WaniKani is a great tool for learning. I have to say the more I dig into the language, though, the more discouraged I am. There’s so much to know that is not intuitive at all. A hundred different ways of counting different things, Kanji not making consistent sounds, not being able to make educated guesses at anything, not knowing anything about words until you already know the words, etc. It seems like I have to memorize the dictionary to get anywhere. I’m overwhelmed and I’m ready to throw in the towel. Thanks for making such a great tool, though! I wish you all the best on learning this because I am nowhere near smart enough to do it.
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Stay strong! I actually enjoy the fact that Japanese is so different from English, so utterly confusing at the start and bewildering. It makes it fun. But maybe that’s because I’m not focused on learning Japanese by X date for Y purpose, but more just because I liked visiting Japan and want to be closer to the country and the culture, and learning the language is an important part of that. I don’t care about the JLPT or any tests, I just enjoy the adventure of learning this language, piece by piece.
BTW it’s not about intelligence or how smart you are, it’s just about consistent effort. It’s a long language to learn, but it’s always doable. If you enjoy the process, like deciphering hieroglyphics, it’s much better.
I also think you have to remember where you started. I remember learning hiragana, piece by piece, and thinking how amazing it would be to just look at a sentence of Japanese or a sign and be able to understand it. Not perfectly, but just to understand it at all, at a base level. I remember a year ago when I couldn’t read any hiragana/katakana at all, and it was all just gibberish to me. Here I am, though, and I’ve got 550+ kanji that I can understand, close to 2000 vocabulary words, and my grammar is now starting to build as well. Feels shocking, but I remember that past version of me sitting in a cafe in a quiet tourist town, practicing handwriting hiragana, and I feel good.
It’s not a race. It’s not about “learning Japanese” as an end goal that you either arrive at or don’t arrive at. It’s not a yes/no proposition. It’s a slow deciphering and understanding of a foreign language from a completely different part of the world. It’s fun, in its own way, and if nothing else, it’s good for the brain to try and learn another language, especially one so completely different from Indo-European languages. Oh, and it never ends. There’s no finish line. Even for English, my native language, there is no finish line - there’s always new vocabulary to learn, different ways of phrasing things, becoming a better writer, more eloquent and persuasive speaker, etc.
Enjoy the journey.
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Language learning is huge time commitment, there’s no way around it. If you think your time is better spent doing something else, it’s perfectly fair and I also think that just dipping your toes into various hobbies can be extremely interesting even if you don’t commit to it. You already know more about Japanese than about 99% of the non-Japanese population.
But even though you didn’t ask I can give you some reasons to keep at it if you want to be convinced to continue your studies:
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The hardest part of learning any language is the start, for the reasons you outline. Everything is foreign, you can’t really do anything with the language, you just keep memorizing words and kanji and grammar points and idioms and cultural references… The well never dries, there’s always more to learn and yet it feels like you’re not getting anywhere. It sucks.
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On top of that the basic elements of the language tend to be the most irregular and overloaded because they’re used everywhere all the time. Consider how irregular “to be” and “to have” are in English for instance. This is mostly true for kanji as well, the rare ones will typically only be used in one or two words and often have a single useful reading. The stuff you learn early on is often trickier.
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Maybe you’re very dumb, I don’t know, but I genuinely don’t think it matters for language learning. I mean, virtually every Japanese native knows Japanese, and undoubtedly there are very dumb Japanese people too. Language learning is about discipline and assiduity, not solving differential equations. The main factor that defines how fast you learn a language is how much time you spend doing it.
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Lastly if you still find Japanese overwhelming but are interested in learning a foreign language, know that Japanese is probably the hardest “mainstream” language to study for a westerner. If an easier language interests you, it may be a good idea to study that first and use the experience and confidence you get from that to try Japanese again in a few years.
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Thank you both for the encouraging words! That’s actually how I want to approach learning the language. I don’t have a specific reason for doing so. I just really like Japan and all things Japanese. And the language sounds downright melodic. I just feel like I am failing hard here. I can read hiragana and katakana thanks to tofugu, but that’s about it.
I studied some ancient hebrew back in the day, and in the same amount of time I understood plurals, grammar, verb construction, masculine/feminine words, etc. Apples to oranges no doubt, but I can’t even pick out individual words in japanese writing or speech except a particle or two. I’m not sure if I am expecting too much, though.
You are right that it is a process, and it’s never really over. It just feels like I’m spinning my wheels is all. I will keep trying a little longer if I can shake the disappointment in myself.
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Let me repeat what simias said: Japanese is probably the hardest language for Westerners.
I had to learn that the hard way too 
Before attempting Japanese, I already had a long history of language learning: Being German, I learned English, Latin, French and some Spanish in school, later I dabbled in some Danish and Dutch, and no matter the language, if I put in a bit of time, it was pretty easy-going (ok maybe except Latin but that was school so I had no escape route). So when I had just started with Japanese, somebody challenged me to sit N5 (the most low-level Japanese language test, comparable to A1 for Western languages), I immediately agreed because I had a lot of language learning experience, I knew the drill and for me, language learning was easy.
Or so I thought…
What I hadn’t considered was the fact that so far I had only attempted to learn Germanic and Romance languages, and the more I learned, the more I could build associations between languages. But then came Japanese where everything was different, and nothing seemed to stick. 
Well, long story short, I managed to pass the test, but I had put in an amount of studying effort that was not known to me until then…
Now I don’t know about Hebrew but maybe it’s somehow similar to my experience? and it’s simply not comparable maybe 
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One thing that really helped me was giving up on the idea of having a goal. “Learning Japanese” felt way too hard and like it would take way too long, so instead I focused on smaller things, like listen to something every day, or open my textbook every day. I would put a little checkmark in my planner on days when I did anything in Japanese, and my only real goal was to see how many checkmarks I had at the end of the year. And then, without me even noticing, I got better.
Of course, the beginning stages really are the hardest, as @simias said. So it might be worth it to tell yourself you’re willing to work hard for little reward for 3 months, and then see where you’re at. (And you can always try something and decide you don’t want to do it, but it would be too bad if you gave up because you believed you couldn’t do it, because you definitely can.)
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That’s an incredibly impressive list of languages! Hat’s off to you!
Hebrew was no joke, especially the binyanim and lack of vowels, but it was nothing next to this. I think I do indeed need to re-evaluate my approach.
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Going the opposite direction is great, though. I had only studied Japanese to a high level before starting French last year and I feel like I’m zooming along 
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Thank you all. Seriously. At least I don’t feel as incompetent as I did. I was really coming down on myself, but I might just be trying to do too much at once.
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That could be true. It’s going to be a language that takes several years to learn. I think in terms of the goals, I think the main thing is to start with the bedrock goal of why you’re learning the language - something personal and relatable to you. Figure that you might get to that point in 3 or 4 or 5 years, and then start working back from that to figure out where you want to be a year before that time, or two, and then as you get closer to today, start working forward with ideas on how you can make progress toward that. If you want to read Japanese manga, for example, figure out what you can do toward that goal in the next few months. Same with watching anime, or speaking, etc. Vocabulary / kanji / grammar / listening / speaking etc., are all just components of the language - and you might need to learn some of each to get to your goals, but remember they’re there to serve your goals, not to become their own goal unless you really love them.
And don’t be afraid to re-evaluate and adjust your study plans as you go. If something isn’t working for you, no matter how many people swear by it, it may not be the right tool for you. There are so many resources, free and paid, for many different slices of the language that some experimentation may be needed. But also remember setbacks are temporary unless you let them become permanent, and things like a review session where you miss like 34 of 50 reviews doesn’t mean the tool isn’t working necessarily, it’s just that at that time you didn’t remember those items as well as it thought you might - and that’s just those items’ way of telling you that you need more time with them.
Definitely feel free to interact with the community here as well, it’s truly awesome. If you want to start a study log, that’s something that helps keep a lot of people motivated - whether you use it as a daily journal of the process, or a place to store stats/streaks, or if it evolves over time as your learning journey does, if you think it’s something that can help you it’s there. If not, that’s fine too!
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I had a similar mindset when I started with Japanese, I have studied a bunch of languages before and was fairly cocky about it, “I know the drill, can’t be that hard”. Then after only a few days I remember having this realization that “wait, I have no idea how to approach this”.
Even Russian, which is probably the second hardest language I’ve studied, doesn’t come close to the feeling of trudging though early Japanese content. Yeah, Russian has declensions and complicated verb shenanigans, but at the end of the day the syntax and general morphology of the language isn’t completely unlike French or English (partly because of the Indo European roots, partly because of shared cultural heritage and continued contact between European languages).
Japanese is just alien. If feels like you must relearn everything. You can try to read a relatively basic sentence in a game (taken from Final Fantasy 2 since I have the script open at the moment) and feel like you’re solving riddles:
いったい、どうやってあんな恐ろしいものと戦えばよいのでしょう…。
Which simply means “Damn, how can we fight such a terrifying thing?”.
If you’re a beginner you can easily spend 20 minutes breaking apart this sentence and figuring out how it works. What is this random の doing here? Why does it use a conditional construction? What’s the difference between どうやって and the 20 other ways to say “how” in Japanese? What does でしょう actually mean anyway, why does it have so many uses?
I mean, realistically a beginner will even struggle to identify individual words here… That どうやってあんな alone can probably stump many N5 folks with hundreds of hours of Japanese under their belts.
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I’m level 17 and have no idea what pretty much any of that example sentence means. I know “deshou” is related to probability or uncertainty, I know the last kanji means war and is “sen” or “tataka”, but that’s literally it.
But I’m also not at all upset or annoyed with that, despite having studied Japanese consistently for 11 months, because I know what I know and I know that it’s growing steadily. Wanikani will teach me that other kanji eventually, and I’ll learn the grammar from my 1 grammar lesson a day on Bunpro, and eventually I’ll start reading super easy stories on Satori Reader and I’ll build a vocabulary of kana-only words and start to see how sentences fit together.
So yeah, 11 months in, 1 hour a day of studying consistently, 550+ kanji knowledge, 2000 word vocab knowledge, and I have no idea what that sentence means outside of one kanji means “war”, and it ends in a way that implies a lack of certainty.
But I also don’t care. I have zero emotional reaction to my inability to read that sentence, because I know I’m on the path to getting there. Eventually I’ll be able to read that sentence no problem, but not right now, and I’m not in a rush to get functional with my Japanese. I just do 10 lessons of wanikani per day, clear all my reviews twice a day, and do 1 lesson of Bunpro grammar a day. It will all work out.
BTW I can read some menu items at Chinese restaurants. That’s the closest I’ve been to functional with my Japanese learning at this point.
Anyway, OP, my point here is that you can’t pressure yourself to be able to read in Japanese. I’m way farther ahead of you and have very limited abilities as well. But eventually it will all come together - the kanji we learn in wanikani is often the hardest part of most Japanese learner’s journeys, so banking that work and knowledge now will pay off big time in the future. Eventually there will be a point where you’ll learn enough vocabulary and grammar the hard way that you’ll be able to read very simple sentences, and then more and more, and then you’ll have broken through. You might also like Satori Reader, another website that breaks down sentences piece by piece, with lots of explanations. It’s incredible, and has a free tier.
edit: Another point in your favor is that while Japanese is very long to learn, once you do learn, you’re in an exclusive club. It’s a massive accomplishment. You also unlock related Asian languages like Korean and Chinese - they’ll still take a lot of work, but you’ll have a huge leg up to add those on as well.
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Oh, OP, since you’re level 3, if you do decide to continue on your Japanese journey (and I hope you do!), wanikani has a promo for an annual subscription on right now for 50% off: code CRABSMASMIRACLE on checkout. Code is good until end of January 2026.
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Just keep at it bro. Make the JLPT exams your main goal. That will give you something to work towards. Once you pass the N5 test, you’ll feel incredible, like you’ve just climbed Mt. Everest. All the frustration you feel will just melt away. Trust me, I am a semi-literate dummy, and if I can do it, so can you.
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I really want to relearn Chinese because i was convinced i couldn’t learn languages, but now I’m like… every hanzi is always pronounced the same, every time, and doesn’t change pronounciations contextually???
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Oddly, this isn’t something I’m personally concerned about, achieving. I just find joy in learning the language. I think you’ve let the result prioritize having fun when doing something. It’s just fun, the complexity of it. The challenge of it.
I think that’s something everyone who become good at something share, a passion. Someone who loves cars will eventually become knowledgeable about through osmosis.
If you find it’s a chore, maybe it’s not something you’re really into? Either way, I hope you discover joy in the process.
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Incredible quote, I want it embroidered on a pillow
I’ve got a friend who’s currently struggling with learning Japanese as well. The biggest piece of advice I’ve given them has been parroted by almost every reply in this thread: Japanese takes time. It takes practice, and effort, and repetition, and more importantly all of those things consistently. And most important, all of that consistently over TIME.
Before I give a breakdown below, this is on average, and of course everyone is different. If you’ve spent more time than the below but aren’t fluent, this is not an invalidation of you as a person, your intelligence, or the worth of the effort you’ve put into studying.
Japanese is said to require 2200 hours of study to master for native English speakers.
Breakdown
Let’s assume you’ve got the discipline to study every single day, never missing a single session, or 365 days a year. If you study 30 minutes per day, how many years will it take you to master Japanese?
0.5hr (30min) x 365days = 182.5hrs per year, 2200 / 182.5 = 12.05 years.
1 hour is then 6 years.
2 hours is 3 years.
3 hours is 2 years.
4 hours is 1.5 years.
Assuming you study for the above time efficiently and effectively, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
“I don’t study every day, but what if I study 10 hours a week!”
220 weeks, then. Or 4 years, 3 months.
But, by not exposing yourself to the language every day, you’re probably not being 100% efficient as you naturally forget some things the less you see them, and it will likely take you longer because of that.
All that to say, time. Lots and lots of time.
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Its a bit challenging at the start because you are so fresh to the language and creating all those initial roots can be quite challenging because there’s nothing really there for them to link to. Its a completely different way of writing and they are literally ancient drawings that encode both meaning and sound. You’ll just have to trust that it’ll start to make sense eventually.
I’m at level 25 so you’re just gonna have to trust that eventually things get patterns and you can start making educated inferences and get some sort of accuracy to your guesses but like all things there are exceptions to the rules. I don’t really know when the educated inferences started being accurate, maybe level 10, 15?
It does seem like a lot and that’s because it is because its an entire language after all, but you aren’t asked to do it all at once. Just take it slow and smooth, do like 5 lessons a day. Its like eating a big steak, you don’t eat the whole thing in one big gulp unless you are a pelican I suppose. Do pelicans even eat meat? Once you start gaining confidence and practicing and remembering you can raise it up to 25 and if you feel brave even 35. Just make sure you aren’t running faster than you can remember because otherwise the tiny details in the similar kanji will catch you unaware.
For alphabet users its an entirely different writing concept other than by emojis, so once I bring them up it starts to click because they all know emojis. Well, these are ancient emojis so they encode much more.
its similar to something like the symbol has a meaning, but it can be read in various ways.
水tic(aquatic), 水(water), 水iming(swimming), 水im suit(swim suit)
except that unlike my example here it might have a relatively consistent reading to 水 with some exceptions that you just learn.
すい, みず are the readings so you just learn the words. Personally, I’ve never bothered with trying to keep the Kunyomi and Onyomi readings separate and I just learn the words.
Oh yeah and reading is critical. Seeing the kanji in the wild and spoken in anime/movies will help them bind much more strongly and I even catch some during anime and them I’m like aha there it is I know what they said. Its actually the last step after burning a kanji, it has to be found in reading.
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Not knowing anyting about words that you haven’t seen before is due to your lack of kanji knowledge (which wanikani aims to repair). My favorite example: 電話 - 電 is electricity, 話 is talk, so 電話 is … telephone! Even if you have never seen this word before you could guess its meaning if you know the components. There are many many other examples.
Once mastered, Japanese is a very logical language. Conjugation of verbs has very few exceptions (compared to French for example!), there are particles to mark the topic, the subject, the object of a sentence.
Pronounciation in Japanese is fairly easy. Compare it to how many different pronounciations ‘ough’ has in English (like in rough, through, thought, …).
There are however two difficulties in learning Japanese: the writing system and the speed in Japanese speaking!
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What you are saying – is very relatable; I think every Japanese learner had to go through this, me included.
I personally had many such moments. But then I realized it’s ok, because I don’t have to be perfect. I have accepted that I might not be able to ever truly master Japanese and would always make mistakes. But I would also always be able to keep becoming a little bit better. The process of learning itself became fun this way. And guess what – I’m now at the point where I’m able to read my favorite manga and play games in Japanese.
Yes, I have to use the dictionary very often and yes, I have a looooooooooooooot to improve, but nevertheless, I have managed to reach this far, which, on many occasions, I thought would be impossible.
I’m not saying you should not quit under any circumstances – I’m just saying that in such situation it’s best to re-examine your goals. When you say to yourself “I want to learn Japanese” – what do you mean by that?
Do you want to just be able to ask directions to the hotel and such?
Or do you want to be able to read simplified Japanese resources for learners like
or
Or do you want to read relatively simple, but non-adapted materials – from childrens manga and books to teenagers’ manga and light novels and computer games?
Or do you maybe want to become really fluent, get JLPT N1, work in a Japanese company and reading classical Japanese literature?
Also, do you want to be good both at reading and listening or only in one of those – and if so, which one?
Those are all different goals. By understanding which of those you want – and why – you’d be able to better decide for yourself whether you consider it worth the effort or not.
Also you don’t have to make this decision once and for all, you can take a break from Japanese and then – perhaps even years later – return to studying it…
Just remember that there is nothing wrong with you – Japanese language and everyone studying it has to go through periods of frustration where it feels like nothing sticks and that they would never be able to comprehend this. But this feeling is an illusion and it eventually disappears for those who keep studying consistantly, regardless of it.
In any case, whether you decide to keep studying or to drop or to take a break, best of luck to you! 
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