What are /r/LearningJapanese's favorite Products & Services?

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I use the website Kanji Koohii (https://kanji.koohii.com). It’s a good place to get inspiration especially if you use Remembering The Kanji. You have to make a free account but it’s worth it for the variety of mnemonics. That being said, I use this as a backup to my own stories since they never stick quite as well when someone else makes them.

I don't think it's a sole use, but DuoLingo really helped me. You can do as much as you'd like a day, sets goal reminders. I learned alot of basics from that. Haven't used it in awhile now due to a lack of motivation, but I really like the app. It's not the cure all but it's a great place that I found, to start at.

https://www.duolingo.com/

1) The next step should be start learning basic vocabulary and grammar. Start with simple sentences (ex. S は Adj./S です。) and every day words, which must include subjects, verbs, pronouns (ex. いぬ、つくえ、はは, べんきょうします、これ/あれ/それ). Then, slowly start learning new particles, interrogative words, adjectives and verb coniugations. (For fun, start naming things around your house in japanese: "this is a ほん", "this is a "かぎ", "テレビ", "ねこ" etc.)

If you have the book, that's perfect. I would just follow along and do the exercises it provides, because good language books will usually guide you at a comfortable pace.

Also, if you have a lot of time to invest in japanese, I would start looking at kanji. Kanji Study is an excellent app for Android that organizes kanji by JLPT levels and has flashcards, radicals, writing exercises and quizzes. I highly recommend, if you can, downloading it and practice the N5 level.

2) As for the subject of radicals, for some they're are a monumental help when studying kanji, but in my experience, only after studying basic kanji did I finally start to understand radicals. But hey, everyone is different; try it and see what works best for you.

I hope this has been some help in your path to learning japanese. Please don't hesitate to ask more questions.

頑張って！

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en_AU&gl=US
if you decide to pay for it it isnt expensive and you can create your own custom kanji lists.

well worth the money, but can easily learn a lot free version too. but at some stage we gotta bite the bullet and pay for something to increase our learning capacity haha

goodluck!

The best place to begin is with structured educational material. You shouldn't be trying to cobble anything together yourself. Tae Kim's Guide and Genki are the two go-to recommended starting points.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789014401

(The second edition of Genki is still a great book, you don't need the third edition)

I personally prefer this book, although it's not touted as a textbook.

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2LD0H7Q0J6LL5&keywords=learn+japanese+manga+way&qid=1667874874&sprefix=learn+japanesmanga+way%2Caps%2C347&sr=8-3

I have both Genki and Minna No Nihongo and neither are as accessible as this one. If you can borrow the Manga Way book from a local library, I'd suggest checking it out.

Are you using any other resources besides apps? I know you're asking about apps specifically, but I found that books actually work better for me.

I've read through many books on japanese (including Genki and Tae Kim), but I really like this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906

i should clarify: it's group classes. it's 3-4 people in my group.

the classes are OK. the teacher is happy to respond to any question and is able to put everything in the book in conext (socio-historical context etc), but i'm not sure if the study material is good enough. for N4 we use this book as a guide with others as supplement, but it seems not everything in N4 is covered there.

There are this and this app to memorise hiragana and katakana. There's no trick just use then whenever you have some free time, just do this everyday and eventually you will have everything memorised! I can't say how long it'll take to accomplish it, because it varies to person to person.

If Kanji scares you anki and wanikani are lifesavers. RTK is also a great resource but I personally prefer wanikani. For grammar I use Genki and youtube. For reading, check out a couple of Japanese news websites catered towards learners. And easy to understand manga. Some great manga are

https://www.amazon.com/Yotsubato-Vol-Japanese/dp/4840224668

https://www.amazon.com/Doraemon-Tento%CC%84musi-comics-Japanese-Fujiko/dp/4091400019/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?crid=19T7QWRUOIJP6&keywords=manga+in+japanese&qid=1657178551&sprefix=manga+in+japanese%2Caps%2C161&sr=8-5

If manga doesn’t interest you then I think there is a book on amazon that has english translations to help.

So here’s a listing on Amazon Japan… maybe something here will help in the search?

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%9C%80%E9%80%9F%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E5%AD%A6%E7%BF%92%E3%83%86%E3%82%AD%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88-%E3%81%AB%E3%81%BB%E3%82%93%E3%81%941%E3%83%BB2%E3%83%BB3%E3%80%88%E4%B8%8A%E3%80%89-%E5%AF%BA%E5%86%85-%E4%B9%85%E4%BB%81...

I like this bookthis book a lot because it really helped me understand sentences better, reading and making my own makes more sense. It's really good for grammar.

I'm using the Japanese Characters ( you can choose between free and pay) there's hiragana , katakana and kanji , it's good for memorisation and have examples for every kanji and how to write them ( not all in the free option ).

The app has 6 levels and I think more than 1k kanjis , I've learned more than 200 or 400 (I lost my progress cause I broke my phone ) I'm currently in lv2 , each level has 10 or more lessons and each lesson has 10 kanjis to learn or more ( I don't remember exactly) .

You have cards to review them and 3 types of exercise, one with the kanji and 4 possible ways to say it ( one is right obviously) , 1 word and 4 possible kanjis that word means , and 1 kanji and 4 possible translation for him .

You has a all kanjis learned exercise and all kanjis in the app exercise. You can also rewatch or re-do the exercises again without problem , have statistics and you can see all kanjis of the level and I think lessons too (but not sure about that ) , you can also see all a little description about that kanji and hear how to spell or pronounce that, write and other ways to say it or it will be used in other words.

I've searched other but I just liked that more and well it's simple and helps a lot.

Sorry if I wrote something grammatically wrong here or missed something important I'm not English speaker and that app helps me with that too cause is in English.

EDIT:here is the link of the app

EDIT: I discovered it now but I can learn Spanish, French , Italian and German . Let's gooooooooooo

i really like learning from these videos that covers the genki books and explains them.

i also recommend this app to study kanji

also for kanji i recommend the books "remembering the kanji", you find them on pdf format online, but i find the books pretty annoying because they teach you the kanjis in order of difficulty not in order of usefullness, so you will learn a lot of simple kanji that you will never use while the more common kanjis that are more complicated you will only learn later, but it is still a good source.

remember to learn all the kana well before jumping into anything else because it will help you a lot

This question is still VERY broad as I am sure you are aware; I suggest asking the internet first before you ask a forum for this kind of question.

を has a pretty specific use, but the others are used in so many sentence types and situations that it would take a reddit user forever to give all of the examples.

The below site has a basic explanation of each particle's use, I suggest you read through this and download a nice textbook for general questions like this.

https://www.busuu.com/en/japanese/particles?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=US_EN_Web_DSA&utm_group=US_EN_Web_DSA_Japanese&utm_term=DYNAMIC+SEARCH+ADS&gclid=CjwKCAiAnO2MBhApEiwA8q0HYb0Wi3U34duQcPWiv-5hY7a3fdyN5XvNWCbHDWEon7IQKjRNBxG9yxoCkdAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Hiragana

Katakana

Kanji study app. Learn how to write the first 50-100 kanji (N5 level) to get a feel for them.

(In the meanwhile learn words in hiraga. See below)

Buy or find a pdf online for Genki 1 and 2. These are the only Grammar books you will need and will bring you up to around N4, early N3.

Pair this book with the vocab app Memrise

https://www.memrise.com/course/29267/genki-i/

I made 3 torrent about japanese podcast, if you're a weeb go for soko ani
https://nyaa.si/user/Tadayuuki

Apparently I can't seed my own torrent anymore, I'll upload somewhere else if needed

I understand, can you point me to some official international articles (or articles from your country) that define these laws for the voice input?

By the way it is a built-in function from chrome so if you accepted the terms when installing chrome you should have also accepted this: https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/whitepaper.html#speech

I really don't understand why people today are so obsessed with their privacy but a law is a law

Hi if you are considering teaching online: how about trying out Preply? Even though they take a percentage on each lesson it’s really great to connect teachers and learners. You can continue teaching via zoom ofc but the platform gives your teaching profile a better chance to be seen by students, who then book lessons. there are a few good japanese tutors on there already : but as everyone has different working hours its not so much competition rather than finding a good match. Wishing you luck finding new students! Just click here: https://preply.com/?pref=MTMwMTQzNg== to sign up. 🦋

I have a tutor who's quite good. Here's his preply link

https://preply.com/en/tutor/23717/

If you're an American his accent is understandable, and his English is pretty good. He just forgets when to use "s" and tense sometimes.

Sometimes it is like a poetic way of speaking, for song lyrics or like a woman trying to sound adorable.

In the example you give it actually has 2 different meanings in context, it is explained in detail here

https://hinative.com/ja/questions/7822094

​

Think of it like the difference between "that person is a funny one" (means they are weird, negative) or "he's a funny person" (makes me laugh, positive)

Use the stories from Kanji Koohii, they works fine for me, I didn't make up my own stories.

Also here you can find more advice on how to go about kanji: The Moe Way - Kanji

Why Japan?

If you don’t know the language at all, is it because of the culture? Do you know people there? Just interested?

I’d recommend looking up YouTube videos and blogs on University in Japan. (Specifically English ones I assume) Also just on Japan in general. Look into the culture. It’s good to be personable, but if you seem disrespectful people might not be as open to chatting.

But yeah, start learning the writing system. Apps are good for kana but also write them out physically and practice pronunciation. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7I2Ryji_9Js

Don’t just learn hiragana and katakana, learn kanji too. It’s good to get a head-start even on just some real simple stuff. I’d recommend WaniKani or something similar for kanji. https://www.wanikani.com/

Genki is good and a source I recommend. Supplement it with other practice.

Don’t wait until the end of Genki to start listening and watching stuff in Japanese. Get a feel for the language. Watch Jdrama or anime, listen to Jpop, maybe even try a podcast. It’s good to get an ear for the language.

In order to feel comfortable in Japan (or any other country) when you don’t know anything about it will be tricky.

Just make sure it’s something you really want and you learn enough to be comfortable.

I hope this helped, God Bless!

I’m about a week in and making good progress with www.tofugu.com and WaniKani

I started with tofugu which led me into WaniKani

I haven't used Wanikani yet, but I know it's a great choice for learning kanji.
Here is the explanation how it actually works. Unfortunately, it's not free tho it allows to reach lvl 3 free (or 5? or maybe futher, idk).

I use Anki because it would take a lot of paper to write all readings and meanings. If you don't have enough time to learn about 30 kanji a day or you don't want to jump in too quickly, you can try Kanji Garden. No registration needed. Can be used from any browser on your phone or pc. It has space repetition system in it and allows you to learn 2 kanji a day. For me it is slow a bit.

It’s pricey, but WaniKani is the best resource online that I’ve found for learning kanji. They give you mnemonics to remember radicals, kanji, and vocab. They do trial periods too!

Their other website’s called Tofugu and it’s totally free. Gives a lot of good recommendations on self-learning tools, nice blog posts about grammar and culture.

https://www.lingq.com/blog/2019/03/how-long-does-it-take-to-learn-japanese/ This answer is more in depth than anything you'll probably come across in the comments.

There was a link a while back to this google play app from this sub. I'm still way too early on to use it, so not sure if it's good, but it was saved in my bookmarks. I believe the books are all free?

I created this book called "Japanese ABC's" to teach about traditional Japanese foods alongside Hiragana! https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-ABCs-Learn-Alphabet-Funny/dp/0998156930

I at first wrote my first hiragana multiple times, later the more I knew I started writing down them in a row. Example: あいうえお(a i u e o) かきくけこ(ka ki ku ke ko) さしすせぞ(sa shi su se so) Etc. And this sometimes I did both hiragana and katakana at the same time. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myapps.hiragana here is a good app(seems the same as the one I tried for katakana) Also once you are close to remembering it then try always reading everything you see in any chance you get.

Here's the amazon link

If you get the kindle app, you can get it on most devices, you can search up kanji/vocabulary in it and make notes etc

Got it from Amazon for 12$. It seems sold out or unavailable. But you can get the Kindle version:

https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/Matt-Fargo-ebook/dp/B003ODHOMC/ref=nodl_

Anyone interested in slang Japanese and idioms would love this book.

I use this one:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

It has writing practice tests which could help you with stroke order

Looking good! I'd invest in a less absorbent paper to prevent feathering. Might I recommend a Rhodia no.16 A5 notepad (5.75USD from GouletPens)? It's made for wet inks and has grid dots, which will help with balancing and straightening your handwriting without the gaudiness of grid paper. There's also a notepad you can buy specifically for practicing kana like the Campus No. 6 Kanji Practice notebook ( 4.99USD from Amazon).

I recommend Mazii. It's dictionary but has flashcard function. You can create your own vocabulary list or use available one based on JLPT level.

First things first: learn to WRITE hiragana and katakana with the correct stroke order.

Can take anywhere between 2 - 4 weeks.

Memerise app - hiragana /katakana course. Genki course

Kanji study app.

Grammar and vocab book: Genk 1 and 2.

You start with Genki after you learned hiragana and katakana. Then slowly work your way in. Try to memorise the conversations in there and repeat everything out loud. Also listen to them daily.

You can use the memerise app to help you with the vocab and kanji study app for learning how to write kanji with the right stroke order.

When learning Kanji always learn words so never it's individual pronunciations.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.memrise.android.memrisecompanion

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

Okay...Time to explain...

When you learn a Kanji, just learn it's basic meaning like

日　sun

本　book

There is no need to individually learn every pronuncuation of every Kanji. You just learn it's meaning and how to write it.

You will learn most of the different readings when you learn new vocabulary as you go along in your studies. This will give the pronunciation more context so you won't forget it that easily and it is easier to remember.

Example:

日本　にほん　Japan

Here we see the pronunciation of 日 as に

日曜日　にちようび　Sunday

Here we see the pronunciation of 日 as にち and び

Now you know 3 pronunciations of the Kanji 日

にち、に and び

Mostly when looking at a Kanji info the hiragana shows the Japanese pronunciation and is mostly used when the kanji appears alone. The katakana shows the "Chinese" pronunciation and is mostly used when two kanji's or more are used for a word.

I suggest you give this a look. This will help out a lot.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy

To answer you question about numbers.

一　いち 一つ　ひとつ

There are two ways of counting to ten.

A Japanese and a Chinese way. Mostly you will use the Chinese way. The Japanese way is more used when counting objects.

For example.

One Apple : りんご (Apple) が(subject particle) 一つ (hitotsu)

When you say one o' clock : 一時　(ichi ji)

For listening skill, i think listen n write is the best way to improve the listening skills. For window os, u can try Listen N Wrire For Android os, u can try this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hoapn1.listennpractice

At 700+ pages, it might not fit your definition of small grammar book, but I will wholeheartedly recommend this, specially English translation version. It shows you different sentence patterns with brief explanations, example sentences, and their English equivalent.

日本語文型辞典 英語版 ―A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners

https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Japanese-Patterns-Teachers-Learners/dp/4874246788/

Tae Kim’s guide is online and free, but I personally use and can recommend Basic Japanese Grammar. It’s physically small and really well structured imo. I read the first half of it just in one go because it was so interesting.

Buy the book ",remembering the kanjis" by heisig.it is the best way to recognise kanji.ths book is about $30 .I can assure you.you will learn all the kanjis in under 3 months if you study 2 hours daily with that book.pdf's are also available for that book.link for buying the book:https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Characters/dp/0824835921/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=remembering+the+kanji+1&qid=1594943562&sprefix=remembering+the+kanji&sr=8-1

I took a class at last year and the teacher used Nihongo Daijobu book (Japanese Ok). It was a great book came with cd to hear the language. And got us talking with it. It really helped me learn fast. Nihongo Daijobu on Amazon Canada

Do you write your kanji down or you just read them? Maybe you try to learn too much to fast and that is why you could forget....

Personally I have no trouble remembering Kanji. I try to learn 5 a day with each day that passes constantly reviewing the previous one for like an hour in Total and then I stop.

When i learn a new kanji I first learn their meaning in English and write them down like 20 Times or so. Their readings I try to learn trough vocab.

I use memrise ultimate kanji course for my vocab and to study kanji I use the app : kanji study....It's a beast. Once you get used to the app it becomes very powerfull...it is everything you want out of a kanji app...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy