Not all those who wander are lost

[MorkTheFiddle]

I think I have been a little unfair with some of my criticism of some of the online Japanese experts. When you look at their advice that seems contradictory and the dates at which they gave it, sometimes it turns out that they changed their mind over a multiyear period, which is not surprising. One person, who earlier claimed that he had,"just started speaking one day," now advocates waiting until you can listen to an audiobook with pretty much complete comprehension, and then spending 50 hours shadowing Japanese audio books, several hours of recording yourself on camera and then listening to yourself, and finally spending many hour listening to one, single native speaker whose language you admire and then attempting to imitate them. This all sounds quite reasonable to me, and is quite different from the Input of i+1, which automatically leads to acquisition, which automatically leads to fluent production, which was what most of these folks were claiming a few years ago.

Not bad advice for any language, no? Not to discount other equally valid methods, of course.

[sfuqua]

Yup, that sounds like a plan. He talks about how a learner who already has good comprehension is discouraged when they hear how bad their output is. This sounds exactly like my experience with Spanish. I sound like an idiot, but I understand everything. Perhaps delaying output has its own problems.

The last couple of days of Japanese have been very satisfying. I have started to see things start to fall into place. Of course, I am still a complete beginner, but, for the first time, Japanese is starting to seem more like other languages.

I have a lot of work to do to continue to improve.

[galaxyrocker]

I have to say you're tempting me to get back into Japanese, something I can't afford to do until May/June when I have 100% decided if I'm going to France this year or not.

But, really, the deal with Japanese experts...I find they're often all very misleading. Matt vs Japan, for instance, often downplays the fact that his first trpt o Japan he had to return home early (iirc) because his method hadn't worked as he'd hoped, and that he did do grammar and other study as well. They just all seem to parrot AJATT and also never consider the process can be sped up, that others have different goals or that others learn differently or prefer different things. It's one of my big issues with the Japanese learning community (well, besides general toxicity) online, and it's spreading into other languages with the general CI push we're seeing.

[sfuqua]

I agree completely with galaxyrocker's assessment of the Internet Experts on Japanese. I do like the software that AJT has produced. Bulk change of Kanji into Furigana is something I do all the time...
Many of the decks seem to be quite nice too, but of course many of the decks assume an input only approach.

When I started to learn Japanese, I wasn't worried about production at all, but I am not sure that practising production wouldn't speed up comprehension, at least for some language features.
I'm not sure, but I'm thinking of starting Assimil Japanese tomorrow. It is not a popular choice among the cool kids, but learning to translate in both directions, and learning to shadow all the lessons at full speed, I think would move a person along about as far as a similar study of a European language would. I think Japanese would take a lot longer to get there.

Luca https://www.lucalampariello.com/home/ complained that Assimil did not work as well for him for Japanese as it did for other languages. I suspect that he may have just underestimated how hard and alien Japanese is. It is a big, beautiful, beast of a language, and it needs a lot of time.

My study this week demonstrated some of the limitations of my brain for learning. My study of Kanji seemed to go much faster and I was encouraged to increase the number of new Kanji a day. I went up to 20 new kanji a day, and it only took three days before I crashed completely. My reviews were through the roof, I hated Japanese, and I was ready to quit everything.

A couple of days with no new cards and a casual attitude about reviews got me back on track. I still have a long way to go, but I think I will be one of those people who complete a run through of the Jouyou Kanji in 200 days instead of in 100.

An alternative to the big vocabulary decks that the comprehensible input people advocate is a set of decks, where all the cards have been made from Anime. I could shadow the audio files from these decks while going through them, and the decks themselves teach Japanese grammar.

I continue the fight with Japanese. I have learned, once again, to keep my new card count down. I continue to consume various kinds of Japanese media.
I'm impatient with my rate of progress, but I actually think I am doing as well as could be expected.
I'm a pretty happy, all in all.

[CDR]

I have to say you're tempting me to get back into Japanese, something I can't afford to do until May/June when I have 100% decided if I'm going to France this year or not.

But, really, the deal with Japanese experts...I find they're often all very misleading. Matt vs Japan, for instance, often downplays the fact that his first trpt o Japan he had to return home early (iirc) because his method hadn't worked as he'd hoped, and that he did do grammar and other study as well. They just all seem to parrot AJATT and also never consider the process can be sped up, that others have different goals or that others learn differently or prefer different things. It's one of my big issues with the Japanese learning community (well, besides general toxicity) online, and it's spreading into other languages with the general CI push we're seeing.

He started studying Japanese in High School. I am also under the impression he studied Japanese in University, but I am not sure. Him studying in High School or University is fine, the problem is how vague he can be about it.

I feel like it is not so much that the process can be sped up, but that the process does not have to take so many hours of listening to content you cannot understand, searching for i+1 sentences.

Stevijs in general seems to be more honest about his experience, and certainly more transparent. He was doing 4 hours of listening, 1 hour of Anki, and 1 hour of reading per day during his "Sustain" period. If you add up the total number of hours he had exposed himself to Japanese in 2ish years, it is enormous.

Livakivi I think is another more recent example of an inspiring case study. He put in a lot of hard work and is honest about the work he did.

I'm impatient with my rate of progress, but I actually think I am doing as well as could be expected.
I'm a pretty happy, all in all.

I am also impatient, so I really feel you. I wish I could feel a bit happier about my progress though!

[gsbod]

Japanese certainly seems to attract more than its fair share of oddballs for learners. In my experience this has been the case both in the real world and on the internet. It also suggests I may be a bit of an oddball myself. Oh dear. This forum is pretty balanced, which is why I stick around, but these days I only tend to dive into the rest of the internet on language learning for ideas around learning materials I might want to use, rather then any grand theories on how to learn a language.

I'm not sure, but I'm thinking of starting Assimil Japanese tomorrow. It is not a popular choice among the cool kids, but learning to translate in both directions, and learning to shadow all the lessons at full speed, I think would move a person along about as far as a similar study of a European language would. I think Japanese would take a lot longer to get there.

I don't get on with Assimil because I like my grammar explanations up front followed by lots of practice exercises (guess that proves I'm an oddball). I also hate translation. But I do like shadowing! That being said, despite them all following the same method in theory, I think there's a lot of variability in Assimil courses, at least the ones I've seen. The Spanish course is thorough and well planned; if you get on with the method I would definitely recommend it. The German course was terrible at introducing cases, it might work for someone who maybe learned basic grammar at school and needs to brush up and improve, but it was a bad choice for me. (I think it's since been revised though, I don't know if the latest edition is better). I didn't get very far with the Japanese one so don't have much of an informed opinion, but I found those first few lessons a bit weird and slow, even for Asssimil. Maybe it gets better. Let us know

I'm impatient with my rate of progress, but I actually think I am doing as well as could be expected.

I can totally relate to this. I go through an impatient phase with any language I start to care about. If you keep at it, you'll get there in the end, but if you are impatient, it will only take longer (that advice is more for me than for you!)

Anyway, given that you've already got quite an unusual collection of languages, I'd be interested to know how your experience of Samoan and Tagalog helps with Japanese, especially the grammar and vocabulary side of things.

[sfuqua]

Don get mad if I say something dumb; I am a beginner in Japanese.

One big thing I learned from Samoan and Tagalog is the idea that if a language is different, that doesn't make it hard.

I started off with Samoan, and I heard a lot about how awful it was because it was different. There were even a few idiots around who suggested that Samoans lacked a sense of time because their system for tense and aspect were very different from European languages. This, of course, is nonsense. Since I learned Samoan being force-fed Samoan every working moment, I quickly noticed that the Samoan system for marking time was actually very, very simple and regular
The politeness language in Samoan was very complex, but you didn't need that for drinking beer or flirting with girls, the two activities I most wanted to take part in.
I would say that Samoan is almost like a conlang in how straightforward basic communication is.

Samoan did, however, have moments like this...

OK, I'm walking toward a house, I notice that the foundation of the house is higher than the neighbour's house, and I know the neighbour is talking chief, so I am probably approaching the house of a high chief, but he might just be a higher ranking talking chief. Any other clues? A pickup truck out back, Not conclusive. Well, I could go with a greeting for a general high ranking chief since he would be entitled to that because I know he is a teacher. That would work, but it is better to get the exact title right. Let's see, his daughter is coming from out back, and she looks dressed up, which suggests high chief with a hostess daughter, but that isn't conclusive... Good there is a little boy at the bottom of the stairs who looks bright. Let me try a whispered question as I start up the steps... " High or Talking?" A big smile, "High." Ok, got it!
I enter and sit and say "Malo lava, Lau Afioga." Everybody's smile gets a little bigger. He replies, "Malo foi, Lau Susuga" (general high chief of indistinct rank, exactly what I should get). So I nailed it, until I have to enter the next houise


I know that I am an absolute beginner, but it seems to me that many of the learners on the Internet are way over impressed with how different Japanese grammar is from English. I think many of them have never learned a second language before. If you just look at Japanese, as Japanese, it seems to me that it is a nice language that is pretty regular and straightforward.

It's different, but it is not super hard.
People are also very impressed at how hard all the politeness levels are in Japanese. I bet it is because this involves understanding the culture and the relationships between people, and interactions with the culture, and I bet people, including Japanese people, have to work at it to get it right.
The Japanese writing system is a glorious, beautiful monster. I love the shapes of the characters; my eyes feel happy when I look at one and recognize it.

[gsbod]

Judging by your experiences with Samoan, dealing with keigo/appropriate registers in Japanese should be a walk in the park by comparison!

I think your intuition about Japanese grammar is also correct - it is different, but mostly regular, and very straightforward. I think the only issue I've really had problems with (apart from occasional incorrect use of particles, which is a similar problem to prepositions in other languages) was around transitive/intransitive verbs. For many pairs of verbs, it is obvious which is which, but not always, and then it needs to be memorised. But compared to dealing with noun genders, it's not so bad...

The writing system though, I would say that is uniquely challenging!

[galaxyrocker]

I know that I am an absolute beginner, but it seems to me that many of the learners on the Internet are way over impressed with how different Japanese grammar is from English. I think many of them have never learned a second language before. If you just look at Japanese, as Japanese, it seems to me that it is a nice language that is pretty regular and straightforward.

I think you're entirely right. For most people, it's the first (or only) foreign language they learn* outside of maybe being forced to learn one in school. They have only one conception of how languages work, as their school language likely didn't go very deep, and likely was also closely related to English. They don't have any grasp of metalearning, or knowing how to learn a language either. So the fact that it is quite different from English throws them completely off. It's like nothing they've seen before, at least on a basic level. So they freak out about how different it is, then go post about it elsewhere. It doesn't help that, as I've mentioned before, Japanese seems to draw a certain type of crowd, so you have people who claim to be fluent hyping up the difficulties to make themselves look better. Or bragging about how quickly they learned it, etc. Which then leads more into seeing it as a ridiculously hard language, because, well, Reddit tells them it is!

But yeah, even having truly learned one language before, especially one different than English, helps open your eyes to approaching a language as a language, not comparing it to English. It's where Samoan probably really helped you, and Irish really helped me I know when I dabbled in Spanish and really started focusing on French.




* Talking explicitly about Anglophones, as that's who I have the most interaction with.,

[lavengro]

I know that I am an absolute beginner, but it seems to me that many of the learners on the Internet are way over impressed with how different Japanese grammar is from English. I think many of them have never learned a second language before. If you just look at Japanese, as Japanese, it seems to me that it is a nice language that is pretty regular and straightforward.
....
It's different, but it is not super hard.
....
The Japanese writing system is a glorious, beautiful monster. I love the shapes of the characters; my eyes feel happy when I look at one and recognize it.

I am thoroughly enjoying reading your log sfuqua and following along with your progress with Japanese. What follows is in no way intended to be contrary just for sport, but for what it may be worth, I have an entirely different view, particularly about the pretty regular and straightforward part.

I agree the characters are fascinating, the grammar while quite different - and in my view a little more challenging for English learners than many other languages are - is still mangeable, and the honorics or politeness register no huge challenge.

It is in the reading or pronunciation where the likelihood of brain hurtage lies. I do not really believe that the Japanese developed their language with the main goal of giving me a headache, but now they know it is having that effect - I wrote a letter to "Japan" recently and complained precisely about that.

Take a straightforward kanji like 日, meaning sun or day. Easy-peasy in terms of meaning.

One learns that the kanji is pronounced either じつ or にち. These are not interchangeable - in any particular context or vocabulary item, only one of these two readings or pronunciations will be correct. And as far as I can tell at this point, there is no rule allowing predictability as to which one will be correct. The only rule seems to be that brute force memorization is required. And sometimes, the second mora or syllable will be dropped entirely, as in 日光 (sunshine), pronounced にっこう, or is changed to か as in 六日 (sixth day), pronounced むいか

And when 日 is used on its own as a vocabulary item, guess which of these several pronunciations will be used? That's right, ひ.

This is far from a unique example.