I first started studying Japanese around a year ago. I’ve been taking my studies at a moderate if not somewhat slow pace (WaniKani level 18, Bunpro JLPT N3). Since my recent trip to Japan, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pitfalls and bad habits I may accrue as I study more and more. In particular, I am concerned about developing the ability to think abstractly in Japanese. I don’t actually know the meaning of words in Japanese. I simply know their general English translation for which I do know the meaning. However, it obviously goes without saying that Japanese words do not map onto English words one-for-one. I am wondering whether my overreliance on learning definitions and such in English will impede my ability to improve in the future, or whether this is simply a matter of experience where I will naturally improve over time regardless. Any advice, links to resources, or just opinions will be greatly appreciated.
The 多読 (mass reading) approach is probably the fastest way to overcome this problem. In the beginning it is completely natural to link words to the closest English meaning you can find.
The more you are exposed to words, the more intimate you become with that word’s ‘personality’ so to speak. It can take a long time, but words will start to take on their own meaning in your mind related purely to the context of Japanese with enough time and enough exposures. Definitely don’t sweat it!
As for resources, take a look here: Your learning resources - Japanese - Bunpro Community
I particularly recommend 小説家になろう - みんなのための小説投稿サイト (syosetu.com) as this will allow you to do 多読 for free with a ton of native material.
Sometimes I read the definitions of a word in a Japanese dictionary to gain a better understanding of what that word means. A good example were the words 電車 and 列車. For a long time I thought that they both meant “train” and never knew when to choose one over the other. Then one day I just really had to know and I found a Japanese article that explained the difference. 電車 refers specifically to an electric train, while 列車 refers to a railway train (possibly connected to a steam engine).
How did you develop the ability to think abstractly in English? Was it something you worked at, or did it happen without you even noticing?
@Asher put it quite eloquently, and this is true of any language: the more you see the words in context, the better your understanding of them will become. Language is a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. As I continued to learn, it became easier and easier to tell when a subtitle didn’t quite match the nuance of the words being spoken. And it isn’t just knowing something isn’t quite right: now I can even think of what translation or words would have been a better choice.
Generally speaking it sounds like you are ready to make your monolingual transition. Eventually you realize that the correspondence between words or concepts between languages are not 1 to 1 and you will have to learn the words on their own terms. That means learning them in Japanese. Though often you will naturally pick up maybe 60-80% of the meaning through exposure and maybe a quick look up of an English or Japanese definition. I often look up a new word in both dictionaries to aid in understanding. Usually the English has a good keyword to base my understanding of the Japanese around.
There is actually not a lot of information on the proper usage of Japanese words published in English. It has for me, been one of my personal pitfalls. The only two sources I found that have good, but limited info on this is Japanesepod101, and Japanese from Zero.
You’re in luck, though. ChatGTP seems to have made short work of that problem, and unlike me, you won’t have to wait 20 years for it. Put in a word and ask it to explain away, along with example sentences and collocations.
I would not say that is necessarily true. But I do agree it is far and few between.
Fair enough, you may have used some sources I didn’t. But in recent years I have had to move to a lot of monolingual explanations and resources. At the end of the day that’s probably the best way to do it outside of ChatGTP.
You are not wrong that the best materials for a resources for a language are mostly going to be within the language. I just would not discount English resources completely! Though we are I’m complete agreement that GPT and other LLM based AIs are quickly become the future for all language related tasks.