Quote:
Originally Posted by kokusaijin
It depends on what you want to learn first. For me, I started learning words and phrases first because memorizing the katakana, hiragana, and kanji are useless if you can't speak the language and you don't even know the meaning. After learning some useful words, I started learning how to read and write. Written Japanese is very difficult to write and understand because of the complexity of kanji especially. Although I am fluent in conversational Japanese, I still can't write the three perfectly. Goodluck!  |
A beginner should, hands down, just buy Yookoso! (or one of the other Big Two series) and just work through the first half of volume 1. After that, he should start following the guide I posted earlier.
That's my opinion on an efficient and strategic way of gaining skills in a short few years.