How to Learn Japanese in 10 Steps

Decided to learn the Japanese language? The learning journey ahead will be long, but it certainly doesn’t have to be daunting.

I’ve devised a quick, basic guide to help you get on your feet and start down the path with confidence. So if you’re a beginner wondering how to learn Japanese, this is the post for you.

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1. Start with Hiragana

Japanese has three writing systems, and hiragana is the very first one new learners should get under their belts.

Hiragana is the most common and basic writing system used in Japan. It will be the foundation of your ability to read and write in Japanese. Hiragana is also used to “simplify” certain other text.

There are 46 characters in total, written in a distinctly loopy, cursive manner. Don’t just learn by staring at an alphabet chart, though—the best way to memorize hiragana is by repeatedly writing each character to cement it in your memory.

You can learn hiragana with this post. Then, once you’ve practiced your hiragana, you can…

2. Continue onto Katakana

Katakana is the second writing system you should tackle. It has the same number of characters as hiragana and the same phonemes, but it’s an alphabet typically reserved for writing out foreign, non-Japanese words.

So, if I wanted to write out “toilet” in Japanese, I would use katakana, like this: トイレ .

Katakana characters are more angular than hiragana, which might make them easier to write.

A katakana character may not look much like its hiragana counterpart. For example, the hiragana letter は looks quite unique from its katakana equivalent ハ (both are pronunciation ha, by the way—more on pronunciation next).

Some hiragana and katakana characters do, however, look similar to each other. Here are some hiragana characters followed by their katakana equivalents; the parentheses show their pronunciation:

• か and カ (ka)
• せ and セ (se)
• へ and ヘ (he)
• や and ヤ (ya)
• り and リ (ri)

When learning katakana, you should still practice your hiragana as well. I suggest that anytime you practice writing a katakana letter, write its hiragana equivalent as well, to keep them both in your head.

3. Practice Japanese Pronunciation

Japanese is a phonetic language. This is great for learners, because it means written characters match their phoneme one-to-one. There’s no funny business or tricks when it comes to pronunciation, unlike in English.

As you learn hiragana and katakana (or right after), you should work on your Japanese phoneme pronunciation.

Once you know the basic characters, you should then promptly study “modified sounds”—phoneme pronunciation can be changed by the inclusion of handakuon and dakuon characters.

Dakuon, meaning “murky sound,” is represented by two dots or little slashes (they somewhat resemble quotation marks). Handakuon, meaning “half-murky sound,” is represented by a small circle and is an option for fewer characters than dakuon is.

Here’s a quick example of how both work to change pronunciation; first is the hiragana, then the katakana, then the romanization:

• Normal: は and ハ are pronounced “ha”
• Dakuon: ば and バ are pronounced “ba”
• Handakuon: ぱ and パ are pronounced “pa”

Besides the dakuon duo, there are also “miniature” characters called small kana or chiisai kana. They look like fun-sized versions of actual hiragana and katakana, and they influence pronunciation as well.

Here’s an example: The Japanese word for “school” is がっこう. Notice that tiny hiragana tsu character, っ? It makes a double consonant sound, so school isn’t just pronounced gakou—it’s gakkou, like so: がっこう .

Different small kana have different pronunciation effects. They’re vital to learn for both Japanese pronunciation and writing purposes, so pay careful attention to how they work.

A great practice strategy is to make short word transliterations using both hiragana and katakana characters. Sound out the word and figure out how a Japanese person would write it out.

For example, let’s say you want to transcribe the name “Diana.” In Japanese, it would be pronounced dai-a-na, and so it would be written:

• Hiragana: だいあな
• Katakana: ダイアナ

This is a fun and easy way to work on your Japanese writing and pronunciation skills. To see if your attempts are correct, you can check them online—Google Translate is usually pretty reliable for this kind of simple practice.

4. Study the Most Common Words in Japanese

Now that you know two of the main writing systems, you can confidently start learning some words in Japanese!

Naturally, before anything else, you’ll want to learn the most essential vocabulary first. These are the most basic of basics, such as greetings, numbers, days of the week, pronouns and so forth.

At this step, I highly recommend that you start perusing through Japanese word frequency lists. These are concentrated lists that contain the most commonly used Japanese terms—in other words, they’re the fundamentals you should learn pronto.

These will take time to go through, so be patient. You’ll likely notice repetitive word parts that can help you predict the meanings of subsequent vocabulary. Practice reading, writing and pronouncing each word you learn.

As you do, you’ll no doubt encounter words written in the third, and most complicated, Japanese writing system, which means you’re ready for the next step!

5. Pick Up Basic Kanji

Depending on how much you know about Japanese already, you may be wondering why I didn’t include studying kanji as an earlier step. There are a few reasons why.

Kanji is the Japanese writing system based on Chinese characters. Technically speaking, writing these characters can involve a lot of strokes that need to be done in a certain order. Plus, a single kanji character can encapsulate one or more phonemes, as well as multiple meanings.

It’s common for beginner Japanese learners to get tangled up in the intricacies of kanji. Sometimes, they get so twisted around that it disrupts other parts of their learning progress. You don’t need to worry about kanji before you’re ready—and at this stage, you likely are ready for kanji basics.

So, while you’re learning the most essential Japanese vocabulary, you can start picking up some easy, fundamental kanji. These are labeled as N5 kanji characters on the JLPT scale (N4 to N1 are of higher difficulty).

Slowly let kanji trickle into your studies. Again, there’s no need to rush and get them mixed up.

Learn the most common meaning of each character and practice writing it stroke-by-stroke (I recommend you have a dedicated kanji notebook just for this!). Repetition is key when it comes to memorizing kanji.

6. Learn the Japanese Verb Groups

Japanese verbs are generally organized into two broad categories:

• Godan (“-u”) verbs: Verbs that end in the う character
• Ichidan (“-ru”) verbs: Verbs that end in the る character (with some exceptions)

(Note that there are also two irregular verbs that don’t fall into either category—we don’t need to review them here.)

It’s important to learn which verbs belong in which category, because that will tell you how they’re conjugated. And luckily, Japanese verb conjugation is overall pretty regular and straightforward.

Again, at this stage, you should be focusing on N5-level Japanese verbs (of which there are about 100 in total). First focus on their hiragana spellings and pronunciations. Once you have those down, you can study the kanji variants in more depth.

7. Learn the Present and Past Tenses in Japanese

I’ve got good news for you: There are only two verb tenses to learn in Japanese—the present tense (which also covers the future tense) and the past tense.

Compare this to the 12 tenses in English, and that’s a huge load off your learner’s shoulders!

Japanese verbs are conjugated by taking the stem (basically, its front half) and giving it a different root (latter half). There are three basic verb forms to focus on:

• Dictionary/plain form: The verb is unconjugated (how you would find it when looking through a dictionary), also used for informal contexts
• Polite form: The formal conjugation of the verb, used when speaking respectfully
• Negative form: To indicate that the verb is not happening

There are differences in the forms depending on the tense, but they’re easily recognizable.

You might be a bit curious about the “polite form”—one thing to know about Japanese is that formality does affect speech.

This system of respect in communication is known as keigo. It’s indeed a very important part of the Japanese language, but for your purposes, you can start by studying only the basic polite forms (also known as masu/masen forms).

8. Get Familiar with Japanese Sentence Structure

With some knowledge on how verb conjugations work, you can start to ease into learning fundamental Japanese grammar.

Basic Japanese sentences follow SOV (subject-object-verb) order. Let’s compare this to the typical English SVO order by looking at an English sentence, and then its Japanese equivalent:

• English: I eat bread.
• Japanese: わたしはパンを食べる。

The Japanese sentence, if translated in order, says “I bread eat.” It may take some practice to get used to this shift in structure, so take the time to read (and listen to!) plenty of very simple Japanese sentences.

Naturally, you’ll sometimes encounter other types of words, such as adjectives and adverbs. These too undergo their own kinds of conjugations. They’ll be easier to identify once you get the hang of where the main three items (subject, object, verb) of the sentence go.

9. Learn and Study Basic Japanese Phrases

If you’ve followed these tips to a T so far, you’ve mostly been learning Japanese words in isolation.

So now, you should again start with the most basic phrases that are used everyday, like “How are you?” and “I don’t understand.”

Don’t just memorize them and file them away in your head, though—really try to pick apart how the sentences are crafted, what’s being conjugated, where each part of the sentence is placed and so forth.

That means when you’re studying any Japanese sentence, you shouldn’t just be picking out the individual words you know. Focus on paying attention to the sentence structure and how it works as a whole.

This way, you’ll come across patterns that will make things more predictable. You’ll also encounter some unique or exceptional quirks, which you should explore further in your own time, using reliable learning sources.

10. Practice with Authentic Japanese Resources

This tip actually applies to every step in this list, though it becomes especially relevant once you start understanding full Japanese sentences.

Take advantage of all the accessible learning resources available to you! There are plenty of Japanese learning websites, Japanese apps and Japanese books catered to beginner learners, and they can all guide you under a certain agenda and curriculum.

At the same time, you can and should also use native Japanese materials that aren’t made for study. These are things like Japanese manga, Japanese anime, Japanese music and Japanese films.

That’s right—even products made purely for entertainment, like the media that might have enticed you to learn Japanese in the first place, can become excellent language study tools!

No, you won’t understand all the Japanese being used, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re actively being immersed in the Japanese language with content you’re genuinely interested in, and your brain will process what you see, hear and experience.

For extra support, you might use a Japanese learning program like FluentU.

By using the right kind of content, your exposure to Japanese will become more of a fun, everyday matter, meaning many moments to learn and practice what you know!

 

With this 10-step guide, you can progress steadily in the exciting adventure that is learning Japanese.

Above all, stay curious and determined! Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and face challenges. You won’t be a beginner forever, so have faith in your progress!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)