Japanese · Curriculum
The Japanese curriculum, start to finish.
1 chapters, 20 lessons. A new band of the 110 most common words every hundred ranks, the grammar that turns those words into sentences woven in, and a graded reader closing each chapter that you can read using only what you have learned so far.
- 1
- Chapters
- 20
- Lessons
- 7
- Grammar primers
- 1
- Story milestones
A beginner's start on Japanese: hiragana and katakana taught alongside the first 100 words, the particles that do the work of word order, and the polite verb. Furigana on every kanji, and no Japanese keyboard required anywhere on the site.
Is Japanese hard, and how long does it take? Read first.
Is Japanese hard to learn?
For an English speaker, yes, and the Foreign Service Institute puts it in its hardest category, at about 2,200 classroom hours against 600-750 for Spanish. Most of that is the writing system and the vocabulary, which share almost nothing with English. The grammar is more regular than its reputation: verbs do not change for person, nouns have no gender and no plural, and there are no articles.
Three scripts, in a sensible order
Hiragana is the sound alphabet for native words and grammar endings, katakana the same sounds in a sharper hand for borrowed words, and kanji the characters borrowed from Chinese. This course teaches hiragana first, interleaved with the first words, then katakana through loanwords like コーヒー and テレビ. Kanji appear only inside words you are learning, always with furigana, the small kana reading printed above them.
You never have to type Japanese here
Almost nobody has a Japanese input method set up, and demanding one would test the keyboard rather than the Japanese. Every typed answer accepts romaji in any common spelling, with long vowels optional: tokyo, toukyou and tōkyō are all correct. Where a text box is shown, it says so.
Particles and the verb at the end
Japanese puts the verb last and marks each noun's job with a small particle after it: は for the topic, を for the object, に for a destination or a time, で for where something happens. Because the particles carry the meaning, word order is loose. Get those four right and most beginner sentences fall into place.
The chapters
What you can do when you finish
- Read the graded reader at the end - every word in it is from the lessons you just worked through, bar the odd new word listed at the top of the story.
- Recognise most of the words in a simple sentence, and the grammar that holds them together.
- Know the 110 most frequent words - about half of everyday speech, by the frequency curve.
- Decide, on real evidence rather than a sales page, whether to take the language further.
Japanese learning: common questions
Frequently asked
Should I learn hiragana or katakana first?
Hiragana. It writes the grammar of every sentence, the particles and the verb endings, so you need it from the first day. Katakana writes the same sounds for borrowed words and names, and is much quicker to learn once hiragana is settled. This course teaches hiragana in its first lessons and katakana a few lessons later.
Do I need to learn kanji to start Japanese?
Not to start. You can read and say a great deal in kana alone, and this course shows kanji only inside words you are learning, always with furigana. Kanji become unavoidable later, because ordinary Japanese text is written with them, but they are far easier learned as parts of words you already know than as a list of characters.
Is romaji bad for learning Japanese?
As a crutch for reading, it can slow you down, which is why this course moves to kana as fast as it can. As a way of typing an answer, it is harmless: it is exactly what Japanese people type into a computer before it converts to kana. So we show kana and accept romaji.
Does Japanese have tones like Mandarin?
No, but it has pitch accent: each word has a pattern of high and low pitch, and a few pairs of words differ only in it, like 箸 (chopsticks) and 橋 (bridge). It matters for sounding natural and rarely for being understood. Listen to the audio and copy it; the course does not grade it.
Is this a complete Japanese course?
No. It is the two kana, the first 100 words and the grammar that makes them work: chapter one of a longer course. A hundred words is a way in, not a way through, and the course is honest about that.