Why You Need To Learn Japanese Like The Japanese

If you want to learn Japanese, the best way to do it is like a Japanese person. This is often seen as a controversial statement, but it really isn’t.

Western teaching methods are just not the best option for learning Japanese, things are just too different compared to European languages and you are effectively trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

I will go through why learning Japanese in a Japanese way is more sensible and why it will actually get you better results.

You Will Need Some English To Help You

The first thing to understand is that you can still use English to learn in a Japanese way. I think a lot of people hear “learn Japanese like the Japanese” and they wrongly assume that this means you have to do everything in Japanese.

While this would be preferable, it isn’t always possible. You are going to have to look up words and also have things explained to you in English, especially at the start.

However, it’s the concepts of the language that need to be explained from a Japanese view point. It is this small difference that changes everything and a lot of this can luckily still be explained using English.

Japanese Doesn’t Translate Word For Word

One of the first problems you will notice with Japanese is that things do not translate over word for word. You get this with all languages, but I feel it is pretty strong phenomena when it comes to Japanese.

This does make things quite jarring at times and this is exactly why you need to try and do things in a more Japanese way.

As I mentioned, you will need English and it can help, but really the sooner you can step away from this the better. A lot of the time you will need to sort of break the Japanese down, then scramble it up and rebuild it into English and this whole process is slow and annoying, the sooner you can keep everything in Japanese, the better.

I will admit that this isn’t easy, and it does take time, but the more effort you can put into this, the less you will need to worry about the fact that things are not perfectly translated across between both languages. 

English Grammar Isn’t Japanese Grammar

The real problem with Japanese is that its whole grammar structure is just very different to everything we have here and this becomes a huge issue when you try and shoehorn Japanese into our understanding of grammar. It just doesn’t work.  

The traditional teaching style pretty much glosses over so much vital information, or explains things in a way that are just not right, and this really makes Japanese seem so much harder than it really is.

This is exactly why we need to learn Japanese like the Japanese …because it’s Japanese! If we try and fit things into our constructs …it doesn’t fit and all logic is lost.

Let’s look at some ways you can see this happening: 

The Word Order Is Different

The word order can seem very back to front in Japanese, but this is only because we are looking it form our angle, we are putting English expectation on to their language.

While this is quite a small problem, it can trip you up quite often, especially when you go to speak and everything comes out backwards.

Really to overcome this, we just need to accept that the order it is in, is totally normal, which means we need to see things in a more Japanese way.

Not easy, but it can be done. 

Verb Conjugation Isn’t The Same

One of the biggest problems I see with Japanese teaching styles is around grammar. I see so many people over complicate it and make it seem like European languages. They somehow manage to make all sorts of rules and exceptions and it all becomes impossibly complicated.

Something as simple as trying to work out what type of verb group you are looking is made 10 times harder for no reason. If look at how the Japanese teach this, and follow this …it’s pretty straight forward.

I think a lot of the problem is that they break everything down to make it easy, but then you can’t see the whole picture and then you can’t link everything together to see how logical it all is.

I have tried to do this in my verb lesson. It’s pretty long, but you should hopefully come away understanding the bigger picture, which is exactly how the Japanese see it. 

Particles Are Not A Thing In English

Sentence particles are another area that is just badly explained by western style lessons. The reality is that we do not have anything like this in English, so it’s kind of hard to try and use our structure to explain them.

The sooner you can try and see the particles as flags, telling you what the function of each word is, it does become easier.

This is one of those areas where you need English to explain things, but hopefully you can take that and then see it from the Japanese view point, as only then it will really make sense.

The Zero Ga Is Never Explained

Speaking of particles, the zero Ga is often totally avoided by most courses, which is pretty crazy. It is a very strange little part of grammar, but it really does play a key role in so much and I am surprised it is ignored so often. By not explaining how this works, a lot of Japanese makes no sense. 

If you can unlock how this works, things suddenly become logical and it can really clear up the confusion that has been unnecessarily caused.

Context Matters In Japanese

Context also plays a huge role in Japanese, and this concept is often ignored too. When you look at real Japanese sentences, so much is missing, and that is fine. The context fills the holes.

You see this all the time when students start sentences with “私” (watashi) and while that seems right to us …it’s not. When you look at how the Japanese actually speak, they don’t say this, they just ignore this part and say the rest.

For example they will not say  私 は 食べる …they would just say 食べた.

We need to see it from the Japanese way of thinking and understand that just staying “eat” really is enough and means “I eat”.  We don’t need to actually say “I”, as the context does this for us.

Keigo/Politeness Makes No Sense In English

When you look at Japanese there is almost two languages in one, which can be very confusing.

I think we can understand the concept of different level of politeness easily enough, but I think we really struggle to understand that you basically have a whole new set of words to say the same thing, but with a different level of politeness.

We are also too often taught that things “desu” just means “is” …and while it does, it is more than this. The fact that it is a polite way of doing things is usually missed and this can cause a lot of confusion later on.

The whole polite and informal way of speaking is often not really explained very well and we would really benefit going through things like a Japanese child would, slowly building up our understanding of things.

Kanji Becomes Easier

Kanji is something we all fear, and if we approached it in the same way as Japanese children, it wouldn’t be so scary.

The kids are slowly taught new kanji based on how difficult they are. You will find that we go for the opposite approach, where we start with the English words that we think we will need to know in Japanese and then try and learn the kanji …but they are usually pretty complex and then we get confused.

If we took the time to do things more like the Japanese, we would build up a solid foundation and then go from there, gradually allowing things to get more complex as we develop. 

Immersion Is The Best Way To Learn Japanese

Really the best way to learn Japanese like a Japanese person …is to do immersion.

Find some Japanese media, like anime, and watch as much as you can.

However, the truth is that you do need some English to help you with this. You are going to have to look up words and maybe some grammar explanations, but the bulk of this exercise should be just listening to Japanese and allowing your brain to just absorb as much as you can.

This is a slow process, but it works and is exactly how Japanese children learn (and how you learned your own language).

Every word you hear is in context and more you listen to, the more you get an implicit understanding of how the language works, it really is the ultimate way to learn Japanese like a Japanese person. 

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see why it is so important to learn Japanese like the Japanese. While it can seem easier to learn it in other ways, you will end up getting more lost and things will just not fall into place in the same way.

You are going to initially find approaching things from the Japanese viewpoint much harder, but you can get the ball rolling by using English to help you and if you can push through, you will reach a much higher level and just have a much deeper understanding of the language, which is really what we all want.

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