One thing I have increasingly noticed in the past few years due to the advent and adaption of learning apps is that Japanese learners have become obsessed with numbers. Almost to the point of learning Japanese not being viewed as a way to communicate, but all about streaks, digits, lists and logs. How much Kanji, how many words, how long of a streak, how many grammar points, how many hours, how many episodes watched, how many manga and light novels read. It’s a tad bit concerning how gamified it’s become.
Now first of all, I’m not saying that tracking your progress is bad. It’s can be a very good thing and a very good indicator of where you are and where you may need to improve in terms of knowledge. I have seen Japanese apps with tracking improve drastically over the years. From being an old school Anki user, to now using a combination of Bunpro/Wanikani/Migaku, it is still something I personally do on a daily basis. But it seems like on a weekly basis, I see a new log post, a new post about how many cards someone did in a day or a month, a detailed plan that looks about as exciting and creative an excel spreadsheet. Everything seems to be dictated by numbers.
You might be asking yourself, well what’s his deal? Is he just jealous of everyone trying to speed run Japanese in order to become a Japanese language God in the span of a year? Nope, not at all and that will never be that case. Trust me, if I had the formula to learn Japanese in a year, I would have already done so and shared it with everyone without trying to monetize it or strut around like Antonio Inoki after stiffing The Great Antonio. But I am concerned with the way the youth is approaching language learning. As some of you may know, I host local Japanese Study Groups in my city, and have been doing them for years. I have never charged a penny for them and have given up hundreds of hours of my time to help beginner and intermediate students. These study groups provide students access to advanced speakers and natives. This I feel is a great resource as the city I live in does not have a very large Japanese population, and any other in-person option would be very expensive.
Years ago, attendance was much better. Of course, we had plenty of college students and I was younger as well so that helped. Study groups ranged anywhere from 5 to up to 15 participants at times. (Starbucks didn’t always like us, lol) People went there not just to learn, but to talk with natives, talk about experiences they had in Japan, and just have a community in general. Did this for years, but even as the city population grew, attendance didn’t. Attendance started to dwindle in 2017, and the pandemic sort of ended it for good.
Post pandemic, we rebuilt the group. Many people have joined over the last couple years, we have done 3 Japanese learning panels at local anime conventions, and currently have a Discord with over 100 local members. Even so, attendance is very low with only 4-5 attendees on average each week, and most of them being older learners or natives. The younger Gen-Zers who attend don’t last very long. Of course, this is attributed to a lot of factors, but I also feel that these days, young people don’t think it’s necessary to attend an in person meeting to learn Japanese, and this is true. But I do feel that it is healthy to attend. Why? Because nobody brings up numbers at study sessions. If you can talk, you talk, and if can’t talk, you listen and ask questions. Nobody pulls out their phone or laptop to show their streak on Bunpro, and most of the regulars actually use Bunpro, Wanikani, or both. Why is that? Because we don’t really care, the learners don’t care and the natives who are there to talk sure as heck don’t care. All that we care about is if you can communicate or not, and if you’re willing to learn or help other people get better.
I understand that online, using numbers is a way to show your skill level or whatever, but Japanese is not an RPG where you level up offense, defense and dexterity in an organized chart. Japanese is a language, and language is chaos. A chaos where rules are fluid, changing, and thrown out altogether at times. It isn’t math where if one part is wrong the whole damn thing is wrong. Even if you mess up something in your sentence, chances are you’ll still get your message across. And thats what I feel language tracking apps and logs fail, they trap people in loop of numbers in the pursuit of perfectionism in all the wrong things. Language learning apps are a tool and not the answer, because before the 00s, people were still learning languages with a couple books, a notepad and plenty of wit. I think that part is lacking a bit now. I would argue that there are waaaay more people learning Japanese now, but the number or people becoming fluent is still probably similar to where it was 20 years ago.
Even when it comes to mass consumption of media in one’s target language, that itself is often quantified by number rather than value. It’s almost to the point that media consumption itself becomes more of a part of one’s identity rather than the conversations one has, the things you experience, and the things you give back to the community. I know that this also attributed to the world’s general acceptance of choosing media and brands to add to one’s own personality, but I see it so prevalently in Japanese language learning these days. Saying that you learned Japanese from watching thousands of episodes of Shounen anime and reading Harry Potter is almost viewed as a bigger badge of honor than saying you learned it from being in Japan and experiencing the daily life and culture.
And listen, I’m not trying to put anybody down here. Highly analytical people probably do benefit from tracking everything. One of the most brilliant learners I knew was obsessed with tracking everything when he was younger. Had a massive Anki deck, tracked the books he read, even built his own program for learning. (He kinda created his own version of Migaku, but never released or monetized it) But he stopped when he got good enough to not need to study. He doesn’t regret it, but he feels that it was the communication with people that in the end made his time and effort worth it. I guess what I’m saying is, numbers can be fun and can give you a visual reference of where you are at, but they should not be a measure of your skill level, as Japanese is vast, complex, and fluid; not absolute. Having numbers that are high can make us feel great, give us a hit of dopamine, but can breed a false sense of knowing, and having low numbers can prove to be disheartening for many, which is why so many quit believing they will never reach learning those 2000 Kanji in Wanikani, all the N levels in Bunpro, and the 2000 or so basic words you need to just understand the bare minimum.
To end this, I will say that if I’m wrong about this I’m wrong. This is after all, an opinion and not gospel, I want to make that very clear. My opinion on language learning has changed so much over the past several years, and it’s bound to change again. I think the problem lies in people thinking that certain ways of learning are absolute, better, or superior. A lot of “only my method works” mentality flies around Japanese learning circles, and I think that makes individuals reluctant to experiment with what works for them. It impedes creativity, and charts, numbers, logs…are just not very creative. They might work for analytical people, but for others, finding creative and fun ways to enjoy and learn Japanese is something I highly encourage. It keeps things fresh, prevents burn out, and makes you look forward to doing whatever you’re going to do in Japanese.
Japanese is not charts, numbers, textbooks, gamified apps, or a meaningless test. It is a language that allows us to communicate what we do, how we feel, how we see things in a way that’s different from our native tongue. Different in tone, nuance, feel, rhythm, and the way things are understood not just at a linguistic level, but a cultural one as well. I think it’s important not to forget that.
But I am glad that there ARE badges, because they give me motivation…
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