As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been studying for a very long time. If you count the time I actually got interested in Japanese, (14 years old) to now (41 years old) , for all intents and purposes I should be a master, or at least fluent. I’m not for several reasons, too many to explain all at once, but I guess I’ll try.
If I could describe my Japanese knowledge in one word, it would be “scattered”. Over the years I have tried so many ways to learn Japanese, from textbooks, apps, AJATT, sentence mining, and even studying abroad. In the end, my Japanese is very much functional, but at times lacking in fundamentals and fluency. It’s kind of like watching Dennis Rodman play basketball; it looks a little sloppy, and lacks finesse, but he’s getting the job done, dyed hair and all. He also had the tendency to miss practice and disappear for months on end. Something that I and many who learn are all too familiar with. And that’s what happened with Japanese the first 15 or so years of my journey. I would just disappear for months on end until something pulled me back in.
Most of my life I’ve felt this sort of sense of urgency about Japanese. “If I’m not fluent by the time I’m 24, 27, 30, 32, things aren’t going to happen”. If I’m not fluent, I can’t help anyone, what use am I to anyone when it comes to Japanese? I want to be the person who can answer every question, knows every word, can recognize even the most obscure Kanji. And to be fair, there are some people who thought I was that person because of the level of knowledge I did have. To people within my weekly study group, I am still that beacon of knowledge. People believed it, but I didn’t because I knew it wasn’t true. I was the one who wanted to believe it.
But this past year or so was the first time I didn’t feel like that anymore. Praise, acceptance and admiration are qualities that young people yearn for. It’s part of the reason that they’re so quick to talk about their accomplishments, but are hesitant talking about their failures and weaknesses unless sympathy is what they are seeking. I know it’s not just exclusive to young people, but this is especially prevalent in one’s youth.
These past couple years, I started to realize that I may never actually become fluent. And while that may sound like a shock, or giving up, or even a death sentence to some, I can say that it is a reality for a lot of people. Growing up in an immigrant family in the US, you sometimes see family members who live here all their lives but never really become fluent in English despite their best efforts. To be fair, some of them don’t try to learn as much as they should, but they have to at least know a certain degree of English. I’ve known people who lived in Japan for years and still struggle with Japanese, and never really properly learn it. And I know that there are going to be people that read this and have a “solution” for me or diagnose a “problem” that is their one size fits all solution like every YouTuber, language influencer and blogger has. But heres the thing, most of these solutions are based on one’s own experience rather than the experience of many. When a proper, funded study is done, it is done with a controlled group of several individuals over a course of months, even years. Each person is different and until you walk in their shoes, it’s hard to pinpoint what will work for them and what won’t. Some people have the will, time, money and resources to seek that on their own, and others don’t.
Being a leader in the local Japanese learning community has given me some reverence and purpose. On a weekly basis I host study sessions, help beginners, learn along with intermediate learners, and speak with natives. I’ve met a ton of amazing people and am able to get a great perspective on learning seeing that everybody from students, teachers, essential workers, artists, musicians, engineers and even lawyers have been part of the group. The wide range of people who are interested in Japanese as a language is astounding.
In my older age I have learned to just embrace the fact that I can read, write, speak and understand at the level that I can. That I can read plenty of manga with some lookups, but not too many. That I am able to read through Famitsu articles (not easily) but with enough knowledge to enjoy them. That I can have dinner and enjoy a subtitle-less episode of anime and annoy my spouse with what this word means and what that context meant. That I’m able to go on trips to Japan without any real worry about communication issues, and can even go into little mom and pop shops that don’t have an eigo menu with little issue. In other words, I’ve learned to enjoy what I have rather than what I don’t have. It’s a philosophy that I not only apply to Japanese, but other parts of my life as well.
I may not be fluent yet, I may not be able to read Murakami flawlessly, I sometimes struggle with understanding conversations and often have to look things up. The Japanese people that I do speak with on a weekly basis correct me, sometimes on things I should know, but I swallow my pride because they show up to help me. I sometimes have to backtrack because I give the wrong information about grammar or vocab in study groups. And the the cardinal sin (finding my eyes gravitating towards English subtitles at times)
Japanese for me has been a lifetime struggle of my mind telling me “This is too hard, you’ll have much more fun doing this in English”. And me being like “Japanese is fun, I may struggle through it a bit, but that’s part of the fun”. As humans, we are riddled with the burden of ambition and the glorification of success and results. Success and results being a byproduct of our mostly capitalist society that favors pride and status over happiness and well-being. We use things like language trackers, standardized tests, reading catalogs, study logs and so forth to not just mark our success in Japanese, but by extension, our value as human beings. But when was the last time you spoke to a Japanese person and they asked “How many words, and grammar points do you know?” They don’t really care, at least not in the technical sense, and whether I was at a point that I knew just 100 or 5000 words, Japanese people have always been thrilled to communicate with me because I put forth the effort, an effort that bridged a gap that wouldn’t be there had I not made the effort or continue to make it. Japanese is exciting not because the amount of words I know, but how I use them. Not by my ability to read books in Japanese, but the lessons I learn from them. Not because I’m told how good I am, but how I can infinitely improve.
I am not fluent in Japanese, and that’s okay for now. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what I do know. But it also doesn’t mean that it gives me the excuse to not continue to get better. I’ll allow myself to enjoy the ride, as it has been a long one and will probably be for most people. Ideally, we would all love to learn it in a year, but very few people can do that no matter what language influencers trying to sell courses and get subs tell you. Enjoying this long, scary, beautiful, eye-opening, risk-taking ride with as much joy as I can have may be the only reason I’m still on it.
