Up until now, I have only spoken English mainly because somehow in my childhood, I decided not to attend Chinese school. Sadly, being monolingual is painful because now I have become interested in playing The Idolmaster, which is only in Japanese. Not only that, I wanted to prepare myself for the future since knowing another language looks better on the résumé opposed to just English.
Since I have motivated myself to self-study the Japanese language, I memorized all the Kana along with two lessons (currently on the 3rd) in one month. Through my experiences, I found the beginning rather easy to grasp. Thus, I share my experiences thus far. (Image Source)
Note: This post uses the ruby HTML5 tag to view the Furigana for any Kanji used. If you use Firefox, install this extension. This is not necessary in Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer.
The Kana (Hiragana & Katakana)
The main reasons I decided to study Japanese opposed to Chinese is not because the latter had hardly any media to motivate me, but it its writing system of just pictograms is complex and there is a vast number of dialects than the former. Sure, the Japanese language borrows a lot from the Chinese language, including the characters. What makes the former easier is the Kana, which consists of Hiragana (ひらがな) and Katakana (カタカナ). Each character represents a syllable that makes up a certain word and easy to pronounce. Both systems work the same, but it use different characters. In addition, there are the diabolical marks, sokuon (little つ that doubles the consonant before the next character) and digraphs that make different sounds, which is also easy to grasp. In short, they are the building blocks for Japanese needed to understand anything aside from Kanji.
When I studied the Kana, it only took me two weeks just to memorize both systems. Although it looks tough to study just the characters and it’s syllabaries from a chart, mnemonics and flash cards made in Anki made it easier to remember. Once I got Hiragana down, Katakana was a piece of cake since some of the characters are slight changes of the former. For instance, りなせか ヘやきそare simplified into リナセカヘヤキソ respectively. However, there are two traps as シ (shi) looks like ツ (tsu) and the same with ソ (so) and ン (n). The only way you can tell them apart is through the slant of the curve and the two strokes.
The interesting thing with Katakana is that words written in it are usually easy to understand. This is because there are a good number of loan words from English got incorporated in the Japanese language and they sound like the actual word. For instance, the word “ice cream” is written as アイスクリーム in Katakana. Obviously, there are other uses for it aside from transcribing foreign words, which I will not go into detail.
Although I practiced Hiragana on paper, I’m not too concerned about doing the same with Katakana at the moment since I use an IME (input method editor) to input these. I might practice more when I get the time. Besides, my Hiragana writing is still messy and slow.
The Grammar
Compared to English, sentences in Japanese uses a Subject Object Verb structure. During the first two lessons in the Genki I textbook, it explains the grammar rather nicely and gave some examples. Although the grammar in the Japanese language can get hectic later on before it gets easier, it’s very logical compared to English. For instance (Subject is bold, normal is the object and italic is the verb):
千早さんはアイドルです。（Chihaya is an Idol.）
Considering that the verb is always placed at the end of the sentence, it’s less likely you will mess up the sentence structure. Not only that, adding か at the sentence makes it a question instantly.
これは渚さんの日記ですか。（Is this Nagisa’s diary?)
On the other hand, the grammar takes a lot of practice getting used to. Eventually, it will become a walk in the park. The only downside is that the textbook covers mostly the polite forms opposed to casual forms that are used mostly in anime, manga, video games, talk shows, etc.
Challenges Ahead
Looking ahead, I think the vocabulary and memorizing the Kanji to go along with some words can become a difficult task. Hopefully through some good old repetition, I will manage to bang these into my head. Also, there are the verb conjugations. The る-verbs (いちだん, ichidan) makes sense, but the う(ごだん, godan) and irregular ones can get a bit tricky, especially the latter. With some extra consideration, I can tackle it in due time.
In conclusion, Japanese so far is not too difficult as most people say. It’s just different, although honorifics and possibly the degrees of politeness is a different story. Heck, any language can be difficult if you aren’t motivated or putting enough effort. For most people, class instruction is usually better, unless you are diligent to study it alone. Just remember, know the Kana before jumping into the lessons. In addition to this, don’t learn using just romaji, pay close attention to grammar rules and most importantly, don’t needlessly abuse random Japanese words in English sentences (e.g. using です incorrectly just to look cute).
I’m also in a similar situation right now. I’m currently enrolled in a Japanese 1 class (about a month left in the class), although we’re using “Japanese for Everyone”.
My biggest piece of advice to anyone learning: “DON’T JUST LEARN ROMAJI”, you will screw yourself over when it comes to actually reading Japanese. Even though my book shows romaji above the kana in the lessons, I tend to ignore the romaji to get better (and faster) at reading the kana.
We haven’t started any kanji yet, mostly to make sure we have the writing system and grammar down, but we have had quite the load of vocabulary (and I thought just learning how to write was a challenge, I’d forgotten the by-gone days of elementary school when vocabulary was such a pain in the a**).
The best approach to improving your writing…write, a lot. Practice all the time, I have two 80 page spiral notebooks full of kana practice, but ふ still gives me trouble. Adhering to the calligraphic step-by-step is the best way to get your handwriting look legible, I’ve spent many an hour just staring at GIFs of kana, watching how to write it. Eventually, it just flows, much like writing in English, you don’t think about it, you just do it (although my spelling leaves much to be desired).
I don’t have any experiences with that text book, but Genki is pretty good (also comes with CDs, which makes it a bit more expensive), even though the experience is better with a teacher. The first two lessons have kana and romaji, but after Lesson 3, its straight up kana and Kanji. In back of the book, there is Kanji practice where it gives you the reading, compounds, stroke orders. I’m planning on practicing that so it gets into my mind eventually.
As for Hiragana, I agree that some of the characters can get somewhat tricky. Katakana not so much since everything is more angular, thus a little bit easier to draw.
Agreed, I had a much easier time with Katakana than Hiragana, and having a teacher really helped me. Before I started class (up to a few months prior) I was just learning kana on my own. I was doing okay, but it was when I got in a class (and started getting graded) that I really buckled down started filling page after page with practice.
Self-learning is fine, but I am always comfortable when learning under someone else’s wing with experience. Really does help you…well me anyway learn better. I tried learning myself, which was good, but with someone elses knowledge is better. My instructor for now is my girlfriend, but she is just as good until I find a more professional person, lol.
The only main problem I don’t know anyone that knows Japanese, except a few people in the Aniblogosphere. Listening Comprehension can get tedious since I haven’t been doing all the listening lessons. So pretty much I’m on my own, although the Japanese TTS engine on Mac OS X Lion does a good job on how the word is said most of the time.
I’ve learned a lot simply be listening (closely) to the anime I’m already watching, if that’s any help :3
I can understand that, since it was ago before I meet my girlfriend or was even interested in speak Japanese that I wanted to learn French and Latin. Actually, a cheap piece of software that I found that offer about 10 languages on one disc was great for a beginner, but when came to the subtle aspects like syntax and such, it just did not cut. Although, they are people that can learn just fine from textbooks and software. You seem the diligent type to me, so it might not be that difficult for you.
Which set of flashcards are you using on Anki?
They are made manually by my self… It’s best to make your own so you can try and remember the words you are trying to study. Of course, you can download decks if you are too lazy to make them yourself under File > Download > Shared Deck.