7. How to learn Japanese

If you want to learn Japanese and be a practical Japanese speaker, there are many steps to go. The reason is that the Asian language has a totally different grammar structure compared to European languages. Even Chinese has a similar structure to English. Therefore, you can’t think of learning Japanese like leaning Spanish as a second language. However, you don’t feel hopeless before trying anything, because you can start communicating somehow with Japanese people with basic expression. Relax and start leaning Japanese with having some fun.

The serious move for mastering any language is taking classes in a school. Any community collages in big cities have a Japanese class for public. They guide you to a sense of the language quickly. You can also try books, but you go wrong way easily with just understanding composition, because the pronunciation of Japanese is very hard. Without checking with right pronunciation, nobody will understand what you are talking. If you don’t have a chance to hear real pronunciation in classes, you must try other ways. The practical materials are Japanese movies like original “Shall We Dance?” for example. In this case, pick only modern story pieces. As you can guess, samurai period movies talk in old Japanese which makes your Japanese weird in daily use. When you see the movies, pay attention on Japanese accent and sound along side with reading English subtitles. After seeing a couple of movie, you start picking up the rhythm and tempo of Japanese. (To be continued)