Only the first section of Duolingo is useful. It’s good to give you a fun way to get an introduction to Japanese, but then beyond that it’s just a super inefficient way to learn. I finished section 2 and even did some of section 3 (there were 4 in total last time I checked) before I realized how dumb it was.
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I sent this video to a Japanese friend who wants to learn English earlier but I’d say most the advice is solid, especially for beginners. Basically, listen to the advice of others but do not feel the need to copy someone who has completely different goals, interests and circumstances to you. I would say fundamentally input is king, personally, but no need to stress if you enjoy handwriting kanji (especially if learning is a hobby), etc etc. The main thing is that you don’t quit.
Something I personally wished I learned sooner was to not worry about sounding stupid when speaking. Just go for it - it can be a very humbling experience.
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8 years on/off learning here, constantly exposed to the language though.
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RTK is great but learn vocabulary immediately after, if not simultaneously don’t wait even a few weeks you want to get rid of these mnemonics fast yet have them as strong as possible learning the actual vocabulary.
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take your time to build a solid foundation, people are getting incredibly impatient these days. lots of ego non-sense giving the inexperienced learner the impression they can be smarter and faster than everyone (thanks influencers)
Reality is, it is a years long journey whatever the method and a solid foundation is the absolute key.
Impatience leads to frustration, just chill out and be consistent.
(I have “rushed” the kanji study myself, it felt solid then, but few years down the road I realised it wasn’t so much)
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I wish I paid more attention to phonetic components of kanji the first time around I tried to learn them. Both the straightforward ones, and more tenuous ones like オウ 往 containing オウ 王, or nameless(?) right-hand side of ユ 愉 輸 being ユ, or several kanji with ソ 且.
It seems many resources put emphasis on learning kanji through English aliases separately and readings separately. For me it was more helpful to tie them together, something like “サ 査 is ソ 且 under a tree”, or “ユ 愉 is ユ 輸 export from heart”.
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I’ll second the pacing advice from stephane and add…
The YTers/influencers you want to avoid are…
- Non-Academic polyglots are more often then not only at a very base level of understanding and having a fling with Japanese
- Anyone who says “Japanese is easy” or makes some other stupid claim. It’s clickbait.
- Anyone who spends 30 minutes explaining one grammar point, mostly in English, then tries to sell you something
- Just because they’re native doesn’t mean their English (or whatever other language) is strong enough to explain things properly
The YTs/influencers you should watch are…
- Real, non-learning focused JP channels! Mix them in.
- Learning channels fully in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. Watch first in JP with JP subs, then English if you need it after to see how you did.
- Learning channels in English with TONS of sample sentences of varying difficulty, especially with Japanese subtitles included.
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Let me add to this, watch learning content for subjects you enjoy! Love astronomy? there are two robot sounding girls to explain it to you. Love cats? there’s millions of robot sounding girls on youtube talking about cats in japanese! Love history about World war 2? Well, maybe can’t help with that.
I jest. But really, watch content you enjoy watching and have interest in already, that isn’t just mother’s basement jp. this is really helpful for learning more specialized language too. My wife recommends VAIENCE for science stuff, and I agree.
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Lots of great advice here. The one that resonated the most with me was about pacing and building a solid foundation.
In my case, I had to come around to the idea that it’s fine moving through a textbook slowly as long as I’m still getting something out of it and supplementing that with other ways to study and immerse. At first I felt like my teachers weren’t moving fast enough. But now I actually prefer this because I can do a first pass on something advanced and then shore it up in class later. Not saying it’s the most efficient way for everyone, but it’s worked for me.
Somebody said on these forums before that one way to approach language learning is as a messy, non-linear process. I wouldn’t have thought that described me, but I’m finding out that it does.
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This massively depends on when andhow you used Duo. I’m currently on section 4 of 5 and it’s an amazing complement to BunPro at mid N3 level as it shares a huge chunk of vocab and grammar. I also use it mostly as a series of Japanese language puzzles as a warm-up/down 15 minute chunk around BunPro and/or actual study, which I usually do before I watch/listen to an hour or so of Japanese content. Which is a pretty effective way to use it I think.
As with most tools:
- It’s constantly evolving and changing
- It’s useful in its right place
- Everybody is different and DL has a very gentle on-ramp for new learners that gets steeper much more gradually than traditional study routes, or even BunPro does
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“Learning channels in English with TONS of sample sentences of varying difficulty, especially with Japanese subtitles included.”
I think I’ve got the other areas covered. Do you happen to have any recommendations for channels like this?
I wish I practiced listening more much earlier on when I was around N5 level. I also wish I went straight to vocab instead of kanji. I can learn the kanji in context that way.
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Beginner:
Intermediate:
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@xeyk1 these two are great examples
One thing you have to avoid is rolling around in N5/N4 suggestions forever. Sometimes hearing it a different way helps, but if you’re listening to the explanation of あなた for the 100th time, stop yourself and get back to your SRS 
If you like video games, https://www.youtube.com/c/GameGengo is another option, and though not fully inclusive of all material, he covers N2/N1 points.
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Game Gengo is great! He has a… let’s say less than stellar accent, but the content is top notch, the videos are well made, informative and entertaining.
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Satori Reader. I love it. I was going to say that maybe you couldn’t use it really early on in your journey… but I think you could actually, as long as you can read hiragana, you could turn furigana on for everything.
Anyway, I was getting very bored of studying and Satori Reader has made ‘studying’ enjoyable (the inverted commas are because you’re not really studying like you would with a textbook, you’re reading story).
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THanks for this!!! x
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That you can start again. I’ve re-started Bunpro over four times, and I don’t mean from scratch, just picking up from where I left off. Surprised how much stuck since its been over three months since the last time I’ve used the site, yet I mastered over 100 words today alone, which means it’s been months since I’ve since seen those words, yet Bunpro’s method works for actually learning the site’s content. You can stop when life gets hectic and continue when life eases up, there’s no reason to punish yourself or feel like you somehow failed and need to get a fresh start learning from scratch.
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Agreed. There is so much you retain. Yes we beat ourselves for what we are always missing, but you never really start from zero.
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Japanese Ammo no Misa is probably one of the main reasons I continued learning Japanese as more than just a ‘learn a few phrases’ thing. I remember google returning one of her videos as a result to my query about how to say something in Japanese. It was, coincidentally, the original X は Y です video. Honestly her videos were good back then, but she has improved by leaps and bounds since then. I can’t recall with absolute certainty, but I’m sure her older videos didn’t have much by way of the subtitles including Kanji and color coding.
edit: I just went back to check and good gracious that was 9 years ago! I didn’t start serious study until much later, but watching those few vids definitely planted a seed that would eventually bloom. Thanks for unlocking that core memory.
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I wish I had started studying Kanji on day 1, or at least after learning kana. I was going to start after finishing N4 grammar, but I ended up only starting after finishing N3. My reasoning for delaying kanji was that I wanted to learn vocabulary by sound, but I don’t think that’s a great reason. I think you still learn sounds from studying kanji, and you’ll be able to learn the vocabulary faster if you know kanji.
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An author might use hirigana, katakana or kanji for the same word in their writing; they’re not being inconsistent, they’re probably trying to emphasize something (or not).
Just deal with it and don’t get annoyed.
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