@@miles6271 as an example the vtuber Pikame wasn't fluent in english but her accent was so good it caused some confusing situations between her and americans.
What he said about quitting gaming was the same for me. When I started immersing after RRTK my gaming time plummeted. Mostly because it was all in English and I needed to replace that time with J immersion. I still struggle with RUclips though, English videos draw me in like a moth to a flame. I made a Japanese only account for this, but as you can see I switch back and forth :) Good luck to everyone immersing out there. I am about 6 months in and the results are great, you just have to stick with it.
yeah, i made a japanese youtube account for the same reason. i do wanna switch some of my games' languages over to japanese some time, but im still hovering around a high N5 to low N4 level and im not comfortable enough with Japanese yet to do so, so i just spend a lot of my time watching Japanese youtube, even though I only typically understand like 10-30% of whats being said, its still enojayable so i hope thats all that matters.
@@lunarleaf Just keep plugging away at the immersion, you will absolutely improve! I started from zero when Covid hit and am now "fluent" (hard to pinpoint my exact level). Just got back from a trip in Japan, it was super cool and rewarding to be able to use the language in the field. Don't neglect your kanji and reading skill either, reading is critical over there.
This interview is what motivated me to start learning Japanese. It's my fourth language that I aim to be fluent in. I've been learning Japanese for a couple of months now. I must say, I thought that speaking 3 other languages fluently would make it harder for me to pick up one more but I've noticed that I've had much less trouble grasping grammar concepts of Japanese than I did with my third language (German). It's very interesting how that works. I definitely understand now how polyglots can speak so many languages and not get confused.
What you guys were saying about how you should focus on the content you're consuming and forget you're trying to learn a language, that's totally how it worked for me with fitness. I wanted to get in shape but I realized that would take at least a few months and decided to stop getting hung up over the time and the goal. I started to work out just because I enjoyed getting exercise each day. After a few months I had that moment where I realized, "Hey, look how far I've come!" I almost didn't realize it. Pretty cool how that works.
I watched this when it was first posted, and just re-watched again. Such a great video content-wise for language learning enthusiasts, and Matt does such a great job interviewing Stevi. Kudos, Matt!
"You probably gonna have this doubts but that's normal and if you just keep going, eventually there'll be a time where everything kind of becomes clear" - Sometimes it's difficult for me to get into this mindset but I try to believe in this sentence and it keeps me motivated
I like how in this paradigm, one begins to speak well without having to learn to speak directly. Many other input oriented teachers and youtubers seem to teach that you have to put at much effort to speak as with input. Matt and Stevi seem to show otherwise. My Spanish is beginning to just explode out of me. I'm not even trying to speak. Of course I know I have to talk to native speakers to really speak well, but I'm not about to spend $$$ and years on italki to speak when I don't have to
Initially I liked Japan and know about their culture through anime, then like Stevi I bumped into Band-Maid's song (I am curious whether it was the same song for both of us) back in 2019 and I really enjoyed it. Eventually I started to listen to J-Pop, J-Rock, J-Metal. Also became interested in real Japanese culture and history, started consuming YT videos of ppl leaving in Japan and finally started learning Japanese. Song: Band-Maid - Daydreaming
I find it hilarious that he remains intimidated by mandarin tones. Shows how humble he is. Honestly, the tones are frustrating in direct proportion to your study methods. Aka, if you do the “textbook method” where they force you to output on Day 1, without an instinct for how it should sound, then yeah...it’s DAMN frustrating. But, if you take a year or two of hardcore listening, you find that - tadah - you no longer even consciously pay attention to tones and find they happen naturally in output. So, frankly I don’t think he has a reason to be worried 🤷🏻♂️
It truly is the difference, even if for example in Japanese, it seems straightforward, hearing the difference between Yo and You can be tough for someone with only written experience in Japanese.
I think in a sense Chinese tone is actually easier than Japanese pitch accent, because you can understand Japanese pretty well even if you do not know pitch accent, but then you are likely to ignore it if your native language doesn't have similar things (tone), but for Chinese, if your ears can not distinguish tone, it is absolutely impossible to understand anything, so that you will be forced to understand tone and your brain will do it for you after a long period immersion, but for Japanese it doesn't happen naturally. basically you will learn tone naturally just by immersing, but for pitch accent, it doesn't come that naturally, it requires some conscious learning.
I'm a beginner in Chinese, I was thinking on getting a textbook. But I want to put an emphasis on immersion, can a textbook compliment this or is there other resources that are more used. Such as a Grammer book or characters
I enjoyed this interview and also how Stevi spliced up his time balancing school and work, and what he had to give up to reach his goal. I wonder if he's dipping back into gaming again with Japanese games now, hehe.. I would've also liked to know what his life situation is more like; did he have any other commitments? Were friends mad at him for not gaming with him anymore? Did/ does he live at home or need to interact with family/ flatmates? Did any of this interfere with his consistency? Would love a follow up video with him in 6 months time :)
@@whatevs8544 Bei mir in Niedersachsen ist es auch sonnig. Gucke gerade Gochiusa und mache meine Satzkarten (Wenn man schon eine so kreative Sprache hat finde ich Satzkarten um einiges passender als sentence cards mitten in den Satz zu schmeißen)
@@awreli864 cool, viel Spaß. Sachen zu übersetzen finde ich ehrlich gesagt auch meistens besser, meine Mutter als Englischlehrerin würde sich da auch freuen.
@@awreli864 cool, viel Spaß. Sachen zu übersetzen finde ich ehrlich gesagt auch meistens besser, meine Mutter als Englischlehrerin würde sich da auch freuen.
This is awesome. I really think that if you have the time to invest, you can become fluent in a year. I think the MIA/AJATT is going to start the snowball of lowering the time to get to fluency. It's going to be cool to see where the standard is at in a few years - maybe we'll look back and say "wow, it took this guy a whole year and a half to get fluent". Super inspiring!
Fluency in Japanese in a year without knowing ANY Japanese beforehand? No, that wont happen. But then again, yes it will, because some ppl will lie about how long it took. A korean/chinese learning Japanese in a year? Sure. An american? Nope.
@@jouumura4654 I also think that 1 year is really little for real fluency in Japanese, not coming from English or other Western language. If the person already knows Chinese, Japanese is bound to be a faster learn. They can start reading right away, and we just can't.
@@KarolYuuki I really want to see someone upload a video about how they actually learned Japanese step by step. I get the overrall idea from the videos ive seen on youtube, but they never really go into small details. F.ex. how the experience of learning how to read the kanjis in Japanese as they only learn how to write them and the meaning in english. The process from knowing no japanese to learn how to write 2000+ kanjis and their meanings in english to learn how to read them in Japanese. And then how they go from there. The struggles etc, any habits they formed during their language journey and so on. Im repeating myself too much now, but thats just how much I long for such a video as I find it truly interesting. If someone have seen such a video please feel free to share it with me. It would be much appreciated.
Been at this for more than a year, and I feel as though I take two steps forward, followed by one step back. I work at a Japanese company too, so that should make things easier. I am taking the motivation this video gave me, and I'm going to run with it. Wish me luck.
My take on accent: I feel like you can have perfect pronunciation and still have a foreigner accent. Actually pronunciation isn't that hard. I think what makes you sound like a native has to do with placement (look it up on youtube or google if you don`t know what that is), resonance and how you release air and use your throat while talking. For example, Kaz sound pretty much native most of the time, and what he seems to do is change where his voice resonances (japanese people seem to resonate from the front of the mouth, while americans from their chest, throat or back of the mouth) , and how he releases the air while talking. Another example is Jerry Dai. He sound native more than 98% of the time, but sometimes his chinese resonance / placement slips in, and even though his pronunciation is perfect, he still sounds chinese because the resonance is different. That's why people that speak more than one language natively sound different when they switch between their languages (their voice change), and adults that speak other languages sounds the same in all of them. It's like they're still speaking their native language, but with different words and word order, if you know what i mean. Everything else, in terms of sound, is the same, even though they're speaking a different language. Even if they make different sounds with their mouth, they don't change their resonance, placement and the way they use their thorat and release air while talking, making they sound foreigner / have a thick accent. One more example is Hadar (she has a youtube channel), she also sounds native 98% of the time and she uses her voice in a different way when speaking her native language and english. That's why I feel like there are too few adults that sound native. First of all, most of them don't even try or care. Second of all, for the majority of them, their listening aren't even fully developed. Even if they're fluent, they don't hear the "real sounds" of the language (their brain replaces the sounds with other similar ones in their native language, and of couse you can reach the point where this stops happening, but anyway), and when watching movies or youtube videos or whatever, there are times where their brain mishear or totally fails to pick some sounds apart, making them miss what was said (of course if you're fluent this doesn't happen all the time, but if you really want to have a native-like accent your listening must be native-like aswell). But now, if your listening ability is the same or similar to your native language's, and you do want to sound native, i don't see why it wouldn't be possible. First, nail the the vowel and consonant sounds, this is the easiest part. Then, just figure out where to resonate your voice, how to relax (or tighten depending on the language) your thoat, and all that other stuff i said. If you can do that, then you should sound native, no reason why you shouldn't. Your mouth and tongue are the same as everyone else's. You're just using them in the "wrong" way. And of course, i could be totally wrong, so take this with a grain of salt.
@@chido5945 95% comprehension on everything except for documentaries, news reports, infodumps in science fiction military anime, jidai geki stuff, and anime made more than 20 years ago.
@@alfredomulleretxeberria4239 that sounds cool how many years hv u been studying? It's weird that you say anime made from long ago hard to comprehend, ive watched a lot of 90s anime and i dont see much difference them and modern day anime in terms of speech
Oh sweet, I didn't see Matt did an interview too 😊. If you're looking for even more of our boi stevi, I did a deep dive episode with him on the Deep Weeb Podcast and a progress update video last week with him as well.
Man, if he thought it was hard not seeing a lot of progress until after a whole year of studying Japanese, I don't think he'd have made it at the rate I learned Japanese. It took me 6 years to get N2.
@@weshouldsaveourselves6780 This was before Matt vs Japan but I had already learned German years ago through immersion and tried that. It didn’t work for me at all. I mostly blame the Japanese writing system. I ended up using JLPT books and the Core 6k Anki deck and two years of Japanese at community college. Against all the odds the class was fun and effective for learning grammar (nothing else). For Asian languages I unfortunately need a lot of knowledge under my belt to benefit from immersion. I envy those that don’t. I kept trying and trying though.
Basically any young German speaks 99% fluent English. Their accent is easier to understand then many native English accents lol (I say this as an English person)
You are both great inspirations. Back in high school I did 1 year of japanese but never immersed and had great difficulty learning in a school setting. I hereby vow to learn Japanese through your immersion method. I will post an update on one of your videos in around a year!
@@ibrahim3348 It is going great. I grinded really hard for about a year and then calmed down a bit. I currently live in Japan and I would consider myself fluent as long as it is in fields that I am familiar with but I still have a long way to go. Totally forgot about this comment though, but I did stick to Japanese with fervor akin to obsession, and I would say it worked.
@@markusvonwowern7852so you’re fluent with almost only immersion as your way of learning Japanese? Bro living in Japan! Living my dream! Good on you man 👏 I’m on day 63 of learnjng Japanese . I’m still finding it hard to not study and instead primarily immerse even though I believe in the method so any advice / testimony would be very helpful
@ashtonchretien I did it during corona which allowed for a lot of spare time, but I got japanese audio to listen to passively while walking, working out or driving. Mostly stuff I was familiar with. I did about 20 minutes of reading grammar per day, mostly to just be aware of different constructions rather than studying grammar. Then I also did 2 hours of writing kanji every day. 2 hours of reading. 4 hours of leisure watching dramas, movies or anime. 2 hours of focus watching media and trying to really understand what I was hearing 60 minutes of anki every day, including adding new cards. This was my regular schedule on days off and I spent between 10 and 14 hours on Japanese every day. On days I worked it was more passive listening + kanji + grammar +anki. I got pretty burned out by the high pace and stopped with passive listening, grammar and cut down time spent on Japanese by 2/3 after about 5 months. Now I live with Japanese around me every day so it is easier to immerse and get Japanese passively but I learned more Japanese and faster before I started living in Japan. Though understanding the culture and learning all of the very daily life words that seldom find their way into media plus speaking Japanese daily has definitively done wonders for fluency.
@@markusvonwowern7852sick bro! Minimum of 10 hours is insane! I do like minimum 5 and max 11 but usually around 8. Are you living in Japan for the rest of your life? What kind of job did you get to allow you to do so? Thanks for answering my questions. I appreciate it. Living my dream
This guy is impressive...at one point he finished a sentence with 'and so on and so forth'... I feel like you just don't hear that from people who learn English as a L2. Well done, sir!
You must be a native English speaker then, because "so on and so forth" is pretty common amongst ESLs with high fluency in English. And that's not to distract from the fact that he's pretty good at English, but you shouldn't judge someone's language skills based entirely on individual idioms, phrases, words, terms, collocations... No matter how fancy they might seem.
@@MaxSaki373 'is pretty common amongst ESLs with high fluency'---Yes, with high fluency.. That was the point I was making.. perhaps that phrase by itself wasn't the best example.
@@dukane14 You said that you feel like "you just don't hear that from people who learn English as an L2" which applies to all learners of English, not just to those with high fluency. Now, I still get your point and all, but you might wanna rephrase that just to be more explicit.
it's not that difficult to catch those idioms, as you are bombarded with english constantly. I almost feel bad for native speakers as they have a much tougher time breaking through the "second language" barrier, as English is SO dominant.
@@BQD_Central That was my thought. I want to learn Chinese, and there isn't the same motivation of "if I want to learn about this unrelated topic, most of the material is in Chinese". Of course there will still be plenty of material = but there will be as much (or more) in English, so it's a deliberate choice.
This is how all swedes learn english. As a kid, I hardly listened to any swedish media and i constantly was surrounded by english without even knowing it.
I don't think this approach to language learning is best for me. It sounds effective for others, but for me, the idea of not outputting for multiple years because there are still gains to be made with input, doesn't make sense emotionally. I want to output because having conversations in the language (even struggling at simple conversations) is the most fun activity I've found. Input and Anki can be fun to an extent, too, but for me they are like a 5/10 and 3/10, respectively, compared to Italki lessons and language exchange conversations being a 9/10 in terms of fun.
When I hear this it makes me think that we need more conversation in the language learning community about focus and cognitive efficiency. For many people, just committing the hours is easily pointless as one runs out of cognitive steam. I live a fairly healthy lifestyle with low stress, good diet, good sleep, exercise, but when I do focused language learning, after 1-2 hours my cognitive performance very noticeably declines up to the point I feel TRYING to focus more just waste my time as I need to recover - even when taking proper mini breaks every 20-30 minutes. Also, my impression is that many people overestimate their "active" study time and count in low-cognition activities in that time. This may include organizing learning material, passive listening, mindless reading, etc. I averaged an hour of (active focused) daily Japanese learning over the last 1.5 years and on the best days with nothing else to do, my cognitive capacity was completely depleted after about 4 hours. With other things in my life (science job, other learning in different hobbies, etc.) 2 to 2.5 hours of active focused learning feel like an upper limit for a day, otherwise I just fry my brain and stare into my screen like a drone. What I am getting at is that the terminology in study time should be more differentiated to give more realistic ideas regarding the relation of study investments and learning outcomes. When I hear someone suggest 4-6 hours of daily japanese study, it is obvious that some or most of that is not active focused learning, otherwise that would be a burnout recipe - or a life with no other activities whatsoever. One factor that may play a big role in these assessments is the level of the student - arguably, things get less cognitively intense as one progresses into the language. E.g. active reading will be much less taxing for someone studying at an N2 level compared to someone at N4 level.
"Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis..." That's a very outdated perception of psycholinguistics because 1) it's not really a hypothesis anymore, 2) it's more a principle in current second language acquisition theory. It's amazing how far both of you guys have gotten with that very simple 50-year-old piece of academic information though. Matt should become a psycholinguist, he'd be good.
Look at all the additional factors going on besides input; noticing hypothesis, cognitive learner strategies and deep engagement in metacognitive behaviour to name a few. Input alone wont get you there and despite his convincing theories, the academic field has moved completely beyond Krashen, primarily because the concept of 'comprehensible input' cannot be operationalised. Agreed Matt would be a great applied linguistic researcher!
Does anyone else use the Bible app in their target language? It’s a ton of free audio and text in just about any language you’d want. I like reading along with the audio. Especially books I’m familiar with.
So in the video you said you don’t recommend the old RTK rep video anymore. What do you recommend instead as a structured course. Cuz rn I’m just doing all immersion
I immersed myself in English for two years and I started to listen to someone I like every single day lately, I would say. that part affect me a whole lot.coz... knowing how to say a language and sounding like someone is a total diff thing.
@@mauricecooper9880 my listening has definitely improved. I can understand more of what is being said and can actually hear the words. Before I couldn’t tell what word was being said 😅
Don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask but what do you do when you're sentence mining a book, and theres obviously no audio to get with it? Do you avoid TTS, or do you use the TTS with a grain of salt? It's not for Japanese, but of an European language.
Hi guys really enjoyed this. Question for Stevi. Why did you feel like you had to go down the anki and sentence mining route since you didn't need that for English. I've done RTK but I literally have no idea how to start sentence mining. I want to just watch dramas and try to read and the thought of sentence mining and making cards is holding me back. Thanks!
I think it’s mostly a matter of time. English was a closer language to my native one so it was easier to pick up. With japanese I would like to speed up this process. To start sentence mining do first vocab cards no matter if they are 1T or not and then when you get to sentence cards look into automated programs like subs2srs if you don’t like to do them manually even if i do suggest you still do a certain percentage manually.
I dont get what he did immerse with at the beginning without vocab learning and just a little bit of tae kims? During the first three months of rtk. Like you cant just learn a couple hundred kanji and go immersing with attack on titan.
With the approach of "just listening to anime, and immersing in the japanese language this way", I once heard, that no one really talks like Naruto for example. Is that so? How can you counter that? What else can you listen to (like japanese news channels for example?), or what other online sources could be helpful for beginners?
What is the difference between passive and active immersion? I have been watching 5 hours of Spanish Telenovelas a day since the Covid hit. I am just about to the point where you were when you started talking and were fluent in two weeks. Twenty years ago before the rise of the internet my french teacher told me to start reading French novels that were at little above my level but to never use a dictionary.. Spanish telenovelas have Spanish subtitles and Spanish audio so I thought I would adopt my French teachers idea to a new language and a new medium. The idea of reading a Spanish book while listening to the same book on tape is even better! Perhaps my next language will be Japanese because of the abundance of Japanese material on the internet! By the way the Turkish dramatic series KARA SEVDA (dubbed into Spanish as Amor Eterno) is the best dramatic series I have ever seen in my life. I am enjoying it all in Spanish
As I said in a previous comment of mine: Unless you are planning to actually use that language in daily communication, learning a language is just as productive as gaming, i.e. not at all.
These interviews are always so awesome! It feels like we gain a lot of interesting insights when you talk to people about this immersion process. 楽しかったよ!ありがとう!
hi Matt, i've watched a lot of your videos, and a few months ago i finally decided to start using ajatt method. i'm about two thirds into learning jouyou kanji, and it's going pretty well. The thing that i don't really understand is what kind of sentences (after finishing kanjis) should i put in my anki decks? Is there a logic to follow? Where should i take them from? thanks.
Stevi, Matt thanks a lot for that interview! ＠Stevi: Can you share how you read books? (Kindle, physical books, ...?) And do you have recommendations for RUclips-channels? Thanks!
Great interview. Just going to ask a question here as i don't know where else to do so. How do you start immersion and building that comprehension. Like if i am watching something with japanese sub in japanese I understand how i can associate the symbols with the sounds. But I don't get how you can associate the sounds with meaning. I understand the concept of i+1 but if you don't know any words already what can you do? Just learn vocab via anki?
Nice, this kind of stories give me motivation. I've been using "ajatt" for almost 3 years and still don't feel near native level. Just passed the N2 last December but on an app because the real one was canceled in my country. Aiming for N1 this year.
I did the rtk while making a kanji deck of it haha, it just felt like a good idea at the time, starting now with content lol. The basis really helps tho, but I feel like the 500 most used kanji would be good enough and sooo much easier
I’m confused because if I were to just listen to japanese audio or even youtube videos/movies in japanese it would all just be white noise and no matter how many times i listen to it there’s no way i’d get better unless i have some previous experience with the language and am somewhat fluent in it. so, whats the step he did as an absolute beginner?
Its interesting that for a guy who is into nutrition and fitness where there is a lot of work needing to be put in to reach goals he was scared off from learning Chinese bc "too much" work needed.
hi Matt i want to ask you a question , during your immersion , have you ever experience a moment that you suddenly hear every word every sound very clear, just like something have "clicked" in your brian , and from that moment on, the foreign language no longer foreign to you ?
What does immersion mean?? I know the dictionary meaning but what does it mean in context of learning language. I heard them use it quite a bit in their conversation.
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The one dislike is probably from someone who doesn't understand you can still have an accent while being fluent.
You can also have a perfect accent and not be fluent
@@miles6271 as an example the vtuber Pikame wasn't fluent in english but her accent was so good it caused some confusing situations between her and americans.
@@mikemustmurder wait, she isn't fluent? I read she lived in the US some time
@@Elaxkun she's fluent now, but she worked at Taco Bell in America when she was learning
There will always be the people who do dislike 😁 let's focus on the like part hahaha
Stevi has the key: "Ignore that you're trying to learn a language and consume and just try to enjoy what you're consuming."
I'm on that JLPT N1 & Fluent in 18 Years pace.
I'm on that dying of old age during the N3 exam pace
Amazing! 頑張って!
A fellow long-hauler.
let's go!
Everytime I see these interviews, I am motivated once again.
What he said about quitting gaming was the same for me. When I started immersing after RRTK my gaming time plummeted. Mostly because it was all in English and I needed to replace that time with J immersion. I still struggle with RUclips though, English videos draw me in like a moth to a flame. I made a Japanese only account for this, but as you can see I switch back and forth :) Good luck to everyone immersing out there. I am about 6 months in and the results are great, you just have to stick with it.
Games in japanese >:)
@@budgetstylestories8357 That is what they call a "pro gamer move"
Yes stick with it that's the real secret behind learning any language
yeah, i made a japanese youtube account for the same reason. i do wanna switch some of my games' languages over to japanese some time, but im still hovering around a high N5 to low N4 level and im not comfortable enough with Japanese yet to do so, so i just spend a lot of my time watching Japanese youtube, even though I only typically understand like 10-30% of whats being said, its still enojayable so i hope thats all that matters.
@@lunarleaf Just keep plugging away at the immersion, you will absolutely improve! I started from zero when Covid hit and am now "fluent" (hard to pinpoint my exact level). Just got back from a trip in Japan, it was super cool and rewarding to be able to use the language in the field. Don't neglect your kanji and reading skill either, reading is critical over there.
My Japanese learning is going alright but this guy wants me to take it into Maximum overdrive as Plankton would say
Lmao a fellow spongebob connoisseur, I see
This interview is what motivated me to start learning Japanese. It's my fourth language that I aim to be fluent in. I've been learning Japanese for a couple of months now. I must say, I thought that speaking 3 other languages fluently would make it harder for me to pick up one more but I've noticed that I've had much less trouble grasping grammar concepts of Japanese than I did with my third language (German). It's very interesting how that works. I definitely understand now how polyglots can speak so many languages and not get confused.
Your amazing
keep it up
Now, THIS is epic.
What you guys were saying about how you should focus on the content you're consuming and forget you're trying to learn a language, that's totally how it worked for me with fitness. I wanted to get in shape but I realized that would take at least a few months and decided to stop getting hung up over the time and the goal. I started to work out just because I enjoyed getting exercise each day. After a few months I had that moment where I realized, "Hey, look how far I've come!" I almost didn't realize it. Pretty cool how that works.
Glad to see another interview, especially one with Stevi!
@Shifter Hey Shifter :> / nice to see a fellow twitch person into immersion learning
I watched this when it was first posted, and just re-watched again. Such a great video content-wise for language learning enthusiasts, and Matt does such a great job interviewing Stevi. Kudos, Matt!
Always a good day when Matt uploads
"You probably gonna have this doubts but that's normal and if you just keep going, eventually there'll be a time where everything kind of becomes clear" - Sometimes it's difficult for me to get into this mindset but I try to believe in this sentence and it keeps me motivated
Is it your first time trying to learn a different language?
@@fabacarini No, it isn't. Why do you ask?
@@クバ probably because that’s something that someone new to language learning would say.
I like how in this paradigm, one begins to speak well without having to learn to speak directly. Many other input oriented teachers and youtubers seem to teach that you have to put at much effort to speak as with input. Matt and Stevi seem to show otherwise.
My Spanish is beginning to just explode out of me. I'm not even trying to speak. Of course I know I have to talk to native speakers to really speak well, but I'm not about to spend $$$ and years on italki to speak when I don't have to
Initially I liked Japan and know about their culture through anime, then like Stevi I bumped into Band-Maid's song (I am curious whether it was the same song for both of us) back in 2019 and I really enjoyed it. Eventually I started to listen to J-Pop, J-Rock, J-Metal. Also became interested in real Japanese culture and history, started consuming YT videos of ppl leaving in Japan and finally started learning Japanese.
Song: Band-Maid - Daydreaming
I find it hilarious that he remains intimidated by mandarin tones. Shows how humble he is.
Honestly, the tones are frustrating in direct proportion to your study methods. Aka, if you do the “textbook method” where they force you to output on Day 1, without an instinct for how it should sound, then yeah...it’s DAMN frustrating.
But, if you take a year or two of hardcore listening, you find that - tadah - you no longer even consciously pay attention to tones and find they happen naturally in output. So, frankly I don’t think he has a reason to be worried 🤷🏻♂️
Peter S Yeah.
Crazy how the brains works on that stuff...
It truly is the difference, even if for example in Japanese, it seems straightforward, hearing the difference between Yo and You can be tough for someone with only written experience in Japanese.
I think in a sense Chinese tone is actually easier than Japanese pitch accent, because you can understand Japanese pretty well even if you do not know pitch accent, but then you are likely to ignore it if your native language doesn't have similar things (tone), but for Chinese, if your ears can not distinguish tone, it is absolutely impossible to understand anything, so that you will be forced to understand tone and your brain will do it for you after a long period immersion, but for Japanese it doesn't happen naturally. basically you will learn tone naturally just by immersing, but for pitch accent, it doesn't come that naturally, it requires some conscious learning.
I'm a beginner in Chinese, I was thinking on getting a textbook. But I want to put an emphasis on immersion, can a textbook compliment this or is there other resources that are more used. Such as a Grammer book or characters
Yes! I’m so glad Matt is back.
Didn't knew about Stevi's channel before, thanks for interviewing him Matt !
I enjoyed this interview and also how Stevi spliced up his time balancing school and work, and what he had to give up to reach his goal. I wonder if he's dipping back into gaming again with Japanese games now, hehe..
I would've also liked to know what his life situation is more like; did he have any other commitments? Were friends mad at him for not gaming with him anymore? Did/ does he live at home or need to interact with family/ flatmates? Did any of this interfere with his consistency?
Would love a follow up video with him in 6 months time :)
da goat has showed up once again
I’M NOT THE ONLY RANDOM GERMAN LEARNING JAPANESE BECAUSE OF JAPANESE MUSIC!!! LET’S FRICKIN GO!!!
Also great taste bro, Band Maid rocks!!!
Viel Spaß beim lernen :)
@@awreli864 danke, ebenso 😊 (hab mich gerade nach draußen gesetzt um harry potter zu lesen [auf Japanisch], ist ja auch sehr schön sonnig gerade.
@@whatevs8544 Bei mir in Niedersachsen ist es auch sonnig. Gucke gerade Gochiusa und mache meine Satzkarten
(Wenn man schon eine so kreative Sprache hat finde ich Satzkarten um einiges passender als sentence cards mitten in den Satz zu schmeißen)
@@awreli864 cool, viel Spaß. Sachen zu übersetzen finde ich ehrlich gesagt auch meistens besser, meine Mutter als Englischlehrerin würde sich da auch freuen.
@@awreli864 cool, viel Spaß. Sachen zu übersetzen finde ich ehrlich gesagt auch meistens besser, meine Mutter als Englischlehrerin würde sich da auch freuen.
“My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio.”
dude yes.
Was thinking this
This is awesome. I really think that if you have the time to invest, you can become fluent in a year. I think the MIA/AJATT is going to start the snowball of lowering the time to get to fluency. It's going to be cool to see where the standard is at in a few years - maybe we'll look back and say "wow, it took this guy a whole year and a half to get fluent". Super inspiring!
Fluency in Japanese in a year without knowing ANY Japanese beforehand? No, that wont happen. But then again, yes it will, because some ppl will lie about how long it took. A korean/chinese learning Japanese in a year? Sure. An american? Nope.
@@jouumura4654 I also think that 1 year is really little for real fluency in Japanese, not coming from English or other Western language.
If the person already knows Chinese, Japanese is bound to be a faster learn. They can start reading right away, and we just can't.
@@KarolYuuki I really want to see someone upload a video about how they actually learned Japanese step by step. I get the overrall idea from the videos ive seen on youtube, but they never really go into small details. F.ex. how the experience of learning how to read the kanjis in Japanese as they only learn how to write them and the meaning in english. The process from knowing no japanese to learn how to write 2000+ kanjis and their meanings in english to learn how to read them in Japanese. And then how they go from there. The struggles etc, any habits they formed during their language journey and so on. Im repeating myself too much now, but thats just how much I long for such a video as I find it truly interesting. If someone have seen such a video please feel free to share it with me. It would be much appreciated.
Not anyone can go balls to the wall like this guy. This is not a slur, but he might be a little neurodivergent.
Both of you are really inspiring, thank you for an excellent interview.
Been at this for more than a year, and I feel as though I take two steps forward, followed by one step back.
I work at a Japanese company too, so that should make things easier. I am taking the motivation this video gave me, and I'm going to run with it.
Wish me luck.
Good luck
Any luck?
@@mannyw_
Hello Immanuel.
Yes actually, my motivation has remained quite high so far.
Thank you for asking.
Or, I should say;
ありがとうございます。
@Truck Man どもありがとうトラック男さん
@@mannyw_ yes, getting better I feel!
What a fantastic interview. Very inspirational and motivating. Thanks for posting!
He's going to do great things. The type of people that just do it without making any excuse to himself.
He is built different
Anyway thanks for the video, so fucking motivating
He must be a product of the famous German engineering, a sophisticated language learning cyborg
My take on accent: I feel like you can have perfect pronunciation and still have a foreigner accent. Actually pronunciation isn't that hard. I think what makes you sound like a native has to do with placement (look it up on youtube or google if you don`t know what that is), resonance and how you release air and use your throat while talking. For example, Kaz sound pretty much native most of the time, and what he seems to do is change where his voice resonances (japanese people seem to resonate from the front of the mouth, while americans from their chest, throat or back of the mouth) , and how he releases the air while talking.
Another example is Jerry Dai. He sound native more than 98% of the time, but sometimes his chinese resonance / placement slips in, and even though his pronunciation is perfect, he still sounds chinese because the resonance is different. That's why people that speak more than one language natively sound different when they switch between their languages (their voice change), and adults that speak other languages sounds the same in all of them. It's like they're still speaking their native language, but with different words and word order, if you know what i mean. Everything else, in terms of sound, is the same, even though they're speaking a different language. Even if they make different sounds with their mouth, they don't change their resonance, placement and the way they use their thorat and release air while talking, making they sound foreigner / have a thick accent.
One more example is Hadar (she has a youtube channel), she also sounds native 98% of the time and she uses her voice in a different way when speaking her native language and english.
That's why I feel like there are too few adults that sound native. First of all, most of them don't even try or care. Second of all, for the majority of them, their listening aren't even fully developed. Even if they're fluent, they don't hear the "real sounds" of the language (their brain replaces the sounds with other similar ones in their native language, and of couse you can reach the point where this stops happening, but anyway), and when watching movies or youtube videos or whatever, there are times where their brain mishear or totally fails to pick some sounds apart, making them miss what was said (of course if you're fluent this doesn't happen all the time, but if you really want to have a native-like accent your listening must be native-like aswell). But now, if your listening ability is the same or similar to your native language's, and you do want to sound native, i don't see why it wouldn't be possible. First, nail the the vowel and consonant sounds, this is the easiest part. Then, just figure out where to resonate your voice, how to relax (or tighten depending on the language) your thoat, and all that other stuff i said. If you can do that, then you should sound native, no reason why you shouldn't. Your mouth and tongue are the same as everyone else's. You're just using them in the "wrong" way.
And of course, i could be totally wrong, so take this with a grain of salt.
thanks for the interview! definitely some valuable insights
one day I will be on here!! I've been studying Korean for about a year now!
Good luck with your studies. ^_^
how is it going?
Still studying everyday almost 2 years
Kanji eater also interviewed him if you want to hear more from him
What a great interview!
Thoroughly enjoyed it.
OMG, I just listened to potsu "letting go" and when I started to watch this video I was so confused lol
This is cool as hell. But it’s also frustrating knowing that he started later than me lol. I took way too many breaks and I still suck now.
~Milark
Have you thought of taking a break from taking breaks?
@@alfredomulleretxeberria4239 yes! Which I am currently doing.
@@milarkdoesthings450 how things going so far for u
@@chido5945 95% comprehension on everything except for documentaries, news reports, infodumps in science fiction military anime, jidai geki stuff, and anime made more than 20 years ago.
@@alfredomulleretxeberria4239 that sounds cool how many years hv u been studying? It's weird that you say anime made from long ago hard to comprehend, ive watched a lot of 90s anime and i dont see much difference them and modern day anime in terms of speech
This is an example of someone who is good at learning languages.
Oh sweet, I didn't see Matt did an interview too 😊. If you're looking for even more of our boi stevi, I did a deep dive episode with him on the Deep Weeb Podcast and a progress update video last week with him as well.
your channel has some of the best content and it has really helped me. This interview was something I needed at the right time thank you :)
Stevi looks like a cross between Vettel and Alonzo....awesome job dude! And great interviewing from Matt!
I wish there was a consistent and detailed guide for the immersion studies in different languages, it takes so much time to gather up decent materials
Ikr
@TRXSH • DO NADA KKKKK
@@user-hs8uw4hn3n kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Great interview Matt, this was very informative!
I learned english exactly like him. so much 共感
Punpun
Man, if he thought it was hard not seeing a lot of progress until after a whole year of studying Japanese, I don't think he'd have made it at the rate I learned Japanese. It took me 6 years to get N2.
maybe you've put less effort? for how long everyday you were studying?
@@muzammilhalimov at least 2 hours a day. On weekends I was studying way more though.
@@paulwalther5237 what method did you learn it. did you acquire it though mass input. or did you study and learn it.
@@weshouldsaveourselves6780 This was before Matt vs Japan but I had already learned German years ago through immersion and tried that. It didn’t work for me at all. I mostly blame the Japanese writing system. I ended up using JLPT books and the Core 6k Anki deck and two years of Japanese at community college. Against all the odds the class was fun and effective for learning grammar (nothing else). For Asian languages I unfortunately need a lot of knowledge under my belt to benefit from immersion. I envy those that don’t. I kept trying and trying though.
@@paulwalther5237 Immersion doesn’t work until it does, u just can’t rush it
I must say it is extremely surprising to hear someone as strict as Matt call his English "near native". Truly.
his english is very good he just has an accent
Basically any young German speaks 99% fluent English. Their accent is easier to understand then many native English accents lol (I say this as an English person)
You are both great inspirations.
Back in high school I did 1 year of japanese but never immersed and had great difficulty learning in a school setting.
I hereby vow to learn Japanese through your immersion method.
I will post an update on one of your videos in around a year!
So how’s it going?????
@@ibrahim3348 It is going great. I grinded really hard for about a year and then calmed down a bit.
I currently live in Japan and I would consider myself fluent as long as it is in fields that I am familiar with but I still have a long way to go.
Totally forgot about this comment though, but I did stick to Japanese with fervor akin to obsession, and I would say it worked.
@@markusvonwowern7852so you’re fluent with almost only immersion as your way of learning Japanese?
Bro living in Japan! Living my dream! Good on you man 👏
I’m on day 63 of learnjng Japanese . I’m still finding it hard to not study and instead primarily immerse even though I believe in the method so any advice / testimony would be very helpful
@ashtonchretien
I did it during corona which allowed for a lot of spare time, but I got japanese audio to listen to passively while walking, working out or driving. Mostly stuff I was familiar with.
I did about 20 minutes of reading grammar per day, mostly to just be aware of different constructions rather than studying grammar.
Then I also did 2 hours of writing kanji every day.
2 hours of reading.
4 hours of leisure watching dramas, movies or anime.
2 hours of focus watching media and trying to really understand what I was hearing
60 minutes of anki every day, including adding new cards.
This was my regular schedule on days off and I spent between 10 and 14 hours on Japanese every day.
On days I worked it was more passive listening + kanji + grammar +anki.
I got pretty burned out by the high pace and stopped with passive listening, grammar and cut down time spent on Japanese by 2/3 after about 5 months.
Now I live with Japanese around me every day so it is easier to immerse and get Japanese passively but I learned more Japanese and faster before I started living in Japan. Though understanding the culture and learning all of the very daily life words that seldom find their way into media plus speaking Japanese daily has definitively done wonders for fluency.
@@markusvonwowern7852sick bro! Minimum of 10 hours is insane! I do like minimum 5 and max 11 but usually around 8. Are you living in Japan for the rest of your life? What kind of job did you get to allow you to do so?
Thanks for answering my questions. I appreciate it. Living my dream
Love these interviews
Interesting how immersion isn't just the method, but also the goal/purpose
Matt, great interview. Great questions leading to insightful answers.
This guy is impressive...at one point he finished a sentence with 'and so on and so forth'... I feel like you just don't hear that from people who learn English as a L2. Well done, sir!
You must be a native English speaker then, because "so on and so forth" is pretty common amongst ESLs with high fluency in English. And that's not to distract from the fact that he's pretty good at English, but you shouldn't judge someone's language skills based entirely on individual idioms, phrases, words, terms, collocations... No matter how fancy they might seem.
@@MaxSaki373 'is pretty common amongst ESLs with high fluency'---Yes, with high fluency.. That was the point I was making.. perhaps that phrase by itself wasn't the best example.
@@dukane14 You said that you feel like "you just don't hear that from people who learn English as an L2" which applies to all learners of English, not just to those with high fluency. Now, I still get your point and all, but you might wanna rephrase that just to be more explicit.
it's not that difficult to catch those idioms, as you are bombarded with english constantly.
I almost feel bad for native speakers as they have a much tougher time breaking through the "second language" barrier, as English is SO dominant.
@@BQD_Central That was my thought. I want to learn Chinese, and there isn't the same motivation of "if I want to learn about this unrelated topic, most of the material is in Chinese". Of course there will still be plenty of material = but there will be as much (or more) in English, so it's a deliberate choice.
Excellent interview my dudes
Thanks for this interview, Matt.
This was a great interview! So motivating
This is how all swedes learn english. As a kid, I hardly listened to any swedish media and i constantly was surrounded by english without even knowing it.
Gotta love this content.
I don't think this approach to language learning is best for me. It sounds effective for others, but for me, the idea of not outputting for multiple years because there are still gains to be made with input, doesn't make sense emotionally. I want to output because having conversations in the language (even struggling at simple conversations) is the most fun activity I've found. Input and Anki can be fun to an extent, too, but for me they are like a 5/10 and 3/10, respectively, compared to Italki lessons and language exchange conversations being a 9/10 in terms of fun.
Interviews are soooo good
More interviews, please! xD It was so inspiring and helpful, thank you! xx
And utterly random but Matt, you give me Elijah Woods vibes haha
Let's goooo BAND MAID !!! :D best band in the world !!!
Great ideas presented, very inspirational
When I hear this it makes me think that we need more conversation in the language learning community about focus and cognitive efficiency. For many people, just committing the hours is easily pointless as one runs out of cognitive steam. I live a fairly healthy lifestyle with low stress, good diet, good sleep, exercise, but when I do focused language learning, after 1-2 hours my cognitive performance very noticeably declines up to the point I feel TRYING to focus more just waste my time as I need to recover - even when taking proper mini breaks every 20-30 minutes.
Also, my impression is that many people overestimate their "active" study time and count in low-cognition activities in that time. This may include organizing learning material, passive listening, mindless reading, etc. I averaged an hour of (active focused) daily Japanese learning over the last 1.5 years and on the best days with nothing else to do, my cognitive capacity was completely depleted after about 4 hours. With other things in my life (science job, other learning in different hobbies, etc.) 2 to 2.5 hours of active focused learning feel like an upper limit for a day, otherwise I just fry my brain and stare into my screen like a drone. What I am getting at is that the terminology in study time should be more differentiated to give more realistic ideas regarding the relation of study investments and learning outcomes.
When I hear someone suggest 4-6 hours of daily japanese study, it is obvious that some or most of that is not active focused learning, otherwise that would be a burnout recipe - or a life with no other activities whatsoever. One factor that may play a big role in these assessments is the level of the student - arguably, things get less cognitively intense as one progresses into the language. E.g. active reading will be much less taxing for someone studying at an N2 level compared to someone at N4 level.
It sounds like you may not take frequent enough breaks- one can study longer hours if they break at 20 min, 45 or whatever they need.
Pick something that is enjoyable so you can concentrate on it 3 to 4 hrs straight
Nice to see this video.
Didnt think I'd see a BAND-MAID shout out here lol
"Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis..." That's a very outdated perception of psycholinguistics because 1) it's not really a hypothesis anymore, 2) it's more a principle in current second language acquisition theory. It's amazing how far both of you guys have gotten with that very simple 50-year-old piece of academic information though. Matt should become a psycholinguist, he'd be good.
Look at all the additional factors going on besides input; noticing hypothesis, cognitive learner strategies and deep engagement in metacognitive behaviour to name a few. Input alone wont get you there and despite his convincing theories, the academic field has moved completely beyond Krashen, primarily because the concept of 'comprehensible input' cannot be operationalised. Agreed Matt would be a great applied linguistic researcher!
Most important thing in all skill building- - - time on task
Great video. Thanks.
These interviews remind of that show where stan Lee was looking for superhumams on earth and every one had a very cool ability!
Does anyone else use the Bible app in their target language? It’s a ton of free audio and text in just about any language you’d want. I like reading along with the audio. Especially books I’m familiar with.
So in the video you said you don’t recommend the old RTK rep video anymore. What do you recommend instead as a structured course. Cuz rn I’m just doing all immersion
I immersed myself in English for two years and I started to listen to someone I like every single day lately, I would say. that part affect me a whole lot.coz... knowing how to say a language and sounding like someone is a total diff thing.
RTK = Remembering the Kanji
Currently I am at N5 so I’ll try immersion and see where I am in a years time. If anyone sees this keep me accountable 😂
This is your reminder
Keep your immersion going. (this is your reminder part 2)
行け！how’s it going??
@@mauricecooper9880 my listening has definitely improved. I can understand more of what is being said and can actually hear the words. Before I couldn’t tell what word was being said 😅
@@karu_roast3161 Update? :)
Don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask but what do you do when you're sentence mining a book, and theres obviously no audio to get with it? Do you avoid TTS, or do you use the TTS with a grain of salt? It's not for Japanese, but of an European language.
Use forvo to get the audio of the word that you don't know and add it to the card
@@fedexman sounds like the best approach, thanks
Hi guys really enjoyed this. Question for Stevi. Why did you feel like you had to go down the anki and sentence mining route since you didn't need that for English. I've done RTK but I literally have no idea how to start sentence mining. I want to just watch dramas and try to read and the thought of sentence mining and making cards is holding me back. Thanks!
I think it’s mostly a matter of time. English was a closer language to my native one so it was easier to pick up. With japanese I would like to speed up this process. To start sentence mining do first vocab cards no matter if they are 1T or not and then when you get to sentence cards look into automated programs like subs2srs if you don’t like to do them manually even if i do suggest you still do a certain percentage manually.
I dont get what he did immerse with at the beginning without vocab learning and just a little bit of tae kims? During the first three months of rtk. Like you cant just learn a couple hundred kanji and go immersing with attack on titan.
Nice Sakamoto Ryoma poster you have there!
With the approach of "just listening to anime, and immersing in the japanese language this way", I once heard, that no one really talks like Naruto for example. Is that so? How can you counter that? What else can you listen to (like japanese news channels for example?), or what other online sources could be helpful for beginners?
BELIEVE IT!
Dude Band-Maid is one of the main reasons I got into Japanese too!
What is the difference between passive and active immersion? I have been watching 5 hours of Spanish Telenovelas a day since the Covid hit. I am just about to the point where you were when you started talking and were fluent in two weeks. Twenty years ago before the rise of the internet my french teacher told me to start reading French novels that were at little above my level but to never use a dictionary.. Spanish telenovelas have Spanish subtitles and Spanish audio so I thought I would adopt my French teachers idea to a new language and a new medium. The idea of reading a Spanish book while listening to the same book on tape is even better! Perhaps my next language will be Japanese because of the abundance of Japanese material on the internet! By the way the Turkish dramatic series KARA SEVDA (dubbed into Spanish as Amor Eterno) is the best dramatic series I have ever seen in my life. I am enjoying it all in Spanish
By the look of the way stevi looks, obviously a huge David Hassrlhoff fan.
i also practically dropped gaming so that i can focus on japanese, heck one day i might be up here lol
As I said in a previous comment of mine:
Unless you are planning to actually use that language in daily communication, learning a language is just as productive as gaming, i.e. not at all.
I’ve been immersing in languages since high school, whenever I learn a language I put my phone and computer in that language
These interviews are always so awesome! It feels like we gain a lot of interesting insights when you talk to people about this immersion process.
楽しかったよ!ありがとう!
hi Matt, i've watched a lot of your videos, and a few months ago i finally decided to start using ajatt method. i'm about two thirds into learning jouyou kanji, and it's going pretty well. The thing that i don't really understand is what kind of sentences (after finishing kanjis) should i put in my anki decks? Is there a logic to follow? Where should i take them from? thanks.
Stevi, Matt thanks a lot for that interview! ＠Stevi: Can you share how you read books? (Kindle, physical books, ...?) And do you have recommendations for RUclips-channels? Thanks!
Great interview. Just going to ask a question here as i don't know where else to do so. How do you start immersion and building that comprehension. Like if i am watching something with japanese sub in japanese I understand how i can associate the symbols with the sounds. But I don't get how you can associate the sounds with meaning. I understand the concept of i+1 but if you don't know any words already what can you do? Just learn vocab via anki?
Nice, this kind of stories give me motivation.
I've been using "ajatt" for almost 3 years and still don't feel near native level. Just passed the N2 last December but on an app because the real one was canceled in my country. Aiming for N1 this year.
you got this man
@@layyyo Thanks! Already registered for N1 this December! Very few spots cause of covid.
@@koutta-idiomas8118 mate u got this, i'm rooting for you! i just started my journey really but ajatt is going well for me so far :)
@@koutta-idiomas8118 I believe in you bro
@@mannyw_ Thanks man, already signed up for N1 this december. Just one more month and we'll see (or 2 months before results)
This makes me very yes
I did the rtk while making a kanji deck of it haha, it just felt like a good idea at the time, starting now with content lol. The basis really helps tho, but I feel like the 500 most used kanji would be good enough and sooo much easier
I’m confused because if I were to just listen to japanese audio or even youtube videos/movies in japanese it would all just be white noise and no matter how many times i listen to it there’s no way i’d get better unless i have some previous experience with the language and am somewhat fluent in it. so, whats the step he did as an absolute beginner?
Look words. Then mine. The word gets wired in your brain after hearing it a few times. And process repeats itself.
I think Matt already made a video about tolerating ambiguity.
I was wondering if it was better to make your own Anki cards or use other people's. Does it make a difference? Thanks!
Its interesting that for a guy who is into nutrition and fitness where there is a lot of work needing to be put in to reach goals he was scared off from learning Chinese bc "too much" work needed.
He looks like a young version of Phillipe Countinho.
I actually loved the 2012 GTO drama lol 🥺🥺
Thanks
Dude, is that a poster of Sakamoto Ryoma behind you? I used to live in Kochi, so naturally he was everywhere.
Matt, what are your opinions on passive immersion for complete beginners?
Do you watch the anime with or without subtitles
hi Matt i want to ask you a question , during your immersion , have you ever experience a moment that you suddenly hear every word every sound very clear, just like something have "clicked" in your brian , and from that moment on, the foreign language no longer foreign to you
?
This happened to me as well with English. And I think Matt talked somewhere about this as well.
Thanks! Also is it worth doing anki cards both ways?
No, just do recognition
What does immersion mean?? I know the dictionary meaning but what does it mean in context of learning language. I heard them use it quite a bit in their conversation.
Immersion is Reading or watching content in the language you're learning.