https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)
But no amount of flashcards will make you a competent language speaker. There is no substitute for immersion.
What made it really click for me for me was reading. Lots and lots of it. My suggestion is to start with short, easy stuff (stories for kids) and then move on to progressively harder material (short newspaper articles, essays).
I passed JLPT N1 back in 2013, and preparing for the test was just an exercise in memorising vocabulary and grammar patterns. What really made the language click for me was reading novels in Japanese. That alone helped me more than any amount of Anki-style JLPT prep material ever did.
Vocabulary is important, but it's much, much easier to absorb and retain if you learn it in context.
I did spend a lot of time memorizing vocabulary with flashcards, but I spent even more time on extensive reading—novels, newspapers, magazines, anything I was interested in, even if at first I understood little. The repeated exposure to vocabulary in real-world contexts really made a difference.
I think that was Krashen’s input hypothesis. If I read a text in Vietnamese with more than one unknown word, it’s too much. Exactly one would do it.
Haven’t seen a tool doing that.
I did find it helpful early on to go through web novels with a low 95% coverage vocabulary count, like the Narou stories indexed here: http://wiki.wareya.moe/Narou
Natively is a great resource too. It does Elo-style ranking of novel difficulty: https://learnnatively.com/browse/jpn/?language=jpn&lvl=
I highly recommend real stories over generated text and synthetic exercises, because the key to success is staying engaged long term. Stories are just more fun. Also get yourself a reading setup that minimises the pain of dictionary lookups, because there are going to be a lot of them. ttsu reader + yomitan is excellent.
The communities are also… particular. People tend to espouse certain deep beliefs or attitudes that you just don’t see for other languages (and I don’t think complexity is the reason; you don’t see that for Chinese or Russian or Finnish, to name some other notoriously hard languages).
(I'm a native Finnish speaker)
They might not be effective in the long run but saying 'they don't work' is an oversimplification, it depends what benchmark you're setting.
They're definitely worth using for beginning, but yeah, returns slope off.
Using just Renshuu and Wanikani I learned enough Japanese to be able to engage with Japanese content and for it to be actually comprehensible.
In the past I tried learning through immersion only, made no progress, found it demotivating and gave up. You need a baseline of vocab and grammar, and I don’t think it matters much where exactly it’s coming from (apps, lessons, textbooks).
With translation, the problem is that there's often many correct answers, which makes it difficult to distinguish wrong answers from unexpected correct answers. But sentence dictation usually doesn't have this problem (barring puns with homophones.)
I tried and failed several times to get started with Anki before having success with Wanikani. The key diffentiator for me was the learning step. Anki is great for remembering things you were taught or learned outside of it, but using Anki to learn new things is very much a learned skill that Wanikani holds your hand through.
I have N2 and am working on N1 now, and feel I still have a very long way to go before getting to CEFR C1. Now I only use Anki with the yomitan and takoboto integrations to quickly add any words I look up, which seems to be working well.
His result to efforts ratio listed back in the days was terrible and reading through is blog - back when it was a blog - was impossible. Everything read like an informercial and never got to the point.
Last time I checked it was a book club. Didn’t bother to check this time.
You mention "result to efforts ratio," but I'm not sure I understand what this could me. In language learning, "results" and "efforts" are more or less the same thing. If you read a lot of books, you'll be good at reading books. It's not like there's some reading that is "effort" reading and other reading that is "results" reading; it's all just reading. For most people, the goal of learning Japanese is to be able to use Japanese in the real world. In which case I don’t see why any amount of time spent using Japanese should count as effort (but not results), since that’s the whole point.
I never paid any money to AJATT nor agree with everything on the site, but did find it inspirational in various ways early on in my studies. I'm fluent in written and spoken Japanese, and I do think living in Japan as well as immersing myself in Japanese media was a big part of that. I studied French in high school and college using traditional courses and I was never a great French speaker, I think in large part because I didn't do much with French outside the classroom.
When I lived in Tokyo I met lots of immigrants that came over with little or no knowledge of Japanese and if they were working in ordinary jobs like in a restaurant or convenience store, they would usually be conversational in a couple months and verbally fluent in a half year. The ones that studied were usually ready to take the N1 after a few years.
People that struggled were usually in jobs like English teaching or programming where most of their day was not in Japanese.
And like I said above, if you want to learn Japanese, the whole point is to use it, so using Japanese for most of the day doesn’t necessarily seem like a burden.
Obviously it’s not for everyone, but that’s true of everything.
Do you think there is another, faster way to fluency?
I started off by memorising the hiragana table, then went hardcore. Got a simple manga (Hikaru no go) and a Japanese to English dictionary and just winged it.
Initially it took me a month to read an entire volume. It gets easier.
That was 20 years ago without any of the fancy tools people have today.
Writing and speaking are effective at establishing long term memories, it's why we do it for other things, but a language learning beginner has no idea if what they're writing makes sense or if there's any subtle mistakes in how they're pronouncing words or how they're putting them together, etc.
Language learning experts don't recommend you start speaking/writing unless you have a coach or have reached an intermediate level so that you can discern when something sounds native or not. That way you can self evaluate with recordings, etc.
It is an effective tool for learning, but for self-learning you're gonna be shooting yourself in the foot long term. You should only do it if you have, say, a partner that speaks the language and doesn't mind correcting you all the time.
For Japanese I recommend that you do learn how to write kana/kanji from the start, and even some vocab if you want. But stop there. Don't write sentences, don't try to talk to japanese people on those apps/discord etc. and wait until you're at an intermediate level to do it, otherwise you'll form some very bad habits that are very hard to undo.
These days AI can tell you if it makes sense and the subtle mistakes you are making. I think this view point is outdated now that everyone has a personal language tutor in their pocket.
Do you have any citations for the idea that it’s better not to practice actually using the language while trying to learn it?
It's true that Japanese tend to be more strict about accurate production of phonology than many other language speakers but speaking and writing are huge enablers of becoming better. It's really not that hard to unlearn bad pronunciation especially in an immersive context. Also most Japanese have a tendency to gently correct a speaker if you use the wrong phrase, particle, or construction.
Obviously if you've been self-learning your first few conversations with real people are going to be rough and so maybe avoid dense topics like Japanese attitudes on the JSDF. But if you end up in a light conversation circle where you talk about your favorite foods you'll be fine.
Also note that these are not barriers to being understood, but they are barriers to be fluent in the language. These people have lived in the US for 10+ years and communicate in english just fine, humans need very little language to communicate most things. But if they need to be taken seriously in jobs that require constant communication, becoming fluent should be a long term goal, and outputting early is bad. It's best to wait for 1-2 months until you get a grasp of sound and flow of the language.
Something that worked for me was limiting it: just 65 words a day in the target language. It forces you to think, but the risk of fossilizing mistakes is low because it’s short.
I even built a little site for this (65words.com) and it’s been fun seeing others use it. Curious if Japanese learners here think this approach makes sense.
There's even a self-deprecating slang term: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97...
Even just forgetting about Kanji for a moment, just like in other languages, written Japanese is not identical to spoken Japanese and requires practice if you want to be able to compose natural sounding texts, emails, letters, and so on.
Output (writing and speaking) is a big beginner trap for language learners. If you can't afford a private tutor or moving to another country, my suggestion is just to skip it until you're able to understand daily conversation in the target language.
People are going to tell you making mistakes makes you improve. Which is true, if and only if you know what mistakes you made.
Speaking can only be improved by speaking. No amount of language intake will improve output.
I remember reading everything from this guide almost 15 years ago, and remembered it really did help
And if that is not possible/desired, perhaps talking to an AI can help?
That's what this tool helps you do.