Learn a Language, the Fundamental Basics

How to Learn a Language, the Fundamental Basics.
(feel free to past this into text program of your choice for easier reading)

Languages are all the same, they are a method of communication. Languages arent magic either, think of the dumbest person you ever met, they too speak at least one languages. So whenever you arent sure of something (including what I am about to tell you) just mull it over for a bit: "How would I or someone learning my language do it?"
Think about how you learned your first words, or if that is a little far back think of smaller kids and how they learn new languages. The most obvious part is when they ask "What is X?" like "What is communism?" when they happen to stumble into a political conversation.
You can do the exact same thing whenever something **stands out to you** that you don't understand, even decades after it seems appropriate. Most people try to understand EVERYTHING which usually is a highway to exhaustion and frustration. So don't stress about it; just look up stuff whenever you feel like it.

Possibly you had that feeling where you simply didnt know where you learned a ceirtain word from; be it slang or niche vocabulary. That is your subconscious at work. It constantly looks for patterns

For starter's I'd recommend using Target Language <-> Your Language dictionaries. For Japanese -> English <https://jisho.org/> for German <-> French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, English <https://www.leo.org/>

How to Learn a Language, the Fundamental Basics.

Languages are all the same, they are a method of communication. Languages arent magic either, think of the dumbest person you ever met, they too speak at least one languages. So whenever you arent sure of something (including what I am about to tell you) just mull it over for a bit: "How would I or someone learning my language do it?"
Think about how you learned your first words, or if that is a little far back think of smaller kids and how they learn new languages. The most obvious part is when they ask "What is X?" like "What is communism?" when they happen to stumble into a political conversation.
You can do the exact same thing whenever something **stands out to you** that you don't understand, even decades after it seems appropriate. Most people try to understand EVERYTHING which usually is a highway to exhaustion and frustration. So don't stress about it; just look up stuff whenever you feel like it.

Possibly you had that feeling where you simply didnt know where you learned a certain word from; be it slang or niche vocabulary. That is your subconscious at work. It constantly looks for patterns out of the information it is being fed. Babies don't invent walking, or eating, or sitting either. They observe what other people do around them, look for common traits and then imitate them. We can abuse that for language learning aswell.

Listen, read or watch as much of your target language as possible, or rather as comfortable (a stressed mind is a lazy mind after all). And after a while, not one day, possibly not even a week but soon enough, you will start to get the jist of things; the air; the idea of what is trying to be conveyed with commonly used phrases. Greetings, cries for attention, rituals (like  "Its time for dinner!") and the like.

Now you are ready to dive into what seems interesting. Now words will most likely pop out at you, make you curious as what really is behind them. The urge for research arises. Working with dictionaries is always exhausting but it is necessary, just like it is exhausting for parents to answer every little definition their kid wants. Just that you are both child and parent in one here.

Always look up things up in a monolingual (so from English into English like oxford for example) dictionary first  For Japanese: <https://weblio.jp/> For English: <https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/> For German: <https://duden.de/>. You'd also be amazed at how helpful good old google is: Type in "define" or your language equivivalent (JP:とは) and it usually gives out definitions that are easier to understand than established dictionaries. You won't understand anything, I promise you won't understand anything. But if you don't experiment with monolingual dictionaries regularly you will miss the moment you do automagically understand the definition in the dictionary. And to get you to that magical day as quickly as possible we will make use of bilingual dictionaries whenever we dont understand the monolingual definition yet! For Japanese -> English <https://jisho.org> For <https://www.leo.org/> German <-> English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Polish and English <-> Spanish.

Say could you do me a little favor? Say "How was your day" in Moghol. Kinda hard isnt it? Given that it is an endangered language only spoken by a few hundred people. But it illustrates my point: You cannot learn a language by speaking. You can only say what you already know, and what you already know cant be learned. Really that simple really. But enough with the tauntingly obvious arguements. What I want to get at is that you can be your own teacher. Children don't learn a language once they speak, as mentioned before you can only babble what you already know. So they must've observed speech for a lot longer.

Maybe it is just me but I have never seen a parent scold their kid for their pronounciation. And they, or for that matter YOU turned out just fine. What does that tell us about how to approach pronounciation now? As usual the answer is quite simple:

Most people try to speak as soon as possible to "practically use" what they have learned. Take a moment to think about that. When you are watching a movie in english, are you not "using" english? If not what else are you using? Is the movie voice acted in a language noone told you about?
But if we assume the observation in the speaking paragraph to be true, we should all just be toddlers again. Don't stress about pronounciation or ... stress for that matter. You already "practically use" your language everytime you hear  and understand it. One day you will just start babbling just like any toddler. Mute and deaf people are fluent just fine without speaking or hearing aswell. Although be it in understanding or writing alone. But they can read books just like you and me. (Not to knock people who are motivated by speaking, go at it, just be aware that it doesnt improve your language ability and most likely builds bad pronouciation habits (you arent native yet after all) that have to be ironed out later)
People flock to classes but you can be your own native speaker to correct yourself. Mute people fluent in the language could also tell you if your pronounciation is off couldnt they? Eventhough they have never spoken a single work in their life. Be your own Mute Native speaker. Don't speak until it is comfortable for you; even then conservatively. You don't know what you don't know, what you do know might be wrong for various reasons.

A lot of people are concerned about grammar but you have to ask yourself why? If you reflect upon how you speak: you dont consider where to put the object either do you? Your thought just flow out of you. I'd recommend a similar approach. No commonly used language I have observed let itself be confined to certain "grammar rules". The only rule people commonly follow is: "As long as I am understood it's good."
If you do encounter grammar structures unfamiliar to you: Let it be. Let your subconcious gnaw at it. Accept that you cant be fluent within a day or two. One day you will be able to understand that thing but for now it is better to aim for other low hanging fruit.

Any questions or confusions that arise, from what is written here, by experience, unqualified or completly fresh language learners are welcome, so I can remedy and improve what has been written here to the best of my ability and conciouns.

Further readings:
http://www.antimoon.com/
https://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/stage-1/jp-quickstart-guide/
https://youtu.be/NiTsduRreug

Concrete Steps for Japanese learning:
1) Use https://realkana.com to get familiar with the kana
2) Download https://apps.ankiweb.net/ and import the Recognition Remembering the Kanji (RRTK) https://massimmersionapproach.com/table-of-contents/stage-1/practice/recognition-rtk/ to get familiar with Kanji.
3) Consume content and look up anything find interesting; optionally add the newly aquired knowledge to an Anki deck for improved retention.
4) Repeat 20.000 to 40.000 times and you should be fluent.