Learn Japanese by actually practising it

How long does it take to learn Japanese?

The US Foreign Service Institute puts Japanese at roughly 2200 hours of instruction — about 88 weeks full-time — to reach professional working proficiency. Holding a simple conversation comes much sooner: most learners manage it inside the first few months.

NativePal shortens the part you control: reading at your level every day, vocabulary that returns before you forget it, and speaking practice that scores your pronunciation instead of just ticking a box.

Is Japanese hard for English speakers?

Among the hardest for English speakers. The two kana syllabaries take a couple of weeks each, but reaching newspaper literacy in kanji is generally a multi-year project.

The parts English speakers usually find hardest:

• Verb at the end, particles doing the work — Japanese puts the verb last and marks each noun's role with a particle such as は, が, を or に. Word order is flexible because the particles carry the grammar.
• は versus が — The distinction between topic and subject has no English counterpart and stays subtly difficult long past the beginner stage.
• Keigo, the politeness system — Honorific, humble and polite registers change verbs outright, so the same sentence looks completely different depending on who you are speaking to.
• Counters — Counting requires a classifier matched to the object's shape or category: flat things, long things, small animals and machines each take a different word.
• Pitch accent — Words are distinguished by a pattern of high and low pitch. It is not written down and rarely taught, but it is what makes speech sound native.

What writing system does Japanese use?

Japanese uses three scripts: hiragana (46), katakana (46), and around 2,100 standard kanji. The two kana syllabaries take a couple of weeks each, but reaching newspaper literacy in kanji is generally a multi-year project. NativePal's alphabet lessons teach hiragana and katakana from zero, a few characters at a time; kanji come later, word by word, in reading lessons.

On the teleprompter, a reading aid adds a line under each sentence in romaji (Hepburn spelling) or in kana, so you can practise speaking Japanese before you can read the script.

What proficiency levels does NativePal use for Japanese?

NativePal levels your Japanese practice with JLPT, so reading lessons, vocabulary, and speaking prompts are generated for the level you select rather than a generic average. The ladder runs N5 through to N1.

Each JLPT level in detail: N5 (Beginner) · N4 (Elementary) · N3 (Intermediate) · N2 (Upper Intermediate) · N1 (Advanced)

Where is Japanese spoken?

Japanese is spoken in Japan, with 125+ million speakers worldwide.