Learning Japanese

Study everyday

I believe that the regularity of the revisions is very important to learn a new language, and as I have some spare time during my commute, I use Anki, an open-source flashcard program, to study my Japanese every day. I input the new words I learn into Anki using one of my computers, and then study them using my smartphone.

Remembering the Kanji

To learn the Kanjis, I use the book Les Kanjis dans la tête from Yves Maniette, a French translation of Remembering the Kanji from James W. Heisig. The methodology proposed is to associate each simple Kanji with a word, then create some small stories to better remember each new Kanji via the ones we already know. Also, there is an awesome Anki deck which is already created with all the Kanjis and explanations from the book, so there is no need to input them manually.

Online dictionaries

As of 2018, there is no need to own an electronic dictionary device anymore, as there are plenty of very useful online dictionaries. I personally recommend the below:

• Dictionnaire de japonais - 日仏辞典: a French-Japanese dictionary that contains a lot of community provided words
• JLPT-Go: A French website focused on taking the JLPT tests, their vocabulary section contains all needed words up to JPLT-1
• Jisho.org: A English-Japanese dictionary, I use it when the two above website doesn’t have the word I’m searching for, as this one have a lot more entries, but is not in my native language.