How to learn Japanese:
Learn Japanese with Easy and Simple Japanese Short Stories
Navigate across the page
- List of all Japanese short stories
- Introduction – Is Japanese hard or is Japanese Easy? How to speak in Japanese?
- How did we study English? How to learn Japanese?
- Should I study Japanese short stories? What about the English translation?
- Why should I read Japanese short stories for beginners?
- Why should I start reading one page stories and not a novel like Harry Potter?
- Why is it hard for a novice to read a Japanese Novel?
- SHOULD I BE TRANSLATING THE ENTIRE JAPANESE STORY?
- Top 10 best, simple and easy Japanese short stories with English translation
Japanese Basic Vocabulary Lists
Introduction – Is Japanese hard or is Japanese Easy? How to speak in Japanese?
Trying to see if you want to learn Japanese? Japan is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Many people in east Asia (and even Europe nowadays) want to learn to speak Japanese.
Let’s go through the obvious lines which every person learning Japanese will tell you. To put into better words, let’s go to the famous statements said by all the so called gurus who are studying online…
- Learning Japanese is super difficult.
- Are you a beginner and want to learn the Japanese? OMGGGG…
- When natives speak fast in Japanese, it becomes very hard for beginners to follow.
- Mastering Japanese requires years and years of hard work.
- You will give up because learning Japanese as it is not fun.
- You have to go through dry boring passages in old dusty books.
Is this all true? Well, its true with every language..
Japanese is one of the difficult languages for any native English speaker to learn. It takes a lot of dedication and time to learn the kana, the grammar and then the kanji. The basic points of the language are easy to learn, but it becomes more difficult to learn the more intricate parts.
How did we study English? And how to learn Japanese?
Of course not! You would have read or listened to hundreds of short stories. You might have read famous moral stories such as Aesop’s Fables, Tenali Raman or Abkar and Birbal. So why not try and read these short stories in German?
Seems like a simple question: Why does anyone not try and read Aesop’s Fables, Tenali Raman or Abkar and Birbal which have been written in German? Because it becomes very hard as most sentences are long (maybe even 20 – 30 words long with 4-5 grammar structures within each sentence. The English translation is usually not available for the German short stories and one has to translate on their own.
Should I study Japanese short stories? What about the English translation?
- With childhood-stories.com, you can read all the stories are perfect for beginners.
- These are Japanese short stories for kids and beginners.
- These children’s Japanese short stories for beginners are simple / easy / free and ones which you would have heard when you were a kid
- Some of the Japanese short stories for beginners available are Aesop’s Fables, Tenali Raman or Abkar and Birbal
- Relive the experience but with the same short stories in Japanese, and relish the experience once more.
- Reading is the most important aspect of learning any new language.
- By reading, you will build up critical vocabulary and also subconsciously memorize the Japanese grammar structure.
Why should I read Japanese short stories for beginners?
- Start off slowly.
- No one starts with a 300 page novel unless they have already read a few hundred short stories, 80 page novels, comics and magazines.
- Try reading simple one page short stories on a daily basis.
- There are 7 collections available in this website: Aesop Fables (4 sets), Akbar and Birbal (2 sets), Tenali Raman (1 set).
- The English version of these stories is also available and that too for free.
- A better tip will be to lock yourself in a room and read the story loudly and slowly.
- Speed is not of essence since your objective is to learn a new language, not to complete the story.
- Consistency and vocabulary should be your focus area.
- In fact, speed reading is detrimental to your learning and you will not have time to process the new words.
Why should I start reading one page stories and not a novel like Harry Potter?
- You will get confidence only upon completion of a task.
- When I started learning Japanese, I started with a 160 page novel or not simple short stories in Japanese.
- I gave up after 3 days and stopped learning for 3 months. Do you know why?
- The reason is that I was a beginner and had a very limited vocabulary.
- Building a large vocabulary enough to read a novel takes time and patience.
- I had to spend hours going through a Japanese English dictionary for understanding the English translation for any sentence.
- What was worse was that these novels cater to seasoned readers!
- Thus each sentence was over 2 words long with many structures.
- It will take you 6 months to complete a task if the novel is 300 pages long!!!!
In a nutshell:
- I quit quickly and lost three months before I restarted.
- I realized that starting slow was the way to go.
- I started with one page short stories and here I am, easily putting entire novels away.
Why is it hard for a novice to read a Japanese Novel?
To explain the example above in numbers,
- In any sentence, a novice might understand about 20 – 30% of the words.
- This means that the reader has to use a dictionary to look up the remaining words.
- For a single page, the reader might take about 20 minutes after cross referencing the dictionary. Now that is not much.
- However if you count the same for 300 pages, it’s about 100 hours reading time which is a insane amount of time.
- This will result in the reader in losing motivation.
SHOULD I BE TRANSLATING THE ENTIRE JAPANESE STORY?
When you open the Japanese short stories, you will find over 100 simple Japanese short stories such as “Aesop’s Fables” in Japanese, “Tenali Raman” in Japanese or Akbar and Birbal” in Japanese. The story will be easy and simple and will just span one page and you will find it enjoyable to read.
Simply put, these are just Japanese short stories for children and kids. You will find over 100 Japanese short stories in Japanese with English translation side by side.
These small and easy Japanese stories for beginners with English translation will make your journey of learning Japanese super fun and also progress much faster.
