Does reading ever feel normal?

Japanese
#21

my brain is doing that thing where it can’t comprehend that English speakers around me don’t understand what I’m saying

It’s funny you mention this, because I’ve definitely had this with hiragana and katakana where I have a second when showing something to someone when I am appalled that my mother or friend or whoever can’t read it before I realize that of course they can’t they’ve never studied Japanese.

All that to say that it does eventually get internalized to the point that it no longer feels like a second language anymore.

(Grammar, vocab and stuff is another story of course, but that’s already been discussed).

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#22

I always read out loud all my review sentences :sweat_smile: I feel like it helps a lot, especially to get all those typical chunks, word endings, typical word combos into the brain, so it’s probably good for listening comprehension, too. :slight_smile: Not sure if it helps with getting hiragana from symbols to automatically understood letters, though.

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#23

If you haven’t done so already: learning to handwrite and writing regularily will burn those letters into your brain a bit faster. Not just single letters, but whole sentences.

I would recommend that to everybody who wants to get this intuitive, almost native feel when reading the letters. Even if you don’t care about writing by hand at all.

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#24

I recomend watching something with Japanese subs, without pausing.
The forced faster pace will help you stop translating in your head.

And yes, as you read more you will get better.
1 reading Japanese is not like reading my first language
2 The symbols stopped feeling like symbols and now feel like a story or senentce.

Oh
So on my chopsticks wrapper it says
“森林保護のため、
生長の早い竹材を使用しています
[割らずにすぐお使いいただけます]”
I read it. Then thought 森…護 "it says the bamboo is sustainable.
割らずに “it says Don’t have to split the chopsticks”

Then typing it もり that’s a boys name はやし, that one is in かんごし… that one is in save. What’s the word for save? …it is also in ほけん
Immersion helped on the first part. Vocab reviews helped on the second

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#25

I’m nowhere close to native level, but I have a lot of moments where I read/understand something as fast as my native language. The more you read, the more you’re gonna encounter the same super common phrases/sentences over and over again until you just understand it instantly. At least that’s been my experience with dialogue/conversation heavy visual novels.

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