Learn How To Speak Japanese

I have set up this website as a helper for anyone that wants to learn how to speak Japanese.

I have included free resources for you and also recommendations for the best Japanese courses available today.

What's The Best Way To Learn How To Speak Japanese?

In the past the most common way to learn how to speak Japanese was to enrol in a class or alternatively hire a private tutor. The problem with these methods are that they can be quite expensive and they are not always convenience, especially if you have a busy schedule to manage!

Nowadays more and more people choose to take online Japanese lessons. Which you can simply download to your computer and take the lessons at your own convenience. Believe me if you have a household full of kids or are juggling university assignments then you will appreciate the convenience a lot more!

I researched 17 online Japanese courses and as someone who has actually been through the process of learning how to speak Japanese myself, I found Rocket Japanese to be the best online Japanese course there is.

This course is extremely comprehensive and as it is audio and text based it makes learning Japanese really enjoyable and a lot easier. You can check it out for yourself here: Rocket Japanese

Benefits Of Speaking Japanese

Whenever you are considering learning a new language this is always a question in the back of your mind. So let me provide some answers for you, as I too asked this question before I began to learn Japanese.

There are many reasons, however one being that considering Japan is the 3rd largest economy in the world there are increasing job opportunities for someone that can speak Japanese. These roles may be as a translator or international relations officers, travel guide, teacher, diplomat to name a few. The demand for someone skilled in Japanese is only going to increase.

On the other hand by learning to speak Japanese you open yourself up to many social interactions and adventures that you otherwise could not possibly have. 130 million people speak Japanese in the world and when you can speak it too, there are 130 million more contacts and friends you have opened the door to in your life.

How Long Does It Take To Learn Japanese?

This is a good question! I'm sure you can understand that this question is a tough one to answer because it depends on the student's willingness to learn. Unfortunately listening to Japanese conversation when you sleep, although sounds appealing and easy, doesn't work, so you have to put in the practice.

However let me tell you the good news!! The Japanese language is widely considered by linguists to be not that difficult to learn, and much easier than English. The reason for this is that Japanese has a lot less sounds than other languages and their words ALWAYS sound exactly as they are written.

With English we have all sorts of strange silent letters and vowels sounds changing and glides etc...but with Japanese this is not the case. So to answer this question in short you can become confident in basic conversational Japanese in approxiamately 8-12 weeks.

Isn't The Writing Really Difficult Though?

The first thing I want to make clear here is that when you learn how to speak Japanese you don't need to learn the writing straight way.

There is a writing script called 'Romaji' that you may or may not have heard about. Romaji is Japanese words written using the same letters that we use in English. What this means is that in order to speak Japanese you don't need to learn the other Japanese writing scripts using their traditional Japanese writing characters.

Let me provide an example: The Japanese word for "I" is watashi

The word watashi is written with English letters so you can easily pronounce it straight away, of course watashi can also be written using Japanese writing scripts too, which again are not that hard to learn either.

The best place to start is to learn how to speak Japanese and then move onto reading and writing afterwards. There are also some great online courses to help you do this quickly too. A very comprehensive and respected courser is Kanji Supremacy, which teaches you to read and write in under a month. You can check out this course for yourself if you like here: Kanji Supremacy.