無料 – Free Ways to Learn Japanese Online
There are several apps, websites, and a number of other free ways to learn Japanese. Instead of just adding another website to the internet with a list of websites I will explain how you can actually use the internet correctly to learn Japanese. If you would like to see a list of resources, I have 5 great language learning websites below which all have a massive list of free Japanese resources:
◆ Fluent in 3 Months
◆ FluentU
◆ Lingualift
◆ Team Japanese
◆ Gaijinpot
All of these websites have great lists, so if you want to find just one specific source to learn from there will definitely be something there for you.
INDEX
Listen to Real-Life Japanese for Free
The Internet has the greatest compilation of free audio for Japanese in the world. There are countless websites out there. We, fortunately, don’t need to search through everything. YouTube is the best place to get audio.
YouTube
All you need to do is search for a video in Japanese and open up the transcript. No, the transcript is not perfect all the time but it is a good place to get real, spoken Japanese in text form. Youtube allows you to listen to a variety of different Japanese speakers.
理解 – How to Understand what you Hear in Japanese
This is very important for learning Japanese. If you only listen to one speaker from a language course it will be harder to learn to listen to real-life spoken Japanese.
Spotify
If you like Japanese music the Spotify has plenty of music. It also has Podcasts. Search for learning Japanese and you can find a few with native Japanese speakers speaking in Japanese.
Forvo
If you want to listen to specific words and how several Japanese speakers say it, go to Forvo. There, native speakers record their voices for individual words. Most words have more than one recording so you can hear the same word in a variety of voices.
You can also download the audio files. One good way to help your Japanese listening skills is to listen to a word over and over. An even better way is to listen to that same word spoken by different people. That helps you to recognize the words no matter who is saying it. So, download the files for specific words, then listen to them while you do other things. It is a good passive way to improve your Japanese for free.
Finding Real-Life Japanese Text for Free
Again the Internet is a collection of websites filled with text. You can find sources in Japanese everywhere. If you want something more compact with short sentences, which are written by Native Japanese people for Japanese people, Twitter is the best place. All you need to do is search in a term in Japanese you would like to know how it is used in real life, and you get a list of tweets Japanese people wrote.
You also can change Twitter trends to Japan and see what Japanese people are currently talking about on the platform.
Phrases and Sentences for Free
Now that you have transcripts from YouTube, and text from Twitter, you just need to figure out what it says. The easiest way to do that is to use an only translator such as Google Translate or Deepl.
Google Translate in the past was synonymous with bad translations. However, this is not the Google Translate of the early 2000s. It has become much better these days. No, it is still not perfect.
Learn the Right Vocabulary for Free
The best way to pick the right vocabulary to learn is to take it from sources you enjoy. So, if you are watching YouTube and looking at Twitter, you have the text right there to use.
Online Dictionaries
Now, the next step is to take some of the words that seem to pop-up over and over and translate them. Here are some online Japanese / English Dictionaries:
English websites
Jisho
Reverso
bab.la
Japanese Websites
Weblio
goo
alc
Vocabulary Lists
If you would like a list of words to learn instead of extracting them from Twitter and YouTube, try Memrise. Memrise has lots of user made content for all sorts of categories of words.
You can also go to wiktionary and find a list of different frequency lists in Japanese. Frequency lists are words lists that show the most used words in a language in order.
Grammar Lessons for Free
The best way to start learning grammar is to make it simple and to enjoy what you are doing.
If you are a Grammar Otaku who loves reading about linguistics then you will do well by endlessly searching topics on Wikipedia about Japanese Grammar.
オタク – What does Otaku mean in Japanese
But for those who you shutter and the idea of learning grammar, then just use some app like Duolingo. There are resources on grammar all over the place.
The point is to not try to memorize too much at once. If you try to learn about too much at once, you can get information overload and then your brain shuts off.
楽しく学ぼう – The Method you are most Interested in is The best way to Learn Japanese on your own
Start by learning some vocabulary, then learn basic Japanese word order. Continue to push yourself little by little to learn more. Like you are building a puzzle one piece at a time.
簡単に – The Easiest Way to Learn Japanese
Once you have enough pieces together you will start to see the picture and the dots will connect.
If you do have specific questions though, then you can go to somewhere like StackExchange, and select their Grammar Tag. From there it has a list of all the questions that people learning Japanese tend to have. I also have a few articles about grammar on this website if you are interested.
If you are interested in learning Japanese I have reviewed what I consider the best resource for Japanese Grammar below:
