Japanese for Beginners Resource Guide

Japanese for Beginners Resource Guide

It is a myth to say that living abroad is the easiest way to learn a language. I lived in Japan for five years. However, I can’t say I really lived in Japan. I worked in an American environment teaching Spanish.

I love languages, and spent what time I could on learning Japanese. My work hours were demanding and not at all in Japanese, so my learning was largely limited to my commute and to my practice in stores and restaurants on weekends.

In addition to my job requirements and time commitments, Japanese takes three to four times as long to learn for an English speaker as a language closely related to English like French or Spanish. It was also very difficult to use reading to learn, like I had in every other language learning experience I had prior. In fact, I learned that in order to have the skills necessary to read the daily newspaper, a person must have the equivalent of a university degree. In short, not easily accessible to non-natives.

Japanese was by far my most difficult language undertaking. In my five years there, I remained at the A2/novice-high level. I am sharing a list of resources appropriate to that level.

There has been much evolution with technology. Here are some great resources to learn Japanese anywhere.Japanese I – MIT Open CourseWare (Free)

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/global-studies-and-languages/21g-501-japanese-i-fall-2012

Online Japanese Beginner Course (Paid)

https://www.udemy.com/online-japanese-beginner-course

LEARN JAPANESE with Rosetta Stone® (Paid)

http://www.rosettastone.com/learn-japanese/

Nihongo-Pro (Paid)

Paid Online Course

https://www.nihongo-pro.com/

Learn Japanese Online for Free!

Japanese-Lesson.com provides self-study programs produced by

an experienced native Japanese language teacher.

http://japanese-lesson.com/

Free Japanese Lessons

http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/

JAPANESE LANGUAGE AND USAGE

http://japanese.stackexchange.com

JAPANESE LINGUALIFT E-TEXTBOOK

Learn Japanese Language (limited free resources)

http://www.learn-japanese-kanji-hiragana-katakana.com/

Tofugu (Resources)

http://www.tofugu.com/

Japanese 101 (Free + Paid)

http://www.101languages.net/japanese/

Japanese Pod 101

Japanese Pod 101 requires a membership, but it does have a free option which will still give you access to a large number of videos, sound files, lessons and their newsletter, with extra lessons and free daily podcasts. The videos are professional and easy to follow and the forum is active and helpful.

https://www.japanesepod101.com/

MLC Japanese Language School Resources (Free)

http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/

Japanese-Online.com (Free)

http://www.japanese-online.com/

IMABI

http://www.imabi.net/

Learn Japanese

Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese

MEMRISE (Resources)

https://www.memrise.com/courses/english/japanese-4

TANGORIN–Online Japanese Dictionary

http://tangorin.com/

Tagaini Jisho–Dictionary

A free Japanese dictionary and study assistant

https://www.tagaini.net/download

Jishoo Online Dictionary

http://jisho.org/

ITalki—Online Paid Courses

https://www.italki.com/teachers/japanese

Lang-8

Online learning tool through interaction with native speakers

http://lang-8.com/

Bauddha – Online Resources

Here you can find several Translated (English-Japanese) versions of books and literature pieces

http://www.bauddha.net/

Goo dictionary–Online English-Japanese Dictionary

http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/

Chokochoko (Blog)

https://chokochoko.wordpress.com/

Blog where you can find resources for learning Japanese and Korean.

Tatoeba—a collection of sentences and translations

http://tatoeba.org/eng/

English-Japanese Sentence Translator

http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english_japanese/

Japanese Grammar Guide Tae Kim (Book)

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/grammar_guide.pdf

Reshnuu ( Free)

Online portal where you can access many resources like textbooks, everyday sentences, games, school/classes, community lessens etc. in order to learn Japanese language, highly recommended.

https://www.renshuu.org/

MARUGOTO+ (Free)

MARUGOTO+ (MARUGOTO Plus) is a website where users can learn about Japanese language and culture based on the contents of the “MARUGOTO: Japanese Language and Culture”, the official course book of the Japan Foundation, which complies to the JF Standard for Japanese-Language Education.

http://marugotoweb.jp/

Visualizing Japanese Grammar , George Washington University

https://www2.gwu.edu/~eall/vjg/vjghomepage/vjghome.htm

TamaTamako’s Nihongo Learning Animations–Let’s learn Japanese!

Through a number of video, animation, audio lessens

http://ookoch.seesaa.net/

GENKI Online (Free+Paid)

A wide range of resources for learning Japanese Language

http://genki.japantimes.co.jp/

Teach Yourself Japanese (Free)

is a very useful site for those early learners of the Japanese language who prefer to study on their own.

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/