I am really fascinated with the concept of human brains working differently depending on the language they learnt as a child and grew up around. It's beyond fascinating to me to imagine that human minds can conceptually work and think rather differently all because of the way words are used.
I am fascinated by this as well! You are probably already familiar with it, but
Lera Boroditsky's research gives some interesting examples. Becoming aware of these patterns is helpful for learning to "think" in a language. For a bit of entertainment, I also highly recommend the movie
Arrival if you haven't seen it.
Does anybody have any tips? For learning Japanese or to stay motivated and whatnot.
Because you mentioned breaking down sentences, I assume that you are starting with reading and are interested in understanding Japanese in the long-term. Therefore...
I humbly suggest conditioning "
Hiragana" into your brain as soon as possible. It is both extremely helpful and necessary in learning just about everything else (pronunciation, grammar, etc.). While it might seem easier at first, I would completely avoid relying on "Romaji" (i.e.: Japanese written out phonetically with English letters). Skip on "Katakana" until you feel thoroughly comfortable with Hiragana. A lot of English loanwords are not as useful as they might look.
Then, install a popup dictionary like
10ten Reader and an add-on like
Furiganaize to insert a pronunciation guide over Chinese characters on any webpage within your web browser. This makes a huge amount of reading material on the Internet available to anyone with a basic understanding of Hiragana.
As you accumulate reading material that interests you, I would go through a crash course on grammar. I highly recommend
Cure Dolly's Japanese From Scratch series. A lot of people do not like the voiceover of her videos, but the information itself is absolutely golden. They are worth going through even if you have to bump up the playback speed to make them tolerable. In my opinion, they are an excellent foundation for the actual structure and usage of Japanese that a lot of language learning materials tend to overcomplicate to the point of being misleading.
After that, if you want to learn "Kanji" (i.e.: Chinese characters as they are used to write the Japanese language), then I would:
Step #1: Write out
this list of characters at least once in the order given. It might seem a bit tedious at first, but this will give you a good idea of stroke order. This is helpful for recognizing and remembering characters through collections of strokes that tend to repeat across many characters, as well as for developing a consistent writing style that works well for handwriting input on phones and computers.
Step #2: Learn the "readings" or pronunciation of characters within the context of words whenever possible. As you do so, keep in mind
the meaning and pronunciation hints present within many of the characters. There are also
general "rules" for how readings are used that it is good to be aware of.
Much like the use of Romaji, I would NOT spend any time trying to memorize readings separately from words or long lists of mnemonic keywords. Instead, learn native vocabulary and build context by
linking them together into "word webs" and collecting sentence examples that you can see yourself using fairly regularly. If one takes a systematic approach and is consistent with it, they can learn a lot very quickly.
Also, all of the above links are free resources. You do not have to spend any money whatsoever on learning material. Having a strong personal motivation for learning and staying diligent in using it are the most important aspects.
I hope that helps.
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