When you start learning how to speak Japanese you discover that it has a high level of difficulty. It is much more difficult for those who speak English or one of the other Romance languages as a 1st language. Japanese is very different, from start to finish. However, given the right tutor you can learn to speak and write Japanese.
How to Speak Japanese
Lumen Learning Center offers tutoring for learning how to speak Japanese. We have both private tutors and classes on this subject. Classes made up of several students start whenever there are enough students to make up a class.
Learning to speak Japanese will be a commitment. Some of it will be easy and then other parts of it will be very difficult. There is a little “cheat” method that most students will use to start speaking. That is using Romaji, a system of using the English alphabet to spell out the sound of the Japanese word. While Romaji is very helpful at the very beginning, it should be abandoned quickly. If you become dependent on Romaji you’ll won’t progress in learning the Japanese language.
Grammar will be a challenge to an English speaker. Your instinct will be to form sentences the way you’re used to doing it in English. But Japanese has an entirely different set of rules. You need to start with a fresh slate and learn like you’re learning your first words as a child.
While you will think you can just skip the writing systems of Japanese, you cannot if you want to learn the language.
You will need to take the time to learn these writing systems:
- Hiragana – The 51 phonetic characters of the Japanese language.
- Katakana – The characters that are added to write non-Japanese words – like “jaywalking” or “smartphone”.
- Kanji – These are Chinese characters that represent whole words in Japanese. Hiragana are characters – much like characters in the English alphabet. But Kanji are entire words in one symbol.
Learning Japanese
Learning Japanese does require dedication, but with one of our tutors at Lumen Learning Center you’ll begin making progress right away. Give us a call for tutor information.
