The first thing to do when learning Japanese...

…is to install a Japanese keyboard in your phone or laptop.

And it’s not by spending days memorizing the alphabets.

I speak from experience of learning Korean in less than 3 months.

Now I’m learning Japanese and I’ll occasionally write my thoughts on language learning.

Why should I learn this way

From a kid, we’ve been taught to follow systematic syllabus.

You were forced to solve the maths problem with the way your school taught you.

Any other shortcut is not permissible - even though you’re right.

Same goes to learning a language.

Alphabet, grammar, vocabulary,…

Is this the sequence to learn quickly and be able to talk to people?

The goal is the chat

You don’t learn Japanese alphabets by writing it multiple times.

Who’s going to reply to your handwritten letter?

With Twitter, you’re able to get into their world and start chatting.

Reply a short “good” to a trending picture in Twitter. A quick search shows one way of saying is “いいね!”

Don’t copy-paste. Type it. That’s how I learned the alphabets without memorizing.

Is that the right word to use? Maybe not. I don’t know and there’s no shame in making mistakes when learning a new language.

There’s no shame in searching and translating words.

It’s okay to rely on autocorrect.

Typo is fine. It’s okay to sound like a child. Even if it’s the wrong word, you might make other people laugh.

What’s next

The next step isn’t to read a grammar book from page 1 to end.

For me, the next step is to grasp the patterns of Japanese language.

Patterns that will allow me to start tweeting sentences.

When I learned Korean, I used 15 sentences to dissect the language and understood its structure.

I’ll do the same with Japanese and report back here.