Konnichiwa!
Welcome and thank you (or shall I say arigato) for visiting my blog! My name is Ellie, and my husband and I have just started our journey of learning the Japanese language (or Nihongo I should say)! We started last Monday afternoon which was September 21, 2015. I will chronicle our learning progress here on this blog at least once a week.
So far learning Japanese has been a very exciting and enjoyable experience. I have always loved all things Japanese from the anime, the language, the culture, etc. I am a very visual learner so the beautiful kanji, hiragana, and katakana characters have been appealing to me for a long time. This past week it has been fun to re-watch a few anime series I have enjoyed previously and be able to understand a few scattered words already where I didn't before.
This weekend I decided to start tracking my progress so I can look back at any time and see how far I've come from knowing little to no Japanese words. It's easy to become discouraged after mastering a few basic words to when things become more complex.
My husband and I are learning Japanese together, which I think has made all the difference for me personally. In the past when I made attempts at learning a new language, I often was practicing on my own (with the exception of college course learning and all that involved). From what I've experienced in just one week, I highly recommend if you are learning a language to have a friend or family member do it along with you. Then you have someone at your same level to be an encouragement to keep practicing, and you won't feel intimidated at first like you might if you start immediately with a native speaker. This is just my opinion of course, and what works for me might not be the right choice for someone else.
During this past week, I have used a combination of:
- Apps
- Online Resources
- Memorization
- 1-2+ Hours Practice Daily
Through this combination, I have learned 100+ words including:
- Numbers 1-100
- Months and Seasons
- Family Members
- Basic Body Parts
- Basic Greetings
- Basic Clothing
I have also progressed well in learning to recognize, pronounce, and write hiragana, some katakana, and a few kanji.
If you are just starting out on your own adventure of learning Japanese, here are some apps and online resources I recommend from what I've used so far.
I've used a few additional apps, but these are my favorite and the most helpful. Youtube has also been a wonderful resource full of helpful tips and lessons from various vloggers. I'm sure over time as I progress, the apps and programs I use will change. In the future I hope to utilize the help of native speakers and tutors to have a fuller learning experience. I just have to get over being shy enough to go for it!
I have heard many people say that if you learn and remember at least 10 words per day you can be fluent to some extent in 3-6 months in any language. So for a 7 day period of time, having learned over 100+ words is pretty good in my opinion! My husband has learned a little less than that (around 70+ words or so) but he has a lot more on his plate schedule-wise than me and so hasn't practiced as much.
To some it may not seem like a big deal to have learned 100+ words in one week, but let me give you a little background on some of my previous language learning experiences and why this is a huge deal for me personally.
I know many people who have immersed themselves into a foreign language and have become semi-fluent in 3-6 months. This has genuinely amazed me over the years and I have always been jealous of these individuals and their brilliant language-learning skills. At times I have felt that maybe I'm just not smart enough to learn another language, or that I just don't have what it takes. It doesn't help that I am shy in nature and can sometimes feel quite anxious and unsure when doing anything in my life, let alone speak a new language!
In my teenage years I learned a little French and Italian due to the influence of a few family members but never really got anywhere much. In high school I decided that learning Spanish would be the most practical for the workplace and in general for where I live. I did well learning Spanish, but to date I have unfortunately fizzled out on that a few times. Who knows, I may try again one day.
I struggle to have enough faith in myself to fully learn a language to fluency level. Where I live there are many people who are bi-lingual English/Spanish speaking, in addition to other languages as well. This can be an advantage and great resource for practicing, but also can be very intimidating when just starting out.
I reached basic conversation level in Spanish about ten years ago by taking three college level courses, but decided to end my college learning after that 18 month period because of issues I had with the only teacher there. Plus an ugh boss I had at work at the time put a crazy amount of pressure on me and I don't handle that well at all. (Those are other stories for another time.) I have dabbled with Spanish a few other times in the past ten years, but with some health issues and mental blocks in my way I haven't seen it through. The desire to speak more than English has always been with me, however, so when the motivation to learn a new language returned again recently I decided to explore other options with my husband at my side.
Which brings me back full circle to my new journey of learning Japanese! Arigato if you have made it through this long post. I hope you'll follow my progress as I share with you the joy of learning Japanese!
Sayonara!
