Does reading ever feel normal?

Japanese
#1

I’ve been doing Japanese for a good long while now (don’t mind my level, I reset recently to iron out earlier grammar). Anyway, I read a fair bit, mostly from NHK News Easy and Satori Reader admittedly, but even though my reading speed isn’t too bad, it never feels natural. Not like reading English does.

So a question to those of you who’ve gotten quite far or pretty close to native - does it ever get to a point where it feels like reading your first language? Where the symbols stop feeling like symbols and start feeling like words?

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#2

I am nowhere near native level, but there are times where I will be able to read a page or so of some manga, and it feels pretty natural to me. It could be because I have read a decent bit which I think is certainly a big part of it; however, I also think it has to do with reading content that you are genuinely interested in and would read other than for the sake of it just being Japanese (not to say those types of content are bad, I love Satori reader and it blends the line between the two very well). As mundane as it is, increasing vocab and kanji knowledge is probably the biggest part of the battle in my opinion. No matter how much you enjoy something, if you have to look >30% of the words, you probably won’t stay that immersed it. Overall, I think it’s just something that comes with time and exposure.

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#3

Just a guess, but based on the fact that you reset to relearn grammar, you’re probably still inserting a translation step in your brain somewhere due to not fully comprehending the grammar (and maybe vocab too).

Eventually, 犬 has to mean 犬, not dog. Eventually 言っています has to mean 言っています not “progressive tense form of ‘to say’.”

No advice on how to overcome this other than repetition and focusing flashcards on places where your brain pauses. I always think of anime where a character repeats a hard word kind of mechanically, sometimes with a funny pronunciation, and the other one explains it to them. Except that’s kind of like every sentence :slight_smile:

オン。。。セン。。。？

(btw… felt that exact feeling with NHK Easy for like… a year or so)

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#4

I won’t be able to answer this for Japanese because I’m not at that stage yet, but English is my second language and I’ve been learning since very young and have always had been at a higher level than I was supposed to be at school mainly because I really pushed myself to learn and consume a lot of media in English, and I’ve been able to engage with 100% English content for nearly 2 decades without translator help.

That said, I’d say it’s only been around less than 10 years when I started engaging with specialized texts that I’ve felt like I can come across any type of text and feel at native-like speed and understanding when reading. That’s not to say it will take you 10 or 20 years, but I’ve been saying I have advanced English level for most of my life, and that has looked very different, and has constantly evolved.

I think you will always feel some type of way when assessing your level, and you will probably feel a lot more confident in a year than what you feel right now, and less confident than what you could feel in 2 years if you keep it up!

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#5

I agree with @hx9 in the sense that you can realize your progress towards fluency as you start to “know” things without having to think it over. Natives or fluent speakers don’t think about the rules as they speak. They just use what “feels” right.

But I bet that you can sense some of that in you even if reading an entire page does not seem natural yet. Do you ever “feel” like a sentence structure should be a certain way? Or “guess” what particle would be used? Maybe you know the reading of a kanji, even without knowing why? Know the reading of a word without initially knowing the reading of individual kanji used? I think those are all steps towards fluency.

I bet hiragana has become natural to you. Everything will eventually follow :smiley:

Note: I’m still N4 level, but speaking from experience learning English or French

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#6

Yes. It will eventually feel normal and one day you will find yourself putting off your bedtime because you have to read just one more chapter of the novel by that one author you used to struggle with.

My advice to my past self is: put off the pressure to skim. It’s ok to read slowly. It’s ok if you have to sit with every single sentence. Eventually it’ll just click.

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#7

I think it’s a matter of rewiring your brain where to expect certain pieces of information. The more you are exposed to it, the more expected it will be. For me, with English as a second language, that did not take too much effort, as English and Dutch are decently close in sentence structure. Comparatively, English and Japanese are a much bigger step, and therefore will take more time to get used to.

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#8

If you really just mean when did the symbols start to automatically produce sounds in your head without thinking about it, that took around a year for me (not including kanji, since I only know a few). So reading japanese already feels like reading normally for me. But I still lack lots of vocab, grammar and kanji.

So if this is just about the automatic transformation of symbols into sounds and meaning, this should come quite quickly once you start reading a lot. Maybe 1000 pages or somemthing (kinda depends on text density).

But if this is about actually understanding everything like you’re a native, that takes a few years more I guess. :sweat_smile:

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#9

Pep95’s point about difference from your native language is important. The Japanese talk about developing and “English Brain” in order to be able to speak English naturally, because the order you expect information in is so different. We need to develop a “Japanese brain”. Also remember it took a long time for reading to become automatic even in your native language, it won’t happen fast with Japanese (or at least it isn’t for me). It should probably be accepted it’ll never seem as natural as it does in your native language just less unnatural.

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#10

Yesterday I suddenly started being able to read and comprehend a lot of ヨルシカ’s lyrics, while Suis was singing, I was able to keep up with the reading.

I did start a vocab deck specifically for their songs; since they use some poetic words/phrases. But it has helped a lot to learn vocabulary that is meaningful to me; what do I want to do with my Japanese?

As for the grammar; only speaking and listening made me able to understand grammar easily. Reading doesn’t do much for me to learn actual grammar structures and whatnot to be used practically.

#11

Yes

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#12

This is actually the main thing I was getting at, a lot of the other answers, though appreciated, were pretty off base. Thank you! I was talking about straight up kana and kanji and grammar that I definitely already know, and don’t at any point “struggle” to understand.

I’ve been properly reading stuff, but only on and off, for about five years. Clearly I need to read more.

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#13

You learned one writing system already. So you already know your brain has the capability :slight_smile: I don’t think you have to do anything specific other than reading. You can rest assured it will come :slight_smile:

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#14

Thank you! I felt all weird because I can actually talk at speed with the Japanese that I know (to the point where my brain is doing that thing where it can’t comprehend that English speakers around me don’t understand what I’m saying), and yet the reading, despite doing much more of it, wasn’t getting there. Made me wonder if the “foreign-ness” of the symbols was forever if you don’t learn them young. Glad to know it’s not!

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#15

Over time, it does become easier and easier. It did take time for me at least. In a way as my vocabulary and grammar knowledge increased, it did become “easier” but I also really like reading stuff and initially I re-read the manga / light novel volumes. On the second re-read, things felt more “natural” lol. I had already looked up most of the unknown stuff.

Sometimes when reading manga, I basically just read like normal and somehow finish the volume as I am reading in English.

With light novels, it really depends. Over time, I did get used to the feeling that I might not understand everything and that I have to look up stuff in a dictionary which kinda stops the “flow”. There are times where I just read and not check unknown vocab / kanji. There are times where I stop on every page and look up a few things.

Its kinda hard to get fully right but as long as my knowledge is around the level of what I am reading and I really like what I am reading, it can feel natural lol.

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#16

Actually this touched on something that made me adjacently remember: my Nan was an absolutely voracious reader of novels, but she kept a dictionary by the couch and would be looking up a word in English she didn’t know all the time, despite English being her only language. Her vocabulary from doing this was enormous.

I think it’s easy to forget with foreign languages that even extremely well read natives don’t know every word they read.

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