Apologies to Benny (Fluent in 3 months). I didn't set out to talk about him at all when I started the video. The intent was initially to commiserate in misery with other struggling language learners. I always get asked about my Japanese, so this was my attempt to answer that. Really, the whole video was just a bunch of excuses and complaints from me about my ineptitude and I totally understood that from the start. For anyone, including Benny, I think it's commendable to try and learn something new. So my hat is truly off to you, I respect the effort. It's hard to fail but still continue on. And I'm not being sarcastic, I truly believe this. Something that turned me around and motivated me to be more consistent in studying Japanese was when I found out it takes MANY, MANY hours of study to become basic, let alone proficient. My goal for the past few years has been to study 60 minutes a day. When I found out basic was estimated at 1,000 hours, I realized that of course I wasn't good, because I needed to put in more time. So instead of making me sad, it actually made me realize I have to look at this as a life long project and that I can't just hack my way to success. So that's how Benny came into the video, because I wanted to believe that I could spend 3 or 6 months, really studying hard, and then I'd be proficient at Japanese. But at least for me, this is not the case, and understanding the difficulty of the task at hand makes it easier to soldier on. One of the big factors that prevented me (and prevents me) from learning Japanese is my fear of failure. It's just something I have in my mindset and the way I get past it is by dedicating myself to things. (Sidenote: there are some things I don't mind failing, so it's not like I'm dedicated to everything in my life). But one example of my dedication (fear of failure) is when I make videos. I really try to not get things wrong. I have to limit myself and say that there's only so much research I can do before I can move on and finish a video. I believe it's this attitude of wanting to get something right before showing people, that results in me being able to be half-decent at making videos. But for language learning, I think type of attitude is detrimental, so I have to consciously fight my natural urge to shut my mouth. One thing I tried but didn't mention was to study full time in a Japanese language school for 2 months. I wanted to study longer, but I had to get back to life. I got marginally better, despite trying really hard, but the big success was that it let me overcome my fear of speaking Japanese in public. So now I can at least do that. Pimsleur is helping me to speak, because it makes me repeat things over, and over, and over. Even if I forget in a week, I can listen to a lesson again and then it come back faster than when I first started out. Something I'm also starting to do is work one-on-one with a tutor. It's also been one of my goals to get a 1 day a week job in Japan, purely so that it forces me to speak Japanese. If I can find a job that is flexible in both my poor language ability and my main work schedule, I would totally do it. Okay, I think that's all I had wanted to say in the video but forgot to. The video was originally 25 minutes long before I cut a ton out and then added a little bit of new stuff in. Thanks everyone!
It's difficult to learn any new language. And from your description, this one seems harder than most. I wish that I knew it now. I imagine that the literature must be very rich, with all the different words/forms of the words that there are. Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you a bit. You're putting forth the effort. A friend of mine who is bilingual (English/Spanish) told me that you really have broken through when you start to think in that other language. I don't practice my Spanish like I should. I understand it, but rarely speak it. But years ago I was in a situation where I was roommates with a girl who spoke no English. I was forced to speak it and translate all the time, with all our friends. I did eventually start to think in Spanish, at least somewhat. Hang in there!
Hey Greg, I'm glad to see you wanting to taking the initiative to start learning. I'm also currently learning Japanese, and eventually would like to visit the country someday and experience life there. I think It's important to make goals about how you're approaching this. Do you really want to become fluent in all of Japanese that will allow you to connect with others in Japan? It sounds like you already know enough Japanese to navigate yourself in the city, but not enough to get to know the locals there. It's important to set realistic goals on how much time you're willing to make to reach your goal. I think it's also important to practice and use Japanese everyday for at least an hour. You have to keep learning new words and keep it up and do your reviews. Yes, this requires discipline on your part. Build it up slowly to avoid burnout, and keep improving everyday even if it's a little. Never settle. A tip: instead of hearing the translation in English, and speak it in Japanese, swap them and start with Japanese hearing first, and then ask yourself, do understand what they're saying? If so, try and answer it only in Japanese, if you don't understand it, then play it out it English so it helps you. The goal is to "think" in Japanese, not use English before translating it to Japanese since it defeats the purpose of "thinking" in Japanese when you're speaking. Native Japanese wouldn't think in any other language besides Japanese when they speak. You want to rely on your "Japanese" only, and only use "English" if you don't understand what it means. And of course a more practical method as some have suggested in the comments, is just, go out and have conversations with other Japanese as much as you can. It forces you to get out of your comfort zone. Get yourself acquainted with other people, I'm sure you have friends in Japan who can help you have conversations in Japanese and can teach you more if you ask. You live in Japan, you naturally, already have access to use the language you're trying to learn, so use that to your advantage. Don't be afraid to fail. It's okay to make mistakes, no matter how big it may seem. It may help you to learn better. Hope this helps. Lih, L
As I'm helping my language exchange partner with English, I'm realizing a little of all the crazy things we do - so much slang, and random things things like how say 'gonna' for 'going to'..not to mention how horrific spelling is..
Jeanie Conner & That Japanese Man Yuta The spelling is hard, even for someone that have been speaking English pretty much every day from the age of 8 to 28. I still do make mistakes when it comes to double consonants, silent letters and the likes. when i am on a computer it is pretty easy to find the mistake due to spellchecking etc, but whenever i have to write something without a spellcheck i often get confused when i write a word that just doesn't look right to me like "Rhythm", it always look wrong to me due to the amount of consonants in there. So yeah, i can see how it is hard to learn the language as well as teach it to a Japanese person.
I wish I had seen this when you made it. I'll give you some hints (10 years of mistakes for me, not just 5 years!) First, throw away the text books. Pimsleur is useful when you are first getting started, but as you say, it's an ultra marathon. The entire Pimsleur series is the first kilometer ;-) You fear of speaking is normal and natural. This is the most important thing to understand. Let me rewind a bit. People think that children learn languages faster than adults. This is not necessarily true, but let's take the case of the average child. As you say, a 5 year old child knows about 5,000 word families (not just words -- word families: the base word plus all its conjugation and various forms. So "polite" and "impolite" are part of the same word family). The progression goes like this: 1 year old - about 500 words. 2 year old - about 1,000 words. 3 year old - about 2,000 words. Then the child goes through a kind of breakthrough and learns the next 3,000 words over 2 years. From there, a child learns 1,000 words every year until they are about 20. That's 20,000 words for a relatively uneducated adult. If you go to University, you tend to pick up another 10,000 words and people with technical jobs tend to wind up with 40-60,000 word vocabularies. Children go through a period called the "closed period" when they have between 1,000 and 2,000 words of vocabulary. In the closed period, they do not speak. Before the closed period, you tend to have babbling and after the closed period you have a typical toddler that's using the language a lot, but incredibly badly. *Learners of second languages also have a closed period!* This is where you have not acquired enough language to spontaneously use it and so you do not speak. Because second language learners tend to study grammar rules and vocabulary alone (instead of language in context), their closed period often lasts a lot longer, but it is completely natural and you should not worry if you are in that period. The next thing I should point out is that the word "fluent" is not a good descriptor of language ability. In fact there are 2 concepts: fluency and proficiency. Fluency is the ability to use and understand language without undue effort. In other words, if you hear language that you have acquired, you will immediately understand it without having to think about it. If you wish to say something that uses language that you have acquired, it comes out of your mouth without you having to formulate how you want to say it. You can be fluent in about 5 minutes if you want: ありがとう means "thank you". Practice it for a bit. There: you are fluent in Japanese! The other concept is called proficiency and it describes the breadth of situations in which you can understand and use the language. In my fluency example, you may be perfectly fluent in Japanese with "thank you", but that is a tiny amount of proficiency. In a paragraph all by itself for a reason: Language learners often study proficiency without studying fluency. This is why they suck at fluency. As you pointed out, people have completely unrealistic views of proficiency as well. The JLPT syllabus contains ~700 words for N5, ~1,500 for N4, ~3,000 for N3, ~5,000 for N2 and ~8,000 for N1. This corresponds to "baby", "1 year old", "3 year old", "5 year old" and "8 year old" at best. But in reality the JLPT vocabulary list contains a lot of stupid vocabulary about unemployement, etc, etc. If you look at the entire N1 list, you will see that it contains a large percentage of words that no 8 year old would know. So what words are *missing* from that list that most 8 year olds know? As well, by age 5 the average child knows all non-literary/non-keigo grammar and yet the N1 list is *full* of non-literary grammar, while N5 contains keigo! How many 5 year olds know keigo???? This should give you a hint why you're getting stuck in the closed period. You are studying exactly the wrong thing. How *do* you study to improve fluency as well as proficiency? There is a super wonderful trick and you mentioned it briefly (possibly without realising it). You have one massive advantage over a child. You can read. This is the key. I tend towards following the theories of Stephen Krashen (though I don't agree with him on everything). There are a few key concepts you need. First there is a difference between learning and acquisition. "Learning" means to be able to remember something. "Acquisition" means to have an association in your head so that the thing you want pops into it without mental gymnastics. It is similar to the concept of "fluency". Learning *may* lead to acquisition, but it is not the direct way that you acquire language. Language acquisition occurs from repeated "comprehensible input". In other words, if you repeatedly get natural language input where you understand what it means (it doesn't matter how you know what it means), eventually you will set up associations which will lead you to acquire that language. You will then become "fluent" with that bit of the language. It is important to understand that you need repeated exposure and you also need to be able to understand it. For example, listening to TV that you do not understand will *never* lead to acquisition of the language (after 5 years in Japan, I'm sure you are quite aware of this). However, your wife telling you to hand her the daikon over and over and over again will eventually lead you to understand and use the same language form because you can see from context what it means. Learning vocabulary and grammar outside of context *can* eventually lead to acquisition as long as you are repeatedly exposed to that vocabulary and grammar in comprehensible situations. It is not necessary, but it can speed up the process. As I said, it doesn't matter *how* you come to comprehending the language, the important part is that you comprehend it. Learning rote material gives you a kind of super fast dictionary where you can look stuff up when you encounter it -- thereby making the input comprehensible. Again in a paragraph by itself for a reason: However, learning vocabulary and grammar without repeatedly exposing yourself to situations where you see that vocabulary and grammar will *not* lead to acquisition. You just have a super fast dictionary, not a machine that understands the language. This is incredibly important to understand. Memorization is a tool, not a goal! One of the biggest problems with acquiring a language (as you have found out) is a lack of comprehensible input. Your kids either natter on with their friends in ways you can't understand or speak English to you. You don't speak Japanese to your wife because her English is a million times better than your Japanese and it is really very inconvenient for both of you to use Japanese. You don't need Japanese in your job. Etc, etc, etc. Enter books. A book is a stream of natural language. You can make this language comprehensible by memorizing the vocabulary and grammar contained in the language. By reading the book (and books like it), you acquire the language in the book. That's it. It's called "Free Reading" and it is by far the most powerful way to learn a language (lots and lots of scholarly papers on the topic -- a shame that language teachers don't read scholarly papers... BTW all the information in this post is from language acquisition research done by real professors at real universities). Since I'm over typing here by a lot, here is a quick overview of how I "study". Find a book. Level appropriate books are best. Manga is awesome for conversational Japanese and I recommend them, but 昔話 picture books are fun too. As your level increases, get short novels aimed at elementary kids (I read the 小学生は女将さん series). Then light novels and finally literature. Save newspapers for later. Skim from where you are reading to find about 20 words that are unfamiliar to you. Enter them into an SRS system like Anki. Do an initial memorization. The SRS is important because you don't want to forget the words as you encounter them later on in the book(s), but at the beginning, you only need to memorize the translation. Once you have memorized those words, read the section of text again. For any sentences where you can't understand the meaning, stick it into google translate (it is quite good these days). Find a natural way to say the English and add it to a different deck on your SRS system. This is how you will memorize grammar. *Always* quiz from English to Japanese, *never* the other way around (it is important for technical reasons which I don't have time to type). Rinse and repeat every day. Hope that helps! Oh and for pronunciation practice and mechanical fluency -- Karaoke. At least once a week ;-)
Thanks a lot for your comment, I saved the video only to be able to read this paper again. Deserves a thousand likes, I hope it will help me in my japanese learning beginning (today).
With so much GRATITUDE for your time and invaluable information. I just started my journey in the Japanese Learning process and I totally understand your point in being freely exposed to the language as much as possible. I already speak and read a second language which gives me the advantage to know the best approach, that works for me, to the acquisition of new material. I absolute Love the simplicity and yet complexity of the Japanese language and I am confident that through the long path ahead of me, I have some tested tools that will make the journey not only easier but fun as well. Your post helped me put a lot of things into new perspective and for that I am forever grateful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Thanks for the thorough and insightful comment. If you have this written elsewhere, I'd appreciate a link because I prefer saving it to an entire video just to look at the comments section.
Don't feel bad. I'm half-Japanese and I have an American father, two American uncles, and two older brothers who are fluent in Japanese. Then there's me. I failed first year Japanese twice in college. I want so badly to learn my mother's native tongue and to be able to communicate with her family when I get to visit them, but it is such a major struggle. I wish my parents had raised us bilingual like you're doing with your kids. You're doing great. Thanks for the resources!
In India the way we become trilinguals or even more is that we speak our mother tongue at our homes with our relatives and families and we speak in the state language with friends or with people we don't know. And as for English we start learning when we are around 3 or 4 years old all the way till we're 18. People with more multicultural backgrounds speak 4 or more languages and understand even more than those
well I was a bilingual when I was younger but my dum 5 year old self decided native language is useless as everyone speaks English and now I can only speak it likely tho I understand like 70% of my native language and im now relearning it
@@asit6947 true. in india every kid speaks mother tounge/families language, then the state of residence say states language, then hindi and english as medium of school or govt work. our central government works entirely in english and hindu. the local state government works in regional language. So an average indian speaks atleast 2 to 4 languages. except english all other language are related to each other in words, sanskrit language and the writing-scripts which all are derived from ancient brahmi.
Hmm interesting. I was raised bilingual but I don't supposed that it's easy with all languages. I was raised to speak French and English and completely forgot Spanish (as I was born in Spain but not raised in Spanish). My brother had a hard time speaking and doctors thought he might have been austitic. Between French and English the difference in grammar and vocabulary is not that different like between Japenese and English. I think that maintaining two so very langauges in a Context taht perhaps doesnt encourage it would be extremely difficult. Like speaking English and French in Montreal or English in Spanish in South Florida or Hindi and English in India wouldn't be so hard as most people speak both and often times intermix the languages. Even then I find that many don't hold perfect fluency in both, I found many French-Canadians with Terrible english or vice versa with terrible French (with regards to mainland French standards). Same can be said with Indians, I have international students from India or Sri Lanka with questionable English, sometimes it's really bad. You shouldn't be hard on yourself. It's completely on your parents, same as my Spanish which vanished into thin air because my Parents couldn't be bothered to hire a tutor for me when I was young, your parents didn't push you to speak Japenese. Fortunately though my mom did give me plenty of opportunites to learn English, at home we spoke English and every Summer I would join my American cousins which I accredit to me being able to speak english natively. Again, Japenese is much much harder to learn than English and so I don't know whether this would suffice to learn it.
@@Charlie-hv3dh Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana are writing systems similar to alphabets rather than for speaking. For speaking they have informal, formal and the 3 Keigo.
@@Charlie-hv3dh That's the writing system. Hiragana is like the alphabet, katakana is like italics, and kanji is like pictures. You can't always tell how it would be written just from what it sounds like, and vice-versa. In writing, yes, it's usually a mix of all three.
I learned enough Japanese to get a job translating full time in a Japanese company in Japan. My main motivation was survival. I was tossed into Japan a couple years back due to my family situation and needed to learn enough Japanese to get a part time job, pay for Japanese school, and eventually get a full time job in Japan. Needless to say, I learned fast. Also helped that I was living in the countryside! Only spoke English at home.
Sorry that I'm not replying individually to all the comments and am simply leaving this top level stuff. I just only have so much time today to reply (and I do like to read all the comments). I don't know if this matters any, but I used to be completely fluent in French. All my schooling from K-12 was in a French Immersion program. It's been a couple decades now though, and while I can understand news anchors and written French, I can hardly speak a sentence without my brain injecting Japanese words into it! Since I had studied french for most of my childhood, I wonder if I moved to France (or Quebec) how long it'd take me to feel comfortable speaking naturally again.
It wouldn't take long. I can speak from experience. I lived in Switzerland for a school year (French part) and spoke French there, but I didn't use French much at all until I lived in Quebec City for 4 months, 7 years later. I'd say it only took a couple of month before I got to the level I felt I had in Switzerland. I have sort of kept up the language by going to Haiti once a year. But living in an area where you're forced to use the language with the locals (immersion) makes all the difference, IMHO
Studies say pretty quickly. It happens a lot in dual lingual households, where a kid can still understand the language, but forgets to speak it, but if they travel abroad where they are forced to speak it, it comes back in a couple of weeks.
yooo, i was about to comment that he should connect with you man! You said it took you like 2 years to be proficient in japanese. Please share more of your tips and knowledge
My brother past the JLPT1 test. His path was 4 years Japanese major at UH Manoa, which included one year study abroad at Hiroshima University. He said his Japanese speaking and reading took a giant leap when he was in the study abroad program. All the lessons were in Japanese. He came home to Hawaii to finish his degree, then went back to Japan via Jet program. He maxed out his 5 years in Jet, then worked at a Japanese Translation company for a year and a half (where every horror story of being a Japanese salary man came true), quit the job and because he made such a good impression with the local BOE, they created a position for him to work as a direct hire. He has now lived in Japan for 11 years. He is perfectly fluent In Japanese. But now that he spends a lot of time with English speakers, and has not written Japanese other than for forms and such, he said that he probably wouldn’t pass that JLPT1 again. My brother knows how to get around Japan even better than locals. He knows how to catch a train anywhere. He showed me around in Tokyo, Yokohama, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji, Hiroshima, Fukuoka. He even drives. He drives to his rural schools in his home town. He drove to me to Onomichi. He recently bragged about a road trip he drove last year in Shikoku with a Singaporean girl he was dating at the time. Ask how many Japanese people in Tokyo that have been to Shikoku, much less drove there. For me, I have been to Japan 3 times and I hope visit there many more times in the future. When I was there, I felt I was relying on my brother too much. I wanted to be able to be more self reliant. I currently use wanikani. My Kanji reading has gotten a lot better. I can read and understand most of what is written on NHK news easy. However I do things a bit differently. Wanikani starts off really slow, it can be annoyingly slow. However if you stick with it and get to level 6 or 7 it gets more and more intense where you cans have hundreds of reviews in a single day. I don’t complete all the lessons. They kind of back log on me. I got a full time IT job, plus learning a new language is hard. I felt the pace of the later levels to be too overwhelming and I would get burned out. I try to complete 80 reviews a day. This has been the most effective for me. It’s about 1 hour for me to complete 80 review items. Note that each slide is not a review item. It’s a Kanji and it’s meaning and it’s phonetic sound in hiragana, plus wanikani throws in some examples on how to use the kanji in a sentence. The new lessons I try to do it in 15 lesson chunks, when I see the sentence examples I try to read them. Then I do some reviews after the lessons chunks. Once I am done with that I try to read all the latest NHK world Easy articles. You can turn off the furigana. Its just there to help pronounce the kanji which is useful if you know what the kanji means but not quite sure how to pronounce it. As for Pimsleur. I have tried it years ago. I “acquired” it on the web. (Does not matter anymore as I have long since deleted it). I feel it’s just another foreign language parrot app. Basically it will teach you some phrases in Japanese. It’s current website says it can teach you any language in 30 days. I will tell you how and why they can say that when we all know that is 100% false. What Pimsleur really is doing is making you parrot commonly used phrases in the language you are learning. The course is basically cram studying all these foreign parrot phrases. If you cram enough, one could complete the course in 30 days. Then if you are a business man, you can impress you non foreign language speaking colleges with your “skills”. Just think about it. There are many western people who will say they “know” how to speak a language, but then you realize they only know a few phrases. That is what Pimsleur really is. It’s a human parrot game that costs too much. Reading the news on NHK World Easy is better for a beginner. However even if you can read that page. It does not mean you can read manga or watch anime with original Japanese voices with no subtitles (because the Japanese in those are less honorific or polite sounding, colder to real conversation). But it’s a lot better than parroting set phrases then when you want to do real conversations, you can’t.
DEAR SPONSORS, this is the kind of QUALITY youtuber you should sponsor. relevant and informative. unlike those lazy travel and food vloggers lazy attempt to incorporate the content of the sponsor into the video they're making.
Yup! One thing I always love about quality RUclipsrs is how they incorporate sponsors into their videos. Like Fourty2's content, he does lots of videos sort of explaining random facts in copious details, yet he always finds a way to incorporate his sponsors, the way he does it is almost like art!
But......the one and only skill that we can study it 24 hours a day is language skill....because you can use that language to communicate, you can watch or listen radio, TV, movie a whole day and when you sleep you can dream about talking in your target language
Just another way to put it, in the UK full-time school is 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 39 weeks a year. And that only adds up to 1,170 hours. You would have to do practically two FULL YEARS of full-time education to learn Japanese at a proficient level. This, of course, excludes study during your free time and homework. If you live in Japan itself, then even more of your free time would be spent learning Japanese, as it's all around you! Doesn't make it any easier though!
I think the whole video is not an excuse but just for curious ppl to why japanese is so hard. Its very informative and give a logical insight to a language like a pat on the back to ppl who are trying to learn but are having struggles. E.g. me its nice to know someone else is having the same struggles and is giving a reason to why its hard and i wont give myself a hard time and just take a step back and having a different perspective
This. It is pretty infuriating when people tells him that he is just making excuses though, since i am in pretty much the same situation, minus been living there for 5 years. Work, family and other duties and continues 1 step forward 2 back is making it a very slow grind to get where I want to be. I wish people weren't so quick to criticize this video as it feel so close to home.
I'm Asian and once, I was walking around at night in London with my headphones on when I heard someone yelling. I took my headphones off and looked around to see what was going on and there I saw a guy who kept yelling "konnichiwa" at me. Me: I'm not Japanese. Him: Oh, then where are you from? Me: Venezuela. I speak Spanish. Bye. *Walks away*
3:55 When people give those 'Fluent in 3 months' or 'Fluent in 6 months' type vids/books, I'm skeptical. This video is a great example; it really depends on what you consider 'fluent' to be. If you mean lots of stuttering, a strong foreign accent, and broken Japanese; 3 months is beyond reasonable. The core Vocab and basic grammar doesn't take long at all. I'd say in 3 months you can learn the core; and in 2 years you learn all of the additional nuances; but I wouldn't consider you fluent until you know those nuances and have those production skills.
You are not alone. I am French and I’ve been living in Japan for 4 years. I work in a 100% Japanese company as a 職員, so I use Japanese the whole time. No English and no French at all. But since I arrived in Japan I simply gave up studying kanji. Even the most basic words I have to look them up in my phone. The only kanjis I master are those used by law in the emails. I am a disgrace, I know. Even some of my colleagues can’t read sometimes kanji, and they get bullied. Hahaha Good luck and thanks for the video!
I am glad that you brought up this topic because the opposite is the case for Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. I am a Korean, and I speak Japanese well. I studied Japanese only for a year but I can communicate with Japanese people over any topic, can express my most complicated ideas in Japanese without much difficulty. If I use just short sentences, Japanese people even can't notice that I am not a Japanese. That's because Korean is very similar to Japanese. On the contrary, I spent enormous amounts of time to study English and I still suck at English, and so do most Asians. Most Asians learn English as their first second language whereas most English speakers learn a European language, mostly Spanish and French, as their first second language. I think it gives to native English speakers a wrong conception of how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. Sometimes it really upsets me when a native English speaker says that he/she understands how difficult it is to learn a foreign language because he/she sill sucks at French! If I had been born in an anglophone country, and tried as hard as I tried to study English, I would have spoken at least three European languages. I know that because I tried German. I learned it much faster than English because German and English are so similar.
My family moved to Denmark and before I was even 10 I picked up european 3 languages (Danish, German and English), without ever studying them first, so I get what you're saying. I'm not saying I was good, but I could communicate at least. Danish used to be my first language, but after moving to the UK, it was replaced by English
@@Heylow1 I think the factor of young age matters here. We tend to grasp launguages much faster then. Learning a language from scratch is harder when one is an adult unless they have a natural affinity toward picking up new launguages and dialects. So all in all, you do seem like someone who has knowledge of quite many languages, just not everybody does.
Do you guys have any advice to help me learn korean so I can communicate with my korean rugby teammate and to make him not feel like a burden to the team since we speak Pacific islander languages and English
@@mastergamer1838, if your only goal is to communicate during sports, I'd advice both you and him to look up phrases you might need during a match/practice and memorise those. If you're having full on strategy meetings, then it's probably a good idea to help him learn your country's language. If your goal is to actually learn the language, that is a longterm endeavour and therefore requires quite a bit of motivation. If you feel you have that, I can tell what my routine for learning Japanese had been so far, which I now studied by myself for a year. My approach is very casual just using my phone and honestly barely feels like work, as I spend very little time per study session, but because I do several sessions during my day, my actual study time adds up quite a bit. I study for a minimum of 50 mins a day, that is 20 in the morning doing Rosetta stone, 20 before bed doing Duolingo and doing a minimum 10 mins of self created Anki flashcards based on what I what I learnt from the apps (using more than one learning source is always best, regardless of what you're studying). If I've just added new cards or struggling to remember some cards, I review them for 10 mins at a time, maybe 4 or 5 times, throughout the day. My progress after a year now is I'd say upper basic. I can't understand a movie or anything like that yet (maybe in a year or two, at my pace), but I can understand and communicate basic info, that e.g. a tourist might want (directions, food, rooms, etc) and memorised some ~400 kanji. Sounds a little disappointing after a year, I know, but Japanese is a language that I know I'll have regular exposure to, so I'm not rushing and planned a pace for myself that I knew I could easily follow. Hope that helps you in some way
I honestly think everyone is being a bit harsh lol, learning a language is easier for some ppl and not for others. I mean like Greg said, he didn't even enjoy learning English when he could speak it naturally, so learning languages r just not his thing. Personally I've had to learn Arabic and even after 3 yrs of 4-5 hrs of learning a day, I can read and write it really well, just the speaking part is still difficult for me. So I think it depends on how much you enjoy it and how much time you give yourself to learn it. Don't worry Greg, you can do it! Thanks for sharing this with us, it really showed the struggles of learning a language in a different way than before.
I went to a small class taught by 2 native Japanese women in London (which I highly recommend if you're in the area, it's called ITO) for nearly 2 years before I moved and had to start learning on my own. I instantly suffered and eventually took a 'break' where I put my attention on other things. Its hard to learn a language when you arn't immersed in it, especially when you're doing it in isolation. This year I took my first trip to Japan and only had a dictionary with me to help fill in my gaps of knowledge. I didn't review the grammar or kanji I had learnt but as rusty as I was, forcing myself to communicate in Japanese with native speakers on my trip brought a lot more of my knowledge back than just reading it. I managed to explain about a ticket error, talk to an elderly man in a kaleidoscope museum about the collection and chat to a young man at the same place about the big typhoon that hit the Kansai region whilst he instructed me in how to make a kaleidoscope. I basically sounded like a child, my sentences were broken and I didn't know the words for some nouns or verbs but these people were patient, listened and helped me along. It really showed me the importance of language practice between people because in the end, thats what its for.
I married my Japanese wife 57 years ago, and I've spent 7 years in Japan at 4 different locations. Early on I tried to speak the language, but every time I would pronounce a word she would say I wasn't saying it correctly. I would pronounce the word three or four times with the same results. After years of this, off and on, I got mad and told her I would give anything to speak poor Japanese fluently. So I gave up trying, but in retrospect I realize it wasn't my pronunciation that bothered her. It was the fact that she didn't trust me around other Japanese women.
Oh my... I stumbled upon this! I am learning Japanese here in Japan and I'm now on my second month. It. Is. Hard. I also had a rough time learning English as a second language but I am now near native speaker level when it comes to speaking and writing in English. Currently, I am attending a language school and we use the Minna No Nihongo book. Thanks for this!
10:09 The biggest why we keep using kanji is because Japanese have to many homonyms. 神（かみ/kami）: God, spirit. 髪（かみ/kami）: Hair. 紙（かみ/kami) ：Paper If it were not for kanji, we couldn’t know whether one is cutting God or hair or paper. Btw, after the end of the Pacific War, in 1948, John Campbell Pelzel from General Headquarters tried to get rid of Kanji(;Hiragana and Katakana too) and make Japanese use only the Roman letters as he thought Japanese writing system was too difficult to rise the literacy rate and this could cause the delay of democratization, however, a result of a nation wide survey showed that only 2.1 percent of Japanese people couldn’t read or write Kanji that John’s proposal was abandoned.
As a guy who's learned eight languages to varying degrees of proficiency and through a variety of methods, I can offer some advice and encouragement. So here it goes, in no particular order. 1. Make it fun. It sounds cheesy, but it's true. If learning feels like a chore, not only will you likely do less of it, but you won't be as focused, and won't get as much out of the time you do spend learning. So do things you enjoy, but do them in Japanese. 2. It's important to be active and not just passive, so you need to speak or write in Japanese. Better yet, get out there and interact with people in Japanese. It's ok to make mistakes as long as you're trying and you keep learning. It's scary, and I share your fear of failure, but who's judging you? What are the consequences if you mess up? Not much, right? 3. No one is "bad at languages". Traditional methods make it boring and inefficient, and boring. And also boring. Plus, there's pressure to have good grades and all that. My point is, a lot of people develop an unhealthy relationship to language learning. But think about it this way: if the dumbest people in Japan can learn it, so can you. You're smart. 4. It's not harder for adults. That's a myth. Kids are highly motivated because they've got no better way to communicate, and not much else to do. But your life experience gives you a big advantage over kids. When you learn "メロン" you already know what it looks like, tastes like, everything. Kids have to learn all of that at once. I hope this helps! :)
It is scientifically proven that kids learn languages much easier than adults do! When we're young, we absorb language pretty quickly. As we age, it is much more difficult for our neurons to make brand new connections-- you should check out the science behind language learning in relation to age. (Not that I doubt that your experience with learning lots of languages makes you knowledgeable in practice.)
@@AJo-wd2ni I'd like to see this scientific proof you speak of, Abby, because I can't find any. And even if it were true, it wouldn't mean that adults should just roll over, which is really my main point. I'm trying to encourage Greg and anyone who happens upon my post. :)
It's easier the younger you are. It's super-easy when you're 3 or younger. I remember starting my first serious stint with Japanese at 17 or 18, and the ease at which my brain absorbed the language then is way different than now, me being in my early 30s. I'm still able to learn, and I'm very good at learning....but I find myself having to relearn more and more things that I JUST learned now, whereas I didn't used to have to do this....stuff doesn't stick as well as it used to, so it's slower going. But yes, it is totally possible.
@@takigan I have different experiences about the learning speed. I started English at the age of 7, but I've picked up the most things at 17. My mum struggled with English around 20, but she easier picks it up over 40. I could barely proceed in Korean 3 years ago, but now, I've improved so much in only 3 weeks. I often find myself forgetting a word in Hungarian (my native language) or in English that I know in Korean. 😂😂
You should hook up with Rachel and jun there you tubers as well. Give your self credit. Your working hard. Raising a family. Give yourself a high five.
I observed that non-English speakers learn Japanese faster than native English speakers. One of the reasons is that they have no choice but to learn Japanese because they cannot speak English well in the first place. As native English speakers, we have a disadvantage learning foreign languages because English has become a widely used language over the world. Many native English speakers give in to using English because they can resort to that option. That does not mean that we should give up. We should never give up! Mastering Japanese as native English speakers shows that our effort and resolve to learn Japanese can overcome the stigma, barriers and temptations. がんばって！！！
@Matthew Estevez I think the "In the first place" part was unintentional, lol. I think what the person was trying to say was that many Japanese will make attempts to speak English to foreigners and many English speakers just...go with that. No need to try so hard to learn Japanese if you live somewhere that has most of everything you need in English and the people go out of the way to speak your language. I'm not saying it's right and I have no personal experience with this (never been to Japan). But I do remember Yuta from...oh god, I just saw his comment on this video and I can't remember it, lol. That Man Yuta, I think. Anyways, he did a video in Tokyo, I think, interviewing foreigners to test their Japanese. A lot admitted to not bothering too much with learning it because the availability of English made it pretty much unnecessary. Coming from that mindset and then maybe moving to the countryside where you'd definitely need Japanese, learning the language would be very difficult.
I'm not a native English speaker, yet I speak it fluently. It is a thousand times easier for me to speak English in Japan than to learn Japanese. My advantage however is that I am used to a different set of word- and grammar rules, which makes it easier for me to learn a new language with new sets of rules. Most native English speakers do not know a second language fluently, and therefore it is more difficult to learn a completely new language, especially Japanese as it's the most difficult language to learn for a native English speaker.
I'm fluent in English and Spanish (the latter being my mother-language) and I find my Spanish helpful for speaking Japanese since I already have their same sounds built in my head (if that makes sense¿) so I don't have problems with pronunciation (only a teeny bit with intonation) lol
I'm half Spanish and half Japanese, my dad is Japanese and is fluent in Spanish. I grew up in Spain so I'm now learning Japanese and yes the phonetics in Japanese are easier when you know Spanish. My dad always tells me Japanese and Spanish have very similar phonetics while the phonetics in English are super different so English speakers tend to have a pretty bad pronunciation while Spanish speakers have it down better. Same with Japanese people learning English or Spanish, they'll be much better at pronouncing Spanish than English.
SAME! I am talking to a Japanese guy (from Japan) and he thinks my Japanese pronunciation is cute. I agree Japanese is not as bad as Arabic which I am interested in as well, or Korean -- I lived and worked there. Japanese certainly has many similarities with how words are said and pronounced. I highly agree.
Camryn Wreanni my dad is Arabic and I only picked up a tiny amount of stuff even though he uses it around the house constantly since I was a baby. Good luck
the #1 thing you need to do: ignore the "Japanese is hard" nonsense. it's actually straightforward, grammatically. the hardest part, i think, is simply memorizing all those words. but the basic structure of the language isn't that hard; it's just different from English. so substitute "different" for "difficult", find someone to chat with (you have an advantage in that area), and look for ways to make Japanese part of your normal daily experience - not a chore or a burden.
I very much agree with this. A huge part of learning.... or really doing anything in life is your attitude towards it. If you've convinced yourself that it's impossible, you'll never succeed. It really is mind over matter
The way that Japanese people express thoughts is extremely different so if you just learn words and use grammar rules to make sentences translating from English in your head you won't sound natural and will often be misunderstood.
I appreciate your honesty! 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 The key is to not be afraid 😱 of making public gaffes. 😉 I’ve been here in Japan for 36 years and I’m still learning the language. All things in time, my good man. Keep on keeping on. 😃😃😃 I love your channel! 😍
I agree 100% with that! Don't think you need to speak perfectly to talk to people, just do it and use your hands and feet and a big smile when you're not sure if what you're saying is right! I recommend trying to talk to someone whose second language is also Japanese and who *doesn't speak English* That way you both are on a similar experience level and if you butcher a sentence, it's not too bad because your buddy does it, too :D I feel like talking to a native speaker in your target language is always a bit intimidating because you *know* they'll know when you make a mistake. When it's another learner, you both just laugh it off and perhaps remember that particular mistake, so you won't do it again.
@Anna That can come later, honestly. Talking to other learnes is in the very first place good for gaining confidence to just speak, because you learn nothing if you just shy away from a conversation because you're afraid of making mistakes. Unless you're holding a public speech where you should talk fairly well, it doesn't matter at all if your grammar is all correct or not. Most people will not care at all about your mistakes, it matters that you are communicating with them, even if it is somehow limited. And by doing that, you're slowly improving, because you pick up how other people phrase things in conversations, and maybe some of that will stick with you. Just be chill about it, as long as it's not a job interview or a professional presentation or something, no one requires you to speak perfectly.
Learning how to read/write/pronounce hiragana & katakana on my own from the very beginning was the best start for myself. It set me up to know how to pronounce words and what to expect when talking, reading, and writing! Also, basic Japanese phrases are needed too! Great video man. Very informative. I’ve also always heard the Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers - but Japanese people are the BEST so it’s worth it.
The speaking only informal Japanese with your wife part is very relatable for me. While it's fine to speak within my family, to colleagues or my boss, when it comes to my boss's boss or even customers, it can easily become pretty embarrassing.
Meanings w/ remembering the Kanji, after that by learning words. Whenever I'm learning a grammar point I make sure to add a couple of sample sentences to Anki. This way I make sure I don't just repeat isolated words but have them in a context in which I can go on and use them. Despite finding the right way or technique however, just like Greg said in his video, I think it's mostly about investing a lot of time and establishing a routine of daily learning.
Ohhh well haha, i know it takes time, also... i have noticed that the japanese language says the things in other order, different from english, like he said in this video, that is something that i have to know before talking Did you know what i mean ? and can you atleast speak Japanese, maybe not fluently but can you ?
For reading and writing kanji, i can recommend anki, the program is amazing, you can use it basically anywhere and you can edit it for anything you wan tto learn.
9:08 - it depends on age. Reason why your bike skills are still there because : 1. you learned it younger age, 2. you practiced a lot. There is a reason why older people have difficulties learning new languages, your brain has matured and any new information will take a lot more effort to be come permanent.
when i was 11 we moved to France from Canada. I thought I knew French, I did not. Over the course of the year it became common place for me to listen enviously to toddlers speaking comprehensively to their parents..........i totally get this
Well he's definitely in a good position and of course knows a fair amount of vocab. His pronunciation is a bit jagged but I imagine anyone elses would be at that stage also
Benny Lewis has goals in a language in three months. He doesn't meet the goals I believe 100% of the time. They are just goals and he attempts to attain it, which he doesn't. He also stated he wanted to reach C1 level speech with Mandarin Chinese in three months, which is obviously not going to happen, but he tried. It is the hard work for the initial three months, but after that, he stops and doesn't go that much higher. It is similar to people who make those strange challenges learning as much as they can for example in 3 -5 weeks, stop, display their results, then go to something else. The audience they are getting are beginners, or dabblers and not serious language learners. Although it might inspire someone to get into the subject.
Pffttt Japanese Kids are learning since they are born up to high school and still only know the basic kanji used in everyday lifes asigned by the Nippon association of newspapers and books or something like that, it is a compendium of 2300 kanji used in everyday life, JLPT 2 Has LOTS that Japanese people normally do not use for they daily lives, and JLPT1 is God Tier, that even Japanese University Students and Teachers Struggle.
I feel your pain! I was born in Japan, but left for America when I was eight. I have not kept up with Japanese since, so now, I can hardly converse with adult Japanese without them looking weird at me. I tried learning Japanese, but no time. I married a Japanese woman and she helped with my lack of vocabulary. She also helped with common expressions used by adults. So today, my 12 year-old have surpassed me greatly. She can read, write and speak Japanese way better than me. She's attending 6th grade Japanese school in the US. I've forgotten how to write and can only read up to a handful of basic kanji's. So, my progress in learning adult Japanese is a similar struggle as you are having. The difference is, I have the basic Japanese, but I'm stuck at that level. and I'm having a difficult time as you in learning adult conversation.
I am half Japanese who moved to America when I was 9. I was of course able to speak Japanese normally because it is my native language, but the more I was in America, the more I forgot Japanese. Plus I had no one to speak Japanese to and I didn't have a cell phone to contact my old friends. And on top of that, I think I forgot Japanese because I moved to a different country at a young age. I heard that it's easier to forget a language if you're young and moved to another country. But now I am working towards regaining my Japanese back, but I know English way more than Japanese. When people ask me how to say this in Japanese, most of the time I can't respond and makes me feel ashamed of forgetting my NATIVE language. I do feel alone and feel like no one is in a similar situation to mine.
@@daten__ trust me you are not alone, my girlfriend of 6 years is half thai but she was born in and lived in Thailand until she was 8 and came over to England only being able to speak, read and write in thai however as it was seen as so important by her parents to learn english and quickly they stopped speaking to her in it completely. Now although she can understand a lot of it she can’t speak, read or write it well at all, however we are going to start having lessons together soon and hopefully regain what has been lost :) dont give up
I take Japanese language courses at my university, and during the summer breaks I feel like I forget everything I learned in the prior semester. Speaking it is also very difficult to do since the only person I have to practice with is the professor during class. I always have to go back to review earlier concepts, especially when it comes to properly conjugating verbs.
Same! I'm majoring japanese too but it's hard when it comes to talking. Because i didn't really speak Japanese in daily life. I need someone who can speak Japanese with me and always patient when hearing me talking in Japanese, i can't do that with my friends because in the end we're just fooling around. Sorry for my bad English, but i really feel you.😖😥
SRS everything!!! Use anki or some srs app for vocab (always make sentences or short phrases so it’s it context), grammar (again always in sentences), and even rules of grammar and make questions about usage like: if you see Nほど will the ending likely be positive or negative? Answer: negative” then have an example. If you make srs off example sentences in your books, and everything else and if you review daily (you can’t skip days as the cards pile up) you’ll never need to excessively review. It saves so much time. *speak in Japanese even if there’s no one to speak to. Seriously. Think in Japanese as much as you can. You want to be able to have the idea/phrase/vocab immediately without thinking in English. You want to habitualize as much as possible so it becomes natural. Ah, too much to talk about lol. Rock it out!
There are people who claim they were at an N2 level after just one year of studying. If you really had no other exposure to Japanese, from any other sources, such a studying regimen is pretty brutal.
O am Brazilian. I studied French for 2 years and travelled to France. I was able to interact with people in a relatively comfortable way. Then I studied Japanese for 4 years. I travelled to Japan and was soooo disappointed with with Japanese skills! Japanese is really hard! But I have not given up yet!
Paulo Abreu I had a similar experience! I have studied Japanese for 4 years so far and thought I could hold a basic conversation. Then I went to Japan and was shocked by how little I could actually speak. I felt like a toddler stumbling over their words. Although the more time I spent immersed in the language the more my skills developed
Paulo Abreu Dont give up guys. I am brazillian currently living in Japan. It really is hard, but try to learn kanjis too. Things will make more sense for you.
I'm Swiss, coming from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland 🇨🇭(here we have four national languages, German, French, Italian and Raetoromanish). As a minority language speaker in my country, in our educational system (which is different in every Canton) we learn French at the elementary school, in junior high we begin German (both compulsory) and English (which is optional). German and English are quite different from Italian, and German is really difficult to learn for native Italian speaker at the beginning. In high school, depending on the curriculum you choose, you can add Spanish to the previous four. At the end of high school an average student can reach a C1 level in each language. The problem is, in Switzerland German speaking people speak Swiss German, which is a totally different language from the one we learn at school. When I began University in a Swiss German city I had the same cultural clash you described, although I graduated from high school with top marks in German. I couldn't understand a word people on the street or in shops were saying. I've been living and working in the German speaking part of Switzerland for 6 years now, I understand everything in Swiss German now, but I still can't speak it, aside from some short phrases. Now I'm about to begin a Japanese course. The secret of language learning is just one: practicing, in every possible way. Imho, everyone should find his/her learning channel. For me, it's reading and watching tv. Just keep it up!
I understand your pain!! I’m a native English speaking person, however ethnic wise, I’m Hispanic. For one reason or another, my parents didn’t raise me on Spanish. I took 4 years (against my will) of Spanish classes in school and didn’t retain anything. And even now when I try, I get frustrated and embarrassed, so I give up. But it’s nice to see that I’m not the only one and you’re trying to overcome your obstacles!
I've spent 5 years in an Arab country and I *still* can't follow my fluent 4 year old. The points you made about your family really hit home. Everyone thinks I have automatic immersion on the daily because of my native-speaking children and husband, but at the end of the day they want to speak English and I want an easy conversation.
I can relate to this too! My goodness it’s just so easy to speak in a broken hybrid of the two languages rather than speak in one or the other. Immersion is a hard boiler test. But you can do it. I think the key here is to find a good language friend who is native speaking and isn’t related to you. You want them to correct you but in a loving way so that you won’t get away with bad habits. You also don’t want it to be a person related to you so that familial relationships can be kept and maintained. I also like that it forces you outside of your house. Most importantly keep at it. Consistently immersing yourself will yield the highest and best outcome.
I see it's really your mindset that is killing your motivation in learning Japanese. You keep bringing up the articles and facts how hard it is to learn Japanese. That causes your mind to go, 'uh-oh, I don't wanna learn it at all.' Additionally, you are trying too hard and pushing yourself too hard in mastering Japanese. More you push, more your mind resists. Let go of that!
Nelson White There is excuses and there are priorities, if you have attempted to learn the language on the side while having to deal with a full time job or another full time education as well as a family you would be able to relate. I certainly do, only having about a couple of hours free in weekdays to do something else than obligations, often times i can't prioritize Japanese. So i see where he is coming from.
He said in the video that he stays at home all day long while his wife works. He could just set aside an hour for Japanese language study. It's matter of scheduling the activities and sticking with them. It seems to me that he doesn't have a good structure and discipline to follow through. Just sayin'...
^^^^ no hate on the guy but these are all just excuse as to why he doesn't want to learn Japanese. For someone _living in Japan for over 5 years,_ he needs to get more motivated to actually learn. Especially when he even said that he sounds like a "impolite, disrespectful, and egotistical child"
Good video ! I lived in Japan for 2 years, and almost completely failed at learning Japanese. So Sad. In retrospect I think I went about it all wrong. I think language learning is a tricky thing and needs a lot of effort once you are an adult, and also each person learns things slightly differently. It's my personal view that "book learning" should only be one facet, also 1 hour a day is probably not enough. (Of course people are busy so they sometimes can't allocate too much time to study). I recommend learners in Japan start by getting a basic textbook for starters such as Genki and working through it to get a handle on the basic grammar. But then spend as much time as possible trying to communicate with Japanese and make flashcards for words that you don't know. There are some vocab lists based on frequency as well, so I would focus on memorizing the most common words.
This video is really curious and makes me thoughtful. I’m Japanese and studying English, the more study English the more realize that leaning Japanese is much harder than learning English. Because grammar of English is relatively simple than Japanese I think. Not only reading or writing Kanji but also that Japanese has many way of expression lines and often we skip the subjective word like “I” in casual talk. It maybe really complicated for non Japanese. English is basically systematic language, but Japanese is sometimes chaos and too flexible even for me. I even cannot correctly 100% explain how different between sonkeigo and kenjougo in detail. Yes, don’t be too hard, go easy and take long time like the marathon.
Learning Japanese is like lifting weights: It’s a slow grind to progress to the top and as soon as you let go for a moment, you lose most or all of your progress. The only good thing is that it is much easier to pick it up again in the next round. But essentially you have to keep at it all the time and accept that all your success is fleeting and will be gone once you leave the country and don’t use it anymore. But it is extra rewarding once you are actually able to use, the same as showing off your muscles at the beach after lifting all those weights. Keep at it, because it’s true what he said in the video: Japanese is like an Ultra Marathon.
4:59-5:15 is just great evidence that Greg is so humorous...so underplayed!! @Greg, actually, your humor is the quality that I find most entertaining and seems left out of or dialed down from even your more recent 'documemtaries'!!!! Your humorous foreign perspective of your environment is a craved and enjoyable ingredient!!
@@fuji3d_studio upper case and lower case isn't a problem. Cursive and print is way harder though. If you can't imagine how hard that should be to someone who never learned the Latin alphabet, try learning the Cyrillic alphabet (should be pretty easy), then try to learn cursive Cyrillic.
@@username-yn5yo Looks like a fun game. When hiragana looks like this かきにへもや and katakana looks like this カキニヘモヤ it is not exactly hard. But a A b B d D e E g G h H m M q Q r R.
8:46 Im a computer science major, HTML is not a programming language like javascript for example. javascript has logic and you can store variables, loops and math ect, i guess this is like grammar and vocab, but like HTML, japanese characters are only for Displaying information not creating information, thats what grammar and vocab are for. HTML is very easy to learn, just like being able to read hiragana and katakana is also easy to learn (compared to Japanese as a whole language)
He’s not Mexican but many people think he is. He did a video on his background and its Chinese, Portuguese, Scottish and a few others. Also he’s from Canada.
It's all about how much you dedicate your time to practice something. Leaning language isn't about how much time you spend on. It's all about technique and one language only everyday, except e emergency. Discipline and out of comfort zone.
What a inspiring video for language learning. The best way to learn a language I found is to immerse yourself into that language environment as much as possible. Contrary to your feeling, I feel it's much easier to learn the kanji and hiragana than katagana probably because I am a native Chinese speaker. I do find there are more similarities than differencez when you compare Chinese-Japanese to English-Japanese. Even though jp grammar is also totally different from Chinese, I felt it's quite natural after watching so many Japanese anime programs and dramas.
ちょっと待って🤔 ...failing is a form of learning ... Just fail your way to the top This was an awesome, awesome video. Do a series of these ... We want to see your progress. お願い🙏。
Saganator cx You were close though. Chiyotsuto would be ちよつと. But OP wrote ちょっと. Notice how the yo and the tsu are slightly smaller than usual. This causes them to be pronounced differently too. The yo "melts" with the previous syllable, whilte the tsu "melts" with the next syllable and starts sounding like a stopgap.
Now I get why you struggle even being married to a japanese person. I guess you struggle because you don't need japanese on your daily life, other than the basics... so it's not a priority. I think this is the reason why you are taking things slowly... In your situation I think it is the right thing to do. The predisposition in learning languages is also a big factor. If you are not good at learning any laguage, you will struggle more, it's a fact. In your case, your japanese need regards to common daily things, so the effort you put into learning is obviously not the same that if you worked in a japanese company or if you wanted to write a book. I believe that if you had no choice but learning japanese to live your life there you would manage to learn faster, but since you had the choice there was no urgency in doing so. Nice video as usual. Now i'm expecting to watch the "no shoes in the house" video ;-)
I'm a complete beginner, thanks for this! After really enjoying my encounter with hiragana for the first weeks, katakana seems like an absolute grinding chore for some reason! Btw I love all of these videos, especially the travel ones and the street level journeys, just captivating.
People who haven't learned a 2nd language or learned a European language dramatically underestimate how difficult it is and a lot of people who study Japanese in a classroom outside of Japan dramatically overestimate how good they are because they are in a textbook Japanese bubble.
Having been in Japanese train for 5 years (3 of which in Japan itself) with N2 slowly coming into view... yes for sure. Maybe I’m overestimating my own abilities, but I’m pretty sure I could pick up Spanish in a year of serious study.
nihonkokusai I do live in Japan :p Although I find most Japanese classes by Japanese natives to be... pretty bad. Most teachers I’ve studied under basically just read from a book or try to prep you for really niche business scenarios. I’m sure that’s great for some but I use my Japanese mostly for academic level history so it’s pretty useless to me. Hands down though, yes, the best way to learn is to just go interact with people who are native speakers
it certainly depends own the aptitude of the learner, i picked up taiwanese accented mandarin in a little under a year but I think japanese is really much harder lol
Fr, I’ve been studying Japanese at school since I was 11 (year 7 UK) now almost 19, meant to have done my exams this summer but now they’re cancelled. I am not that near to being fluent in Japanese... A levels have had a bit more content in them but despite having met a few Japanese tourists through websites and Japanese family friends, It’s safe to say I cant speak proper Japanese. I’ve learnt 300 kanji, maybe a third of which I can’t write on command. Hiragana and katakana were v ez done and dusted from the first two years of secondary but it all feels like a waste now, all these years. Im thinking of doing a year abroad for uni to go Japan and just survive off the language to learn it!
My own trick: Learn Chinese first, then learn Japanese (or in your case, Kanji) -> 1000x times easier, plus an extra languages learnt :) Just kidding, that's why most people whose Chinese is first language master Japanese faster than Westerners. But as a person who has learned Chinese characters I found out that, to memorize the characters you have to practice reading and writing them a lot and you have to increase your exposure to them as much as possible. E.g. when I was learning vocabulary about fruits, I wrote all the fruit words on a piece of paper and inserted them under the glass layer of my table, which I sit everyday. This forced me to look at those words day by day until they got stuck in my mind, I'd change to a new set of vocab :) When I have some free time, I'd write down Chinese characters randomly (e.g. my name in Chinese, the names of my favorite Chinese actresses and dramas/movies, or even the list of all PRC municipalities and provinces). Sometimes I searched the lyrics of my favorite Chinese song or favorite movie quotes and wrote them down several times. These methods helped improve not only my vocab and character memorization but also my handwriting quality :) Watch Japanese TV shows, first with English subtitles then gradually skip it. You may not get the meaning at first, but your eyes and ears will gradually get used to looking at Kanji and its pronunciation in different cases. This will be beneficial for later comprehension :) Hope these tips help and good luck in mastering Kanji!
As a Chinese myself. Japanese is only advantageous when it comes to the meaning of Kanji, strictly because of the probability of educated guesses. However, not even the simple ones could be guessed correctly. Simply put, those who didn't learn any Japanese often would had no idea if Kanji was not included in a sentence. Also some of the Kanji were invented by Japanese that simply did not existed in Chinese. So, native Chinese speakers learning Japanese have a 'slight' head start over others. However, just not as much as you will think.
If you learn traditional Chinese then maybe it will help, but if you are learning the simplified characters, good luck. You may as well start from the beginning.
This discouraged me more lol I tried learning Japanese and got daily migraines, still can’t speak more than a few words that I only remember thanks to anime lmao but to see korean on the “very hard” learning list (and I see that often) baffles me. I guess everyone is different, because I found korean EXTREMELY easy (once you learn the letters and sounds/Hangul) everything else just falls into place.
After Chinese I feel any language is possible! Chinese the tones took me years to master, but it's like a puzzle it all comes together! Started Japanese and the speaking is easy, but the writing is hard! Like Chinese!
Maybe do a month where you can only communicate with your wife and kids in Japanese? Probably won’t level you up to fluent, but I’m sure it would progress you leaps and bounds in a way shorter time span. At least when it comes to verbal proficiency and confidence :) informative video though!
So enjoy your VLOGS. You were one of the first channels I found on RUclips. Still here. Thanks for the interesting education from where you are. The beautiful Japan backdrop and your humor makes me feel like learning isn’t so bad. I will keep Watching in Texas.
Think of how a child learns a language - whether their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. They're not looking at it as this massive problem to solve. If they did, they'd be bawling their eyes out, all day long! No, they absorb a language in little nibbles, in just the way they meet any new situation: like play. An idea : Turn on talk radio or TV, and listen for words & phrases you've already heard. Repeat them the way they're pronounced. Take note of your favourites, and repeat them later in the day. Next time you hear them, notice how the speaker connects them to other words. At first it's just sounds; but gradually you figure out some meaning, thru context. This is a great game! There are no rules, and no tests. It's just a way of expressing your interest in the language. You'd be amazed what happens when you let go of the idea of it being a massive, overwhelming challenge ahead of you. Steady, relaxed interest is key.
4 года назад+1
Sure but a slow one at that. As long as you are consistent and study efficiently that’s enough.
Coz they are forced to learn the language otherwise they will be isolated from family or drop out of school. But as a second language speaker, usually she doesn't have to make a choice like that. She can always find a group that speaks a language that she's familiar with. And she will have a hard time to find someone who will talk to her in a new language in all situations.
We adults can turn any opportunity-for-growth into a daunting burden. A big key to bypass that mindset is to take an interest in both the language, and its speakers. Language is about connecting humans; and there's joy in connecting with a group that you've never been connected to before. Allow yourself to get a kick out of building your new bridge, little piece by little piece. _Play_ with the pieces!
I recently started learning Japanese. I already dread cramming the Kanji. But after seeing this spreadsheet at 10:07 I dread it even more. I tried many apps and have to agree that you need to learn the "Alphabet" first before continuing to learn. I found apps like Rosetta Stone overwhelming: not only do you get plastered new words, there is also the new way of talking and writing. Way too much stuff to deal with as a beginner. I think hiragana wasn't so hard to learn. I mostly got this feat done within 3 weeks of work commute. The main key in my opinion is really wanting to learn the language. If you have no drive to learn the whole project will suffer badly.
It must be so frustrating trying to learn Japanese. Japanese, Chinese (mandarin) and Korean are all super interesting languages but I don’t think I’d have the patience to ever try and learn them, unless I really had to😣
There are some youtubers such as Venusangelic and “Taylor R” who seemed to learn Japanese very quickly, I’m wondering if they are just naturally “good” at languages or also struggled a lot. I know they also studied for hours and hours as well
Im learning korean the alphabet is easy,super easy but the language itself is complicated,you must be patient for that fyi,now im bcome to intermediate level
Leeda lee yes! I’ve heard that the Korean alphabet is pretty simple. I currently know English, Serbian and Spanish which are all to me pretty easy languages , I would like to learn more but I’m not sure what would be most helpful for me to learn
Kirsty Hill I’ve always thought that! That’s why I was surprised to see Korean as a category 4 language I always thought it was supposedly one of the easier Asian languages
my grandfather was stationed in japan after ww2 so there has always been a few Japanese words floating around my house when i was a kid, i can't talk in sentences but I've been able to say "thank you, water and hello" ,just simple stuff, in Japanese since I was tiny
So glad I watched this. The very first thing that I have started to do is read Hiragana (following Tofugu.com guide of learning japanese) and one of the worksheets that they provide for when you think you have it down is to change sentences of Hiragana into Romaji and read the characters out and then try to read the words out. The problem is that because I don't know vocabulary I don't see words, and so I can't tell where one word begins and another ends, so I was unable to really read them. Its nice to see that its not just me struggling with that. Fear of failing making you fail is a real thing :(
Nada Majdy I did a little bit of Arab and I don’t think it’s too difficult.Only thing that I found slightly confusing is how some letters look almost completely different depending on where they stand in the sentence.
MCShvabo If you think that's difficult, then you really have no idea how difficult Arabic is. It is easy to misjudge the difficulty of a language if you don't know it.
As someone who has stuggled learning Japanese for about 4-5 years now, I can easily relate to what you're saying. One thing I think is really important for people - and that's to work on multiple methods of learning the language. What I mean by that is don't just learn from a text book. Don't just learn from an anime. Don't just learn from a manga. The key to really learning is to have many different types of input, and force different ways of interacting with the language. Do some reading, some speaking (even if it's mirroing what others are saying), some listening (anime/dramas/etc), some writing (lang-8, write it out manually, etc). What my single largest mistake in the past has been was focusing too heavily in one area. I spent most of my time learning Kanji and words. Not full sentences, grammar, and so on. Because of that, my knowledge was more or less all over the place (according to my teacher). My vocabulary is great, over 10k words - my individual kanji knowledge is also quite good. But, even to this day, I have a hard time putting it all together to actually *say* what I want to say. Many times I'll have to stop, and type it out. My listening comprehension is also really quite poor, for a similar reason. I also found it quite valuable to read simple sentences in Japanese, and mirror what's being written. So, taking a book like "Common Japanese Collocations" and physically saying the words can help. Anki also has some sentences that you fill in the blank, which also are helpful. The idea is not to learn in isolation (e.g. on a word level) and instead on a phrase level when possible. That way you're stringing sentences together to make something that sounds more natural.
pretty sound advice. couple things I would add: 1. get a japanese learning partner! (invaluable) 2. always have fun while learning - do not force anything - if you do not feel like doing a particular type of exercise, do something else instead. The more fun you have the better. 3. learn every day for at least 1 hour. 4. listen, read, listen, read, listen! Whenever you can listen to japanese audio that you can understand (80%+) , over and over and over again! I'm four months in, read harry potter (one paragraph at a time and have my tandem partner correct my pronunciation during our learning sessions!) and listen to the sections I already read (and translated - I also read the sections in the english original) every day (audiobook). It's fun, the narrator has a great voice and you learn a ton of useful words and expressions.
Props to you! I too am learning one of the hardest languages- Arabic! So i understand the amount of constant hard work it takes to be half decent! Great videos! Thanks for making them.
i agree, also everyone is hard on themselves for kanji but japanese children literally go through 6 years of vigorous kanji lessons. it's not like english where you learn the alphabet for a year annd off you go
Thanks for the encouragement 😅 I've spent a total of 29 days in Japan and have achieved the fluency of a explaining myself with the vocabulary of a polite 3 or 4-year old. I've had the most learning success by just speaking poor Japanese everywhere, as people avoid English-speakers. Online dictionaries fill the gap for words I haven't heard before. However I feel like I've hit a wall, where the only way forward is to read more than 40 kanji. I admire your persistence to reach 3rd grade kanji skills.
Thanks to our leaders, we Singaporeans grow up learning 2 languages. English as our first and a mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Indian language). Right now i’m on my 3rd which is Japanese and i am really excited to be learning Japanese. English and Chinese has been ranked one of those hardest languages to learn and i believe we can all pick up any language with consistency, resourcefulness and effort. (Don’t forget to have fun learning it!)
well its really not super difficult of a language the hardest part is the kind of backwards, relative to english, flow of grammar, knowing the function of particles, and remembering the many arbitrary forms of grammar ways of counting, levels of formality. Which sounds like a lot but after a year of doing japanese ive not found it super hard because i stopped trying to think in english then translate into what i want to say thats counter intuitive when your speaking japanese forget english (not at first but soonish) it makes it much easier
I think the problem with learning a new language is that there is a lot of focus on grammar and structure and not enough on speaking and understanding. When I started living in an English speaking country (it was my second language), my grammar was definitely better than at least 90% of the kids in my school but I would sometimes avoid speaking because I was always thinking "oh my god...is my grammar right?", or "did I say that right?". The more time I spent listening to people the more I realized that grammar doesn't really matter, and as soon as I let go of that type of mentality it was like a whole new world opened up and I just started speaking more. Problem is now my grammar is not as good but who cares, at least I can communicate with people. I think not being afraid of making mistakes when speaking to others is a really important tip and step to take in order to become better at a language.
Hey man, if you're still living life in Japan for that long without speaking the language, you must be doing something right. Love you're videos dude. Please keep em comin!
Apologies to Benny (Fluent in 3 months). I didn't set out to talk about him at all when I started the video. The intent was initially to commiserate in misery with other struggling language learners. I always get asked about my Japanese, so this was my attempt to answer that. Really, the whole video was just a bunch of excuses and complaints from me about my ineptitude and I totally understood that from the start.
For anyone, including Benny, I think it's commendable to try and learn something new. So my hat is truly off to you, I respect the effort. It's hard to fail but still continue on. And I'm not being sarcastic, I truly believe this.
Something that turned me around and motivated me to be more consistent in studying Japanese was when I found out it takes MANY, MANY hours of study to become basic, let alone proficient. My goal for the past few years has been to study 60 minutes a day. When I found out basic was estimated at 1,000 hours, I realized that of course I wasn't good, because I needed to put in more time. So instead of making me sad, it actually made me realize I have to look at this as a life long project and that I can't just hack my way to success. So that's how Benny came into the video, because I wanted to believe that I could spend 3 or 6 months, really studying hard, and then I'd be proficient at Japanese. But at least for me, this is not the case, and understanding the difficulty of the task at hand makes it easier to soldier on.
One of the big factors that prevented me (and prevents me) from learning Japanese is my fear of failure. It's just something I have in my mindset and the way I get past it is by dedicating myself to things. (Sidenote: there are some things I don't mind failing, so it's not like I'm dedicated to everything in my life). But one example of my dedication (fear of failure) is when I make videos. I really try to not get things wrong. I have to limit myself and say that there's only so much research I can do before I can move on and finish a video. I believe it's this attitude of wanting to get something right before showing people, that results in me being able to be half-decent at making videos. But for language learning, I think type of attitude is detrimental, so I have to consciously fight my natural urge to shut my mouth.
One thing I tried but didn't mention was to study full time in a Japanese language school for 2 months. I wanted to study longer, but I had to get back to life. I got marginally better, despite trying really hard, but the big success was that it let me overcome my fear of speaking Japanese in public. So now I can at least do that.
Pimsleur is helping me to speak, because it makes me repeat things over, and over, and over. Even if I forget in a week, I can listen to a lesson again and then it come back faster than when I first started out.
Something I'm also starting to do is work one-on-one with a tutor.
It's also been one of my goals to get a 1 day a week job in Japan, purely so that it forces me to speak Japanese. If I can find a job that is flexible in both my poor language ability and my main work schedule, I would totally do it.
Okay, I think that's all I had wanted to say in the video but forgot to. The video was originally 25 minutes long before I cut a ton out and then added a little bit of new stuff in.
Thanks everyone!
Life Where I'm From How dumb are you. Seriously...? You lived their for 5 YEARS LMFAO
It's difficult to learn any new language. And from your description, this one seems harder than most. I wish that I knew it now. I imagine that the literature must be very rich, with all the different words/forms of the words that there are.
Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you a bit. You're putting forth the effort. A friend of mine who is bilingual (English/Spanish) told me that you really have broken through when you start to think in that other language. I don't practice my Spanish like I should. I understand it, but rarely speak it. But years ago I was in a situation where I was roommates with a girl who spoke no English. I was forced to speak it and translate all the time, with all our friends. I did eventually start to think in Spanish, at least somewhat.
Hang in there!
Hey Greg, I'm glad to see you wanting to taking the initiative to start learning. I'm also currently learning Japanese, and eventually would like to visit the country someday and experience life there. I think It's important to make goals about how you're approaching this. Do you really want to become fluent in all of Japanese that will allow you to connect with others in Japan? It sounds like you already know enough Japanese to navigate yourself in the city, but not enough to get to know the locals there.
It's important to set realistic goals on how much time you're willing to make to reach your goal.
I think it's also important to practice and use Japanese everyday for at least an hour. You have to keep learning new words and keep it up and do your reviews. Yes, this requires discipline on your part. Build it up slowly to avoid burnout, and keep improving everyday even if it's a little. Never settle.
A tip: instead of hearing the translation in English, and speak it in Japanese, swap them and start with Japanese hearing first, and then ask yourself, do understand what they're saying? If so, try and answer it only in Japanese, if you don't understand it, then play it out it English so it helps you.
The goal is to "think" in Japanese, not use English before translating it to Japanese since it defeats the purpose of "thinking" in Japanese when you're speaking. Native Japanese wouldn't think in any other language besides Japanese when they speak. You want to rely on your "Japanese" only, and only use "English" if you don't understand what it means.
And of course a more practical method as some have suggested in the comments, is just, go out and have conversations with other Japanese as much as you can. It forces you to get out of your comfort zone. Get yourself acquainted with other people, I'm sure you have friends in Japan who can help you have conversations in Japanese and can teach you more if you ask.
You live in Japan, you naturally, already have access to use the language you're trying to learn, so use that to your advantage. Don't be afraid to fail. It's okay to make mistakes, no matter how big it may seem. It may help you to learn better. Hope this helps.
Lih, L
*there
If you're going to insult someone, you can at least use the proper word.
maybe it's the way you master the language. Mastering a language through listening and learning a song works for me :-)
it works the other way around too. English is difficult for Japanese people. Sure, English doesn't have kanji but it's still difficult.
As I'm helping my language exchange partner with English, I'm realizing a little of all the crazy things we do - so much slang, and random things things like how say 'gonna' for 'going to'..not to mention how horrific spelling is..
It's generally difficult to learn a language from a complete different language-family. A Russian-German speaking here;-)
Jeanie Conner & That Japanese Man Yuta
The spelling is hard, even for someone that have been speaking English pretty much every day from the age of 8 to 28. I still do make mistakes when it comes to double consonants, silent letters and the likes. when i am on a computer it is pretty easy to find the mistake due to spellchecking etc, but whenever i have to write something without a spellcheck i often get confused when i write a word that just doesn't look right to me like "Rhythm", it always look wrong to me due to the amount of consonants in there.
So yeah, i can see how it is hard to learn the language as well as teach it to a Japanese person.
English is way harder 😅
Ziirf oh yeah definitely what is up with those silent letters thing??
I wish I had seen this when you made it. I'll give you some hints (10 years of mistakes for me, not just 5 years!) First, throw away the text books. Pimsleur is useful when you are first getting started, but as you say, it's an ultra marathon. The entire Pimsleur series is the first kilometer ;-)
You fear of speaking is normal and natural. This is the most important thing to understand. Let me rewind a bit. People think that children learn languages faster than adults. This is not necessarily true, but let's take the case of the average child. As you say, a 5 year old child knows about 5,000 word families (not just words -- word families: the base word plus all its conjugation and various forms. So "polite" and "impolite" are part of the same word family). The progression goes like this: 1 year old - about 500 words. 2 year old - about 1,000 words. 3 year old - about 2,000 words. Then the child goes through a kind of breakthrough and learns the next 3,000 words over 2 years. From there, a child learns 1,000 words every year until they are about 20. That's 20,000 words for a relatively uneducated adult. If you go to University, you tend to pick up another 10,000 words and people with technical jobs tend to wind up with 40-60,000 word vocabularies.
Children go through a period called the "closed period" when they have between 1,000 and 2,000 words of vocabulary. In the closed period, they do not speak. Before the closed period, you tend to have babbling and after the closed period you have a typical toddler that's using the language a lot, but incredibly badly. *Learners of second languages also have a closed period!* This is where you have not acquired enough language to spontaneously use it and so you do not speak. Because second language learners tend to study grammar rules and vocabulary alone (instead of language in context), their closed period often lasts a lot longer, but it is completely natural and you should not worry if you are in that period.
The next thing I should point out is that the word "fluent" is not a good descriptor of language ability. In fact there are 2 concepts: fluency and proficiency. Fluency is the ability to use and understand language without undue effort. In other words, if you hear language that you have acquired, you will immediately understand it without having to think about it. If you wish to say something that uses language that you have acquired, it comes out of your mouth without you having to formulate how you want to say it. You can be fluent in about 5 minutes if you want: ありがとう means "thank you". Practice it for a bit. There: you are fluent in Japanese! The other concept is called proficiency and it describes the breadth of situations in which you can understand and use the language. In my fluency example, you may be perfectly fluent in Japanese with "thank you", but that is a tiny amount of proficiency.
In a paragraph all by itself for a reason: Language learners often study proficiency without studying fluency. This is why they suck at fluency.
As you pointed out, people have completely unrealistic views of proficiency as well. The JLPT syllabus contains ~700 words for N5, ~1,500 for N4, ~3,000 for N3, ~5,000 for N2 and ~8,000 for N1. This corresponds to "baby", "1 year old", "3 year old", "5 year old" and "8 year old" at best. But in reality the JLPT vocabulary list contains a lot of stupid vocabulary about unemployement, etc, etc. If you look at the entire N1 list, you will see that it contains a large percentage of words that no 8 year old would know. So what words are *missing* from that list that most 8 year olds know? As well, by age 5 the average child knows all non-literary/non-keigo grammar and yet the N1 list is *full* of non-literary grammar, while N5 contains keigo! How many 5 year olds know keigo????
This should give you a hint why you're getting stuck in the closed period. You are studying exactly the wrong thing. How *do* you study to improve fluency as well as proficiency? There is a super wonderful trick and you mentioned it briefly (possibly without realising it). You have one massive advantage over a child. You can read. This is the key.
I tend towards following the theories of Stephen Krashen (though I don't agree with him on everything). There are a few key concepts you need. First there is a difference between learning and acquisition. "Learning" means to be able to remember something. "Acquisition" means to have an association in your head so that the thing you want pops into it without mental gymnastics. It is similar to the concept of "fluency". Learning *may* lead to acquisition, but it is not the direct way that you acquire language. Language acquisition occurs from repeated "comprehensible input". In other words, if you repeatedly get natural language input where you understand what it means (it doesn't matter how you know what it means), eventually you will set up associations which will lead you to acquire that language. You will then become "fluent" with that bit of the language.
It is important to understand that you need repeated exposure and you also need to be able to understand it. For example, listening to TV that you do not understand will *never* lead to acquisition of the language (after 5 years in Japan, I'm sure you are quite aware of this). However, your wife telling you to hand her the daikon over and over and over again will eventually lead you to understand and use the same language form because you can see from context what it means.
Learning vocabulary and grammar outside of context *can* eventually lead to acquisition as long as you are repeatedly exposed to that vocabulary and grammar in comprehensible situations. It is not necessary, but it can speed up the process. As I said, it doesn't matter *how* you come to comprehending the language, the important part is that you comprehend it. Learning rote material gives you a kind of super fast dictionary where you can look stuff up when you encounter it -- thereby making the input comprehensible.
Again in a paragraph by itself for a reason: However, learning vocabulary and grammar without repeatedly exposing yourself to situations where you see that vocabulary and grammar will *not* lead to acquisition. You just have a super fast dictionary, not a machine that understands the language. This is incredibly important to understand. Memorization is a tool, not a goal!
One of the biggest problems with acquiring a language (as you have found out) is a lack of comprehensible input. Your kids either natter on with their friends in ways you can't understand or speak English to you. You don't speak Japanese to your wife because her English is a million times better than your Japanese and it is really very inconvenient for both of you to use Japanese. You don't need Japanese in your job. Etc, etc, etc.
Enter books. A book is a stream of natural language. You can make this language comprehensible by memorizing the vocabulary and grammar contained in the language. By reading the book (and books like it), you acquire the language in the book.
That's it. It's called "Free Reading" and it is by far the most powerful way to learn a language (lots and lots of scholarly papers on the topic -- a shame that language teachers don't read scholarly papers... BTW all the information in this post is from language acquisition research done by real professors at real universities).
Since I'm over typing here by a lot, here is a quick overview of how I "study". Find a book. Level appropriate books are best. Manga is awesome for conversational Japanese and I recommend them, but 昔話 picture books are fun too. As your level increases, get short novels aimed at elementary kids (I read the 小学生は女将さん series). Then light novels and finally literature. Save newspapers for later.
Skim from where you are reading to find about 20 words that are unfamiliar to you. Enter them into an SRS system like Anki. Do an initial memorization. The SRS is important because you don't want to forget the words as you encounter them later on in the book(s), but at the beginning, you only need to memorize the translation. Once you have memorized those words, read the section of text again. For any sentences where you can't understand the meaning, stick it into google translate (it is quite good these days). Find a natural way to say the English and add it to a different deck on your SRS system. This is how you will memorize grammar. *Always* quiz from English to Japanese, *never* the other way around (it is important for technical reasons which I don't have time to type). Rinse and repeat every day.
Hope that helps! Oh and for pronunciation practice and mechanical fluency -- Karaoke. At least once a week ;-)
Thanks a lot for your comment, I saved the video only to be able to read this paper again. Deserves a thousand likes, I hope it will help me in my japanese learning beginning (today).
omg, that's long man, thanks
With so much GRATITUDE for your time and invaluable information. I just started my journey in the Japanese Learning process and I totally understand your point in being freely exposed to the language as much as possible. I already speak and read a second language which gives me the advantage to know the best approach, that works for me, to the acquisition of new material. I absolute Love the simplicity and yet complexity of the Japanese language and I am confident that through the long path ahead of me, I have some tested tools that will make the journey not only easier but fun as well. Your post helped me put a lot of things into new perspective and for that I am forever grateful. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Superb elucidation, many thanks.
Thanks for the thorough and insightful comment. If you have this written elsewhere, I'd appreciate a link because I prefer saving it to an entire video just to look at the comments section.
Don't feel bad. I'm half-Japanese and I have an American father, two American uncles, and two older brothers who are fluent in Japanese. Then there's me. I failed first year Japanese twice in college. I want so badly to learn my mother's native tongue and to be able to communicate with her family when I get to visit them, but it is such a major struggle. I wish my parents had raised us bilingual like you're doing with your kids. You're doing great. Thanks for the resources!
In India the way we become trilinguals or even more is that we speak our mother tongue at our homes with our relatives and families and we speak in the state language with friends or with people we don't know. And as for English we start learning when we are around 3 or 4 years old all the way till we're 18. People with more multicultural backgrounds speak 4 or more languages and understand even more than those
Honestly same, I wish my parents had spoken their language to me instead of English. I rlly wanna learn it but they refuse to help me smh
well I was a bilingual when I was younger but my dum 5 year old self decided native language is useless as everyone speaks English and now I can only speak it likely tho I understand like 70% of my native language and im now relearning it
@@asit6947 true. in india every kid speaks mother tounge/families language, then the state of residence say states language, then hindi and english as medium of school or govt work. our central government works entirely in english and hindu. the local state government works in regional language. So an average indian speaks atleast 2 to 4 languages. except english all other language are related to each other in words, sanskrit language and the writing-scripts which all are derived from ancient brahmi.
Hmm interesting. I was raised bilingual but I don't supposed that it's easy with all languages. I was raised to speak French and English and completely forgot Spanish (as I was born in Spain but not raised in Spanish). My brother had a hard time speaking and doctors thought he might have been austitic. Between French and English the difference in grammar and vocabulary is not that different like between Japenese and English. I think that maintaining two so very langauges in a Context taht perhaps doesnt encourage it would be extremely difficult.
Like speaking English and French in Montreal or English in Spanish in South Florida or Hindi and English in India wouldn't be so hard as most people speak both and often times intermix the languages. Even then I find that many don't hold perfect fluency in both, I found many French-Canadians with Terrible english or vice versa with terrible French (with regards to mainland French standards). Same can be said with Indians, I have international students from India or Sri Lanka with questionable English, sometimes it's really bad.
You shouldn't be hard on yourself. It's completely on your parents, same as my Spanish which vanished into thin air because my Parents couldn't be bothered to hire a tutor for me when I was young, your parents didn't push you to speak Japenese. Fortunately though my mom did give me plenty of opportunites to learn English, at home we spoke English and every Summer I would join my American cousins which I accredit to me being able to speak english natively. Again, Japenese is much much harder to learn than English and so I don't know whether this would suffice to learn it.
5:06
"Excuse me, do you only speak Japanese?"
"We're Chinese." -but answers in Japanese
Straight out of a comedy film, lol
ahahaha I laaughed so much with that part
Usara how do people speak in Japanese? Is it a mix kanji katakana and hiragana?
@@Charlie-hv3dh Kanji, Katakana and Hiragana are writing systems similar to alphabets rather than for speaking. For speaking they have informal, formal and the 3 Keigo.
@@Charlie-hv3dh That's the writing system. Hiragana is like the alphabet, katakana is like italics, and kanji is like pictures. You can't always tell how it would be written just from what it sounds like, and vice-versa. In writing, yes, it's usually a mix of all three.
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice katakana is not like Italics, that's what people who only know the very basics say.
"Can't read this magazine, everything's so blurry!" I almost died after hearing you say that
That was well done.
I learned enough Japanese to get a job translating full time in a Japanese company in Japan. My main motivation was survival. I was tossed into Japan a couple years back due to my family situation and needed to learn enough Japanese to get a part time job, pay for Japanese school, and eventually get a full time job in Japan. Needless to say, I learned fast. Also helped that I was living in the countryside! Only spoke English at home.
how was your life at japan?im also willing to go there for studies and work
Sorry that I'm not replying individually to all the comments and am simply leaving this top level stuff. I just only have so much time today to reply (and I do like to read all the comments). I don't know if this matters any, but I used to be completely fluent in French. All my schooling from K-12 was in a French Immersion program. It's been a couple decades now though, and while I can understand news anchors and written French, I can hardly speak a sentence without my brain injecting Japanese words into it! Since I had studied french for most of my childhood, I wonder if I moved to France (or Quebec) how long it'd take me to feel comfortable speaking naturally again.
Tabernac!
It wouldn't take long. I can speak from experience. I lived in Switzerland for a school year (French part) and spoke French there, but I didn't use French much at all until I lived in Quebec City for 4 months, 7 years later. I'd say it only took a couple of month before I got to the level I felt I had in Switzerland.
I have sort of kept up the language by going to Haiti once a year. But living in an area where you're forced to use the language with the locals (immersion) makes all the difference, IMHO
Je suis surpris d'apprendre que tu as déjà parlé français :O
dansk
Studies say pretty quickly. It happens a lot in dual lingual households, where a kid can still understand the language, but forgets to speak it, but if they travel abroad where they are forced to speak it, it comes back in a couple of weeks.
The fear of the doulingo bird keeps me on track
I love that little bird!
He still hasn't taken my siblings... I'm disappointed
@@Cheezybrie I joined Duolingo in hopes that Duo would "take care" of my siblings for me
Same. 😂😂
@@FrkyFerret yeah I loved him too until I missed a day of Spanish and he showed up in my bedroom in the middle of the night holding a knife.
This was a fun watch, great breakdown and love the humor!
my man.
yooo, i was about to comment that he should connect with you man! You said it took you like 2 years to be proficient in japanese. Please share more of your tips and knowledge
Englsih = 360 hrs
Japanese =1000 hrs
Piano = “lEarn till u Die”
I know ur pain bruh
Vera Love I felt that skskgxnmi
Violin requires you to practice for 48 hours a day! :(
@@faping9217 only if youre ling ling
_cries in Piano and violin_
My brother past the JLPT1 test. His path was 4 years Japanese major at UH Manoa, which included one year study abroad at Hiroshima University. He said his Japanese speaking and reading took a giant leap when he was in the study abroad program. All the lessons were in Japanese. He came home to Hawaii to finish his degree, then went back to Japan via Jet program. He maxed out his 5 years in Jet, then worked at a Japanese Translation company for a year and a half (where every horror story of being a Japanese salary man came true), quit the job and because he made such a good impression with the local BOE, they created a position for him to work as a direct hire. He has now lived in Japan for 11 years. He is perfectly fluent In Japanese. But now that he spends a lot of time with English speakers, and has not written Japanese other than for forms and such, he said that he probably wouldn’t pass that JLPT1 again. My brother knows how to get around Japan even better than locals. He knows how to catch a train anywhere. He showed me around in Tokyo, Yokohama, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Himeji, Hiroshima, Fukuoka. He even drives. He drives to his rural schools in his home town. He drove to me to Onomichi. He recently bragged about a road trip he drove last year in Shikoku with a Singaporean girl he was dating at the time. Ask how many Japanese people in Tokyo that have been to Shikoku, much less drove there.
For me, I have been to Japan 3 times and I hope visit there many more times in the future. When I was there, I felt I was relying on my brother too much. I wanted to be able to be more self reliant. I currently use wanikani. My Kanji reading has gotten a lot better. I can read and understand most of what is written on NHK news easy. However I do things a bit differently. Wanikani starts off really slow, it can be annoyingly slow. However if you stick with it and get to level 6 or 7 it gets more and more intense where you cans have hundreds of reviews in a single day. I don’t complete all the lessons. They kind of back log on me. I got a full time IT job, plus learning a new language is hard. I felt the pace of the later levels to be too overwhelming and I would get burned out. I try to complete 80 reviews a day. This has been the most effective for me. It’s about 1 hour for me to complete 80 review items. Note that each slide is not a review item. It’s a Kanji and it’s meaning and it’s phonetic sound in hiragana, plus wanikani throws in some examples on how to use the kanji in a sentence. The new lessons I try to do it in 15 lesson chunks, when I see the sentence examples I try to read them. Then I do some reviews after the lessons chunks. Once I am done with that I try to read all the latest NHK world Easy articles. You can turn off the furigana. Its just there to help pronounce the kanji which is useful if you know what the kanji means but not quite sure how to pronounce it.
As for Pimsleur. I have tried it years ago. I “acquired” it on the web. (Does not matter anymore as I have long since deleted it). I feel it’s just another foreign language parrot app. Basically it will teach you some phrases in Japanese. It’s current website says it can teach you any language in 30 days. I will tell you how and why they can say that when we all know that is 100% false. What Pimsleur really is doing is making you parrot commonly used phrases in the language you are learning. The course is basically cram studying all these foreign parrot phrases. If you cram enough, one could complete the course in 30 days. Then if you are a business man, you can impress you non foreign language speaking colleges with your “skills”. Just think about it. There are many western people who will say they “know” how to speak a language, but then you realize they only know a few phrases. That is what Pimsleur really is. It’s a human parrot game that costs too much. Reading the news on NHK World Easy is better for a beginner. However even if you can read that page. It does not mean you can read manga or watch anime with original Japanese voices with no subtitles (because the Japanese in those are less honorific or polite sounding, colder to real conversation). But it’s a lot better than parroting set phrases then when you want to do real conversations, you can’t.
I took Japanese for 3 years, and can talk to Japanese kids under 8 years old without any problems.
But what if you want to date someone your own age?
3 years is a long time tho
@@baronballenpap2335 Tag: loli
LOL all these replies! xD
DEAR SPONSORS, this is the kind of QUALITY youtuber you should sponsor. relevant and informative. unlike those lazy travel and food vloggers lazy attempt to incorporate the content of the sponsor into the video they're making.
Yup! One thing I always love about quality RUclipsrs is how they incorporate sponsors into their videos. Like Fourty2's content, he does lots of videos sort of explaining random facts in copious details, yet he always finds a way to incorporate his sponsors, the way he does it is almost like art!
Wasn’t this video for the sponsor...
Psh, a 1000 hours isn't so bad. It will only take you about 40 days to learn Japanese.....
If you study 24 hours a day.
omg I didn't realize it until now. LOL
or just a year on 2 hours a day!
But......the one and only skill that we can study it 24 hours a day is language skill....because you can use that language to communicate, you can watch or listen radio, TV, movie a whole day and when you sleep you can dream about talking in your target language
Just another way to put it, in the UK full-time school is 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 39 weeks a year. And that only adds up to 1,170 hours. You would have to do practically two FULL YEARS of full-time education to learn Japanese at a proficient level. This, of course, excludes study during your free time and homework. If you live in Japan itself, then even more of your free time would be spent learning Japanese, as it's all around you! Doesn't make it any easier though!
@@chvhndrtntlr3482 if you live in a country where it's the native language though, otherwise you have to actively learn it if you can't use it all day
I think the whole video is not an excuse but just for curious ppl to why japanese is so hard. Its very informative and give a logical insight to a language like a pat on the back to ppl who are trying to learn but are having struggles. E.g. me its nice to know someone else is having the same struggles and is giving a reason to why its hard and i wont give myself a hard time and just take a step back and having a different perspective
This doesnt mean i wont study as hard but ill work from a different perspective
This. It is pretty infuriating when people tells him that he is just making excuses though, since i am in pretty much the same situation, minus been living there for 5 years. Work, family and other duties and continues 1 step forward 2 back is making it a very slow grind to get where I want to be. I wish people weren't so quick to criticize this video as it feel so close to home.
5:06 - 5:16 Oh my, that's embarrassing. "We're Chinese..." LOL 🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I died!!!! ROFL
Hilarious innocence
I'm Asian and once, I was walking around at night in London with my headphones on when I heard someone yelling. I took my headphones off and looked around to see what was going on and there I saw a guy who kept yelling "konnichiwa" at me.
Me: I'm not Japanese.
Him: Oh, then where are you from?
Me: Venezuela. I speak Spanish. Bye. *Walks away*
@@JadeCaro you look like Chinese, that's he thought
3:55 When people give those 'Fluent in 3 months' or 'Fluent in 6 months' type vids/books, I'm skeptical. This video is a great example; it really depends on what you consider 'fluent' to be. If you mean lots of stuttering, a strong foreign accent, and broken Japanese; 3 months is beyond reasonable. The core Vocab and basic grammar doesn't take long at all. I'd say in 3 months you can learn the core; and in 2 years you learn all of the additional nuances; but I wouldn't consider you fluent until you know those nuances and have those production skills.
You are not alone. I am French and I’ve been living in Japan for 4 years. I work in a 100% Japanese company as a 職員, so I use Japanese the whole time. No English and no French at all. But since I arrived in Japan I simply gave up studying kanji. Even the most basic words I have to look them up in my phone. The only kanjis I master are those used by law in the emails. I am a disgrace, I know. Even some of my colleagues can’t read sometimes kanji, and they get bullied. Hahaha Good luck and thanks for the video!
LOOOL at the maid's "We're Chinese"
Deniera zonk
Clever
I am glad that you brought up this topic because the opposite is the case for Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. I am a Korean, and I speak Japanese well. I studied Japanese only for a year but I can communicate with Japanese people over any topic, can express my most complicated ideas in Japanese without much difficulty. If I use just short sentences, Japanese people even can't notice that I am not a Japanese. That's because Korean is very similar to Japanese. On the contrary, I spent enormous amounts of time to study English and I still suck at English, and so do most Asians.
Most Asians learn English as their first second language whereas most English speakers learn a European language, mostly Spanish and French, as their first second language. I think it gives to native English speakers a wrong conception of how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. Sometimes it really upsets me when a native English speaker says that he/she understands how difficult it is to learn a foreign language because he/she sill sucks at French! If I had been born in an anglophone country, and tried as hard as I tried to study English, I would have spoken at least three European languages. I know that because I tried German. I learned it much faster than English because German and English are so similar.
You say you suck at English? And that's how well you are able to communicate? Kudos to you.
My family moved to Denmark and before I was even 10 I picked up european 3 languages (Danish, German and English), without ever studying them first, so I get what you're saying.
I'm not saying I was good, but I could communicate at least.
Danish used to be my first language, but after moving to the UK, it was replaced by English
@@Heylow1 I think the factor of young age matters here. We tend to grasp launguages much faster then. Learning a language from scratch is harder when one is an adult unless they have a natural affinity toward picking up new launguages and dialects. So all in all, you do seem like someone who has knowledge of quite many languages, just not everybody does.
Do you guys have any advice to help me learn korean so I can communicate with my korean rugby teammate and to make him not feel like a burden to the team since we speak Pacific islander languages and English
@@mastergamer1838, if your only goal is to communicate during sports, I'd advice both you and him to look up phrases you might need during a match/practice and memorise those. If you're having full on strategy meetings, then it's probably a good idea to help him learn your country's language.
If your goal is to actually learn the language, that is a longterm endeavour and therefore requires quite a bit of motivation. If you feel you have that, I can tell what my routine for learning Japanese had been so far, which I now studied by myself for a year.
My approach is very casual just using my phone and honestly barely feels like work, as I spend very little time per study session, but because I do several sessions during my day, my actual study time adds up quite a bit.
I study for a minimum of 50 mins a day, that is 20 in the morning doing Rosetta stone, 20 before bed doing Duolingo and doing a minimum 10 mins of self created Anki flashcards based on what I what I learnt from the apps (using more than one learning source is always best, regardless of what you're studying). If I've just added new cards or struggling to remember some cards, I review them for 10 mins at a time, maybe 4 or 5 times, throughout the day.
My progress after a year now is I'd say upper basic. I can't understand a movie or anything like that yet (maybe in a year or two, at my pace), but I can understand and communicate basic info, that e.g. a tourist might want (directions, food, rooms, etc) and memorised some ~400 kanji.
Sounds a little disappointing after a year, I know, but Japanese is a language that I know I'll have regular exposure to, so I'm not rushing and planned a pace for myself that I knew I could easily follow.
Hope that helps you in some way
I honestly think everyone is being a bit harsh lol, learning a language is easier for some ppl and not for others. I mean like Greg said, he didn't even enjoy learning English when he could speak it naturally, so learning languages r just not his thing. Personally I've had to learn Arabic and even after 3 yrs of 4-5 hrs of learning a day, I can read and write it really well, just the speaking part is still difficult for me. So I think it depends on how much you enjoy it and how much time you give yourself to learn it. Don't worry Greg, you can do it! Thanks for sharing this with us, it really showed the struggles of learning a language in a different way than before.
I went to a small class taught by 2 native Japanese women in London (which I highly recommend if you're in the area, it's called ITO) for nearly 2 years before I moved and had to start learning on my own. I instantly suffered and eventually took a 'break' where I put my attention on other things. Its hard to learn a language when you arn't immersed in it, especially when you're doing it in isolation. This year I took my first trip to Japan and only had a dictionary with me to help fill in my gaps of knowledge. I didn't review the grammar or kanji I had learnt but as rusty as I was, forcing myself to communicate in Japanese with native speakers on my trip brought a lot more of my knowledge back than just reading it. I managed to explain about a ticket error, talk to an elderly man in a kaleidoscope museum about the collection and chat to a young man at the same place about the big typhoon that hit the Kansai region whilst he instructed me in how to make a kaleidoscope. I basically sounded like a child, my sentences were broken and I didn't know the words for some nouns or verbs but these people were patient, listened and helped me along. It really showed me the importance of language practice between people because in the end, thats what its for.
Well done bruh, that's quite a brave thing to do, throwing yourself out there like that.
That's exactly what it needs to be done when you're learning any new language. Great man!
Was it the kaleidoscope museum in Azabu Juuban ? I love that place
I married my Japanese wife 57 years ago, and I've spent 7 years in Japan at 4 different locations. Early on I tried to speak the language, but every time I would pronounce a word she would say I wasn't saying it correctly. I would pronounce the word three or four times with the same results. After years of this, off and on, I got mad and told her I would give anything to speak poor Japanese fluently. So I gave up trying, but in retrospect I realize it wasn't my pronunciation that bothered her. It was the fact that she didn't trust me around other Japanese women.
Jack Riley 😂😂😂😂😂😂
It killed me 😂😭
Dang! 😂
"we're chinese" xD
Nom futaba is best girl
?
Yay! :D
My boyfriend is half Filipino but has lived in England his whole life so only speaks english :)
PlayerPerPerson Personal Gaming Lmao u just had to ask for a sub.
Oh my... I stumbled upon this! I am learning Japanese here in Japan and I'm now on my second month. It. Is. Hard. I also had a rough time learning English as a second language but I am now near native speaker level when it comes to speaking and writing in English. Currently, I am attending a language school and we use the Minna No Nihongo book. Thanks for this!
10:09 The biggest why we keep using kanji is because Japanese have to many homonyms.
神（かみ/kami）: God, spirit.
髪（かみ/kami）: Hair.
紙（かみ/kami) ：Paper
If it were not for kanji, we couldn’t know whether one is cutting God or hair or paper.
Btw, after the end of the Pacific War, in 1948, John Campbell Pelzel from General Headquarters tried to get rid of Kanji(;Hiragana and Katakana too) and make Japanese use only the Roman letters as he thought Japanese writing system was too difficult to rise the literacy rate and this could cause the delay of democratization, however, a result of a nation wide survey showed that only 2.1 percent of Japanese people couldn’t read or write Kanji that John’s proposal was abandoned.
As a guy who's learned eight languages to varying degrees of proficiency and through a variety of methods, I can offer some advice and encouragement. So here it goes, in no particular order.
1. Make it fun. It sounds cheesy, but it's true. If learning feels like a chore, not only will you likely do less of it, but you won't be as focused, and won't get as much out of the time you do spend learning. So do things you enjoy, but do them in Japanese.
2. It's important to be active and not just passive, so you need to speak or write in Japanese. Better yet, get out there and interact with people in Japanese. It's ok to make mistakes as long as you're trying and you keep learning. It's scary, and I share your fear of failure, but who's judging you? What are the consequences if you mess up? Not much, right?
3. No one is "bad at languages". Traditional methods make it boring and inefficient, and boring. And also boring. Plus, there's pressure to have good grades and all that. My point is, a lot of people develop an unhealthy relationship to language learning. But think about it this way: if the dumbest people in Japan can learn it, so can you. You're smart.
4. It's not harder for adults. That's a myth. Kids are highly motivated because they've got no better way to communicate, and not much else to do. But your life experience gives you a big advantage over kids. When you learn "メロン" you already know what it looks like, tastes like, everything. Kids have to learn all of that at once.
I hope this helps! :)
It is scientifically proven that kids learn languages much easier than adults do! When we're young, we absorb language pretty quickly. As we age, it is much more difficult for our neurons to make brand new connections-- you should check out the science behind language learning in relation to age. (Not that I doubt that your experience with learning lots of languages makes you knowledgeable in practice.)
@@AJo-wd2ni I'd like to see this scientific proof you speak of, Abby, because I can't find any. And even if it were true, it wouldn't mean that adults should just roll over, which is really my main point. I'm trying to encourage Greg and anyone who happens upon my post. :)
It's easier the younger you are. It's super-easy when you're 3 or younger. I remember starting my first serious stint with Japanese at 17 or 18, and the ease at which my brain absorbed the language then is way different than now, me being in my early 30s. I'm still able to learn, and I'm very good at learning....but I find myself having to relearn more and more things that I JUST learned now, whereas I didn't used to have to do this....stuff doesn't stick as well as it used to, so it's slower going.
But yes, it is totally possible.
@@takigan I have different experiences about the learning speed. I started English at the age of 7, but I've picked up the most things at 17. My mum struggled with English around 20, but she easier picks it up over 40. I could barely proceed in Korean 3 years ago, but now, I've improved so much in only 3 weeks. I often find myself forgetting a word in Hungarian (my native language) or in English that I know in Korean. 😂😂
@@AJo-wd2ni I agree. I learned to speak, write, and read english very well in my childhood.
You should hook up with Rachel and jun there you tubers as well.
Give your self credit. Your working hard. Raising a family.
Give yourself a high five.
Randy Eldridge would be great to have a collab with Rachel and Jun
Yeah he could kinda of have a interview with Jun and Rachel! If English was hard for Jun and Japanese hard for Rachel
Yessss
Oh, God, please don't! I love LWIF!
Erin T Y
Bit rude. You know, just a little.
"do you speak japanese?"
"we're chinese"
".............."
I legit died of laughter at that part and its even funnier since she replied in Japanese.
that doesn't answer the question, unless you assume that no one from china can speak japanese.
Lmao 🤣
They look very much alike with Japanese
Sometimes Japanese language can get very difficult even native speakers like me.
You are doing great work!
I hope to learn it someday
I observed that non-English speakers learn Japanese faster than native English speakers. One of the reasons is that they have no choice but to learn Japanese because they cannot speak English well in the first place. As native English speakers, we have a disadvantage learning foreign languages because English has become a widely used language over the world. Many native English speakers give in to using English because they can resort to that option. That does not mean that we should give up. We should never give up! Mastering Japanese as native English speakers shows that our effort and resolve to learn Japanese can overcome the stigma, barriers and temptations. がんばって！！！
@Matthew Estevez I think the "In the first place" part was unintentional, lol. I think what the person was trying to say was that many Japanese will make attempts to speak English to foreigners and many English speakers just...go with that. No need to try so hard to learn Japanese if you live somewhere that has most of everything you need in English and the people go out of the way to speak your language.
I'm not saying it's right and I have no personal experience with this (never been to Japan). But I do remember Yuta from...oh god, I just saw his comment on this video and I can't remember it, lol. That Man Yuta, I think. Anyways, he did a video in Tokyo, I think, interviewing foreigners to test their Japanese. A lot admitted to not bothering too much with learning it because the availability of English made it pretty much unnecessary.
Coming from that mindset and then maybe moving to the countryside where you'd definitely need Japanese, learning the language would be very difficult.
I'm not a native English speaker, yet I speak it fluently. It is a thousand times easier for me to speak English in Japan than to learn Japanese.
My advantage however is that I am used to a different set of word- and grammar rules, which makes it easier for me to learn a new language with new sets of rules. Most native English speakers do not know a second language fluently, and therefore it is more difficult to learn a completely new language, especially Japanese as it's the most difficult language to learn for a native English speaker.
I'm fluent in English and Spanish (the latter being my mother-language) and I find my Spanish helpful for speaking Japanese since I already have their same sounds built in my head (if that makes sense¿) so I don't have problems with pronunciation (only a teeny bit with intonation) lol
I'm half Spanish and half Japanese, my dad is Japanese and is fluent in Spanish. I grew up in Spain so I'm now learning Japanese and yes the phonetics in Japanese are easier when you know Spanish. My dad always tells me Japanese and Spanish have very similar phonetics while the phonetics in English are super different so English speakers tend to have a pretty bad pronunciation while Spanish speakers have it down better. Same with Japanese people learning English or Spanish, they'll be much better at pronouncing Spanish than English.
SAME! I am talking to a Japanese guy (from Japan) and he thinks my Japanese pronunciation is cute. I agree Japanese is not as bad as Arabic which I am interested in as well, or Korean -- I lived and worked there. Japanese certainly has many similarities with how words are said and pronounced. I highly agree.
Camryn Wreanni my dad is Arabic and I only picked up a tiny amount of stuff even though he uses it around the house constantly since I was a baby. Good luck
@@oqeufh wow I am also half spanish and half japanese with a Japanese father. I've only known 1 other person who was the same. That's so cool!
the #1 thing you need to do: ignore the "Japanese is hard" nonsense. it's actually straightforward, grammatically. the hardest part, i think, is simply memorizing all those words. but the basic structure of the language isn't that hard; it's just different from English. so substitute "different" for "difficult", find someone to chat with (you have an advantage in that area), and look for ways to make Japanese part of your normal daily experience - not a chore or a burden.
I very much agree with this. A huge part of learning.... or really doing anything in life is your attitude towards it. If you've convinced yourself that it's impossible, you'll never succeed. It really is mind over matter
The way that Japanese people express thoughts is extremely different so if you just learn words and use grammar rules to make sentences translating from English in your head you won't sound natural and will often be misunderstood.
Agreed
It’s not hard, but it is quite time-consuming.
@@Reforming_LL if a language is time consuming that makes the language hard to learn.
I appreciate your honesty! 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 The key is to not be afraid 😱 of making public gaffes. 😉 I’ve been here in Japan for 36 years and I’m still learning the language. All things in time, my good man. Keep on keeping on. 😃😃😃 I love your channel! 😍
I agree 100% with that! Don't think you need to speak perfectly to talk to people, just do it and use your hands and feet and a big smile when you're not sure if what you're saying is right! I recommend trying to talk to someone whose second language is also Japanese and who *doesn't speak English*
That way you both are on a similar experience level and if you butcher a sentence, it's not too bad because your buddy does it, too :D I feel like talking to a native speaker in your target language is always a bit intimidating because you *know* they'll know when you make a mistake. When it's another learner, you both just laugh it off and perhaps remember that particular mistake, so you won't do it again.
All this year's and you didn't die yet , just kidding 😁
but who tells you that you were wrong? I'm afraid of making mistakes and don't even notice it if I only talk to other learners etc.
@Anna That can come later, honestly. Talking to other learnes is in the very first place good for gaining confidence to just speak, because you learn nothing if you just shy away from a conversation because you're afraid of making mistakes. Unless you're holding a public speech where you should talk fairly well, it doesn't matter at all if your grammar is all correct or not. Most people will not care at all about your mistakes, it matters that you are communicating with them, even if it is somehow limited. And by doing that, you're slowly improving, because you pick up how other people phrase things in conversations, and maybe some of that will stick with you.
Just be chill about it, as long as it's not a job interview or a professional presentation or something, no one requires you to speak perfectly.
Adel Ahmed why would he die ?
Learning how to read/write/pronounce hiragana & katakana on my own from the very beginning was the best start for myself. It set me up to know how to pronounce words and what to expect when talking, reading, and writing! Also, basic Japanese phrases are needed too! Great video man. Very informative. I’ve also always heard the Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers - but Japanese people are the BEST so it’s worth it.
The speaking only informal Japanese with your wife part is very relatable for me.
While it's fine to speak within my family, to colleagues or my boss, when it comes to my boss's boss or even customers, it can easily become pretty embarrassing.
Can you please tell me how you learned Kanji characters, and how to use and order the sentences ? I would really appreciate it.
Meanings w/ remembering the Kanji, after that by learning words.
Whenever I'm learning a grammar point I make sure to add a couple of sample sentences to Anki. This way I make sure I don't just repeat isolated words but have them in a context in which I can go on and use them.
Despite finding the right way or technique however, just like Greg said in his video, I think it's mostly about investing a lot of time and establishing a routine of daily learning.
Thank you very much : - ) i can assume that you can speak Japanese fluently right ?
@@hedgehogthesonic3181 absolutely not.
Ohhh well haha, i know it takes time, also... i have noticed that the japanese language says the things in other order, different from english, like he said in this video, that is something that i have to know before talking
Did you know what i mean ? and can you atleast speak Japanese, maybe not fluently but can you ?
For reading and writing kanji, i can recommend anki, the program is amazing, you can use it basically anywhere and you can edit it for anything you wan tto learn.
9:08 - it depends on age. Reason why your bike skills are still there because : 1. you learned it younger age, 2. you practiced a lot. There is a reason why older people have difficulties learning new languages, your brain has matured and any new information will take a lot more effort to be come permanent.
when i was 11 we moved to France from Canada. I thought I knew French, I did not.
Over the course of the year it became common place for me to listen enviously to toddlers speaking comprehensively to their parents..........i totally get this
Yoda speaks like Japanese grammar.
Tony Kondaks lmao
Best analogy, this is.
Because he is..
*lol* my son walked in on me at 'pizza like to have ?' & we just looked at each other, going "YODA !"
I know a little ASL (American Sign Language). People proficient with it tell me that the grammatical set-up is the same as well.
The guy who learned Japanese in 3 months makes me cringe.
his pronunciation is terrible. very clearly cut corners in the wrong places
Well he's definitely in a good position and of course knows a fair amount of vocab. His pronunciation is a bit jagged but I imagine anyone elses would be at that stage also
Benny Lewis has goals in a language in three months. He doesn't meet the goals I believe 100% of the time. They are just goals and he attempts to attain it, which he doesn't. He also stated he wanted to reach C1 level speech with Mandarin Chinese in three months, which is obviously not going to happen, but he tried. It is the hard work for the initial three months, but after that, he stops and doesn't go that much higher. It is similar to people who make those strange challenges learning as much as they can for example in 3 -5 weeks, stop, display their results, then go to something else. The audience they are getting are beginners, or dabblers and not serious language learners. Although it might inspire someone to get into the subject.
Pffttt Japanese Kids are learning since they are born up to high school and still only know the basic kanji used in everyday lifes asigned by the Nippon association of newspapers and books or something like that, it is a compendium of 2300 kanji used in everyday life, JLPT 2 Has LOTS that Japanese people normally do not use for they daily lives, and JLPT1 is God Tier, that even Japanese University Students and Teachers Struggle.
Yep lol.
"We are Chinese"
That was damn hilarious
i laughed so hard
"So when speaking outside the group, I sound like an impolite, disrespectful, egotistical child"
That's how I sound too... in my native language
I feel your pain! I was born in Japan, but left for America when I was eight. I have not kept up with Japanese since, so now, I can hardly converse with adult Japanese without them looking weird at me. I tried learning Japanese, but no time. I married a Japanese woman and she helped with my lack of vocabulary. She also helped with common expressions used by adults.
So today, my 12 year-old have surpassed me greatly. She can read, write and speak Japanese way better than me. She's attending 6th grade Japanese school in the US. I've forgotten how to write and can only read up to a handful of basic kanji's.
So, my progress in learning adult Japanese is a similar struggle as you are having. The difference is, I have the basic Japanese, but I'm stuck at that level. and I'm having a difficult time as you in learning adult conversation.
I am half Japanese who moved to America when I was 9. I was of course able to speak Japanese normally because it is my native language, but the more I was in America, the more I forgot Japanese. Plus I had no one to speak Japanese to and I didn't have a cell phone to contact my old friends. And on top of that, I think I forgot Japanese because I moved to a different country at a young age. I heard that it's easier to forget a language if you're young and moved to another country. But now I am working towards regaining my Japanese back, but I know English way more than Japanese. When people ask me how to say this in Japanese, most of the time I can't respond and makes me feel ashamed of forgetting my NATIVE language. I do feel alone and feel like no one is in a similar situation to mine.
VTAK I understand how you feel... 😔
@@daten__ i guess you can travel to Japan once in a while and meet some old friends.
@@daten__ trust me you are not alone, my girlfriend of 6 years is half thai but she was born in and lived in Thailand until she was 8 and came over to England only being able to speak, read and write in thai however as it was seen as so important by her parents to learn english and quickly they stopped speaking to her in it completely.
Now although she can understand a lot of it she can’t speak, read or write it well at all, however we are going to start having lessons together soon and hopefully regain what has been lost :) dont give up
I take Japanese language courses at my university, and during the summer breaks I feel like I forget everything I learned in the prior semester. Speaking it is also very difficult to do since the only person I have to practice with is the professor during class. I always have to go back to review earlier concepts, especially when it comes to properly conjugating verbs.
HYDRAdude I suggest watching Japanese shows/movies or listening to Japanese music. Obviously you need to have an interest for that.
Same! I'm majoring japanese too but it's hard when it comes to talking. Because i didn't really speak Japanese in daily life. I need someone who can speak Japanese with me and always patient when hearing me talking in Japanese, i can't do that with my friends because in the end we're just fooling around. Sorry for my bad English, but i really feel you.😖😥
SRS everything!!!
Use anki or some srs app for vocab (always make sentences or short phrases so it’s it context), grammar (again always in sentences), and even rules of grammar and make questions about usage like: if you see Nほど will the ending likely be positive or negative? Answer: negative” then have an example.
If you make srs off example sentences in your books, and everything else and if you review daily (you can’t skip days as the cards pile up) you’ll never need to excessively review. It saves so much time.
*speak in Japanese even if there’s no one to speak to. Seriously. Think in Japanese as much as you can. You want to be able to have the idea/phrase/vocab immediately without thinking in English. You want to habitualize as much as possible so it becomes natural.
Ah, too much to talk about lol. Rock it out!
Try italki app
Wow, this video must have taken forever to make! So much editing and different clips/settings/camera angles. Very nice!
There are people who claim they were at an N2 level after just one year of studying. If you really had no other exposure to Japanese, from any other sources, such a studying regimen is pretty brutal.
how to learn Japanese : Hang out with Natsuki
*electric.... BOX*
versnellingspookie easy style
yaaaaasss
Justice delicious!
O am Brazilian. I studied French for 2 years and travelled to France. I was able to interact with people in a relatively comfortable way. Then I studied Japanese for 4 years. I travelled to Japan and was soooo disappointed with with Japanese skills! Japanese is really hard! But I have not given up yet!
Paulo Abreu I had a similar experience! I have studied Japanese for 4 years so far and thought I could hold a basic conversation. Then I went to Japan and was shocked by how little I could actually speak. I felt like a toddler stumbling over their words. Although the more time I spent immersed in the language the more my skills developed
Paulo Abreu Dont give up guys. I am brazillian currently living in Japan. It really is hard, but try to learn kanjis too. Things will make more sense for you.
I'm Swiss, coming from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland 🇨🇭(here we have four national languages, German, French, Italian and Raetoromanish). As a minority language speaker in my country, in our educational system (which is different in every Canton) we learn French at the elementary school, in junior high we begin German (both compulsory) and English (which is optional). German and English are quite different from Italian, and German is really difficult to learn for native Italian speaker at the beginning. In high school, depending on the curriculum you choose, you can add Spanish to the previous four. At the end of high school an average student can reach a C1 level in each language. The problem is, in Switzerland German speaking people speak Swiss German, which is a totally different language from the one we learn at school. When I began University in a Swiss German city I had the same cultural clash you described, although I graduated from high school with top marks in German. I couldn't understand a word people on the street or in shops were saying. I've been living and working in the German speaking part of Switzerland for 6 years now, I understand everything in Swiss German now, but I still can't speak it, aside from some short phrases. Now I'm about to begin a Japanese course. The secret of language learning is just one: practicing, in every possible way. Imho, everyone should find his/her learning channel. For me, it's reading and watching tv. Just keep it up!
I understand your pain!! I’m a native English speaking person, however ethnic wise, I’m Hispanic. For one reason or another, my parents didn’t raise me on Spanish. I took 4 years (against my will) of Spanish classes in school and didn’t retain anything. And even now when I try, I get frustrated and embarrassed, so I give up. But it’s nice to see that I’m not the only one and you’re trying to overcome your obstacles!
I've spent 5 years in an Arab country and I *still* can't follow my fluent 4 year old. The points you made about your family really hit home. Everyone thinks I have automatic immersion on the daily because of my native-speaking children and husband, but at the end of the day they want to speak English and I want an easy conversation.
I can relate to this too! My goodness it’s just so easy to speak in a broken hybrid of the two languages rather than speak in one or the other. Immersion is a hard boiler test. But you can do it. I think the key here is to find a good language friend who is native speaking and isn’t related to you. You want them to correct you but in a loving way so that you won’t get away with bad habits. You also don’t want it to be a person related to you so that familial relationships can be kept and maintained. I also like that it forces you outside of your house. Most importantly keep at it. Consistently immersing yourself will yield the highest and best outcome.
Oh god a white convert
@k_bb: Honestly that's kinda messed up.
I can relate lol as I am a native English speaker currently I;egypt
klj788986sbb haha i was thinking the same
Wow I was literally just googling “why is my japanese still bad” 😂 so relatable
Really??😂😂
Debby_GRxx The 2,000+ hours of recommended study explains a lot... 😛😅
Watashi mo......and I’ve been practicing it on and off and speaking it with my in laws for over a decade!
Don't try and learn it as a native English speaker and it's no longer a difficult language, just normal like all others.
@@mavsworld1733 And how do you do that?
5:06 "Excuse me. Does anyone speak Japanese here?" "We're Chinese." lmao
I see it's really your mindset that is killing your motivation in learning Japanese. You keep bringing up the articles and facts how hard it is to learn Japanese. That causes your mind to go, 'uh-oh, I don't wanna learn it at all.' Additionally, you are trying too hard and pushing yourself too hard in mastering Japanese. More you push, more your mind resists. Let go of that!
InTeCredo totally this.
Nelson White
There is excuses and there are priorities, if you have attempted to learn the language on the side while having to deal with a full time job or another full time education as well as a family you would be able to relate. I certainly do, only having about a couple of hours free in weekdays to do something else than obligations, often times i can't prioritize Japanese. So i see where he is coming from.
He said in the video that he stays at home all day long while his wife works. He could just set aside an hour for Japanese language study. It's matter of scheduling the activities and sticking with them. It seems to me that he doesn't have a good structure and discipline to follow through. Just sayin'...
^^^^ no hate on the guy but these are all just excuse as to why he doesn't want to learn Japanese. For someone _living in Japan for over 5 years,_ he needs to get more motivated to actually learn. Especially when he even said that he sounds like a "impolite, disrespectful, and egotistical child"
InTeCredo
There is a huge difference between sitting at home, and working at home.
Good video ! I lived in Japan for 2 years, and almost completely failed at learning Japanese. So Sad. In retrospect I think I went about it all wrong. I think language learning is a tricky thing and needs a lot of effort once you are an adult, and also each person learns things slightly differently. It's my personal view that "book learning" should only be one facet, also 1 hour a day is probably not enough. (Of course people are busy so they sometimes can't allocate too much time to study). I recommend learners in Japan start by getting a basic textbook for starters such as Genki and working through it to get a handle on the basic grammar. But then spend as much time as possible trying to communicate with Japanese and make flashcards for words that you don't know. There are some vocab lists based on frequency as well, so I would focus on memorizing the most common words.
This video is really curious and makes me thoughtful. I’m Japanese and studying English, the more study English the more realize that leaning Japanese is much harder than learning English. Because grammar of English is relatively simple than Japanese I think. Not only reading or writing Kanji but also that Japanese has many way of expression lines and often we skip the subjective word like “I” in casual talk. It maybe really complicated for non Japanese. English is basically systematic language, but Japanese is sometimes chaos and too flexible even for me. I even cannot correctly 100% explain how different between sonkeigo and kenjougo in detail. Yes, don’t be too hard, go easy and take long time like the marathon.
Learning Japanese is like lifting weights: It’s a slow grind to progress to the top and as soon as you let go for a moment, you lose most or all of your progress. The only good thing is that it is much easier to pick it up again in the next round. But essentially you have to keep at it all the time and accept that all your success is fleeting and will be gone once you leave the country and don’t use it anymore. But it is extra rewarding once you are actually able to use, the same as showing off your muscles at the beach after lifting all those weights. Keep at it, because it’s true what he said in the video: Japanese is like an Ultra Marathon.
2:17 Hol' up... Why are all the languages I want to learn in category IV?? Am I some kind of secret masochist??
Yes and I am too
Haha 😂 we’re on the same boat!
4:59-5:15 is just great evidence that Greg is so humorous...so underplayed!! @Greg, actually, your humor is the quality that I find most entertaining and seems left out of or dialed down from even your more recent 'documemtaries'!!!! Your humorous foreign perspective of your environment is a craved and enjoyable ingredient!!
Listening to Benny speaking in "Japanese" is like nails on a chalk board.
it was a really painful experience for me too
Why does he over-pronounce absolutely everything.
@@oonadoodles Cause he's Oirish
@@amandal.1422 Thank You. This is why people are afraid to learn languages and start practicing.
Don't deny it still felt like nails on a blackboard
5:35 What People always forget is that the 26 Latin letters also exist in two variations: Uppercase and lowercase, so you have to learn 52 overall.
Not only that but there's print and cursive writting, so it goes up to 104
true, but when lower case looks like this w u i v c and upper case like this W U I V C it is not exactly hard
People
@@fuji3d_studio upper case and lower case isn't a problem. Cursive and print is way harder though. If you can't imagine how hard that should be to someone who never learned the Latin alphabet, try learning the Cyrillic alphabet (should be pretty easy), then try to learn cursive Cyrillic.
@@username-yn5yo Looks like a fun game. When hiragana looks like this かきにへもや and katakana looks like this カキニヘモヤ it is not exactly hard. But a A b B d D e E g G h H m M q Q r R.
8:46 Im a computer science major, HTML is not a programming language like javascript for example.
javascript has logic and you can store variables, loops and math ect, i guess this is like grammar and vocab,
but like HTML, japanese characters are only for Displaying information not creating information, thats what grammar and vocab are for.
HTML is very easy to learn, just like being able to read hiragana and katakana is also easy to learn (compared to Japanese as a whole language)
"White sounding Mexican Guy" 😂😂😂... I was curious of his background but didn't want to ask 👀. Love the videos!
Me too! I thought another viewer would answer.
What's his background though? I thought he was Filipino (I'm Mexican lol )
He’s not Mexican but many people think he is. He did a video on his background and its Chinese, Portuguese, Scottish and a few others. Also he’s from Canada.
@@allysontudda1023 ok thanks for the clarification/ update 🙂
@@allysontudda1023 Damn I always thought he was aboriginal Canadian, but his brother is so much whiter than him so it didn't make much sense.
It's all about how much you dedicate your time to practice something. Leaning language isn't about how much time you spend on. It's all about technique and one language only everyday, except e emergency.
Discipline and out of comfort zone.
What a inspiring video for language learning. The best way to learn a language I found is to immerse yourself into that language environment as much as possible. Contrary to your feeling, I feel it's much easier to learn the kanji and hiragana than katagana probably because I am a native Chinese speaker. I do find there are more similarities than differencez when you compare Chinese-Japanese to English-Japanese. Even though jp grammar is also totally different from Chinese, I felt it's quite natural after watching so many Japanese anime programs and dramas.
ちょっと待って🤔 ...failing is a form of learning ... Just fail your way to the top
This was an awesome, awesome video. Do a series of these ... We want to see your progress. お願い🙏。
deafwing chiyotsuto? I tried to read the hiragana
Saganator cx chottomatte
deafwing oh my god I suck
Saganator cx You were close though. Chiyotsuto would be ちよつと. But OP wrote ちょっと. Notice how the yo and the tsu are slightly smaller than usual. This causes them to be pronounced differently too. The yo "melts" with the previous syllable, whilte the tsu "melts" with the next syllable and starts sounding like a stopgap.
Saganator cx don't worry I use to make that mistake to ...that expression was always hard to write lol 😂 ...don't give up
Now I get why you struggle even being married to a japanese person. I guess you struggle because you don't need japanese on your daily life, other than the basics... so it's not a priority. I think this is the reason why you are taking things slowly... In your situation I think it is the right thing to do. The predisposition in learning languages is also a big factor. If you are not good at learning any laguage, you will struggle more, it's a fact. In your case, your japanese need regards to common daily things, so the effort you put into learning is obviously not the same that if you worked in a japanese company or if you wanted to write a book. I believe that if you had no choice but learning japanese to live your life there you would manage to learn faster, but since you had the choice there was no urgency in doing so. Nice video as usual. Now i'm expecting to watch the "no shoes in the house" video ;-)
I'm a complete beginner, thanks for this! After really enjoying my encounter with hiragana for the first weeks, katakana seems like an absolute grinding chore for some reason! Btw I love all of these videos, especially the travel ones and the street level journeys, just captivating.
People who haven't learned a 2nd language or learned a European language dramatically underestimate how difficult it is and a lot of people who study Japanese in a classroom outside of Japan dramatically overestimate how good they are because they are in a textbook Japanese bubble.
Having been in Japanese train for 5 years (3 of which in Japan itself) with N2 slowly coming into view... yes for sure. Maybe I’m overestimating my own abilities, but I’m pretty sure I could pick up Spanish in a year of serious study.
@@fennec812 It's because you need to live there and also interact with all sorts of stuff. Go to a language class and quickest way to learn.
nihonkokusai I do live in Japan :p
Although I find most Japanese classes by Japanese natives to be... pretty bad. Most teachers I’ve studied under basically just read from a book or try to prep you for really niche business scenarios. I’m sure that’s great for some but I use my Japanese mostly for academic level history so it’s pretty useless to me.
Hands down though, yes, the best way to learn is to just go interact with people who are native speakers
it certainly depends own the aptitude of the learner, i picked up taiwanese accented mandarin in a little under a year but I think japanese is really much harder lol
Fr, I’ve been studying Japanese at school since I was 11 (year 7 UK) now almost 19, meant to have done my exams this summer but now they’re cancelled. I am not that near to being fluent in Japanese...
A levels have had a bit more content in them but despite having met a few Japanese tourists through websites and Japanese family friends, It’s safe to say I cant speak proper Japanese. I’ve learnt 300 kanji, maybe a third of which I can’t write on command. Hiragana and katakana were v ez done and dusted from the first two years of secondary but it all feels like a waste now, all these years.
Im thinking of doing a year abroad for uni to go Japan and just survive off the language to learn it!
My own trick: Learn Chinese first, then learn Japanese (or in your case, Kanji) -> 1000x times easier, plus an extra languages learnt :)
Just kidding, that's why most people whose Chinese is first language master Japanese faster than Westerners. But as a person who has learned Chinese characters I found out that, to memorize the characters you have to practice reading and writing them a lot and you have to increase your exposure to them as much as possible. E.g. when I was learning vocabulary about fruits, I wrote all the fruit words on a piece of paper and inserted them under the glass layer of my table, which I sit everyday. This forced me to look at those words day by day until they got stuck in my mind, I'd change to a new set of vocab :)
When I have some free time, I'd write down Chinese characters randomly (e.g. my name in Chinese, the names of my favorite Chinese actresses and dramas/movies, or even the list of all PRC municipalities and provinces). Sometimes I searched the lyrics of my favorite Chinese song or favorite movie quotes and wrote them down several times. These methods helped improve not only my vocab and character memorization but also my handwriting quality :)
Watch Japanese TV shows, first with English subtitles then gradually skip it. You may not get the meaning at first, but your eyes and ears will gradually get used to looking at Kanji and its pronunciation in different cases. This will be beneficial for later comprehension :)
Hope these tips help and good luck in mastering Kanji!
As a Chinese myself. Japanese is only advantageous when it comes to the meaning of Kanji, strictly because of the probability of educated guesses. However, not even the simple ones could be guessed correctly.
Simply put, those who didn't learn any Japanese often would had no idea if Kanji was not included in a sentence. Also some of the Kanji were invented by Japanese that simply did not existed in Chinese.
So, native Chinese speakers learning Japanese have a 'slight' head start over others. However, just not as much as you will think.
Many of my friends know Chinese well and are trying to learn Japanese, they are failing terribly
If you learn traditional Chinese then maybe it will help, but if you are learning the simplified characters, good luck. You may as well start from the beginning.
I'm impressed that you linked your sources. That's great for people that are doing research on this stuff thanks lol
This discouraged me more lol I tried learning Japanese and got daily migraines, still can’t speak more than a few words that I only remember thanks to anime lmao but to see korean on the “very hard” learning list (and I see that often) baffles me. I guess everyone is different, because I found korean EXTREMELY easy (once you learn the letters and sounds/Hangul) everything else just falls into place.
After Chinese I feel any language is possible! Chinese the tones took me years to master, but it's like a puzzle it all comes together! Started Japanese and the speaking is easy, but the writing is hard! Like Chinese!
Can I ask how did you learn Chinese? What were the processes you went there? TIA.
Just be aware that Japanese does have pitch accent, most Japanese teachers and textbooks don't mention it, but it does.
Teach me your secrets, I beg of you, you know how embarrassing it is when you can't even hold a conversation in your mother tongue?
I thought this was a particularly good video. Excellent production values, accessible delivery, and a "relatable" story. Thanks!
Maybe do a month where you can only communicate with your wife and kids in Japanese? Probably won’t level you up to fluent, but I’m sure it would progress you leaps and bounds in a way shorter time span. At least when it comes to verbal proficiency and confidence :) informative video though!
So enjoy your VLOGS. You were one of the first channels I found on RUclips. Still here. Thanks for the interesting education from where you are. The beautiful Japan backdrop and your humor makes me feel like learning isn’t so bad. I will keep Watching in Texas.
"what i've learned to master is failing" me irl
Think of how a child learns a language - whether their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. They're not looking at it as this massive problem to solve. If they did, they'd be bawling their eyes out, all day long! No, they absorb a language in little nibbles, in just the way they meet any new situation: like play. An idea : Turn on talk radio or TV, and listen for words & phrases you've already heard. Repeat them the way they're pronounced. Take note of your favourites, and repeat them later in the day. Next time you hear them, notice how the speaker connects them to other words. At first it's just sounds; but gradually you figure out some meaning, thru context. This is a great game! There are no rules, and no tests. It's just a way of expressing your interest in the language. You'd be amazed what happens when you let go of the idea of it being a massive, overwhelming challenge ahead of you. Steady, relaxed interest is key.
Sure but a slow one at that. As long as you are consistent and study efficiently that’s enough.
Coz they are forced to learn the language otherwise they will be isolated from family or drop out of school. But as a second language speaker, usually she doesn't have to make a choice like that. She can always find a group that speaks a language that she's familiar with. And she will have a hard time to find someone who will talk to her in a new language in all situations.
We adults can turn any opportunity-for-growth into a daunting burden. A big key to bypass that mindset is to take an interest in both the language, and its speakers. Language is about connecting humans; and there's joy in connecting with a group that you've never been connected to before. Allow yourself to get a kick out of building your new bridge, little piece by little piece. _Play_ with the pieces!
I recently started learning Japanese. I already dread cramming the Kanji. But after seeing this spreadsheet at 10:07 I dread it even more.
I tried many apps and have to agree that you need to learn the "Alphabet" first before continuing to learn. I found apps like Rosetta Stone overwhelming: not only do you get plastered new words, there is also the new way of talking and writing. Way too much stuff to deal with as a beginner.
I think hiragana wasn't so hard to learn. I mostly got this feat done within 3 weeks of work commute. The main key in my opinion is really wanting to learn the language. If you have no drive to learn the whole project will suffer badly.
It must be so frustrating trying to learn Japanese. Japanese, Chinese (mandarin) and Korean are all super interesting languages but I don’t think I’d have the patience to ever try and learn them, unless I really had to😣
There are some youtubers such as Venusangelic and “Taylor R” who seemed to learn Japanese very quickly, I’m wondering if they are just naturally “good” at languages or also struggled a lot. I know they also studied for hours and hours as well
Im learning korean the alphabet is easy,super easy but the language itself is complicated,you must be patient for that fyi,now im bcome to intermediate level
Leeda lee yes! I’ve heard that the Korean alphabet is pretty simple. I currently know English, Serbian and Spanish which are all to me pretty easy languages , I would like to learn more but I’m not sure what would be most helpful for me to learn
Stasi Korean is the easiest, Japanese is harder and chinese is hardest. I agree though
Kirsty Hill I’ve always thought that! That’s why I was surprised to see Korean as a category 4 language I always thought it was supposedly one of the easier Asian languages
my grandfather was stationed in japan after ww2 so there has always been a few Japanese words floating around my house when i was a kid, i can't talk in sentences but I've been able to say "thank you, water and hello" ,just simple stuff, in Japanese since I was tiny
So glad I watched this. The very first thing that I have started to do is read Hiragana (following Tofugu.com guide of learning japanese) and one of the worksheets that they provide for when you think you have it down is to change sentences of Hiragana into Romaji and read the characters out and then try to read the words out.
The problem is that because I don't know vocabulary I don't see words, and so I can't tell where one word begins and another ends, so I was unable to really read them. Its nice to see that its not just me struggling with that.
Fear of failing making you fail is a real thing :(
"can't read this magazine, its all so blurry" HAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHA
Your videos are always great and very informative. My Mother tongue is in the same difficulty category as Japanese and Chinese 😂✋
Nada Majdy Arabian?
MCShvabo yes I'm Arab
Nada Majdy I did a little bit of Arab and I don’t think it’s too difficult.Only thing that I found slightly confusing is how some letters look almost completely different depending on where they stand in the sentence.
MCShvabo yes true
MCShvabo If you think that's difficult, then you really have no idea how difficult Arabic is. It is easy to misjudge the difficulty of a language if you don't know it.
As someone who has stuggled learning Japanese for about 4-5 years now, I can easily relate to what you're saying.
One thing I think is really important for people - and that's to work on multiple methods of learning the language. What I mean by that is don't just learn from a text book. Don't just learn from an anime. Don't just learn from a manga. The key to really learning is to have many different types of input, and force different ways of interacting with the language. Do some reading, some speaking (even if it's mirroing what others are saying), some listening (anime/dramas/etc), some writing (lang-8, write it out manually, etc). What my single largest mistake in the past has been was focusing too heavily in one area. I spent most of my time learning Kanji and words. Not full sentences, grammar, and so on. Because of that, my knowledge was more or less all over the place (according to my teacher). My vocabulary is great, over 10k words - my individual kanji knowledge is also quite good. But, even to this day, I have a hard time putting it all together to actually *say* what I want to say. Many times I'll have to stop, and type it out. My listening comprehension is also really quite poor, for a similar reason. I also found it quite valuable to read simple sentences in Japanese, and mirror what's being written. So, taking a book like "Common Japanese Collocations" and physically saying the words can help. Anki also has some sentences that you fill in the blank, which also are helpful. The idea is not to learn in isolation (e.g. on a word level) and instead on a phrase level when possible. That way you're stringing sentences together to make something that sounds more natural.
pretty sound advice. couple things I would add:
1. get a japanese learning partner! (invaluable)
2. always have fun while learning - do not force anything - if you do not feel like doing a particular type of exercise, do something else instead. The more fun you have the better.
3. learn every day for at least 1 hour.
4. listen, read, listen, read, listen! Whenever you can listen to japanese audio that you can understand (80%+) , over and over and over again! I'm four months in, read harry potter (one paragraph at a time and have my tandem partner correct my pronunciation during our learning sessions!) and listen to the sections I already read (and translated - I also read the sections in the english original) every day (audiobook). It's fun, the narrator has a great voice and you learn a ton of useful words and expressions.
"fluent in 3 months", funny guy, he wouldn't even pass N5 with that japanese lol.
He speaks many languages very well, I reckon. But 3 months is too small of a timeframe.
@@muhilan8540 What languages do you think Benny actually speaks well?
I've lived here for for a year and I can't speak Japanese to save my life lol
助けてーーーーーーーーーー
おにぎりおごるから救急車読んでください
me too lol no english in the countryside
I love the language but it’s so old. Who needs 3 writing systems? Get rid of the other two & only keep hiragana
Cam oh ya bc there’s more letters u can dump katakana
Props to you! I too am learning one of the hardest languages- Arabic!
So i understand the amount of constant hard work it takes to be half decent!
Great videos! Thanks for making them.
I'm a Japanese man and when I was a kid I learned Japanese (vocabulary, kanji, etc.) through manga.
So I think it works for foreigners too.
i agree, also everyone is hard on themselves for kanji but japanese children literally go through 6 years of vigorous kanji lessons. it's not like english where you learn the alphabet for a year annd off you go
@@MusiicRoolz yeah I thinks it's hard to grasp that idea for us English speakers, makes us feel stupid lol
I’m learning Japanese through reading manga and watching RUclipsrs, it seems to be working quite well.
2200 class hours != 2200 hours, class hours imply youcare doing more, individual work on the side, like personal study, homework, etc.
7:45 so wholesome.... reminds me 5 years ago I was 18 and still living with my family
Can't read these magazines. Everything's so blurry.
Thanks for the encouragement 😅 I've spent a total of 29 days in Japan and have achieved the fluency of a explaining myself with the vocabulary of a polite 3 or 4-year old. I've had the most learning success by just speaking poor Japanese everywhere, as people avoid English-speakers. Online dictionaries fill the gap for words I haven't heard before. However I feel like I've hit a wall, where the only way forward is to read more than 40 kanji. I admire your persistence to reach 3rd grade kanji skills.
Thanks to our leaders, we Singaporeans grow up learning 2 languages. English as our first and a mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Indian language). Right now i’m on my 3rd which is Japanese and i am really excited to be learning Japanese. English and Chinese has been ranked one of those hardest languages to learn and i believe we can all pick up any language with consistency, resourcefulness and effort. (Don’t forget to have fun learning it!)
well its really not super difficult of a language the hardest part is the kind of backwards, relative to english, flow of grammar, knowing the function of particles, and remembering the many arbitrary forms of grammar ways of counting, levels of formality. Which sounds like a lot but after a year of doing japanese ive not found it super hard because i stopped trying to think in english then translate into what i want to say thats counter intuitive when your speaking japanese forget english (not at first but soonish) it makes it much easier
I can't read magazines *everything is so blurry*
this got me so good hahahaha
I think the problem with learning a new language is that there is a lot of focus on grammar and structure and not enough on speaking and understanding. When I started living in an English speaking country (it was my second language), my grammar was definitely better than at least 90% of the kids in my school but I would sometimes avoid speaking because I was always thinking "oh my god...is my grammar right?", or "did I say that right?". The more time I spent listening to people the more I realized that grammar doesn't really matter, and as soon as I let go of that type of mentality it was like a whole new world opened up and I just started speaking more. Problem is now my grammar is not as good but who cares, at least I can communicate with people. I think not being afraid of making mistakes when speaking to others is a really important tip and step to take in order to become better at a language.
Hey man, if you're still living life in Japan for that long without speaking the language, you must be doing something right. Love you're videos dude. Please keep em comin!
Try Lingodeer
It's an app that helps you learn Japanese
Trust me it's really helpful
Brasil Soccer I use that app!