Work in proggress

Hello and welcome to my guide into learning japanese.

Before starting there are a few things that must be said.

This guide was made from the perspective of a language learner, as such you will find methods to learning here that you might not find in any other guide.

All recources listed here are %100 free and most importantly, fun!

All recources (except anki) are web based, as such they can be used from any device.

first things first hiragana and katakana.

Usually this part is skimed whith out explaining much,no wonder most people give up so early.

Hiragana and Katakan are two out of the three japanese writing systems, the third being Kanji (more on that later).
now you may ask, why three?
because each and every one has there own unique uses. hiragana is mostly used for function words and inflectional ending. while katakana is used for loan words and onomatopoeic words.

how to memmorize them quickly?

Very simple, with the use of Mnemonics

Althought a bit unknown and usually people make fun of it when they see it, it's by far the most effective and fast way to learn both Hiragana and katakana, and maybe even use it for kanji as well.

Tofugu's guide inHiragana and katakana is probably the best there is in quickly learning them. and with quick i mean quick, usually people learn both of these kana in weeks maybe even months! but with the use of Mnemonic you will sure learn them quickly, for me it took three days to memmorize them!

Theories and ideas.(unfinshed)

Now that you have started your Japanese Journey, toes in the water, there are a few ideas and theories that should be mentioned.

Stephen Krashen

If you have been around the Polyglot community before you are probably tired of hearing his name, but his praise is for a good reason, because of his work in the psychology of language learning he revolutionized the way people learn it.

Here is a short video of him explaining his theories.

Immersion and how to learn Japanese.

For sack of simplicity this section we will use a metaphor of a chemical reaction to explain things.

Imagine learning Japanese is the final product that you want out of your reaction. Of course you need ingredents for this reaction to happen, with out it you will never get the finall product, that main ingredent being your words that you aquire through immersion and how to use it, of course geting to that final product with just immersion needs alot of time and energy, as such you need catalysts (especially in the early stages of learning) for your reaction, althought not compleatly nessasery, it will make the reaction happen quicker and with much less effort, those catalysts being your vocab and gramer. Here is the thing though learning with immersion is 100% nessacery, you can't just memorize vocab and gramer and expect to be good at any language, adding more catalest while there is no ingredients will result in nothing to happen, Learning with immersion is neccacery no matter how you spin it to learning a language.

NO SUBTITLES!

Never, and i mean NEVER use subtitles!

Japanese learners usually get stuck at this step, they say they are learning Japanese and if you ask them "are you using subtitles" and they say yes you should be sure that they probably have been learning japanes for the longest time with out much success.

Not usning subtitles forces your brain to connect what you already know of the language and with what you don't, and from that concloud what the words mean, that is exactly how you will all your words, you can't use a dictionary for that.

If you aren't convinced i will give you an example, imagine the word rain, a few things have poped into your mind when you read that word, it could be seen as the name for water faling from the sky, it could also be seen as a name of some one, it could also be used in the prase "it is raining cats and dogs", but, if you used a dictionary for that the only thing you will get is "the name of water falling from the sky", same thing with Japanese, you need to hear the words in context to give them meaning, using subs deprives you of that.

Immerse at your level.

This one seames a obvious, but you should only Immerse with stuff that are slightly upove your level, learning form material that is below your level will not result in you aquiring the language (although you can do it if you want to feel confident in the progress that you have done so far), at the same time if you use material that is way upove your level you wont gain much from it.

ps: It is hard find material that is at your exact level as such it is usually recomended to go slightly upove. EX: if your at an itermediat stage it is best to go for watching jdrama insted of reading the news.

Don't look up words.

Although this is a bit hard at the begining of learning a language it is beter for the later stages to not use a dictionary and try and learn the word through context, of course it there is a spacific word that you are having truble with you can look it up just only in the very hard cases where you cant figure it out.

Repatition.

Repeating the words that you just heard or read is a great way of understanding them, for example the more you read a certan sentence structure the more you get used to it the more likely you are to understand what is being said with out needing to think about it much like how you are reading this while fully understanding what is being said.

Immersion.(unfinshed)

Theorized by Stephen Krashen and popularized in the Japanese learning community by Matt vs Japan it is by far the most effective (and the only one proven to actually work) way to learn Janpaese.

Off course there are alot of ways to immerse ,but we will only discuss the most popular three below.

Immersion type pros cons
Visual content. The most effecint way to learn a language, with visual learing you can directely tell what is being said form that assume what the words mean. lots of repatition which good to strengthin your memory of sentances and there structure. Requires your full atention; can get boring after a bit; you have no idea what is going on during your early stages of learning(as expected).
podcasts. Can be done anyware EX.Driving, on a bus or drawing. Not as time effecint as watching show.
Reading. Good if you want to train your reading, which is compleatly nesacery if you want to be any good at the language. It's only good if you want to train your reading and not very good for learning the language (espically early on where you are yet to know that much kanji), usualy recomended at an intermediat stage in language learning.

This list will be organized from beginner to intermediat, if you want expert content you can look any ware, being it anime or the news or a book.

Visual content.

Reading.

Grammer.

Althought not compleatly nessasery to learn japanese, you don't need to get a full n1 or to full understand every thing to learn the language, you only need to know some of the basics and you will do great.

Toys.

Toys!

Other guides and sources.(unfinshed)