Learn conversational japanese necessary for real life

hello! does anyone here know how i can enrich my japanese? i’d hate to know all this kanji and not know how to formulate sentences-- i had genki but with the lack of a partner to do exercises it just wasn’t helpful for me.

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My favorite two resources are “Human Japanese” to learn basic grammar, and then following that up with Satori Reader. Both are great and include lots of great reading and listening material :slight_smile:

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There are plenty of online resources to use. I suggest checking out the Ultimate Additional Resources list.

The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List! - Japanese Language / Resources - WaniKani Community

There’s also a dedicated thread to Listening Practice, where you can find tips on how to improve listening comprehension.

Listening Practice :headphones: What do you listen to for Japanese practice? - Japanese Language / Listening - WaniKani Community

There are more resources for sure. You can search for discussion threads about seeking out an online teacher, Italk etc. to see what people thought of their experiences of that. :slight_smile:

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It’s definitely best to have someone to talk to (in my case, I had my friend reply my messages in Japanese, though we don’t talk a lot in Japanese), but if you don’t have that, maybe try watching anime and catching YouTube videos or streams? Anime isn’t all realistic speech, but it’s not all non-existent slang either. A lot of it is stuff you can reapply by making it more polite. (Almost all my N3-N2 grammatical knowledge is from watching anime and checking the dictionary, and while I don’t have a ton of conversational practice, I can speak somewhat coherently, and my Japanese teacher in school has confidence that I should be able to pass the N1. I’ve been studying Japanese for about 3.5 years, and I watched anime quite frequently the whole time.) I personally watch rom-com/isekai anime a lot, and VTuber streams.

That aside, the resources @ekg shared aside… shameless plug, but I’m doing a series on grammar on Twitter right now. Here’s a PDF compilation of all the Tweets from Part 1:

I’m currently on Part 2, which is about particles and basic verb forms, which should help with forming sentences. Here’s one of my more recent Tweets:
https://twitter.com/AnAsianPolyglot/status/1496410904321265665?s=20&t=bTaGF53Rov8NG0iDC_Ksxw
My aim is to make grammar more intuitive by breaking it down, including by using the history of words and the analysis Japanese people (not foreign learners) are usually taught. If you’re on Twitter, maybe you’d like to join in? :slight_smile:

Whatever you’re using to learn, you can practise on Twitter, HelloTalk, italki, HiNative… and here on the forums, like in this thread:

You’ll probably have a few people coming along to correct you or make suggestions.

That aside, you can ask questions in the Language Questions and Grammar Questions threads if you want to see if a conversational sentence might be correct.

I hope you’ll see good progress soon! :slight_smile:

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thank you :slight_smile:

ahh thank you so much!! i am on twitter ill be sure to check it out when i get out of school later today

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I’m going to go ahead and throw in this series, since you’ve got the keywords- conversational, necessary, and real life


While a bit dated, this series is pretty good for teaching you practical Japanese along with giving it to you at fairly close to regular speech speeds and showcasing Japanese culture. I think it’s a bit more suited to people planning to live in Japan, so if you’re just planning to visit, there’s probably a better resource.

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