Anyone else start "officially" learning and think… where am I?

Japanese
#1

I’ve been self-learning Japanese for a few years now, mostly through listening, kind of like how babies pick up language. No textbooks, no grammar guides, no formal study. Just tons of exposure. I never really tried to form my own sentences, and I’ve never spoken aloud using phrases I hadn’t already heard before.

But recently, I decided to actually start working on grammar and speaking. And that got me thinking: how many words do I even know?

I’ve started looking at N5-level material, and while some of it is new, a lot of it feels… strangely familiar. Like I’ve heard it all before, even if I never learned it consciously. It’s like putting names to things I already kind of understand.

Has anyone else experienced this? That weird feeling when you finally start “studying” and realize you’re not starting from zero—but you have no idea where you actually are?

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#2

That was basically me last year, when I finally started wirh bunpro. I used whatever I found randomly, trying out different things until I settled with bunpro. Now I just started with N3 here and still get vocab that I already learned on renshuu.

Don’t worry, though. You’ve already spent a few years learning japanese, so taking a month or two to settle in on bunpro for a smoother transistion isn’t that much compared. I suggest going over the vocab decks, adding around 100 vocab a day and manually sorting it into an SRS level you feel is a good fit. Sure, that’s a lot of work, but it will make for a nicer experience later on. Don’t add new vocab and don’t sort vocab into the beginner category or you’ll probably die :sweat_smile: For the grammar decks you can do the same, though 100 grammar items a day is probably be way too excessive. Don’t forget to do reviews every day (if you get any), or otherwise your reviews will stack.

After you sorted all the somewhat known items and feel like your reviews have calmed, you just start with the N5 decks filling in the gaps you might have.

And finally, you seem to get a lot of native exposure already? The feeling of “I kinda already know this concept” probably won’t go away then. Same for me, I feel like I read and watch a ton. Everyday I learn new items from my learning queue and oftentimes I find myself thinking “well, I’ve seen this one everywhere, finally I know what it means”.

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