Why do you study Japanese?

Japanese
#22

1.) My sole motivation really is eroge + light novels. Maybe a bit of manga perhaps but not really. I also believe translated Japanese media is disgraceful to the author and you should be ashamed of yourself for reading it-you aren’t reading the author’s work, but the interpretation of the author’s work from some random guy.

2.) None

3.) I pretty much completed all bunpro grammar before I started reading but in terms of immersion itself, I have learnt 200x more now I am reading eroge in Japanese than before.

4.) Now immersion is my primary source of learning. I normally read eroge 12-16 hrs a day.

5.) Eroge makes learning enjoyable for me. So many 美少女 out there and their stories to read.

6.) Don’t track my progress at all. Just keep reading and adding words to anki.

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#23

Motivation
I was born and raised in the United States for reference. In high school, I met my now-ex partner who was Japanese by heritage and had family there still. Honestly, hearing phone conversations between my partner and their parents that I couldn’t comprehend was beyond frustrating. They could’ve been bad-mouthing me, for all I know! So I started learning, but it ended up being a bit late because I ended up breaking up with them.

Nevertheless, I continued onward, for no discernable reason than “well, I already started, so I might as well continue”. It had just become a routine for me. At some point though, I figured I needed a reason and applied for a MEXT scholarship. Now, my motivation is much more tangible, because I will be moving to Japan in April to begin postgraduate studies in geophysics.

Prior Language Learning Experience
I had to learn a secondary language as part of my high school’s graduation requirements. In the United States, it is very common for people to be monolingual. My teacher wasn’t great, and I really couldn’t be bothered to put any outside time into the class, so I never got anywhere with the language. Japanese is really my first earnest language learning effort.

Attitudes Towards Immersion Learning
Honestly, I’ve always been one to say that structured learning methods, like textbooks and flashcards, are very underrated. However, it’s hard to argue about the effectiveness of immersion. I do feel quite uncomfortable at my frankly subpar level when I immerse, but I feel discomfort in moderation is the quickest path to true mastery.

Role of Immersion in my Daily Studies
I have a routine that involves vocabulary review, grammar review, and immersion. I see immersion as the end goal of each day, and the vocabulary/grammar is the warmup. At most, I like to spend no more than an hour on the warmup and 2-3 hours on the immersion. On that note, I tend to use resources such as NHK Easy to sort of ‘ease’ (no pun intended) myself into immersion for that day, finishing on more native-level material like an anime or similar.

Enjoyability
What I find most enjoyable now is the prospect that very soon, this will all just have been foundation-building, and that I really will be using this language in my daily life. Even when the flashcards, reviews, and sentence-mining gets sort of old, that thought keeps me going.

Progress Tracking
I mostly just feel things out by how easy it has become to read or listen to something, but I do track my known words in Anki and with Yomichan. Personally, I don’t feel this has any feedback mechanism with my motivation or how much I enjoy it. Stats are just neat to look at.

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#24
  1. Motivation. What made you start learning Japanese, and is that still your motivation? Are you learning mostly as a hobby, or is there something in your life that requires knowing Japanese?

I wanted to read manga and light novels. At that time (12 years ago), not a lot of media that I wanted to read were translated. So I had the great idea one day to start studying Japanese. That way I can read whatever I wanted. This is still my main motivation.

  1. Prior language learning experience. Do you know, or have you ever learned other languages? If so, how does it compare to your Japanese level? Did you study actively to learn the language?

Before Japanese, I already studied, English, Latin, Spanish, French mostly due to school / moving countries. After Japanese: Korean + Mandarin Chinese for fun

Bulgarian and English - Native level. Actively had to study
Japanese - N3 / N2 level. Evening Class lessons, Japanese Language School from time to time
Korean - beginner level. Some evening class lessons + going through textbooks.
Latin / French / Spanish - Did actively study for 2 years in school ages ago. Remember very little.
Mandarin Chinese - mostly learned from watching dramas. Very very low level haha

  1. Attitudes toward immersion learning. Do you believe immersion is the most effective approach to acquiring a language? Do you feel uncomfortable when you immerse?

Probably it is for some people and in some situations. Personally, I don’t believe that immersion is the most effective approach as everybody learns differently. HOWEVER I do believe that it becomes more and more necessary and fun as one’s ability improves.

Some level of “uncomfortable” I think is good. Yes I did feel it initially, I just accept it and don’t worry. If I put on a show or read something, I expect that I will not know everything. Its more about finding a media to consume where there is a balanced (for me) approach - the unknown vocab / grammar is at a reasonable level and it is not a hindrance to enjoy the book / manga etc.

  1. Role of immersion in your daily studies. What role does immersion play in your language learning process? Is it your primary source of learning? How does the amount of time you spend immersing compare to the amount of time you spend on guided resources? Is the amount of time you spend immersing consistent with your attitudes toward immersion learning?

I did watch quite a lot of anime before starting to learn Japanese.
When I started to learn - not much immersion. If I watch a Jdrama / anime it will be with subs. Most of my daily time would be spent on learning grammar / vocab / kaji

Gradually it transitioned to 60% learning - Sometimes I would experiment with watching anime with no subs or a show with no subs. I started to read books aimed at kids or simple manga.
Some days I would just make notes and / or do SRS on Anki / Renshuu

Current level - sometimes I do watch media without subs Or I will switch the subs from time to time. Most days I can get Bunpro / Renshuu / Anki done in less than 20 minutes. Some days I read for about 1 hour, other days 4+ hours…

I just have fun with reading and watching, don’t really think about it as “immersion”.

  1. Enjoyability. What makes learning enjoyable? Is there anything unenjoyable in your current study habits (and if so, why do you stick with them)? What parts of your study habits are enjoyable for you?

Learning inherently does not really feel enjoyable all the time as some effective methods are not exactly fun (eg shadowing), maybe its just me. What makes it fun is seeing my hard work lead to progress. Eg finally understanding a manga / light novel with nearly no vocabulary look ups.
Able tick off in my daily planner that I have done a particular task everyday gives me joy.
Setting myself goals and going for them makes it fun - eg I will get all Bunpro grammar done by the end of the year.
Making a reachable goal or in some cases unreasonable goal to stive for makes it fun to improve. I do enjoy a challenge.
Listening to music while making Anki cards takes away the boredom haha

  1. Progress tracking. How do you track your progress in the language? Do you go by feel, or do you use tools to do this? Does your (conscious or unconscious) approach to progress tracking tie into motivation or enjoyability?

I write 本 in my diary on the days I read and its really satisfying to see it on every day of the year.
I also apply for the JLPT as its fun to see how far I have gone and a way to set deadlines to get better haha.

For short term motivation sometimes seeing the Bunpro tracker and getting it gradually completed helped to boost my desire to learn and study more some days.

Motivation comes and goes all the time. I try to make learning a daily habit and naturally my Japanese will improve over time (hopefully). Enjoyment mainly comes from using the language.

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#25

Thank you all for responding! As promised, here are my answers:

1. Motivation

What got me started with Japanese was my crush on a Japanese peer in undergrad. I wanted to surprise her by speaking to her in Japanese as our relationship progressed. What actually ended up happening though is that I got ghosted in increasing intervals of time until I finally got explicitly rejected when I asked her out to be my Valentine.

By the way, to this day, she probably has no idea that I ever started learning Japanese.

Although that was the impetus, it definitely was a short-lived motivation. What really motivated me was the desire to self improve in some manner. I remember learning the fact that sentence structure in Korean and Japanese is totally inverted, and that really made me curious to learn a new way of thinking. I wanted to feel my brain being shaped into a new way of being.

I started off with JapanesePod101, and as I learned the basics, I started to enjoy learning not just about the language, but also a bit about the culture. Some other secondary motives have been to travel to Japan one day (and I finally booked my first trip in May!), to understand anime (which I now can), and to open up opportunities in my life (such as having the option to move to Japan after graduation).

2. Prior language learning experience

English is actually my second language, but I acquired it at a young age. I remember consciously struggling with English at age 7 when my parents forced me to go to an English-only private international school in Brazil.

I was born and raised in Brazil until I moved to the US at age 13, but at that time, I could already speak fluently (but apparently with an accent at first, even though I couldn’t tell). When I came to the US, a standardized test (not the SAT, it was one that I took in middle school) revealed my weakness in writing in English - I scored slightly below the mean, which was something I had never experienced before.

Within 2-3 years of studying at a public school, my accent faded away, and my writing improved. Despite having a firm grasp of English grammar to the point that I got a perfect score on the grammar section of the SAT when I took it, and despite having started learning English from a young age while continuing to live life solely in English for over a decade now, I still make non-native mistakes, particularly with prepositions.

Knowing Portuguese made knowing Spanish easy - I can understand even rapid native speech to a high degree, write, and read in Spanish, but I can’t communicate easily. I studied Spanish in school, and during that time, I might have been able to hold a conversation, as I represented the school in Spanish speaking events. However, having not engaged in the language for years, I am extremely rusty now.

I also took one semester of Italian, but never felt confident enough to apply it in daily life even when I traveled to Italy shortly after taking the course.

Finally, I dabbled in Mandarin with several apps, unfortunately including Duolingo (I didn’t know better at the time).

3. Attitudes toward immersion learning

Although I felt that traditional language learning methods were effective for me, I noticed that I didn’t feel confident enough to apply my Italian because I hadn’t struggled with native materials enough before going to Italy. As soon as I noticed an unexpectedly large gap between authentic language and what I had studied, I didn’t feel confident that I’d be able to understand responses even if I could start a conversation.

Also, the only language I truly mastered so far has been English, and I remember the critical few months of transition between utter frustration and full comprehension. I believe immersion is the only way to grasp the underlying logic and way of thinking that underlies how expressions are formed.

However, the presence of first-generation immigrants who can perfectly understand their parents’ mother tongue yet can’t speak it makes me believe that there is no amount of comprehension and input that can make someone automatically master output as well.

4. Role of immersion in my daily studies

I primarily immerse now. I have started treating nature as my SRS. I do use Yomichan and Migaku Reader often to aid in reading. I don’t create flashcards anymore, as I am now at the point where it is not too aggravating to encounter new words in the wild, nor do I know so many words that I need SRS to remind me of them. Instead, I treat nature as my SRS.

5. Enjoyability

It’s hard to enjoy content way above my level. I was stuck in this state for a long time. I still struggle to a healthy extent when I engage with the language, but it is no longer to a grating extent. What makes learning enjoyable for me now is feeling like I am past the hump and able to unlock Japanese more and more just by engaging with it.

I also enjoyed having a conversation in Japanese and not being 日本語上手’d for once. They actually just treated me like someone who could speak their language, which felt amazing.

6. Progress tracking

My main progress tracking is number of words known. I estimate it to be at around 10-11k. This is not enough to be utterly confident with most materials, but it is enough, for my own disposition, to tolerate the ambiguity when I immerse. Now, my main progress tracking has turned to number of books read.

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#26
  1. I started learning because it was an option in high school. This was back in the 90s, and I desperately wanted to play all the games and see all the game metatext that I was missing out on. I stopped as an adult, but then I started back up again during the pandemic because, again, I wanted to play them video games and I finally realized there was no reason not to. Since I do math in my day-job, I’ve also been getting into college entrance exam math problems, which are insanely difficult but rewarding. My hope was that they’d enhance my teaching but my students seem to want my blood, so…
  2. Japanese has been my second language since I was 14. Over the years, I’ve also studied Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese… and those are just the ones where I did more than Duolingo! Spanish and Russian are useful for my job, so I’ve been chipping away at them, but I still hit Japanese hardest.
  3. I wish I’d started immersion practice decades before I did. Nobody had ever given me the idea or told me that I was ready. Obviously, it’s extremely frustrating for a long time, but I thought I could just memorize enough words and I’d passively get good. I didn’t know the only way out was through.
  4. I spend less time on immersion than I should. I believe it’s critical but that learners should balance it with “bottom-up” learning such as flash-cards and grammar books. I’d like for half my practice to go to immersion, but the way my life is set up right now, that’s not logistically easy yet.
  5. While I was teaching last year, extemporaneously found, translated, and correctly solved a Japanese entrance exam problem in class. That felt damn good. I still run into sentences where I didn’t catch a thing, both written and spoken, so that sucks. I have to stop and remind myself that getting frustrated is what learning looks like in reality. The best feeling is when I can cruise through a game or book and seldom need a dictionary.
  6. I mostly used WaniKani for this until I hit level 60. I don’t really use Bunpro the same way; I go slow on purpose with Bunpro. Now I mostly track my progress by how far I’ve gotten in whatever book/manga/light novel/game I’m playing. I know the amount consumed doesn’t correlate with skill, but I get more motivation from tracking my mileage than my skill.

I know how stressful grad school can be. I doubt I can do much to help but I wish you luck!

EDIT: I still struggle a lot with output, largely because I’ve never been to Japan and because I’m extremely shy, but italki has helped a decent amount. Obviously, it took a lot of psyching myself up to start using it, but that’s been great for talking to native speakers who are more patient than my students who are like, “Please stop. Just speak English.”

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#27

One thing that popped into my head reading this thread but which I forgot to mention in my comment:

The more traditional resources aimed at intermediate learners (N2+, soB1 to B2) are either test prep material, review style material, or simply guided readers for native material. I guess texts aimed at linguists also exist but I wouldn’t put that in the category of language learning. It is basically assumed that your primary contact with the language at that point is just generally using it (I.e., immersion) and at the advanced level (comfortably beyond N1, so C1 to C2) there are basically no traditional style resources. What I’m getting at is that beyond personal review systems (SRS, note taking, whatever) there is basically no way to “textbook study” the language. I would assume it is like this for other languages as well although perhaps it is exacerbated by the paucity of learners who genuinely reach that level in Japanese.

If I’m wrong and someone knows of a high quality N1+ textbook then I’d love to at least have a look at it though…

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#28

Studying geophysics in Japan? I can’t imagine a better place to do so! Also going to Japan this spring for at least a year, for studying Japanese. : )

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#29
  1. to read yuri LOL no but like ive also had a huge fascination with japanese culture forever
  2. im half chinese and speak semi fluent mandarin but am basically illiterate. took a few years of japanese in highschool but came out with basically nothing besides hiragana and probably less than 100 words (didn’t care about school). skip 10 years into the future to now, i’ve been serious about learning it for the last couple years.
  3. yes and yes, my brain hurts and it’s frustrating at times
  4. id say about 30%, ideally it would be at like 75% or higher. i just need to force myself more, my attention span is an issue sometimes.
  5. its all enjoyable to some extent, i enjoy grinding jpdb the most.
  6. i use jpdb and it does an alright job at tracking known words. number go up feel good
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#30

  1. I started learning Japanese in July of last year (age 21) because I suddenly had an epiphany that I have never really done anything in my entire life that is actually difficult. I figured that learning a language would be pretty difficult and the only language I had any interest in learning was Japanese. I am going to attend a language school in Japan for 18 months starting in July of this year so currently I am cramming as much as I can before I leave.

  2. I had to choose between Spanish and French in high school so I took like 3 years of Spanish before dropping the class. As much as it sucks to say I think I could actually understand more Spanish than Japanese right now (it sucks because I have no interest in Spanish and I haven’t studied it at all in around 4 years).

  3. yes and yes

  4. Currently I am spending almost all of my time on guided resources (wanikani and bunpro) I believe that immersion is necessary to learn but I am very uncomfortable with ambiguity so I dont do it nearly as much as i should. Crunchyroll is my main source for immersion but they dont have Japanese subtitles so it only improves my listening.

  5. Honestly I dont really enjoy studying at all, I do it because A: I want to do something difficult and B: because im going to Japan no matter what (if I get my visa) so Id rather learn as much Japanese as I can before I go. If I was not going to Japan I think I would have quit by now.

  6. The only tracking I do is what wanikani and bunpro do automatically. A few months ago I was immersing a lot with anime/podcasts/audiobooks and I was recording every minute that I spent doing that and it just made immersing and studying feel even more like a chore.

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#31

I don’t quite see the need for traditional resources at the C1+ level, since, as you say, you can just use native material directly at that point. If you’re particularly interested in deepening your knowledge of the language itself on a theoretical level, which I don’t think you really need for practical purposes, you could always turn to native linguistics textbooks.

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#32

I’m a little confused by this thread because most posters seem to be using the term “immersion” in a way that is unfamiliar to me.

To me, it means being in a situation where you use the foreign language all the time, such as when

  • you move to a foreign country and don’t have family/friends around with whom you speak your own language, or

  • at a lower level, you’re in your own country but in an academic program that is mostly or entirely conducted in the foreign language (e.g., here in Canada we have French immersion programs in public schools starting in kindergarten).

But in this thread it seems like “immersion” just means engaging with actual Japanese material (anime, music, novels …) as opposed to studying through formal means (bunpro, textbooks, flashcards …)—am I right about this?

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#33

But to answer the questions that I can …

  1. These days it’s a hobby, basically. At the outset, I took an intensive summer Japanese course in university because I was thinking of moving to Japan for a year or two following graduation. That didn’t pan out, and I let my Japanese drop. Fast-forward nearly 30 years, and I’m getting regular emails at work with a roundup of headlines from around the globe related to my field. For fun, I clicked on one in Japanese and was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could track a certain amount of the sentence structure even if hardly any vocab. Googled “katakana chart,” found my way to wanikani, and the rest is history.

  2. I’ve formally studied two other modern European languages, attaining a high level of proficiency in one and an intermediate level in the other. I’ve also picked up a fairly good reading knowledge of a third one by listening to music in that language. I’m at a much lower level in Japanese than in any of those three languages. I’ve also formally studied a number of classical or medieval languages, but that’s quite different because it entails reading and writing only, not speaking.

  3. [shelved for now because as mentioned in my post above, I’m not certain what this is asking]

  4. [ditto]

  5. I like the way my brain feels when I study Japanese :slight_smile: The sense of mastery when I get the hang of a tricky grammar point, the satisfaction of clicking quickly and accurately through a bunch of reviews, the additional challenge of learning kanji, which is so different from any other language I know …

  6. To me, the internal features of bunpro/wanikani are the most simple and obvious way to track: the progress bar at the top during reviews, or the number of completed, or overall level attained. These are definitely a motivation for me and feed into my enjoyment. Also, I just passed N5, which was a big boost!

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#34

Yes. To be fair, “immersion” is a pretty bad term and it’s so vague even coach circles uses it, but we are unfortunately stuck to it. What most people mean when they say immersion, in the language learning community, is “use the language” basically.

If you listen to music in the background, or watch media with subtitles (in another language) without paying any attention to the words and grammar being used in said media, you hardly can call that immersion, and it will hardly make any impact at all. If it did I would be fluent by now.

Going to Japan will not make you fluent either, but it helps you to maintain the “learner” mind active at all times. If you want to simulate this, you can change your devices and apps languages, fill up all your internet feeds with japanese, consume only japanese content and make some japanese friends.

You have to consciously and actively engage with the language, and do your effort to understand the messages you are receiving through purely the lens of that language. Then, your “mental machine” that convert Japanese to useful meaning gets better with time.

As an analogy, you will not get stronger without using your muscles; with diet and lectures will help you to know what to do, but if you don’t do it, you will gain nothing. But for Japanese you are so weak, SO WEAK that you can’t hold anything, not even your body out of the ground. For languages very close to your own, you could study a little and go directly to a walk or running. Spanish and Portuguese are 90% similar, for example.

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#35

Yeah, I think the term is abused quite a lot online and it is why discussions about the utility of immersion become quite confusing. Generally in online Japanese learning communities it refers to any input of native media, no matter how small. I believe this confusion came about as AJATT or some similar guide described itself in terms of replicating immersion learning (living in the country whilst somewhat abandoning your native language temporarily) at home via mass input and then “immersion” became a shorthand for mass input and eventually just any input. As such, I took the OP’s question as actually being about native media input (and I suspect they’re developing tools related to that and not to learning Japanese whilst being in Japan).

At this point the genie is out of the bottle regarding the usage of “immersion” for Japanese learners and in general it isn’t actually ambiguous once you know people mean “some form of input”. The ambiguity normally arises due to the difference in input at different stages of learning, as I posted about above in this thread. There isn’t a question of whether getting input is useful or not for an intermediate or advanced learner as that is basically the main way to learn anything by that point so to question it is in itself strange.

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#36

The way that I understand the term “immersion” is

Doing all or some of these actions:

  • Changing your PC to Japanese language
  • Listerning to Japanese podcasts even if not understanding anything
  • Reading in Japanese even if the comprehension level is 0%
  • Learning Japanese in Japanese by mining Japanese sentences as word descriptions
  • Watching stuff in Japanese with / without Japanese subs
  • Watching a ton of stuff before trying to speak

Basically something akin to All Japanese All the Time. Maybe this is because of seeing stuff from Refold or the original AJATT article.

#37

You can’t really realistically immerse all the time (not even if you lived in Japan, unless you’re already at C1 or higher), so any form of immersion as a language learner will be some kind of compromise between time you spend on consuming and engaging with natural Japanese and any other activity, so I think simply reading Japanese texts for natives or watching anime without English subs can be considered immersion on some level, even if you don’t do it all the time.

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#38

I was watching an anime series last year with original sound and subtitles. This rekindled two things in me that I experienced before when listening to Japanese.

  1. This sounds rather regular, it’s probably easy to learn. (Oh boy…)
  2. I felt I would like to learn Japanese.

I tend to follow impulses these days, so I started and haven’t stopped.

I’ve learned to translate Latin in school adequately, I have been learning English in and out of school (native language is German), and I had three years of Greek and half a year of Swedish. I had practically no previous knowledge of Japanese.

I strong believe in immersion once some basics are present. My interest in English started before school lessons because most computer games in the late 80s and early 90s were still in English, and I wanted to understand, so I even read texts I couldn’t understand. The fundamental similarities between the Germanic roots of English and German helped some - and that English is so simple.

The biggest boost in my English fluency was immersion after the fundamentals were in place. A decent amount of vocab and some experience with the grammar. But my English really took off when more English original audio media became available, especially with subtitles.

I largely thank Futurama for boosting my English comprehension. :wink:

I watch at least about an hour of anime each day, often more. The more Japanese I already know, the more I recognize. But this would be insufficient by itself. Most of my immersion I get from the reading out loud that Bunpro does, because then I can mentally map what I know to the sounds of an actual speaker, and then it becomes easier to recognize in other media.

I generally have good experiences with the mnemonic method of remembering meaning and reading of kanji. The most unenjoyable part is when neither Wanikani nor I can come up with good mnemonics for a given combination of syllables.

Similarly, what I find frustrating are distinguishing the many variations of verbs based on the same kanji, as there are sometimes pointers to know which ones are transitive and intransitive, and sometimes not.

Learning is enjoyable when I can successfully recall stuff - even if I have to fall back to the basic mnemonic. Similarly, when spotting words and grammar constructs in my daily anime watching that keeps my motivation up.

Well, since learning 2000 kanji is a partial goal, this helps at times tracking progress. But the big number of items can also be discouraging - Wanikani is probably a two year slog. I’m at the quarter mark.

Similarly, the progress bar through the JLPT grammar in Bunpro is nice, but by themselves these things don’t motivate me.

The best thing for motivating me is picking up more and more of the Japanese in my daily watching.

What frustrates me is that there is no ability to watch shows with dual subtitles. I would like to see the actual written Japanese for what is being said. But at the same time, I also desperately need the English or German subtitles. If there was one thing I’d wish for is having both at the same time, so that if I spot something, I can look it up directly instead of having to guess.

In the same vein, it would massively help if the subtitles weren’t so keen on confabulating endless new variations of making simple Japanese constructs sound like so many things that aren’t really being said. Yes, this might make for duller subtitles, but it would aid actual immersion massively.

To this day I prefer watching English shows with English subtitles. Seeing written what I hear is very helpful for me, especially since it corrects for the speech patterns and dialect varieties found in speakers. I’m doing okay with US English, but trying to follow along with BBC shows is a real pain without subtitles. Sadly, a lot of content lacks Japanese subtitles (Netflix seems to have them.)

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#39

Do you mind sharing where you heard the statistics about how many learners reach a certain level? I’m just interested for motivation purposes to see how far I’ve come.

#40

You can do that on animelon.com at least

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#41

Cool, @imsamuka! I hope it is available in my country. :sweat_smile: Thanks for sharing. :slightly_smiling_face:

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