Good afternoon wanikani, I am very new to learning Japanese and was looking for a good way to learn grammar, I have tried duolingo to unit 8, but I feel like it is very slow and doesn’t let you get as much review as you need like wanikani does with kanji. hoping this post will help people like me starting out, I currently know 200 or so kanji, hiragana and katakana and little to no grammar. Thanks in advance to everyone who may take the time to respond and have a great day!
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There are various textbooks you could try (e.g. Genki). I’m not familiar with Duolingo or Unit 8, but if it’s a workbook / practice question type of thing you’re missing, maybe you just need a textbook like Genki that includes that. Japanese From Zero is another textbook series with lots of questions, though they teach very slowly (it’s what I used when I first started Japanese). There’s an online version that might be a bit faster, but I’ve never used it myself.
If you’re specifically looking for some kind of SRS review system your choices are somewhat limited. There’s a very new website (as in launched a free beta only a week or two ago) called https://marumori.io. It’s meant to be fully comprehensive, teaching kana, kanji, vocab, and grammar all in one (you can skip stuff you already know). I think they only have pre-N5 and N5 available right now, but are actively working on N4, and of course since it’s a beta they are still working out some kinks. I haven’t used it much myself since I’m far beyond N5, but I have used another website by the same developer (https://kitsun.io) and generally like his work. It will become a paid service at some point, but what better time to see if it’s for you than when it’s free!
Another option with SRS is https://bunpro.jp, though it didn’t really click for me personally.
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No. There are lots of ways to learn grammar, but none of them are particularly good. Unless you have a mind like a robot, it’s going to take a lot of study and immersion just to be able to accurately understand complex sentences, never mind producing complex sentences that sound natural.
As they say, it’s a marathon, not a sprint…
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if you want SRS I recommend bunpro from n5 to n3, it really helped me a lot to understand dialogues in anime specially.
but for n2 and n1 I dont recommend at all. I will start using books shin kanzen master n2 or matome.
Thank you! I haven’t even heard of bunpro it seems like an excellent resource!, as for genki was told you need an answer book to go with it but I suppose if that is the case I could find it online or look further into topics I don’t understand using google.
I’m going to chime in about Japanese From Zero’s website service. They have options built-in that allow you to skip their awkward “progressive kana” method which slowly replaces romaji syllables with kana as you learn them. Teaching in that method (seeing words like ろmaji) was really disorienting for me. Turning that off and making furigana invisible until you have over a word REALLY helps speed things along. The customization options in the website help overcome some of the tediousness of the printed material.
As for grammar, I dislike learning grammar from most apps and SRS methods, so personally I use books and websites that give a brief explanation of the grammar points, and a LOT of examples.
If you are the type that likes gameified learning, DuoLingo is one of the least recommended by many users here. In my opinion, LingoDeer, Busuu and KawaiiNihongo all do what DuoLingo does, but better. I’ve also been trying out Immersely lately, which basically gives you splices of a video, breaks them down, teaches you the vocabulary and then asks you basic questions about what’s going on in the video. It’s like Pimsleur without the soul-dredging repetition.
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Just since it wasn’t mentioned here yet: aside from Genki, I’ve also used
- Minna no Nihongo (皆なの日本語)
- Marugoto (まるごと)
- Dekiru Nihongo (できる日本語)
which all have workbooks that you might want to purchase alongside the actual text. Marugoto has a a companion website that allows you to do listening exercises. While the website itself I find clunky and hard to navigate, it is actually a great tool alongside the workbook.
These textbooks were the textbooks used in teaching Japanese in educational institutions that I attended. I enjoyed all three and all three have different textbooks for each competency level. That being said, I have not used these textbooks in solo study, except for a little bit of the Minna no Nihongo which I found would be fine for solo study.
Anyway, if you’re looking for traditional textbooks that are used to teach Japanese grammar and vocabulary, then I hope this is helpful!
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Wow I had no idea about that new website thank you for sharing. I see they have plans on making it mobile which is great as I typically tend to forgot to use websites for studying Japanese. Also the visuals look really nice and cute!
I hope instead of studying the main course we’ll be able to study from an anime/manga/video game list. There is a new anime coming out next week so if there is a study list for that anime I’d be so down to using the website then.
These Japanese language learning video games are in development currently, but Nihongo Quest N5 teaches grammar and so does Shujinkou (this game goes up to N3 level). If you have Steam I recommend wishlisting them.
There is no one true way. But the most popular route for beginners is Genki and Minna no Nihongo. Personally I prefer MNN because it gets you reading only Japanese and not reliant on your native language. Having gone through both MNN is also more friendly for self study.