Best Books for Learning Japanese

I was a Japanese padawan myself some 5 years ago - but now I am nearly fluent. It's been a long but very fun and rewarding journey, and I really recommend everyone to start learning Japanese. Anyway, let me point out some tips that I think might be useful for a beginning Japanese student:

Don't fall into the romaji trap! Japanese written using the Latin alphabet is called romaji. You can use romaji to learn the Japanese kana syllabaries hiragana and katakana. After that you should get rid of using romaji as soon as humanly possible. There are two reasons for that: One is that you need to become literate as soon as possible. Literacy is key to efficient learning of any language - and even more so Japanese, which literal form has some quirks (to say the least), that are reflected in the spoken language too! The other reason is that it'll make your spoken Japanese sound more natural. Maybe I'm just imagining, but I think I can tell when a foreigner has learned Japanese through romaji from the way he/she is speaking.

Make sure you have a good Japanese dictionary and kanji dictionary. They're indispensable for your learning progress. Your goal is to learn the whole Japanese language, right? So every time you see a word or kanji you don't know - look it up, write it down, and study it.

Don't make the mistake of putting off learning kanji thinking that you'll pick it up later after you learn spoken Japanese. Being literate in Japanese is essential for learning to speak and understand spoken Japanese as well.

Why is that? Well, I've read that once a person becomes literate, he/she can never again go back to thinking about language without subconsciously associating it with its written form. This, I think, applies even more to Japanese, since in many cases words get their meaning from the kanji characters they're made up of, rather than etymologically through morphological compounds. Why is that? It's because Japanese has borrowed around 50% of its vocabulary from Chinese - so the words might have made sense as sounds in Chinese at the time, but they sure don't in modern Japanese.

That's why I really recommend that you focus a lot on becoming literate in Japanese early on in your learning.

I think this step on the learning stairway is one of the most rewarding. Why? Because now you start getting some reward for the time you spent learning the basics, namely that you start understanding real Japanese to some degree.

That's why I think reading real Japanese texts is starting to get essential at this stage. I myself was a little bit late doing that, and I think it hurt my progress. There are books with short stories or essays in intermediate level Japanese (real Japanese though, not just schoolbook examples!), as well as lots of material on the web. You can sign up for an account on Mixi for example. Mixi is the biggest social networking site in Japan, and it contains lots of small snippets of text, such as diary entries and community board messages, in everyday, fairly straightforward, real Japanese written by real Japanese people.

Also don't let your listening skills fall behind! While I recommend that you read a lot, get some listening practice too. There are good books for this, especially those aimed at passing the JLPT, and there are also Japanese podcasts, youtube videos, etc that you can use to make sure your ears and brain is attuned to the sound of real, spoken Japanese - even if you don't understand all if it yet.

As has been discussed in my blog, there aren't yet any JLPT level n3 textbooks or study materials available, even in Japan. And since the test content specification hasn't even been released, what will actually be in the n3 test is a matter of speculation. However, based on the vague hints and examples that have been released regarding the new jlpt level, we can still make some qualified guesses.

For instance, as specified in the guidebook for the new test format, level n3 will be separated into three parts: characters and vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension, and listening comprehension, just like the old test, but unlike the new n2 and n1 levels where everything except listening is merged into one section.

We can also see that the time allocated to kanji and words is the same as for level n4, while grammar and reading is 10 minutes longer and listening is 5 minutes longer. So although they say that the new n3 level is between the old level 3 and 2, this time allocation suggests that grammar and reading will be comparatively harder than the average of these two old levels, while kanji and words will be comparatively easier. That's good to know when setting up a study plan!

So if I were to aim for N3 this year, I would study for the N2. If you score close to 50% on a mock (old) level 2 test, then I bet you will pass the N3. But of course, if the purpose of your studies is explicitly to pass the N3 test, then that will be rather inefficient since you'd want to study exactly the items that can appear on the test. If your goal is to become fluent in Japanese, then you won't lose much by studying for the N2 directly; skip the parts you consider so hard that they're blocking your immediate progress.

Anyway, using the example material available, I have created a mock jlpt level n3 test quiz that features kanji, characters, grammar, and the new sentence understanding format questions. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to create a reading and listening test, but I hope it can be of some help for judging whether or not the new jlpt level n3 is right for you.

I often get questions on my blog regarding which book is better for JLPT - the "Kanzen Master" or UNICOM series? As well as specific questions regarding Kanzen Master vs Unicom for vocabulary, listening, grammar, etc. The Kanzen Master and UNICOM series are the most popular study books for JLPT levels 2 and 1. That comes as no surprise as they're both really good series and I'd say they're the best books for studying for the JLPT.

So which one is best, Kanzen Master or UNICOM? In my opinion it breaks down to this: UNICOM's listening books are great! For the rest, I recommend Kanzen Master once you're at or above JLPT 2 level. The exception is the reading practice books where I recommend both. Yes, they're both equally good, and you can never get too much reading practice.

I like the Kanzen Master series "lesson plan" concept with one lesson per day essentially. If you follow that, you'll be in a very good position to pass the JLPT tests. I think doing exercises is essential to making the study material stick in your head. Do each and every exercise, preferably many times (with a month or so in between intervals). That way you WILL learn Japanese without having to bother too much about study methods yourself - let the books help you as much as possible.

Knowledge of Japanese can be a great advantage to your career, especially if you have a JLPT 1 or 2 certification to show, regardless of whether you want to work in Japan - possibly even at a Japanese company - or overseas working with Japanese customers and clients.

In fact I studied software engineering at the university, and just a little Japanese on the side as a hobby, but after getting into working life, I haven't had much use for my software engineering studies at all - despite working as a software engineer! - but I HAVE had an extraordinary advantage from speaking Japanese! I'm sure it can spice up any career.