japanese come

I love Japan, I've been one time for 1 week and it was enough to convince me that it's a country I want to be more involved with. I've been doing duolingo on and off to learn hiragana and katakana, but haven't started learning how to speak yet. I also purchased the genki textbook so when I'm ready, I'll be able to put in the hours to learn. Any tips on how to get started learning/speed up my progress, OR do you think I should just give it up and not waste my time? I've heard it's a very difficult language to learn and even after many years you may not get very far.

i forgot to put off topic oops

Watch vtubers and animes 🤣, but srsly, if you want to study a language, you should consume their media more often

Learn grammar first and how to structure sentences, conjunctions and key words etc. Once you get that you can plug and play with new words and stuff. Also focus on learning the words before Kanji cause there’s always almost the mini hiragana above the kanji

It really depends on what your end goal is. If consuming Japanese media without the aid of English subtitles is your goal, sure just follow the textbook series to N2/N1 and you'll understand 80/90% of Japanese media you see online. But if you're looking for a career in Japan, you'll definitely want to get a private 1-1 tutor, someone you can practice your conversational skills with on a weekly basis (daily if possible).

Speaking is still the hardest aspect of learning any language due to the lack of opportunities for practice. Many JLPT N2 / N1 learners can't even speak Japanese well because they are too reliant on textbooks and theory-focused, but they do well in understanding / listening / reading.

Consistency and immersing yourself in the language is what you should be aiming for.

I hope this can help u to learn japanese
https://www.tiktok.com/@chikahiraoka_/video/7367030115722726661

Outside Duolingo, you should try Anki, it's a great website/app that will help you memorize the hiragana and many things. First of all, you could create a new desk or just find an existing desk. As an example for Deutsch, people are using Goethe Institute wordlist, I believe Japanese has one too. You must also enable whiteboard feature on the app.

1) force yourself to speak even if you know you're ass

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

thats it

you do not ask native how to learn their language

OR do you think I should just give it up and not waste my time? I've heard it's a very difficult language to learn and even after many years you may not get very far.

It's true that people often say that Japanese is a very difficult language but from my experience it is also a very intuitive language and there's a lot of explanations for why things are the way they are. No need to be put off by it's seeming difficulty, unless you want to learn just any language for the sake of a hobby then it shouldn't be a big problem.

Duolingo is a serious waste of time. I would not bother with it at all for Japanese. For some reason it wants to avoid using kanji for as long as possible so instead you learn the hiragana versions of the word which is often worthless aside from listening and other times it opts to use the obscure version of the word instead of the commonly used one. Very bad reputation in the JP learning community.

On the other side of the spectrum, big up Anki. I recommend getting Kaishi 1.5k or Core 2000. Those decks will help expand your vocabulary.

There is a lot of guides for grammar. Cure Dolly on Youtube. Tae Kim's grammar guide. I use Imabi a lot for lookups, or the alternative, simply searching 〇意味 lol.

Highly recommend utilizing immersion learning. Watch Japanese youtubers, Vtubers, light novels, visual novels, anime (either no subtitles or use JP subtitles), games, anything that interests you works. Search up words you don't know (or don't, just don't whitenoise it). Be consistent. There's a lot of resources to get what you want online for free. Generally, you shouldn't have to spend a single dime to learn Japanese (I haven't at least). Something that helped me a lot was finding a community, really motivated me to learn more.

Look for Japanese friends and start talking with em!