順番 – Learning in the Right Order is The most Effective way to Learn Japanese

The most effective way to learn Japanese is to learn everything in the correct order. Let me explain what this means.

When you learn Japanese everything is different and feels difficult. Some things though are easier to get a grasp of than others. You can remember better and get used to Japanese quicker if you focus on learning the easier stuff first.

When you learn Japanese you will need to learn several different things at once. For example, reading, learning vocabulary, grammar, Kanji and so on. It is impossible to learn everything in total isolation. But what you can do is pick a topic to focus on. After you get comfortable with that topic then move on. I will explain the order of things to learn that will make your studies the most effective.

1. Basic 2 or 3 Word Phrases
2. Connecting your Phrases Together
3. Forms of Verbs and Adjectives
4. Complex Phrases and Clauses
5. Compound Verbs and Phrases
6. How to use Function Words
7. Multiple Translations, Collocations and Synonyms

1. Basic 2 or 3 Word Phrases

I see learning Japanese as a puzzle. In the beginning all you have is a box of meaningless pieces. The only way you can make sense of it all is to put those pieces on the table one-by-one.

https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/

These puzzle pieces as Japanese words. You maybe able to make out a few of the pieces. If you want to understand better though you can fit a few together. The puzzle pieces that fit together are phrases.

Noun and Verb Statements

When you start learning Japanese don’t jump right into learning complex rules. Start by learning 2 or 3 word sentences. At this point in time don’t worry about how useful the words are. Just try to make a few sentences that have two things, a Noun and a Verb. At this point just know that Verbs come at the end of the phrase.

The words you pick should have two properties:
1. They are easily visualized
2. They are short

Some examples:

By learning these short, visual phrases you are accomplishing a few things:
1. They are easier to remember than longer ambiguous phrases
2. You are able to get accustomed to Japanese word order quicker
3. The phrases can be linked with one image, making the phrase easier to comprehend

UPDATED:
I have a whole article with 164 words that are visual and short. This is a good list to learn from or use as a guide to what type of words to start learning from.

Add Adjectives, Adverbs and other Particles

After you memorize just a few phrases, add Adjectives, Adverbs and Particles to your phrases.

2. Connecting your Phrases Together

Now that you know how to make basic statements, the next steps is to learn some conjunctions so you can start having conversations. 

https://japaneseuniverse.com/2022/06/21/conversational-japanese-with-key-conjunctions/

Returning to our Puzzle Metaphor, at this point your table has all the puzzle pieces set out and they are beginning to be grouped by color, shape and other identifying characteristics. Next, you just need to connect the parts of the puzzle together with conjunctions.

Conjunctions allow you to connect phrases together. Continuing with our examples sentences before, here are some examples:

3. Forms of Verbs and Adjectives

Japanese verbs and adjectives have different forms. With the basic sentence structure of Japanese you can now express time and other concepts.

4. Complex Phrases and Clauses

This is the stage where you can start expressing more complex statements.

If you want to say, the bear that eats the fish in Japanese you would simply add the phrase eats the fish in front of the bear, as below:

魚を食べる熊 (さかなをたべるくま、the bear that eats the fish)

You can take this phrase above and add it to some of your old phrases.

犬と魚を食べる熊が外で寝ない (いぬとさかなをたべるくまがそとでねない、The dog and the bear that eats fish do not sleep outside)
魚が熊に食べられる(さかながくまにたべられる、The fish is eaten by the bear)

5. Compound Verbs and Phrases

After you have a good grasp of simple and complex phrases, verb and adjective forms you can start learning about compounds. Compound verbs are just two verbs stuck together. The second verb usually just adds more meaning to the first verb.

食べる (たべる、to eat)
食べ始める (たべはじめる、to begin eating)

At this stage you can also put more focus into learning grammatical phrases.

食べたほうがいい (you should eat)
食べたばっかり (I just ate)

6. How to use Function Words

Looking at learning Japanese like putting together a puzzle again, by now you can see the whole picture pretty well but there are still several pieces missing.

In order to make more sense of the picture, you just need to put in the right pieces. You do this by learning more complex rules that would have been harder to understand in the beginning.  You can start getting serious learning the difference between similar function words like らしい、みたい、and っぽい.  You can make more sense of words like くれる and あげる. Also, linguistics concepts such as Tense and Aspect start to make sense.

7. Multiple Translations, Collocations and Synonyms

If Japanese is a puzzle, you will never fully finish it. A language is an ever changing creature. But, now if you followed to this step then you pretty much know Japanese. All that is left is to refine your skills.

Now, to make your Japanese better it is less about getting the mechanics right and more about just being able to express yourself better. You can do that by learning mostly new vocabulary. You can learn synonyms for words you already know, or collocations which are words that are used with each other. You will mostly learn at this point by reading and listening.

If you are interested in learning Japanese I have reviewed what I consider the best resource for Japanese Grammar below:

Resources

Order of Acquisition (Wikipedia)