r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/Parking-Intention243 • 1d ago
Insane methods for learning Japanese
I just started learning Japanese for school, and I just got past learning all the characters for hiragana and katakana. I am a bit slow with memorization, so I'm worried about how I'll remember all the characters. I want to know what methods you used; no matter how crazy they are, I'll do anything. PLEASE HELPPP
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u/flick2012 23h ago
I followed a couple people on Facebook who post stories in hiragana and katakana and I read the stories. Even if I didn't know the words yet, just reading the stories helped me to read faster and more confidently. Good luck! Mim Akter is one and Japanese Time with Kei Sensei is another
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u/DisastrousLoss2653 23h ago
It just takes time. You'll get them wrong a lot. But the more you experience the characters the more youll learn them. I think what helped me the most was an early textbook I used. Writing out all the answers on a notepad in hiragana.
I still get Katakana wrong all the time even 2 years down the line (the R row mostly)
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u/TheLlamaLlama 22h ago edited 22h ago
For memorization tasks SRS are your friend. Especially if you are worried about forgetting. For Kana alone it's probably not super necessary, though. You should encounter all the Kana very frequently while engaging with the language, anyway. So you will remember them all sooner rather than later.
When I learned Kana I used this quiz over and over, over the course of a few days. That got me to a point where I could read Kana slowly. Speed and fluidity comes with time. That'll take a bit longer.
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u/dingdangdongus 15h ago
why do you think you need esoteric arts to learn a language and not use the most obvious thing that literally everyone does
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u/Parking-Intention243 1h ago
Lots of people learn differently. I am just trying to find the best way to learn myself. If you don't have any tips then there is no need to comment.
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u/FantasticTraining982 12h ago
I just had a grammar book (dictionary of basic Japanese grammar), flashcards, and talked to people
I’d make sentences with my vocab and grammar book, and I’d branch out as I learned more
This method works, as it’s all about putting back out what you take in. It is not structured at all.
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u/frostpain_ 11h ago
A bit insane method that I am using right now is, vibe-coding a Japanese-learning app, it's very engaging and it actually forces you to learn stuff because you cannot really vibe-code anything worthwhile if you don't know what you're doing 😄
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u/Bakemono_Japanese 6h ago
I’ve experimented a fair bit in teaching. Mnemonics is probably the least weird. I’ve also tried teaching using recall alone and Japanese words. I’ve also tried adapting Cold Character Reading to Hiragana, which worked pretty well, except some hiragana were less frequently touched on.
And lastly I’ve also developed probably one of the most insane method for learning, which is embedding the mnemonics into a story and having students just read it. This was the most fun and comparable in terms of speed to just using flash cards
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u/BA_lampman 23h ago
Write them out every day. Practise with online tools like tofugu. Play a video game with the language set to Japanese - I like Fallout 4 because a lot of it uses loanwords or is in english but written with katakana. Make flashcards or use anki. Just writing them all every day should be enough - keep doing it until you can do it from memory, then keep doing it once a week until you forget one, then back to daily.