How to Learn Japanese (3 page)

To help you, I have put a lot of vocabulary into printable flashcards on my
website
so you can print them out and cut them up. Cut out the English and Japanese together, glue the back quickly and fold in the middle to make an instant flashcard.

Mnemonics are very useful for those hard-to-remember words. Let’s take a random word,
hebi
meaning “snake”. Imagine yourself being bitten by a Japanese snake and saying “He bit me!” This kind of memory trick is absolutely invaluable for learning new words. The only limit is your imagination. Soon, the word will sink into your consciousness and you will not have to use the mnemonic.

Mnemonics are the basis for Heisig's
Remembering the Kanji
. Mnemonics come in many types from simple
word mnemonics to visual mnemonics and imaginative mnemonics. It's well worth reading up on them.

It is important that you actually learn how to use new words in a sentence. It's very easy to use words incorrectly. For example,
majime
means serious but you cannot use it in the sense of “serious injury”, only in the sense of a “no-nonsense person”.

Learning grammar
Read through a decent grammar book (e.g.
Japanese Grammar
) at least once to get an overview of the
language. Make sure you understand the meaning of grammatical words like verb, adverb, clause, intransitive etc.

The same flashcard tricks that are so useful for learning vocabulary can also be applied to chunks of grammar. Learning example sentences can be a great help when tackling a new grammar point. Make sure you know how the grammar connects to the other parts of the sentence (nouns, adjectives etc.).

Try to learn the grammar appropriate to your level and not get too advanced too quickly. Verbs and particles will need a lot of attention at first. I have organised the grammar in this book on a progressive need to know basis. If you need a comprehensive guide, check out
A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
and
A
Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar
.

It is possible to speak fluently using a few grammatical structures that you know well but you will need to be familiar with a great deal more if you want to understand what people are saying. Know the ones you need for speech extremely well. Make sure you keep a note of any grammatical mistakes you make and do your best to correct them. Feedback from a native speaker will be invaluable for this and you must make sure your teacher corrects your mistakes. Review, review, review.

Finally, note that some people are more concerned about speaking quickly than speaking correctly. Your focus should be on speaking clearly and correctly rather than achieving a high “words per minute”. Speak in complete sentences wherever possible in order to become used to Japanese word order and sentence structure. I realise it will not be possible to speak with perfect grammar all the time but the more you ingrain your mistakes, the harder it will be to unlearn them.

Listening
It takes some time to develop
nihongo no mimi
(an ear for Japanese). At first, all you be able to make out will be the
–masu
and
–desu
endings (a Japanese friend once complained to me all he could hear of English was the “I”s and “You”s at the start of sentences). Speech will seem terribly fast but that is how natives speak.

The more you listen, the better your listening will get provided you are spending some time learning vocabulary. Ideally, you want exposure to comprehensible or almost comprehensible Japanese i.e. not too far above your level. Bear this in mind when selecting listening materials.

There are many sources of spoken Japanese suitable for learners. Japanese TV is especially great if you are learning to read because programs often have subtitles. Following TV is going to be all but impossible for a beginner but it’s a great way to get exposure to the sound of real Japanese. Most serious language learners I know watch a lot of TV and switch it on in the background when doing housework etc. There are several programs on NHK (the government channel) aimed at students of Japanese.

If you live in Japan, joining clubs and taking part in activities is a good way to practice your listening. I belonged to a jiu jitsu club where most of the students couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English (some of the Brazilians couldn’t even speak Japanese). Some people like to hang out in bars to practice their Japanese. I always found I got hassle from drunks wanting to practice their English on me.

Don't spend all your free time with other English speakers if you want your Japanese to improve. Make sure if you do make friends with Japanese people that you are not just speaking in English. You should not be working as someone’s unpaid teacher.

Lots of textbooks come with CDs and tapes which are worth listening to. I like to rip them to my computer for use on my mp3 player. There are other sources of spoken Japanese available for download on the net. When you get more advanced (around level 2 JLPT) you might want to try listening to an audio book. I had the first two Harry Potter audio books and they were quite helpful.

If you have a microphone there are ways to record Japanese and play it back through your computer with
programs like
Audacity
. I used to record the news and slow it down until I understood it. I also used to record interesting vocabulary for myself to listen to (hearing yourself speak Japanese is pretty weird at first).

Travel time is ideal for listening practice. Listen to your mp3 player while you shop. Try to listen to Japanese at home while doing the housework (at least your house will be clean and tidy). Be aware though that it’s very easy to tune out when listening to Japanese. If you feel like your concentration is wandering and the Japanese is not really going in you might want to take a break.

What did you say?
You’re in a conversation with a Japanese person and they say something incomprehensible. Relax, all is not lost. Let’s look at some phrases to make communication easier.

Please speak more slowly. Could you repeat that? What does that (word) mean? In other words, you mean… I’m not good at understanding polite Japanese.

Motto yukkuri hanashite kudasai. Mou ichido onegai shimasu. (Sono kotoba ha) Dou iu imi desu ka. Tsumari,
Keigo ha amari wakarimasen.

Of course, you are not just limited to these phrases. Feel free to come up with your own.

Speaking
For most people, speaking is the most rewarding part of learning a foreign language (
kanji
fetishists may disagree). The better you get, the more fun it is to speak Japanese. How do we achieve fluency then? Well, many people are confused as to what fluency actually means. In my opinion, fluency simply means that you can say what you want to say without resorting to a dictionary.

This kind of fluency can be most quickly achieved by preparing for the situations and topics you often encounter in your own life. I myself am much more comfortable discussing jiu jitsu and martial arts than I am talking about cookery. Before job interviews, I would make a special effort to practice my polite Japanese and review the vocabulary I was likely to need.

Be picky about what you learn. If you don’t think you are likely to need a particular word, don’t spend as much time on it as with other ones that you are likely to need. Apply the vocabulary you learn to your own life and you will master it much faster.

It’s all very well to say “I want to speak like a native speaker” or “I want to be able to understand films perfectly” but these are quite lofty goals and will take a long time to realise. You don’t have to have nativelevel Japanese to get a lot out of the language. It’s better to set short term goals and exceed them rather than to get discouraged failing to achieve vague and unattainable goals. Better goals would be to say, “I want to be able to talk about my hobbies” or “I want to be able to enjoy samurai films”.

All news is good news when learning to speak. Don’t worry if you don’t have anything momentous to impart to your friends or classmates. Explain to them your daily routine in detail if you have nothing else to say. The more you speak, the more you will improve. Grasp every opportunity to speak Japanese.

Confidence
One barrier many encounter is lack of confidence in their skills. It’s interesting to note that attitudes to speaking in a foreign language often vary according to culture. I found Americans were generally confident speakers even when they didn’t know a lot of Japanese. British learners were more worried about being correct and tended to downplay their abilities more.

Most Japanese will be impressed that you are trying to speak to them in their native language and won’t be worried about any mistakes you make. The more you speak, the better, so try not to let lack of confidence hold you back. Sometimes you’ll end up in classes with other learners who are better than you. Try to look at these as good opportunities to learn; foreigner Japanese is often easier to understand than native Japanese as it tends to be simpler and slower. Don’t let others intimidate you.

There's usually one bore in the class who'll drone on forever if not stopped. Don't rely on your teacher to give everyone equal talking time. Fight for your share of the conversation. Make sure the bore is you! :-)

Less is more
It’s better to know a few useful grammatical constructions well than to half-know many. There are many ways to say “I have to do something” in Japanese; you only need one. The essential ones are all covered in this guide. Do master the simpler ones before moving on to the more complicated ones.

One thing to accept is that it is very difficult to translate accurately from English to Japanese. If you are having trouble, think how you could re-phrase what you want to say in English without losing the meaning. You must learn how to use the grammar you know to express a range of concepts, especially in the beginning.

Tips on starting a conversation
Japanese people can get a bit jumpy if a random foreigner starts speaking to them in public. In general, they are not confident in their English and have a terror of being accosted in English and made to look stupid in front of others. Yes, I know we want to speak to people in Japanese but (unless you are of Asian descent) the tendency will be for people to assume you are going to speak to them in English and panic. As a result it’s a good tactic to make your first words simple and to pronounce them well. Creating a good impression at the start of a conversation discourages people from trying to speak English to you.

Some people will try and start conversations with you in English. Some will start talking in Japanese and switch to English once you start replying. It’s really up to you how you handle it but you don’t want to be giving out free English lessons every time you get on the train. Insist on continuing you half of the conversation in Japanese, no matter how slowly. You could always feign being poor at English. My friend and I would often talk in pig Latin or complete nonsense when people were bothering us.

Get out of jail free
I once overheard a cunning linguist say that you need to use a word 40 times before you learn it. I’ve no idea where she came up with that figure but it is true that using new words in conversation will help reinforce them in your mind. However, it is almost inevitable that you will forget a word you want to say or want to say a word you don’t know. There are several ways to get around this and mastering them will help you avoid grinding to an embarrassing halt mid-flow.

Filler phrases

 

Oh what was the word? I forgot the word. Wait a moment.
Describing

 

It’s a big grey animal It has a long nose It lives in Africa.

It’s the opposite of heavy.
It’s something you use to write with.
It’s not a pen.
It’s a book for studying Japanese.
Questions
How do you say “…” in Japanese?
Gestures
It’s about this big (spreads hands).
It looks like this (does elephant impression).

There are a couple of games that are good for developing these skills where players try to explain words without saying the actual word.

Troubleshooting
If you do run into problems making yourself understood in Japanese make sure you are pronouncing the words correctly. Japanese are quite particular about pronunciation, especially long/short vowel sounds, and what sounds fine to you may be incomprehensible to them.

Also, while Japanese takes some words from English, it doesn’t mean that you can say those words as you would in English and be understood. Pronounce them using the Japanese syllables e.g. salad ->
sarada
.
See the
next chapter
for more tips on pronunciation.

As I said in the section on vocabulary, you must be careful to understand the nuances of the words you are using. If you are not getting your point across, there may be some difference in usage between the Japanese and English equivalent. For example,
mizu
in Japanese means water, however, it is only used to refer to cold water. The word for hot water is
oyu
.

Slang
The use of slang and rude words in Japanese in an effort to sound more like a native will often backfire on you. These are very context dependent and correct use is a high-level skill. I met a few Japanese who went to learn English abroad and came back sounding like pirates. Not a good impression. It will be more useful and more impressive if you can master the polite language forms and explain your thoughts clearly.

Practice
In the end, regular speaking practice is essential if you want to improve. Don’t forget to do your reading and study at home though. If you don’t, your progress will be a lot slower. Oh and remember that talking to oneself in public places is considered strange.

Writing

 

In all honesty, writing Japanese is hard. However, it can be done. Writing by hand is the most difficult and requires a thorough mastery of