Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten more Japanese than I ever learnt 
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This really makes me think, how could one actually reach C2 in productive skills, if most material focuses on receptive skills? I can read and recognise A LOT more than I can output, which makes me sad. Cannot be helped if you’re self-studying, though, I guess.
But yeah, this chart seems about right.
If we are talking about demotivation here, all this stuff with levels,
I feel like it’s pulling me away from feeling the real progress, for example “when I read this book and lookup every kanji I go much fat ster then 2 month before” or “I can understand 80% of this podcast whereas I couldn’t a month ago” or “words are now sticking so much better, I can see a word and remember it for some time even if all kanji are new in it”. I can find a lot of examples like that, and they appear very often, and when looking at my ability I feel good
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Def resonate with this! I think part of it is that any language is moving, breathing, and evolving, so how we imagine we might feel when we become ‘fluent’ is just not quite accurate - there’s always more to learn and adjust to. Plus language attrition is so real - if you’re not using it regularly it really will just sort of slip to a degree
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Considering many linguistic experts collaborated internationally over many years to get down their CEFR reference number - as they have documented, - I think calling it farcical may be a bit unfair.
Hear me out. Both exams test listening/reading comprehension, (the JLPT does test for correct grammar usage and word usage via multiple choice, but let’s just put that aside for now), but the CEFR also tests free output. It does not seem unreasonable to attempt to correlate just the comprehension component - or comprehension competencies -of the CEFR to that of the JLPT. They have made it clear that they’re not granting an official CEFR certificate or something, it is merely their best estimate for the competencies that the JLPT actually tests. Since the CEFR is essentially a global standard, it makes complete sense to me why they would want to be able to provide at least this much.
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I think it’s okay to look at it like this, there are plenty of people who pass n1 but can’t speak, or people who can hold conversations but couldn’t pass N5. i think it’s relatively well known that the JLPT isn’t a great way to prove japanese proficiency. Though I will admit I am a bit disheartened that I’m not even officially b1 after several years of study. it’s understandable. I still have tons of writing practice to do and several tens of thousands of words before I’d call myself fluent.
But it is also two different tests testing different abilities, even if they are from the same idea. like you wouldn’t compare the kanji kentei to the JLPT or anything. either way, let’s do our best to all be native speakers (C2, which is practically impossible for anyone non-native) or be gigachad and reach D-2 levels of japanese.
Seems I have slightly misunderstood the graph, the height is the results from the jlpt. so 180 points is C1 and such. that makes much more sense.
112 points in N2 being the same level as 141 points in N1 makes absolutely no sense to me.
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it would be the difference between someone who is barely n2 level to someone who could probably pass the n1 level. there’s significant differences between the two.
however it’s like the saying; what do you call a doctor who got all D’s in med school? A doctor.
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C2 isn’t native speaker level, by essence the CEFRL doesn’t apply to native speakers. There are a lot of people who managed C2 in other languages with a CEFRL-grid exam so I don’t see why it would be impossible for Japanese, even as hard a language as it is.
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I think the CEFR just doesn’t really match that well with the JLPT, so you really can’t compare the two, since CEFR takes into account other skills and assumes you share the same proficiency in all of them, which we know is not very accurate when it comes to the JLPT. Just my thoughts. It is still a little disheartening though to see that after over a year of study I’m only at a high A1/Low A2 level 
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I think by CEFR standards the skill gap between their upper levels is just that huge. Considering you basically need N1 mastery to even be compared to a low C1, I guess it makes sense.
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Yeah i went back and did a bit more research on that. shows me what i get for listening to one of those polyglot salesmen.
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