In the end, I still have lost interest in learning Japanese

Japanese
#1

Some of you surely remember how I wanted to quit a few weeks ago, but despite small shot of motivation, here I am again.

The reason I’m quitting Japanese is that I want to have more time for learning German, a language that is more important in my life due to Germany neighboring Czechia.

Though although my journey ends here, I still have learned a lot that will help me in my German learning. That is the importance of immersion. I don’t know why, but in the Japanese community it’s more popular than in other languages. Without learning Japanese, I would maybe never find about SRS and the method of immersion.

Good luck guys with your Japanese journeys.

In case anyone would want to keep in touch with me, just ask and I will share my email in the DMs.

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#2

Good luck with your German learning journey.

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#3

Lots of weebs with strong technical backgrounds.

- a weeb with a strong technical background

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#4

I think another reason being the channel Matt vs Japan why immersion is so popular in the Japanese community.

#5

Huh? Am I understanding you wrong? I learned multiple languages inside and outside of school settings, and everybody always raved about the importance of immersion. They just packaged it differently, especially in school, where it was about reading books and news and stuff (we had to read the vatican news every week in latin :sweat_smile:), writing with your penpals, multiple language exchange vacations, watching movies, analizing sketches, singing along songs. So at least in school, there was lots of immersion by week one with nicely curated native materials (maybe language learning is different from country by country). And most language learning forums for other languages always had huge recommendation seeking threads. I don’t feel immersion is bigger in japanese learning communities than in others. It might feel like that, though, cause everybody is sharing what anime they watch or what manga they read, while other countries don’t offer this vast amount of easy accessable media. I gave up on learning finish, cause I wasn’t finding enough easy accessable material.

Or was it about SRS? That should have been covered in school, too. I still remember us crafting small vocab boxes with SRS a few decades ago :sweat_smile: My kids preferred online tools for that, but it was definetly covered in school. Honestly textbooks for school should come with a free SRS tool, since everybody here went to digital schoolbooks anyway

Anyway, giving up on a language, especially if you already have a few under your belt is quite normal. You can only spread yourself out so much. My French learning is on hiatus (I used to be B2 back in the days) until natively finally adds french support ^^ It was so hard finding nice books, and basically impossible to find some nice french series I’d enjoy. Nowadays my japanese listening comprehension is way above my french one, but I can read most french books fluidly without look ups.

Haaaaaahhhh, language learning is a tough but fun journey, glad you’ll keep up the good work woth learning German :slight_smile:

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#6

If you are still a1 or a2 at German I really recommend those guys: https://languages-on-fire.com/
I’ve bought full French deck and now starting speedruning it. French deck has 5500 cards, on German deck, on the website it says it consists of more than 2000 cards.

From the French deck I can say it is really good quality with native audio and i+1 sentence.

Btw they have first 250 cards of that deck on Anki: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1698672280

Basically the closest thing to bunpro for other languages I’ve seen

#7

In my experience it’s more like “how will it help me” from everyone, it’s something new and revolutionary for most people I’ve seen

#8

tech bro signing in o7

Honestly, I find the systems designed to aid language learning to be the most interesting part. I just happen to be learning Japanese.

#9

Really? Seems different from my experience, then. I could imagine people learning their first language and doing so outside of school (like in many english speaking countries, where learning a foreign language is more of a fancy option instead of something you have to do your entire school life) hearing about immersion or SRS for the first time. Makes sense, when it’s their first language. But that’s not the case for @Mathias_Tichota.

Not that it matters much, it’s just a thing you should learn with your first real language learning experience (so not something like duolingo for a month). I was more concerned about how someone who already learned a few languages didn’t know about that. We need better onboarding for new language learners :sweat_smile:

#10

Im Austrian and to form it quickly, warum lebe ich hier.
Die Sprache ist ahh and the grama is also hell, so Im hoping while learning japanese, I can flex around type shi

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#11

In my country, there’s just little to no focus put on immersion. Sometimes there are small stories in the schoolbooks, but more focus is put on rote memorization. Not even SRS is mentioned.

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#12

As someone whose mother tongue is German (I’m from Austria),
I wish you good luck with learning it!

It is an easy language; the different tenses will be a bit tricky. German has more tenses, and Japanese is simpler and has fewer. German also has pronouns — which don’t exist in Japanese and English in the same way — it’s just “that, sore, are, kore” (as far as I know in Japanese).
In German, it is “die, der, das” — and here you also have to adapt them based on the gender and case of the noun, which don’t exist at all in English or Japanese. For example, in English, it’s just “the woman, the man, the dish” — no gender change, no case change. In Japanese, it’s also just sore, kore, are (or sono, kono, ano when used before a noun), and they never change — no matter whether you’re talking about a man, a woman, or a thing. Oh! And the capitalization! It doesn’t even exist in Japanese, and in English it is way simpler than in German (I hate it).
But I am sure you will manage and get the hang of it!

I think that your motivation, and why you want to learn a language, always plays a huge part in how long you will study it. And as you said — Germany is nearer to Czechia, so it is easy for you to visit, you will find people you can practice with and hear the language, and it’s not as far away as Japan. (Just my thoughts.)
But again, you don’t even have to explain yourself to anyone — it’s your choice.

And I have to agree with you on the SRS method and immersion! My schools never mentioned such a thing or learning types in general! I also studied in Germany for a bit — it wasn’t mentioned there either, even though I visited a language school. Nor did we ever learn that way — why??? It is sooo much easier. I would have wished I knew about it earlier.

Maybe you will find a similar website as Bunpro for German which offers such functions. Good luck!

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#13

There’s little focus put on it anywhere unless you’re in a pretty hardcore language-learning community, and in those it’s just assumed that that’s what you’re doing. I guarantee that most of the people learning Japanese in the US are just taking college courses or using Pimsleur or something and have never heard of AJATT or immersion.

#14

Every language has its quirks.
I’m L2 German (L1 Italian), my family moved to Germany when I was 6. German has some weirdnesses but so do all other languages.

For me the main information “load”, not necessarily complexity but just sheer amount of things to memorize one-by-one were der/das distinctions (die felt pretty intuitive, der/das was often a trap) and conjugation exceptions because there’s tons of them.

I’ve been speaking German for almost 30 years now. I probably still get some der/das wrong sometimes :smiley:

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#15

Someone recently ‘corrected’ my use of “Das Nutella” with “Der Nutella”. I’m still gonna use “Das Nutella”. :rage:

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#16

my first thought was “isn’t it die Nutella?” so I had to look it up:
for Nutella, all are valid (der/die/das)

I was probably biased towards die, because it’s an Italian word and Nutella is feminine (la) in Italian. The “-ella” part in Nutella is a feminine diminuitive suffix in Italian grammar. Think of it as sort of a ちゃん equivalent to (to some degree, the nuance and usage is not exactly the same). Nutella = nut chan :sweat_smile:

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#17

Im a native German and “Das Nutella” sounds so much better for me :smiley:

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#18

I would not see this as having lost interest in learning Japanese, but instead you picking the prioritization of your own life.
None of us have the time to do all the things we may want to do in our lives, so identifying what is most important in your life and putting those first is merely a part of gaining maturity.

o7
May you live a life of no regrets.

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#19

Understandable.
You could study Japanese less.
I studied 20 minutes a day for the past 500 days.
And an hour per day from 1,300 days until 500 days ago.

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