12 Things I Did to Become Conversationally Fluent in Japanese 

"Embarrassment makes things stick for a long time." So very true!

Your bonus tip is called circumlocution. You don't know the word for mailman, so instead you describe the man who brings the mail. Your conversation partner might then use the word for mailman and you've learned a new word without breaking the flow of conversation

I'm learning japanese for 2 years now, at first I was like " this is impossible" but look at me now, I'm getting ready for n4 exam. what I mean through this, dont give up, it may be hard but not impossible. 頑張ってね！

I am currently studying japanese as my minor and have been through soooooo many youtube japanese teachers that obviously just make content for views and not to actually help people. That being said this is the BEST channel i have found for helping me learn japanese, Andy does a great job explaining grammar and he’s probably the only reason I havent failed yet lol

Learning vocab through sentences and phrases instead of lists/flashcards is definitely something worth emphasizing and repeating in the language learning community. While reviewing a list can be helpful, it's best to apply the language and put it into practice..always be moving forward! Immerse!

はじめまして！ I’m Japanese and taking class to become Japanese language teacher now. I didn’t know how Japanese language can be when you learn it until taking this course. I’m very proud of you, how you did it! すごいよ！ Enjoy living in beautiful county Japan. I miss my country, people, culture, manner, tradition, food and おんせんthe most. 😍

ok, so basically do everything immediately. Got it

FOR PEOPLE WHO GAME: Pokémon is a great thing to play when learning Japanese! The recent games have a Japanese setting, with both Kanji and Kana only options!

I only intended to be there for the extent of my tourist visa, ended up staying 11 years 😅

I have been studying Japanese for about 7 months now. Even though I have learned a lot, it has been really hard to concentrate on Japanese for the last few months. I guess the whole pandemic situation is at fault. Anyhow, thank you for another cool video, Andy! If it wasn’t for your Genki videos, I would have never learned the “te” form and the adjectives!

Your advice here is GOLD for learning not only 日本語, but any language. Yes, CONTEXT is always key to learning a language. THANK YOU for such a valuable video! I have subscribed to your channel 🙂

Thanks for taking the time to make this video. You've given me some additional food for thought as I continue with my own Japanese learning experience. Your Genki overview videos are so helpful, and I look forward to more content from you in the future.

2:24 - Extra "Some" lol 6:03 - "In only JAPANESE" 11:55 - Things like やっぱり and ええと、あのう、etc make you sound more natural! Thanks for stopping by!

Good tips!!! I'm learning both English and Japanese by myself (My Native lenguage is Spanish) I can almost speak fluent English (not like a native tho) read and comprehend conversations, I can read Hiragana, now I'm trying Katakana then I will go for Kanji!! 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻

These are some great tips that aren’t the same ones you hear on all the typical language learning blog posts.. I’m studying other languages now but hope to get to Japanese soon enough, thanks!

Ive been learning Japanese poorly for years on my own and just found your channel. Thank you!

Andy, you are awesome. Just as you shared, instead of just learning isolated vocabulary words... it truly makes more sense to learn these as part of phrase or in a sentence. Your suggestions are already paying off! ありがとうございます。

If Japanese is your religion, let the book “remembering the kanji” be your bible

Thanks for balancing out the “input only” RU-vid channels with a different point of view which is well-reasoned.

Thank you for posting this - it's an excellent reminder.

I spent the entire night looking for a useful video about this topic amd this is the only one that was really useful, thanks a lot! :D

I feel like most of these tips only work if you are living in Japan and are forced to speak Japanese in situations... I can't find a way to speak to native speakers without inconveniencing them with my low level of JP, unless I am paying them... which I can't afford

Thank you. I’m just getting started, and your channel is an incredible resource.

heya, great video! I love your positive attitude as well. I agree with the tip about interjections and conjunctions- I find them incredibly useful for digesting spoken casual japanese.

Hello Andy, thanks for sharing this video! It was insightful!

Taking a few notes from how I learnt English: Tip #1: Don't just watch videos of people teaching Japanese. Watch content you like *in Japanese*. This will train your ear and see how other natives speak and structure their sentences. You will most definitely witness slangs, puns, sarcasm, expressions of joy, anger and jokes in Japanese - it'll broaden your knowledge. You can do the same with games you already played and films without subtitles Tip #2: Take your time. Everyone learns at different paces and different methods. Don't feel discouraged if it's taking long, just remember that you're taking initiative and that's more important than learning fast (unless you have a Tinder date, then my friend you done goofed)

Me after Tip 4: *Join call with a friend* Me: "申し申し” Friend: "STOP SPEAKING JAPANESE!"

I was so impressed with your Japanese as a Japanese language teacher! it is always my dream to help others! This video will help lots of people☺️I hope you will be successful in Japan✨I would love to help as many people as I can!頑張って下さい！

Thanks for the tips and resources.

Thanks for quality content sir!

A hugely overlooked resource - bunpro! It's fantastic.

Thanks for making this video. It is helpful.

Great video! You provided many tips and resources for us to try out. I'm new to Japanese, but I will definitely be starting with Hiragana and learning some common phrases.

I think it's useful to learn Japanese culture and how it relates to language. As an American, and a English speaker, the way we typically communicate is direct, where we don't typically want the listener to read between the lines. Also the way we address people older or superior hardly changes our patterns. However Japanese expressions are not direct, they usually want listeners to infer meaning from your indirectness, whether it's because the speaker is superior or it's just a form of politeness where you don't demand things from people. A common way to tell someone to be quiet is to say "urasai!". Literally you're saying "noisy!" but the listener will understand you're saying "to shut up!" This goes with Andy's point about learning sentences instead of single words because your expectation of how to say something in English is very different from how Japanese will express themselves.

Thank you so much for your insights! And you were able to do this with a full time job, great!

The most effective way is to speak the language, really - conversation. The sad thing is that there is no one to talk Japanese to in my neighborhood. Therefore, people might think I'm insane for talking to myself in Japanese while there's nobody in the room. 🥺

One of the best videos for tips on learn Japanese in my opinion !! Thank you for creating this video !! 🙏 😁

You're amazing Andy, thank you so very much. I hope I can be as committed to learning Japanese as you were. You've been a stellar help. Thank you

In short, just start learning JAPANESE! Instead of wasting your time planning, searching and in the end you did nothing/didn't learn anything. What I'm saying is if you started learning japanese, you will start to develop your own way of learning, what method works for you. Just remember that when learning something, it takes time. Enjoy the process, be mindful of slow growth, do not rush. 1% everyday is the key :)

Thanks. Love this!

Oh god this is a saving grace,,,, I’ve been learning Japanese in high school for 5 years now. It took me until year 3 to actually start making any progress with it, and I only learned about the existence of pitch accents this year through my own research 😭😭

This is so helpful, you don't even know. Thank you so much for your resources, tips and lessons!

Great videos man, this advice was awesome thanks for sharing. Don’t stop making videos, can’t wait to see your channel blow up

I just cheked ANKI out and its amazing. Thank you!

Andy is great and his views are valuable. A real language teacher. Highly recommended.

This has really helped thank you

Your videos are soooo helpful!!!

I’ve been using wanikani for kanji and vocab, along with some other studies, so when I heard you say 山登り, I was pretty excited because I knew what that meant without much second thought, even though you were talking about it prior🤣

Very useful video!! Thank you :D Edit: helpful, useful - both 😂 also just realized how applicable these tips are to other languages that I’m learning. here’s more thanks!! :)

Very helpful! ありがとう

good tips, finally someone who isnt trying to sell me something and is giving actual advice although I wouldve loved to have more resources linked&mentioned

I learned hiragana and katakana first Then started Genki (still am) I also changed my phone to Japanese and I only listen to Japanese music and Japanese shows (not anime). I have to speak English tho I’m still in highschool

Best Japansese learning tips video!

この動画の情報は役に立ちます。ありがとうございます

I started learning Japanese and the first thing I did was to get the Genki books which led me to your videos, andy! this is a wonderful resource and I signed up to to your course well! ありがとう!

I love your videos! These are really helpful tips (noted!) I find that your experience learning kanji is similar to my own. I'm currently using Kodansha's Kanji Learner's Course and I study it similarly to how people used Remembering the Kanji. I learned the kanji meaning first and now I'm just learning vocab as I find it through immersion. I found this to be much easier, especially for vocabulary that is specific to a subject. (Plus I get to enjoy just reading, just watching without trying to make everything into a lesson. This is tedious enough work as is and I've to care for my 2 kids) Now, when I learn a kanji for a word I've known the kanji takes little to no effort to read, and thus makes reading Japanese and learning their readings soooo much easier. One thing to note that I've realized is that there will come a time when you learn so much kanji that your mind will yearn for more meaning. At that point definitely dive into reading (for me it was after 1300-1500. But I knew near 800 before from studying in college using genki and my own failed attempts lol). Once I started reading it was almost as though I was a Chinese person reading Japanese. I knew the meaning of the kanji and could figure out some of the sentence's meaning even if I couldn't pronounce the word in Japanese. But understanding it became really motivating. Now I try to practice reading books or anime scripts (for the audio pronunciation) and I'm learning vocab for kanji I *know*. Interestingly enough, kanji I just could not memorize on its own from the English meaning (which I would mark in my anki deck and just pass it so that I could at least still see it later) the kanji suddenly stuck better when I learned the Japanese word within context. Thus making acquiring new vocab much easier. Yes, it sounds very odd to do it this way but it's been incredibly useful. FyI, In 1 week I'll have learned 2300 kanji (no more new kanji!) and I've been learning 20/day. I practice writing by writing them once or later if the kanji doesn't want to stick but I mainly only try to recognize them so that I can read it in context. Now that I'm not longer in school I don't need to write as often but knowing the stroke order made it really easy to replicate kanji using the writing input feature on my phone to look up words wherever I go.

i always procrastinate learning japanese since 2009 and had the time to do it now. luckily for me, i was able to apply my learnings on hiragana already during those times. although i only know how to identify them in a flash card rather than reading it with a full sentence with hiraganas. that's my progress so far

Would definitely love if you made a video about interjections and conjunctions!

I just found this video and that is so awesome you were able to advance so much with speaking! I wish I lived in Japan to be able to go that hardcore with my language immersion haha. Amazing video and great job!!! :)

非常に素晴らしいビデオです。ありがとうございます。 これからも応援しています。 Super cool video! Thank you. Keep making great videos!

Loving your content and the Genki lessons... Trilingual soon!

Good points andI find point 12 specially important, to make flashcards with sentences. I use Genki and there's a Genki vocabulary app which I use and first I only used one side of the card which has the word and the meaning but on the other side is a sentence using that word and when I started to memorize the sentences, my Japanese took a leap foreward.

The twelfth tip was my mistake with Anki; and it's fun that we arrived in the same solution.

Great video! 🤗 I've been following your genki series, although admitedly I'm not going at the pace I would like because turns out being a public school teacher during a pandemic is a lot of hard work lol. I can read hiragana and katakana, and last year I took a trip to Japan and enjoyed trying to use my VERY LIMITED Japanese to ask questions and such. I still have trouble forming sentences and I feel like my next step for sure should be to speak with native japanese speakers online, but talking to strangers gives me bad anxiety! 😥😥😥 Hope I am able to overcome this feeling so that I can make some progress!! 🤧😊

Thank you! 😊

I’m a Chinese living in the uk and study Japanese as a hobby. I replaced most tv watching to be in Japanese, gaming to be language app/Japanese games, chatting with friends to be chatting with language friends. That’s helpful.

I'm in Japan learning the language and it's super difficult to find someone to speak with (even on italki), but I'm oddly not discouraged to quit because when I do in public the Japanese people are very shocked, appreciative, and curious. I think when I become more comfortable I'll try italki again. Great video and points. The locals don't speak like the books and genki is pretty good.

As always, fantastic video Andy! Thank you for all of your help! Keep up the good stuff and hope you can survive the heat and up coming wet season!

thank you

Learn a new hobby in my target language???...🤯😲 I'm enjoying the entire video, but this is my favorite tip. Now I just need to figure out what I want to learn.

This video really inspires. Am just a few days in to learning japanese. I hope I won't lose the motivation. The pronunciation isn't hard since I'm exposed to japanese media and my native language pronunciations are similar to japanese so atleast sounding japanese is taken care off. Currently learning hiragana and people always say kanji is such a b**** to learn so I guess that will be one of the biggest challenge I'll face.

貴重な動画です。Golden.

Hi Andy! I love the channel. I’ve been following along with your Genki 1 series for a couple of months now. Honestly, I could talk about this at great length, but for the sake of time I’ll try to keep it short. I know everyone has different reasons/motivations for learning a language, but have you made any videos on talking about some applications and uses for Japanese specifically? I’m at a point where I’ve put a lot of time in, and I want to get even more serious about my studies, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t worry at times that it will be all for naught if I don’t find a meaningful goal or career path. Many resources on this topic discuss the usual options (teaching in Japan, translation, interpretation, working in a field you’re interested in but in Japan, etc) and I know that, by nature, options are somewhat limited, but sometimes it feels overwhelming to figure it all out. I know this is personal, it requires goal-setting and figuring out what’s most important to you, and likely is different for everyone. However, any advice/input you can offer on this topic, based on your journey and experiences would be appreciated tremendously. Thank you & hope you are doing well!

thx for these tips my first japaness class in wensday you really help me thx

Took N2 some 10 years ago and passed it. Then failed N1 by like 10 points. To this day, can barely speak, but I’m pretty good at reading. I can read and understand newspaper articles for the most part and most manga are no problem. I practice writing any words I don’t see all the time as I read. Not very efficient, but it’s got me far over the years.

Excellent description of your learning experience! I love the one on “stopping to speak English. But Anki was not good for me, it’s like cramming, Best and thank you aplenty!

Sooo helpful! I just made a "one word" flashcard deck and thought "hmm this is pretty hard". After watching this video I'm definitely tossing that.

Thank you for the video! Would you be able to do an anki tutorial? Like what is the recommended settings for new cards, reviews, etc.

Great video.

These tips are helpful. Can we also note how Andy always has a nice shirt? Goals.

Wow i feel like i just stumbled onto a great channel! Liked and subscribed 👌🏾 I'll be checking out your other videos on Genki II ✨ and love these authentic tips!

Great channel. My experience with the “immersion” method wasn’t great. Having the teachers only speak in Japanese and all the explanations in japan was detrimental to me. I really wanted to know 100 % what they were talking about. Other than that great content and I agree with everything else!

Hi Andy!l'm really loving your videos!please keep up the good work!atm i'm speaking both my native language and english, i'm learning japanese because of a trip i'm planning since a bit that will take through Nihon for about a month, can't wait for it! As of now, i don't know if i should pair my studying of grammar with Kanji learning. Should i give priority first to grammar or vice versa? Cheers, can't wait for your next vids!!!

Thanks!

ありがとうございます！

This is a very good video. When I first lived in Japan I did 1) learn hiragana and 2) use a phrasebook immediately too. Also, I too have never seen anyone become fluent using one-word flashcards, pretty obviously why not when you think about it, and I agree too that grammar textbooks are useful. They're not difficult, you can read one in a day, but it just shows you quickly and simply how to make similar constructions in another language, eg. "A is more ........../er than B" The only thing I would change is to put "reading" higher up the list, but it can be hard as it depends on knowing hiragana and finding good materials.

one of the most useful video on that matter that I've seen so far. I'm N4 level currently

Hi! First time on your channel =) Hope Ill find some usefull things here ) like this video )

damn bro. ive lived here for five years and i didn't bother in studying. it made me kind of sad. but just now i started learning. my biggest weakness is consistency i always fell like i cant remember stuff also "study thing you enjoy" i hate studying as a whole lol

I am currently learning hiragana now, trying my best to learn new vocabulary too ☺️ thanks for the video!

Thank you

Andy is the GOAT! Might work up the courage to try and speak to a native thanks to this video...XD

Very useful

Thanks for the video! Your teaching style is really effective, so glad I found your channel. Speaking about flashcards, how would you set up a flashcard if it wasn't just the single word and meaning?

yes! pls do a vid on conjuctions:)) itll be really helpful

Great vid

You know me my friend I want to learn as much Japanese as possible this year. I think as of right now i will focus more on reading and listening based off of the resources i have right now. So far I am: -On GENKI 2 Lesson 17 and watching your videos to review GENKI 1 -Going to read through the Tobira textbook -Listening to Japanesepod101 and watch anime everyday and I’m starting to here more words and phrases -Learning kanji from Remembering the Kanji and learning -Learning more grammar from the Elementary/Beginner Grammar Dictionaries Do you have more advice for Learning Kanji

I found the app Skritter really helpful learning hiragana and katakana. Its got kanji as well but haven't started that one yet.

Thank you very much for those useful tips ! What Japanese phrasebook would you recommend relating to the 2nd point ?

Please make a series of kanji🥺🙏🏻