tips + tricks – カツ猫 Katsukats

How Do I Learn Kanji?!

Anyone learning Japanese is going to have to learn Kanji at some point in their educational lifetime or they won’t truly know Japanese. Here’s how you should go about teaching yourself Japan’s most difficult writing system.

WHERE DO YOU EVEN START?

Anyone learning Japanese is going to have to learn Kanji at some point in their educational lifetime or they won’t truly know Japanese. The two questions you’re going to need to answer for yourself are: “When do I start learning Kanji” and “How do I go about learning Kanji?” Don’t worry, we’re going over it as soon as the next paragraph.

Whether you’re self teaching or are taking a class, you should start learning Kanji as soon as possible. If you put it off it’s just going to weigh on you as some mystical and difficult step that you end up avoiding. Don’t do this. Once you know your Hiragana and Katakana you should drive straight into Kanji. We’re not saying you should be learning 30 new characters a day and stress yourself out. No, we are saying you should take it slow and steady but don’t mystify the process. It’s also important to stress that you don’t just focus solely on Kanji. Be working on grammar, reading skills, and other aspects of the language while doing your best to pick up Kanji. Language is a process you have to absorb slowly over time, not in awkward chunks. Even if you knew every single kanji on Earth, not knowing how sentences are glued together grammatically you could only make random guesses about sentences.

OKAY, BUT HOW?

There are quite a few good options out there for learning Kanji but the one that we currently recommend—and the one that we’re still using—is Wanikani. It’s a website that employs the SRS (Spaced Repetition System) method of learning to teach you all of the most important Kanji characters and vocabulary at your own pace.

It’s free for the first three levels, so go see if it’s something that works for you. They use fun and memorable mnemonics to make sure that all the kanji and vocabulary words stay in your long term memory!

がんばって！

Free Online Dictionary

Are you tired of copy-pasting Japanese text you find on the internet into google translate every five minutes? Use Yomichan to streamline that process to quickly get translations in real time on any website!

FREE ONLINE DICTIONARY

Do you hate when you see something written in Japanese on the net and you have to copy and paste it into Google translate to understand what’s written? Then I have a solution for you! Yomichan!

This is how it works: After the extension is installed, anytime you hover your mouse over Japanese text the word will be defined for you! How cool is that?!

LET’S GET IT INSTALLED

First install the extension. Yomichan is available on Chrome and Firefox but I use Chrome so those are the steps I’m showing today. That said, installing on Firefox is going to be extremely similar.

Go here to download all the dictionaries you would like Yomichan to have access to when it’s looking something up for you. The developer has said that the English dictionaries have more words but use whatever you are most comfortable with.

Once you have all the zip files downloaded you just click the Yomichan icon next to the address bar in Chrome, click the wrench, click “Choose file” and select the dictionaries you downloaded one by one.

Once done, the app is immediately useable! Just hold the shift key (default) and hover your mouse over the text you don’t know.

What YOU Should be Saying

Feel as if your Japanese is stalling and you never have a chance to actually speak because you don’t have anyone to talk to? Fret no more, here are some tips and tricks to overcoming that little hurdle with a little creativity.

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

Learning a new language can be stressful, especially when you’re trying to recall odd phrases you only use a handful of times a week. Really, how often do you ask people out for coffee or tell someone else what time it is? Sure, these are helpful phrases that you should put time into learning, but there are more helpful words and phrases that you should be studying alongside these seldom used ones. Which words and phrases? Glad you asked.

TAKE NOTE

First and foremost, take note of all the things you say every day. Everyone has a particular speaking style and a set of personal favorite phrases they just love to say. Do you talk to your pets a lot? Do you find yourself saying a set phrase like “I’m hungry” many times during the day? Learn to say these phrases in Japanese! That way, the phrase will be repeatedly hammered into your brain. Eventually you won’t even have to think about how to say the phrase, you’ll just say it!

Here are some phrases that could help you get a list started:

I’m hungry.
I’m thirsty.
I’m going to the bathroom.
I’m tired.

Sounds like a lot of whining, but just trust that it helps!

TALK TO FIDO!

As I said earlier, maybe you talk to your pets a lot when you’re at home. Talking to animals is actually a really good way to improve your language skills. Talk to them as much as you want, they love it and won’t judge you for any errors you make. Here are some phrases you could use in this regard:

Move.
Stop!
Good morning.
Goodnight.
Are you hungry?
What are you doing?
Oh my lord, what in the world do you have in your mouth?!

Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the point. Practicing set phrases or short little filler words with your animals can help you practice in an environment where you don’t feel judged and can also help you to sound more fluent when you’re speaking with a Japanese speaker as these random filler words will be second nature. If you have to think about the use of a filler word, it’s not a filler word, right?

CONSCIOUS TALKING

So what exactly do you need to do? Consciously think about all the words and phrases you say throughout the day. Write the ones you want to learn in a notebook or on an app in your phone. Then ask someone fluent in Japanese — such as a friend or teacher — to help you translate these phrases. Then practice, practice, practice!

Hopefully these tips get you speaking more Japanese throughout your day. がんばって！

Nexflix’s Secret Japanese Options

Getting your fix of Japanese language through media can be a daunting task when you’re just starting out as most sites serving Japanese media are in Japanese. But everyone has Netflix, let’s use Netflix’s secret language functions to get that audio into Japanese!

SHOW ME YOUR SECRETS NETFLIX!

If you have the desire to learn Japanese and have a Netflix account you’ve probably wondered what things you can watch in Japanese to help you pick up the language. Sure, you can watch anime or a J-Drama in Japanese, but what about your favorite American sitcoms? Finding foreign language content to watch can be difficult when outside of the target country’s border, but I’m here to help!

ONTO THE SECRET!

Did you know that you can switch the audio language for much of the content on Netflix? This isn’t just for television and movies originally in Japanese, either. Many movies have been given a treatment by talented Japanese voice actors and you can experience their performances!

Now, to make things easier, Netflix has given us the option to search through its large library by audio language through their website. All you have to do is follow this link and follow the instructions below. Super easy!

INSTRUCTION TIME!

After you’re on the website make sure “Audio” is selected and then select “Japanese” as your target language.
Next, choose what you want to watch from the given list and press play.
Click the icon in the bottom right corner of the video and select Japanese!

SOME WORDS OF WARNING

Netflix’s language features are extremely buggy right now. I was unable to choose Japanese as a language option using devices such as a PS4 or smart TV even though the website shows it as an option. ALSO, if you don’t choose that you’re looking for Japanese, using the link provided BEFORE you search the show, it won’t show up as an option on the language list. This also goes for pulling up known Japanese audio shows on the previous platforms I mentioned. Odd? Yes. Actually a bug? No idea.

Anyways! Sit back, relax, and enjoy all those new options!

Should You Use Romaji?

RomajiーJapanese spelled using the writing system you already knowーis something many new learners of Japanese will rely on for all their information. But does it hurt more than it helps?

SPOILERS:

Don’t even think about using it.

ROMAJI, WHAT IS IT?

Simply put, Romaji is the Roman character spelling of Japanese words. Simple, right? So why don’t we all just learn Romaji instead of that scary Kanji and the two other writing systems Hiragana and Katakana? We don’t use it for a couple of reasons. For one, nobody in Japan is writing in Romaji. It’s confusing, and due to all of the homonyms in the Japanese language, things can get more than tricky if you’re trying to read everything using Romaji. For example, let’s say I write Kyuuban in Romaji. What did I just write? Cuban? Suction cup? The number nine? If you answered all of the above, you would be correct.

“ONE SYSTEM TO RULE THEM ALL?”

To make matters worse for Romaji, there isn’t a set system for actually “translating” Japanese into Romaji that all people equally follow. Let’s take a look at the word “Romaji” to help get this point across. Romaji is normally spelled ローマ字 but look at how you would spell it using Roman characters: Rōmaji, Rômazi, and Rômazi. This one word has three possible spellings in Romaji.

Tofugu has another amazing example in their article here that I just have to mention. It shows another word 大きい with its Romaji examples: Oki, Ookii, Ôkî, and Ōki. None of these are wrong in any way and would be accepted equally in situations where they’re used. See? Romaji is trash…

DON’T, JUST DON’T

Long story short, just learn how to read the original Japanese characters as soon as you can. At the end of the day, Romaji is just meant to be a bridge to help foreigners along in the country or when they’re FIRST starting Japanese. Once you can read Hiragana and Katakana, drop Romaji. Trust me.