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How I self-learn Japanese
and my best resources for that
About
The purpose of this article is threefold. It first relates my own experience towards Japanese self-learning, one of my greatest achievements so far. It also shares helpful tips and resources for current self-learners. Lastly it goes beyond language learning considerations and anyone intersted in self-development will find it worth the read.
Motivation
I am an adult European citizen, who grew up in France, always studied and worked in Europe, and who will probably continue to do so for a long time, if not my entire career. So why learn Japanese? Like anyone, I need strong good reasons to achieve what I perceive as a big challenge and a long journey forward. And despite what many book covers pretend, learning a new language so different from your native one is definitively a long term goal. It took me a long time to come up with a simple way to answer this question:
I learn Japanese because I want to deeply understand Japanese culture and interact with Japanese people. I learn Japanese because it’s a challenge for me in multiple ways: memory, interaction with others, resilience, language learning, etc. I learn Japanese because achieving language proficiency would make me feel immensely proud.
This motivation finds its source in my childhood and teen age, where I first perceived Japan as a miraculous place where anime and manga are better than anywhere else in the world, where food is the best in the world (equally with France, pardon my chauvinism), and where both respect for ancient culture and most advanced high tech world peacefully coexist. If you want to learn more about this feeling regarding Japan, I recommend the travel diary from pechedediamant.com, whose articles perfectly reflect my thinking.
How
Except if you are naturally gifted and skilled for language learning, Japanese is somehow scary, especially if you learn it on your own. I must admit I tried many different approches before finding my way. To give a few examples:
- I studied Japanese in classroom for two years during my studies: this ended up being super inefficient due to too much heterogeneity across students (level and motivation-wise). From…
