Learning Japanese: What? Why? How?

Some Background

My name is Bob Bledsaw III, grandson of Judges Guild founder Bob Bledsaw Sr.—a game designer and tabletop pioneer that invented things like Campaign Maps, Adventure Modules, the Critical Hit and Miss, and Random Encounters. 

I, like my grandfather before me, am an engineer by day and game designer by night. You can see some of my work at Catholic-Gamer.com. I also am going to school full time for a degree in Game Design. I am a husband and father of four children (and counting!).

Since I was a kid, I loved languages and alphabets. In 6th grade, I would spend time coming up with new alphabets and languages instead of paying attention in History class. I see many things as being nothing more than a language to crack: music, guitar, piano, math, etc. They all are nothing more than a language that needs to be interpreted correctly.

I've already learned quite a bit of German, Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Greek. I am also well versed with HTML, CSS, Java, C++, and Python. As for Japanese, there is a couple of reasons why I want to learn it.

Why Do I Want to Learn Japanese?

What triggered all of this was picking up a Japanese version of an SNES game I played to death as a kid. Many of the classic NES and SNES games I played growing up fetch pretty steep prices online; anywhere from $40–$120+ for just the cartridge!

SoulBlazer goes for about $50 online in any condition. I had recently dismantled an old SNES that didn't work to restore it and clean it. In the process, I decided to modify the case so that it could accept NTSC Japanese Super Famicom games (the Japanese version of the SNES here). So in searching for a copy of SoulBlazer, and not wanting to shill out $50, I decided to see how much a Super Famicom version, "SoulBlader", would be.

motherofgod.jpg You can see English versions going for almost $80!

Only $19.00 with shipping from Japan? SOLD! Within a week it was here. First thing I did was open up the cartridge and give it a good cleaning. It wasn't too bad, although there was some slight residue on the pins. Put it in the SNES and...

The Moment of Truth

It works!

BAMM! Wall of indecipherable text!

Well shit... I remember playing the game as a kid, and I could probably brute force my way through this game, but there is just sooooo muchhhh textttttttt. There is also quite a bit of content in the game that can't be reached without reading dialogue.

For some reason, I felt inspired to learn Japanese. So I started searching online.

What Is Japanese?

I know this seems like a silly question, but when faced with learning a language that literally shares nothing in common with your native language you have to get philosophical about it; otherwise, you will go into learning it attached to pre-suppositions and assumptions that may end up hindering your progress.

The Japanese language is one of the more complex written and oral forms of communication. There are three forms of writing:

• Hiragana—This system is consisted of 51 "syllabaries", or sets of characters wherein each character represents a syllable, not a letter. This is why Japanese does not technically have an "alphabet". Hiragana is also the first writing system taught to children. It is used for all Japanese-native words.
• Katakana—This system is exactly the same as Hiragana, but has completely different syllabaries, with a few exceptions. It is also comprised of 51 syllabaries. Katakana can be used for emphasis much like italics are used in English, but is mostly for loan words borrowed from other languages. It is important to pronounce the loan word (Kanji:外来語 Kana: がいらいご pronunciation: 'guy-rye-go') as it is written in Katakana and not as you would pronounce it in English otherwise you will not be understood. For example, hamburger is ハンバーグ (pronounced: 'han-ba-ga'); if you pronounce it as it is in English instead of 'han-ba-ga', you will not be understood.
• Kanji—This is a system that communicates words that are Japanese with Chinese origins, thus they use Chinese characters. In order to be considered 'fluent' in Japanese, about 2000 of them need to be memorized. The crazy thing is, some Kanji have several different pronunciations. Why? Because each Chinese dynasty had a different way to pronounce them and each time China invade Japan, Japan adopted the new pronunciations while also keeping the old. For people who are just learning Kanji, there is a thing called Furigana (振り仮名). This is Hirgana text that is placed above Kanji to let you know what that Kanji means and how to pronounce it.

Seems like a daunting task to memorize 102 syllabaries and 2000 Kanji, but keep in mind that the English alphabet has 104 characters to memorize: 26 upper case, 26 lower case, 26 upper case cursive and 26 lowercase cursive. Here are some great worksheets to help with practicing Kana:

• http://brng.jp/en/Kana-Copybook/
• http://brng.jp/en/Kana-Table/

How Am I Going to Learn Japanese?

I've been a big fan of Duolingo. I've used it to learn a moderate amount of Italian and brush up on my German. Unfortunately, they are still working on Japanese; so they were out of the question.

Doing some searching online, I started getting a feel for what I was getting myself into. Finding out there there are 102 base syllabaries and over 2000 Kanji to memorize kind of made me geek out. Honestly, there areOne way people try to learn Japanese is by learning Romanji. This is a method of transliteration where you substitute the Latin alphabet for the syllabaries of Japanese. I can tell you from learning Hebrew and Greek, both languages with alphabets different than our own, that transliterations become a crutch and the earlier you get away from them, the better. 

Another reason why transliterations are awful is because foreign languages often have sounds that English simply cannot translate. For example, the Hebrew letter א

has no functional equivalent in English. It's a glottal stop. The closest we get to that is how we don't pronounce the second 't' in 'kitten' or 'mitten'. In Japanese, ツ and つ are both transliterated as 'tsu' in Romaji. However, English does not have a good way to pronounce 'ts' together.

Side note, this is why the Hebrew name Aaron has two a's in front of it. In between those a's is suppose to be a glottal stop making it sound like a-ha-ron instead of A-rin. So Key & Peele's substitute teacher should be vindicated!

Anyway, my point is, I want find something that helps me learn Japanese without relying on Romanji. For me, learning the writing systems is the only legitimate use for Romaji. After you memorize those, you should be trying to learn vocabulary, grammar, etc., in the native Kana script. Immerse yourself in it, because that will be the quickest way to pick it up.

Back to my search: so I tried Busuu and Memrise because I prefer learning with some gamification for incentive. Both do a good job of showing the words in Japanese Kana, but neither have an option to turn Romanji off. So currently, I'm going through a trial of TextFugu. I'm not too keen on spending money, and don't really want to wade through thousands of YouTube videos either.

The first thing to learn is the 3 writing systems. Hiragana and Katakana are important. The last one, you kind of learn as you go along. The best tools I've found for memorizing these is as follows:

• iKana for Mac OSX ($12.99)—great for learning the Hiragana and Katakana writing systems (together known as Kana), has a flashcard like quiz, teaches strokes and pronunciations, and offers sayings to better remember each character. Some people think the sayings are a little ridiculous and quite a stretch and I agree; however, they stick to you in a weird way and definitely helped me with memorization.
• Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese for iOS (Free)—I'm using this together with TextFugu. It's a great guide from square one and tackles the hardest parts of learning Japanese first; something I appreciate. Tae Kim also has a website linked here.
• Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana) Writing Reading Practice for iOS (Free)—This is geared more towards children, but it is great for tracing the characters with your finger or stylus. I found the touch responsiveness to be frustrating at times, but it only helps to reinforce correct stroke order and shape. There is a paid version with more content; don't bother though. It's not worth it.
• Kana Writing for iOS (Free)—Like the previous app, this one is for memorizing correct stroke order when writing Kana. The touch responsiveness is far more smooth than the previous app.
• 1000 Basic Flashcards for Japanese for iOS (Free)—This is a great app for quizzing yourself over everything you've memorized so far.

With these tools above, I managed to memorize Hiragana and Katakana in a matter of days. Your mileage may vary.

Something else I'm going to be using to help immerse myself in the language is Japanese Manga with Furigana. It's hard to find manga that's in Japanese in America. I then am faced with either buying it online from someone or using sites like cdjapan.org and yesasia.com to import them myself.