皆さん, こんにちは! Minasan, konnichiwa! Hello everyone! 🌸
Today I want to tell you how I learn Japanese because just being in Japan is not enough to automatically learn the language. You have to put a little more effort into it. However, it does not only take effort but also patience, because learning is a long process and not easy. 🙈
I do not attend a language school here. I did find out about a few offers, but they did not suit me because they were too expensive or at unfavorable times. So I am learning by myself or together with my colleagues and my boss, during the internship, or with friends. And these are the methods I use:
On the one hand, I write a small diary about what I did during my internship. At first, I only wrote in English, then at some point I wrote small key points in Japanese and now I always write a small, coherent text in Japanese. I write in Hiragana and Katakana, but I also use the Kanji that I already know and a few new ones that I then learn as vocabulary afterward.
At the beginning I learned Kanjis with this book:
The advantage of learning with a book is that you can always find instructions on the order in which you have to put the dashes to write a Kanji. The disadvantage is that you don't necessarily use or see all of these Kanji yourself in everyday life. Some of the Kanji are not necessarily used, which is why they can sometimes be forgotten. To prevent this from happening, I use a vocabulary app to consolidate the Kanji: vocabulary trainer. There I created a vocabulary list with different Kanji for every day of the week. So I can practice all the kanji I know so far once a week and test whether I remember them all. 🙈
The app is really practical because there are different modes with which you can learn playfully. However, I prefer to have the English word displayed, then say the Japanese translation once and then write down the corresponding kanji by hand. 📝
However, I recently finished the book and now I'm going to focus more on the kanji that I come across in everyday life, such as street names, groceries... To find out how the new Kanji are written, I used another app: Kanji Tree.
In this app, there is a dictionary function where you can enter the English word, Hiragana or the Kanji and you will be shown how it is written, what it means and how it can be pronounced.
Of course, writing is not the only thing I practice. Reading must also be trained because it is not always easy to quickly and correctly, read and understand the new characters. To practice reading, I have three different books.
The first two are books for children, which are entirely written in Hiragana. I read this and add a few new Kanji to the side. The last book I just started today. It is a Japanese high school book, which is why Kanji are also used. I'm curious to see how I can cope with reading. Since November I have been studying with my boss Jo Ishida for almost an hour every day. Part of the learning is that I read for him out of these books. One thing he often has to tell me: "Read flat". Foreigners often go up and down with their voice when they read something in Japanese (including me). Getting used to it and speaking "flat" is not easy, especially since I sometimes don't know exactly how to do it, but that's just a matter of practice, so stay tuned! 😉
In general, our lessons consist of little "tests". Normally, they are structured as follows:
reading aloud (I read something to Jo Ishida)
a dictation (Jo Ishida reads something and I write it down)
the Kanji test (Jo Ishida announces Kanji, which I write down)
correcting my internship diary
Now and then all JARFO employees play the Shiritori game during the lunch break. There is a topic, such as food. One begins to say a dish and the next has to say another that begins with the ending syllable of the first word. For example: Chokoreto (Chocolate) - Tomato (Tomato) - Tofu etc.
At home I also have a few more real learning books, but honestly I have to say that I don't use them so regularly. At the beginning I enjoyed working with them very much, but at the moment they don't help me much. Nevertheless, I can highly recommend the books from "Japanese from 0" for the beginning!
I know that not everything I mentioned is suitable for using it at home, especially since you need a learning partner for some things, which may not always be available, but maybe there is a new method for one or the other, that you would like to try out for learning a language.
But one thing that should be accessible to everyone is YouTube. If you search for Japanese learning videos on YouTube, you quickly come across the channel "Japanese-Pod101.com". There are a lot of videos there and a lot of topics are covered. However, I prefer to watch the videos on the "Miku Real Japanese" channel. I like the mix of language and culture here because you not only learn about linguistic peculiarities but also about current events.
Of course, books, apps, and videos are not the only media that can be used for learning. Learning can also be made fun with films, series, and music. What I have discovered in these categories, I will tell you another time, so stay tuned! 😉
次回まで! Jikai made! See you next time! 💕
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