Japanese
phaidenbauer • 26 Feb 2025 •
My brother and I have been discussing a Japan vacation in the upcoming years. A coworker was there last year for three weeks and was blown away. Interestingly, he started learning Japanese quite a while before.
When I asked him why, he answered that they don’t speak good English, and you’re better off if you understand a bit of Japanese. So 22 days ago, I signed up for Duolingo.
Those 22 days have been quite interesting. Not only do they build sentences different, but there are also three different writing techniques. Besides that barrier, Duolingo doesn’t support German to Japanese, so I’m also honing my English skills by going from English to Japanese.
I can’t say many words yet, but as with all things, gamification and a streak make it quite an interesting and fun journey. We’ll see how long it takes before I can order Mangas directly out of Japan (probably forever).
There is no exact deadline on the trip yet, so I’ve got plenty of time to prepare.
Comments
I used to do the Japanese lessons during my lunch break, but after a while reading the kanji took me so long I never could finish a lesson before it was time to head back to work. Then I totally lapsed. But I think today an LLM is probably the best tool for learning a language. がんばって!
@haideralmosawi Oh, didn’t know. Sadly, I think it won’t be happening before 2027.
@Winkletter Kanji is completely crazy. In Duolingo, you need to finish Hiragana & Katakana before you start learning Kanji. What I really like about Duolingo is the speech and hearing practises. The voice recognition works really well so you’re not only learning new vocabulary but also how to pronounce things.
The World Expo is in Osaka this year, so it might be nice to catch that, if you can. 😄