How Long Will It Take To Learn Japanese?

If you are thinking about learning Japanese, you have probably been told it’s really difficult and takes a long time, which is true, but how long does it actually take? …well the answer is that it depends.

The reality is that there are a lot of different things that can affect how long it will take and I will go through these before, but honestly, it is going to take you hundreds of hours, over months …maybe even years to learn Japanese.

The best thing to do is not worry about the time, just get started and each day you will get better and better until at some point you feel confident with the language.  So let’s go through some things than can affect how long it will take you.

It Takes As Long As It Takes

A really harsh, but true answer to this question is simply that it will take as long as it takes. Learning any language is difficult and this is especially true for Japanese.

You basically have to start from complete zero and build up your knowledge and understanding step by step, this is not a small task and there are many interlinking layers of the language that your brain has to process and make sense of before you can feel comfortable.

Everyone’s experience of this is different and it is not as simple as saying learn X, Y and Z and you are good to go and this will take exactly this length of time. That is not how languages work, everyone’s start and end point and the journey in between is totally different.

The only certain thing I can be sure of is that whatever time you are expect it take …it will be longer than that.

This isn’t a bad thing or an attempt to scare you, it is just the reality that you cannot really predict how long it will take you to learn the language and it usually is always slower than you think …but you will get there. 

It Depends How Much Effort You Put In

So far I have been a bit vague, but if you want to get more measurable with things then really it comes down to how much effort you put in.

This should not really be a surprise, but the more effort you put into your Japanese studies, the quicker you will see results.

Let’s say you learn 1 word a day and while that is great, you will find that the person learning 10 words a day will simply reach a better understanding of the language in a much faster time than you. 

If you spread that out over a year, you will have gained 365 words …and they will understand 3650. That is quite the difference and while it is not as simple as “do more” …doing more does help a lot.

It doesn’t matter how you measure it, maybe someone studies 1 hour a day and the other studies for 10, either way, the person who puts more effort in, will make faster progress. 

It Depends How You Are Studying

While the effort level I have just discussed matters, it also matters what you do with that effort.

As I mentioned above, you could study for 1 hour a day, or 10 …and while you would expect the person doing more to have faster results, this isn’t a guarantee.

If I spend hours “studying” but really I’m just doing nothing and not really progressing with my Japanese, then this is simply a waste of time. If you are efficient with what you are doing, then you don’t need to spend all day on it.

This also does come down to what approach you are taking with your studies and this in itself can be confusing. If you just focus on classroom lessons, you can make fast progress but often it’s quite surface level. Take my Japanese course for example, you can go through that in 34 day, maybe less and you will feel like you have learned a lot …but you also haven’t.        

Then if you go to the other end of the spectrum where you only focus on immersion, it can seem like you are making no progress whatsoever, even after spending hundreds of hours with the language.

Really you need a mix of the two, almost tackling the language from both directions. This is usually where the best approach, and often the fastest results come from doing this.    

It Depends On Your Pervious Knowledge

Unfortunately for some of us, our previous knowledge …or should I say, a lack of previous knowledge will slow us down when it comes to Japanese.

If you have learned another language before you will be at an advantage, you will kind of know the process and what needs to be done and you can draw from that past experience to speed you along with your studies. I wouldn’t let this put you off, but it is a fact.

However, the real advantage comes if you already know Chinese and this just comes down to the fact that it will massively help you with kanji. Basically the Chinese use the same characters and they have the same meaning, so really they can look at something in Japanese and kind of understand it already, so you can really see how that is going to help and how the results will be faster.

It’s kind of similar to how we as English speakers could read something in French and kind of get a rough idea what it means, without knowing any French. 

What Level Of Japanese Are You Trying To Reach?

If you want to know how long it will take to learn Japanese, you really need to know how far you are trying to go.

Really if you are just wanting to learn some key phrases you can do this in a few days. It will probably take you a few months to get some basics down and then if you want to reach a near native level, it is going to take a few years.

It also depends if you want to learn how to write kanji and even if you want to master the world of keigo as it’s also going to add significant time on to your studies.

Basically the more you want to achieve, the longer it will take you. You also have to remember that language is more like a spectrum, where you gradually get better in different areas, so it’s not as clear cut as being able to reach certain milestones in certain timescales.        

What Are People Saying About How Long It Took To Learn Japanese

As you have probably noticed, I have been very vague about exactly how long it may take, but let’s look at what some other people are saying and see if we can get an actual figure.

FSI – Foreign Service Institute

Probably the most cited figure is the one that the Foreign Service Institute give …which is around 2200 hours.

This organisation is responsible for teaching languages to American diplomats and it gets them to a level that allows them to do their work overseas.

What exactly this means is unclear, but it is probably somewhere past basic, but not fully fluent, you could probably see it as sort of intermediate level. They also base this number on classroom hours, so it is quite intensive learning.

Youtubers

If you look to youtubers who document their journey you will notice a pattern …they all learn quite quickly, usually around 18 months …but they also put a lot of effort in.

A lot of these youtubers use the AJATT method, which is really just extreme immersion and they go beyond just making it a full time job and make it more of a “every waking moment is Japanese” type situation.

You will watch these videos and think that their methods are too extreme, but the results speak for themselves.

I think you can make a lot of progress in 18 months, but really if you want to reach the super high level that these guys do …you need to put in the super high effort.

Give Yourself A Year

If you are really want to learn Japanese, I would just give yourself a year and see what you can do.

Challenge yourself to see how far you can push yourself and really make the effort to do as much as you can. I would be trying to learn daily, for at least an hour, but hopefully more.

You will see progress and I think if you do the minimum of an hour there is no reason why you can’t get the basics down and reach The N5 level. You will probably reach that in half the time, but just push yourself for a year and see how far you go.  

If you follow my vocabulary guide, which should cover most of the N5 words, it will take you about 80 days, so that’s only about 3 months. If you can master this, you are going to have a good foundation to go from there.

If you want to carry on after a year, or even just change the pace, you can, but I really think you should throw yourself into this. It is worth it.

(You can read more about – Can You Learn Japanese In A Year?)

Don’t Worry About How Long It Takes

Hopefully now you can see that asking how long it will take to learn is a pretty loaded question and it really depends on so many things.

I honestly wouldn’t worry about it, just have fun and just do what you can. It is going to take 100s of hours, probably more like 1000s and at the end of the day you are not even really going to count this.

Just start learning and enjoy yourself along the way as you chip away at things. You have to see the journey as the enjoyable part, and not worry about when you will “arrive” at the end goal as the reality is that there is no end, you will be slowly improving for the rest of your life, you will never complete Japanese, so don’t worry about trying to, just do what you can and enjoy it.  

(If you are looking to learn Japanese, you can follow my plan – Learn Japanese – The Plan For A Complete Beginner)