Bear's Guide to Japanese

The Japanese language is incredibly fascinating to me, because much like Arabic which is my native tongue, it has a long and rich history and a beauty that can only be found within each language. I have been learning it for about 11 years now, and while it was by no means been a totally concentrated effort, I still loved it enough to continue digging deep into it for over a decade now. I won't be teaching you anything directly, but I hope to clear the confusion and mystery surrounding Japanese as a 'Difficult' and 'Scary' language, and ultimately inspire an aspring to start their beautiful Nihongo Jouzu journey.

My aim is for this guide to include only free resources and be clutter free, helping you pick up the language in the simplest way possible, so don't expect it to be lengthy and exhaustive because that goes against the whole purpose of this page. No expensive courses, no multiple book series, no subscriptions, and definitely no lengthy Kanji lists for you to memorize all the readings of every Kanji Japanese people use. All resources here are ones that I personally used/still use.

Getting started

Learn Hiragana and Katakana. You have no choice, Romaji can only get you so far before you slam into a wall and get stuck, plus you can brag to your friends about how you can read and write in Japanaese. Just do it, think about nothing else for now. Feel free to spend as much time as you'd like here, my personal advice is to get very familiar with all the letters, especially how they're written and how they're pronounced before you move on.

And this is a handy reference with how each letter is pronounced if you find yourself in doubt.

The road continues

Now that we have a good grasp on the basic Japanese writing system, it's time to move on to something a little more interesting in my opinion: how the language works, AKA grammar. Tae Kim's Japanese guide to Japanese grammar is my absolute favourite resource that I have. It feels much more like a cool and kind Japanese teacher than a bunch of words on a screen or paper. It covers pretty much everything you need to go from absolute beginner, to a confident and knowledgeable speaker, with a very seamless and smooth transition. And for those with an Android device there's a neat little app that contains the whole guide plus a couple more useful tools. All cost and ad free of course.

Once again, my personal advice is to take it slow. The guide is divided into many small sections as to not overwhelm you. Start with the Introduction & Writing System sections and become more familiar with the language and why it works the way it does. After that, you may start on Basic Grammar, which is where the real fun starts. This is also where you'll get your first taste of a lot of common Kanji, which I'll talk about more into the Kanji part of my guide.

Currently under construction. Come back later when there's more stuff to see.