How Long Does It Take To Learn Japanese? Can you learn Japanese in 5 minutes? (please note all links on this page are affiliate links) One of the first questions that I get asked is how long does it take to learn Japanese? and of course there is no hard and fast answer but I can encourage you by saying that if you spend a few hours a week you can become confident in basic conversational Japanese in about 3 months, but it could take longer because I don't know how much time you will put in and how well you learn.

As for wanting to learn Japanese (sponsored affiliate links) in 5 minutes, well you wont become fluent unless you are some sort of genius however you can learn all the basic greetings in 5 minutes quite easily. Over on the left we have a free audio course that teaches you the basics of the Japanese language as quickly as possible and takes you through Japanese greetings in day 1.

Some people think that learning Japanese (sponsored affiliate link) will take a long time and be too difficult but I have to disagree, and a number of linguists share the same opinion as me, and that is Japanese is actually not that tough and doesn't take as long to learn as English does!

Now of course I am referring to becoming confident in basic conversational Japanese, however if you want to master advanced dialogue, and reading and writing all three Japanese writing scripts including Kanji then it becomes more difficult that is for sure.

There are a number of reasons why a person can pick up conversational Japanese quickly, one being that you don't have to learn the different Japanese writing scripts to start speaking Japanese because there is a writing system called Romaji that is Japanese words transcribed into English letters. This makes reading Japanese and speaking it much easier.

Another reason why Japanese is not that hard is because the sounds, vowels and consonants are consistent, unlike English where we have crazy rules and changes.

However learning any language does take discipline so although I have explained some advantages over English there is no shortcut to learning Japanese, you of course need put in the effort to get the results, and some people do more than others and get there faster.

So in answering the question: 'how long does it take to learn Japanese?' the answer is not as long as English and it you apply yourself and take a few lessons each week online or otherwise, you can reach a basic level that will impress your friends and enable you to hold a simple conversation with a Japanese person in few months if you are diligent.

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