Adding onto this, the duolingo kana section is fine, but something I would recommend is to write the characters out by hand as well, as it's better for retention and, you know, writing Japanese.
If you're willing to spend money, I used this and I highly recommend it!
I am a beginner as well and I am probably not as far along as I should be, I am teaching myself in my spare time of working 2 jobs and full time student so I only get like 40 mins a day to work on stuff. But here are some methods I used, I started on duolingo, but I also have these books from amazon that really helped. ( I left the link below). If the library dosnt have them the first 3 are on Youtube.
I would look for opportunities at community colleges. A lot of colleges will offer ‘enrichment’ classes in foreign languages at a decent price (not including textbooks obviously) I know that most Japanese language courses use the Genki textbooks/workbooks which you can actually find on eBay/Amazon. You could also look at 4 year colleges for this type of thing too but the price would be significantly higher.
I would recommend getting familiar with Hiragana & Katakana quickly. There are lots of workbooks that were a great help to me personally that made it easy to remember.
They use Kanji as well but it is harder to learn & even Japanese natives sometimes struggle with knowing Kanji characters (so i have heard/read). In text you can see this by the Kanji accompanied by the ‘breakdown’ of Hiragana in parenthesis usually beside it in smaller font. So I’m basically saying, not learning Kanji right away won’t necessarily hurt you.
Youtube is valuable as well. With any language learning you want to try to immerse yourself as much as possible, so watching Japanese television with subtitles (not just Anime) would be helpful.
Look into virtual penpals as well. You can exchange your English for their Japanese :) download LINE since it is used by a lot of Japanese speakers (its similar to Snapchat/Whatsapp/Kik)
Another thing that would help me, especially with just recognizing Hiragana/Katakana, would be purchasing children’s manga/books. I would translate them on the page. It would help me with vocabulary as well.
Hell yeah! Sorry for the late reply I seem to have not gotten notifications on this thread for some reason. Even though I got these books I found it distracting to switch my study material mid stream. I want to finish the first book I started. Which is this one. It has went really well so far.
I'm sure I'll end up studying the same stuff multiple times but that should just help to reinforce it I think.
I purchased the Genki I textbook, workbook, and answer key. However, reviews seemed to indicate I'd be better off knowing how to read Kana going in..so I purchased Japanese Hiragana & Katakana for Beginners, which has been really helpful thus far.
Just studying in my free time at work I've quickly familiarized myself with reading and writing Hiragana; about to move on to Katakana. Pronunciation may be a little spotty, but I've yet to use the CD included.
Yet to embark on Genki I (waiting until I finish the aforementioned Beginners book), though I've read nothing but good things about it..so I'd imagine it's a good resource as well.
Any books you are using for self study? I'm looking on Amazon now and there are a bunch of them. This looks interesting.
I heard Rosetta Stone is quite poor and expensive, but of course, naturally, I am not an expert :)
Here's what I bought on Amazon so far, still waiting for it to all ship to me:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4805311444/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M3STG9N/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014479/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I am under the impression that it's a good use of time to first learn the Kana (Hiragana + Katakana.) As such, I am currently learning to recognize them by playing https://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/. Once I learn to recognize them I will move to "Japanase Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners" and drill them so I am able to write them and recognize them more seamlessly, while still continue playing the game to review. I think by the end of next weekend I should be able to recognize the Kana, and hopefully after another 2-4 weeks of drilling I can write them too (I'm not sure if this is realistic at all).
Once I am comfortable with Kana I am going to move to the Genki books, which seem to be highly recommended. I think I will do the workbooks and make Anki decks to memorize Kanji/vocabularly. I think this is approximately 2-3 years of University classes but hopefully this process takes 1-1.5 years of dedicated work? Again, not sure what timelines are reasonable.
I picked up this from Amazon to start with, but was thinking that I needed graph paper or something to practice writing on!
Np, best of luck. Here's the UK link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Beginners-Mastering/dp/4805311444/
Yes. It's around 13 US dollars. Here's the link:
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Beginners-Mastering/dp/4805311444/
If you find that you remember better with a physical component, like writing, you can try a book (I'm using this one and my handwriting is terrible but I get a better memory result if I am writing it and saying it at the same time. There is not enough room in the book to copy a character enough times to memorize it, so use notebook paper once you have the idea, and do them in groups of five.
The Anki (or AnkiApp for iOS if you can't afford to donate $25) is also a very useful and important tool. SRS is a magical thing.
The third thing to try is drag & drop hiragana or real kana which you can also use for Katakana (and learn different font recognition, which is very difficult at first, but very important!!)
I want to order the first Genki book to start learning Japanese.
I'm not sure which ones they are, taking a look at the amazon search for the books, it looks like there is the first book (Genki I) and then a workbook (Genki Workbook I).
Are these books suppose to be bought together?
Also would it be a good dea to buy this as well?