Useful websites and books to learn Japanese
I get many messages from my followers telling me how they would like to improve their Japanese, but don’t know which books and the like to use, or generally which ones are considered good for beginners. So I decided to reach out to those of you who have a hard time finding useful learning material online or in your book stores by compiling a list of websites and books I personally used and/or would recommend.
So without further ado, let’s begin!
To start learning any language, the most important thing is to be able to actually read the language you are going to learn, even more so in Japanese…because yeah, you basically ARE screwed if you can’t even read Hiragana or Katakana when you either aim to understand Japanese texts you find online, in books or magazines, or if you decide to go on holiday to Japan and don’t want to feel like a complete hopeless mess.
Hiragana/Katakana
So what exactly are the so called Hiragana and Katakana? Well, to put it short, they are the Japanese syllabary (some may like to call it the “Japanese alphabet”), meaning that each character you write has a corresponding sound made up of a consonant and a vowel (unless it’s just a-i-u-e-o, あ-い-う-え-お, aka plain vowel sounds). Hiragana are used to either "spell out" each and every Japanese word there is out there phonetically, so words without Kanji, or as so called furigana (which are the small hiragana you can see either above or on the side of very difficult kanji, making it possible for you to read the kanji as such) or as particles, suffixes and prefixes. Katakana on the other hand are mostly used for foreign loan words (mostly from English) or for certain country names or foreign names as such, but they are also frequently used by Japanese adolescents as a form of online slang language (yes Cazqui, I am looking at you! *glares at him with evil eyes*)
To learn how to read and write Hiragana and Katakana, I suggest looking up the following links:
For Hiragana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/
For Katakana: https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/
They give a great overview of both syllabic systems, show you how they are written and provide you with worksheets you can print out so you can actually actively learn how to write them.
For further practice, I made a Hiragana/Katakana learning chart for you where you can practice writing them as well. This is also how I learned them back at university.
For Hiragana, click here:
For Katakana, click here:
Hiragana as well as Katakana can be combined to create contracted sounds or soft sounds, long sounds as well as double consonants. For more information regarding this, please check the following links:
For Hiragana: http://myjapaneseprofessor.com/category/hiragana/
For Katakana: https://yosida.com/en/katakana.html
Congrats! Now you have mastered the most difficult part of the Japanese language *jkjk* if only it were that simple...
Kanji
Up next are Kanji - you will hate them at first, but learn to appreciate them once you progress. Truth be told, when you as a Japanese or as a Japanese language learner see a text solemnly in Hiragana or Katakana, you just want to punch something really hard, end up crying over the text rather than actually reading it as you curse the person who wrote it (true story...#iregretnothing).
I have no one solution or one page to offer you to learn how to write Kanji, because it really depends on your personal preference aka which Kanji you decide to learn first, but what I CAN tell you is that Japanese language learners usually start with the so called Jōyō kanji...wait, Joy-wha'?? Breathe, you'll be fine *hands you a cookie for mental support*.
Jōyō Kanji, in Japan, are considered a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, consisting of a total of 2136 Kanji, basically a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents. Out of these 2136 1006 are taught in primary school (Kyōiku kanji) and 1130 are taught in secondary school.
For a full list of Kyōiku Kanji, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%8Diku_kanji
For a full list of Jōyō kanji (including Kyōiku Kanji), click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
For all the different readings of the Jōyō kanji, I found this document to be very helpful (due to copyright reasons I cannot upload the kanji lists from my university that I used to study the symbols):
http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/joyokanjihyo_20101130.pdf
Scroll down to page 11 as that is when all of the Kanji actually start. The utmost left is the kanji itself, the following column features its reading, the one beside it the readings as they would look like with the kanji itself and the very right column is titled "notes" - basically this features the kanji in question in possible alternative readings or words that are pronounced the same, but with different meanings and written with a different kanji).
A very helpful and detailed explanation on how to write Kanji correctly as well a short overview of the radicals in each kanji can be found in this document:
https://kanjialive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/intro-to-kanji.pdf
If you're more of the book type of person, then I definitely recommend getting this book:
The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji: Remembering and Understanding the 2,136 Standard Characters
(click on the book to be redirected to Amazon)
Japanese grammar and vocabulary
There are thousands of books out there that are very good in terms of providing its learners with a good guideline to learning Japanese grammar with comprehensible explanations and my list of recommended books may or may not differ from your own, but the following are books and pdfs I personally would recommend you get/check out if you're really interested in learning Japanese. Please note that not all of them are ENG-JAP as some of them are GER-JAP or JAP-JAP too.
1.) (PDF) Japanese Grammar Guide by Tae Kim (ENG-JAP)
I would recommend this for those of you who are truly beginners and have no clue about how the Japanese language or its grammar works or even looks like. It also includes an introduction to Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.
2.) A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino and Michio Tsutsui (ENG-JAP)
(click on the book to be redirected to Amazon)
Not so much a beginners book, but definitely helpful if you already have an idea of how Japanese sentence structure, particles, pronouns and tenses (past/present for both verbs and adjectives) work. It really is built like a dictionary, meaning you can look up singular particles, phrasal verbs etc. and see how and when they are used.
3.) Grundkenntnisse Japanisch 1 by Shin'Ichi Okamoto (GER-JAP)
(click on the book to be redirected to Amazon)
This is the first part of the two of the best books I've come across so far to learn Japanese, especially actively and not just passively. It consists of 15 chapters with a vocabulary list at the end of each one as well as exercises to actively learn what was discussed and explained in each chapter like the usage of verbs, adjectives and sentence structure (active/passive/questions), just to name a few, as well as keigo (the poilte form). It also features "active kanji lists" where you can learn how to write some of the kanji that were included in the chapter before.
Another reason I'd recommend this book is because each chapter comes with dialogues and short texts where you can learn and revise the vocabulary and grammatical elements featured in the vocabulary lists of the chapter in question. Each chapter comes with translation exercises and self-tests for an extra dose of revision.
4.) Grundwortschatz Japanisch für junge Leute by Kay Genenz and Roland Schneider (GER-JAP)
(click on the book to be redirected to Amazon)
This is basically a JAP-GER dictionary ordered according to the hiragana syllabic system - this means that it starts with Japanese words made up of the vowels of a-i-u-e-o and then progresses to ka-ki-ku-ke-ko and ends with wa. Each word comes with a) a German translation and b) an example sentence featuring that word in Japanese that is translated into German. The last pages of the book are dedicated to useful phrases in Japanese like greetings, farewells, asking for something, asking for permission etc. and thematically structured vocabulary, e.g. you have a whole block of words connected to the term "school" or "elements".
5.) Shin Bunka Shokyu Nihongo 1+2/Bunka Chukyu Nihongo 1 by Bonjinsha (JAP)
(click on the books to be redirected to either Amazon or JP Books)
NOTE: You have to be able to read Hiragana and Katakana before using these books. NOT BEGINNER FRIENDLY!
These are the books that we used at my university, and although I wouldn't necessarily recommend them for beginners since you need either a Japanese native speaker or someone who studied Japanese to be able to explain each bullet point to you, you CAN use them as a good explanatory book alongside, for example, the pdf I mentioned a bit earlier when it comes to grammar in use as they feature a lot of example sentences to each grammar point. Shin Bunka 1+2 include short dialogues at the beginning of each unit introducing new vocabulary and grammar - this changes in Bunka Chukyu 1 as now each unit concentrates more on full-length texts and/or more sophisticated dialogues that are closer to real life-Japanese. What's more, each unit has a list of conjunctions (+ example sentences demonstrating their usage) at the end.
All books come alongside workbooks, but since I myself have never used those I'm a bit hesitant to include them in this post. Same goes for the new and revised versions of Shin Bunka - those currently studying Japanese at the university I was at are using those new editions and if you're interested in them I will leave the links down below, but cannot offer you any recommendations or reviews on their behalf.
6.) Kodansha's Effective Japanese Usage Dictionary. A concise Explanation of Frequently Confused Words and Phrases (JAP-ENG)
(click on the book to be redirected to Amazon)
Basically what the title says, e.g. the difference between 行く (iku, to go) and 来る (kuru, to come).
Useful online translators and dictionaries
Forget Google translate and Bing once and for all, please. You'll only be doing yourself a favour. Here are some online translators and dictionaries I myself use quite frequently and yes, while they too (especially and specifically the translator) can of course sometimes (ok, 80% of the time) be somewhat inaccurate because of poor word choice or how-do-I-even-English-and-Japanese-translations, they are still one of the "most accurate" ones out there.
Dictionaries:
GER-JAP/JAP-GER: Wadoku
ENG-JAP/JAP-ENG: Jisho
Translators:
ENG-JAP/JAP-ENG: Weblio
And that basically concludes my "short" introduction to "Useful websites and books to learn Japanese". I hope some of you may find this useful as a little starter pack or as an addition to your own Japanese language learning library. If you have any more questions, feel free to message me either here under "Contact" or on my Facebook page!
勉強頑張ってね！^_^
