Three levels of difficulty, and my best ways to get through each

(By the way, I'm going to start sticking in Japanese now, with a goal of this becoming a Japanese language blog eventually.  You've got rikaikun now and know your かな; it should be OK.)

I suppose language teachers know this, but I've never seen it written anywhere.

I find there are essentially three levels of difficulty of learning a new word or sentence pattern.¹

1. Easy; I get it without much work.  とても (totemo; "very") is an example of this.  I saw it, I knew it.  Maybe it's because it starts sort of like "totally."  Same for たくさん (takusan, "lots") -- I don't know why -- and many English import words written in カタカナ.
2. I keep forgetting it, but I can make a mnemonic for it.  Here are some examples:
   
   
   • おこします (okoshimasu; "wake [someone] up").  It was especially tough because of the similar おきます (okimasu; "awaken") that Rosetta inconveniently put in the same lesson.  The mnemonic:  of course she must (o-ko-she-must) get up!
   • There seem to be way too many sets of words that sound almost identical: for example, からい ("spicy"), かるい ("lightweight").  I study one of such a set at a time to reduce my confusion, but also make something to help me remember:  for からい (spicy), it is "KAAAA!  RAA!  It's too spicy!"  Sometimes it's a stretch.
   • For よやく (yoyaku, "reservation"), I remember "Yo, ya cool with me staying here tonight."  Actually, I did a twofer:  "Yo, ya cool with me taizaiing here tonight" -- so I could also learn a word for "stay."
3. No mnemonic will do it -- sometimes repetition is the only way.
   
   I couldn't find anything to make me able to remember 少なことも (すくな くとも; sukuna kotomo; "at least").  So I made a little chorus, once again doing a twofer to cement learning another phrase:
   
   おなじ ぐらい、おなじ ぐらい、 すくな くとも じゅう、すくな くとも じゅう
   onaji      gurai   ,   onaji     gurai   ,     sukuna  kutomo  juu     ,    sukuna  kutomo juu
   about the same,    about the same,   at least               10,         at least               10
   
   and made myself learn it while doing a repetitive activity (exercising).

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¹ Though most of these examples are more properly written in kanji, I'm doing them in かな kana  for now, to keep things simple.

Grammar books: way funner than that sounds

You'll certainly get grammar from your textbook, but I tend to want to either look up a grammatical construction, or at least focus on it for a while.

I found Japanese Demystified to fit the bill for that:  you can learn how to compare things, or use passive verbs, etc., and it starts from the ground up.

I still have it and may use it at times, but I've found two such excellent competitors that it's been sitting on my shelf for a while.

I can't say enough good about Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide.  It's succinct, it tells you a variety of constructions from raw beginner on, and I love that it gives the vocabulary it's going to use in its examples up front, so you don't have to spend your time looking up enough words to understand the examples -- unlike every other textbook or source I know!  [Rant, argue, gnash teeth!]  We are beginners, after all!

It comes in different formats, all linked to on this page on Kim's web site: a printed book you have to pay for; the web site itself; PDF format; iOS and Android.  I use the Android app because it has an extra nice feature: touch a vocabulary element and it pops up a window with the translation.  I love not having to struggle to get the vocabulary in order to follow the grammar -- because the grammar is enough of a challenge!

That's a fine tutorial... but this is supposed to be fun, too (or -- since I'm not getting paid for this -- why do it?).  So I've been reading this book just for fun:  Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure, by Wayne Lammers, former translator for the periodical Mangajin, which I'll definitely want to talk about later.  For each grammatical element, Lammers gives multiple examples, and for each example:  a frame from a comic using the construction; a roumaji transliteration; a word-by-word translation; the English meaning; and an explanation of why it makes sense.

What's amazing is that even though he's taking his examples all from things not intended for language learning, he's made selections that aren't too trying in terms of vocabulary.  So it's not a lot of work to read it, and (as with Kim) you get to focus on the grammar.

I'd start on this after, oh, maybe one volume of whatever textbook you're using.  Except the manga book:  that's just fun.

Kanji: cool tools

tl;dr: Check out Kanji Study, for Android or iOS.

Long version:

I use the texts (Walsh, and Heisig) from the previous post to give me stories to help me remember the kanji, but I also need to practice.

One way is just to write them on paper.  I've heard that in Japan teachers say, just write it ten times.  OK; good practice.

I also do it on my tablet.  Kanji Study (also for iOS) is a great program for doing this.  You can pick the set you want to study, select Study and Writing Challenge, and start going at it with a stylus or your finger.  If you can't do it, after a couple of strokes it'll give you a hint.  I'm up to 600+ kanji now, starting four months ago I think, admittedly having learned maybe 150 previously.

The way I did it:  put all the groups together, N5 to N1 and beyond, in a group called "all"; move the ones I want to learn into "current"; look in Heiseig to get some mnemonic to help me; and when I've learned them, they go into a group called "done."  I tend to select sets with common radicals, because I find that easier.  I go back through "done" periodically for review, selecting out those I forgot for a group named "review."

One bad side to this app is that there's no easy way to search a group for the kanji I want; I must do it visually.  (I can also look it up in a web browser and bring it into Kanji Study through the clipboard.) Another bad side is that it seems like it takes five or six screen commands to actually get to the part of the program I want.

I also make my own list in Word of compounds of kanji (like 日本語, "Japanese language"), and use that file as easily made flashcards, as I do with my vocabulary from Rosetta Stone.  It's easy, using Microsoft IME to type Japanese into.

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There's only one other program I'm using for kanji:  Kanji Recognizer.  (There's an iOS equivalent, and here's a web site that does the same thing.)  Write the kanji and it should give you the character so you can cut and paste it into something else.  But I use this only when I don't know what it sounds like (because if I do, I can look it up by pronunciation).

Kanji: texts

If you can't read kanji, ultimately, you can't read Japanese.

The best intro I know -- and can imagine -- is Read Japanese Today! by Len Walsh.  The  author takes you from one kanji to another similar one to another, building new ones and using them for still other new ones.

For example, once you learn 木 (tree -- you can see it, right?), you can get 林 (the name "Hayashi"; woods) and 森 (forest).  Emphasize the bottom and you get root:  本.  Add a human figure and you can have 休 (rest or vacation -- someone leaning against a tree?) and 体 (body -- the root of a person, perhaps).

For all of me, getting a story to explain the kanji is the only easy way to remember it.

Walsh only gets about the first 400 kanji, though.  400 down, 1600 to go... who'll help you remember the rest?

There are two main sources I know.  One is Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig.  Many on the reddit subgroup LearnJapanese seem to be enthusiastic for it.  It provides fanciful stories that help you remember kanji.  For example, it associates 寸 ("sun," a unit of measurement) with "adhere," which it doesn't really mean, so you can tell yourself stories about kanji that contain it, for example, 付, person + adhere, to mean "glue."  OK, it's often a stretch, no matter who's explaining it.

But to me, it's sometimes needlessly a stretch.  For example, Heisig lists 体 (body, as above) as 亻person + 本 book,  OK, 本 does mean both root (as above) and book (the root of learning?), but... person + book → body?  Huh?  (At this point he's throwing large numbers of kanji at you at once, no longer talking you through the connections.  The point is speed, I think -- but I fear getting confused with "huh?"-inducing explanations.)

The other source I know is A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Kenneth Henshall.  For him, as with Walsh above, person + root -> body.  Each kanji has his best attempt to explain it historically, followed by his suggestion as to how to remember it.  Admittedly often his explanations are as fanciful as Heisig's, but at least we give it a good try.

One drawback to Henshall is that he orders his kanji by elementary school grade level rather than by themes like 木 or 寸 or whatever.  So I find myself skipping around to get similar characters to learn together.  Edit 5/30:  This is why I find myself using Kanji Portraits to get clumps of kanji to learn, and use Henshall if a) Kanji Portraits's stories aren't mnemonic enough; b) when Kanji Portrait doesn't cover a character; and c) when I want to finish up with a particular grade level.  More on this in a later post.

I'm still cooking along pretty well I think; I've got nearly 1/3 of the full 2000 done.  But I use more than just a textbook.  That's for next time.

The coolest tools for your コンピューター (computer)

Now, this is the really fun part for me.  Internet is where I'm doing almost everything related to Japanese.  So I need to be able to type it and read it.

Google Chrome, and two reasons to use it

Google Input Tools is great for entering Japanese input into Chrome.

rikaikun translates text right on the web page into English.  Hover your mouse pointer over the text and it'll pop up a window giving pronunciations and translations, so you can get through texts you could never otherwise read.

One disadvantage is that popup window can get in the way, and it takes some keystrokes ('a' and 'd' for example) as commands, so you can't type while it's on -- at least, I can't.  So I turn it off when not using it.

What these Extensions
look like in Chrome

I haven't yet tried the souped-up version rikaigan.  Maybe I don't want it to get too good:  if I'm using it a lot, I should stop and read something more on my level.

Helpful hint:  It's annoying to have to click on the icons for rikaikun and Input Tools, so it makes sense to set up shortcuts or hotkeys to enable and disable them.  Here's how:  go to Chrome Extensions, lower right, and click on Keyboard Shortcuts.  I use Ctrl-J for Input Tools and Ctrl-U for rikaikun.

Everywhere else

Part of the toolbar
when you've got
IME working right

I use Microsoft Input Method Editor (IME) a lot, in Word and Notepad.  You're stuck with the activation hotkeys its gives you:  Alt-Shift to turn it on/off, and Alt-` to get it to actually do Japanese script rather than roumaji (!).  Extra hint:  if the characters look scraggly and ugly, switch to Yu Gothic font.  They're beautiful.

This will also work within the browser, so I suppose you don't need Google Input Tools -- but I find the activation of Input Tools easier than IME's, so I keep it around.

I lack experience with other platforms, but you can input Japanese into your Mac, Android, and what have you as well.

Now, search as I might, I can find equivalents to rikaikun only for two platforms:  Opera, and Firefox.  A reason to switch browsers?

Translation

Google Translate is a very useful tool, but it does get confused:  it doesn't like it if you enter roumaji, so you'd better be typing in kana and/or appropriate kanji.  Sometimes it can't handle it at all.  But it's still my first go-to for things I don't understand.  The other is...

jisho.org, an online Japanese dictionary that takes kanji, kana, roumaji, and English, and works great.  It can't handle verbs or adjectives if not in dictionary form, though, so if you don't know those yet, run it through Google Translate first.

How to use Japanese input

You type in roumaji, hit a space, and either a) accept its best guess of what you want, or b) go through a list of options, possibly after hitting space again, and then c) hit enter when you got what you wanted.

Two odd things to be aware of:

• No input tool I have used is willing to accept dzu as づ.  To get it, type du.  Argh
• Most double-long o's are written ou, but some are oo.  The input tool may insist you get the right one before picking the right kanji.  Oh, well

Rosetta: its problems, and how to fix them

Although I'm grateful for Rosetta Stone, it does have its problems.  Fortunately, they are surmountable.  Here's a resolution to each.

• It's not a textbook.  Right.  So buy a textbook (duh)
• It's not a grammar book either.  So get one of those.  I'll talk about that later
• It won't teach you kana or kanji.  See my earlier post on how to learn kana quickly and for free.  I'll talk about kanji in a subsequent post
• Sometimes even after getting the answer right I still don't understand the phrase that goes with the picture.  So I type it into Google Translate to get its meaning.  It works most of the time...
• It costs too much.  This is true.  So wait for a sale; no, search for a sale.  (I just looked at the Rosetta site and found two different pricing schemes for the same subscription.  It's worth checking!)  I bought mine for about half off as I recall, did the six-month option, and planned to finish it in time.  I'm almost done, with a month to go

Here are some extras to get the most out of Rosetta:

• Put it on your tablet and carry it everywhere.  It's much more convenient than only doing it at your computer
• If you're learning kanji (we'll get to that), alternate between kana view (when first learning vocabulary) and kanji (when reviewing it).  Sometimes you need the kana to nail the pronunciation
• To get the vocabulary in advance of the lesson, download the PDF transcripts Rosetta provides.  I wish they also just provided vocabulary lists, but ah well
• When vocabulary isn't sinking in... I keep a Word document of all Rosetta vocabulary I want to learn, both Japanese word and English version.  It's like flashcards without having to program Anki flashcards: I just cover up the Japanese, figure from the English version what it is, and then look to see if I was right.  It's work, but it's work pairing Japanese with meaning, so it's OK.  I also use mnemonics, which I'll talk about later
• Your subscription (I recommend the Web-based subscription, not CD's, as it turned out cheaper for me) may well include occasional tutoring sessions with a native speaker.  It can be stressful, but it's also good to make myself a deadline
• Sometimes Rosetta pairs things in the same lesson that are so close together it's confusing.  For example, okoshimasu (wake someone) and okimasu (wake oneself).  Solution:  don't stress on it.  Learn one, and go back later to learn the other
• Dialect:  Rosetta sometimes pronounces the g in the particle が (ga) as "ng" not "g"; it also will change "g" to "ng" inside certain words like えいが (eiga, meaning movie theater).  This is apparently an accepted but far from universal dialect trait.  A native speaker also tells me that "ng" and "g" are cognates here, that is, native speakers don't much notice the difference
• I'm currently in lesson 12 of 12, and I've recently started scanning for a word I know that goes with the picture rather than understanding the sentence.  I try to stop myself from answering till I've parsed the whole sentence

Later on I intend to listen to the "Audio Companion" mp3 files I've downloaded from the site -- simply the audio part of the lessons, I believe -- to keep myself from forgetting so much after my subscription's ended.  I have to admit, I expect it'll be boring.  Maybe I'll be ready for Chi's Sweet Home by then, or NHK NewsWeb Easy.

Rosetta

Rosetta Stone is controversial to say the least.  On Reddit's Learn Japanese group, people say things like "I pirated it and I still regret using it" and "utterly worthless."  The two primary complaints are

1. It's expensive.  (True.)
2. It doesn't do what any good textbook would do.  (Also true.)

Nonetheless, if I hadn't used Rosetta, I think I would have given up by now.  I'm very, very glad I bought it.

Rosetta Stone is an approximation of total immersion:  that is, once the lesson starts, you won't get one word of English.  This is its strength and its weakness.

Here are its problems, based on my experience and others' angry complaints:

• You won't learn (enough) conjugations from it
• You won't learn politeness levels
• I like Genki better
• You could use Anki flashcards instead
• It's not a good way to learn kana.  (I'll add:  or kanji)
• It's too hard to learn the vocabulary initially
• Sometimes it isn't clear what's going on in the pictures, so it's hard to pair the right phrase to the right picture

Each of these things is true (except I found picking up vocab to be easy).  Essentially they boil down to

• It's not a textbook
• It's not a textbook
• It's not a textbook

...and then some legit problems that I'll attempt to address in my next post.

So if it's not a textbook, what do I get out of it?

The main thing I get is that it keeps me practicing.  It's so easy to pick up my tablet, carry it with me, and go through a few pages when I have a moment.  It's more fun than reading a textbook.  The pictures make the stock phrases feel less flat and limiting. even if they really are.  (My son refers to it as "that Japanese game you play on the tablet."  Now that's a recommendation.)

I get to hear correct pronunciation over and over, while the mind is engaged in picking the right picture, so it can soak in without boring me.

It has gotten me able to rattle off and (a big thing, for me) actually hear simple Japanese phrases like "Ringo wa orenji no hou ga suki desu" ("[I] like apples better than oranges") and "Hiji wo kageshimashita" ("[I] hurt [my] elbow"), as well as the more common stock ones like "Doumo arigatou" and "O-genki desu ka."

That is, it's got me thinking in the new language to some degree, which is the point in the program.

Maybe some will have a blast using Duolinguo, Mango, or what have you.  If so, more power to you.  But they really do different things.  Rosetta teaches thinking in Japanese; other software that I have found teaches translation.  Translation's cool, but if you can think in Japanese, you'll be able to translate.

Kana: the basics of writing

Now for the fun part.

Textbooks aren't the way to learn kana, the Japanese alphabets.¹  It's way easier than that.  I'm selling back my Kana from Zero! unused.

Here's what you do.

Hiragana

Making a mnemonic chart

1. Get or make a chart of the hiragana (gotta start somewhere).
2. Get or make a chart with mnemonics to help you remember the shapes.  For example, い, i (pronounced ee), could be a couple of eels:² 
3. Practice writing these characters while using the mnemonics.

There are two reasons I think you should make your own mnemonic chart rather than just cribbing:

1. It'll be full of things that makes sense to you, so that you can remember
2. There are a lot of different arrangements people put the letters in.  I prefer the traditional (shown above).  You can get this by printing the image below and marking it up:
   
   
   

But even so, it saves time to see what others came up with.  Let me Google that for you -- there are tons.

Playing a game

It helps to just make copies of the chart in your spare time, but as you progress, I think you may find this game to be helpful:  the Hiragana Drag-n-Drop Game.  Get this and I think your time learning kana will be cut in half.

Katakana

Now do the same things to learn katakana, all the way down to the Katakana Drag-n-Drop.

Two special problems

In katakana, you'll find some characters that look way too much alike:

シ (shi) and ツ (tsu).  It seems the only difference is in the angles.

I remember it thus:  a burashi (brush) is for brushing up, so if you imagine it to be a brush, the brush itself is written with an upward stroke, and the bristles are kind of flat -- not down.

The second character ツ can be imagined as two surfers diving down into a tsunami.  OK, that's a little scary, but I can't think of any other English words starting with "tsu."

Similarly, ソ (so) is someone sewing down with a needle (left stroke) into a cloth (right stroke); and ン (n) is a nice noseless smile of someone saying "mmm" or "nnn" (image to the right).

Mnemonics for directions of things help for other letters too.  How do I remember if サ (sa) has the curvy thing going back left, or forward?  It looks like a saddle to me.  So I think, "Back in the saddle again."

Now go have some fun learning a secret code that nobody but you can read.  Oh, and about 130 million Japanese.

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¹Effectively, Japanese has two alphabets.  That's not as bad as it sounds:  we have two as well, upper and lower case.  (Technically they're "syllabaries," but let's not get technical.  Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out.)

One is hiragana:  a beautiful, flowing, smooth set of glyphs used for native Japanese words -- おはようございます; どうもありがとう.  

The second is katakana:  pointy, angular shapes used for foreign import words:  オレンジ ("orenji," or orange); インターネット("intaanetto," or Internet).
²Tofugu has a lot more of these images -- check 'em out.

Textbooks

tl;dr:  You need a textbook.  Japanese from Zero! and Genki are popular choices, and Japanese for Busy People isn't bad.  It may not matter much.

Long version:

Textbooks don't excite me, but I need the basics:  how to pronounce things, all about doubled vowels and syllables and how to introduce myself.  I started losing interest in my third textbook, but #1 was absolutely necessary.  So...

I used Japanese From Zero!, based on Amazon reviews.  Here's what I liked:

• "Progressive" spelling of vocabulary words.  At first, it's all roumaji (Roman letters -- our alphabet).  Then, as you learn to kana (Japanese alphabet), it uses the ones you've learned so far.  Eventually, it starts putting in kanji (Chinese ideographs), as you learn them.
• Thematic vocabulary lists (fast food, at the doctor's office...)
• Cute illustrations
• Covering one or two more grammatical things per chapter.  And yes, by the end of the appropriate chapters, I knew when to say hoshii desu ("I want it"), suki desu ("I like it"), etc.

What I didn't like:

• The dialogues and translations are boring as hell.  This may not be their fault:  it's hard to be riveting when your reader's vocabulary is like tiny.  Mangajin manages, though.  More on that later.
• The authors almost immediately slam you with not just counting, but counting ages.  Japanese counting is highly irregular, so it's work.  In Chapter 11, they slam you with counting cylindrical objects, abstract objects, round things...I lose count.  Too much at once.

An aside:  Japanese's counters are arbitrary, often somewhat irregular, and what in computer science people call "evil and rude":  that is, there's no excuse for the arbitrary difficulty.  Thinking about the counters for dates in Chapter 10, I imagined this dialog:

Textbook:  This is how you count in Japanese:  ichi, ni, san...

Me: Got it.

Textbook:  And this is how you count flat objects like papers:  ichimai, nimai, sanmai...

Me:  OK.

Textbook:  This is how you count small round things like fruit:  ikko, niko, sanko...

Me:  OK, so there are some irregular forms.

Textbook:  And this is how you say days of the month:  tsuitachi, futsuka, mikka...

Me:  Now you're just messing with me.

We can't blame that on JfZ!, of course.  And maybe it's OK to get through a chunk in one chapter.  It would have been easier if they'd highlighted the irregular form, so I didn't have to scan carefully through the regular ones for exceptions.

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Despite its difficulties, I'd take JfZ! over Japanese for Dummies, based on this problem alone:  some dialogs are parts use roumaji (our alphabet) only, and others give you either roumaji or correct Japanese script, including kanji (Chinese ideographs).  Since you won't know the kanji yet, you'll just skip over that, and you're not learning or getting practice with kana.

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Around 1990 I tried learning Japanese from Japanese for Busy People.  The fact that I quit may not be the book's fault: the Internet didn't exist, and it's hard to stay motivated when all you have you can read is a textbook.  Looking over it today, it seems comparable to JfZ!.  If you decide to get it, for God's sake get the kana version not the roumaji -- not learning to read the language is pretty limiting!

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Most people I meet online seem to use Genki.  If I had it to do over I'd use Genki.  People seem to have collected various resources to use with Genki.  (Japanese from Zero's web site YesJapan exists, but doesn't have much on it that I want.  Videos talking about Japanese rather than in it.  The other two texts listed have publishers' sites, but no community I can find and not much in the way of extras, at least, not as compared to Genki.)

What are we suruing here?

The purpose of this blog is to share what's working, in at least one case (mine), for language learning.  If you follow it, you should see some cool tools, some helpful approaches (I hope), and ways to succeed.

It'll also contain more Japanese as it progresses:  not enough to lose anyone -- again, I hope -- but enough to work both me and the reader and get us thinking in the language.  Let's see how it goes.