Concepts you wish someone had told you in the first place (please tell them to me!)

[Tsukemono San]

Hi everyone,
I just started learning Japanese a few months ago, so I'm a beginner, but I love learning the language and I study every day.
Sometimes I find that the materials for beginners leave out general concepts about the language in favor of giving a thousand and one examples of the rule. Can other beginners (or experts!) tell me some things that they wish they knew from the start of their studies?
For example:
-Japanese sentences usually go from the specific to the general
-Japanese speakers rarely use personal pronouns
-In Japanese, the subject is only mentioned when the subject is first being introduced or if the subject isn't obvious
Any advice is appreciated, no matter how elementary or advanced!

 

[Coffeesan]

A small one but no textbook I've read has ever mentioned Dakuten and/or Handakuten, for an absolute beginner looking at Kana they can after a while infer what they do and why they are there but a simple explanation wouldnt hurt, I remember when I started I had to physically ask on here if they had special names because I didnt know what to google.

The particle が also always has the shortest explanation and list of examples despite the fact its the particle newbies find the most difficult to understand when they start.

Literal translations from Japanese to English often make very little sense. Many newbies often try to find ways to convert exact English sentences into Japanese when its more often than not wholey impossible. Many books and online resources try to get you to think of Japanese and write in Japanese using a English language mindset which is also a bad habit because the languages are so different when either try English or Japanese construct a sentence in their head they use completely different thought processes because of sentence orders and other things.