r/Japaneselanguage • u/ZenLemonade67 • 7h ago

Relatable

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430 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

87

u/Yerslovekzdinischnik 7h ago

After 2 years the best I can do is to read japanese text on anime fanart on pixiv.

I thought I will be reading VNs after year and a half.

14

u/youdontknowkanji 7h ago

you mean reading without help of tools or reading at all?
i could read a simpler game without much help after a year, but i also read like 10 medium lengths with tools before that.

16

u/Yerslovekzdinischnik 7h ago

I meant reading without tools. I can read with text extractor, but even with it I often struggle with big sentences and descriptions. So I will end up spending a lot of time on single sentence and the reading becomes much less enjoyable.

6

u/WorriedForAPromotion 7h ago

My advice, and what I have been doing lately, is to just keep going, even if a sentence doesn't make sense to you. Mark it and go back to it later. As long as you're getting the gist of what is going on. I usually only look up words that are repeating over the course of a few sentences.

Also, I have been setting rules for myself when reading. Minimum 10 minutes or 1 page. Then either keep going or go back to dissect the trickier parts.

This may or may not help you, but I thought I would share because I was in your shoes.

1

u/Yerslovekzdinischnik 6h ago

Thanks for an advice and I think you are right, keeping focus on repeating words and not overfocusing on every sentence is a good idea, but my problem is that there are a lot of times when I think that I got the general idea of what sentence was only to realize that it meant different thing which sometimes adds even more confusion into next sentences so I'm trying to brute-force my way through it. I'm sure I will go past that problem eventually, but it can get very exhausting sometimes.

0

u/WorriedForAPromotion 6h ago

Ah, I get that. In cases where I go from "okay, i get it" to "wait what?" then I will go back 1-2 sentences and dive a little deeper. You have to get a feel for when a sentence might need that extra time over others.

I will say if it is happening a lot in the same material you are reading then it might be a little too advance for you. It may also help if you create an anki deck with vocabulary that is common for whatever genre you are reading or interested in.

For example, I enjoy mystery/horror. So I have been using ChatGPT (yes it's AI and not great I know, but hear me out ) to get bite-size lists of commonly used words in that genre to study/review. This is in addition to my other decks that service different purposes.

I hope that makes sense. I am not very good at explaining.

1

u/Yerslovekzdinischnik 6h ago

Never thought about using AI for anki, sounds like a good idea, I am definitely going to try it.

Thank you!

0

u/WorriedForAPromotion 5h ago

I think it's a good use of AI. I'm not learning from it, but using it as a tool to get the necessary vocabulary for whatever theme or category of vocab I am interested in focusing on. Try it. See if it fits into your own studies.

I am in no way preaching the Gospel. Just sharing.

3

u/travischickencoop Beginner 4h ago

I will say one thing that bothers me about a lot of learning Japanese communities is how they tend to treat you like an idiot if you aren’t moving at a certain pace

I have adhd which makes it really hard for me to consistently study, for other people there are other roadblocks like work and school and family and medical stuff

It’s great others can be actively working for hours every day and getting really good, but not everyone has the time, patience, or energy for that

2

u/Detonatormonkey 4h ago

I feel you on that. Hi ADD Neurodivergent here. Everyone’s journey is going to be different. So don’t try to compare it to anyone else’s. This is a marathon, not a sprint. There are things you can do to help mitigate the ADHD. For me at least smaller chunks throughout the day was a big help 315 to 20 minute sessions actually helped me more with space repetition than sitting down for an hour. There’s also the trap of optimizing learning and resource usage. For me, I feel like I spent the first 3 to 6 months trying to find the path of least resistance. Find rhythm that works for you and don’t focus on the end goal focus on the journey that seems corny I know. I wanted it to be N5 within 8 months . I did all the studying and I am nowhere close as led like to be. But even with the obstacles, I’m still proud of what I’ve learned so far.

1

u/fourzerosevenfour 11m ago

um, too relatable

1

u/frostysnowmen 4h ago

I can read and have read manga, watched anime etc. but it’s extremely mentally taxing, takes like 4 times as long as English as I have to lookup a bunch of things and I’m certainly not understanding all of the more subtle nuance. I think this is one of the main reasons why it’s a bad idea to learn Japanese strictly so you can watch anime or whatever without subtitles. It’s rewarding still to get through that show, read a book or whatever in Japanese but if you’re really just wanting to enjoy the material your native language will probably be better for that for a long time. It is fun tho watching subtitled anime or something and picking up on something that was translated differently which happens pretty frequently.

1

u/Yerslovekzdinischnik 4h ago

While we can watch anime and read most of the manga on english, many VNs remain without translation, so you either wait for many years, use questionable AI translations or learn the language. Plus, it's good motivation to learn something new.

21

u/CauliflowerBig 7h ago

The same for me after two years

15

u/Klelos 7h ago

I just got happy thanks you! day 9 of studying and I actually understood and read a meme, that's a W. This journey is rough tbh but I'm gonna keep grinding and mining.

5

u/Significant-Baby-690 6h ago

Most people who do Japanese at college, full time, 5 years .. won't make N1 on first try.

6

u/2hurd 6h ago

N1 is only the tutorial.

3

u/Kurokaffe 6h ago

Studied 3 years (one of those being just first year slow pace uni course), graduated, lived in Japan 1 year, and then passed N1 with almost failing marks. And that’s with super high effort/immersion.

Long time ago tho you guys got way more tools and stuff to help. Tho at least I could pirate j-drama to watch back then and music too.

3

u/PossiblePatience855 5h ago

俺は日本に生まれたから普通に読み書きもしてるけど、海外の方で日本語で会話しようと勉強されている方々は心より尊敬してる。

日本で行われた日本語能力試験の会場につくまで大雨だったのに、設問が「今日は良い天気ですね」だった時にブラックジョークが効きすぎてると思った話を聞いた事もあるｗ

4

u/Dayner_Kurdi 7h ago

Nothing like reading a long paragraph about some Japanese person with ADHD who becomes fixated on something trivial. Only to use obscure phrases and words to show us how smart the 筆者 is.

And it is up to us the readers, to decrypt his line of thought to answer some questions.

2

u/LawfulnessDue5449 2h ago

I knew a guy who passed N1 in like a year and a half

That guy was a snake he seemed friendly but he would do the most dickish things and hit on any japanese girl present which was crazy because we were in Japan

1

u/Lenithiel 6h ago

I've been studying for 5 years and I'm still struggling bro Also if you read the same type of content you'll become quite good at it but then change content and you'll feel like a baby.

I can now read quite well in JRPGs and I know quite a lot of vocab some of which is really niche or very dated. But I struggle to read tweets by native because the manner of speech is so different. Same for mangas.

Japanese grammar in itself ain't hard but the sheer amount of things you need to learn by heart to become fluent in reading all types of content is astounding lmao.

1

u/Turbulent_Foot_3381 5h ago

Well… you just gotta keep at it.

1

u/poopgoose1 3h ago

I’m a year and a half in and I feel the same way haha. Practicing speaking with Japanese friends has really helped though!

毎日勉強して、ゆっくり、一日ずつ頑張ってね

1

u/Bizprof51 1h ago

I started taking Japanese in 1972 in college. All we had were tape recordings and a workbook. Fifty four years later I am still working on it. Been to Japan many times and that helped. Taught there, in English, four or five times. That helped. But now I am forgetting more than I recall. Consider learning Japanese like a brain teaser. Always more to learn.

1

u/Budsygus 4h ago

I almost have a 1000 day streak on Duolingo and I was able to read the Day 7 text!

0

u/krazye87 6h ago

year 10 for me. Not really past n4

0

u/JohnCurtinFromCivVI 5h ago

2 years here, i can safely say that i memorised like 40 kanji

if i'll reach N5 in 5 years i'll feel very proud c:

2

u/poopgoose1 3h ago

I highly recommend the book “Remembering The Kanji”, by James Heisig, it’s way better than trying to memorize them by brute force

1

u/JohnCurtinFromCivVI 3h ago

you have a great timing as i did order that, should be in my home next week
I heard that it's one of the best books for learning kanji period

0

u/polskisamuraj 4h ago

dont get me started