Passing the N1 in 18 months and becoming fluent in Japanese a year or less after is an incredible achievement. It’s far beyond what could possibly be expected for a typical person, let alone many people. It’s so superlative, it’s difficult to comprehend how it could even happen. Unless you don’t actually mean to say they are truly fluent (a word that gets thrown around a bit too easily) or that they didn’t actually pass N1 (they just “studied” to that level). I’m not sure if that’s what you meant.
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It’s estimated that fluency in Japanese takes 2200 hours for native English speakers. If you want to accomplish that in 18 months, that means studying Japanese for around 4 hours every day (Or less if your goal is 2 years) - which should not be difficult to do if you are living in Japan. For example you might have an hour long commute in the morning and again on the way home, an hour for lunch, and an hour or two at the end of the day before bed. That’s 4-5 hours daily that you could spend reading books, watching tv, talking with people, or studying grammar.
The reason why most people struggle with it is because they don’t devote the time to it or they simply do not know how to learn a language.
Having N1 doesn’t mean you are fluent. There are many people who have passed N1 and can’t even hold a basic conversation. But if you are fluent then it can be assumed that you are above N1 simply because fluency requires a large vocabulary and the N1 holders only have to know around 10k words. What I am talking about is people who are fluent and live their lives and work their careers in Japanese. It is not at all rare or unheard of to pass N1 within 18 months, and there are many schools in Japan which exist specifically to get students up to that level so that they can enter into Japanese universities.
Rather, I would argue that if you haven’t reached fluency within that amount of time then you are doing something wrong. Like spending too much time on grammar and textbooks and not enough time reading or talking with people, or simply not enough exposure to the language in a day. For example reading for just an hour a day will get you very far in two years, but it’s not enough exposure to reach fluency in that time.
I’d just like to point out the definition of “fluency” is completely arbitrary and varies by person to person. But most importantly, I’d just like to mention that your definition of “fluency” does not match the statistics you’ve cited. Specifically:
The US State Department considers Japanese a category IV language and estimates proficiency in 88 weeks or 2200 class hours. I would assume this is where you got your statistic from. In which case this instruction only takes you to “a score of “Speaking-3/Reading-3” on the Interagency Language Roundtable scale.” Which, according to the Language Testing Institute itself only brings you to the middle of the scale. 5 Is considered “fluent.” This estimated 2200 hours only brings one just past what they consider “Limited Working Proficiency, Plus” which, again, is halfway to what they consider fluency.
I’d also like to point out that this number is the average amount of time it takes. An important distinction to make because people in these programs come from all backgrounds. Some have experience with Kanji, or Japanese in general, and some are starting completely from scratch. So 2200 hours is an average figure and not the standard. A student with 1400 hours and a student with 3000 hours makes the average 2200, but that doesn’t make it the standard. Which leads me to…
It was estimated for students who had experience with kanji could pass the N1 in 1700-2600 hours. But students with no prior experience with kanji would take 3000-4800 hours.
Which brings me to my main point:
I feel like that’s not only incorrect, but it’s condescending, if not just outright rude. Different people learn a language at different rates due to a whole host of reasons. Somebody not reaching “fluency” (again, completely arbitrary definition) isn’t due to them doing something wrong. There’s a whole host of environmental reasons why people learn languages at different rates.
That’s not just my opinion; that’s science. Just off the top of my head: current brain plasticity, previous exposure to foreign languages to increase aforementioned plasticity [1] [2], and exposure to foreign languages at specific periods in childhood [1] are all HUGE biological benefits one can have. Even the quality of education is going to be a huge factor. A student with a professional educator paid for by the U.S. government complete with materials tailor-made to people in the program is absolutely going to have a better grasp of Japanese than somebody with Bunpro and Genki II in the same timeframe. Doubly so if somebody has had exposure to parts of the language or even the language itself.
Sorry for writing a book. I wound up having to go over similar research for my Master’s thesis and I find most of it super interesting. But I also just find this attitude of treating language-learning like a race so disappointing. There are people just starting Japanese, likely on their own, reading stuff like this and being completely mislead to disappointment. And it’s especially frustrating because I know of people, really capable people, that give up before they even start because they see this behavior.
If you are studying, if you are seeing results, just keep going. Don’t compare yourself to this.
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The definition is pretty clear. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
Even if it took you 4000 hours, that just means using Japanese for 5 hours a day which should be no problem for someone in Japan. For example if you commute by train an hour each way, have an hour for lunch at work, plus 2 hours of free time at home at the end of the day then you have 5 hours to study Japanese every day.
I really don’t understand why you are taking offense to this or are trying to make it more than it needs to be. We’re talking about language learning, not rocket science: it’s just a matter of time invested daily.
This is getting into the realm of anecdotes, but I have taken language classes and I have also self studied and to me this point just sounds silly. Class instruction can only get you so far and in order to reach fluency you have to actually use the language because there is a clear difference between memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary words and actually acquiring them. Anyone going through those programs is going to be spending a lot of time holding conversations and reading books or watching TV in the language they are learning. Are you saying hat normal people are unable to read books, talk to people or watch TV in Japanese?
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Second is one’s natural experience of language acquisition as a child better matches my approach. As a kid, you didn’t (couldn’t) artificially limit your exposure to language based on what you knew. You just had to keep ploughing ahead. Eventually things became clearer.
I just want to be clear here: I don’t think that you shouldn’t be looking or listening to other people or try to read other things while studying. I do this all the time. What I am saying is that, if you’re introducing new explanations of grammar points and don’t fully understand the explanations? Slow down!
You might very well get the grammar point from listening to others and picking up on it, sure, but as a child, you have adults correcting you and providing you feedback on almost a daily basis because they’re invested in you. You don’t have that so much as an adult.
Ultimately, do what’s best for you in your journey and do what you can to ensure you’re doing what you can to help care for yourself when you inevitably hit frustrations in the process. That’s all
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This is actually something that has really started being studied within the past few years. There has always been an assumption that children learned better via implicit education simply because they were children. Explicit education within a child’s “sensitive period” wasn’t widely looked at. I found this recently and thought it was interesting.
Age and learning environment: Are children implicit second language learners? (2016)
A big factor in this research being important is its recency. A large portion of “children are the best language learners because they just are better implicit learners” research is often 20-30 years old. This was done only a few years ago and, to quote from their conclusions:
The position I call the maturational hypothesis holds that children learn languages implicitly because of cognitive maturation – because they are children. If this is the case, children should not benefit from explicit training. Results, though, showed that children aged five to seven who received explicit training did develop more explicit knowledge of the mini-language’s grammatical rules than those receiving implicit training, and that all children, even those not given explicit training, produced sentences more accurately when their attention was drawn to form. These results better fit the instructional hypothesis: children learn languages implicitly because they have not been exposed to explicit grammar instruction; adults learn languages explicitly because they have already been exposed to explicit grammar instruction.
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Overall, this study shows more similarities than differences between child and adult L2 learners. Both children and adults are capable of learning an artificial mini-language under either implicit or explicit training conditions. Both perform more accurately when their attention is drawn to form. Both develop more explicit knowledge when instructed explicitly (although adults may also develop explicit knowledge on their own). Both age groups make errors, displaying individual differences in performance.
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These results do not support the idea that children, because of their cognitive maturation, rely on implicit learning mechanisms in all circumstances, nor that adults always rely on explicit learning mechanisms. Rather, they suggest that the learning environment is very important: explicit language instruction leads to explicit language knowledge, at any age. Adults, having had more lifetime exposure to explicit information about language, may be more likely than children to seek out and use explicit knowledge – without this difference being caused exclusively by cognitive maturation. This makes an important contribution to our understanding of age and second language acquisition. Relying on explicit knowledge and benefitting from explicit instruction may not be hallmarks of ADULT classroom L2 learning specifically, but rather hallmarks of classroom L2 learning at any age.
Basically. Language learners start using more classroom learning methods as they get older because a majority of what they have learned has come from the classroom. Their environment matters more than their age. Although there is a lot of research indicating that children do have a better ability to pick up languages and understand phonetical differences, when it comes to learning a language neither immersion nor classroom learning is particularly better than the other and it all comes down to what fits best for you.
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i always thought “fluency” simply meant being able to talk without thinking (about grammar/vocabolary), like when the right words just “come up” to you when needed.
also consider that all the first year elemetary school kids are considerent “fluent in japanese”, and the might not even pass n5, let alone n1. i’d say that we are talking about 2 completely different skillsets here
I feel like I see these types of posts every once in a while, and I genuinely wish you the best of luck with achieving your goal, but I’m honestly not sure I have seen anyone hit N1 in a year who wasn’t a native Korean speaker. Japanese grammar rules are “simple” however it’s a very “dense” language, primarily due to all the Kanji that must be learned in addition to the grammar. There’s also a lot of nuances in terms of politeness and how you physically carry yourself in conversation with Japanese people that are hard to learn without lots of interactions.
Regarding fluency, my Japanese tutor put it very succinctly. She said fluency is when you can speak, read and write and you don’t have to think about it.
I used to teach some supplementary classes for EFL teachers and one of the first questions I would always have them discuss with each other is “what is fluency?” Like, reeeeaaallly think about what that word means and you’ll find it’s kind of hard to quantify.
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Is it being able to speak what’s on your mind quickly in Japanese? Because I’m able to do that in Japanese now and yet I likely wouldn’t be able to pass N2 currently. Does that make me fluent? I wouldn’t consider myself so.
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Is it being able to have a conversation? Because you can have a conversation with the most bare minimum of vocabulary and grammar. A toddler can convey to me needs, wants, and ideas with just words. Is a toddler fluent?
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Is it being able to understand 100% of what somebody said in their native language? Because even within a target language there’s different levels of ability. If I understand an elementary school student am I fluent? A junior high school student? A high school student? A college graduate? A professor?
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Is it accuracy? Then consider, hypothetically, somebody perfecting what you would consider N5 and N4 vocabulary and grammar. Let’s say you spoke at an N4 level with 100% accuracy but knew none of the grammar beyond. Is that fluent?
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Is it vocabulary and grammar knowledge? Because as has been discussed previously you can have a ton of vocabulary and grammar knowledge and still be unable to have a conversation. Moreso, at what % of vocabulary knowledge does fluency begin? If I know 50% of a target language’s vocabulary is that fluent? What about 40%? 30%? What’s the exact amount?
I don’t mean to hamper anyone’s goals of fluency. But I just want to point out that what fluency is can be kind of nebulous. So rather than trying to be “fluent” I would just say try to be better than you were yesterday, you know?
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I think in general people should spend less time thinking about what fluency means and how fluent they are and more time studying.
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Oh, man, great job @Devenu! I came in here to provide exactly the same information you did and you did it a lot better than I would have. I’ll just add a couple of thoughts because, like you, I find this to be a very interesting topic.
Many people see that 2200 hours figure thrown around online and they have little idea where it comes from or what it means. Those hours are classroom instructional hours provided by the United States Foreign Service to federal employees whose job requires language training. It is the average time expected for someone to obtain a “professional working proficiency” in the language. The programs have been developed for decades using some of the best resources available. Students are provided direct interaction with instructors, a complete curriculum, personal coaches, etc. all oriented toward getting them as proficient as possible as soon as possible. When students enter the Foreign Service language program, that’s essentially their job until they complete it (or flunk or drop out). And the classroom hours (which take up half the day) are supplemented by individual study time. I don’t know about anyone else, but as someone with a full-time job who only has access to what’s available on the Internet, I don’t see that as being a practical measure. 
One minor note to make is technically, it’s not “Limited Working Proficiency,” but actually “Professional Working Proficiency” (ILR3). Your point stands, though: it’s still a limited comprehension of the language. More importantly, it’s also well short of N1. N1 corresponds to ILR4, which is “Full Working Proficiency.” It’s estimated it can take as much time to go from 0 to ILR3 as it takes to go from ILR3 to ILR4 (just like N2 to N1). This places further skepticism on @runrun’s original claim that people are getting to N1 level in 12-18 months and then attaining fluency a year later. You would expect the opposite. (In this case I’m going with a definition of fluency that means working proficiency in the language that allows one to speak naturally without noticeable halting or faltering in speech. It should be noted that fluency is often defined in terms of productivity using the language, and not in measures like vocabulary size, grammatical correctness, or other important language considerations. But if you define fluency more generally to include being able to hear, speak, read, and write, and you measure that against a sizable vocabulary, that’s a much higher goal to attain.)
The only exception to this (passing the N1 before becoming fluent) would be for people like me for whom fluency is not a goal. My aim is to be able to read Japanese, not speak it. Consequently, I’m able to devote more time to that. The N1 only tests you on reading and listening, not speaking. If you’re able to cut out speaking and writing that can get you a shortcut to passing N1 without achieving fluency, but that’s still far from a year-long process. It takes years to get there. I’ve been studying for almost two years at around 2-5 hours per day (more if you count listening to podcasts and YouTube videos and playing Japanese language games), and I’d say I’m barely at N2 reading level right now. I have reason to believe my ability is at least average, too (i.e. I’m not a slow learner).
Couldn’t agree more, and that was exactly the same point I was going to make! 
I think the same way. Academics can’t even agree on what fluency is. Don’t spend your time comparing yourself to some kind of arbitrary measure, and don’t allow stories about people becoming fluent in the language in a year or two to discourage you when that doesn’t happen. You shouldn’t expect it. You’d need to do nothing but spend your entire waking existence studying the language to even have a chance at that. Just keep at it. You will get better the more you practice, and the more you practice the faster you’ll become proficient.
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if you have an intuitive grasp on the language then you are fluent. but sematincs aside, that should be the goal of somebody who learns a new language, because the whole point is to understand and being understood.
being able to have a conversation doesn’t imply you are fluent, especially when you translate stuff literally from your native language, which is what most people still do
nobody can undestand 100% of words, even in it’s native language. it depends on the context.
i guess that’s what elementary school children do. and also jlpt level are very arbitrary, you can’t “know” only up to n4 if you are fluent
depends un the context
there’s nothing nebulous about it, and it should be the main goal of language learning: the intuitive understanding of said language, and being able to intuitively output your own thought in it.
then of course different people have different goals, like somebody wants to learn all the kanji, how to write them, pass jlpt, finish bunpro, etc… but non of those imply that you’ll get fluent by doing that, since the skillsets are different
what people should stop wasting time on is counting the hours “until” something happens. language is a lifelong journey, you can always get better at it
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I completely understand where you’re coming from. Please don’t think that I was being critical. I only wanted to offer another perspective on how one might approach studying. Like I said, I know a lot of people prefer to take your approach and that’s absolutely fine. Each person should find what works for them best and stick with it.
Like the saying goes, “What’s the best diet? The one you’ll stick with.” What’s the best way to study Japanese? The one you’ll actually do! Because if you don’t, you certainly won’t learn it. 
One other interesting thing that comes to mind here is as adults with mastery of a native language, you (hypothetically) can access a second language better because you have a frame of reference. Now granted, what that frame of reference is can make a big difference in how effective it is. This is reflected in the Foreign Service’s ranking of languages. For an English speaker, Spanish is relatively easy to learn, whereas Japanese is exceptionally difficult. The dissimilarity in the languages makes the frame of reference less useful, so the learner has a larger knowledge gap to make up. But no matter what that first language is, it’s not starting from zero as it would be for a child growing up and learning their first language. Many of the same ideas are already crystalized in the adult’s mind, they just need to know how it’s said in the other language–they don’t have to grapple with the ideas themselves.
Adult language learners should thus not be discouraged, thinking that, “Oh, only children can really pick up a second language”–that’s an urban myth (except for pronunciation; that’s almost always the case there ). Most adults don’t actually end up acquiring a second language due to other factors that have nothing to do with ability. It’s usually things like being unable or insufficently motivated to devote enough time. In the case of foreigners living outside of Japan, another frustrating factor is you have to work very hard to even find people to talk to. You can try doing it online, but it can often be difficult to find conversation partners, and people tend to be flaky. Many of them will probably also be learners like you, and you could end up reinforcing incorrect speech patterns that could be corrected by speaking with natives.
I had to sit and think of a better way to respond to this correctly! Let me go into detail a bit more because I don’t think I explained myself well enough.
First, the academic world disagrees, which I’ll link to at the end. Second, if something is concrete and unnebulous then you need to be able to quantify it, which you can’t really do. For example, it’s the same reason why, when trying to explain the temperature to somebody, it’s more accurate to use degrees instead of “hot” or “cold” because what is considered “hot” is going to vary to different people. If somebody from Australia and somebody from Ireland visited the middle of America they likely are going to disagree if the weather is “hot” or not, but they will agree on the numeric temperature. Which brings me to:
If intuitiveness is what you are using to be able to concretely define fluency, then you need to be able to quantify it. Because:
Context. You mentioned earlier an elementary school student would be considered fluent. In what context? In what conversation? People often say “an everyday conversation” but even that conversation is going to be different person-to-person. An elementary school student will, likely, be able to “intuitively” produce their native language with somebody at a similar level and with a familiar subject; but if you had an elementary school student talk to a college professor they will likely not “intuitively” understand the conversation. Were they fluent before and not fluent now?
Let’s say we become Genki masters. You and I both sit in a room for two years exclusively studying Genki I and II. We get * so good* with what we learned from Genki that we are able to “intuitively” communicate with what we learned from Genki. In this world, we are by this definition fluent. But if we then both take a flight to Tokyo and try to talk to strangers our “intuitiveness” will likely change. Did we suddenly go from fluent to non-fluent? Were we never fluent to begin with?
This isn’t just me musing. There is no concrete definition of fluency and different people define it in different ways. This is a pretty regular conversation in a lot of language learning research. Or, to just quote the several on Wikipedia directly:
Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person’s language ability, often used in conjunction with accuracy and complexity. Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears fluid, or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use. In other words, fluency is often described as the ability to produce language on demand and be understood.
Varying definitions of fluency characterize it by the language user’s automaticity, their speed and coherency of language use, or the length and rate of their speech output. Theories of automaticity postulate that more fluent language users can manage all of the components of language use without paying attention to each individual component of the act. In other words, fluency is achieved when one can access language knowledge and produce language unconsciously, or automatically. Theories that focus on speed or length and rate of speech typically expect fluent language users to produce language in real time without unusual pauses, false starts, or repetitions (recognizing that some presence of these elements are naturally part of speech). Fluency is sometimes considered to be a measure of performance rather than an indicator of more concrete language knowledge, and thus perception and understandability are often key ways that fluency is understood.
There is no concrete definition of being fluent to the point people are still studying what the “definition” of fluency means. There’s also just, in general, a huge difference in definitions between the words “fluent” and “fluency.”
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This thread got weird man.
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do you know the Sorites paradox? i guess the same could be applied to fluency. if a fluent person forgets 1 word/grammatical construct, will he still be fluent? what if this process keeps going on and on? is there a cutoff point from fluency to non fluency? while this is a very cool though experiment, it’s not really that important in practice
this is a very nice observation, and i agree that making a general definition of “language fluency” isn’t easy. but as we both pointed out, what’s important is the context. if you are a kid among kids, than you’ll be fluent as any other kids. if you are a teenager among teenagers then obviously you’ll need to have a better grasp on the language in order to be considered fluent.
but since most people who decide to learn a new language do so by choice (leaving aside those who do so by necessity, since in that case the context is clear), i’d think that the “context” here is your own self. that is to say, consider the definition on wikipedia (which is also how i interpret the concept of fluency):
and apply it to yourself and yourself only. this means that the “context” of fluency will become your own internal monologue with yourself, which i think would be a good generalization for the whole concept, since it would have the same validity in case you are a kid, a highschooler, an adult, or a genki 1-2 purist.
as for the paper you linked, i can’t read the full text without paying, but i also saw that it’s from 1997. i really hope there was some progress in the “fluency” field during the last 25 years, lol
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I just think language learning and psychology is cool.
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Curious to see if op did in fact finish n1 at the end of 2022
Hell nah. Depression got in the way, but I did do intensive therapy, so I’d like to start back up.
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