Reddit mentions: The best foreign language dictionaries

The decision is up to you, and your final choice should pertain to your situation/interests, but if you do choose to learn Japanese, then I can give you some pointers:

Learning Material

Start by learning Hiragana and Katakana. This should take you 2 weeks tops. You can learn it through apps like Dr. Moku (apple and android), and practice with Drag-n-Drop.
After that, use the Genki textbooks I and II (make sure that it's the 2nd edition, which has more features added to it), which are the most popular by far within the Japanese learning community.
Japan Times, the company behind the books, also made some pretty neat apps to side with the book. Available for apple and android. There's also a workbook, which is a bit of a drag to buy after buying two $50 textbooks, so I uploaded the PDFs here.


Supplement your studies with Anki SRS (Spaced-repetition-system), which is essentially virtual flash cards.
There's also Tae Kim's Grammar Guide, which is pretty good as a reference, but not so much a sole learning material. His website is another good reference resource.


Please realize that it's okay to forget words and grammar points, and you're definitely going to have to revisit some of them along the way.




I should probably mention Kanji. Kanji are characters imported from China during the 5th century, although many have divulged from their modern Chinese equivalent. Genki I+II will teach you 317 kanji (image for scale (sorry for bad quality!!)), and Tobira (the textbook I'm about to mention) will teach you another. There are officially 2136 "Jouyou Kanji", or kanji used in everyday life (e.g. a newspaper). Some people use Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, which I wouldn't recommend since it only teaches you the meaning (which it sometimes lies about), and doesn't even teach the reading or any words that use it. I'd recommend learning words and then the kanji that they use. That way you're getting more bang for your buck. While I personally don't use WaniKani to learn kanji, I have used it in the past, and it's really good. Sleek interface, gets the job done, forums for questions. All the good stuff you'd expect out of a kanji learning site. The first couple of lessons are free, and then it's something like $8/month. Despite WaniKani and all its greatness, the creator behind it (named Koichi) also made an "online Japanese textbook" called Tofugu, which I definitely wouldn't recommend. It waaaay too much around the bush, and half of it is just "motivational talk" (which I'm pretty sure is just trying to get you inspired for a night or two, pull out your wallet, pay for a lifetime subscription, and then give up once you get to the 〜ます forms).


Edit: I also feel the need to mention that, despite what pop culture might tell you, only a tiny portion of kanji are truly pictograph (e.g. 川 (river), 山 (mountain), 人 (person), and 大 (big)). The more conceptual ones have almost no tie to their actual meanings, which is why kanji teaching resources that use mnemonics fall apart pretty quickly. After being written with a chisel on turtle shells (called "oracle bone script"), imported to Japan 1500+ years ago, written 1,000,000s of times from people in prefectures miles away, and reformed numerous times, almost all of them lost their original pictographic quality. Just take a look at 働, 色, and 起. What do you think those mean? The answer is: to work, color, and to get up (in the sense of waking up).

Edit 2: Learn the stroke order for the kanji, since it makes them much easier to break down in the long run. For that matter, learn the radicals, or parts, of the kanji. There's a list here.


To clear up any more misconceptions, Japanese is not like Chinese in the sense that a character alone can be a verb. The kanji "起" doesn't mean "to wake up" on its own; only when you add the "き" and "る" hiragana does it turn into the verb. This is called "おくりがな" (okurigana). There are also many different readings for each character, unlike Chinese where there's usually only one or two. For example, the character "日" (day, sun) can be read ひ (or び), にち, or じつ. One kind of reading is called 音読み (onyomi), literally meaning "sound reading" because when the Japanese came into contact with the Chinese, they didn't yet have a writing system (their language was called "和語" (lit. "native Japanese language"). So, they "borrowed" their characters and transcribed the Chinese pronunciation based on their phonetic system. The other kind of reading is called 訓読み (kunyomi), which literally means "riverside reading". This type of reading is native to Japan and was prescribed to the kanji that corresponded with the meaning. On the more extreme side, some kanji can have 10+ readings. Don't sweat it though (心配ないよ！), as you'll learn all of these different readings through context in your vocabulary.

Now to bridge the gap between "beginner"-ish to "intermediate"-ish, use Tobira (which literally means "bridge"). The book assumes you to have a certain level of knowledge, some of which might overlap with Genki and other words/grammar that you may have to look up. It's an uphill battle, but you'll come out triumphant in the end.


On a side note, I'd recommend Jisho.org as your go-to online dictionary, even if some of the example sentences are riddled with errors. "Imiwa?" is a great Jp<->Eng dictionary for android and iOS. If you're really serious, then get "Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary".
Also check out /r/learnjapanese. There's a lot of great questions/resource links on there, and you can ask any questions you might have.


Duolingo has opened up alpha testers for its Japanese course as well. I'm so-so on the quality of Duolingo, since it doesn't even really teach you grammar, but just in case.

There are a lot of great resources posted up on the Kanji Koohii forums, which is where I found ヨミちゃん for Google Chrome.


To go further, read 4chan's /int/ guide.
Oh, and in case you didn't know, stay away from Rosetta Stone!!

Native Material

After Genki II, give a go at よつばと！ (Yotsuba!), a simple children's manga with furigana, which is kana above the kanji (intended for little kids). There's quite a bit of slang in it, and almost always uses the casual form. Even in a simple manga like Yotsuba, there will still be words and advanced grammatical constructs you haven't even touched yet. You can get the "Yotsuba Learning Pack", which consists of an Anki deck and vocabulary list here.


You can practice speaking with native speakers on a wonderful app called HelloTalk (available for apple and android). It's pretty great.


There's also iTalki, where you can write journal entries in your target language (so you can do this for Italian too) and have them be corrected by native speakers. You can also correct journal entries in English.

About the JLPT

The "Japanese Language Proficiency Test [Number X]", commonly referred to as "JLPT N[X]", is the standard Japanese test. N1 (Number 1) is the highest and most advanced, while N5 is the most basic. You can see how ready you are for each one here. Honestly, N5 and N4 are so easy, they're really not worth the money you have to pay to take it. N3 is a good warm up to N2. Passing N2 will look pretty damn good on any business related Japanese job. I wouldn't worry about these tests until a good way into your studies.

Conclusion

While Japanese might not be the easiest language for an English speaker to learn (far from it, it in fact), and quite daunting due to the scores of kanji you're required to learn, the rewards are numerous. For one thing, you get 130,000,000 more people to converse with on this planet. You're also opened up to the world of anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese cartoons), and the original language of the haiku (俳句). Not only that, but you're also introduced to the literature world Haruki Murakami and other such Japanese writers. Most importantly, you should enjoy it. After all, nobody who doesn't enjoy learning something gets very far into it. If you ever feel incredibly discouraged, take a break for as long as you need. Revisit the material when you feel ready. Never study something if it pains you to do so. PM me if you have any more questions.

Just to give you a benchmark, the words you listed are ones I would consider low-intermediate level. Think about what age American children learn words like 'smile' and 'art museum'. Then think about the English vocabulary you learned in middle and high school - I would consider those 'high intermediate' and 'low-mid advanced' respectively. I would guess that your grammar is pretty close to the same level, maybe a bit higher, compared with your vocabulary. Also, It's easy to overestimate how much we understand when listening or reading in the target language. Try translating what you hear in real time and you'll get an idea of where you are. If you really want to be sure, take a practice TOPIK test and see how it turns out.

The reason I tell you this is to try to give you a realistic outlook about your level and give you an idea about what kind of resources you might look into.

If you're enjoying TTMIK and it's not too boring, I would definitely keep up with that. You'll breeze through the beginner stuff and correct any small errors along the way, and then be able to slow down once you get to stuff closer to your level. Generally their material is really natural, accurate, and useful. I would give anything for a resource like that in Romanian or Finnish ㅠㅠ

I also recommend the Korean Grammar In Use series to brush up on grammar. It's easy to use and effective. I suggest starting with the beginning level just because that's my preference as a language learner and as an ESL teacher - review almost never hurts, and can help a lot, filling in gaps and increasing fluency and confidence.

For other textbooks I recommend:

• the Korean Made Easy series, although this will be majority review for you (you might just want to check out the intermediate book if you're in a rush)
  
• the Practical Korean series by Cho Hang-rok, published by Darakwon (make sure you get the right book series - there are several called "Practical Korean" by other authors). You could probably get away with starting at Basic 2 if you like, although of course you know my position on review. ;)
  
• The Integrated Korean series is written for university students and can be pretty dry at points, but it's definitely the most comprehensive curriculum I've found and will make a big difference for you. I recommend starting at the beginning levels because there will certainly be a lot you haven't been exposed to.
  
  So that's grammar, usage, and guided practice covered. As far as vocabulary, I can't recommend using a flashcard service enough. I really like iKnow because I can create my own courses and I like how it quizzes you on audio, reading, spelling, you name it. I haven't looked at many other options though so you may want to investigate. I strongly recommend inputting every single unknown word you come across in your Korean study into this program and using it as often as you can (daily if possible). Listening to the news, reading practice, etc. are also valuable but you don't need to include vocab from that yet unless it's a word you're particularly interested in for whatever reason. Once you're at the advanced stage where you're comfortably reading newspapers, textbooks, etc. I would start in with that kind of advanced vocab study. Also, starting now, consider using it for grammar/sentence practice and not just vocabulary - sometimes I find that's the best way to drill new constructions into my head, although it can be a bit time-consuming.
  
  Unlike the majority of language teachers it seems, I do NOT recommend trying to be more productive with the language than your level allows. Writing when you're not sure of the correct grammar or vocab, forcing yourself to speak, etc. is not the best path to increasing skill or fluency - only familiarity and drilling are. That said, it's definitely not useless, and you should try to practice when you're with native speakers. But I would recommend against putting too much emphasis on that. The epidemic of Koreans who can pass English tests but not speak is not due to lack of practice, as is common belief there, but more due to the fact that the majority of their English study is geared toward multiple choice tests and very narrow language use rather than natural language. You can tell that's true because they also have trouble understanding TV/movies, reading novels, etc. in English. As a native English speaker and ESL teacher with a degree in linguistics, I would not be able to get a perfect score on their English exams. So don't believe the myth that "conversation practice" is an essential component to fluency - it's valuable, but not the main component.
  
  Once you get through TTMIK and the textbooks I listed, and have made vocabulary practice a regular part of your life, you should be at least a low-advanced level, which is likely more than enough to communicate most things in your daily life with family etc. In the meantime you can also practice translating songs, young adult novels, etc. from Korean into English. Once you've reached the advanced level I would recommend investing more in your conversational skills, perhaps hiring a tutor, doing a language exchange, taking a trip, etc. as well as doing some of the TOPIK textbooks (just an example; haven't tried that one) and doing more advanced vocabulary.
  
  OH! And as for slang and independent vocabulary work, spend some time playing around with endic.naver.com. Probably the best source for natural language, although of course there are still some errors and mistranslations. But for the most part that will be your best bet.
  
  I really hope this has been helpful for you! If you have any other questions or would like any other advice just let me know. :)

I wrote a PM to someone yesterday who essentially asked me the same question. It may not apply to you exactly, since I wrote it for someone else, but I think it will help you regardless. Here it is:

I'm assuming you're studying by yourself, so most of my advice is geared toward that. However, if you actually are taking a class, or decide to take a class in the future, my advice will still be valid. Also, if you use an instant messaging program of some sort (AIM, MSN, Skype, Steam, whatever), please add me and I can help you in real-time rather than through private messages. I hope I'm not being creepy by repeatedly asking this, but I honestly love talking to people in and about Japanese!

Where are you learning grammar? When I started, I bought Genki I and used that for quite a long time. It has some problems, like teaching mostly the polite form and very little casual Japanese, and that example of poor explanation of grammar I posted earlier, but it's overall a great book for beginners. You can also find it for free at some places if you can't afford it, or want to try it out first. You only need the actual textbook if you do plan on buying it; the workbook isn't needed and the CD with listening exercises was really expensive, so I just downloaded that.

I also started using Tae Kim's grammar guide, a free online guide to Japanese grammar, about a month or two after I had started using Genki. It's not complete enough to learn solely from it, but what it does have is very well explained. The only drawbacks are the relatively small amount of examples for each individual grammar point, and no example exercises to check what you've learned.

You should, in my opinion, be learning katakana and hiragana simultaneously. Since each character directly correlates to another one, just like the English capital and lower case characters (though the usage is different, it's the same idea), it makes it easier to remember both. I highly recommend writing them out by hand. Writing something by hand helps with memorization via muscle memory and recall rather than just simple recognition, and I guarantee you that you will some day want to be able to write Japanese by hand, so you might as well get started with that on day one.

What I did to memorize kana was print out this Hiragana chart and this Katakana chart, courtesy of Wikipedia, and hung them up on the wall above my monitor. Then I would try to write down the five or so characters that I wanted to memorize that day a dozen or so times, spaced apart maybe 30 minutes to an hour. For example, let's say I wanted to learn あ い う え お... I would grab a notebook and look at the chart once for each character to see how to write it, then write that character a couple dozen times, and repeat this for all of the ones I wanted to learn that day. I would then go do something else for half an hour or whatever, long enough to have the shape of the character gone from short term memory, then try to write them all again without looking up how to write them. If I could successfully write them again, say, five times in a row without needing to look them up, I considered the character memorized and moved on. This took me maybe a week and a half to memorize both types of kana.

As for kanji... you should start on kanji immediately after getting down hiragana and katakana. It's a little difficult to explain how I studied kanji in the laggy environment of PMs, so I'll just point you toward the website I started off with (and am still using) to study kanji, located here.

>watch a few select animes (Death Note is freakin awesome!)

Anime is good for listening comprehension, but only if you watch it without English subtitles. I guarantee if you're watching it with subtitles, especially if you're only a beginner, you won't learn anything. You'll feel like you're learning stuff and maybe understanding it, but the second you turn off the subtitles and watch something you haven't seen before, you'll realize you're not actually learning or understanding anything. I know because I've been there myself.

You also need to be careful about what you learn from anime, because the characters in anime are, well, characters, and not real people. The guys use very masculine and aggressive speech, and the women use very feminine speech. That's actually yet another difference in Japanese from English! There are certain words and pieces of grammar that are masculine and feminine, and to use some of them makes you look more manly or girly or whatever. Note that I'm not saying "You can't learn from anime!", because that's not true: You just need to actually understand what is being said so you don't end up saying something rude or weird.

If you end up contacting me via an instant messenger, I can even give you a couple basic grammar lessons to help you start off. I absolutely love the language: I enjoy learning it, I enjoy speaking to anyone in it, regardless of skill level, and I enjoy teaching what I already know to those who may not know it yet.

がんばってください！

I didn't mention it in the PM, but another great way to practice is manga. One of my favorite manga for this purpose is 「よつばと」 (yotsuba to; often translated as Yotsuba&), for several reasons: It uses very simple but realistic, every-day Japanese, has furigana, and most importantly is actually good; I would read it even if it had nothing to do with Japan because it's honestly a really, really good manga.

Hi (or should I say こんにちは?),

I'm an American took Japanese for a year in middle school, 4 years in high school, and around 2 years in college. I've also been to Japan but never lived there. I haven't kept up with my Japanese and as a result have started to forget a lot. I'd be a terrible conversation partner but I can give you some advice as to where to get started.

One of the main issues beginners have with learning Japanese is that the letters look all crazy and you can't even sound it out if you wanted to. You may have heard something like "Japanese has 4 alphabets" which is only partially true.

I highly recommend you start by learning the letters, make yourself some flash cards either with index cards or digital, and start coming up with pneumonic devices to remember them. There are plenty of resources out there that teach you the basics as if you're a kindergartener but don't let that discourage you, you are just learning the letters after all, its ok to be a kindergartener for a bit.

The first "alphabet" you'll want to memorize is Hiragana. It's what I used up above to write hello and it's the letter system the Japanese use for Japanese words. There are a few exceptions but for the most part if the word is Japanese, you write it in hiragana, at least when you're first learning. Every letter is a syllable so the first letter あ (a) is prounounced "ah" whenever you see it. い (i) is not pronounced "eye" but more like the English letter "e". お (o) is pronounced "oh" so if you put these together あおい - aoi is pronounced "ah-oh-ee"

The next set of letters to learn is Katakana. Its the same exact syllables as hiragana but the shapes look different. That is to say the same letter is still a prounounced "ah" but instead of あ it now looks like ア. Katakana tends to have more straight lines and jagged curves. This is the alphabet the Japanese use to write non-Japanese words. For example America or hamburger are both words borrowed from somewhere besides Japan and therefore would be written in Katakana. America is written アメリカ with the letters a, me, ri, ka, and pronounced "ah-meh-ri-ka" with 4 distinct syllables.

Those are the 2 main letter systems you'll be writing with when you first start. The other two are romaji and kanji. Romaji is simply writing Japanese syllables with English (latin) lettering. So あおい is written aoi and アメリカ is amerika. The trick to romaji is remembering to pronounce it in Japanese syllables, not how it would sound in English. Amerika looks like it could be pronounced the same as America to an English speaker but you need to make the ah, meh, ri, and ka distinct. You wont use romaji too much in actual writing but it will help you remember the pronunciations when first learning and it is used for typing Japanese on standard qwerty keyboards.


The last "alphabet" is not really an alphabet at all. It's called Kanji and it is extremely discouraging to your starting Japanese student. Borrowed almost entirely from Chinese Kanji is a series of literally thousands of characters that can make up entire words or parts of words. The nice thing about Kanji is that it uses many repeating parts called radicals from one character to the next and once you learn the most used pieces it becomes easier to recognize. The problem is that you can't sound them out if you've never seen one particular Kanji before and for very early beginners it is difficult to look up.

Kanji will often be mixed with other Kanji or hiragana to create a full word. For example 青い is "aoi" from above, same exact word but by writing the Kanji it saves a character and space. It may seem like much more work for 1 character of saving but kanji can sometimes represent several syllables and long words can be shortened into just 2 or 3 spaces. As a result many newspapers and comics heavily rely on Kanji and can be frustrating for beginners. Most Japanese classes will first get you comfortable with everything above before starting on Kanji and then only introduce the most basic ones a few at a time until you get the hang of them.

Just a couple pieces of miscellaneous advice:

1. First learn hiragana and katakana and don't worry about vocab until you've got a pretty good grasp on it. Do worry about pronunciation though. It can seem weird at the very start but it's better to get it right at the start than to have to break a bad habit later ("e" is pronounced "eh" not "ee" and "u" is "ooo" not "you")
   
   
2. For the most part hiragana and katakana pronunciation follows the same 5 vowel sounds. If you were reading off the alphabet it would sound like this "ah ee oo eh oh / kah kee koo keh koh / tah chi tsu teh toh / mah mee moo meh moh" etc.. notice how in the "tah" line what would be "tee" is now "chi" and what would be "too" is "tsu". That's one of the few exceptions but any decent hiragana guide will cover things like that. Also I was not writing in romaji there, I was just writing how the letters actually sound"
   
   
3. Don't let this massive guide get you down. Honestly you could learn hiragana and katakana in an evening if you crack down on it and in a week if you just look at it for a bit every day. From there you can start to work on vocabulary and grammar. The only thing that really makes Japanese hard is the letters and once you have the basics its really not that bad.
   
   
4. A lot of books, especially children's books or comics will have little hiragana letters over the kanji to help you learn or continue reading if you don't know the kanji. Once you get a decent grasp at grammar don't be afraid to muscle your way through a kid's book or two to get a feel for things. No one expects you to be able to fly through it but with a dictionary by your side and a notebook for translating its really fun to work your way through something like that. I wouldn't worry about that for a bit though.
   
   
5. Since I was taught in a classroom I don't know too much about learning online. I do know there are a ton of resources online if you know what to search for "romaji to hiragana, kanji dictionary, etc". I do know that it helps to have someone who speaks it work on your pronunciation, maybe live mocha could help there. I'd avoid using anime for pronunciation advice because you'll end up with the voice and mannerisms of a cartoon character. :)
   
   
6. The book my university used for people who didn't speak a single word of Japanese was Genki and I highly recommend it. It has a lot of English in it and works you through basics of grammar and vocab at a good rate. Plus it has a mini dictionary in the back of words it teaches you and a hiragana and katakana chart which is handy to have in a physical format. If you do like the book they have several more in the series that gets you to fairly advanced stuff in an easy way.
   
   Sorry about the wall of text but I hope it helps point you in the right direction. If you have any questions feel free to PM me and if anyone who speaks Japanese has better advice let me know! Like I mentioned at the top I've started to forget a lot from not using it and I've never taught it so maybe there are better resources out there. Good luck and have fun!

Edit: Apparently I had nothing better to do than this evening, so here's a wall of text. Hope it's useful for you.

EditII: Didn't expect so many people to look at this, either.. so I'll say: this isn't an in depth zero-to-hero guide for Japanese, this is just a tidy gathering of the path I took to learn Japanese to my current level (minus a few textbooks), which is definitely still very far from fluent. I'm personally learning Japanese for its literature, and the vast majority of what I did was aimed at getting into books as fast as possible (cough Heisig cough) -- if you don't care about reading, I'll be the first to say that a lot of what's here might not be interesting to you. Google around and see if my suggestions fit your learning style or not. Japanese is weird in that there are literally resources for everything, so I'm sure there's something that fits you.

EditIII: Just wanted to link the DJTguide, a library of tons of resources organized into different skills and stuff. If you don't like my suggestions, I'd personally start here to find something else.

intro -- textbook stuff -- post-textbook stuff -- tutoring -- loose timeline

I have lived in Japan (for school) for two years, speaking nothing before I arrived (fully intended on going to Spain instead lol)...and am now somewhere between N2/N1, which is the level of fluency required to work with Japanese businesses/join a Japanese-conducted program. At this point no conversation is a problem, I can read modern literature for enjoyment (older stuff literally employed a partially different language and requires its own study), and follow movies/comedy shows/anime without subtitles if I'm pay attention.

I didn't try nearly as hard as I could have, so I honestly think you could reach my level of "fluency" if you make a religion of it -- a research student at my university came speaking nothing one year ago and now speaks notably better than I do across the board (on behalf of being forced to communicate with people for like 12 hours a day). Granted, you don't have the luxury of multiple Japanese people needing to communicate with you in order to do their job, and thus adjusting their language to your level to communicate with you all day every day... but I still think you can learn enough in a year to thoroughly enjoy yourself, at the very least.

Here's how I'd do that.

Textbook Stuff

1. Read The Kanji -- don't use this for kanji. Make a free account, use it to learn the Hiragana and Katakana (two of Japanese's three alphabet systems; 48 characters each and phonetic. One is for Japanese-origin words, the other is for loan words and other random things). It just throws flash cards at you with each of the symbols; you can probably commit them to memory in a few hours. It's okay if you forget a few or several or even most of them at first; you're going to see these things so often that they'll be impossible to forget before long. We're just shooting to prime your passive memory so that you'll see a word written, have your curiosity irked, and be able to work it out, connecting that forgotten information to more and more recent memories to help remember them. Plus, this is a model for your year as a whole -- contextually acquiring passive understanding that stretches your boundaries, then diving back inwards and working to solidify passive knowledge that has become useful for your current situation or will allow you to express something you want to express currently, into knowledge that gradually becomes active.
   
   
2. Buy Genki I, its workbook, Genki II, and its workbook. This will walk you from knowing absolutely no Japanese at the beginning of Genki I, and while mileage varies, I was personally able to make sense of ShiroKuma Cafe (see the link in the next section) upon completing Genki II. I'm currently taking the first "advanced" level Japanese course at my uni, meaning that I have had the opportunity to talk with other "advanced" (apostraphes meaning take with a grain of salt, looking at myself) learners about how they learned Japanese, and the Genki series is by and large the crowd favorite.
   
   
3. Buy Heisig, or you can probably find a version somewhere on the interwebs....... make an account at Kanji Koohii (a site where people work together progressing through Heisig, mainly by sharing the mneumonics they make for the kanji), and otherwise follow the instructions on Nihongo Shark's Blog. He suggests to completely put learning Japanese on hold till you finish the 2200 Kanji in this deck in 97 days, but I think that's ambitious as is, and eats too much of your year up. So I personally would say learn 15 a day, every day, until you finish -- that will have you finishing in around 5 months, you'll be on target with the 6 months I'm plotting out for Genki I + II even if you miss a few days. (see below).
   
   
4. Others might disagree and you can make up your own mind, but I personally think learning the Kanji is essential. They take time to learn at first, but repay you dividends later on when you accumulate vocabulary basically without thinking, passively, by reading or watching subtitled shows. Plus, any resource you'll use past the beginner stage will require kanji.. meaning if you don't learn them, you can't use these resources, and gimp yourself down the road. They're incredibly logical and like legos; the resources in #3 basically talk about the most efficient way to build things out of those legos (to help remember what each lego is). Also look into Moonwalks with Einstein if you'reinterested in memory in general. The thing about Kanji is that they unlock Japanese, as every single Kanji has a unique meaning, and Japanese words are basically simple definitions of themselves. Take fire extinguisher, for example: 消火器。It literally means extinguish-fire-utensil/tool. Good luck understanding a random word like that in any other language at first sight, but it's easy in Japanese, and the vast majority of Japanese words are exactly like this. Learning the Kanji allows you to take a word you've never seen before, instantly have a reliable guess as to what it means... and depending on your familiarity with the Kanji, maybe even how to read it. This happens to a lesser extent in conversation, also. Kanji are a new system of logic, but once you adjust to it, it's pure magic -- eventually, you sort of stop needing to study vocabulary, because you can just read and passive understand most any word (which you'll eventually work into your active vocabulary). I talk about "The First 2000 Words" in #5, and basically, words give you diminishing returns -- they're a lot of bang for your buck at first.. but past 6,000, 10,000, 20,000 ... learning 10 or 100 or even 1,000 new words might not give you noticeable improvement.
   
   
5. This anki deck is Genki in Example Sentences; pace your daily reviews so that you'll be going in time with your progression through chapters in the book. I really, really wanted to link you The Core 2k(the first 2000 most frequent words of Japanese) because I really liked it and the first 2000 words make up a significant majority of daily conversations (we repeat a lot of the same things over and over, the same bread and butter structures, laced and spiced with more rare nouns, then descriptive words, and the occasional verb)......... but I also think that context is the biggest key when it comes to language learning, and the 2k doesn't have that for you right now. It's eventually going to outpace your Kanji studies (if I'm recalling how I studied accurately), and more importantly, the word order does not follow Genki. You're going to be spending a lot of time with Genki for 6 months, the pace that I want you to complete these words in. You're already going to be stretched thin, so I guess I'm going to recommend you take that Genki deck and use it as a supplement to help you get more out of Genki -- it looks like it's going to take, on average, ~25 cards per day. I don't know if that's ideal, but then again, I stuck with Genki until I finished Genki (no other resources, began Hesig - also below - about 2/3 of the way through), and I began watching Shirokuma Cafe (below) immediately after Genki II, able to (at first, painfully) understand it... and I think I'm just a normal dude, if you're also a normal dude -- or, better, a better than average dude -- I guess Shirokuma should be good for you, too, after Genki II and this Genki Deck.

Writing and reading kind of come in the same package if you need to learn the Kanji. As Kiruwa said, spoken or written first doesn't have an answer because everybody is different. But here are some general suggestions...

1. Learn the Kana first and foremost. I can't stress how important this is, because the sooner you start learning Japanese in Japanese the better off you'll be later down the road. Learning the Kana is easy and can be done in anywhere between a day or 2 to a week. But really get Hiragana down with utmost haste.
   
   
2. Once you have a basis in reading the Kana, start up an Anki deck (or any Spaced Repetition System). If you search a bit, you should be able to find the Core2k and Core6k which are some great decks to work towards. I'm not too familiar with working with the Core decks, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here that are so ask around.
   
   
3. If you want to go the free route, Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide is an excellent free e-book on Japanese grammar. Their iPhone and iPad apps are excellent and work extremely well, too. This would be a good place to possibly start learning your way around Japanese grammar. If you want to go down the textbook route, I'd suggest the sort of tried-and-true Genki method. I use these textbooks in my Japanese University class and, while I'm not the biggest fan of them, they're pretty good textbooks for learning the material. Pick up Genki I, the Genki I Workbook, and the Genki Answer Key at your favorite online bookstore.
   
   
4. Once you've got a good foundation with the above three (in the case of my University class my professor started after the first semester, or 6 lessons into Genki) I'd say it's time to start learning some Kanji. If you're going down the self-studying route, I, like many others, highly recommend Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. Start with Vol. 1 and don't use any other method of learning the Kanji. Use it in conjunction with Reviewing the Kanji site and you'll have a great foundation after a while of work.
   
   
5. Practice, practice, practice. That's all I can really say. Immerse yourself in the material, don't give up, and go for it. It's really hard work and incredibly daunting. I'm only a little more than a year into my studies and the further I get the more I realize I don't understand. That said, I keep pushing myself to see if I can't get a little further and when I look back to what I knew a year ago and what I know today, I couldn't possibly imagine even knowing this much. This isn't going to be a quick process, but years upon years of studying.
   
   But enough of the prep talk. Good luck and if you ever need help, /r/LearnJapanese is a great place to ask! :)
   
   *Of course, all opinions expressed here are my own and may or may not be conclusive for your learning.

The first thing I'd recommend doing is learning ひらがな(Hiragana). Hiragana is one of the three alphabet systems in Japanese. It's made up of 46 separate characters and is used primarily for native words and grammar. You need to be able to read hiragana to actually start learning Japanese. This may seem like it's super hard but it's not actually that bad. I recommend printing worksheets and writing them by hand to start with. After that I'd recommend using flash cards or online/mobile testing programs to drill them in. Hiragana will allow you to read and pronounce most Japanese text (though there are exceptions for particles which you'll learn later on).

I would recommend getting a textbook: Genki is often recommended and you can either buy it on Amazon or find a digital copy floating around somewhere. After that you just need to start working through the textbook. Somewhere in this process you should also pick Katakana, which is used for foreign words mainly. This can be learned in the same way you did Hiragana.

The hardest part about learning Japanese is definitely kanji. Kanji are the (mostly) Chinese characters used for words in Japanese. There are thousands of them and this is where a lot of learners burn out. The important part is to take them slowly and I'd recommend not starting kanji for a little bit anyways just because it's a little overwhelming. That being said, I'd recommend learning kanji with vocabulary. There are flash card sets meant for this using Anki, a flash card program. You don't have to worry about that for a while, though.

This may seem overwhelming at first, but all new languages are, especially one as far from English as Japanese is. The important thing is to take it slow at first so you don't burn yourself out. Languages are learned over long periods of time, not overnight and that's important to keep in mind. Just set yourself a small goal to start and work on completing that, the rest will come in time.

 

Here are some resources you might find helpful:

• Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese - really good resource for explaining grammar, has lots of examples
  
• Jisho.org - Japanese -> English and Kanji dictionary
  
• Pretty much everything here
  
• /r/LearnJapanese - Good for questions and finding resources
  
   
  
  Well, that's all the procrastination I think I can handle from writing this right now. Ending up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. Hope it helps you find where to start. Feel free to ask any questions and message me for help anytime. Good luck with your goals and happy New Years!
  
  がんばって！(Good luck)
  

Hi! It's great that you want to learn Latin yourself - I was in a similar position not long ago, and can share my experience. Firstly, it's not going to be very easy, but it will be a lot of fun - learning Latin will teach you a lot about linguistics, history, and even English.

It seems to be a consensus at /r/latin that Wheelock's, while being a good textbook, teaches to translate, not to read. It focuses on rote memorization of grammar. Lingua Latina, on the other hand, focuses on reading comprehension and is considered by /r/latin users to be a superior learning method. It's based on the natural method: it is written completely in Latin, beginning with very simple phrases which speaker of any European language can understand, and slowly progresses further. To give you an idea, its first sentence is "Rōma in Italiā est". You can understand it easily, and you've already learned 4 words!

While Lingua Latina is a great textbook, I would advise getting some supplements to augment your studying process. All of them can be bought on amazon, or acquired by other means if you wish to cut your costs. Excercitia Latina, which follow Lingua Latina chapter by chapter, will give you enough practice to get a firm grip on each chapter's material. I would recommend not just filling the gaps in, but writing whole exercises out in a separate notebook - making the mechanical memory help you memorize words and grammatical structures. Latine Disco and Neumann's companion are useful companions, which will help you understand grammar introduced in each chapter of Lingua Latina (you only need one of them).

Finally, memorizing words is necessary with any language, and Latin is no exception. Some students find Lingua Latina's method to be sufficient for spaced repetition of new words, but it wasn't enough for me. I used anki, a spaced repetition software based on flashcards, to study words. There is a Lingua Latina deck available for anki, divided into chapters: thus you can easily add words into your flashcard pool after completing every LL chapter.

I hope this helps! If you'll have any questions on the material, redditors on /r/latin are very nice and are always willing to help.
Good luck with your studies!

Valē, amīce!

I remember someone asking a similar question on /r/languagelearning, these are the resources I could come up with:


Vocab:

• This is a good memrise course, with audio and everything
  
  
• Quizlet is also a great resource, you can just search "swedish vocab" and get a ton of sets.
  
  
• There's also Anki, but I haven't been able to find a good deck with audio.
  
  
  Grammar:
  
  
• If you're willing to spend $11.72, I couldn't recommend this book more. It's probably the single most useful resource I own for learning Swedish.
  
  Other:
  
  
• You can get a virtual library card from the Malmö public library, and check out up to 2 e-books a week with it. They have a ton of Swedish children's books that are really useful for practice. If you're interested, I can post the link and instructions.
  
  
• This is a free text-based course from the Stockholm School of Economics that's pretty good. You can download the file on that website.
  
  
• Rosetta Stone Swedish is a really good way to get a strong foundation in Swedish. I personally wouldn't spend that much money, but you don't necessarily have to...if you know what I mean.
  
  
• The Foreign Service Institute has a ton of courses (pdf with audio) that are surprisingly good. They're all available to the public for free, and the audio makes it great for learning pronunciation. This is a link to the Swedish one.
  
  
• Once you get moderately far into learning the language, you can watch Swedish shows for free on SVT, which has Swedish subtitles so you can improve your pronunciation and get more comfortable with spoken Swedish. Unfortunately, there aren't English subtitles (that I've found) so that's why I recommend not going on until you know a bit more of the language.

You should probably just use Genki

It is possible to learn Japanese using only the internet and free sources, but it certainly makes things more difficult. The advantage of using a standardized textbook and traditional learning methods is that you get a solid foundation, both in the sense that it gets you started on the right foot, but also in that it teaches you what sort of things you need to learn in the first place.

I highly recommend you try getting and using Genki. See if it is available from your local library, for example.

Yes, it is possible to learn Japanese using just free resources found on the internet.

These days, everything you could possibly want for learning Japanese exists on the internet right now.

If you learn how to use Anki (the best and most popular free flashcard program) you can get SRS flashcards without paying for a fancy website. TextFugu's free lessons will get you started with using Anki while at the same time teach you hiragana and katakana (the two syllabaries used in Japanese).

If you use Tae Kim's grammar guide and other online sources, you technically don't need a textbook. Imabi is another website similar to Tae Kim that people like. Duolingo might even be worth your time, assuming you utilize the discussion forums and that community to make sure you understand the grammar which is poorly taught by the app.

If you use HelloTalk, iTalki, and HiNative you can interact with Japanese people who'll help correct your compositions, and that could potentially lead to language exchange friendships where you Skype and practice conversation.

You can find free reading material online for practice, both by nature of the entire Japanese internet being at your fingertips, but also due to free websites like NHK Easy News and Watanoc.

You can assess your skills without ever paying for a standardized test by using the J-Cat.

You can find communities of fellow learners here on /r/LearnJapanese (we've got some good guides in the sidebar, btw), on the Japanese Language Stack Exchange, and /jp/'s Daily Japanese Thread (they've got a good guide for getting started over there).

That's very sweet of you; I'm glad you liked the music! Rossini is one of my favourite composers. If you've never seen all of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, it's so much fun. Donizetti's great too and in a similar style; here's an aria.

Italian will help you somewhat, and honestly, if you have a good English vocabulary, that will help you a lot too; no other languages necessary. Regardless of how you do it, it's going to require a pretty big time commitment. I majored in Latin, have been studying it for six years, and in fact I placed first in a Canada-wide competition for third- and fourth-year undergraduates in translating a previously unseen passage, and I still read Latin a fair bit slower than English. I can certainly testify to the utility of reading ancient texts in the original, though. I had a bit of an epiphany in fourth year when I was reading Plato's Phaedo (not written in Latin, I know, but it still applies). There was one point where I was interested in how different translators interpreted a particular passage, and when I compared four or five different translations, I couldn't help but notice how different each of them was from the others. It made me realize how much interpretive work goes into a translation, and it made me happy that my studies were enabling me to make those sorts of judgements myself.

If you do decide to tackle Latin, I can recommend two series to start you out that you could choose one of, depending on what kind of approach you like. In my university, we used a very grammar-based textbook called Wheelock's Latin. It covers almost all the important grammatical concepts necessary to read genuine Latin, and includes towards the end unedited passages of real Roman writing. The downside of the book is that it encourages a deciphering kind of approach, rather than learning to be comfortable with the language first.

The other, more welcoming approach is the one taken by the Cambridge Latin Course. I will note that I haven't used the textbooks myself, but I know it's extremely popular in high schools. Those books try to get students reading right away and gradually increase the difficulty and introduce grammatical concepts along the way. It's more like a modern language textbook. There are three or four books in the series. I suspect that these books would be better for an amateur learner than Wheelock.

If I were you, I'd see if I could take a look at both those textbook series before buying anything of them. Some copies might be in a nearby university library or a high school that offers Latin.

After textbooks, good first authors to read in actual Latin, depending on your interests, are Catullus's poems, Phaedrus's adaptations of Aesop's fables, Julius Caesar's accounts of his campaigns in the Gallic and Civil Wars, Cicero's letters and speeches, or bits of Ovid's Metamorphoses or Ars Amatoria.

If you get past the textbooks and are reading real texts, you'll need a dictionary. This and [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Cassells-Latin-Dictionary-Latin-English-English-Latin/dp/0025225804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347668490&sr=8-1&keywords=latin+dictionary) are good choices. Anything by James Morwood, like this, is not. Having some kind of grammatical reference is essential as well. Woodcock's Latin Syntax is my favourite for its excellent explanations and its great readability, in spite of its thoroughness.

Edit: Huh, this got quite long. Sorry about that. Anyway, don't feel pressured or intimidated by the length of this. I just listed a few things in case you decide to give Latin a shot.

There are plenty of good resources out there, so there's no one best option. So, try what you can, see what jives with you, and then stick with it.

Anyway, here are the resources I used and liked:

1. Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course. I haven't tried RTK, but I went with this one because I liked the approach. It orders the Kanji taking into account frequency, but also introducing "graphemes" one at a time, and the mnemonics were mostly etymologically accurate. Both it and RTK include all the Jouyou kanji, but KKLC includes a few more (total 2,300) by adding in some common non-Jouyou kanji that are still handy to know.
   
   I used this to quickly go through all the important kanji and their meanings. I neglected readings, but I think it was worth it, since now I can recognize characters more confidently, and pick up readings in context with vocabulary.
   
   Unfortunately it's currently unavailable via Amazon, but the item listing lets you preview the book. Use that to see if you like it. Alternatively, see if you can find it at a local bookstore so you can page through it (I bought mine at Barnes & Noble), or check your local library (which may be able to order it if you ask for it). You can also use those methods to preview other books, like RTK.
   
   
2. KanjiStudy. It's an app for Android (and iPhone, but last I checked, that version is considerably behind). Great for quizzes and writing practice, and it supports grouping the kanji by whatever order you want, be it KKLC, RTK, Japanese grade levels, etc. $10 and super worth it (again, at least on Android), but you can try it for free to access the kana, radicals, and one "level" of Kanji for each learning order. The only think it's missing is a spaced repetition system, but that's coming eventually.
   
   
3. WaniKani. I like it as a convenient supplement to keep me studying kanji regularly. You can get many of the same features with an Anki deck, so it's up to you if it's worth the convenience, style, and audio samples. The mnemonics have improved, but are still way too goofy for me, but that's what I have KKLC for anyway. There's a free trial, so it's worth checking out. Plus the people running the site and the community seem cool. Also, it includes vocabulary, which is nice, and has an API to integrate with other apps, like BunPro and SatoriReader, which can add a little value.

Most people are going to recommend you use some sort of SRS (spaced repetition system) to effectively learn the vast amounts of information you need to memorize. Many recommend Anki (it's my preferred flash card/srs app) but there are others out there. Here's the link to the manual (https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual.html#introduction). It obviously explains Anki specific functionality, but it describes the use and purpose of an SRS system and why it's proven to be effective for memorizing information.

As for learning Kanji, this is the most challenging part of learning Japanese. You're gonna want to use some structured learning material which will help you understand what radicals are and how the factor into building individual Kanji. I personally use James Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" and its sister learning site Koohii (https://kanji.koohii.com/study) to create mnemonics for the Kanji and learn to memorize them. I then make my own flashcards in Anki and practice them when they come up on the app.

I've seen others recommend Kodansha (https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268), but I've never used it so I can't speak to its quality. From what I've heard though it might honestly be preferred to Heisig's stuff cause his mnemonics can seem pretty strange or outdated (which is why I get most of mine from the top upvoted ones on koohii).

You're gonna want an english to japanese dictionary. For that I use jisho (https://jisho.org/). You can search for words in english, romanji, kana, and kanji and you'll find definitions, related words, pronunciations etc. It's incredibly helpful.

I don't know about a discord server but I'd be interested in something like that as well.

It takes a lot of time and dedication, and for most people the payoff will only be achieved after years of learning, but it's definitely doable, and learning can be very fun in and of itself. There's a very satisfying feeling to go from looking at Japanese and seeing it as alien characters, to being able to read a sentence that once just looked like scribbles.

More than likely the light novels (7 and 8) will be officially translated by the time you're able to read the untranslated version.

If you still want to learn Japanese though, my best advice is to search around on your own and see what works for you. What I've found works for me has been:

Free Stuff:

First memorize Hirigana and Katakana (Japanese has three alphabets - Hirigana, Katakana (for loan words), and Kanji. Hirigana and Katakana are close to the English alphabet while Kanji is more like pictograms (for example, eye <3 u)). Write them in the margins of notes your taking, buy a set of post-it notes and write down the hirigana and katakana tables every hour or so, and you'll learn it in a few days Certainly less than a week.

For kanji, wanikani (https://www.wanikani.com/dashboard) is a good idea to get started on early (it's slow going at least at first, but a nice review tool - learn the kanji and example phrases on your own if it's too slow). (edit: Actually $10 per month after the first three levels (~1 month to complete first three levels). edit 2: There's a coupon for 50% off forever floating around though.)

Other than that, there are pdfs of the textbook Genki I (link to amazon) floating around (or you could pay $80ish for the textbook and workbook). This is the textbook the majority of people use, and it's basically your standard textbook. The stories of Mary and Takashi are awesome though and pretty fun to follow.

Learning a language requires you to learn a whole host of new grammar rules (Japanese has a good chunk with no equivalent in English) and thousands upon thousands of vocabulary. Tae Kim's Grammar Guide is typically pointed to for those who want to learn the grammar quickly, or have a resource to look at as you encounter new grammar.

Youtube videos. Puni-Puni, and others are quick to watch and really good review.

Watch anime, read manga! It's either very low-cost, or free, and exposes you to the language. You can hear or read the grammar structures your learning about, or see kanji in action. Likely since most are geared towards japanese middle-school-age to high-school-age students you won't be able to understand the vast majority of what you read or hear (without subtitles or translations), but you'll be able to get the gist of it. Here's a youtube channel that takes a sentence or two from currently-airing or recent anime and breaks it down. Also, here's a newer subreddit doing somewhat the same thing.

Lower cost stuff:

I used the workbook "Japanese Tutor" to get from the beginner to intermediate stage. It's $20 but was a very nice way to work my way through the beginner stage to intermediate.

Japanese Graded Readers is a great way to practice reading. They're kind of like scholastic books you would find at book fairs in elementary school. They don't use complex sentence structure or complex words (or complex kanji in japanese's case), and are designed for foreign language learners (so the topics are more adult, less "The dog ran. The cat ate. The bug couldn't swim."). I recommend you start at Level 1 since Level 0 is more about learning odd vocab. You can understand Level 1 books in about 2-3 weeks if you spend around 2 hours each day studying. You get 5 books (15-25 pages each - which is just enough so you don't get tired ever so slowly reading them) for $30.

High cost stuff:

Rosetta Stone is a nice way to learn vocabulary and practice hearing the language, but it's costly at $170-$200 (for all 3 levels - 150 hours). If you have a friend who can loan it to you to try out (or split the cost with) it's a really nice tool since it teaches vocabulary of objects you see in daily life, and you'll be able to look around your house or city and have a word for a good chunk of things.

I've been working on learning Japanese for a few years now! My focus comes and goes, and I understand far more than I can write/speak, but I'm getting there! Yes, I am an anime fan, and that's how my interest was sparked, but I love the sound of the language and the challenge of something without a Roman alphabet!

This book seems promising! And bonus! Awesome reviews. Kanji are so difficult to remember, and I've only ever been able to memorize about 20 of them before things start slipping away.

And this is one of my favourite songs. I was introduced to Hyde a long time ago by a good friend, and his voice has always been something I adore!

As for something funny... this has always frightened me with it's super happy intensity! It's one of those things that never fails to make me grin in response!

Hey!

For learning the Jouyou kanji, I used James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji volume 1 (and volume 3 for an extra ~1000 kanji). It requires a bit of re-thinking how one should go about learning these things:

Usually when learning kanji, people go in grade order, learning the English meaning of the kanji and memorizing all of the possible readings (for some kanji, you'll have two pronunciations -- for others, you can surpass 10 different pronunciations). I feel that this method is ridiculously inefficient, and Heisig agrees. With RtK1+3, you completely ignore the readings, learning only to write and recognize the kanji, as well as their English meanings. On top of that, you don't learn them in grade order, but rather in the order of the elements that make up those kanji (for example, these are taught to you in order: 口→日→刀→召→昭 ...and so on). Instead of being given a bunch of unrelated complex characters, you're given the building blocks, and then shown how to create the more complex kanji by being able to see them as just their individual parts (for example, 鬱, despite its 29-stroke-count, is super easy when you break it down).

As for actually remembering the kanji you learn, check out Reviewing the Kanji, a free web-based SRS specifically for use with Heisig's books.

A common argument against RtK is the fact that readings are totally disregarded; after all, you can't read Japanese if you can't read the kanji, right?? Of course. But the way we've usually gone about learning them isn't all that great. That's not to say it hasn't worked -- people have used it to success before -- but it's slow, inefficient, and prone to failure. Instead, once I'm able to write and recognize a good 2000+ kanji and can read ひらがな/カタカナ, I've got the ability to use everything I need to learn readings: a dictionary. When you're reading and you come across a word you don't know (say, 竜巻), simply look it up in the dictionary. The dictionary will have the reading right there for you (たつまき!).

Traditionally, people would look at 何 and memorize that it can be read なに, なん, て, が... and probably some more that I don't know. Then do this for every kanji they learn -- memorizing these lists of sounds. My thought is, though, even when you know all of the pronunciations for something... you still don't know which of those readings to use in a new word (the 何 in 如何体... the answer may surprise you!). So you're gonna have to look up the word; heck, you'll probably be looking it up anyway because you don't know the word! If that's the case, why not forget about memorizing these contextless sets of sounds and just look up words as they come? In that way, you naturally begin to pick up how kanji are read, in context.

Sorry for the novel of a comment, but I hope it makes sense. Getting through the kanji can seem like a huge, daunting task, and it takes longer than one might want, but if definitely doesn't take as long as one might fear! Find a pace that works for you -- I went through the first ~300 or so kanji of RtK1 at about 30 a day, but then bumped it down to 10 a day for the remainder of it and RtK3, and it was a glorious pace. Slow? Maybe. But I was making real, consistent progress, and it feels huge to reach the finish line. :) Hope this helps! Have fun!

Hey! I’m also 16, I’ve been learning Chinese for 3 years now and I absolutely love it!!!

Don’t know much about online courses, I was lucky enough to take it at my high school. We don’t usually use our chinese books, but if you want to start there, the type we sometimes go off from is Integrated Chinese: Simplified Characters Textbook, Level 1, Part 1 (English and Chinese Edition) but man, that price is ridiculous! I’m sure you can find some better ones at a book resale shop or even a local goodwill, I’ve found plenty of good chinese language related items at Goodwill’s near me, whether it be movies, informational stuff, or made for learning. It just depends on what you find, sometimes you can get stumble across some real treasures!

Sorry to go so far off topic, but yeah, my advice would be to start with whatever cheapest learning book you can find and then see how you like it. But I also can’t stand learning things on a computer, so that could also be personal preference. Sorry I’m not much of help!

I do like the site FluentU a lot, they post lots of helpful videos and I believe that have many more learning tools you can utilize!

Here’s a link on their list of best textbooks and from there you can scour the site for whatever else you can find.

Best of luck, and you can do it! 加油！Oh! BTW, you should download the Pleco app, as there’s a quite large consensus among Chinese learners and teachers alike, all attesting to the notion that it does wonders. It’s literally my Chinese Bible—as in, it is a Chinese dictionary. Much better than Google Translate, (although Translate can also be useful when used the right way and not as a crutch) and Pleco also gives helpful context clues and sentence examples to make things make more sense.

In my own opinion, grammar is the most important part of any textbook. How well a book explains a grammar point determines how well I like the book. There are 3 major areas of grammar that I look for: verb modification, particle usage, and how well the book explains 関係節 (using a verb/sentence to modify a noun: "The chair that he sat in")

I've looked at a few textbooks:

Yookoso (which has, apparently changed its cover...) is a sort of intense, high-density textbook that makes it a bit hard to look up grammar points. However, it is well written and has a lot of practice. It also only requires 2 books to "get the job done". The grammar explanations are short and don't really explain away the confusion, but it's FULL of practice. There isn't much translation in the book, so if you have a question... your screwed (unless you have a teacher with you). However, you probably won't have many questions while reading because the sentences kind of stay mundane.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": It explains it, gives good examples and practice, but the explanations are lacking depth. Good for learning the basics, bad for learning the specifics.

Nakama isn't really anything special.

Adventures in Japanese is a series of books that I'm using on my website to teach Japanese a little bit. However, I only chose this textbook because it is the book being used by the local high school, so my students are using it. The book isn't bad, but it teaches a lot of things that really don't need to be taught. Also, some of their explanations/translations are... less than accurate? -- I find myself saying "yes, this is right, but... Really it's this" too much to recommend this book. There is also a stunning lack of practice/guidance. It's NOT a self-study book, you NEED a teacher for it. The workbook for this book is nice, however, and would probably be good practice. The grammar points taught in this book are easily-referenceable.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Similar to Yookoso, however the practice is lacking. It's a textbook and a workbook rolled into one.

Ima! is a book that I kind of detest. When using it to teach, I found myself having to make my own materials in order to get the point across. It's a thin book without hardly any grammar explanations.

This book gets a 1 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". I hated using this book. A lot. It was just a glorified workbook.

Genki seemed pretty decent as far as a textbook went. It had plenty of practice, the grammar points were short, concise, and easy-to-reference. I would use it as a textbook in the future.

This book gets a 4.5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Great explanations and easily referenceable. It seems like a pretty good buy.

Japanese the Spoken Language is my bible. The grammar points are in-depth, effective, and incredibly well thought-out. If you want to know exactly how to use a grammar point, this textbook is the one you want. It is JAM-PACKED with practice that can be done completely solo. It also comes with audio cds that are worth a damn. When I want to know the difference between ～て、～たら、～れば、and ～すると, you can expect a great amount of explanation. The practice sentences in this book aren't just mundane sentences, either: the authors intentionally use weird examples in order to show the student the true meaning of a grammar point. That is, it doesn't just use "one-sentence examples", it uses "entire conversation contexts, and then weird 'breaks the rules' verbs to highlight how the grammar works"

HOWEVER- the language is dated - this book was written in the 80s (earlier?) and has never been updated; it uses a weird romanization system (zi = じ, tu = つ, ti = ち); is intended to teach the SPOKEN language (get Japanese: the WRITTEN language to learn how to write); and the grammar explanations are almost TOO long and convoluted (long and convoluted, but extremely insightful and specific).

This book gets a 5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". However, the grammar is SO well-explained that you might be a little confused trying to read it.

-------------

To teach the language, I would use Genki or Yookoso to get people off the ground, then move into JSL. Then the student should be more than ready to self-study and translate native materials.

• 1. The First 100 Japanese Kanji: A great first step into the world of kanji. Basic, but at first you just need something to help you dip your feet in the water.
     
• 2. Berlitz Essential Japanese: Better than I expected, by why bother with non-academic textbook if you're a serious learner?
     
• 3. Genki I: This was my real first foray into Japanese. Great series, especially for self-study. Holds your hand but covers a lot of territory. It helps to read it, then go back and read it again. I used the workbook on a few occasions, but not much. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 4. Genki II: The follow-up to Genki I. Goes into more complicated grammar. Again, a great book. I used JGram and Tae Kim's a lot to reinforce my learning with the Genki series. NOTE: The link is to the old version.
     
• 5. N3 Speed Master Series: I really liked these, however I didn't use them for long before moving on to N2 materials. It wasn't well edited, though, and some placeholder text was repeated a lot in the grammar book.
     
• 6. 合格できるN3: This is just practice problems. Really useful for the N3, though.
     
• 7.　絵で見てわかる 日本語表現文型 初中級: This was recommended by a friend. I love it because it was my transition into using primarily Japanese to study. It's a list of grammar points from high N4 to low N2 level, with related phrases lumped together. There are example dialogues and pictures along with a few sparse English notes. It's not perfect, though (some sentences don't give you a very good understanding of the grammar points).
  
• 8. Remembering the Kanji: I dropped WaniKani to study faster, and used RtK as my new curriculum. I used Reviewing the Kanji more than this book, though.
     
• 9. Shadowing: Let's Speak Japanese: Okay, so I only ever used the CD (not the book). Still it's great. I realized my listening was weak and conversation skills were even weaker so I found this. Starts slow, builds up. Funny and interesting. Transcribing the sentences helped my ear a lot.
     
• 10. 新完全マスターN2 Series: These are amazing for intermediate Japanese and preparing for the N2. The Kanji and vocab books are probably the weakest and least necessary. The others are essential for N2 study.
      
      I know there's been a few others but I can't think of them right now.

I can't speak much about teaching in Taiwan but there are lots of good opportunities and everyone I know who has done it absolutely loves it. I can comment however about learning Mandarin in Taiwan and other tidbits.

As a Computer Engineering graduate, Mandarin is the most useful language you could possibly learn so I highly recommend it. After teaching English and learning Mandarin for a while, you may want to consider using your Computer Engineering degree to help you get a job in Taiwan (at an English-speaking company) - everything in the PC industry goes through here so it could be some interesting experience.

As for learning Mandarin, definitely try to learn some before coming out but don't worry too much as you'll "re-learn" a lot when you're in Taiwan. Focus on learning the tones and learning to understand spoken Mandarin above all else so that you're ready to learn quickly when you land in Taiwan. Remember that you'll be learning Beijing Mandarin abroad and while Taiwan Mandarin is very similar but there are some "quirks." Also, remember that if you move to the South of Taiwan most people speak Taiwanese, not Mandarin, so you may want to be in the North if you're keen to learn Mandarin. Lastly, remember that you'll learn pinyin and simplified characters abroad but if you want to continue your studies in Taiwan you'll be learning with bopomo (ㄅㄆㄇ) and traditional characters.

If you have an iPod or iPhone, buy a copy of Pleco. This will come in very handy for learning but also for writing out any signs you come across. If you want to learn to read Traditional Characters, I can recommend this book: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0824833244. But honestly the best thing to do in advance of coming would be to set up some (Pleco/Mnemosync/Anki) flash cards with typical "menu words" and learn to read them. All the authentic restaurants have no English menu. :)

Send me a PM if you want any more info.

I appreciate the quick reply! Yeah, I'm looking at Genki at the moment. I'm wondering which is the best one to get? Is this version suitable? Does it have audio instruction or is it all text? I'm not opposed to text, but I benefit greatly from hearing the pronunciation and flow of things.

Like I said, I enjoyed Pimsleur; if anything it gave me a great jumping off point, I learned basic grammar through exposure, but as you mentioned it doesn't really branch out much, and I feel like most of the lessons have been condensed greatly. I should say I started learning the language out of genuine interest, but I'd love to have it as a career advancement tool in the future, so I'd love to find a good approach to learning the language that I can stick with that should hopefully dovetail with more advanced programs. I don't think my knowledge is advanced enough yet to start working with something like, say Tobira for example.

A few thoughts off the top of my head...

1. Spend as much time as you can listening to native speakers of the language. Watching Japanese shows, even with English subtitles, is going to really help your pronunciation, colloquial language use, etc. Even better would be conversing with native speakers, but that can be harder to arrange.
   
   
2. This is the textbook series my American university worked from. This is the textbook series my Japanese university worked from. It can be kind of confusing to switch series of books in the middle of learning, so I'd recommend picking one and sticking with it. Learn Japanese was great with a professor guiding me through, but Genki may be better for a solo learner. (Grain of salt: I am not familiar with the earlier Genki books.)
   
   
3. Japanese uses three writing styles: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The first two are both syllabaries, which are kind of like alphabets, only each "letter" stands for a mora (a syllable, more or less). For instance, what we would write in English as ka is expressed in hirigana as a single "letter." They also are used to represent the exact same set of sounds, and some of the "letters" in each syllabary look pretty similar to each other. You'll want to learn hiragana first, then katakana. If you're able to focus on your work, with lots of practice and flashcards, it shouldn't take you more than a month to learn all of them. Once you have the hiragana down, learn katakana. You'll probably find it goes much faster, since so many of the "letters" are similar. Next will come kanji, which are characters whose meaning and pronunciation can change based on context. You will eventually need to learn about 2,000 kanji to be functionally literate in Japanese, but don't panic; even in Japan, they spread the teaching of them over years. Whichever series of books you pick to learn from will introduce kanji to you gradually.
   
   
4. Once you learn to read hiragana, WWWJDIC is going to be your best friend. There are features to look up individual words, search for kanji, and perform text glossing of entire chunks of text. Dictionary entries include a ton of features, including example sentences, verb conjugations, and the ability to examine individual kanji in a word. Additionally awesome if you have an Android smartphone is the app, which comes with a kanji recognizer: you can draw out kanji you don't know, and it will give you its best guess. (Accuracy increases hugely if you're drawing the kanji with the correct number of strokes and stroke order, so the tool gets more useful once you've started learning kanji.) Note, however, that WWWJDIC is a dictionary, not a translation engine; it can give you a bunch of useful vocabulary, but it can't tell you how to use it to construct a sentence.
   
   Source: Japanese was my foreign language in college, which included a semester abroad in Tokyo.

It's like asking how long it will take to reach 1-dan, it varies so much depending on time commitment, motivation, personal ability and method. I'd expect it would take at least a couple years, though there are examples of people becoming somewhat fluent in 6 months, so anything is possible.

As for the best approach, you'll find lots of opinions. I think people are generally bad at remembering what it was like when they started learning and knew nothing, so all those "here's how I'd do it if I started all over again" are not always the best advice but I'll try to give you my version of it anyway:

• Start with a generic "learn Japanese" method, those won't take you very far but you have to start somewhere. Your first goals should be to get a feeling for how Japanese works, basic grammar, a few basic words and most importantly learn to read and write hiragana and katakana (the phonetic system used in Japanese writing). I recommend the Japanese in Mangaland series of books, but any other decent beginner method will do.
  
  
• In parallel get the JapanesePod101 podcasts. Those really helped me a lot, as I would listen to them every day and build listening ability. They start from the very beginning too. Continue listening to them, especially during the next step for motivation.
  
  
• Now this is going to be controversial but after doing introductory material for some time, if you're really committed to learning Japanese and be efficient at it, you have to bite the bullet and learn the Kanji (Chinese characters): all 2000+ of them that are in common use. Fortunately that isn't that hard if you use the Heisig method, you can use the Kanji Koohii website to manage the flashcards you'll use for memorization. It's a bit controversial because with this method you're learning the Kanji in isolation without learning how they are actually used in Japanese. It's still 100% worth it. This turbo-charged my Japanese learning like nothing else before. It took me 3 months to go through the book and learn all the characters. Once you're familiar with the characters, it's 10 times easier to learn vocabulary, even if your goal is to listen to shogi commentary, it's still the best way of doing that in my opinion (plus you'll be able to read shogi books eventually)
  
  
• Once you're done with the kanji you need to start building vocabulary, using your new kanji knowledge, it will be much more efficient, as you learn vocabulary, you learn how to write them using kanji you already know and as a consequence learn how those kanji are pronounced and used. This is why this method works so well. For vocabulary I recommend using the Anki flashcard software, you can download pre-made decks of vocabulary. Look for Core 2k, 6k and 10k which are a set of most common words complete with example sentences and audio, there are alternative but I think those are the best lists. A few thousands words plus shogi specific vocabulary should be enough to get a decent understanding of shogi programs.
  
  Anyway this isn't everything, you need to continue with more grammar, practice, and so on while doing that, but this is the gist of what I wish I knew when I got started. I guess it can seem a bit overwhelming but just get started and go one step at a time...
  
  Also you'll need this: Dictionary :)

Okay, so I'm also new to Japanese, and I'm 15 too, so I'm in the same boat as you. I should probably let you know though how often people tell me to learn Hiragana and Katakana before jumping in to anything else.

You can do that through hiragana and katakana courses on the flashcard site Memrise. It's recommended for general language learning and specifically Japanese vocab. and writing systems often, and I've had a generally good experience with it. Pick up a book on them if you feel like it.

It could take you between a week to a month depending on your skill level and your general ability to pick up knowledge, but once you have them under your belt and only then, start learning speaking, listening and general grammar and vocabulary then. Pick up a textbook like Genki if you feel like it. Genki 1 is recommended a lot here too.

I should probably emphasise the FAQ, wiki and other info here on this subreddit, too. The /r/LearnJapanese starters' guide is your friend, and will give a more wholesome rundown than I did.

One final thing - I'm new to this too, so to you and any other new learners like me reading this: I'm not an expert; I'm just doing what's working for me and is generally advised. To people with more experience learning Japanese with a better idea of how to start: please comment with anything I've missed or messed up; like I said, I'm not a genius. I've seen people here who I think are, and they're friendly, good people. I try to be good and friendly, but I'm no genius at all, I'm just starting like you.

Sorry for the long post, I can't feel my fingers from typing fast. Good luck to you, /u/Harry-kun!

The best way to learn a language is to interact with it as much as you can in every way you can. Yes, you can and probably should spend some time seriously studying from a good resource like tae kim's complete japanese guide(the whole thing is free), but you won't want to do that all the time for all of your free time. Get some Japanese books, manga, tv shows(this is one way to watch the region-locked Japanese Netflix) video games, listen to Japanese music, listen to podcasts in japanese. (You will want to find things with both japanese speaking & japanese text - subtitles are not good for learning!).

Kanji is a difficult hurdle, and there are a few popular ways to tackle it (this is by no means a comprehensive list):

• Heisig's Remember the Kanji book
  
  
• Anki is a flashcard program with spaced repetition, and it is useful both by itself or with a RTK deck. There's also good vocab decks. Anki is completely free.
  
• Wanikani is kind of like Heisig's RTK and Anki glued together and glossed over with a fresh shade of paint. I've never used it but it looks good.
  
  Well hopefully that helps. My personal take on learning kanji is to just learn it as you go from new vocab you acquire. Finding things like games or manga with furigana is very helpful as you can just search for that character in Jisho and all of a sudden you have its basic meaning, on/kun readings and most importantly, its stroke order.

Pretty much everyone will tell you that is nearly impossible to accurately gauge. It depends on how much you study each day, what materials you have to help you, how good you are absorbing the information, etc.

I feel that if you have enough time to absorb around 20 vocab a day (not as hard as it sounds, some days I try for around 50) for the first few months (then cut it down a bit as you go, as the grammar you are covering becomes more involved), and practice 1-3 grammar points a day (depending on their complexity/involvement), and avoid kanji for the first month, then start slowly (5 a day, not learning more until you know the current and it's associated vocab), using this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568365268/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I feel like you could read random sentences of a very simple manga within 6-12 months. These numbers are all arbitrary, as it all depends on your motivation and ability to truly absorb and retain all the information.

I can give you a list of materials that I find essential, and I think anyone that used them would recommend them as well:

A general textbook like Yookoso or Genki. I use Yookoso myself, but have heard little bad about either. You can skip this if you are good about learning what you need to focus on next on your own, or if you have someone else guiding your studies, but they are not that expensive, and I would recommend both levels of Genki or Yookoso.

https://www.amazon.com/Yookoso-Invitation-Contemporary-Japanese-Third/dp/0072408154/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496923360&sr=1-1&keywords=yookoso

Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (once you learn the majority of it, they have a second and third level of this book [intermediate/advanced])

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=4789004546&pd_rd_r=MARVSJ4E1JD75N4JANKK&pd_rd_w=supQ1&pd_rd_wg=oQkTv&psc=1&refRID=MARVSJ4E1JD75N4JANKK

501 Japanese Verbs. Fantastic for learning conjugations, and checking yourself while you practice them each day.

https://www.amazon.com/501-Japanese-Verbs-Verb/dp/0764137492/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496923311&sr=1-1&keywords=501+japanese+verbs

The Learner's Kanji Dictionary. This will help you look up any Kanji you do not know, and does not have Furigana. It gives you stroke order, Chinese and Japanese pronunciations, and tons of vocab combinations for each Kanji. It is tricky learning how to look up Kanji by radicals, but you only need to learn it once. You can learn Kanji from this, but it would be a terrible idea, as it is a dictionary, and not organized in a way that will help you retain anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Learners-Japanese-Kanji-Dictionary-Bilingual/dp/080483556X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1496923666&sr=8-3&keywords=kanji+dictionary

Lastly that Kanji book I linked earlier. Many will tell you it is silly to not learn Kanji right away as you learn the vocab, but it takes a lot longer, most modern texts have Furigana (the hiragana characters of how to pronounce the Kanji) for all the Kanji, and Kanji do not help for listening or speaking skills anyways.

I do feel that learning the Kanji from the get-go is far better for vocab retention, but you will pick up vocab so much more slowly. You can pick up Kanji later, once you can actually understand some basic Japanese and are much more motivated to continue your studies.

I listed the materials I recommend in the recommended order (minus the Kanji book listed early on, which I recommend last). Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Also, learn the kana first. Both Hiragana and Katakana. There is no excuse not to, they are invaluable. I would go so far as to say do not even bother starting vocab until you are comfortable enough to sound out a word written in kana in your head without a reference. Does not matter if it takes you a while, you will see them every day, and you will get used to them. Bare minimum, write the entirety of both every morning and night, and whenever you find yourself bored throughout the day.

As always, others will argue this, but again, there is no excuse not to learn it. Most good learning resources will use it anyways. They are very easy to learn.

Let me kindly guide you to the Starters Guide located at the top of this reddit page: www.reddit.com/r/learnjapanese/wiki/index/startersguide

​

There are lots of methods and resources availible for japanese learners but the most important thing is finding a method and sticking with it for a fairly significant amount of time (at least a few months). Personally I am a fan of the MIA method, but thats not for everyone. Many people also like following a text book series, the most popular being Genki. The one thing I can suggest the most is getting comfortable with a Spaced Repitition System (fancy name for a gucci flash card app) the most popular and customizable being Anki. What ever your goals are know that learning japanese is someting that takes a lot of time, a little bit of motivation in the beginning, but most importantly dedication. Just find a way to enjoy the journey which for most people means enjoying the thing they already do, just in Japanese, like video games, music, manga/comics, anime, dramas what ever! good luck.

​

MIA

Genki

anki

I'm currently using a couple of things -- The trick is to find what works for you the best :D (And these work for me, but yea everyone is different :D)

-----

• TextFugu -- http://www.textfugu.com/ [Not a free Resource after the first season $20 USD] [Will also provide Anki lists for you to work with as well as worksheets and a really great forum base]
  
• Human Japanese 2.0 (Software) --http://www.humanjapanese.com/
  
• JapanesePod101 (Podcasts) --- http://www.japanesepod101.com/
  
  
  I have heard good things about the Genki Textbook series (http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/) -- I don't personally use it, due to the fact I am studying Japanese at university and we use Total Japanese Series instead (http://www.amazon.com/Total-Japanese-Conversation-Kimiko-Okano/dp/489358278X)
  
  
  -------------------------------------------
  
  
  
  Also this site has a good resource list to start from: http://www.japanese-irc.net/index.php?title=Japanese_Resources
  
  http://www.tofugu.com/2012/08/28/japanese-reading-practice-for-beginners/
  
  I also recommend Anki Flashcards
  
  --------------------------------------
  
  Also you will be able to find some help at this subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/
  
  And if your are interested, someone is running a UofReddit Course on Japanese:: http://ureddit.com/class/43183/japanese-101 [Subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/uofrjapanese]
  
  ------------------------------
  -----------------------------
  
  
  Good Luck With your learning :)
  がんばってください

Hey, this is very late, but I am procrastinating studying for my Kanji test tomorrow, so I'm going to write this out again! I hope you see it.

Free is going to be hard. I would suggest less than $50, as that's a hell of a lot more feasible.

Step 0: Get your expectations in Check

You have 3 - 5 months, depending on when you are going. That's enough to learn some stuff, but not as much as you'd like.

You will need to study at least an hour a day, every day. At that point, you'll likely be able to form basic sentences, read basic signs and instruction, and absolutely struggle through the most basic of basic conversations. That's really about it.

You can do more if you study more, obviously. But you also run the risk of burning out. Personally, I would suggest setting an hour a night aside, and at the end of that hour, ask yourself, "Am I good for another 30 minutes?" and continue doing that until you can't honestly say yes.

---

Step 1: Learn Hiragana and Katakana

There are lots of apps and books and stuff for this: It's a gigantic waste of money and time. Make yourself some flashcards, drill them into your head at every spare moment over a few days. You should have a basic sense of them. You'll still forget some, that's normal, don't worry. As long as you don't have to stop and look up every other kana, you're going to be fine.

Step 2: Get a Grammar Resource

Textbook, unfortunately. Alternative: tutor or classes but that gets expensive quick.

Any one of us can give you a massive list of vocab and useful grammar points and flash card decks. That will give you a wealth of information and no direction. The important part of a class or a textbook is that it's a lesson plan. You don't need to waste the time deciding what to learn in what order: Just flip the page.

Genki is the standard recommendation, because it's used in University/College classes across North America and there are resources for it everywhere: Downside: You need 4 Books + The Answer Key to use it effectively. That'll end up at $225USD ish.

Skipping Minna No Nihongo because, while it's another popular recomendation, it's MORE expensive.

I used Japanese for Everyone (I have also used Genki and I own a copy of Minna No Nihongo 1 from school, but haven't used it) and I'm going to recommend it here stronger than I normally do. Reason: It's super cheap, because that's the only book you're going to need. Downside is less internet resources and a faster pace.

Free Alternative is Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar. It's useful, but it contains no useful practice problems and a not so great selection of example sentences.

---

Step 3: Practice

Once you get 6 or 7 chapters into your textbook of choice, you need to start using it. Even if you're not speaking, at least be writing to someone in real time in text. Input is probably more important than output, yes, but you need some output at least. Lots of people (Me included) put this off far too long and I Definitely suffered when I first came to Tokyo for it.

Free? You want HelloTalk. It's an iPhone/Android messaging app specifically tailored for people exchanging languages. It's pretty much your only/best option for free. Conversations tend to fizzle out when both people are low level, so be persistent.

---

Step 4: Additional Resources

• imabi.net
  
  One guy writing hundreds of pages of guides that go into mid-depth of Japanese Grammar. This is not a primary resource. It takes the problems I have with Tae Kim to the extreme, and it is very grammar term heavy. It's best used for additional explanation when you don't understand something. Say, you get to ~てしまう in a textbook and don't understand? Imabi.
  
  
• Anki/Ankidroid/Memrise
  
  Spaced Repetition Flashcards. They work, they're useful. Anki is more powerful and has more community vetted resources, Memrise is more "Game-ified" but less powerful and with less resources. You should never use either of these programs as your first contact with any grammar point. They are flash cards. They are used to review.
  
  
• A Dictionary App
  
  Goes without saying. Take your pick, 99% of them use the same base database so the only difference is UI. I use mine 500 times a day (But I am in Tokyo).
  
  
• NHK Web Easy
  
  Here. 3 Articles a day (5 on Friday) taken from the NHK main site and simplified heavily, intended for foreigners and elementary school students. Includes Furigana on every kanji, colour coding places/names, and full audio recording for each Article. Too advanced for you now, but good god is this good to know about it.
  
  
• Erin's Challenge
  
  Here. Originally made to go with a textbook, and for learning it's pretty well impossible without that textbook. This site is still a fucking goldmine, with over 100 1-5 minute skits and videos in normal Japanese (Except the main character, who is correct but intentionally slow). Full scripts and line-by-line break down in Japanese, Kana Only, Romaji, and English. Listening Practice and Shadowing does not get better than this.
  
  ---
  
  Step -1: Things to Avoid
  
  

1. Massive Pre-made Vocab Decks on Anki. They have a time and a place, but neither of those are "At the beginning of your studies".
   
2. "Learn Japanese" apps. Duolingo is bad. Lingodeer is less bad, but still not ideal. Human Japanese is even less bad, but provides no practice beyond shitty quizzes.
   
3. "Remembering the Kanji" or RTK. It basically teaches you English Key Words for all the standard Kanji, with little mnemonics and mnemonic forming tips. It requires a 3 - 5 month investment, during which you are not learning Japanese. The key words are incomplete at best and wrong at worst. It has a place if you're willing to not learn Japanese for 3 - 5 months to make the following 3 - 5 months significantly easier on you, but that's not going to help you in Japan.
   
   Have fun!

As a Latin student, I'm obviously biased, but you should choose Latin. Latin is a really fun language, and it's really not that difficult. Since you've studied Russian, you already have a background in declined languages, and your Spanish will help with the vocab. English will help too, regardless of the fact that it's a Germanic language.

If you pick Latin, look into Wheelock's Latin. I use this book, and I think it does a really good job of explaining everything. It's also loaded with examples and practice work, and has a nice answer key in the back if you get stuck. Since it's a course "based on ancient authors," many of the passages are excerpts or adaptations from authors like Cicero or Caesar. It teaches you about Roman history and culture in addition to the language, which I think is nice.

I've also heard plenty of good things about Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, but I haven't used it very extensively.

There's also the Perseus Latin Word Study Tool, which is really helpful. They also have a Greek version, if you decide to go with Greek.

Wiktionary can be useful as well, as it gives full declensions or conjugations for tons of Latin words.

If you progress to a high enough level, you can read the news and tons of ancient authors in Latin.

Also, if you study Latin, we can be language twins. :P

Depends on what you're looking for:

• Grammar approach: Wheelock's Latin. If you like grammar and syntax (which I do), you'll be right at home here. This is a rather popular college textbook.
  
• Reading approach: Ecce Romani - want to read a story and learn the language more inductively? Hit up this textbook. It does have a decent grammar backing, though you may want some more explanation at times. Very useful with cultural and historical explanations. A high-school text.
  
  
• Immersion Approach - Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata - want a book that is purely in Latin and will slowly teach you how to read Latin? Choose this. Like Ecce, tells a story, but no English explanations whatsoever. Immersionists and oral Latin folks are big fans of this. I'm told this has been used at the American Academy at Rome.
  
  
• Grammar-Lite Approach - Jenney's Latin - a bit off-put by the enormity of Wheelock? Still want grammar? This is a high-school level text that is grammar-centric, but won't smack you over the head with it. Note: hasn't been updated in a while, might find this one in older Latin programs.
  
  
• Immersion-Lite Approach - Cambridge Latin Course - not a big fan of total immersion like in Lingua Latina? This text will have the story and English explanations of Ecce, but with much more Latin around. This textbook probably does the best job of teaching history, culture, and mythology as well. You might also be an Anglophile if you choose this book, as it's huge in the UK.
  
  These are the big ones that I know of. I'm sure there are more out there, so other folks, please comment! I'm also sure that some of my own biases might have come out in the post. I've personally used all of these in my classroom (high school Latin teacher here) to some extent except for Cambridge.
  
  Best of luck to you in your pursuit of learning!
  
  edit: clarity

Hey! Good to see someone interested in East Asian languages! The CJKV writing system normally throws a lot of people off.

CJK Writing System

I wrote a short little rant a while back on how the characters are constructed that you might want to read.

There are methods of learning the characters that make use of their structure. Heisig's RtK and RtH books (Amazon link) are the most well known books I think. Fansites such as Reviewing the Kanji and Reviewing the Hanzi also exist which you might want to take a look at.

Not sure if you like RtK? Here's the sampler. See if you like it after learning 276 characters~

Chinese-Specific

The only thing headache inducing about any Chinese dialect is the writing system and tones.

Note that though we call them "dialects", it is a matter of politics as most of them are mutually unintelligible. A Cantonese or Mandarin speaker is unlikely to understand a Hokkien speaker at all, for example.

Written chinese, on the other hand, is in Mandarin and only in Mandarin -- the other dialects do not have writing systems. Well... the notable exception is Written Cantonese, but that's can be seen as a variant of standard written chinese.

Oh! There are have two variants of the standard writing system: Simplified and Traditional. I had learnt the former in school, and I can read the latter after learning about the simplification process, so just pick one and stick with it.

I personally find Mandarin grammar to quite simple. This might be because it's an isolating language.

• Zhongwen.com -- I love the way he arranges related characters together in a tree.
  
• nciku.cn -- Online Chinese Dictionary
  
• Unfortunately I don't have that many online Chinese resources, and the physical ones I have are hard to obtain here in the UK.
  
• Reviewing the Hanzi has a nice list.
  
  Japanese-Specific
  
  Japanese folk have an easier time with Chinese characters. While 6000 Hanzi is roughly college-level (I think?) in Chinese, 6000 Kanji in Japanese is probably more-than-you-need-to-know-ever. There is a Kanji Aptitude Test which is pretty much the only reason one would learn that many.
  
  However, Japanese also have two syllabaries you'll need to know (~50 syllables each). These are phonetic, so they shouldn't pose much of a challenge; most who learn Japanese learn both of them in one or two weeks.
  
  Essential:
  
  
• Denshi Jisho -- Online Japanese dictionary (Basically WWWJDIC with a pretty interface)
  
  Beginner resources:
  
  
• TextFugu - An Online Textbook
  
• Tae Kim - Another Online Textbook, slightly more well-known. Free, unlike TextFugu.
  
• I would also strongly recommend grabbing Remembering the Kanji as soon as possible.
  
• Genki -- Textbook. Some will say to avoid this completely, but just for starting off I don't think it's /that/ bad. Get rid of it once you're past the beginner stage though.
  
  Books to get:
  
  
• Writing - Remembering the Kanji and Remembering the Kana
  
• Speaking / Listening - Shadowing Book 1, Shadowing Book 2
  
• Grammar - Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar
  
• Grammar - Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication
  
• Yes, I recommend both books.
  
  Mixed collection of Online Resources:
  
  
• Reading material - A list I posted a while back
  
• Listening material - Another list, though Koohii has a better one
  
• On Japanese flashcards
  
• Random learning resources from Koohii

I used Duolingo to get the basics before I moved here. It's absolutely not perfect, but I found it was very good for giving you a fairly decent vocabulary and explaining the basic grammar rules.

If you try working your way through the course a little bit every day, and keeping a notebook with any new words you come across, you should be off to a very good start.

I then also got this book to get the hang of the grammar a little more - it's much more in-depth than Duolingo, but still explains things in quite a simple way, good for getting quick answers if you come across a construction you don't recognise.

Apart from that, the rest of my Swedish I got simply by living here and speaking, reading, hearing it every day, and also taking weekly classes. But I guess that's harder for you to do in the US! Watching Swedish movies with English subtitles (and later Swedish subtitles, once you get better) would help a lot, as well as listening to the radio, watching Swedish YouTubers etc. It can be a slow process, but you'll get better with time.

There's also 'lättläst' (easy-reading) books available - basically condensed versions of popular books written in simple Swedish. They help a lot with reading practice. There's also 8 Sidor, which is a news site/app with all the articles written in simple Swedish. Reading them and looking up any words/expressions you don't know can be a good way to expand your vocabulary.

I used it up until about level 8 I think. I liked it and the items that I leveled to mastered/enlightened (as they call it) are definitely in my brain.

However I'm cheap and for the cost of 4ish months of WK (it's like $8/Mo for non beta testers now right?) I just decided to pick up The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course.

This book paired with HouHou is effectively the same thing as WK. Of course you do need to be a little more motivated because you need to add the items to HouHou yourself. I think this is also pretty cool because, for example, I recently switched the language on the weather site I use to Japanese. I've thrown all the new weather terms I've encountered so far along with their Kanji into HouHou.

In the interest of fairness: A major drawback of HouHou is the lack of any app/online review. I've resorted to using Teamviewer to connect to my PC in order to do reviews remotely. WK (and I think Anki) certainly does not have this problem; there is even a pretty good app for WK afaik.

If you're interested, I pretty much do what this guy does (except he uses Anki) and I feel like I've been making as much progress as I did with WK.

Edit: I'd like to add that with WK I never bothered with stroke order or writing any of the kanji at all. Since I've switched to this new approach I've started writing out each kanji ~10 times (sometimes more if it looks really similar to another one I already know etc etc) and I feel like this has helped me remember them immensely YMMV.

The truth is that Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin are not that different. Christian Latin has some interesting new words from Greek like episcopus, and Classical words like gloria take on special new meanings, but it will not be difficult to read and understand the text of the Mass after studying Classical Latin alone.

Yes, learn the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria by rote now and say those prayers in Latin every day. Let yourself absorb the Mass responses week-by-week. But to acquire a broader command of the language—if you hope to understand the Mass readings, for example—I cannot recommend a better book than Familia Romana by Hans Ørberg, every word of which is in Latin. It is written and illustrated in such a way that an absolute beginner can read the first page and figure out what it means without help, and gradually, more and more things are introduced. If you carefully study this book, you will be amazed at how much you can understand.

An alternative with a similar approach, but a stronger focus on preparing the student for Christian Latin is Fr William Most's Latin by the Natural Method. It includes explanations in English and covers some grammatical features that do not occur in Classical Latin, but are everywhere after 200 AD.

Latinitium and Dickinson College Commentaries have some very helpful resources and are well worth looking at. The YouTube channel LatinTutorial is trustworthy. The Word Study Tool on Perseus is helpful if you get stuck trying to parse a word. There is a good mobile game called Vice Verba which drills the player on verb conjugation.

So I’m also learning Japanese too and the best method I have found was the Japanese from Zero! series. George is a great teacher and he makes the lessons entertaining as well. He clarifies the lessons and tries to make it as simple as possible.

I was able to start the lessons without the books for the first 5 videos and then eventually got the book on Amazon . It has really helped me so far. Another thing I also use are apps that help me further memorize the hiragana and katakana. I use Learn Japanese!! app on my IPhone and Kana Drill.

Also George has his own website online where you can further help yourself with games, flash cards, etc. I just really like the feeling of having a teacher motivating you to learn instead of practicing on your own. It lessens the feeling of being easily overwhelmed and he helps you on knowing what to learn next.

Either way good luck !

Edit: link

the books that I have are:

Hammer's German Grammar and Usage - it's a huge comprehensive in-depth look at everything grammatical, breaks everything down completely. good as a reference book but not really to go through and study

English Grammar for Students of German - it's a really brief overview comparing English grammar to German grammar with examples, but doesn't get really specific

Berlitz Self Teacher: German - some of the vocab is a little outdated but it's a cute concise book that's really good to carry on the subway or whatever and read in short spurts. there's special parts dedicated to helping you "think in german" which is important for fluency. it's a pretty good book for beginners I think.

I also have Barron's 501 German verbs but I actually haven't started looking through it yet.

and then if we add an audio section to this list is highly recommend Pimsleur's audio courses, though they're pricey so you may want to try and obtain them ahem another way.

To learn Latin, I always suggest Wheelock--I think the fourth edition was new when I studied Latin, so I can't swear by the 7th edition, but it probably hasn't changed too much. Others frequently advocate for LLPSI because it's closer to immersion (the way most modern languages are taught) than grammar-first (Wheelock's and my preferred method). Obviously you'd need more than just the first volume of LLPSI, but that's where you'd start.

As for Latin resources, the Latin Library has a ton of free texts, including the Latin Fathers. At least some of them are OCR scans, though, so be aware that there may be typos here and there.

For Ancient Greek... I learned with Groton, which tries to be the Wheelock of Greek, but doesn't do as well. Every time someone asks this on r/AncientGreek, there's never a consensus on the best textbook.

Once you understand how the language works, you can start reading texts without translation, as long as you have a dictionary handy. My recommendation is that you always try to figure out each word yourself before turning to other resources, but if you get really stuck, you can use parsers (Whitaker's Words for just Latin, Perseus has parsers for both). Perseus also has a lot of texts available, both original language and public domain translations, and the code for their database is open-source. Even if you don't use their parsers, Perseus has Liddell & Scott (the Liddell-Scott-Jones "Great Scott"/"LSJ" and the "Middle Liddell" sizes), Slater, and Autenrieth dictionaries for Greek and the Lewis & Short (as well as its abbreviated Elementary Lewis) dictionary for Latin.

If you're flush with cash, the Loeb Classical Library has, I would like to say, almost everything in Greek and Latin side-by-side with translations. It's an easy way to read and study the classics without first learning the languages (or while you learn the languages). If you have access to an academic library, you can usually find/access them without having to buy them. Now that I work far from academia, I just have to lament sadly that I can't afford it. (Before I get too old, maybe I'll buy an individual license for the digital version.)

As for Church Fathers in general, like I mentioned above, many Latin Fathers are available for free, and most (not quite all, I don't think) Church Fathers are available for free in translation. The Greek texts are harder to come by, mostly because they aren't collected in one quick place that I'm aware of (except perhaps sites like Perseus).

Trying to find free resources can be a challenge because university presses are behind most publications of classical texts, which means (1) they get to copyright the texts because of their translation, critical apparatus, or editing, and (2) those copyrights last a long time when assigned to an institution instead of a person, especially when they keep refreshing them with new "editions" that barely change.

Hi, I'm fairly new to learning Japanese too, here is what I know so far: At first it seems like there is a brick wall that you have to break through. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say. If vocab are the bricks.. grammar (particles, canjigation etc.) Are the morter that hold everything together. Its more like having to build a house by yourself then it is breaking through a brick wall. It requires hard work, sacrifice and dedication. First thing is to learn kana, then focus on grammar and reading. Don't study kanji starting out and when you do start learning kanji, make sure to learn it in context. At first you will be focused on each character, then you will start to recognize words, and then you will begin to see sentences and then have to get used to keeping track of what the topic is (は).

SRS is good but won't help you learn well unless you are reading native materials also (such as graded readers or manga). At first I studied as much as possible for the first 4 months to get past most of the absolute beginer grammar. Also, after the first 3 weeks of learning vocab and honing kana skills I started wanikani. Now there are a lot of people who push RTK but having memorized 350 kanji from the book before getting serious about learning.. if I knew then what I know now, I would have gon straight to wanikani. (Anki is ok too if you're on a budget). RTK is good for overcoming fear of kanji and for learning correct stroke order (which comes in handy when looking up kanji that doesn't have furigana). This to me doesn't justify using RTK though in my mind.

I will say that it is better to go at your own pace instead of burning out like I did at first. To me, studying is what you must do in order to achieve your goal. Learning is enjoyable and even leisurely. Finding a good balance is important.

Also, I was in a class that was being taught on discord for a while. Now I'm learning on my own. The internet is full of resources that can help you.

Here are some good resources:

Takoboto (android or windows)
http://takoboto.jp/

WaniKani (I know there are wanikani decks for anki for free too if your watching $$$)
https://www.wanikani.com/

Anki (Free)
https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Japanese Graded Readers (level 1-2 I hear will get you high enough to start reading manga, but I cant confirm this as fact.)

Level 1
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079Y2GR81/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_pr9nDb0JQRYY3

Level 2
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079XY9XTM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_vt9nDb32S5E9H

RTK (1st book is the only one worth using)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0824835921/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_Eu9nDb5SK9WP7

Genki 1 & 2 (more for in class but can be used to study on your own too)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3STG9N/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_jw9nDb50CDXS6

Here's a few tips, although this is without knowing your level and your aims:

1. Naturally, there are plenty of choices of schools. I happen to run LTL Mandarin School, which is located in the French Concession but can also send teachers out to students' locations. A class like this once/twice per week, focusing on specific points of interest, can be a good start for acquiring new knowledge/vocabulary/grammar/etc.
   
2. For further practice of listening comprehension, listening material such as the stuff they have on [FluentU] (http://www.fluentu.com/), the ChineseClass101 Audio Blogs or Youtube channels like this thing I used before are very good.
   
3. For writing and memorization of characters, there's Skritter, as well as Heisig's Remembering Hanzi book
   
4. For vocabulary memorization, simple: Anki
   
5. For reading, I personally like using subtitles of movies I know (helps also with review and learning of new vocabulary). A good resource for this is Zimuzu and Zimuku. Also, you would need a dictionary to use - Unfortunately, it does not work on the Mac, but for Windows users, Wenlin is an excellent dictionary, even though GUI-wise, really bad.
   
6. For speaking... You just need to speak with people. If your level is not up to the task of speaking in a comfortable speed yet, get a Chinese person who agrees to sit with you every week and listen to you botch his language for some sort of payment (otherwise, he will very quickly tire of it and find excuses for why he "doesn't have the time" and so on).
   
   There you go, hope this helps! 加油！

Thanks! I'm living in the UK at the moment, and about to move to a new city. I think i'll be able to find some chinese students there (it has two universities), so this should really be useful in practicing my mandarin!

Someone earlier recommended this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1CVOOAPOKFUGL&coliid=I3KK8RBNU3V7L0

I've been reading the sample version on amazon, and it seems to have a very well-thought out approach to learning chinese symbols; basically showing you the basics first (sun, mouth, companian, old, etc.) and then suggesting how they might alter the meaning of symbols when they form part of a symbol. Then it builds on chapter on chapter. It also comes with neat little stories! Is this the kind of thing you were suggesting?

And your general advice on writing chinese is very good! Once i've nailed a few basic phrases and greetings, i'll give the webchat one a go!

My plan of action is currently to take a listening course. Chinesepod seems to be the one that comes highly recommended, whilst at the same time working my way through the book of characters I posted earlier, and trying to find chinese friends to talk to!

In january I hope to start a proper chinese course at a local college.

Does this sound like a reasonable aim?


Thanks so much for your help. I have been quite overwhelmed by the level of enthusiasm and commitment on this subreddit!

The best method for learning Kanji is a system by James Heisig in Remembering The Kanji.

It's a little atypical—book 1 is meaning only and book 2 is pronunciation—but if you stick with the method it's quite incredible. At my peak I was learning ~100/day with excellent retention.

And then it's just drill drill drill like everyone says. But when drilling focus on writing. Production is harder than recognition as a rule so that's what you should focus on.

I use an excellent flash card app called Anki which has desktop and mobile versions. It's pricey on mobile if I recall correctly but worthwhile. It's got a bit of a learning curve but definitely worth the investment. And you'll find lots of shared decks, including if memory serves, one based on the Heisig books. (Although there is definitely value in building your own yourself.)

I'm on iOS and you can add the Chinese Traditional Handwriting IME in "Keyboards" which allows you to practice your writing. It's not great for general Japanese input, but for Kanji practice it gets the job done. I'm sure there's something similar for Android.

Good luck!

Edit:fixed my mangled link

Please don't do it. Serious.

Anime characters have a very distinct speech pattern, and you do not want to speak a language like their cartoon character. Trying to learn Japanese from anime is flawed from first principle; you will get endless shit from native speakers if this is the route you choose to learn the language.

It's kinda like how some Japanese learn English by listening to Elvis Presly songs. Just don't.

It sounds like you're new to the process, so I suggest you pay /r/LearnJapanese a visit. They are a great community, and you'll learn about what you have to learn in order to master the language.

Other resources:

Heisig's Remembering the Kana. A fantastic way to learn the basic alphabet. You want to start reading Kana and stop reading romanization as soon as possible, and this can help you do it literally over a weekend.

Remembering the Kanji by the same author is the next obvious step. Much more tedious, but that's the thing with Kanji. You sit down, shut up, and learn it. This book makes it as painless as possible.

With that said, trying to memorize a lot of information is a solved problem in human psychology; this means there are softwares implementing proven techniques that will help you do it. I highly recommend Anki.

Finally, if you want a glimpse at the grammar, there's a fantastic guide over at Amaterasu translation.

Good luck, have fun!

(Full disclosure: I'm essentially a n00bie at the process myself. I tried to learn the language too, but it's on shelf right now due to other stuffs in my life. I do not know Japanese.)

Any of the basic primers (with the exception of the Oxford Latin Course) are probably fine, though Wheelock's is the time-tested standard for many Classics programs. However, once you get beyond the first few units, I would warmly recommend something like the Lingua Latina series, which not only is written entirely in Latin (with a graded difficulty curve as you advance), but also gives a nice in-situ introduction to Roman family life, civic institutions, etc.

Really, the major problem for any Latin student—or student of any language, really—is gaining proficiency in the language via an inventory of vocabulary, grammatical structures, idioms, etc. With a purely textual language like Latin, one can't easily use daily conversation (or 'immersion' in the current pedagogical lingo) as a means of reinforcement, and thus reading great quantities of text is the only way to improve one's comprehension. Since the bulk of extant Latin literature is 'high' literature, attempting to read even so-called 'easy' authors such as Caesar can be incredibly frustrating to a novice, as even these authors were writing in a style that was the result of years of intensive rhetorical schooling. The canned readings in Wheelock's are okay, but none are longer than a few pages, at the most. The Lingua Latina books can help supplement one's reading, particularly with the graded difficulty approach that they are designed around.

A final bit of advice: memorize everything. You will never, never achieve any degree of proficiency with the language if you don't work at it; I recommend (and regularly use) a flashcard program (Anki in my case) for vocab, forms, names, whatever. You simply can't half-ass this aspect. Most student's trouble when learning Latin is the result of imperfectly knowing a) the vocab, and b) grammatical endings, constructions, etc. Despite its reputation and popular sentiment to the contrary, Latin is not any 'harder' or more complex than English or whatever other language one might be native to. Remember that at one time all manner of people learned and spoke Latin: slaves, foreigners, statesman, plebs, etc. You can do it, but you have to put in the time. Be patient with it, work at it, and you will be rewarded. Good luck!

When you say you have studied Japanese for 2.5 years that's really not enough information. Have you been to Japan? Have you been there for an extended amount of time (e.g. several months?). I doubled my number of Kanji while I was staying in Japan, whenever I saw a sign / something written on my milk carton / my aircon remote, I would look it up and learn it that way. While in the subway I would take my time to look up random Kanji I saw in the advertisments.

I would use Kanji flashcards of the kind you can by in 500 box sets and go through a couple of them after a day of life in Japan: some characters I would have seen today but maybe would not remember, so going through the flash cards would help me remember them and clarify their reading. I would not learn with flash cards of Kanji I hadn't ever seen before - a useless exercise for me, I can only remember characters I've seen used in a real-life context. I don't "learn" Kanji programmatically taking them from some list and remembering the on- and kun-readings, I will only ever care about what I need to know in order to understand the text I'm working on. A children's book, song lyrics I got from the internet, texts for learners, Wikipedia articles, NHK news. The real lesson is: in order to get good at reading, you have to read a lot. Today I got a copy of a printed newspaper (読売新聞), you can buy those internationally, I got one from my local retailer at a train station in Germany. Reading an article takes an hour and a PC with a Kanji search by radical and a dictionary site, but I can do it.

For refreshment, I use resources like the amazing etymological dictionary "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" which will tell you the historical evolution and proper decomposition of Kanji, some stories can be really interesting. With this help I can tell that when seeing a character such as 緒, it consists of thread (糸) and the pronunciation しょ/しゃ(者), hence "the word meaning together (=bound by a thread) pronounced kind of like 者)". Next to etymological help you can also use pure visual clues.

When you read real Japanese texts, you quickly realize that 2000 Kanji is not enough. Even children's literature would use characters outside of that official list. 3000 is more realistic. You should have material (dictionaries, flash cards etc.) that covers more than the official list. Don't despair though, actual Japanese native speakers take their time learning them, too! The more Japanese you come in contact with every day, the better.

First, I would check to see if the language requirements are for entering the program or if they are for achieving candidacy. I know it varies widely by program, but if it is a candidacy requirement (or even maybe a requirement to be fulfilled by the end of the first year), the program you enroll in might have a path to achieving proficiency that doesn't require remedial language courses or self-instruction.

That being said, I am doing this right now. I would recommend a healthy dose of Duolinguo, but also some French for reading books. Karl Sandberg's French for Reading is an excellent resource that is aimed at the academic. Additionally, I have heard that Jacqueline Morton's English for Students of French is great, too. I have also picked up a few side-by-side French/English novels to practice on. After about a month of this (maybe 3-5 hours a week), I am already feeling like I could struggle bus my way through the exam if I could beg another half hour out of the proctor.

There are some informal extension courses offered by some universities for rather cheap, as well. Just googling "French reading summer online" or something like that makes a bunch of them pop up.

Lastly, in the next few weeks I am going to be rounding up some music theory/musicology articles in French that have English translations (or perhaps the reverse) so that I can practice. PM me if you want me to send them to you when I get them.

/r/LearnJapanese

Best places to start are to learn the two main Japanese alphabets, hiragana and katakana. A good place to start with that is here.

Next, you need a grammar resource. Tae Kim is a good free online resource. You could also get a popular textbook like Genki.

Lastly, you need a resource for learning kanji, the complex characters adapted from Chinese that make up a lot of Japanese writing. The first two levels of WaniKani are free.

It takes a couple months of study before you really start to feel like you're making progress, but after a year or so a lot of easy reading material becomes approachable. There's also a huge and awesome community of people doing the same thing. Give it a try if you feel like it!

Japansepod101 is great! But they are super spammers its true. Great product made to look terrible. Why???? Not as good as JFZ though.

George, I guess the reason people want you to recommend books is they trust you. You should be proud of that.

Books I'd recommend (even in you won't!) are:

Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubin (very funny and lots on interesting bits even if some of it was beyond me)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Sense-Japanese-What-Textbooks/dp/156836492X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486317692&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=don%27t+tell+you+about+japanese

Japanese the Manga Way by Wayne Lammers (Really terrific and great practice on your kanji too.)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Guide-Grammar-Structure/1880656906/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1486317895&sr=1-1&keywords=japanese+the+manga+way

Actually I don't think these books compete with your ones in any case.

And finally I recommend this explanation of when to use wa and ga. Its a video thing and you can throw away all textbooks after watching this. (I suppose it is just barely possible there is more to it than this guy says but surely not).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU9rjYZe2P4

Oh, just realised George did a video on this subject I haven't seen. Well, I am sure they are both equally good . . .

In the past few months, I have taken up the hobby of learning Latin. I just ordered Wheetlock's and it should be here tomorrow so I can get into the real work of studying. I bought these 3, which seems to a common path.

Wheelock's Latin, 7th Edition

Workbook for Wheelock's Latin

Thirty-Eight Latin Stories Designed to Accompany Wheelock's Latin

$43 for all 3, which is a pretty good deal IMO.

---

As for some free material online to get things kicked off, here are some links for you:

Latin Dictionary - good to look up words, has some lessons available.

Another Latin Dictionary site that has a pretty good basic lesson setup

Youtube:

Learn Latin - Gregory Myles Youtube channel - click on his channel and watch the few videos he has. Great intro to Latin.

A reading of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata - Good immersion type learning. A lot of people recommend the book as well.

TBH The easy news can be too easy, and it's not really going to launch you much further in reading comprehension. It's not a bad resource by any means, but if it isn't challenging you, look for something that will. Reading will require you to know a ton of kanji (RIP), so I advise just getting books and going to town. There's also several styles of writing, so academic/news/similar read pretty differently from manga/light novels/etc. I am personally quite fond of the Gakken elementary school books. They cover science, autobiography, folktales, so on. They run from 1st~6th grade on the Japan scale, so the content and furigana are all in line with what's expected at that grade level. For reference, the 4th grade list. The 5th grade book I'm reading covers why we have a belly button, why albino rabbits are different from non-albino, why humans can't breathe underwater, why stinkbugs stink, and a ton of others. It's pretty easy to read, and it definitely challenges my vocabulary. Plus, it's a lot of things I'm at least vaguely familiar with in English, so it's easier to catch on.

I definitely recommend the Tobira textbook. I much prefer reading from paper (computer eye strain 2 real), so I have a lot of books. Concerning Tae Kim, I haven't treated it as a text by any stretch of the imagination: I use the search function and ctrl+F to get what I need and close the tab.

Also, the JLPT is... a test. And if you get 50%-ish of the material, you pass. IMO, it's not really worth anything unless you need the N2 or above to get a job in Japan (or where ever). I just passed N3 and I was genuinely surprised at my results. It's a good resume builder, but it doesn't test your ability to use Japanese, just if you understand it. It doesn't really help you much with anything besides reading.

A good starting point is the app LingoDeer and its Japanese practise sessions. The first course is free and has a ton of content. Its practise focuses on teaching kana, grammar and building up vocabulary with a variety of guessing games so it's a very natural and entertaining way of learning. This makes it better than a lot of the language apps out there since their main focus is usually flashcard learning and hard memorisation.

Beyond that, Tae Kim's Japanese grammar is considered by many to be a fantastic way to learn the language. It builds up the necessary fundamentals for learning the language in a rational, intuitive way that makes sense in Japanese. The explanations are focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view (which means you think in japanese rather than english).

If you want to get a textbook the Genki guides are considered by many to be the quintessial classroom learning book. Japanese for Busy People is also a good one if you don't have a lot of spare time.

Beyond that, watch Japanese tv without subtitles to get used to them speaking. Japanese Children's tv is a great way to go about it. Try watching something like Chi's Sweet Home without subtitles on. There's also Japanese dramas on Netflix where you can turn the subtitles off.

I think it depends on what you want to get out of it, honestly. Chinese is going to be more "practical" since more people speak the language. Also, I find that even just a little Chinese knowledge can be fairly interesting and exciting, such as being able to read a Chinese sign in the background of a movie, etc. There's a lot of Chinese study abroad students, so I'm sure that could open up some cool possibilities, like meeting people in on-campus clubs like the International Student Organization. A decent amount of Chinese customs could also be applied as customs in Korea, so in a way Chinese can provide you part of the culture background. On the other hand, Korean is very unique in the sense that there's a smaller base of people that speak it, however Korean modern popular culture has been slowly influencing a lot more people, in addition to it being such a newer language. It's amazing to see how much thought was put into Hangeul and it's impressive to look at in-depth from a linguistics point-of-view.

I'd look into both a bit. With Chinese, you're going to learn pinyin and also Chinese characters aka Hanyu. Chinese characters have a base pronunciation, and a tone associated with them. Chinese doesn't have any conjugations, and for the most part when speaking, you'll refer to a time that you're talking about. It does have the use of one particle for past-tense or indication that a situation has changed, but that's about it for any kind of tenses. Korean you'll have to learn Hangeul which you could honestly learn and memorize in an hour. However, Korean has a lot of grammar particles (는/은 for marking subjects, 을/를 for marking complements, etc) in addition to verb conjugation for tenses, etc.

If you really wanted to know which would be easiest, I would argue Chinese. While you'll have to remember many characters, you won't have to deal with conjugation. Oral quizzes in Chinese don't require you to know the characters since it's all spoken, and with written tests, if you can identify the character, there's probably a 60% chance it's printed somewhere already in the test in another question. Chinese grammar is a lot like English grammar, unlike Korean where the verbs are always at the end. While there's not too many resources for Chinese or Korean that are a complete course, KoreanClass101.com and TalkToMeInKorean.com can be used as independent-study aids in addition to a textbook like Integrated Korean.

Hope this wall of text helped. :)

Wheelock's Latin (link to the seventh edition on Amazon) is an excellent place to start, and at US$15, it's a pretty good deal, too, as textbooks go! I had six years of Latin in middle and high school, so if you need a hand, feel free to ping me. It's a fun language, and learning it taught me as much about the structure of English and other languages as it did about Latin. Best of luck!

I would definitely ask r/Korean as many people there are longtime Korean learners and can offer good suggestions. However, imho the Integrated Korean books are great, specifically Integrated Korean Beginning 1 is a good start as it teaches you Hangul, grammar, and new vocab words with every lesson. I myself use it for self teaching and it's been working great! I also recommend purchasing the accompanying workbook as it gives you more practice. Best of luck!

Lol, I promise I never spent any nights weeping into my coursebook! The main online resource I use is the very excellent Vicarius interface for Whitaker's Words dictionary, which you can find here: http://vicarius.thomasleen.com

​

I like reading so I used a lot of supplementary readers, and I would recommend doing that in addition to whatever your main textbook is. I have particularly enjoyed the LLPSI series, the first book of which is here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Familia-Romana-Lingua-Latina-HansH/dp/1585104205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549409155&sr=8-1&keywords=familia+romana

​

There are also some free online readers: search for Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles and Puer Romanus. Geoffrey Steadman has an annotated version of Fabulae Faciles here: https://geoffreysteadman.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/ritchie-10mar17.pdf (his other annotated texts are good too!)

​

And when you want something more advanced, there's an absolute shitload of classical texts with facing-page translations available here: https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus/

​

Have fun!

​

Yes absolutely. I think ideally it would be cool if there was a BCS Duolingo course for the first 1/4th of the tree, just to get the basics and exposure to the differences between BCS, then you can pick which one you want to advance with later on after understanding the basics. Pretty much exactly like the BCS Textbook teaches it. I think this would draw more widespread attraction to BCS learning, and would eliminate some confusion for people traveling to holiday to Croatia/Bosnia/Serbia. I would guess that most people don't know just how similar the languages are.

https://www.amazon.de/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Textbook-Exercises/dp/0299236544

Example Page of BCS Textbook

With that being said, I am extremely excited about this course. I've been hoping for a Croatian one for a LONG time, and been working my way through my BCS textbooks in my spare time. Super pumped!

And count me in for Alpha Testing!

I'm taking a Latin III this year and this is our sorta finale for the Latin program.

The other question is very tricky.

1. It's taken me three years to get the point I am now and I wouldn't even call myself super qualified. We're all getting by with a lot of help from our teacher. And the rate I've been working at has been anything but steady. So that being said, I'd say anywhere from 1-3 years of learning.
   
   
2. It's very dependent on the book you have. I personally recommend Hans Orberg's [Lingua Latina] (http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367455675&sr=8-1&keywords=Lingua+Latina) and its [companion] (http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-College-Companion-Vocabulary/dp/1585101915/ref=pd_sim_b_3). The first one is written entirely in Latin; it's meant to teach Latin in a totally immersive way, by bypassing your native language and getting you to connect Latin vocabulary with images and ideas. I guess you don't technically need the companion but it's helpful when grammar concepts get more complex so I'd recommend it.
   
   
3. We jumped into Ovid after chapter 26ish, but I'd recommend at least finishing the book. Also, I hear Orberg's second book is a great bridge between the teaching style of Latin he writes and the poetry of Ancient Rome.
   
   
4. One more thing, take your time. By the time you're finished with each chapter, reading it should be as easy as reading in English. I think its recommended that you read them 7 times before moving on. It'll be dull at first but the repetition only reinforces it more.
   
   Hope I helped!

> What should I do?

You should use a kanji learning method that has you learn radicals (smaller parts of kanji) first, and then teaches you kanji that you can make out of them. One of the oldest popular versions of this method is Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. It teaches you a story and English word to associate with each kanji, which makes learning vocabulary easier in the future.

KanjiDamage takes a similar approach, but uses mnemonics that are a bit more crass. Unlike Remembering the Kanji, KanjiDamage also gives you vocabulary to associate with kanji.

Either of these methods should be paired with regular use of an SRS system. Anki is free, highly customizable, and popular, but is has a steep learning curve. Most people find it worth the effort to learn how to use it. If you search around there are other alternatives, but none of them as widely used as Anki. You could also just make traditional flash cards.

Or, if you're like me and you're too busy (read:lazy) to get books, make flashcards, manage anki decks, etc, you can just buy WaniKani. WaniKani is free to try for the first two "levels". It is pretty much the approach I explained before, except that it's done all the hard work for you. Also, unlike Remembering the Kanji, WaniKani teaches you vocabulary as you learn kanji.

Always start with learning hiragana and katakana. These are a handful of phonetic symbols that you will need to read basically anything. The guides below will cover them, but just make sure it's the first thing you do.

Tae Kim's guide starts at the basics and then continues with grammar. It's very much based on a "casual first" principle where it starts informal and builds up to formal speech, unlike most textbooks that focus on the latter. You could also check out the pdf version if you find that more comfortable.

Speaking of informal, you might like Namasensei's videos. This is how I made a start years ago. His handwriting is terrible, but it's a very motivational way to learn your hiragana and katakana.

A popular tool for learning vocabulary is Anki with a Core 2k/6k vocab deck. I found a guide here, but I haven't checked if this particular one is up to date. Anki is a flashcard program, and that vocab deck contains the 6000 most frequently used words in Japanese. You can build up your vocab knowledge daily, and get reviews on words you've had before. There's also a mobile app (free on android, paid on iphone), which is really convenient if you commute a lot.

If you like textbooks, possibly the most commonly used are Minna no Nihongo and Genki. I have no experience with these myself, so I can't really comment on them. Apparently the Minna no Nihongo book I linked expects you to know hiragana and katakana before you even dive in, so be aware of that.

For reading practice, look for children's books or simple manga. These texts usually have furigana, which basically means that all the complex characters (kanji) have little hiragana on top that show you how to read them. It's going to make your life a lot easier when you're just starting out.

Another website to keep in mind is Jisho, which will help you look up kanji by piecing them together. Useful if furigana aren't present, which is the case for most advanced texts. Kanji are a huge roadblock for a lot of people, but don't be intimidated by them.

The only thing I can't really help you with is listening practice. I have tried watching some TV shows, but it's often very fast and hard to follow. Anime is fine, as long as you're aware that it's not always exactly realistic.

In summary:

• Learn hiragana and katakana first
  
• Build up your grammar and vocabulary
  
• Find material to practice reading and listening, appropriate for your current level of grammar/vocabulary

> Thank you for giving me the free feels of what it is going to be like when I visit you there! Immersion ftw!

You're so very welcome!!! Have I told you about this yet? and this?

That was a delicious giggle! Thank you! Thank you!

Take the academic route. Start by purchasing or pirating Integrated Chinese (from what I understand it is by far the most popular chinese textbook) and the equivalent workbook if you'd like.

Use this site's vocab and definitions (they correspond with the vocab in the book but provide more accurate definitions). The rest of the site is actually also pretty useful for learning grammar and practicing reading, listening, and pronunciation.

Then learn how to use quizlet's 3 way flash card option for Chinese (its really poorly implemented but it does work, allows you to study character->definition or character->pinyin and vice versa). If you're curious how the quizlet feature works (its really poorly explained online) it requires you to make a set with one side set to chinese the other to english, on the chinese side have the character/word you want, on the english side have the definition and the pinyin within parentheses (if you have any other parenthses it will screw up and break the whole set, so I use brackets when I want to clarify definitions)

For example the chinese card would read: 水

the english card would read: water (shuǐ)

here's a template for further clarity

Also www.archchinese.com is the best site for stroke order and audio

In terms of vocabulary this combo of resources is working really well for me, I'm currently in a 6 hour a week chinese class but all the vocab learning I do at home and this is how. This so far has allowed me to recognize any character I've learned in the past, but if you want to have it solid enough that you can always write any character from memory you might want to make your own anki and update it as you learn new words since you'll end up forgetting how to write some of the lesser used characters if you don't.

As far as grammar it'll be tough on your own but you can do it from Integrated Chinese and other online resources.

/r/learnjapanese's Getting Started Guide

> ###Online Guides
>
> Luckily for the modern language learner, the internet is full of free resources for study. When using them, however, make sure that you are using a credible source. One extremely popular and quality guide is Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese. Written, and even available through Amazon, as a book, Tae Kim’s Guide covers everything you need to know to get started learning Japanese.
>
> Another great choice is Pomax's Introduction to Japanese.
>
> If you’d like to follow a different path, you can follow the subsections below.
>
>
> ###Textbooks
>
> If you’re interested in a more traditional form of study, you may be looking for a recommendation of a textbook. In /r/LearnJapanese, the most commonly recommended textbook series is Genki. Currently available in its second edition, the Genki consists of two textbooks (GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese and Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese II) with companion workbooks. The books and associated media are designed to be used to help in learning speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, with additional segments for cultural information. These textbooks are commonly used in college and university settings and cover the first two years of study at a common pace.
>
> These books are available for purchase from many sources, such as Amazon.com (Amazon.com Purchase Links: Genki I | Genki I Workbook | Genki II | Genki II Workbook ) and traditional brick-and-mortar resellers.
>
> Additional choices for textbooks, such as the Nakama series, can be found on the Resources page of the wiki.

If you're a beginner, those are some good resources to start with for reading, including Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. For Kanji, I'm using "Remembering the Kanji" by Heisig. Japanese Skype partners or using HelloTalk is great if you're looking to have a conversational partner with. Your Chinese background will definitely help with your Kanji, so that's great.

Keep in mind about payout, though. It doesn't make practical sense to study intermediate or advanced levels of a foreign language if you're not going to be working or living there for an extended amount of time (e.g., spending three years to study advanced Spanish for a month long vacation in Mexico makes zero sense sans personal enjoyment).

Best of luck on your never-ending adventure of learning.

I tried Rosetta Stone in Korean briefly. It sucked. Like really, really sucked. It wasn't just that it did a bad job of teaching things, it taught some things in a way that was incredibly misleading and would result in you speaking some pretty absurd Korean. If you didn't know any better (I did, but obviously a complete beginner wouldn't), it would actually be harmful to your acquisition process if you used Rosetta Stone. It doesn't go up to a very advanced level either.

So now that that's out of the way:

• If there is a Korean class available anywhere near you, take it. Korean isn't easy, and self-studying it certainly doesn't make it any easier.
  
• Integrated Korean is the most widely recommended textbook series I've seen. I've never used it myself, but you should get a textbook, and it seems that theirs are good.
  
• Talk to Me in Korean is a great site to practice listening. It has lessons starting from complete beginner (including a few Hangul lessons).
  
• To practice speaking, you should find real-life Korean people to practice with once you've studied it a bit and have something to work with. Unless the person is a Korean tutor/teacher, don't expect them to do much in the way of teaching you though. You can try Meetup.com or classified ads like Craigslist to help you find Korean people if need be.
  
• Here's a list of other various resources I use.

If you really, really start feeling uncomfortable with kanji, like I did, RTK can help.

It's controversial on this subreddit for a number of reasons:

1. It does not teach you the readings of any of them.
   
   
2. It teaches you one, concrete meaning for every kanji it introduces. Nearly every single jouyou kanji ("essential" kanji) has multiple meanings. It's nice to have an anchor point for each kanji you come across, but for some people, it can be hard to attach extra meanings to a character they've already memorized as meaning something else.
   
   
3. Some of the meanings are just plain incorrect and wrong altogether. In fact, I made a post about it. So, every single kanji you learn using this book, ALWAYS cross check with jisho.org before committing the meaning to memory.
   
   The pros:
   
   
4. It breaks kanji down into easy easy EASY to remember parts, all of which logically come together to form any particular kanji. Or at least, after you've formulated your own story to help you remember it, they do.
   
   
5. It teaches you to dissect more complex kanji instead of just looking at some big, scary character and thinking "Oh God". For example, 夢 (dream) looks scary, doesn't it? Well it's not. It's composed of these "primitives" (every other resource you encounter will call these primitives "radicals".): Flower, Eye, Crown, and Evening. They're all separate pieces. It's not like "Dream" is just some insane, unique kanji. It's composed of parts, like a puzzle. 95% of all kanji I've encountered are this way. Even kanji I've never seen before can be dissected into these parts. Very few are completely, 100% unique and require their own memorization.
   
   
6. You will remember them like it is your job. You won't know how to READ them; but assigning readings to kanji you already know is so easy it's disgusting. That's why I took a break from Genki upon starting lesson 3 and started RTK. It's been 25 days and I've learned 330 kanji thus far, 15 new ones today. It's hard, hard work, but it has paid off so far. Anki helps a great deal (free flashcard program, look it up if you haven't heard of it before).
   
   The biggest, most important part of this book, to me, is the fact that it shows you that kanji aren't impossible to learn. Challenging, definitely. Difficult, definitely. But not in the SLIGHTEST impossible.
   
   At my current rate, it'll take me about 5 and a half months to finish it up. The average time is 3-6 months, and it can be faster or slower depending on how comfortable you are with it. I try to do at least 15 a day. But sometimes, I have no time and skip it, and other times, I have excess time and will do up to 30. No matter what and no matter how many, it's always easy to remember. Just remember you aren't actually learning Japanese; you're merely making ACTUAL learning of Japanese potentially easier.

Hello everyone! I've always been lazy about it and put off learning but I want to get serious about it. So starting today I'm going to do daily studying.

I don't have much money IRL due to illnesses hindering me having a strong income, so I'm currently using memrise's free course titled "Japanese 1". I'm probably going to try to milk all the free courses for what they're worth. Is this a decent strategy / will I learn properly? Or should I go to a different website?

Also, I'm putting some money aside to order this book - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568365268/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

Is it worth it or is there better stuff out there? Thanks!

No problem... thanks for the reply!

So a little over a month ago (after I made that last post), I bought a copy of The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, and it's absolutely awesome. If you can get your hands on a copy, I'd definitely recommend it.

Basically, the book lists 2300 basic kanji... and for each one, it gives the meanings, the readings, a few example compounds, and - most importantly - a useful note on how to remember the character. For example, with the kanji 作 (as in つくる, "to make"), the book recommends viewing the right radical (乍) as a hacksaw, and the radical on the left as a person - thus, a person using a hacksaw to make something. That might not be the true etymology, but it's still a good way to remember the kanji. Some of the suggestions are a bit of a stretch (and kind of hilarious)... but I figure, as long as it helps me with memorization, then why not?

I was starting to go crazy trying to come up with mnemonics to help me remember kanji, so this book has been a huge help (and time-saver) for me.

Sounds like you're interested in classical Latin. Starting there is a good idea, as church Latin tends to be simpler than classical Latin, meaning if you can read classical Latin, you'll have no trouble reading church Latin. I would recommend Lingua Latina. It is 100% in Latin, but starts off very simply and slowly introduces grammar and new words, so that by the time you finish the book you can read in Latin reasonably fluently. If you have experience in learning languages or speak another Romance language, you may be able to get by with just this book, but if not a traditonal grammar like Wheelock's Latin would be a good supplement. The benefit of Lingua Latina is that it teaches you to read in Latin, not painfully translate it. If you're goal is to be able to read texts for pleasure, this is a must.

I'm sorry to hijack this thread.

I'm heading to Japan in 11 hours for 4 months(Going abroad for my college), and I lived there for 10 months in high school. I study Japanese at my college.

My biggest fault in grammar. I've used a couple of resources to help me, so I'll start with that.

Japanese the Manga Way is one of my all-time favorite resource book. It's less boring, and has well written explanations. I've often used this book as a supplement to my other textbooks.

Genki is another favorite. I've used both 1 and 2 in my college class, and if well taught is extremely valuable. It teaches Kanji/grammar/ vocab at a moderate pace.

I've also used this grammar book in the past. It's good, but lacks in presentation.

Tuttle's Japanese Guide to Kana/Kanji provides good practice space for Kana/Kanji. The later Kanji's space can be limited, but if you write it in pencil you can erase and re-write at any given time.

I use the Random-House dictionary, but it's kind of 'old hat'. For online I use Jisho.org or Jim Brean's dictionary. There was another one I used to use that was very similar to Jisho.org that was made by a Redditor but I lost the link. If you have a DS I would recommend Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, it's like have a full electronic dictionary w.o the full price (Though I wish you could jump from English -> Japanese words [You can do Japanese -> English words] but that's my only grievances against it).

Good luck!

Well 정보은씨?, you are in luck.
One possible solution for you is to grab a copy of the Remembering Traditional Hanzi series by Heisig and study the "meanings" of the characters. I would also recommend using something like Anki or Skritter that make use of Spaced Repetition Schedule for better retention rate.
I recommend learning the traditional characters because both some Chinese speaking world and Korea use the traditional set of characters. The mainland China uses the simplified characters and if you want to make the transition to the simplified characters, I heard it's not that hard.
As you are learning the characters, you can manually input the Korean way of reading the characters or rely on the Korean readings that Skritter provides.

If you work consistently, I think the above step should be done in a matter of months. Then, you have given yourself a strong foundation in characters.

I would also suggest perfecting your Mandarin pronunciation as you are learning the characters.

I'm a big supporter of using media to boost your listening and reading comprehension, when learning a language, but as a 一年生 don't expect too much from this approach yet. This is more of a thing for intermediate students. Mediawise, it will be very hard for you to understand anything at your level, so maybe you should look into graded readers instead of manga and look into kids programs instead of, say, the more adult oriented anime, though there are certainly plenty of cartoons out there for kids. There are a bunch of ways, though, to maximize how much you learn from media, such as listening to the same clips several times, first with subtitles, second with a dictionary in hand to look up everything you didn't know, and third without anything to test how much you retained/picked up. If you're not focusing on how the media can improve your language skills, then you're only convincing yourself into just watching TV or just reading for pleasure. Neither of these things are bad in small amounts, especially as an occasional break from studying, but, don't make the mistake that sooooooo many others make when adopting television and comic books into their language learning regimen.

Also, check out Japanese the Manga Way by Wayne Lammers. It's a very good source of grammar information, and it gives you example sentences taken from real manga.

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906

I started learning to read and write Korean with Hangul Master, then the basics with the Integrated Korean series. Because Korean grammar can be no bueno, I used Korean Grammar in Use as well. All of those books were super worth the price and really helped me understand how the language worked.

If you're looking for something free, Talk To Me In Korean is always a good option, or if you wanna learn Hangul on your own, YouTube has a lot of good videos!

Good luck!

Do you have a local university where you can audit a summer class? I recommend doing that if you can, and also you can ask your professor recommendations.

Force yourself to learn Hiragana and Katakana in 1 week or so and get that over with quickly. Do not go easy on yourself and move on from reading the Romanized pronunciations. There are flash card apps you can use as well, my preferred is called Anki. I live in Japan and still use it as there are flash card decks for everything, and especially since it's on my phone (free on android, paid on iphone).

Find a language partner if possible. There are also online Skype services.

For now though, I recommend either of the first two books, and the third. My organization's Japanese language advisor prefers Minna no Nihongo, because he thinks the Genki series uses too much English. But I first learned in the states during college and still feel that Genki 1 & 2 were great introductory books. The third book is from my language advisor's preferred Japanese Language Proficiency Test prepbook series:

Genki

[Minna no Nihongo] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/4883196038/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522710731&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=minna+no+nihongo+1&dpPl=1&dpID=41T4AzzZhzL&ref=plSrch)

[Nihongo So Matome N5] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/486639076X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522710835&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=nihongo+sou+matome+n5&dpPl=1&dpID=51HKNmOKvfL&ref=plSrch)



Learn how to count, along with the basic various counter words (ex: the first 10 days of the month are special words, 10 people, 10 things, etc)

Learn "すみません sumimasen" for "I'm sorry / excuse me / thank you" (sometimes). Use this especially if you need someone's attention or want to ask a question.

"arigatou(gozaimasu/gozaimashita)" = thank you

Toire wa doko desu ka? =
Where's the bathroom?

男 "otoko" = man

女 "onna" = woman

Also check out /r/movingtojapan /r/japanlife

Blessings on you

On the other side of the coin, anime can have its place in language study. So, to answer your question, check out http://kitsunekko.net where you can find Japanese subtitles for many shows. They're of course written in Japanese, so be sure to study your kana and kanji.

But don't expect that to be enough to learn the language. Language learning needs lots of practice interacting with others. It's also more difficult to learn the grammar rules from passive listening.

I'd recommend looking for a place that holds Japanese lessons in your area. One possibility if you have the time are universities or community colleges, where you may be able to sit in on classes for no credit, for a small fee (which is called auditing). My old university charges $50 for non-students, which is pretty cheap for a several month-long language course. Other universities may be cheaper or more expensive. Granted, the class times might be difficult if you're still in K-12 or working.

If you can't find any classes, at least invest in some proper course books. The universities I studied at used either Minna no Nihongo (main book in Japanese only, need the English, or your native language, supplement), Genki (starts out all in English/romaji, and gradually introduces kana and kanji), or one other I don't recall the name of. For supplementals, I had found the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar set useful. A good electronic dictionary is helpful as well, which will give you many example sentences. http://jisho.org is so/so as well, and free.

Good luck!

It's not crazy. I'm a fluent English speaker who has learned conversational Korean over the course of two years, albeit in a classroom setting. I've found it to be a pretty simple language when compared to other East Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese. The best thing to do is get some books and learn the grammar patterns. I recommend [these] (http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Korean-Beginning-Textbooks-Language/dp/0824834402/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419721377&sr=8-2&keywords=klear+korean) because they come with listening resources and teach you the basics well. Once you get the basic grammar patterns and memorize the elementary vocabulary I would recommend getting yourself to the intermediate level with the same line of books. Supplement your education by listening to Korean pop music and watching Korean dramas (super fun). There are also many websites and apps that are willing to connect you with people that speak Korean fluently.

My biggest piece of advice is to focus on reading fluently and getting grammar patterns down. Once you have this down you will only have to learn more vocabulary to expand your grasp on the language. Going to South Korea will also help you learn, although a lot of people will only want to speak English with you. You will have to actively seek out people that are willing to speak Korean to you. If you have any other questions about learning the language or going to Korea, then don't hesitate to PM me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0299236544/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487088409&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=serbian

This is a book I am using. I have a Serbian girlfriend as well. If you are good at teaching yourself languages, this book is amazing. I also have her help me with examples that I can use newly learned words or phrases in. I also use uTalk which is a free app in the play store to help learn useful phrases.

If what you want to achieve is A1 and nothing beyond, you best bet would be getting one of the many course books:

• Schritte (http://www.amazon.com/dp/3190018510/). You may simply ignore the 1 stars review as they're irrelevant.
  
• Lagune (http://www.amazon.de/dp/3190016240/) and a lot more others. Actually it doesn't really matter which one you pick. Any one of them is sufficient.
  
  A arguably better alternative would be the free online course offered by Deutsche Welle (http://deutschkurse.dw.de/KursPlattform/WebObjects/KursPlattform.woa/wo/6.1). Do register and try it. Really valuable resource. Together with Deutsch – warum nicht? (http://www.dw.de/deutsch-lernen/deutsch-warum-nicht/s-2163) you can go far. (In case you didn't realise already, both the sound files and pdf notes can be found on the right, featuring four series.)
  
  Maybe the only problem you would encounter is speaking. The speaking test is actually like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGNd-6pDkEI), and you may panic if you don't already speak in German for a several hours. Try to find someone who speaks German and wants to do a language exchange with you. (http://www.language-exchanges.org/) is one of them. You may as well find one on Reddit.
  
  By the way, if you really want to have a strong command of German sooner or later, there are some good, though popular (popular doesn't always mean bad) books for foundation, apart from your already awesome German for Reading:
  
  
• German: How to Speak and Write It (http://www.amazon.com/dp/9650060359/)
  
• The Everything Learning German Book (http://www.amazon.com/dp/159869989X/)
  
  If you insist on getting a grammar book, a nice start would be:
  
  
• Essential German Grammar (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0340741899/)
  
• English Grammar for Students of German (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0934034389/)
  
  And eventually you may want to take down the boss:
  
  
• Hammer's German Grammar and Usage (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1444120166/)
  
• Duden 04. Die Grammatik (http://www.amazon.de/dp/product/3411040483/)
  
  Finally I recommend you to take a look at my favourite reading material when I started, Studien und Plaudereien (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22160), freely offered by Project Gutenberg.

You can check out what you'll learn right now if you'd like. The book is Integrated Chinese Level 1 Part 1 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887276385/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdo_t1_91RMAbTQJKWP1). There's also a pdf copy floating around the internet somewhere if you just want to check it out without buying. The beginner 1 class goes over the first 5 chapters and the beginner 2 class goes over the next 5 chapters. The entire book is equivalent of one semester long college class so it's a little bit of a slower pace than taking a class at A&M (which I kind of liked, since I didn't know anything going into it, it provided a no pressure environment).

For a large part of the beginner 1 class, we would start with like 5 mins of going over the tones individually and the teacher would correct us. The teacher was also usually pretty good about correcting our tones when speaking to answer questions. Our teacher also provided time at the end of class to answer whatever other questions we had. I guess the experience is entirely dependent on your teacher so YMMV.

I'm not sure of your background but here's some info in case you have no/little experience. Be aware that there are two sounds in Mandarin that aren't in English: the 'r' sound isn't quite the same, and we don't have the ü vowel. I don't know if you speak any other languages, but don't be discouraged if you can't get those quite right, it took me over a year and I'm still not confident I say them right (although I've been told I do). Also pinyin (the phonetic romanization system that tells you how to pronounce characters) isn't a direct mapping to English spelling. For example, "hui" in pinyin is pronounced more like "hway". The app "Pleco" is free (with paid add-ons) and shows you characters, pinyin, definitions, and example sentences, and it can read everything out loud for you so you can mimic the pronunciation. It's a must have.

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to help out!

I have always used the Chinese Link textbooks. I also see Integrated Chinese everywhere. Also, I highly highly highly recommend all of the Demystified books! I have both the Chinese and German and they are fantastic! Also Heisig's books are really popular and they also come in traditional. Hope this helps! I am pretty experienced in trying out tons of different resources for Mandarin! :)

My classes start on the 4th. :) I've bought most of my textbooks already but I really need this Japanese workbook for my intro Japanese course. I moved it from my books list to my main list so its easy to find if you end up picking me. :) This is a really great contest and even if I don't win I think it's fantastic that you're willing to help people get their hands on much needed textbooks. <3

-Stay motivated. I tried learning Japanese on my own for about 2 years (didn't get very far) until I finally got to college and was able to take a class. The foundation I'd already established helped SO much, and now I'm learning at an incredible rate. But that's because I have 4 classes a week, and I'm constantly using everything I know to write and speak frequently.
-For learning hiragana, katakana, and kanji, try to make up stories or associate the pictographs with things that you can remember. There are certain workbooks that will teach you hiragana and katakana, giving you cutesy little ways to remember the characters. That's a good starting place.
-I'm using the textbook Genki...learning from a textbook helps you go through grammar in pretty logical steps.
-Pay close attention to the sentence structure. Once you get that down, it's easy. (Ex: Instead of Subject Verb Object - I kicked the ball - Japanese uses Subject Object Verb - I the ball kicked.)

As expected, my N5 didn't go well for me, as I only seriously started practicing like a few days ago. Although, listening part went well (or so I think) for me, as I'm watching Japanese stuff on a regular basis for ~7 years now.

In any case, I'm more determined now. I'm following KLC book, KLC Anki deck, JLPT N5 Vocabulary Anki deck, and An Introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar, & Language. Also, I have Making Sense of Japanese but haven't started reading it yet.

I tried Memrise too but didn't go well for me. I found Anki better. Now just have to devote some time off Anki to study grammar too.

Hope this helps, and all the best!

Hammer's German and Usage

Hammer's German and Usage Workbook

German Grammar drills

Secondary grammar book

Personally, Hammer's Grammar book is quite enough. It is around 500 pages of dry grammar. It is very well constructed and very easy to understand, get it with workbook. It is logical, as it teaches you from the most essential and easiest structures. Nouns -> genders, -> cases, that way it is easier to learn.

Secondary Grammar book is not necessary.

Advice her to use Anki, its a very helpful tool i think for the most easiest words to learn. Especially it helps a lot with German genders.

Listen to me right now. Listen to me good.

Remembering the Kanji is probably one of the best ways to achieve what you're talking about. However, according to the introduction of the book, it will hurt you to read it alongside a Japanese course or in conjunction with other Kanji-memorizing methods. So just dedicate a few weeks to learning the 2,200 Kanji this books teaches. It claims that you can do it in 4-6 weeks if you're dedicated enough. Highly recommended.

Edit: Oh, and then there is a second and third volume which help with pronunciation of Kanji and introduce you to advanced Kanji, respectively. But even mastering the first volume puts you at a great advantage to learning Japanese.

xizar answered already, but KLC, Kanji Learner's Course, is a book by Andrew Conning that presents the kanji in an order that prioritizes both useful to building up future kanji vocabulary as well as usefulness to the student of Japanese. All kanji from the Joyo list are included, as well as kanji popular in names or that are expected to be added to the Joyo list. Each new kanji also has a mnemonic story that helps a student remember the kanji. I really do suggest checking it out if you are looking around for a kanji resource, it's worth far more that what you pay for it.

Check out Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji". Learn the kana, know stroke order, pronunciation, etc, but realize they are not a substitute for kanji. You need both to be able to do anything besides read children's books and play really old video games.

Get yourself an SRS (Spaced Repetition Software). Basically really intelligent flash cards. The software tells you when to review them so you don't waste time reviewing what you already know. I recommend Anki, but Surusu also has a large number of users. Both are free.

Check All Japanese All the Time. The author, Khatzumoto, tends to take things to extremes, and he verges off into personal developement a lot. If you stick to the Table of Contents I just linked to and take everything he says with a few grains of salt you'll be fine. A more moderate, more Spanish-focused view can be found on Spanish Only.

Would love to recommend this book to you:

https://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Chinese-Simplified-Characters-Textbook/dp/0887276385/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=integrated+chinese+level+1&qid=1573484927&sr=8-1

Integrated Chinese. You can use this in conjunction with the book you are looking to buy (glossika). When I first started learning Chinese in middle school they used much more juvenile books, but for my friends who continued Chinese in university, this is what they used. I've seen the book in real life and I really like it and would recommend it. Let me know if you have any questions :)

Why do you want to learn French? The answer can have an effect on what kind of course materials you should look for.

If you're main focus is conversation, than Language Hacking French would probably be the best fit for you in conjunction with italki lessons and videos on youtube.

If you're main focus is reading (to read literature and that sort of thing) than something like French for Reading would be a better fit, in conjunction with something like Duolingo stories.

Language learning, as I once heard, is like travelling. There are planes, trains, cars, and boats, and whatever you pick is based on what you want to experience/personal preference.

YES TOTALLY WORTH!
Khatzumoto : AllJapaneseAllTheTime.com
Khatzumoto learned to be fluent in Japanese in 18 months. He did this through complete immersion. He would listen to Japanese every single day even if he didn't understand most of it at first. Learning is all about TIME. He learned how to read and write fluently by going over many sentences through SRS(Spaced Repitition System). As for Kanji, he recommends the Heisig method which I myself found extremely helpful and have a much easier time learning Kanji. If you don't want to purchase you can find a torrent very easily.

Explanation in video bits:

Watching Japanese videos without subtitles

4 stages of listening

You'll suck at it less as time goes on

I do highly recommend watching all 3 parts of the videos as there is a lot more information in them.


READ THESE:

10,000 Hours of Listening Comprehension

10,000 Sentences


Additional Sources I use for Learning 日本語:

Anki Deck for Sentences

Grammar: imabi.net

Dictionary: tangorin.com

Learning at first is overwhelming but definitely will get easier over time. But that's the thing, you have to give it a chance.

Try some other schools? Usually you don't need to come in at rank beginner level if you already know a lot of Japanese. (I haven't been to one, but I am going to one in October).

The advantage of a school is that it offers you a 2 year visa. If there are other visa options, I'd recommend those - working holiday visa is available for some countries, etc. Then you can self-study and practice conversation. Assuming you're sufficiently motivated!

As for books, I did this book. It overlaps a bit with Genki 2 but it's a natural step up. Towards the end it gets quite difficult as it uses native texts. I'm now doing Tobira which is really fun and is placed between N3 and N2.

I've never used Japanese for Dummies, so I don't know how far it takes you and how well it allows you to transition to more advanced learning materials. As has already been mentioned, the easiest method is to exhaust all the grammar your current book can teach. The most popular alternatives to JfD are Genki and Japanese from Zero. If you asked anyone who studied Japanese for a while, if they used either book or at least heard about them, they'll most likely say yes. On top of that, it's easy to build up on your knowledge after you finished the textbook. After Genki 1, you can use Genki 2 and after you finished that as well you'll be quite good at Japanese.

If you want to practise natural speaking and writing, I'd recommend to take a look at an app called HelloTalk. It basically lets you chat with native speakers of a language of your choice for free. It might feel like it's still a little too early to try that but when I look back at how I learnt Japanese, I wish that I would have used that app much, much sooner. It's never to early to start speaking/ writing!

Thanks for the reply! Are these the Genki books you're referring to?

Offhand I'd put myself as an Intermediate-Beginner. Kana is no problem, but I only have around 60 or so Kanji under my belt, and my vocab/verbal was about the level to get me though typical everyday conversations, albeit with some groping around with very basic and bad grammar to make myself understood when I don't know how to say something. One of the bigger points is just that I haven't been speaking / listening to it for the last 4 years.

Is Nikkei this website?

I guess I would want to get a lot of math / physics / mechanical vocab so I can describe results from stress tests and failure loads and so on. I'm not aiming to have easy, flowing conversation skills in 2 months or anything, but if I can understand most of what the other engineers are saying, and make myself understood quickly at least, I'd be satisfied.

Yeah, I haven't set myself up for success very well; all of my blocked-off self-study time ended up getting eaten up with business trips and late nights in the lab, and then the transfer date got set recently.

I've been hoping to find an outside tutor / course if for no other reason than to have some time that I know couldn't get sucked into work-time, but you may be right; setting some focused time each day to work on vocab could be my best bet.

In college I used Keller and Russel's Learn to Read Latin and didn't have any luck with it.

A few years later I picked up Lingua Latina, (and its supporting materials), and did a LOT better. The latter uses an immersion based method where you try to figure out what's going on based on cognates. Over time you pick up conjugation and declension pretty naturally instead of trying to memorize tables.

There are supporting materials with classical vs ecclesiastical pronunciation which you might find helpful as well.

Edit: Check out the Amazon preview I linked, it should give you a good idea of what to expect.

I really want to learn Japanese. I watch a decent amount of anime, and it'd be great to be able to watch it without subtitles (as in, have it open in a tab while I do other things). I'm also planning a trip to Japan next spring, and knowing the language would definitely be handy. I already know Korean, and I've heard the grammar is similar, so it should be slightly easier to learn, but the writing/reading is going to kill me.

This book seems to have good reviews and appears to be a structured way to learn some basics.

This is one of the first of a few Japanese songs I've listened to and thoroughly enjoyed.

I tried looking up a joke, and the only one that provided an explanation is...

Q: What is Michael Jackson's favorite color?

A: あお！ (Say "ow!" like Michael Jackson style. Means "blue" in Japanese)

Other than Japanese, I'm hoping to make some time to learn French using the duolingo app. I started when I went to France this past year, but I ended up losing my phone and was too busy with studies and travels to continue on. I'd say I'm close to native in Korean and about intermediate in Spanish. I've been working on my Spanish vocabulary using memrise, because that's what usually destroys me when I try to speak it or listen to someone else speak.

Oh, and this is a fun song we listened to in my high school Spanish class.

You're not just going to be able to guess/work it out/get an answer in even a long reddit post.

Are you actually studying Japanese? You need a self-study book at the very least (many people recommend the Genki series) or, if you just want to dabble, look at the Pimsleur or Michel Thomas audio series. Another fun approach you may enjoy is Japanese the Manga Way.

It's well worth making the effort. Good luck!

I think it's a kinda poor way to learn kanji on it's own, but for kana and general vocabulary it's fine. It's a good supplement to use in conjunction with other resources.

For kanji a friend of mine recommended Remembering the Kanji by Heisig. His method is working the best for me.

I haven't used Lingodeer since it went to a paid model, but for an app it's pretty good. Starting out, https://www.talktomeinkorean.com/ is pretty good too IMO

The majority of my studying has come from this textbook series though: Integrated Korean

I'm not fluent, but the kanji resource that I like best is the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course; I feel that it does the best job of anything that I've seen in terms of explaining similar kanji and how to tell them apart. There is a decent number of pages available in the Look Inside preview, so maybe browse through and see if any of the explanations for similar kanji early on (木 vs. 本, 休 vs. 体, 牛 vs. 午, 北 vs. 比, 刀 vs. 刃) click with you?

There's actually a book series that made memorizing characters really easy. I'm learning Japanese, and with it I was able to commit 2000 kanji to memory in a bit over a month. It doesn't go over readings at all, but you can at least write everything without issue.

And Chinese grammar is great, it takes all those things like conjugation and irregular verbs and noun genders and just laughs at them

EDIT:

Books I used was this for Japanese

Chinese equivalent

I don't really know why but the books are listed twice on Amazon... on the more expensive base listing (the 90€ one) the alternative shops are actually a bit cheaper (see here) so at least you could get the textbook for around ~50€ and I think the workbook is around 23€ here (the picture shows the second edition so it should be the right one), maybe if you get them from the same shop you could get lucky with cheaper shipping as well, but I don't know about that (same goes for the answer key )

Apart from looking for cheaper shopping on Amazon de you might also want to check Amazon jp (the shipping costs are pretty high but the base price is much cheaper). I'm a bit too lazy to look it up right now, but you can change the site to English so it shouldn't be too hard. Just don't forget to calculate the shipping in as well!

If you can't read hiragana and katakana, find an app for that and learn them right away (really doesn't take long).

You'll want some way to study grammar, and while a textbook like Genki is probably best, Human Japanese or Tae Kim's Guide are good options that I really like.

You'll also probably want a way to learn Kanji, in which case I would pick up a copy of the Kodansha Kanji Learners Course and the Anki app plus related decks. If you want to stay entirely on mobile and don't mind monthly fees, try out WaniKani.

As for vocab, Anki with one of the "Core" vocab decks would be a good start.

WaniKani or other "Learn Kanji via the Radicals" methods actually make learning Kanji a lot easier and more fun. WaniKani doesn't always use the "real" meaning of the radicals, which takes away some of your ability to figure out what unknown kanji may mean, but it the method is fantastic for learning kanji. www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ is really good if you need to learn a certain set of Kanji (via a class or something) and want to learn/use the radicals as wanikani picks your kanji for you.

I don't like these novelty-approaches to language learning like duolingo, they seem like a waste of time.

I think the most efficient way is to study the basic grammar structure, acquire a good vocabulary, and get as soon as possible to a point where you can read written text. If you decide for German, I suggest the book "German for reading" by Sandberg or "German quickly", combined with the daily use of Anki to acquire a basic vocabulary (say, the most commonly used 3000 words).

If you choose French, French for reading + Anki.

Even if you want to speak or listen, I still suggest your first move must be to reach reading competency as soon as possible. It can be done in 2-3 months (read the reviews of those books), and after that it will be very easy and enjoyable to work from there toward your other goals. And if you lose your enthusiasm, you can keep on practicing by just reading books or sites you enjoy, instead of just quitting and forgetting what you have learned.

/r/LearnJapanese if you haven't found it already. I am trying to learn as well!

To be more specific, the FAQ is a great place to start. I am using a textbook called Genki along with a flashcard program called Anki for vocab memorization.

Start by learning Hiragana and Katakana, then you can start to learn vocabulary. I'm obviously not going to claim this is the best method, as learning a language is a unique process for everyone. Good luck!

The main benefit is that you learn kanji in a systematic way. They teach you to take kanji apart into their components and are structured so that you don't learn new kanji without being familiar with the components.

Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course has a pretty good breakdown of each character along with a simple etymological explanation of how it was formed and a few example words. It's excellent for using with Anki and there is a pre-made deck for this.

Wanikani, however, is a self-contained online SRS platform with a paid subscription model. It teaches you first the components, then kanji that are made of these components and then words that are made of these kanji. It's divided into 60 levels and you have to complete each level before you can go on to the next (as it's an SRS), so it takes at least over a year to complete it.

As for whether to use either of them, you'd have to decide for yourself. WK has first 3 levels free at an accelerated pace and KKLC has a preview on Amazon, so you could check them out for yourself:

https://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268

https://www.wanikani.com

That wiki is wonderful because it offers the ability to group by radicals. This is an approach that Heisig would approve of, who has written the incredibly popular Remembering the Kanji.

If you're really committed to learning Japanese, find every way you can to engage yourself. You are in control of how much you learn! Make sure you know whatever lessons you're assigned strongly. go over them enough times to never forget them. Talk to native Japanese speakers, read books, make flashcards, watch TV and movies, do everything you can to use the language.

Recommended movie

It's pretty neat. The author takes panels from various manga along with a brief description of the context, gives a translation and breakdown of what each word is doing, and explains the grammar point for that section. It's a very fun read, and actually teaches you a lot. I suggest clicking "look inside" on the amazon page to see what it covers in the table of context. Read the preface, too.

A Google search reveals that it'll bring you up to about an N4 level of grammar, which is as good as what the Genki 1+2 gets you. The difference is that it's actually fun to read, and it teaches you casual speech in conjunction with the formal stuff. If you're taking a class, Genki takes 2 years to finish; I finished The Manga Way in 2 weeks.

Any book written to prepare you for the DSH will have these exercises and more.

I took the DSH (and passed with a level 2) at my current Uni and it's considered one of the hardest to pass in Germany. So my opinion may differ slightly than other people's so take the following with a grain of salt:

I strongly suggest you work on your writing style and your grammar basics (especially endings and vocabulary). The best way to improve the former is to read copious amount of German texts, especially news from like Tagesshau. I mean, read this level of material until your eyes bleed. The DSH prep books will have tons of texts for your to read and reading comprehension exercises to solve, and additionally reading news articles or random internet articles for C1 will bolster your effort.

For the latter, use these series of books:

1. A2-B2
   
   
2. C1
   
   If you do intend on buying these, make sure to buy the Answer Book to correct yourself. Every single professor I ever encountered, used these books to some capacity to practice German grammar. Every. Single. One. I abused the hell out of mine, I'll tell you that. Not to mention, they are cheap for how effective they are.
   
   For a more in depth explanation(s) in English check out Hammer's German Grammar Bible. If it wasn't for this book, I would have been lost for much longer when it came to things like Passive.
   
   Good luck on your exam.

You seem to have a good grasp on things. It looks like some of the linked threads follow a similar path, and I'll probably be following a very similar path myself. Nice books, too. I have quite a few myself. I'm not quite sure which of these are good (since they all had great Amazon reviews). I have the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RTDPBA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078G5P6Q4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014401/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/478901441X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312270/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572229195/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GW5KTDK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976998122/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0658014900/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Although Genki I and the Genki workbook, plus the Kata/Hira quick guide looks good)

Sure. To regain motivation, have fun.

Do you need to learn kana? Make mnemonic charts with your own art.

Genki's method of kanji is bad? Textbooks don't excel at that. KanjiStudy does.

Japanese Graded Readers are fun, tho you may not be ready yet.

Rosetta Stone [insert obligatory condemnation in the next reply] costs money, but if you have it and it doesn't bore you stiff, it's worth a try. (Do the demo first to see if it's for you.)

You can do Japanese the Manga Way ( https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Manga-Way-Illustrated-Structure/dp/1880656906 ) or online versions of the defunct Mangajin almost from the beginning, tho you get more out of it the better you get.

Whatever you do, if it's learning or practice at all and you like doing it, you've got something to make it fun.

I dont know if this will help but here are some resources I use

Tae kim grammar guide is good for learning grammar http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/writing
anki is really good for making flash cards or you can find pre made decks to study https://apps.ankiweb.net/
If you like reading you could try these https://bilingualmanga.com/
http://syosetu.com/
If you like anime use this, you can watch anime with japanese subs
https://animelon.com/
Also kanji is important to learn because you cant read japanese without them
I recommend remembering the kanji 1 https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Characters/dp/0824835921/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/135-4585020-0846068?ie=UTF8&qid=1542029781&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=remembering+the+kanji+1&dpPl=1&dpID=51QhUaQJRmL&ref=plSrch

Thanks for the detailed post. I think the textbook-search site'll be especially handy, since I've never heard of it before.

And since you seem to know of a lot of good resources, I have a few questions (if you don't mind).

1. Would you happen to know the difference between these two Kodansha kanji dictionaries?
   
   

• Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary
  
• Kodansha Kanji Dictionary
  
  I'm really not sure what to go for. I'm currently using the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, and it strongly suggests that Learner's Dictionary as a supplement. But at the same time, the regular Kanji dictionary seems to be the better deal since it has much more Kanji. Is there any point in owning both?
  
  

2. I'm interested in the All About Particles book, and other such supplementary texts, but is there a chance that the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series might make them redundant?
   
   
3. How is Kodansha's Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary? Wouldn't it be redundant to the Furigana dictionary, which lets you do look-up in both JP-EN and EN-JP? Or is it nuanced enough to be worth it on its own?
   
   Thanks!

Your choices as a foreigner to get going are between titles that contain either "Croatian" or "Serbian" (if you find older material, it'll be likely advertised as "Serbo-Croatian"). "Bosnian" stuff is still pretty much restricted to this book which might actually be overkill as a total beginner learning independently.

The most important thing is to get started with a decent course. Teach Yourself Serbian, Beginner's Croatian and Beginner's Serbian are good starting points if you're really motivated (FWIW, I've used all three). You could also get a taste of the language(s) in everyday life by watching short videos involving Croats and Serbs.

If you learn the basics of any of Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian, you'll be able to start communicating with him. If he plays along and speaks to you in his native tongue, he might adjust somewhat by using fewer features/words characteristic of Montenegrin or speaking more slowly or clearly and using a slightly more formal register than he would when he's with his friends or family.

Some Kanji facts.

There are 1945 Jouyou "Daily Use" kanji. Newspapers use these. Of these, about 1000 are designated Kyouiku "Educational kanji, divided into six grades to be learned by the end of elementary school. You might want to try and learn them in that order.

For reference, Kodansha's The Kanji Learner's Dictionary is unbeatable. It's compact, being almost small enough to fit into your pocket. It uses SKIP, which is the fastest, easiest way to look up characters.

When learning kanji, make sure you memorize the basic rules for stroke order. Enclosures first, left to right, top to bottom, horizontal before vertical, vertical piercings come last. Knowing the stroke order will make your handwriting look authentic.

Radicals each have their own meaning. A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters is very good for learning the meanings of each of the radicals and creating a "story" for each character to help you remember them.

One common pitfall with learning kanji is if you neglect to WRITE kanji out by hand, you will be able to READ them, but you will forget how to WRITE them. Just make sure that even if you're using a computer to write out your Japanese by hand.

Try to memorize WORDS instead of CHARACTERS. For example, don't just learn that 続 means "continue" because it's not a word on its own. Instead, learn that 接続 means "connection" and 続く means "to continue".

There's a lot of Kanji. You don't learn them in a few years. It takes Japanese natives over a decade of schooling before they are able to read their own language fluently. And they are immersed in it! Just keep working on them and don't get discouraged.

Anki/memrise.

Also, there is a very good croatian textbook on amazon that is only like 40 bucks used: https://www.amazon.com/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Textbook-Exercises/dp/0299236544


Memrise on laptop/phone is free and pretty efficient just for vocab.

Do you have any advice for learning croatian for someone who is in diaspora and didn't grow up speaking it in the home.

I've been using KLEAR Integrated Korean textbooks to learn Korean this summer. It's actually really great and I've been making progress. There are the textbooks and workbooks, plus all the audio files that accompany it can be downloaded online for free. I definitely recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Korean-Beginning-Textbooks-Language/dp/0824834402/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313630860&sr=8-1

You'll need a solid grammar, and I wholeheartedly recommend Hammer's. Very comprehensive, easy to use, clearly written, tons of examples, great at pointing out differences between formal, colloquial, and regional uses.

The list of verb principal parts could be a little longer, that's what Wiktionary or "500 German Verbs" are for. Otherwise, it's a very solid resource for you. Find grammar points that are tricky for you and work on those.

If you need kanji learning to be gamified for you to be interested enough to keep at it, it's not a bad way to learn kanji. However there are much faster ways of learning the kanji, if you're wiling to use a system like Anki. Think of it this way:

Wanikani

• Interesting and organizes learning for you, making less external effort on your part
  
  
• Expensive
  
  
• Minimum of ~2 years to complete (according to what others have said)
  
  You could also get the other oft recommended resource for kanji learning, the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course.
  
  Kodansha
  
  
• Go at your own pace
  
  
• Book is only ~30 dollars
  
  
• Community made anki decks mean it isn't that much more work to use with an SRS system
  
  If you did 8 kanji a day from KKLC, and learned each recommended vocab word for those kanji (On average there's 2 for each kanji) you'd be learning 16 vocab a day, and you'd "finish" the book in 288 days. The good part about KKLC is if you feel you're getting overwhelmed or you feel that you can handle more, you can adjust how many kanji you do each day. It's both a more flexible system and a cheaper system.

DO read LLPSI Familia Romana! It's a 300 page continuous story introducing over 1000 words not covered in Wheelock!
Besides that, have fun with all the online resources available, like Magister Craft's many Minecraft video's (Latin subtitles available), the 24 episodes of Forum Romanum (full script in the description), Legonium, or Tres Columnae (which requires a lot of clicks to go through each story, but surprisingly provides an enormous narrative of over 140.000 words using a ~3000 word vocabulary). Also Cloelia , as one of the many simple novellas published in the last 3 years, can prove to be a nice read.
At this stage, it doesn't really matter what you read, as long as you read a lot of it and enjoy doing so.

> I don't really care if Hayashi did his homework or if the lady reading the newspaper is Tanaka and neither do the people I want to talk to.

At my undergrad school, I taught the language lab (1 hour per week required intensive practice session where we drilled the students) for three years. I was surprised at how surprised the actual instructors were that the students often wrote very similar criticisms on their course evaluation forms. No one gives a fuck what Hayashi is or is not doing. But, everyone was up on the latest chapter of whatever Shōnen Jump manga was popular at the time.

I'm a huge fan of manga. Even as a first year student I enjoyed plodding along in my favorite story with my trusty denshi jisho, and copies of my Yellow and Blue. (The Red one hadn't come out yet.)

Pick a story and go for it. Even if you have to keep a translated copy nearby to help understand.

https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499677957&sr=8-1&keywords=genki
Is a great starter as a book.
You also have http://www.imabi.net/beginnersi.htm if you rather start online (and free) It's very extensive and the guy is really a nerd about the language but imho it's a bit blunt for beginners.
http://www.textfugu.com/ is online and beginner friendly but I find it quite verbose (maybe you wont). First "season" is free so go check it out as the WK team has done a nice job there too.
頑張って

Here are some links from the sidebar:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Svenska/comments/y76c3/modthe_official_swedish_links_thread/


http://www.reddit.com/r/Svenska/comments/yc67u/modthe_official_toolsresources_thread/


As I understarnd it, this one is pretty good:
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Swedish-Grammar-Practical-Mastery/dp/0844285390/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1381010462&sr=8-2&keywords=swedish

Also, we got a skype group for learners when you are good enough to start reading/writing. PM /u/Estre for that.

Good luck!

If you want to learn the language most on here will probably reccomend Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. There's a lot of other options as well and I'm sure others will recommend them. Personally, I went the more traditional route (Wheelock's and Writing Latin, then working through a reader and finally just going through Virgil, Livy, etc.) and am currently going through LLPSI for the first time myself, so I can't really preach it's benefits yet haha.

For the Mantras why don't you post them, if you can, and someone might help you out!

the genki books are good for starter-intermediate learning.... kana's the easy part though. you need to find a kanji book to really know how to read.

edit for teh TL;DR better infoz: the first genki book teaches roughly 100 kanji if i remember correctly and the second's like 150 or something. the follow up book is called An Integrated Approach to Japanese and is more difficult as kana to assist kanji reading is mostly gone, but you'll learn enough from those three books if fully studied to understand basic news prints/read childrens' manga...
here's genki 1:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-1
there's a supplementary workbook that you don't necessarily need but can order as well, good for writing practice/exercises.
Genki II:
http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789011631/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1291080055&sr=8-4
I'm not sure where to get copies of the third book as i bought it for university but you can probably find it on amazon or abebooks. just be sure you're not getting only the workbook that is mostly fill in the blank.

This is the best way I've found outside of classes.

First of all pick up a copy of Genki I and Genki II, really good textbook to learn Japanese Grammer and basic Kanji.

Here's a link: Genki I

Next I'd head over to /r/LearnJapanese to get some more resources and find someone to talk, italki is also a great way to find a teacher, a proper J-teacher, prices range quite a bit.

And next read everything you can in JP, change your phone language and learn kanji EVERY DAY.

First off, thank you for sharing your personal background.

If English is not your native language, yet you are striving to learn a third - honestly, I can't send enough kudos your way.

As far as kanji is concerned, I highly recommend A Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Remembering-Japanese-Characters/dp/0804820384/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501029816&sr=8-1&keywords=a+guide+to+learning+the+japanese+characters

"Remembering the Kanji" seems to be far more preferred, but me, I've found that learning the historical basis of the kanji has helped far more than mnemonics that may be counter to their actual origin. Again, that's just me - everyone is different.

tl;dr version - Looks like you've decided to start learning Japanese and join the group that may have other people looking at you weird. Ignore 'em. We're glad to have you. :)

Japanese From Zero is a wonderful way to learn! Here's the link to the first book if you're interested

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Zero-Techniques-Students-Professionals/dp/0976998122/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=japanese+from+zero+1&qid=1565528459&s=gateway&sprefix=Japanese+From&sr=8-1

The author George also goes over the entire first 4 books in video lessons which is a great addition to help reinforce what you've learned after reading a chapter.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOcym2c7xnBwU12Flkm5RcLIEhvURQ8TB

Did you read the FAQ? It contains a bunch of sites you might find useful for your situation, like Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese, which can get you started on grammar and hopefully won't arouse anyone's suspicion.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a language where no one is ever going to judge you, this might not be the one. Just saying. Maybe you should get that issue sorted out before moving onto any new hobbies.

If you can wait until you move out of home, Genki (also in the FAQ) is a great textbook, and is highly recommended. Get the workbook too so you can practice what you're learning. This is way more comprehensive than Tae Kim IMO.

Can't really say for an actual order between all of the books but you should learn hiragana and katakana before doing anything else (it's not so intimidating to do), and you can probably go on to use Genki 1 then Genki 2 after that.

That said you did pick several well recommended books so assuming you can get a study plan going (and stick with it) you should be on a good footing.

As far as other recommended resources, I've heard (but not tried it myself) Tobira mentioned as a good way of moving on after finishing Genki. For Kanji and (to a lesser extent) vocab you could also use Anki (free) or Wanikani (subscription / one off payment), or if you prefer textbooks KKLC.

I also highly recommend KKLC. You can read the introduction with Amazon's Look Inside! function which really explains the methodology. It takes the best of other existing methods and wraps them up into one. You learn mnemonics for each character, you don't need to study graphemes because they are introduced as the course goes on, and it contains selected vocabulary that represent common compounds with the primary on and kun yomi readings for each character. Vocabulary is, after all, the way to learn readings. Pair the book with a SRS system like Anki (and there is already a deck for KKLC), and you've got an excellent method that you can work through at your own pace. I personally have been trying to average 15-20 characters a day so that I can finish before the end of the year. Some days I'll do up to 50 though.

HERE is why I would recommend WaniKani over KKLC: If you want a system that is all in one, that will give you progress markers, and will hold your hand throughout the process. I'll be the first to admit kanji study is rather tedious, and I think doing KKLC independently requires a lot of dedication. So if you aren't ready to commit to that, you can start with wani kani. I don't want to comment on it because I never used it, but I don't like that it locks you off from further content until you reach a certain level of mastery with the current stuff... I'd rather learn vocab through reading and not be forced to memorize words out of context to advance.

The various Dictionary of * Japanese Grammar books are all pretty good. They have good explanations and example sentences and if you use Anki, there exist decks that cover all of the example sentences in the books.

The only issue for self-study is that they are laid out like dictionaries, so they go in alphabetical order. I would also recommend the Kanzen Master grammar books if you want something a little more guided.

I had fun reading through this BCS textbook. I keep meaning to go back through and do the exercises and use the workbook, but I've been tied up. It's fun seeing all three presented side-by-side-by-side, though, and you could certainly focus on one (I was particularly interested in Croatian).

Honestly, in my opinion, unless it's a very specialised language institution, don't even bother with traditional classes. The majority of them will do little more than go through the beginner textbooks at a pace 10x slower than you could on your own. All the information you need to learn the language is freely available as long as you have the discipline to go through it without being forced to.

The first step will be to learn hiragana, then katakana. After that you'll want to tackle grammar basics, beginner vocabulary and kanji, and then begin getting exposure to simple native content while exploring the more intermediate and advanced material.

---

For kana:

Use mnemonics to familiarise yourself with hiragana and katakana.

Then drill yourself with a tool like DJT Kana until they are burned into your brain.

-

For grammar:

The single free resource I most recommend in the beginning would be Wasabi's online reference, but there are plenty of other resources out there, including Tae Kim, Imabi, Maggie Sensei, Cure Dolly, etc...

For paid resources the most commonly recommended beginner textbook would be Genki. And then Tobira for more intermediate material. My most recommended resources to purchase would be a book called Making Sense of Japanese and the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series, with emphasis placed on the first volume.

-

For kanji and vocab:

Wanikani will automate the process for you if you have the cash to pay for a yearly subscription.

If not you can use Anki with either Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Course or with Remembering The Kanji.

---

All my Japanese knowledge was acquired through self-study, starting with resources similar to these. After I had sufficient experience with the basics I went on to learn primarily through reading native material and using native linguistic resources.

It took around 3 years before I was able to begin reading light novels.

• Start with Hangul. (I did this by using Memrise Hangul lessons.) Example I also suggesting writing them down a ton, getting used to them and utilizing many of the other free resources. Although, I would just learn the basics, trying to memorize when sounds change because of their placement in the word is a bit confusing at this point.
  
  
• Move on to basic phrases and the most common verbs. (The beginner lessons on TTMIK might help.) Write these down. Get used to reading them without the romanization.
  
  
• At that point I would get a language partner to help with pronunciation or whatever you are having trouble understanding.
  
  
• Then, I suggest getting a text book, or what have you, like Integrated Korean.
  
  I only say to wait this long before using a textbook, because the most suggested book -is- Integrated Korean, and I found jumping into it did not help me. (aside from maybe the Hangul lesson at the beginning, but even that was a bit much.) I found the lessons to take a much different course than other languages that I have learned in the past. I really feel basic communication (Hello, Thank You) and the verb "to be" should be included in the very first lessons you take. They kind of jump right in without great explanations.
  
  
• I suggest going with the lessons in the text book as well as doing memorizing of common verbs/nouns/words either via Anki (or since you're limited in time) Memrise.
  
  I hope that's a good starting point. Its basically how I've gone about it, without all the stumbling around aimlessly trying to figure out what works for me, what didn't work, and lots of wasted time studying things I wouldn't fully comprehend until I had a better foundation of knowledge.
  
  I find to get the most out of Anki you end up putting lots of time into creating decks, which can be a bit overwhelming or complicated.
  
  Edited for clarification.

http://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Edition/dp/4789014401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345338134&sr=8-1&keywords=genki

It's costly, but it's easy to get for free if you know what I mean, very good textbook

Very nice survey of the options, thanks.

Some years ago I used Henshall's book and recommended it on another forum as an alternative to Heisig/RtK. I liked Henshall's mnemonics and etymologies, though he never got popular like Heisig/RtK did. I've not heard of Conning's book, it seems to be quite new, so I'm guessing it must be really good if you recommend it over Henshall.

Another +1 for the Core10k deck, though I'm only studying the words that have high frequency according to a particular frequency list I'm using. I've heard there's quite a bit of low-frequency, newspaper-ish vocab in it.

As for self-study, this is what you need IMO:

These are hard to find in the US but you can get them new from Amazon.co.jp:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/A-Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=lh_ni_t?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AN1VRQENFRJN5

￥ 2,946

http://www.amazon.co.jp/A-Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789007758/ref=pd_luc_sim_01_01_t_lh?ie=UTF8&psc=1

￥ 3,885

Shipping & Handling: ￥ 3,300

Order Total: ￥ 9,806

So for a $100 you can get a solid grammar reference set. There's a third in this series but it's not quite as useful as the first two.

That, combined with rikkaichan or what have you for inline vocabulary help would be a pretty good use of your time I think.

Plus there's always /r/LearnJapanese, too!

To learn them. For Japanese, this is great and widely considered one of the best ways to learn the kanji (and some vocab along the way); for Chinese, this (Traditional) and this (Simplified) are two of your options. Another is to just learn them out of whichever textbook you get and while studying vocabulary separatedly. There are probably some other hanzi books too; you might wanna have a look over in /r/chineselanguage for that sort of thing.

However, I suggest getting a good base in one of the two character sets (Japanese or Chinese) before you start with the other, to minimise any confusion. I knew probably 1.3k kanji (as in, I could recognise them and sort of figure out the meaning; I couldn't pronounce all of them) when I tried learning Chinese as well, so I didn't have any problems with that.

Try satori reader, from the guys who made human japanese.

If you really need a textbook you should probably go with Tobira, it covers more advanced stuff than genki but you can probably handle it since you finished Human Japanese.

I can also recommend ["Making Sense of Japanese"] (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Japanese-What-Textbooks/dp/156836492X) by Jay Rubin, it's a short read but gives you a deeper understanding of a few different topics.

Imabi is probably the most complete japanese resource in english and it's free, definitely give it a try.

I moved to Belgrade 2 months ago and I'm currently learning the language, too. I have some language lessons in Belgrade. The best way to really learn the language is to live in the actual country, it helps a lot just to hear people talk Serbian every day.

I can also recommend two books, which are really good and go in depth into the grammar, too.

四/よん/yon = 4
Try https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imiwa/id288499125?mt=8 if you have iOS. I'm not sure if Imiwa is on Android, this app serves as a dictionary.

Also checkout the 1st Genki textbook and workbook, they are used by schools all over the US and my professor teaches from it daily.

Textbook: GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese (English and Japanese Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/4789014401/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_gxGPCbTNRWJB9

Workbook: Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese Workbook I [Second Edition] (Japanese Edition) (Japanese and English Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/478901441X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GxGPCbQEZBF16

I started with Duolingo as well and it wasn't a great start. These books will help further your Japanese learning. I've been studying for two years starting in August, they really work.

r/learnjapanese is also a great place to check for viable resources besides the ones I mentioned.
Good luck! 頑張って！

I've used two textbooks for learning Chinese.

1. Basic Spoken Chinese. It helped me a lot with survival Chinese. I learned how to answer basic questions, ask for directions, and so on. BSC also explains lots of the culture, and the design of the book inside is good. The downside is that there are two tracks, one for speaking and listening and another for writing and reading. There's also two books for each track, one textbook and one workbook ("Practice Essentials"). This will cost you, but the textbooks are pretty thorough in helping you to use the language.
   
   
2. Integrated Chinese. I've been studying Chinese for three years. The first year I used IC, and now I'm using it again. (The middle year was with BSC.) The pro of this one is that it's very academic. I'm doing level two right now, and I just studied a dialogue on two people arguing about animal rights. It also has a lot more grammar than BSC. It's cheaper, too, especially if you buy an older edition.
   
   Between the two textbooks, I'd recommend IC for you. It has the grammar, and I think this is what you're looking for. Another thing I love about it is that it doesn't put the pinyin, characters, and English on the same page. After every line of pinyin in the dialogues, BSC put the English translation. This hurt my attempt to focus on Chinese. Going back and forth between English and Chinese doesn't allow you to make the necessary form-meaning connections between Chinese and the real world. In IC, you'll see a page of characters, and you'll have to flip a few pages to find some English and term definitions.
   
   Edit: The reason I'm back in IC again is that, after spending a summer in China with mostly BSC running through my head (I memorized all 40 dialogues for class), I wasn't able to hold a decent conversation. I could ask for directions, tell somebody that my Chinese wasn't too good, and ask somebody about how many siblings they had (spoiler alert: none), but that was really the extent of it. I went through a lonely phase because nobody around me could speak English, and I was totally unprepared to get to know people on a deeper level in Chinese.
   
   Edit2: You can find a graded reader/listener on this website. I've also heard some positive things about FluentU.

Scroll through to Japanese for a resource list. And also this video. You didn't really mention what you will be using Japanese for (speaking, reading, etc.) so this is only a general overview. Also, keep in mind this is coming from a highschool student self-studying Japanese, so some of my recommendations may not be the best. Here are the basics of the writing system:

• Hiragana: a 46 symbol "alphabet" used for particles and sentence structure. Each symbol represents a specific syllable. Chart and Wikipedia Article
  
  
• Katakana: Also a 46 symbol "alphabet", this is used for constructing foreign words and sometimes for emphasis on a word or phrase. chart and Wikipedia Article
  
  
• Kanji: a logographic system, that is, it uses unique symbols for each object or word. There are about 2200 Kanji used in everyday situations.
  Each Kanji can be read different ways depending on how it functions in a sentence. Wikipedia Article
  
  Here are the resources I use for learning Japanese:
  
  
• Learn Hiragana. Hiragana will get you started on reading and pronouncing Japanese. Go at our own pace, but try to memorize some everyday. After memorizing Hiragana, do the same with Katakana. Use the same picture-word association with Katakana, it really solidifies the symbols in your mind. Use RealKana to practice or refresh.
  
  
• For Kanji, Dr. Heisig's Remembering the Kanji I think is hands-down one of the best resources for learning Kanji. It uses mnemonics to memorize Kanji. One strange thing about the book is that it doesn't provide pronunciation guides for the Kanji. For instance, it would have a Kanji 雨. It would tell you, this is "rain" and how to write and remember it, but no pronunciation for how it is said in Japanese ("ame"). For this reason, it is necessary to use Jisho to find the pronunciation.
  
  
• For vocabulary, I use japaneseclass.jp . It has both vocabulary and Kanji memorization.
  
  
• Tae Kim's guide is a great beginner-intermediate guide for grammar.
  
  
• For a all-in-one beginner's course, I recommend using Memrise and specifically, jlptbootcamp's course.
  
  
• To practice all you have learned, use Lang-8. You post in Japanese and native Japanese speakers will correct you. On the flip side, you will correct their English. You can also live chat or video call on howdoyoudo.do. Use Anki to make flashcards for practice.
  
  Everybody has a different way of learning, but the absolute first thing to memorize is Hiragana and Katakana. After that, you can juggle learning Kanji and grammar or learn common phrases, or whatever. Use what works for you.

I've had success with Genki.

https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789014401

Pretty sure you can find it at Chapters or for free online.