1 hour per day

[Saiyan]

ありガット　プチクレアさん and Javizyさん for the advice. JLPT 4 remains my present goal and I will try to move towards it, 1 hour per day!

[theprophe]

To give you some indication of how long it takes to reach fluency. The Us government has training programs for officials going to work in foreign countries. japanese they list at 2200 hours of instruction, 2200 hours of study time. of course this is for english people, not sure if your language is more similar to japanese then english is

[untmdsprt]

Saiyanさん、

As the others have stated, finding more time during your day will help. My commute to work is an hour by train/bus so I use that time to listen to Jpod. At night I switch from studying flashcards or reading books, to playing video games. I've bought Metroid Prime for my DS and since it's in Japanese instead of English, it's also forcing me to study while I am having fun.

Another question you need to ask yourself is how much can I afford to spend on my studies? Is there something you can give up for awhile to save the money for a Japanese book?

[Saiyan]

ありがっと　thepropheーさん and untmdsprtーさん for your advice.

To give you some indication of how long it takes to reach fluency. The Us government has training programs for officials going to work in foreign countries. japanese they list at 2200 hours of instruction, 2200 hours of study time. of course this is for english people, not sure if your language is more similar to japanese then english is

After studying for 2200 hours , do they get native-level fluecy? I'm not bragging or anything, but luckily, I am finding reading and pronouncing Japanese (although I do both of them at a snail's pace!) easier than I thought, thanks to my mother tongue Telugu. Telugu has approximately 60 different sounds in it, including all the sounds in Japanese (except for "z", which I know from English ). So I am guessing I won't need 2200 hours of study. Yet, knowing the sounds alone won't teach me Japanese so I will have to put in more efforts!

Another question you need to ask yourself is how much can I afford to spend on my studies? Is there something you can give up for awhile to save the money for a Japanese book?

I forgot to mention a small thing in my first post. I am just a student who is about to join college this month in a small town. So I have no source of income to buy Japanese books! The only allowance I get is Rs.100/- per month and any good Japanese book won't cost less than Rs.1000/- There is no scope of a part time job in my town and that is my full story!