Japanese Beginner's Guide
STEP 1
NOTE: First read the whole document (from beginning to end) just read. Once
you finish reading the whole document, start learning with STEP 1 and then
STEP 2.
1.0) Learn the basic terms
● Hiragana
● Katakana
● Kanji
● Romaji
1.1) Learn Order Wise (Step 1)
● First Learn Hiragana from below given resources. While learning Hiragana, make
sure you are learning vocabulary too. (see the YouTube Video given below for
more details.)
● Second Learn Katakana from the below given resources. While learning
Katakana, make sure you are learning vocabulary too. (see the YouTube Video
given below for more details.)
● NO Need to learn Kanji as of now, because you are just a beginner (Just try to
know a little bit about kanji. Its history, what is kanji etc…)
● For now, Mostly focus on Hiragana and Katakana with some vocabulary.
1.2) Hiragana
● Watch this video (one of the best YouTube video explanation of hiragana):
Learn All Hiragana in 1 Hour By Japanese Pod 101 - YouTube Video
● Hiragana Google Drive Folder: Hiragana Google Drive Folder
● There are 46 hiragana symbols in Japanese, each with a particular sound
but with no independent meaning.
● Practice reading full sentences of hiragana without looking at the answers
from this site: Hiragana Reading Practice: Princess Kaguya
● Tip: If you wanna memorize hiragana fast then try to write down each
hiragana on paper (probably 10-15 times) and keep that paper with you
and try to look and remember whenever you get free time. It’s called the
“Repetition Method”. The more you Repeat, The more you remember.
1.3) Katakana
● Watch this video (one of the best YouTube video explanation of
Katakana): Learn All Katakana in 1 Hour By Japanese Pod 101 - YouTube
Video
● Katakana Google Drive Folder: Katakana Google Drive Folder
● There are 46 Katakana symbols in Japanese, each with a particular sound
but with no independent meaning.
● The major difference between hiragana and katakana is the fact that
hiragana is primarily used to represent Japanese words, while
katakana represents foreign words.
● Practice reading full sentences in katakana without looking at the answers
from this site: Katakana Reading Practice
● Since you are a beginner, let me tell you one thing: “Most of the people
feel that Katakana are hard to remember/memorize compared to
Hiragana”. So if you feel like that too, then the simple way to master
katakana is practice, practice and more practice. (believe me, It works!)
● Tip: If you wanna memorize Katakana fast then try to write down each
katakana on paper (probably 10-15 times) and keep that paper with you
and try to look and remember whenever you get free time. It’s called
“Repetition Method”. The more you Repeat, The more you remember.
1.4) Kanji
● Kanji is a system of Japanese writing that uses adopted Chinese
characters. One of three writing systems in Japan, Kanji is usually used to
write nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Each Kanji symbol can represent a
word or an idea, but these same Kanji symbols can have different
meanings and pronunciations depending on the other symbols they’re
matched with.
● The Kanji alphabet has 216 radicals which combine together to make the
structure of each kanji. This makes Kanji arguably the hardest part of
learning Japanese because learning Kanji requires a great deal of
memorization and practice.
● If you’re just looking to learn Japanese recreationally, then you won’t be
required to learn Kanji. However, for those who want to be fluent, they’ll be
required to learn Kanji, especially if they’re going to take any JLPT test,
and N1 requires testers to know 2,000+ kanji.
● Same thing is explained in the below image.
1.5) Kana and Romaji (What is the difference Between Kana and Romaji?)
● Romaji is the romanization of the Japanese written language.
● It shows the pronunciation of kana (the general term for these two
syllabaries) as well as kanji.
● When you’re first starting to learn Japanese, you may tend to rely on
romaji to learn the pronunciation of Japanese words.
● However, the best way to master Japanese pronunciation is to master the
pronunciation of kana and use kana to learn new words.
STEP 2
Since you already know Hiragana and Katakana with some vocabulary (Considering you
finished step 1), now it’s time to learn new things which will really help you to make sentences
and understand them.
2.1) Learn Order Wise (Step 2)
● Greetings
● Particles
● Kanji
2.2) Greetings
● Try to learn greetings. For example:
○ Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening
○ Thank you, Thank you very much
○ Sorry, I am really sorry
○ Nice to meet you.
○ How are you?
○ I am fine/ok/alright.
○ I am not fine/not ok/not alright etc…
○ Google about common greetings in Japanese. As of now, I don't have any blogs
related to greetings or vocabulary, so you have to google them. I will soon post
about these topics too.
○ Learn about Japanese culture. It will help you to understand how they behave
and react to certain situations. Which is very necessary.
2.3) Particles
● From here, Japanese really gets exciting. Using particles you can make a good
sentence and understand them in a better way.
● There are so many definitions of “what is a particle in japanese?” but I will try to make it
simple. (Read below)
● Particles in Japanese don’t have any meaning on their own but in sentences, they’re
used to bind words together like an infusion of delicious taste.
● Particles might be small—the word actually comes from the Latin particula, meaning
“little bit” or “part”—but they’re essential parts of Japanese sentences and learning to
use them correctly is crucial to acquiring Japanese fluency.
● They follow other words such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives as parts of a sentence.
Some but not all can be compared to prepositions in English. The Japanese language
uses around 188 particles.
● Some Examples Particles:
○ は (wa), が(ga), と(to)
○ か(ka), の(no), を(o)
○ も(mo), に(ni), へ (e) and で (de) etc....
● You might have noticed that I wrote hiragana は (ha) as は (wa). And it’s right. Some
hiragana are pronounced differently when they are used as Particles. So take a
note of it.
● for example: を(wo) read as を(o) and へ (he) read as へ (e)
● Since we are going to learn order wise, I will not recommend remembering all the
particles at once because it can be overwhelming and you will get confused. But there
are some particles which you MUST LEARN to make simple sentences or to get you
started with japanese.
● Try to study in depth about these particles (given below) first then you can learn more
particles in your free time.
● Important Particles for Beginners: は (wa), が(ga), の(no), を(o)
● You can Google about them or watch some videos on youtube as well.
● One of the biggest questions arises to lots of people about particle is:
“When to use は (wa) and が(ga) particles?” and I admit that it’s quite confusing
if you are new to the Japanese language and you should know when to use which one.
● So to avoid the confusion between は (wa) and が(ga) particles you have to
learn in depth about them from YouTube/website or some friends. And
believe me once you start speaking Japanese, you will automatically get the
hang of these particles.
2.4) Introduction
● Learn the Vocabularies like
○ I, Me, Myself
○ We, you, your, yourself
○ Name, hobby, interest, country name, age
○ Likes, dislikes etc…
● Now after learning the above english words, try to google how to make sentences, how
to introduce yourself in Japanese, watch some youtube videos.
● If possible, try to write down your introduction in a notebook. So that you will have writing
(hiragana-katakana) practice and you will remember it for a long time.
● Whenever you meet a new person who’s learning Japanese or native speaker, you can
use this introduction to start a conversation.
2.5) Kanji
● Look what do we have here? Yes Kanji (again!). Well we can’t forget kanji because it's a
very important part of Japanese. Actually If you wanna be so fluent in japanese then you
must know kanji. That’s how important it is.
● But if you are new to japanese then don’t directly jump on the kanji from the beginning.
Because most likely you will end up hating kanji (Because it’s hard) or might get
demotivated.
● So what to do???? Well read below (xD) (I will mention some points which I mentioned
above already. So if you know some points already then you can skip that part)
○ Learn about Kanji first. (Like what is kanji and why should we learn it?)
○ Learn about History of kanji.
○ What is On-Yomi and Kun-Yomi?
● After learning above things about kanji, now you can start kanji officially. Now you will
understand why we are learning kanji, what’s the use of it and why it is so important.
● So for kanji, I will suggest you to start with very basic and useful things.
○ Learn Numbers in Kanji (ex: 一、二、三、四 etc…)
○ Read this Complete Guide to Japanese Numbers
If you have finished everything till here then you are good to go on your own. Now you can
watch youtube videos or google some things, use a dictionary to know the meaning of words,
read articles or blogs or visit different websites or read books etc…
がんばってください。- Do your best! 👍🥳
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NOTE 1
These are the tips that I can give to a person:
● Who is totally new to Japanese Language or Want to start learning OR
● Who has started in the past but got busy in life and now he/she got interested
again in japanese and they don’t know where to start from. OR
● Who already started but still having hard time understanding what resources to
use or where to look for what kind of things OR
NOTE 2
● As of now, I have only these many tips. And I hope it helps.
● If I get new resources or any new information which can be very useful/helpful to
beginners then I will keep updating this document.
Social Media:
● Instagram Account: @coolnihongo1
● Telegram Japanese Group Chat: Japanese_Learners
● Telegram Japanese Channel: Learn_Japanese_Lang
● Discord Server: Nihongo Is Awesome
1.
Document Update
● This is the section where I will mention the new changes. Like, helpful
information or I have provided you wrong information or some new link that I
have added or something like that. Suggestions are always welcome.
● So if you revisit the document and find new changes then read this section and
you will know what has changed.
1.
Hiragana - かわいい
Romaji - Kawaii
English (Meaning) - Cute
2.
Katakana - アイスクリーム
Romaji - Aisukurīmu
English (Meaning) - Ice Cream
3.
Kanji - 先生
Hiragana - せんせい
Romaji - Sensei
English (Meaning) - Teacher
