your deck with full sentences instead of individual words. This is very important because collocation is an important factor in language, and if you study words isolated than you deny yourself the building blocks of lexical chunks. When you study words within the context of a complete sentence, then you are building important word associations. Take for example the word ‘parking’. What are some other words that collocate nicely with ‘parking’? “Parking lot”, “parking spot”, “parallel parking”, perhaps even “parking structure”. We would rarely if ever hear a native speaker use “parking plot”, “parking location”, “lateral parking”, or “parking edifice”. “I can’t seem to find a parking location,” sounds like a very unnatural construction.

With that in mind, take a similar approach to Japanese in your studies. Simply knowing the meaning of a word is pointless if you don’t know how to use it. Go ahead and exploit a dictionary by mining all of its example sentences!

Additional supplementary tools

Reviewing The Kanji

Reviewing The Kanji is a site where users contribute stories to help them remember how to write kanji (Chinese characters in Japanese). The site runs parallel with content presented in James Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji. While both the book and the site are great resources, I recommend learners stay away until you’re at the beginning stages of the “intermediate level”, and then studying it independent of your other Japanese studies.

Note: Remembering the Kanji is a controversial book. Learners either love it or hate it. I find it useful when studying it with a foundation in the language, but as a tangent to my studies rather than a primary focus. It’s worth a try if you’re on the fence.

Smart.fm

Smart.fm is a useful resource, but limited despite its flexibility. With the idea that we are focusing on ideal sentences, I can only really recommend the Japanese Core Steps and Intermediate Japanese Steps as a potential source of language. (Besides the Hiragana and Katakana goals which you can find discussed here.)

Rikaichan / Rikaikun

To be honest, I’m growing less impressed with Rikaichan / Rikaikun. These are addons to Firefox and Chrome, respectively, which allow the user to simply place the mouse cursor over a Japanese word and get a pop-up translation. The problem is that, while this is instant gratification, it doesn’t foster learning because of that. I much prefer simply copying and pasting unknown words into Weblio and getting potential examples of collocation or example sentences. But I leave the ultimate decision to you.

Conclusion

I encourage you to explore these tools and exploit them for your studies. Make them work for you. The technology is there to make your life easier, so why not take advantage of it?

Before you do anything in Japanese – even before you learn how to say your name – I implore you, dear learner, to master the Japanese kana systems.

What is Kana?

The native Japanese syllabary is made up of what we as English speakers would consider two “alphabets” – Hiragana and Katakana. For the beginner, two separate systems of letters may sound counter-intuitive, but allow me to argue that upper-case, lower-case, upper-cursive, and lower-cursive alphabets in English might be considered an even more zany system for learners of the English language.

Right now, in the beginning, let me urge you to abandon your grievances with linguistic differences and persuade you to instead enjoy them! You will be encountering many differences from here on, so don’t let them get you down.

Hiragana

Let us forget the historical development of Japanese kana and instead focus on their colloquial application. From here on I will no longer italicize Hiragana because, from here on, it will no longer be a foreign concept to you.

Hiragana are primarily used for representing non-Western words in Japanese. You will encounter them the most as you study Japanese, and reading them will become second nature. As unbelievable as that may sound at this point, accept it as fact – You will soon be a Hiragana master.

Hiragana are syllabic representations of sounds, meaning that one letter is exactly one syllable. Unlike students of English, you will never have to clap your hands as you recite words to determine how many syllables they are! You don’t even have to know how to read them to be able to determine how many syllables a word is. See for yourself:

Each character is placed in a box, and each character represents either a vowel or a consonant-vowel cluster. When you begin to practice Hiragana, everything will fall into place.

Usage

It’s best to think of Hiragana as the gap-filler-alphabet of Japanese. While kanji and Katakana have special roles in the language, Hiragana is the fundamental representation of the modern language. It’s the “alphabet” that Japanese children learn first.

Practice

Get a pad of large-square graph paper and head over to Smart.fm’s Master Hiragana goal. As you drill the words in the system, practice writing them on paper. Confirm the stroke order for each Hiragana with this resource.

The kana systems will be the only part of learning Japanese that you need to do this sort of traditional repetitive task for. Mastering Hiragana should take you about four hours of concentrated study (about one day of intensive drilling, or a week of casual 30 minute daily sessions). If it takes you longer than that, don’t let it stress you out! Stress will only prolong the process.

Katakana

Learning Katakana is your second goal in Japanese. As we did with Hiragana, I will from now on stop rendering Katakana as an italicized word. (This will continue throughout the website.)

Usage

This kana system fills a few important roles:

• It is used to represent borrowed words from Western languages, like ‘pizza’ or ‘arbeite‘ (meaning ‘work’ in German).
• It is used in place of Hiragana to create emphasis in much the same way we use italic or bold text.
• It is used to represent onomatopoeia, for instance the Japanese word representing the sound of slurping 「ズルズル」
• You’ll also see it is used to represent subtitles for foreign-accented Japanese speakers, to the chagrin of many Japanese learners.
• Sometimes, it seems to be used arbitrarily! [ ウサギ, ワニ ]

In a sense, learning Katakana is actually a more productive endeavor than Hiragana because with it you can actually render meaning, although the word becomes riddled with superfluous vowels because of the nature of the language:

There are exactly as many Katakana as there are Hiragana because each set represents the exact same vowel or consonant-vowel clusters (syllabary) in a different format.

Practice

Head over to Smart.fm again and study the Master Katakana goal. As you drill the words in the system, practice writing them on paper. Confirm the stroke order for each Hiragana with this resource.

Mastering Katakana, like Hiragana, should take you about four hours of concentrated study (about one day of intensive drilling, or a week of casual 30 minute daily sessions).

Review materials
Hiragana writing practice
Katakana writing practice
More practice and “graph” paper printout

Pronunciation

Pay close attention to the way the letters are pronounced in the Smart.fm goals. If possible, find a place where no one can hear you and imitate the sounds out loud as you practice reading and writing the characters.

Tip: Distance yourself from Romaji

Unless you are preparing to digest academic texts that rely heavily on Romanized Japanese, distance yourself from Japanese rendered in the English alphabet. Roman characters will end up atrophying your Japanese skill muscles as all of your weight is supported on them as a crutch.

Let me really hammer the importance of this tip in with an anecdote. Perhaps one of the most shocking incidents in my own Japanese studies occurred when I was in my third year of a Japanese undergraduate degree. One girl in my class, easily judged the worst student, asked me to confirm a note she had taken down in class. She opened her notebook and all I saw was the English alphabet littering the pages. I thought she must have taken the wrong notebook out of her bag, and then I realized it was all Japanese rendered in Roman characters. I looked at her quite puzzled, considering that we were already three years deep in the language. She told me she had never bothered to internalize the kana systems. Her lack of skill in the language truly reflected it.

Expanded practice

Click here to review Hiragana and Katakana. Click on the letters to get a word and visual. Perhaps you might learn a few words while you’re at it! (If you feel childish going through this activity, don’t worry – You’re still a child when it comes to Japanese!)

Real text

When you feel you have a grasp on the kana systems, try reading over the following text. You don’t have to know what all of it means, just make a few guesses based on contextual hints.

What is the text about? What words do you see in Katakana? Can you guess their meaning by sounding them out? (Answers are at the bottom)

かんたんなレシピ！
★バナナチョコパフェ

ざいりょう：
バナナ　1/2ほん
しはんスポンジケーキまたはカステラ　１５グラム
バニラアイスクリーム　１００グラム
チョコレートソース　てきりょう

つくりかた：
１．スポンジケーキは1～1.5センチのサイコロじょうにきる。
２．バナナのはんぶんはえんけいのうすぎりにする。のこりのはんぶんは、あついななめきりにする。
３．うつわにうすぎりにしたバナナと(1)のスポンジケーキとアイスクリームをいれ、チョコレートソースをかけ、ななめにきったバナナをかざる。
４．ガラスのコップをつかうと、フルーツパラーでたべるようなバナナチョコパフェができるよ。

ANSWERS

What is the text about?
A recipe. [ レシピ ]

What words do you see in Katakana?
レシピ – recipe
バナナチョコパフェ – Banana-choco-parfait
バナナ – Banana
スポンジケーキ – Sponge cake
カステラ – Castella (Japanese sponge cake)
グラム – Gram
バニラアイスクリーム – Vanilla ice cream
チョコレートソース – Chocolate sauce
センチ – centi[meters]
サイコロ – (This one is actually tricky – It means ‘dice’ in Japanese.)
ガラスのコップ – Glass cup
フルーツパラー – Fruit parlor

What does this recipe end up looking like?

Cited: キッズgoo　食育・かんたんレシピ

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