I find that completely immersing yourself in that language is the best way to go and hearing natives speak is particularly helpful. These are methods I think would be helpful if you stick to them: 1. Watching movies/series with subtitles (in your native language) - after some time, the repetition of sounds and simply the way they speak get ingrained into you. You'll not only pick up words but whole sentences that are frequently used (such as "How are you?", "I'm not feeling well today", etc). 2. Listening to songs in that language, singing along with them and comparing the words with a translation you understand. 3. Using the material you know to speak with native speakers, further reinforcing what you've learnt. Making mistakes is rewarding because often, getting corrected helps us remember more. 4. Reading books yes, but go slow. Work your way from simple books to more complex ones gradually. And never stop reading. Ultimately, reading is what's going to help in expanding your vocabulary and opening your mind to variations of sentence structure. 5. Practice and be consistent. I don't think learning 2 languages simultaneously is a good idea, though. You might want to start with one and wait until you're fluent to start with the other. Anyway, I'm only speaking from my personal experiences. Hope this helped. :)

I am a professional teacher now holding a Bachelor in Education and in my masters of arts in teaching program. Honestly the best thing to start with is developing some kind of vocabulary. The higher your vocabulary the faster grammar will come. You will then put that same vocabulary you learned into grammatical contexts that you are learning. Also learn to make simple sentences with words in the language that would translate to I, you, he, she, it, we, they, is, are, from, of, and....hope this helped :)

beginners, not beginner's (omg)

Very much. Thank you!

Hi! Do you know this site -- it has everything and you might feel motivated by everything you could absorb... http://www.manythings.org/japanese/ There are two very cool quizzes to learn hiragana / katakana: http://www.manythings.org/q/kana.php?u=hiragana http://www.manythings.org/q/kana.php?u=katakana I had one song that was about 6 min that I used to play (a trance song, good beat) and then I'd try to get through these with 100% by the end of the song. I think you need to be learning whole words (not letters) to match the words with the SOUND / pronunciation but, as a reading / recognition drill -- this page is well-set up and I found it worked for me. You can do ENG > JAP and JAP > ENG I think interacting with a human is the best / only way to really learn to speak and I suggest this site as a way to get your feet way -- so you'll have some questions and then you can work with a teacher. A professional teacher will be able to start in your L1 and transition to more and more Japanese. Untrained tutors are GREAT and WONDEFUL but they often immediately switch to the student's language if there is a problem. There are things that a trained tutor / teacher can do with beginner's so you're speaking from the beginning. One you start speaking and have success, it will be addictive and you'll be motivated to continue. That's just my two cents as a foreigner who really struggled to get Japanese native speakers to work with me :-) Good luck to you!!