I'm almost at 1 year of learning as well and I just wanted to say that I totally agree with your side note about the Japanese learning community. There's a lot of keyboard warriors out there with nothing but anecdotal evidence who are dead set on promulgating their favorite learning methods. Many of them are selling 'learning' packages and seem to heavily rely on breaking down their prospective clients pride in their accomplishments as a marketing strategy. All in all it's a pretty shameful ordeal and I've personally come to the conclusion it's best just not to watch any videos coming from someone selling a product (or anyone who seems to get their sense of well-being from their ability to pull of the pitch accent LOLWTF). That being said it seems like most people who really give it their all end up somewhere short of N3 level with slightly different levels of proficiency for reading/speaking/listening etc... so I think you can feel a great degree of satisfaction with where your at. I'm curious to see your eventual transition into speaking if at any point you decide to continue in that direction.
Yea I mean I stand by what I said in the video but seriously my barely n3 level is absolutely not my goal. I'm going to keep working at this until I'm extremely good at Japanese. I just think that people who don't want to improve past that/don't use your ultra chad methods shouldn't be looked down upon like so many of us seem to do. Like I just finished a 3 week break from anki. Yolo. But I'm so much of a nerd that I'm actually excited to get back to it. If that's not you don't get caught up in it Anyway since I posted this I've actually started some italki speaking lessons and honestly I can get a lot of simple ideas across in an actual conversation. I've also been writing some short essays for the sessions for fun and I feel like I'm pretty good at that for where my level is. I could answer more questions about if your interested but it's not that special. It feels really good though every time
I believe that the learning community is very much about speed and how much you can learn in the shortest amount of time. It's nice to hear other versions. It takes time to learn. Especially when it's a language like Japanese that is so different to English (and in my case, Swedish). Great work with your hard work. I myself started pick up the pace in Japanese last spring.
It's not about speed in your life time line, it's about efficiency, so speed in the time you allocated to "learning" the language. The community warns you about wasting your time with worthless method or content, you take it or not but the fact is, it has been proven to be working for people willing to put the effort better than with any other accessible method.
This is such a good, down-to-earth video about learning Japanese. I've lived in Japan for the better part of a decade, and I can chat idly with people and use it in a work or everyday environment - but I only put in about 1-2 hours per day of active study, the rest of it is passive learning. It's still a lot of work. If I had been able to afford a full immersion school with a dedicated teacher, I'd be a LOT further ahead. Of course, I am also focusing on all four main areas of learning at once and the only formal schooling I have is through Kumon (I'm currently working on the version only available for native Japanese learners - to do that, you have to complete the entire first part for non-native learners (2400 pages of work). I have, in general, avoided most Japanese language learning communities and am self-propelled. I *do* access the communities, but I typically stick to myself. For the other commenters... N1 in under 2 years... can it be done? Yes, it can - plenty of people do. But what many of those people /don't/ tell you is that they've likely had other Japanese lessons and tutors, have probably studied in school/university, have Japanese friends who are helping them directly, are good at learning languages in the first place, are wealthy enough to have the time to pursue it with no distractions (eg: having to work full time, or worry about if they'll make rent or not), and the list goes on (and yes, there *are* genuine exceptions where people do the figurative impossible against the odds!). To gain "professional working proficiency" in a language (NOT fluency), with a dedicated 1~4 students with 1 (highly) qualified teacher and a /team/ of support specialists, Japanese takes 88 weeks with 2200 classroom hours. This is hands on and dedicated learning, not self-learning. So for all the people out there... if you take a few years to get to that point, pat yourself on the back, you've done great work! It's no joke, learning this language. Japanese (along with Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Arabic) is considered one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to master (Source: USDoS). Oh, and I'd add that using imabi(dot)net instead of Tae Kim's - it's far more comprehensive and is kept up to date (and mistakes are fixed). Wanikani is great for learning words and kanji - but not much else. More for word and kanji recognition. BunPro is great too for grammar etc (similar to Wanikani). And yes, I also think Anki is pretty great because it's way more customizable. It's a bit daunting for people new to it. I do love the "keep the consistency" remark! Yes! Soooo much yes to that! Even if it's just 10 minutes, do *something* every day!
Thanks man! I appreciate the comments. Obviously we disagree about the usefulness of formal classroom study, but like if you really put in the work and go out and use the language any method will work. I also don't really believe anyone's lying about how they learn. I do at least agree with the idea of being "wealthy" time and resources wise is a big factor in the people who have had the most success. I do have a full time job, but it pays well and is low stress for me, which does let me more easily focus on my hobbies. But people who stare too much at the success of others and make excuses (as I am guilty of many times) just make it harder on themselves. I'm far from my goals even now, but since this video I've made a crazy amount of progress, and had a blast taking it seriously. For the people who don't want to be hardcore about it, own that decision and make learning as fun as possible!
I'm basically doing half of what you are doing and felt the same way regarding language communities. It was fun in the beginning as I love to fully dive into new topics I'm interested in (so even outside of learning I just loved reading and watching what others do), but after that initial spark was over I noticed that I mostly get negative things out of the communities. Not only the "how you have to learn" aspect, but it also makes you compare yourself to others constantly. I'm really bad at learning, so it constantly got me down knowing e.g. how shockingly awful I am at Anki needing 40-60 minutes for only 10 words per day, or in general that it will probably take me 3+ years to get to a stage of having some decent basic understanding in comparison to all the "N1 in 1 1/2 years" prospects. Luckily I found the Game Gengo Discord as a safe haven to ask questions, apart from that I kind of avoid communities nowadays. Hopefully you're enjoying your journey as much as you thought you would! :)
dude are you me I am so bad at remembering words sometimes. Maybe, we are both bad, or other people are exaggerating how fast they are at studying haha
Props to you we're probably around the same level (i estimate i'm around N3) But in my case i've started 3 years ago althrough, really went here and there and was inconsistent for the first 2 years. I've learned the basics in grammar and everything but that's it. Recently (october 2021) i've changed my method completely and started to build habits ! 20 words a day through anki (i'm using core 6K and abt 4.5k words in) I ended up beeing decent on the reading front been reading a few mangas here and there wich i could understand enough to enjoy. The pile of vocabulary really made me progress a lot cause i was really lacking a lot of words and it started to show when i reached 1.5k words. There was only one big issue now : i can read decently, I have enough grammar to not have to look up too much. But i couldn't hear anything. Recently i changed that by going through lots of anime (with varying degrees of difficulty sometimes complex plots sometimes just chill slice of life) I really been at it for less than a month but i'm making rapid progress cause of all the words i already know and i see i'm starting to recognize them a lot more. (the moe way's setup for checking subs rapidly is helping a ton) After going through some tough anime with a complex plot and spending 1.5h to understand a 23min episode. It's been a joy to go through nagatoro with it's casual conversations and pausing very little ! I feel if i keep my current pace i could be reaching somewhere around n2 by the end of the year at least i hope so
It sounds like you got a good plan here. The daily grind is just so important to keeping yourself moving. What's so amazing and awful at the same time is that there's truly not one magic way to do to this. As long as your getting a lot of listening and reading I think you can do it! For me I just whitenoise all my listening *shrug*. Although with minecraft videos it's not like there's a plot I need to understand like watching anime would. It sounds like you have content you really like and that's great as well I actually just started italki lessons last month despite what I said in the video and I've actually felt a huge improvement in my youtube comprehension since I've started. Not new words but just stringing the meaning of a whole sentence together fast enough to process it before the next one. Honestly I'd recommend trying to get some output in your plan so you can start to build it that skill. Doesn't have to be much. My lesson is 30 minutes a week compared to the like 20 hours of immersion I get a week. Basic grammar + 4.5k words is absolutely enough (literally didn't even use ある・いる in my first lesson lol) and I was scared off by other people in the community saying output was a godly thing that couldn't be touched by us noobs. Good luck from a fellow learner!
@@waldenperry i do agree with the output part, i've been part of a japanese culture club in my city and manage to encounter and speak a bit with a few students. I'm making lots of mistakes but i can generally make my point across ! そうなら、勉強のためには頑張ってくださいよ!
Thanks for your information on what it takes to get better at Japanese. I am in the US, 73 years old, and first goal is just trying to see how much I can grasp with Japanese language (Level 5 basics). I am starting right now with youtube video lessons like you did on both words/phrases and Hiragana letters. Spend a couple hours a day learning a few things a day. I use the Google Translator on my PC as my input/output right now to see if I am speaking each word/phrase correctly. Seems to work for me right now until I can get up to your level. I will worry about proper grammar later on once I know some basics (proper order of saying words in sentences). One problem I see with the language are the people in youtube videos speak way too fast for me to understand right now - they are talking at light speed for me and seems like there are no breaks in individual words in their communications. At least Spanish which I have learned, I can understand them and pick out the individual words that they are saying if I don't know one of them. Another thing is certain letters such as "sh", "f", "r" and a couple of others right now don't seem to produce the correct words after I hear even what is said on the instructor video, unless the google translator is not that great. I know allot of Japanese language learners go to online instructors that are fluent in Japanese once we get to conversation levels. Or unless the person is planning to go to Japan to work, etc. But with all said above, it is fun trying to learn the tough Level 5 language. Take care.
This is awesome! I hope I'll be brave enough to try new things when I'm older as well. If your struggling with real Japanese videos being too fast - definitely into beginner graded-reader type material. I like the youtube channel Comprehensible Japanese, but there are others too. She talks slowly and has subtitles you can turn on. Also I'd be careful about using too much of the translation tools. If you just want word pronunciation there probably are other places you could look for that.
Cool to hear about your approach. Something I'd point out about having conversations: It's actually half output, half input. And it's highly relevant input that your brain REALLY wants to understand, often tailored somewhat to your level (assuming the native speaker realizes your level and speaks a little slower for you, etc). So honestly, I think conversations are an awesome form of input, if you enjoy them and can find ways to meet native speakers (apps like HelloTalk make it easy enough).
Yea I agree now too. I said in the video I wasn't gonna do any output, but I ended up doing weekly italki lessons starting in march. The way I do them they're not really lessons either, it's pretty much just conversations, and sometimes I write essays to get corrected. Can't believe it's almost been a year since this video too, crazy.
Very inspirational video! Thx a lot for sharing your experience with your 1st year of learning Japanese. I am also going to reach my first year of learning Japanese in 7 days, which is something I am really exited for. I am also learning by myself, with a similar approach. I try to follow the Refold’s roadmap, but with a little twist to it. I focus my first year mostly in building vocab’ (I am about to reach 5000 words) to have a solid enough fondation to immerse without having to look-up a word in every sentence. I am of course doing active immersion in free-flow from time to time and I started doing 30min of intensive immersion everyday recently. I am basically adding more and more immersion the more I progress. The biggest thing which bugs me, is that I don’t spend as much time learning Japanese as I would like, I have an average of something like 1.3h per day in this first year. Your video made me want to bump up that number to 3h everyday, but I also need to practice piano so it’s super difficult to balance out everything. Anyway, I really wish you the best in your language learning journey, you will definitely be able to reach a N1 level in no time!
Thanks! Sounds like you've made a lot of progress too. The whole time thing is tricky to talk about. Honestly I still feel a lot of my hours are pretty low quality in terms of so many areas. If you've only got an hour or two a day just make sure your putting your all into that time and it might even get better results than my "just throw all of my free time at it" approach. I'm in a band playing keys right now so I totally get where your coming from lol. For me I decided that I didn't want to put the effort to improve my playing, just keeping my level for our gigs. That decision will be different for everyone. Good luck as well!
Bro you got to tell me how the f you got around 5000 words in 1 year at just 1.3 hours a day of studying because I focused almost solely on vocabulary for most of my first year and I'm at like 3k~4k. Also I totally quit improving at guitar for language learning which was really hard to do but ultimately the right choice for where I'm at right now -_-
I've just recently started 100% focusing in inmersion, and what makes it so hard is not words or grammar, cuz i can look them up, it's getting used to it, japanese is so mentally draining, i can be watching a video and understand pretty much everything for the first 10 minutes and after that my comprehension starts falling, making the video harder to watch which ends up making me lose interest, i was doing 5 hours a day but now i lowered it to 4, i hope it's a sweet spot, i think I'd be able to pass N3 with a bit of study and N2 with a few months of dedicated study
Man I really feel this with reading right now. Right at the hour+ mark or so I notice I giant dip in my ability to focus, which just leads me to skim super hard and not process anything. I don't think there's really anything we can do about it besides getting better, which means you understand more, which means there's less hard parts you don't understand. Anyway that's what I'm counting on.
Very much appreciate the honesty in this video! I've always started learning Japanese in one way or another, whether it be RTK or Immersion but never stuck with it. This video gives people a very real idea of what they can get out of immersion for a year and helps with deciding where to invest your time in the language. Thank you again for the content!
Yea, I'm going to Japan in march for my 2 year anniversary and I really want to try to record it there. So it'll be a bit. tldr I kept it up and got better
This was a nice find and good to listen to. Very well done on your journey thus far, and all the best for the road ahead! Something I personally very much relate to, which has lost me a lot of time and caused unnecessary stress, is that I worried about not encountering certain words which might be common in everyday Japanese. As such, more time was spent looking for overly tailored content than just jumping into content one enjoys. I probably missed this part in the video, but how did you overcome the dreaded 'monolingual transition'? It always seems as though no matter how much progress I make, I cannot switch over to all-JP dicts. Still using English definitions, sadly, and have tried to have both Eng and JP dictionaries on my cards, but it won't work, likely due to my lack of coding and settings knowledge when it comes to Anki.
I didn't overcome the monolingual transition lol, at the time of this video I was in the middle of trying to make it work and shortly after failed and switched back to JMDict. I'm only now trying to reintroduce monolingual grammar lookups. For your multiple definitions thing look at the yomichan section on the mining guide and step 6 is what makes it to where only the first defintion of your list is pulled into anki. I wanted to code something more complicated there but like I said I gave up on monolingual for now... rentry.co/mining
Great video, it’s always fun to see someone else’s learning pathway and I’m looking forward to that Year 2 update. I loved that minecraft deck idea btw, that was great. On that topic, can you recommend any good Japanese minecraft channels? I’ve tried to find some before but have never really known where to look.
I didn’t actually do the Minecraft deck btw, but I like to try different things out and make learning fun. Man there’s so many great Minecraft channels out there, but here’s a few my favorites right now. ドズル社 - Tons of creative minecraft challenges/game show type contents. The members have their own separate channels you can follow too ゴラクバ - Used to be my favorite at the start, and now they recently announced their retiring. Great backlog though. 鶴太郎 - Survival building lets play style, incredibly talented builder KUNの50人クラフト - My #1 reason for doing Japanese right now. 50人クラフト is an entire universe but its worth the effort. KUN is hilarious. (Explaining what this is would take like 5 paragraphs lmao)
its great to see someone openly discussing realistic progress, compared to other languages i have studied japanese has by far the most "N1 in 6 months" type of nonsense
Thanks for this, super insightful. I'm going to make some changes to my own approach to learning Japanese (hopefully increase efficacy) based off of what you said.
I just wanted to say that mpvacious, an addon for mpv media player to automate anki card creation from subtitles, got an update that puts the English subtitle in your anki sentence cards. It is so nice the get the perfect translation for every sentence, it helps a lot.
What would you suggest for immersion if you are new to the language. I recently learned the 2 writing systems but I basically don't know any vocab yet.. is it better to grind a few hundred flashcards first or is jumping in when you don't know the vast majority of words ok?
I also was very concerned about watching the "right" content at first, but ultimately I just let that go and started watching the stuff that was the reason I started japanese (for me at the time Super mario 64 JP speedrun livestreams lol) with 0 comprehension. I essentially only knew all the hiragana and 私 when I started. Yes of course I learned vocab along side. Why are you learning japanese? Just watch what you want to watch when your fluent. I admit I didn't have a ton of reasons to learn JP at first either but over time I discovered stuff that I can't imagine my life without anymore. Of like the first 50 youtube channels I watched none of them are in my top 10 now. Give stuff a real shot before bailing. If you want to be a better student than I was, right at the start look for vocab that you are seeing and study those. After you've got like a few hundred hours under your belt I promise you will have enough confidence to make more fine tuned decisions on your own!
@@waldenperry Mostly for media and games. I think it would be cool to be able to understand movies and anime without subs. I think I will take your advice and just start watching stuff that interests me even if i understand like
Ironically, I also stopped using WaniKani and switched to Anki, but I just ended up using a WaniKani deck on there anyway lol. Idk what people think about WaniKani, but it was really good for learning to read, which is one the things I'm most excited about. Good luck with this next year in learning!
Just got recommended your video and it's super insightful coming from 1.5 years into jp study. It's hard for me to guess how much time I've actually spent studying (I never ended up tracking it), but I'm pretty confident you've spent more hours than me We have similar interests (I'm a full time software dev too lol) and study methods. Anki is the clear winner for me in terms of speed of progress, which is why Duolingo feels so laughable now (I did like 6 months of Duolingo in initially). I'm also doing the Tango MIA N5 deck rn lol and it's been so insanely helpful for me. I didn't even know there was an N4 deck so I'll have to look into that afterwards Anyways, to stop rambling, it's been a little over a year since you made this video. I'd love to hear what your progress is these days and if you still follow the same aggressive schedule
Thanks! Somehow I've kept it up. I'm passing the 2 year ~3 hour a daily immersion mark pretty soon here. Despite the large number of hours though I've still got quite a way to n1 level. I just try to have fun with it. I could progress a lot faster if I did more reading, but I've never been able to do more than like 20 hours of reading in a month. I just really love japanese youtube and I keep getting better anyway. These days I don't feel any pressure about the number of hours, just that I need to finish comprehensively going through n2 and n1 grammar points, and I want to be better at reading and understanding monolingual definitions. My n4 deck days feel so far away now, but I do remember that was a big turning point for me when Japanese got a lot more real. If you can make it through that you've really got the hardest part done! I can't remember if I said it in the video but I was doing 5 new n4 cards a day at one point because I thought it was too hard lol My plan is when I go to japan in march I'mma make a 2 year update video, and probably stop tracking hours and start to become even more chill about learning. If you joined my discord i'd be happy to talk more about japanese language stuff is your interested
I had never done any speaking then at all, so unsurprisingly I couldn't speak. But either way it wasn't any good. The whole thesis of this video is that if you don't use optimal methods you can make progress although slower then people who are actually good at this. I guess I optimized for not actually trying very hard. I'm definitely in the bottom 25% of immersion learners when it comes to skill gains for the time I've put in, so don't use this video for advice.
I said I wouldn’t in the video but I ended up doing it shortly after lol. I’ve been doing italki for 6 months by now. It’s helped me feel so much more confident, even though most of the work is still immersion ofc
Super dope! I'm re-starting my language learning journey right now. I completed the Tango N5 and N4 decks in May 2022, but I did very little grammar study and abhorrently low amounts of immersion (and I mean like, I logged 50 hours AT BEST in the span of half a year. Terrible.) Now I know what to do correctly and this video really inspires me :-) I hope you're doing well nowadays!
Good job on making such good progress :)…I know by the time I’m seeing this video you probably are a lot better in the language. Keep it up :) For me, I’ve been learning close to 3.5 years…the only structured learning I was been doing was when I was learning kana. And the time I was learning verb conjugation and grammar and kanji…but I was doing immersion right after learning kana by way of gaming (starting with Luigi’s Mansion 3)… adding every single card to anki….I tried premade decks and because they usually dont have context I just couldnt do it. I did 95% of my Japanese learning on the phone. Here’s what my time looked like First year -kana -immersion every day with gaming -anki -kanji -basic grammar such as verb conjugation -towards the end I started reading visual novels (which I didnt do before learning) Second Year -Towards the first quarter I started reading Light novels (which I didnt do before) -grammar using 日本語総まとめ series…but only for grammar -iKanji for Kanji studies, using iKanji’s SRS and also anki while I write them by hand on a 原稿用紙. -anki. This for me started being more on and off kind of thing…..I definitely didnt do it as much as before -started listening to JDramas and anime Third year -Finished all my studies at the beginning for kanji and 日本語総まとめ all the way up to N1 -now I just do immersion (I want to read books, and I have read a few by now, but I do more immersion via manga and raw anime on my phone whenever I have some time since now I’m too busy also learning italian and french) -No more anki -Reading has become soooo much easier…I barely have to do anki kanji lookups anymore (although it still happens from time to time) -listening, still a struggle but as long as I’m focused I can understand show without any subs with a bit of repetition -All my focus up to now has been in immersion….all input and basically no output….and I dont regret a thing as my goal was to understand untranslated content :) I’m a programmer too, but I do suggest trying to do less custom things as it takes time away from actually learning…just a suggestion ;)
