The first thing you should do while learning Japanese is learning the Japanese alphabet. The first steps are very important as these will help you set a strong foundation on the basis of which you can make your learning easier. There are three types of alphabets that are followed in Japanese.
- Hiragana – it is where everything starts in Japanese. It will help you understand how and why the Japanese words sound the way they do. It helps a lot in pronunciation.
- Kanji – it is considered to be the most difficult part of Japanese. But learning Hiragana first will help you a lot with it. Also, Kanji being the most difficult it is also a very important part hence you can not totally decide on skipping it for later. Learning Kanji would lead to building a vocabulary.
- Katakana – Katakana initially would seem very less in use, but as you will proceed you will find that it appears more frequently. Just being able to read Katakana at the initial stage is enough as later on, you will get to practice it, however, this is not the case with Hiragana and Kanji you need to be thorough in them before moving forward.
Focus on building a vocabulary after you finish learning these alphabets.
The next step is to perfect the grammar. Once you have learned the alphabet and built a bit of your vocabulary, you can move forward to learning and perfecting the grammar of Japanese. Before beginning with grammar make sure you know 300 Kanji and 1000+ words. With this, you will not find yourself clueless in the middle of your grammar sessions. You would know enough words to understand and follow the grammatical rules of the language.
The third step is the combination of your first and second step. After learning the alphabet and words, you have also learned the grammar now. So what are you waiting for? combining both the steps, try forming sentences. Since you know a lot of words and their meanings by now, you can understand simple questions and try forming the answers to them in Japanese. This will put your grammar and vocabulary both at test.
These are steps or the order you should follow while learning Japanese. These are the basics and mastering the basics is equivalent to mastering the language as half your work is done there. After that, all that remains is practice and practice and practice. With thorough practice, you will be able to read books and talk fluently in Japanese.
To have a helping hand in learning Japanese, you can also take the help of a tutor or a Japanese-speaking friend, moreover with the right books and material you can also learn it completely by yourself.