How to be fluent in English and Japanese language?

English is a West Germanic language that was initially spoken in early mediaeval England and has since risen to become the 21st century’s, Lingua Franca. The term was coined after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic people that came to the region of Great Britain that was eventually named England after the same. Both names are derived from Anglia, a Baltic Sea peninsula. While English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon (thanks to Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth and seventh centuries), its vocabulary has been heavily influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Old Norse (a North Germanic language predominantly spoken by Vikings), as well as Latin and French.

Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 128 million people, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, and its relation to other languages, such as Korean, is debated. Japonic languages have been grouped with other language families such as Ainu, Austroasiatic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language’s prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th century.

With the history and general background of the two languages, it is clear that both differ quite a lot from each other. Considering their differences people might think that achieving fluency in either of the languages is bound to differ from the other as well. On the contrary, mastering the two actually requires the same set of rules, but their application differs depending on the language itself. In addition to this if you’re planning to learn both of them simultaneously, then you need to follow an external set of rules as well.

 

1. Set the right goals: Goals are extremely important when it comes to learning any language at all. You need to first understand what your fluency goal is, depending on which you can prepare an entire plan. These goals not only help motivate you but also help assess your progress in the long run. 
2. Gather the right resources: Once you’re done setting your goals, you can start formulating a full-fledged plan. Arguably the most important part of formulating a plan is gathering the right set of resources. If a certain library provides specific books in English or Japanese that would prove to be helpful, then that is your first resource. If you aren’t much of a reader, then finding good movies or videos in each language and watching them with subtitles is another good resource. 
3. Online Resources: Gathering external resources is a great way to expand your practical knowledge, but at the end of the day, you definitely require online resources. By online resources, i mean, flashcards, recordings, quizzlets etc. These will help build the basic yet extremely important section of learning the languages. 
4. Tutors: If you’re truly aiming to achieve fluency in a language, I personally, do not recommend the method of self-learning. While self-learning is highly self-dependent and self-reliant, at the same time it can cost you your time and effort. On the other hand, I suggest signing up for some online classes or seek a professional tutor. Both of these would help you receive expert guidance in any language you opt for. 

These were the tips common to both languages to achieve a decent level of fluency. Now, we move on to their specific differences in case you plan to learn them simultaneously. 

English and Japanese are the extreme opposites of one another, in the sense, there doesn’t exist any similarities between the two. For example, according to FSI if you’re a native English speaker then Japanese is bound to be one of the toughest languages for you to master. Basically, a native English speaker would require a total of 88 weeks to master Japanese as it belongs to Category 5, which is the toughest to master. 

Now considering you aren’t fluent in either, you then need to discern the proximity of your native language to either English or Japanese. For example, if you’re a native speaker of French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish or any language that falls into Category 1 of the FSI difficulty board, then you’re likely to learn English with a lot of ease but will definitely face issues while learning Japanese. On the other hand, if you’re a native Chinese, Korean and Arabic speaker, you’re likely to master Japanese a lot easier than mastering English. There are tons of other languages in the world but you need to locate the proximity of your language to one of the two to understand the difficulty to learn the other.

Once you’ve identified the proximity of your language, you can now easily divide the rather difficult sections of learning either of the languages. You can also ascertain the difference in the languages themselves, how their vocabulary differs, how their pronunciation differs, any differences in their cognates, all of these will be very clearly visible to you. Take precaution, while these differences can help you learn both languages even better, they are capable of confusing you as well. Therefore, in my opinion, mastering either Japanese or English to a decent extent and then starting with the other is a better option. Simply because a cemented memory of one language is likely to help you stay cautious while you learn the other. 

With that said Multibhashi offers amazing online classes in both languages, you can enrol to receive expert guidance. 

Click Here for English

Click Here for Japanese