For those who don't know, I speak 3 languages
English is my native language
Then when I was around 20 years old
I learnt Thai and Japanese
A lot of people have been asking me why I can speak Japanese
So I thought why not make a clip to explain
So in today's clip I want to talk to you guys about some studying resources that I used
studying techniques and also some tips
I also want to introduce you guys to a tool that was really useful for my Japanese study
and that tool is an application called Hello Talk
HelloTalk is an application that lets you practice the language you're studying
with native speakers of that language
So i'm going to go into more details about the application later in the video
If you like the video then
Please don't forget to press like and subscribe :)
Let's get started!
The thing that got my into Japanese was
MANGA!
When I was around 19 years old
I was obsessed with manga
Before I could read Japanese
I always read manga in English
Look, all in English
There were so many manga I wanted to read but
They weren't available in English
It takes a long time for the English release to come out
Also I wasn't sure if it would ever be available in English
I wanted to read them so much that I decided to learn Japanese
So for the following 4 years
I studied Japanese at University and at home
Before I entered University I literally understood zero Japanese
All I could say was 'hello' and 'good evening'
Then after entering university
I started studying Japanese from hiragana and katakana
The textbook I used at University
was this
I think this textbook series is okay. It's pretty good at teaching things such as basic vocabulary
But sometimes when it comes to grammar explanation, I think it can be a little bit too short
The text book I used when studying at home was
this textbook
It's called 'Genki'
So just like 'Minna No Nihongo'
'Genki' also teaches the essential vocabulary, but I feel like when it comes to the grammar explanations like this
It's a lot more detailed and also provides much more examples that are easy to understand
The only downside about 'Genki' is that it doesn't really teach much kanji
and I think kanji is really important for new Japanese learners
But this is a grammar booklet, so if it taught kanji as well, I think it would be like this thick
So if you're going to study kanji as well, I think you need to find some other resources
So another resource that I found really useful for Japanese study was Tae Kim's guide to Japanese
I will write the website somewhere around here
If you're having trouble getting your hands on the textbook at the moment
I highly recommend using Tae Kim's guide to Japanese
After graduating University I planned to continue my Japanese study
However it hasn't gone very well
But last year
I planned to take the JLPT level N2 exam
But on the day of the exam I had shooting for 'My Engineer'
So I couldn't take the exam
But I'd like to try and take the exam again next year
To study for my JLPT exam
I bought these textbooks
So this is the Shinkanzen master series
Kanji is important
So one thing you need to be careful about this particular book series
is that all the grammar explanations and word meanings are in Japanese
So if your Japanese reading level is not as good as your other skills
Then maybe you would be better off with a textbook with English explanations
I personally really enjoyed having everything written in japanese because I feel like if you can understand the
Explanations written in the language that you're studying
Then you really have a good understanding
Yes :)
So next i'm going to talk to you guys about a tool that I found extremely useful for my japanese study
And that tool is the application HelloTalk
I also have an affiliate link with HelloTalk which is in the description below
So if you're interested in using the application and you want to support the channel
please use my affiliate link to download the application
So HelloTalk is the world's largest language exchange community
It has over 20 million users from over 200 different countries
So at its core what hellotalk does is that it connects users with native speakers of the language that they are studying
So they can learn and exchange language and it's all for free
So i've personally been using HelloTalk for around the past four years
And it helped me a lot especially during my times as a university student
So let's take a look at my hellotalk profile.
I have English chosen as my native language and then Japanese as a language I'm learning
I put my Japanese level as intermediate
So because I picked intermediate
The application will match me with people who best suit my language level.
So to find people you can use the search
So these people that come up here are my best match and these people are located all around the world
But there are other options you can pick so for example
You can choose nearby and this will show you people who live near you
or you can use something like serious learners
So what you do on HelloTalk is you post things on the moments wall
So on the moments wall you can literally post anything you want you can ask questions or just talk about your day
Let's take a look at some of the moments I posted
For example when I'm reading manga
If there's something I don't understand sometimes I would take a photo of the manga post it
And then ask what a particular word means and then people will comment down below and tell me what it means
So another great feature about HelloTalk is it has a correction tool
you can see down below in the comment section
That there is red and green. So the red is what I initially posted and then someone corrected it
So let me show you how the correction feature works
So to correct this person I click here
Then I click on correction
Now I can correct what they wrote
So you can see the corrections I made then I click send
And it pops up in the comment section
The thing that I found the most useful was the chat feature
So I used this feature a lot, especially when I was in university to chat with native speakers
So another great feature about HelloTalk is that it also has a translation feature
So for example if we look at this message, and I want to translate it. I hold down on the message and I click translate
And then you can see it translates into english down below
Another really good feature is the transliteration feature
So for example, if there's kanji that you can't read you can click on transliteration
And it will come up with the romanji and how to read the kanji on the top
If you're learning another language, whether it be Japanese or Thai or a different language
I highly recommend HelloTalk as a study tool
So if you're interested in downloading the application and you want to support me and the channel
Please don't forget to use my affiliate link down below in the description
So next i'm going to tell you about some studying techniques that I use and also some tips
So the first tip I want to give you guys is that I wouldn't recommend learning romanji
So romanji is when you write the japanese out in english letters
Now the reason for this is that I feel like learning romanji will hinder your pronunciation of Japanese
When you write things out in English letters, you're more inclined to put the stress where we would put them in english
So one example of this would be the city called Osaka
So when we write Osaka in english, we write o-s-a-k-a
Before I studied Japanese, I would call it like 'Osaka' or something like that
But actually when you write it in Japanese, it's a long o sound and it's actually pronounced
Also if you plan on going to japan and practicing your Japanese almost everything is written in kanji hiragana and katakana
almost everything is written in Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana
So you'll be struggling to read a lot while you're over there as well
Another piece of advice that I would give is that you should study Kanji
So when you go to Japan, there is so much kanji everywhere
So before I went to Japan, I went there for the first time at the end of 2019
I thought that my kanji skills were pretty good. I thought that I could read quite a lot it understood a lot
But when I went there, I was kind of overwhelmed by the amount of kanji that I couldn't read
So, please don't slack off on your kanji study
So as I said before the reason that I choose to study japanese is because I love manga
So, of course I used manga as a tool to study Japanese
I know a lot of you guys out there like to read
Shonen and manga battle manga and things like that
but I think if you're a beginner level learner
Then I wouldn't use Shonen manga
The reason for this is because there's a lot of hard and uncommon vocabulary
Also the way that the characters speak is nothing like how people really speak japanese in real life
So then if you started to imitate the way people spoke in shonen manga
Then you might start to sound like a anime character in real life
Which of course there's nothing wrong with that you want to sound like that
But if you want to sound more like a native japanese speaker
Then I would recommend something like shojo manga instead
The reason for this is because I feel that shojo manga is more easy to understand
And also the way that people speak it resembles the way people really speak in real life
And also it's really cute and who doesn't like a good love story.
So this is one of my favourite manga of all time
It's called 'Ao Haru Ride'
And look at the art. It's so cute
Okay, so this is my old notebook that I used to use
So, what I would do is I would write a word here
Then I would write the meaning here
And then I would write the sentence that I found the word underneath and then also write the meaning in English
That way rather than just memorizing a single word and its meaning you also know how to use it in a sentence
Another good thing about reading manga is that it helps a lot with kanji because most manga have Furigana
So furigana is when you have really small katakana written next to the kanji
Even if you didn't know how to read the kanji before
It has the little hiragana next to it so you can go and type it in the dictionary and find out what it means
After I started studying Japanese
I started to become really interested in Japanese culture
and I got addicted to Japanese dramas
Sometime I want to make a video about my favourite manga and dramas
If you'd like to see that kind of video let me know in the comment section
So another thing that I used for my Japanese study was I watched a lot of Japanese drama series
So at that time I would watch series with English subtitles
And i've heard a lot of people they don't recommend doing this because you end up focusing on the subtitles too much
So it's important when you're watching the drama to try and be an active listener
So that means not just reading subtitles and kind of let what the people are saying go in one ear and out the other
It's a good opportunity to pick up new vocabulary and also practice your listening skills and intonation as well
So for example when the sound goes up and down as well as the rhythm of the language as well
So language is basically a tool for communication and like any tool to get better at using it
You need to practice using it a lot. So for example if you want to get better at listening
Then what you need to do is listen and listen to a lot of Japanese
If you want to get better at speaking Japanese
Then you need to speak as much Japanese as possible
And I don't think there's anything better than speaking to a native speaker of the language
I was lucky enough to make some Japanese friends at university and also after I graduated university
And it was a good opportunity for me to practice my Japanese with them
so at the beginning I found that the Japanese I spoke was too text-book like
After using HelloTalk and practicing with them
My Japanese became more fluent and Japanese-like
So that would be my last piece of advice
if possible try and practice as much as you can with native speakers
Okay, so that was why I chose to study Japanese, how I studied Japanese and also my tips for you guys
So if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me in the comment section below
I'll be happy to have a discussion with you about anything about language learning in general or learning Japanese
Please be on the lookout for my favorite manga and favorite japanese drama video. I'll see you guys next time