Learning Japanese From Scratch? Start Here!

If you’re new to japanese the language can feel overwhelming. Not only do you have to learn vocabulary and grammar, but you also need to learn a whole new writing system on top of that!

While it might seem like a lot at first, we’re here to tell you that you can do it. Like any skill in life, with enough practice, you can learn to do it. The real daunting part of any new skill is often figuring out where to begin. We’ve got you covered!

With Japanese there is a very clear cut set for the first things you need to learn, in order the first three things you need to understand are:

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Basic vocabulary

This might surprise some people that we didn’t list Kanji, but kanji take a long time to learn and are much harder to learn without the associated vocabulary built up. We’re getting ahead of ourselves though. Memorize Hiragana

Right off the bat you simply have to memorize the hiragana characters and the sounds they make. Not everyone loves rote memorization, but there’s really no way around this. It’s what you did when you learned to read your native language and it’s what you’ll have to do now to get a grasp on Japanese foundations.

Hiragana has 46 basic characters, 23 diacritical characters, and 33 combination characters. That’s a total of 102 characters to learn! While it seems like a lot initially, Japanese thankfully follows rules when it comes to its letters. Unlike English, you only have to learn one way to pronounce each character.

Side note: Yes, we are glossing over pitch accents which can be important, but you won’t start learning those until you have your Japanese foundational elements solid.

Another boon the Japanese language offers is that hiragana is mostly combinations of sounds between a standard vowel and a consonant, this means you can learn characters in groups very easily. You can start learning hiragana on our site here.

Once you have your hiragana down it’s time to…

Buy a Textbook

Most people would expect us to jump right in to learning Katakana, and you can, but we highly recommend you get a solid textbook. We personally recommend Tobira: Beginning Japanese as it is slightly more friendly for people learning through independent study. Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese is also good, but is better for classroom learning (in our opinion).

Why do we recommend a textbook?

We recommend a textbook because after you learn hiragana you have to start building up your basic grammar and fundamental vocabulary. This is very hard to do with language learning apps, and difficult to do with the materials online for free. Yes, you can learn Japanese without a textbook, but you’ll be much better at it if you learn from one.

What about our content?

You can learn some foundational Japanese here, but we’re not a great primary source. We’re a much better tool for practicing your Japanese when you need to cram hundreds of characters and vocabulary words in your head as quickly as possible. Practice is where Textbooks fall apart. They have great information, but it’s hard to make it stick without practice.

Our tools are designed based around the flashcard method for studying. Unlike free tools like Anki, we’ve already built the decks for you, we check your work, we automatically sort cards you’ve missed for later study, and provide feedback on each answer.

In short, we’ve tried to make practicing Japanese as quick and easy as possible where existing applications go more slowly and force you to work through content without explanation.

Once you learn hiragana here, buy a textbook, and come back to learn katakana and to practice your vocabulary. By the time you complete all that who know, we might have our Kanji trainer finished!

Should I use Other Language Apps?

Of course you should! Language apps are practice tools just like anything else, but different apps have different uses. Here’s the apps we recommend and what we think they are good for.

• Duolingo - general practice and familiarity with written characters.
• Drops - stroke order and writing as well as some vocabulary.
• RosettaStone - Speaking and Listening

These apps are all functional and can help you learn a language more completely. Are they necessary? No, but they can be helpful. None of these are totally free, but if you put the cash into them make sure you use them and get your money’s worth.

The Secret to Learning a Language

Practice.

Practice as much as you can. It takes time to learn a language and you simply have to put in the hours and study. No one likes to say this and a lot of companies claim you can learn a language by studying just 5 minutes a day. You can do this, but it will take you years!

If you can put in an hour a day minimum, you’ll be in a good place with basic grammar and vocabulary in a few months. Yes, months.

Don’t be discouraged by the hard work, it’s worth it, but you should have realistic expectations about what learning a language is like.

If you've read this far and are ready to get started click the button below and start learning Hiragana!