Japanese in 3 Months (Day 10): How to Learn Grammar Easily without Studying

How to learn Japanese grammar fast without studying rules or theory or anything like that. This is going to be the topic of today's video. Welcome to my three-month Japanese challenge in which I try to learn Japanese as fast as possible, try to learn to understand, speak Japanese as fast as possible, and I show you the whole process. So today we're going to talk about grammar. There's been a lot of questions about grammar, and today I'm going to explain what the game plan is. First, a quick update on what I've been doing. I didn't post any videos yesterday. I've been doing a lot of learning, a lot of memorizing vocab with associations, and a lot of shadowing with sentences, listening and repeating. And the 2000 verb list is complete. There's audio, 2000 verbs with example sentences and translation and audio. So I'm halfway through the list. I'm not going as fast as I thought because I'm doing other things as well. But yeah, so I keep learning those. And now what I'm doing, and you probably, if you're learning Japanese, you'll find this very interesting. What I'm doing is expanding that list, and I'm taking each one of those verbs. So I take the first verb, and I create around 30 sentences with it in every possible form, yeah? So it's a pretty complicated and also slow process. I'm having to do it manually because, well, I'm also learning while doing it, right? But it's the most trustworthy way. I don't really trust ChargeAPT to do a good job with this, so I'm doing it manually. So it's going to be pretty slow. But the good news is that you can already start using it without... I mean, I might not even finish the whole list in the three months because if it's 2000 verbs times 30, each verb, that's 60,000 sentences. And if I'm having to do it manually, it's going to be very, very slow. But if you learn the list, the 2000 verbs from the other list, that's good for knowing all the verbs, and then you can learn to conjugate a few hundred of them, and then that will be enough to learn to conjugate the others, even if you haven't done this with every single one of them. Although I will try to finish it, but we'll see. So how does this work? Well, for each one of the verbs, we get... Well, this English translation here. This is the... They call it the Romanji or something like that. Jumanji. I don't know. Whatever name it's got. The Roman alphabet... Yeah, phonetically written, basically. This is so that we can understand. We don't care about learning this for now, or maybe ever. If you're not moving there, you don't want to learn to... If you're not taking exams or anything, who cares? There's just one reason why I'm doing this. It's here. So that I use this so I can create audio files, yeah? With this, and audio files, and translation, you're good. You don't need to learn the characters if you want to understand spoken Japanese and speak it, right? So we have this. So I exercise every morning. Why is it that way? Well, one's the normal form. This one is the polite form. And we'll have that in every single one. So we'll learn the polite form. We'll learn basically every form, every conjugation, everything. Grammar is quite complex. I don't find it particularly difficult because a lot of things are similar to my native language. I mean, not similar, like the languages are similar, but they have the same way of changing the endings, and there's the normal you and the formal you, and yeah. So it's not that difficult for me, but it is quite complex. There's a lot that changes. So we're going to... Well, I'm going to. Maybe you can do it with me if you're interested. Otherwise, good luck learning this. But the plan is simple. For each verb, there's going to be loads of sentences, and absolutely everything is included. That's from... Yeah, so from normal to polite. So you notice... This is great for pattern recognition, by the way. You'll start noticing patterns. First one is... I think he called it plain. Yeah, well, yeah, normal. And this is formal. Plain and formal, let's call them. So, okay, then negative. And then this endings, you start noticing the endings. Because after you've done it a few times, you start to look at the same thing as negative and formal. This is negative always. And you start noticing these patterns. Humans are great. Humans are much better at recognizing patterns. Than at being explained. Like if someone explains something to you, and then you try to do it, not going to be as good as if you see people do it, and you see it, let's call it, in the wild. Yeah, basically, learning by doing is better than being taught how to do it. Being told how to do it. That's why grammar exercises are not very effective. No explanation. You recognize the patterns. And once you've seen 10, 20, 30 sentences, similar sentences, plain and formal next to each other, you will remember what the ending is for formal, what the other one is, yeah? And if you're really worried or making mistakes with this, you can also always download this as a CSV file, import it to Anki, and start memorizing. With virtual practice. That's what I'm doing with the 2000 PEPs, by the way. I'm halfway through memorizing them with associations. And now I've got the list on my phone, and I'm just reviewing flashcards as well. As well as listening to the audio. Yeah, so memorize the vocab, and then listen to it regularly and review flashcards. And that's how I learned the 2000 PEPs. But this long term is going to be better because there's a lot of stuff in Japanese grammar. It's kind of like, again, like I said, like I know I'm saying it a lot, but there are a lot of similarities with my own language in which they have these things at the end of words, afterwards, like in the place or to the place, and you are the ending. To learn all of those really well, pattern recognition is the best thing. By the way, if you notice there's nothing here, it's because the meaning is the same. I just didn't see the point in copying it again. Yeah, so, and then you also learn some vocab. You'll notice that there's less vocab here. There's not very vocab rich because I'm making it like this on purpose so that you don't have to worry that much about unknown words. Because the goal here is to learn sentence structures, right? So it's monday, monday. Monday is a problem, by the way. Easy to create an association. Monday, problem. Yeah, this is yesterday. This is there is, or there. No, there. This is at. This is book. And again, formal, plain, negative, negative, formal. You start recognizing the patterns the more you do this. So what I'm doing with this is the same. Just create audio files, five reps each, and then shadow. Maybe I'm butchering now. The pitch accent of someone's. Some nerds are just raging. That's a computer. But yeah, if you do it with the audio, normally I do it with the audio. And several thousand, several thousand reps a day. I guarantee the screen will get good fast. You don't need to worry about accent rules and this and that. No, just try to focus not on reading, but on imitating what you're listening. And you're speaking really good just by doing that. So this is what I'm doing. Programmer. This is the plan. I'll keep adding. This is available, by the way, in the. Or it will be shortly available. Soon will be available. If it's not yet with the rest of materials and audio for this. And there's not much yet. Because again, I'm having to do it manually, but I'll keep adding more and more. But you can see this everything. So this even if you're giving someone orders or you're telling someone not to do something or conditionals. If I, if I have done this, blah, blah, blah. All of that is included. There's lots of stuff. A lot of it, a lot of it is stuff that traditional grammar and classroom-based stuff. You don't see until the third or fourth year of. Yeah, that's why, that's why that kind of learning sucks. Because, oh no, that's, that's V1 stuff. We don't, who cares? If I want to be able to talk about what I did yesterday. I need to use the past. You know, I don't want to wait until next year to be able to talk about what I did the weekend. No, learn everything. And then what's more important, you learn it faster because you use it more. If you just do this, you learn everything at the same time. This is good for comprehension or great for your own speaking. But for that, we've got a language challenge, right? Which I hope you're using because they do make a difference. Your speaking will get way better So yeah, I keep adding more content to this. Every day I'll add a couple hundred more sentences and an audio for them and just start shadowing them. So you don't really need to memorize vocab here. If you're memorizing from there because this is not very vocab-rich. It's just the same stuff over and over. It's the same vocabulary, monday, monday, monday. So yeah, maybe if you don't know how to say... Kino is cinema in German. So yesterday I went to the cinema. That's my, that's my... I didn't, I don't go to the cinema. I'd like the cinema if I was alone in the cinema. I just don't like people in the cinema, to be honest. I've had a couple incidents because they were being noisy and I was, I got pissed off. I mean, long story. But yeah, so yeah, yesterday I went to the cinema. That's my, my association, you know. But yeah, vocabulary, no need to, no need to memorize from here. Use the other list for that. There's way more vocab there. This is great for just, just lots and lots of shadowing. So listen and repeat with the audio files. You learn all the conjugations and all the grammar relatively easily. If you do 10-15 minutes a day of just listening and repeating sentences while paying attention to what the meaning is, obviously, you'll start learning. You'll just notice the patterns and you'll learn it. Or you could directly download it and just learn it with flashcards as well. It's also an option, right? So yeah, progress. I'm happy with how things are going. Making progress. I'll make a longer video speaking Japanese this week. At the end of the second week, so let's say Friday. Try to speak maybe a couple minutes, five minutes maybe. Maybe not five yet. Yeah, a couple minutes. And that's the plan for this week. Finish memorizing the, yeah. I know I said I'd learn the whole 2,000 word list this weekend. I was a little bit too ambitious. Because I end up doing things like have dinner out and stuff and waking up late. But plan for the rest of the week. Finish that list and learning it. And then a couple thousand more of these sentences, which are faster to learn. Because once you've been memorizing the others, this, the vocab here is easy. And there's a lot of repetition here. And then continuing to do language items or speaking loads. Lots of shadowing. Lots and lots and lots of saying everything aloud. You have to say things aloud. And when you're doing flashcards as well. I will make him as exercise. Karenyon do as a certain or whatever it's pronounced. You don't, I think I know that one. Yeah, I know that one. No, no, you say it because if you don't say it. You're not practicing saying things in the language, right? And that's a game changer. If you, if you're saying it, you, you're getting good at saying things. Either when you're shadowing, don't just listen. That's the problem with watching videos to learn languages and all that. No, you have to be. If it's a video in which they make you repeat hundreds of sentences and great. If it's just watch this story and learn with English with stories. And you're not, you're improving your comprehension a little, but you're not doing much for your speaking. You need to be saying things all the time. Yeah. So we're used to, and a lot of people just, they don't listen. I mean, they don't listen to this advice because for some reason, I guess, because it's effort, it's obviously speaking at home on your own is much more effort than. Then just put in something or just learn Spanish by watching Netflix, but you'll never be fluent with that nonsense. You improve your comprehension a little bit, but that's it. This is look at speaking a language, like learning a language, like learning an instrument. You want to play the guitar or something like that. You need to put in the hours and you do practice. And it's, it needs to be deliberate practice in which you're trying to make yourself sound better in the language. You do that on your own, right? Lots of shadowing. So listen to your audiophiles and speak alongside and try to sound as close as possible. And then translate from English into Japanese in this case, or whatever, Spanish or whatever you're learning. And you, you, but you do it aloud. You come up with a sentence, you say it, and then you get the feedback. Okay. Go right. Go wrong. But always aloud, right? Really important. It will trust me. If you do it in a few weeks, you'll notice, Oh, I'm able to say a lot of stuff now that I wasn't able to and much. I don't have to think that much. And I, when my transitions were better, um, I don't sound like a gringo anymore. All of that. It's, it's a matter of practice. You need to either move in with native speakers and spend all day trying to talk to them or this, and this is more effective simply because at some point, once you get good enough for them to understand you native speakers, uh, yeah, you stop improving that much. Um, because you just, you're good enough to communicate, right? So you don't improve as fast. Ideally, you'd have a combination of several hours a day of conversation and hanging out with native speakers and then an hour or two of deliberate practice so that you specifically work on things that you wouldn't work on in conversation. The problem with learning only by conversation is that, uh, you use the same, you say, once you get good enough to speak a little, you stay, you stick to the few things you were able to say comfortably and you just keep using those. And also you don't get much correction because most people just, they won't, they don't want to correct you. If they understand you, they won't be able to, they won't, unless you specifically tell them, even then, because it's, it's work. And it's even teachers in class. They often don't correct you because they just can't be asked. They're going to, they're going to be speaking wrong anyway. So a lot of them just don't feel like correcting you and they're paying to teach you the language. So imagine people in real life who are just hanging out with you. They don't correct you most, most of the time. So you have to do this. Even if you spend time with native speakers, you will notice if you, they, I mean, you will notice them. Notice it. If you do this regularly, and then you also hang out with native speakers, let's say once a week or twice a week, even every day, uh, they will tell you, dude, what are you doing? You're speaking so much better. You're making much bigger mistakes. Your pronunciation is way better because you're doing this deliberate practice, right? Uh, you can't get good at football by only playing matches. You have to go train. Can't get good at music and anything just by trying to show up and try to play life. You know, like you have, you have to practice. This is the skill, right? Anyway, enjoy the rest of the weekend and see you tomorrow.