It’s definitely possible though. Personally, I went from having no Japanese experience at all to being fluent in less than five years. It’s mostly due to the extended time that I spent as an exchange student, but even if you spend time in Japan, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll become fluent. I also know people who have learned to speak Japanese very very well who have had nothing but their computer and their motivation.

However, there are various things that you can do to help you learn how to speak conversational Japanese. Mind you, these take some hard work and dedication as well as commitment and motivation. 

What is Fluency?

There is no real agreed on definition of fluency, but people seem to mix it up with mastery. In my eyes, there is no real such thing as one hundred percent language mastery- as one changes setting or subject, there are a million words that one must learn in order to be able to understand or express the ideas being discussed.

I consider fluency the ability to converse about any everyday subject without stumbling over words or thinking about what is being said. Fluency is a state when you are comfortable enough with the language that it is hardwired into your brain as if it had always been there. Fluency means being able to express yourself in a comfortable way. This doesn’t mean that you know every word about every subject, but instead that you are able to converse comfortably about everyday subjects without problems.

Immersion

I know it’s not possible for everyone, but if you have a will or a way, immersion is the best possible way to learn how to speak fluently in conversational Japanese. Being surrounded by people who only speak Japanese will do wonders. To get to Japan for immersion, you could go as an exchange student, through a study abroad program, through JET, or just go with a friend or friend of a friend.

If you can’t do a physical immersion, organizing your own small immersions can be good. Decide to only listen to Japanese music and watch Japanese TV shows for a day, a week, or a year. Have a Japanese-speaking friend only speak Japanese to you. Get together with some friends studying Japanese and cook and eat a meal together using no English. Any little bit helps, as long as you’re all committed to the goal of practicing the language.

Warning- Embarrassment Goes Out the Window

No shame is allowed. None. Are you embarrassed that people will laugh at you? Too bad, laugh at yourself first. Are you worried that you sound stupid? Well, you probably will until you get more practice. How badly to you want to be able to speak well? If you want it at all, you have to take all of those inhibitions and put them through a grinder, pressing them into a fine powder before letting them flow through the wind, to a place far, far away.

Talk To Native Speakers

In order to get better at riding a bike, you’d ride a bike. To get better at baking a sponge cake, you would bake a lot of sponge cakes. So, to get better at speaking Japanese, you should speak more Japanese.

Actually Talk To People

Again, you have to really try yourself to actually go and talk to people in Japanese. Again, if you don’t practice, you won’t get better. No matter what level you are at, as long as you actively practice, you’ll improve.

Also avoid getting stuck in the English rut. That’s the undesirable comfort zone of when you’re so used to speaking English with a native Japanese speaker that speaking English on both ends is awkward.

Listen actively, Speak Bravely

Look again at your inhibitions? Are they flying in the wind with the rainbow pinwheel? If they are, your mouth is now free be brave. Go forth and make many a mistakes while remembering these following tips:

What’s that?

If you don’t know what a word means, you can always just ask.

I know that in the beginning phases, there are too many unknown words to really ask for one. Also a lot of the time you can get the basic meaning of a sentence from context, but if there’s something that you don’t know that is critical, ask. If someone starts looking it up in a dictionary, tell them that you want an explanation, or “説明して”

However, using a dictionary can be very helpful as well. Although phones and electronic dictionaries are fast, sometimes a paper dictionary is useful in that you can highlight and bookmark pages. Sometimes starring or virtual bookmarking just isn’t enough.

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

In order to pick up pronunciation or an accent, directly imitating the speech of a native speaker you know can be helpful.

I know that when I spend too much time with any of my friends, I pick up their speech habits. When it’s with my Japanese friends, I pick them up even more quickly. Just remember to pick up the speech habits of someone who is the same gender and around the same ages as you- I know that it’s your life and you make your own choices, but Japanese society is less likely to take you seriously if you speak Japanese like a girl as a 30 year old man.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

When you make a speech mistake, repeat yourself with the correct way to say your mistake.

For example, one day I was with my friend and I gave her a cute acorn that I had picked up on the ground. When I gave it to her, I wanted to tell her to try not to lose it, (なくさないようにね）but instead told her “なかないように”, which means “Try not to cry.” I realized my silly mistake, and started to try to find the right words. With my friend’s help, I managed to get it right, and then repeated it a few times. I don’t think I’ll make that mistake ever again.

Is This Normal?

When you’re unsure if a phrase or word is used properly, ask if it is.

A lot of the time when someone is learning a new language conversationally, they will have something specific that they will want to say in the other language that they will look up in a dictionary or translate word by word. Sometimes direct translation works, but a lot of the time it sounds robotic or forced. However, if it makes sense, the person who you’re talking is not very likely to correct you. You know how awkward it would be to point out weird speech habits of a non-native speaker of your own language. So just casually ask if the wording is odd or technical before you store it into your daily vocabulary cave along with all the other lions, tigers, and bears.

The best go to phrase that I use is  ”Xっていうのが普通？” or ” X使う？”

The Guessing Game

If you don’t know exactly what the word is, but kind of know the sounds, just go at it. You’ll probably have the real word repeated to you.

For a long time, I’d heard the word the phrase “置いとく” which means “to set down for now.” But I never really got it right at first. I’m sure that I said a mixture of different variations of oitoitoku, okitoku, oitoitete, and anything else under the sun. But every time, the meaning was understood and I was one step closer to saying it right.

Aizuchi

Learn how to actually be an active listener through Sarah’s article about aizuchi, or Japanese interjections. Even if you don’t speak fluently, you can trick people into thinking that your nihongo is super jouzu with your “a, sou?’”s and your “haihaihai”‘s.

No Native Speakers?

It’s virtually impossible to become fluent in a spoken language if you’re not speaking it with people. But, if you happen to be in an area or situation where there is no one to speak Japanese with, you can absorb a lot to prepare yourself for a time when you can use the language on your own. If learning how to speak Japanese is you goal, I would recommend dramas and real-person TV shows over anime.

With language exchanges, although skype exists, sometimes it can get creepy if you’re just exchanging addresses with strangers who will undoubtedly be as awkward as you on camera. Be careful, kids!

I hope this will help those who are on their way to Japanese fluency! You can do it! Just don’t give up!

If you have anything you’d like to add, experiences to share, or questions for me, leave them in the comments!

I’ve made a list of little things that I was able to come up with to hopefully help you out. Now, for the most part, these are little things. If you want big things, be sure to check out our ebook, which goes over changes you can make to your learning over 30 days that will save you a butt-load of Japanese learning time.

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Japanese “R” Sound:

A lot of people have trouble with this. A lot of people also get lazy and skip over it after they don’t get it the first time. The longer you skip over this, the harder it will become to correct. Trust me, you want to spend the extra time (an hour? Maybe two?) trying to wrap your tongue around this one so that your R’s sound good later on. It’s one of the biggest pronunciation issues Japanese learners have, and it’d be nice if this wasn’t you, right?

Estimated Time: 2-4 Hours.
Effect: Sound more fluent / native
Get Better: “How To Pronounce The Japanese ‘R’ Sound”

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Foreign Loan Words:

Loan words are foreign words that get converted to Japanese. They sound kind of like the original words, but since the Japanese sounds are somewhat limited in terms of what they can do, they can be kind of weird. The thing is, you know a lot of these loan words. For example, スターバックス (sutaabakkusu) is the word for “Starbucks.” But, it doesn’t sound like Starbucks. When you use a loan word or learn a loan word, don’t get lazy on the pronunciation. It’s too easy to fall back on the original “Starbucks” pronunciation for you, but it’s actually really hard for a Japanese person to understand, meaning your Japanese is plain wrong even though your English is plain right.

Estimated Time: 1-5 minutes per word (decreases over time)
Effect: Japanese people will understand you
Get Better: Strange Katakana Words, Unusual Katakana Words, Katakana Dictionary

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Hiragana ね, れ, わ, ぬ, め, る, ろ, お, and あ:

These hiragana kind of look like each other. Beginner’s of Japanese stumble on these over and over again, which slows them down from getting better at other things. Most of the time, these nine kana will be the weak point of people who have just recently learned hiragana. Less commonly, people will even have trouble with these for months (like, 6-12 months). Really though, all you have to do is sit down and destroy these eight kana in one sitting. Force yourself to recall them. Force yourself to write them. Force yourself to tell them apart. Make flashcards for them. Do what you need to do to make these kana easier than all the other kana. Otherwise, you’re just letting them slow you down.

Estimated Time: 2-3 Hours
Effect: Fewer snags when learning hiragana
Get Better: RealKana

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Learn The Rules Of Kanji Stroke Order

Stroke order isn’t something you should learn for each individual kanji (if you even need to hand write kanji in the first place). Instead, you should learn the general rules of kanji stroke order, then apply them to kanji you’re learning. This way you don’t need to learn each stroke for each kanji. You just learn the kanji and automatically know how to write them correctly 99% of the time.

Estimated Time: 2 hours
Effect: A better ability to focus on kanji learning, the ability to write almost any kanji
Get Better: How To Guess A Kanji’s Stroke Order

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Learn How To Type In Japanese

Since people don’t really handwrite Japanese anymore, it’s a pretty good idea to learn how to type. First you’ll have to set up a Japanese IME on your computer (scroll down and find your operating system). After that, you have to learn how to type as well. There’s a lot of little tricks and subtleties, but to learn how to type the main stuff is actually quite easy. With a little bit of practice, you’ll be typing Japanese (including kanji) in no time!

Estimated Time: 1-2 hours
Effect: The ability to type in Japanese, which has countless side benefits
Get Better: How To Type In Japanese

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Dropping The “U”

A lot of sentence-enders in Japanese end with an “u-sound.” The most common are verbs (in both ます and dictionary form) as well as です. Although they end with an u-sound, most of the time you actually want to drop the “u” in these situations. When you get better at Japanese, you’ll find some times when you can keep it on, but for now learning to get rid of it will make your Japanese sound better overall. It’s one little thing you can change that will make a pretty big impact on how you sound!

Estimated Time: 1 minute
Effect: Sound better
Get Better: n/a

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Solidify Your Katakana

Most people learn hiragana pretty well because they use it a lot. Katakana then comes along and is treated like the unwanted step-child. You feel like you have to learn a whole other “alphabet,” not to mention one that isn’t used as much as hiragana or kanji. If this is you, and you’re at the point where you pretty much know katakana but it’s not natural, spend a few hours (or 10 minutes a day for a couple weeks) making your katakana better. You want to be able to read it just as easily as you read hiragana. Kanji’s already troublesome enough, and these 2-3 hours will make everything else easier going forward. It’s kind of like those “look-alike” hiragana kana I talked about earlier, except an entire “alphabet” worth.

Estimated Time: 2-3 hours
Effect: Ability to read katakana
Get Better: RealKana

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Learn How The Common Particles Work

Particles show up all the time. They’re in between everything. So, you should know how they work, at least in general terms. I’d recommend knowing and understanding the particles は, が, の, も, へ, を, で, に, か, と, や, よ, and ね. If you already have a moderate understanding of them, then that’s good. Make it better. Particles should be things that you don’t have to think about.

Estimated Time: 2 hours
Effect: Reading comprehension +1+1
Get Better: Japanese Particles Cheatsheet

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This is just one of many one-time things that you can do to make your Japanese better. They all take less than 4 hours, so there shouldn’t really be any excuse. Of course, this also depends on your overall level of Japanese. Some of these things will be fixed nearly instantaneously if you’re at a higher level while others will take a bit longer if you don’t have the prior knowledge necessary in the first place (if that’s the case, be sure to integrate these tips into your learning as you go!).

So do you have any tips to add (I bet you do!). Remember, I’m looking for one-time things that will make your Japanese learning experience better overall, not things you do every day to get better (like listening to the radio, studying your SRS, and so on). Let me know what you’d recommend in the comments below! I’m sure your fellow Japanese learners would love to know!

Listen to as Much Japanese as You Can

Think about it – as a baby you listened to the English language constantly before you ever spoke a single word. By listening to Japanese all the time (TV, music, podcasts, etc) you prepare your brain for the great adventure ahead of you. It also helps out a lot with pronunciation. The more authentic Japanese you hear, the easier it will be for you to produce Japanese with little to no accent.

I listened to a lot of Japanese before I ever started seriously studying the language (TV, movies, music) and as a result I had a much more native sounding accent when I started taking classes. It really works!

As far as TV shows – dramas and talk shows are definitely the way to go. Watch them without subtitles, or just have it playing in the background while you do something else. Even passive listening can be a great help.

Anime can be good too, but for the beginner I’d say listening to real people talk in dramas and talk shows is best. The style of speech in anime is not always parallel with how people speak in the real world, and if you’re still just a beginner you might not always know if the styles and phrases used are practical. Wouldn’t want to develop any bad habits!

Don’t Use Romaji

Speaking of bad habits, let’s talk about romaji. Romaji is an unfortunate, unsightly crutch. Using English characters to represent the Japanese language will encourage you to speak with an English accent. And that’s bad. Very bad. There are even different “forms” of romaji (arigato, arigatou, arigatō), and that’s just confusing. Either don’t use romaji at all, or get yourself off it as soon as you can.

One of the first steps you should take in learning Japanese is getting katakana and hiragana down pat. If you can do that, you’ll never need to touch romaji ever again. And that’s a good thing.

One of my biggest gripes with the textbook we used in college was that it was chock full of romaji. Even in the third volume, everything was still in romaji. This really slowed down my reading speed and it wasn’t until I actually started reading real Japanese media on my own that I started to see great improvement. Check out the Tofugu Japanese Language Resources Guide for textbooks that don’t suck.

Sticking with romaji will really slow down your reading ability. If you get used to reading Japanese strictly in romaji, you will be very slow at reading Japanese in hiragana/katakana. The quicker you get used to reading in real Japanese, the better.

Use an SRS

SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System. They’re basically smart flashcards that track your progress for you. My favorites are Anki and iKnow. I use Anki for making my own flashcard decks, and I use iKnow for general vocabulary. SRS is really helpful because it automatically pays attention to which cards you get wrong and which ones you get right.

For example, if you keep missing one card, then the SRS will bring it up more frequently to give you more practice with it. And then if there’s a card you consistently get right all the time, the SRS will place it on the back burner and bring it back when it is ripe for review.

I use Anki when I want to make my own flashcard decks. I use video games, manga, and TV shows as material for getting new vocab words and phrases. As I’m going along, I make note of the words or phrases that I don’t understand and then later I put them into an Anki deck. That way, I can review the words and phrases that were difficult for me and speed up my comprehension. It really helps me focus and make the best use of my time.

Programs like Anki and websites like iKnow are very helpful for setting up a systematic schedule of study. They keep track of what you need to focus on studying first, and what you can save for another day. Anki also has a great community and a lot of premade decks you can download and check out before delving into the adventure of making your own. Using regular old flashcards is fine, but you’re really wasting a lot of time by not using an SRS.

Make Japanese Friends

While not as important as the other tips on this list (in the very beginning, at least), having real life Japanese people to talk to is very helpful, especially if you are self taught. And besides, what fun is learning a language if you have no one to talk to?

Having someone to send emails back and forth with, call, or webcam with can be a great learning asset. It prepares you for the real world of speaking Japanese, and you’ll have a native to immediately correct any mistakes you’re making. One of the online services that Koichi really likes is Lang-8. You can check out his review of it here.

Just make sure to let your new-found Japanese friends know that you actually want them to tell you when you mess up. A good amount of Japanese people are very shy and hesitant when it comes to correcting people and telling them they are wrong. This of course depends on the person. Our language partners in Japan had no problem telling us when we screwed up.

I made a lot of good friends when I studied abroad though, and I talk to most of them weekly. I still email with my home-stay sisters on a regular basis and talk to my other Japanese friends on Facebook. They help keep my Japanese skills sharp as well as improve my writing and reading comprehension. The Firefox plug-in Rikaichan can be a very useful tool for deciphering cryptic Japanese on the internet. Check it out!

Be Consistent

Don’t study Japanese for five hours on Monday, not touch it again for a week, and try to make up for it by studying ten hours next Tuesday. You need to be consistent. Study Japanese every day if you can. Figure out how much time you can set aside each day and develop a schedule. Studying a little bit each day is way better than studying for long periods erratically. Keeping a consistent schedule will help you learn faster and retain information better.

Out of everything on the list, this is what I personally have the most trouble with. There’s just too many video games to play and people to hang out with for me to stay focused all the time. Don’t be like me! Set up a schedule for yourself and stick to it!

Have Fun While You Learn

Most important of all, just have fun with it! You’re not going to want to do something if you’re not enjoying yourself and you’ll retain a lot more information if you’re having a good time. And once you find a study method that works for you, stick with it, but don’t overdo it.

For example, if you’re really enjoying a study session with your favorite manga, stop a little early. Quit while you’re still having fun. That way, you’ll be looking forward to getting back into it. Don’t study until you’re completely stressed out and frustrated – who would want to come back to that?

Study with your friends and learn with manga, TV shows, and video games you actually enjoy. As you start to have fun with it, you’ll actually start to look forward to studying. Suddenly studying seems less like a chore and more like an adventure! (Whee!)

Put It All Together

On days when I’m not slacking off, I try to get a solid 2-3 hours of real study time in. I really like the Core Japanese decks on iKnow, so I make use of those quite often.

Lately, I’ve been reading the manga Yotsuba&! and making Anki cards out of the words and phrases that are new to me. I usually start from the beginning of the manga every session just to practice reading with the new phrases I’ve learned because it’s good review.

When I’m not actively studying, I like to have Japanese TV playing in the background. I have a two monitor set up on my computer, so when I’m surfing the web, I’ll have my browser up on one and a Japanese playlist up on the other. My playlist is comprised of some of my favorite dramas and a handful of variety shows.

When I’m not at home, I try to listen to Japanese music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Imaginary Flying Machine lately, but it’s always good to listen to music where the lyrics are audible and easy to understand.

Listening to Japanese all day really gets your brain into “Japanese mode.” On days when I really immerse myself in Japanese media I’ll often find myself thinking and even dreaming in Japanese. Fun!

There’s also a lot of mobile apps that you can use to study Japanese on the road. Some of my favorites include Kotoba! (awesome free Japanese dictionary), Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese (super awesome for grammar and structure), and Kanji Study (great for studying kanji on the go).

With Japanese, anything is possible

And there you have it. Just keep these simple tips in mind and you’ll have no problem overcoming the obstacle of conquering the Japanese language. I’ve been studying for 3+ years now and I still make good use of these basic tips each and every day. Now get out there and JFDI.

So tell me, what are your best tips for someone starting to learn the Japanese language?

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