What is Japanese? Japanese is the national language of Japan and its people. According to Ethnologue, Japanese is the 9th largest language in the world by number of speakers with 122 million speakers in 25 countries.
I put together what I believe is a comprehensive list of all of the free online resources to learn Japanese, including video, audio, apps, courses, dictionaries, websites, textbooks ... you name it.
He's been studying Japanese for a nearly 10 years I think and he definitely knows what he's talking about. His views and methods can be a bit controversial in the community, but overall, everyone agrees that immersion and sentence mining are essential to learning languages fast. Reply reply grownOnMars •
Japanese, a language which has 3-level vowel height system, does not have the distinction of /e/ and /ɛ/. Or speaking more correctly, Japanese え and お are (true) mid vowels, that their sweet spots fall just midway of theoretical [e] and [ɛ].
For just starting out, I suggest the beginner and N5 grammar videos from Japanese Ammo with Misa and Miku Real Japanese. For beginner vocabulary, there are N5 vocab decks or Japanese "core" decks on anki or quizlet with the 1000 most common Japanese words. A side note on anki, it's free on android and PC but around $25 on iPhone.
- たん is a lisped version of - ちゃん. It's probably the most cute-sounding, casual name suffix in Japanese. There are many fictional (usually female) characters who are always called with - たん. OS-tan (oh, this article has an explanation for -tan, too) Binchō-tan You should never use - たん in business settings even though it may be grammatically classified as an "honorific ...
The Japanese course on Duolingo is mainly a word learning course. Each unit will introduce you to a couple new words (between 15 and 30), then it will incorporate some of those words into sentences, and finally those sentences will try to teach a couple grammar points as well. Assuming, you get each unit to max level, most words are gonna stick.
