Introduction

Thanks to the sheer existence of AJATT and further popularization of its ideas by numerous “modernized” regurgitations, people who start learning Japanese now have never been at quite as huge of a historical advantage over language learners of any other era. Obviously, humans were in fact doing immersion way before AJATT, however in the not-so-distant past you would’ve had to have been an aristocrat in order to go to a different country for a few years (or maybe a pirate, or some sort of inquisitor), and by the time the internet became usable and enabled media-based immersion… the business machine of academic language education had completely won over common sense and the not-so-eldritch knowledge of immersion being a thing was made lost to all but a very select few. Luckily, recently tables have started to turn. Unless you do literally no research before and during venturing into a foreign language, you are absolutely doomed to come across AJATT ideas at some point, be it the AJATT itself or its franchising branches. The AJATT is not really a language program/course, although it can (and is intended to) be interpreted as one. If anything, it’s a blog. And a huge mess. It is also free. Its clones are anything but free, and are sold as “revolutionary” courses. They all give you the same exact key to fluency, technically applicable to any language, but originally designed around Japanese (and very much still remaining this way) mostly because Japanese is also… well, sorta the best language for it. Except for maybe English, but I assume you speak it already. I would say Korean is definitely the third most suited for AJATT-esque approach language, followed by Cantonese and Mandarin (one I assume has better content, the other I assume has moar content), maybe followed by Thai and a few other… after that AJATT as a method gets drastically less applicable. Here I should note however that English, being the easiest language in the world (as well as one of the dumbest and least expressible), doesn’t really require any of the AJATT tools in order to be mastered: you can learn how to read English in a day or two, and from there you are free to just immerse — you don’t need any special tools for that. For Japanese immersion though: you better stop by the armory before you embark.

Most people learning languages other than Japanese are obviously far less likely to encounter ajatt&copycats. Especially for non-English speakers, but I am sure AJATT alternatives exist in most languages already. One of the first known “AJATTs” was actually written, I think, by a Polish dude about learning English… so yeah, the alternatives have in fact been out there even before the AJATT itself. I am also sure that most of them are hidden behind paywalls under pretense of containing some sort of secret and very exclusive knowledge for cool people eyes’ only. I really recommend against following neither AJATT nor its “forks”. Except for the core message any real polyglot can give you for free — immersion is king — you really shouldn’t follows any of the AJATT-y gurus (including the madhouse that is the original AJATT) to a T: not even close to it, in fact. Especially if you’re a complete beginner and would pretty much have no choice but to completely trust everything they say and blindly do what you’re told. Bad idea. Let me explain why. It will take a while.