Preface

Learning a new language is always a challenge for most people. And a lot of them quit early due for different reasons too. As someone who is kinda proficient in three languages I have always asked myself: "Since I already know more languages than most folk, why not just learn another one that can benefit me?" - And so I started out picking which one to actually study.

I had three choices.

• Japanese
• Korean
• Chinese

I was interested in all of them, but due to limited time I could only pick one of them. Japanese was my final choice due to having most of my interests aligning with Japan. I am reading translated chinese novels and am an avid fan of korean pop, often abbreviated as K-Pop, but that was too shallow of a reason to pick up those 2 aforementioned languages.

I didn't prepare anything to start studying, which was kinda lazy on my part, but since I do have connections to native speakers and learners due to playing a japanese mobile game, I figured 'Why not just ask them?'. In the end they all recommended using the textbooks Genki I + II for self study and it seems that those are also often used in universities as study guidance. As for enrolling in an university course to help, my university goes through Genki I within 3 semesters. That is way too slow in my opinion, so I decided to self-study instead.

Start of studies

As I started the first chapter of Genki I, I noticed that it already dived into vocabulary of which I couldn't read the hiragana (one of the three components of japanese language used for native words). Thus my aim for today and probably the next few days is thoroughly learning the hiragana and katakana table before I can even start with Genki I.

This textbook does provide both a hiragana and katakana table, but no means to effectively study it. It is even missing stroke orders, which are a big thing in the japanese language! We don't have those in german and english so it never occured to me that it might be important. Thus I asked around again and in the end was recommended to use Remembering the Kana by James W. Heisig.

After going through half of it learning hiragana, I can't yet say that I am proficient yet in terms of calligraphy, but I can slowly read it like a kindergardener. I still struggle with writing few hiraganas such as あdue to it being way more curvy than what I am used to in romanic letters. Oh right and this textbook doesnt go through all kanas in the standard A I U E O order.

While being written in that exact order to satisfy the hiragana table, it forces you to jump pages, so you can actually start writing coherent words to practice your calligraphy. And writing also makes it easier to remember the kanas.
My first letter to learn was ん(n) followed by い(i) and く(ku), so it was very refreshing to actually write いく andくん since I heard those words in anime already, hence it was naturally easier to remember. On the end of the day I was able to write easy words I could remember from my time watching anime. It felt really refreshing to know that I'm one step closer to my goal.

That's it for today. My progress on my first day has been sloppy and slow in my opinion and I'm only done with hiragana so far, but my enjoyment is still there, as it literally is learning a whole new world.

If you've studied japanese, what was your progress on your first day and what could you recommend me to do better or differently instead?

Otherwise have you started studying a different language due to own interest and if so, why?

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it.