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When I decided to learn Japanese, I kept hearing and reading one complaint from other Japanese learners: “Ugh, Kanji are so hard to learn.” “Just wait until you get to Kanji.” After learning Chinese, I wondered why Kanji was such an obstacle for so many Japanese learners. Was it because it was yet another writing system on top of Hiragana and Katakana? Was it because Kanji...
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When we think of verb conjugation, we often think of it from a European language perspective. We run through the verb conjugation tables we learned in school – I run, you run, he runs, she runs, we run, they run… But Japanese doesn’t handle verbs in quite the same way. Rather than needing to figure out how to conjugate verbs based on who is doing...
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After studying Croatian, Japanese has been a big change. And not for the most obvious reasons. While the languages are very different in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and how far removed they are from my native language, none of these things are what made learning the languages difficult. With Croatian, one of my biggest challenges was finding resources, while with Japanese, there are plenty of...
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Are you thinking about learning Japanese but find yourself struggling to find resources that help you start speaking? When I started out, I certainly did. Many of the tools that I found when I started learning Japanese were grammar-heavy textbook style resources and they didn’t offer me a lot in terms of day-to-day conversation. Rather than learning how to say “what did you do last...
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I know what you’re thinking. Japanese has three – sometimes four – writing systems. Where do you start? As I shared in one of my earlier Clear the List posts, I recently took on what I think will be my last language – Japanese. I wanted to do things differently this time, so I decided to take a conversational approach to the language, meaning I’d focus...
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I’m no stranger to learning new writing systems. And while taking on another system gets easier after you’ve done it once or twice, the practice still needs to happen. There are no shortcuts to learning a language. Even though the work still needs to be done, doesn’t mean that you can’t have a little fun along the way. An important part of taking on a...
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Last month, the Language Reading Challenge theme was to read an introduction to your target language. Those who were at an intermediate or advanced level could find an article or chapter in their coursebook that explained something that they were struggling with in particular. Because my focus language, at the moment, is a language that’s new to me, I was able to read an introduction....
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At first, learning Japanese can seem daunting. Not only do you need to learn three separate writing systems (four if you count romaji), but you have to deal with honorifics and particles. Thankfully, there are several aspects of the Japanese language that aren’t nearly as challenging as your first impression may lead you to believe. Plus, there are a variety of high quality materials available...
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We’re getting ready to start a new year, so I’m excited to share my new language learning project with you! In 2018 I plan to learn Japanese. Today I want to detail my plan on how I am going to go about this. Getting Started with the Japanese Language Earlier this year, I decided that I wanted to learn Japanese. I started learning the alphabets...
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In studying Japanese, beyond learning a few conversational phrases, I needed a bit of direction. Most of the books I had focused on learning Kanji, but I needed something more. And so I decided to start looking for a coursebook to guide me. A while back, I remembered trying out Lingualift, but because I wasn’t studying Japanese, it didn’t make sense for me. Now that...
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