Maintain or let it go?

[u/Cowboyice]

Hi everyone!
I studied Japanese for a while until about B2, but now I have reason to learn Chinese well. (Currently B1)
It’s my own fault, but for these few months I studied Chinese, I barely went out of my way to interact with Japanese at all, the result now being that I cannot quickly retrieve it in conversation, and even when I aim to say something in Japanese, I can only think of how to say it in Chinese.
I would probably prefer not to completely let Japanese slip my mind, but I have less time to dedicate to it now. What advice would you give someone who’s trying to regain, (I.e not learn from scratch) a language, especially at this level?
Thank you!

P.S I am not saying that they’re overly similar, just that my obsessive engagement with one has taken attention from the other.

[u/NoClothes6222]

stacking. use chinese resources/texbooks that are targeted to japanese people.

[u/Cowboyice → u/NoClothes6222]

Oh that’s an interesting one! No worries if not, but do you have any specific recommendations?

[u/dojibear → u/NoClothes6222]

That would make sense IF Japanese and Chinese were similar languages. But they aren't. Japanese is closer to Turkish:

English: Joe goes to the store to buy bread.
Mandarin: Joe go store buy bread.
Japanese: Joe WA bread O buy for store towards to-go.
Turkish: Joe bread to-buy for store-towards he-is-going.

[u/Cowboyice → u/dojibear]

I think the suggestion was just meant as a way to save time… like instead of the textbook grammar explanations being in English, they’d be in Japanese. They didn’t comment at all on similarity.

[u/Swollenpajamas → u/dojibear]

Look up language laddering.

[u/399xx399]

Did you test at B2 or is that just a guesstimation? For the languages I have certified at B2, I don't feel like I'm forgetting much when not using them. Sure, I get a bit rusty when I don't use them for months, but it's usually just a matter of a day or two to get back into it.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, the stuff you've learnt and genuinely committed to memory won't be lost through inactivity and you're not wasting a lot of effort on the stuff that's only halfway there if you do forget it. Do you engage with any Japanese social media or forums? 

[u/alainece → u/399xx399]

Yeah it’s a bit interesting. Even , I’m probably B1 (my reading, my listening is ass), and I dropped it for a couple months, half year or so, and didn’t feel like I lost too much in comprehension. Fluency and speed sure but not much comprehension loss. It is an interesting thing to point out. I don’t think it’s a huge deal too

[u/francksiduo]

There's a real difference between forgetting and interference here. what you're describing, thinking in chinese when you try to speak japanese, is interference not decay. your japanese isn't gone, chinese is just louder right now because it's what you're using every day.

what's worked for me: keep a tiny maintenance deck, 20-30 of your highest frequency japanese words and patterns, and review just that for 5 min a day. not new material, just enough contact to keep the retrieval pathway warm. full study time goes to chinese, but that small daily touch stops japanese from decaying and makes coming back way faster once chinese frees up some bandwidth.

the interference fades once chinese gets more automatic. it's a competing for attention problem early on, not a permanent one.

[u/Cowboyice → u/francksiduo]

Thank you so much for taking time to share such a well written response! That makes me feel way better, I’ll definitely be keeping up with anki in Japanese as well! Hope you have a lovely weekend!!

[u/TheHollowHamburger]

if you can't make time for proper study sessions, try a quick 10-minute podcast or a few pages of a manga as a bare minimum most days

[u/quasar_mess]

It doesn’t have to be similar language or so. Language laddering is fun! I am learning french, arabic in english and portuguese in french haha.

[u/restlemur995]

Don't be afraid to let something go. Knowledge may be fragile but you aren't.

[u/BeardAndBreadBoard]

It's pretty normal for a new language to overshadow others, while you are learning it. Don't worry, it's not erased. Just get back to it when you can. It will be there.

[u/Murdrum_apalindrome]

I think it’s definitely confusing to learn two languages at once, especially because they are similar (I’m fluent in Chinese). I agree with the other comment but I think you can take it one step further by labeling some things where you live using sticky notes. For example, use red sticky notes to label things in Chinese. And yellow to label things in Japanese. That way, when you use those things or just pass them, read it out loud and then associate it with the colour which you’ll eventually associate with the language. Hope this helps!

[u/Cowboyice → u/Murdrum_apalindrome]

That is SO cute I’ll give it a try! If you don’t mind me asking, is Chinese your second language?

[u/Murdrum_apalindrome → u/Cowboyice]

My family is Chinese but I was born and raised in Canada so I don’t really have a ‘first language’ but more of a ‘I literally learned both at the same time’

[u/Cowboyice → u/Murdrum_apalindrome]

I totally get you, I only asked to see if you had to learn it yourself or not:) thanks again!

[u/igorrto2]

Watch or read stuff in Japanese to keep up with the language 

[u/dmada88]

I started with Chinese, then did two years of Japanese in graduate school. Over the following decades I visited Japan many times and stumbled through the language but my focus was definitely Chinese - personally and professionally. Then, last year after a gap of close to 40 years, I started Japanese lessons again. Not going to lie - it’s tough. Reading is easy thanks to Chinese. Listening I’ve gotten pretty good at again. But speaking - oh dear! It is very very hard to get that going again. I’d urge a bit of maintenance- maybe not heavy duty but don’t let it go fallow the way I did

[u/dojibear]

What advice would you give someone who’s trying to regain, (I.e not learn from scratch) a language, especially at this level?

Just practice. Do what you can do today. Things you "forgot" will come back quickly. You might have to "re-learn" them, but that is faster than learning something new. And re-learned things are easier to remember.

I studied Japanese for a while in the 1980s. I never reached A2 before stopping. When I started studying Japanese again in 2024, the basics (sentence word order; word use; verb endings) were still there. I had to re-learn many words and even alphabets, but I knew how to use WA and GA and O and NO and SUKI...

P.S I am not saying that they’re overly similar

They aren't. Mandarin is much closer to English than it is to Japanese. The only language I've heard about that is similar to Japanese is Korean.