But, a graph can't lie!!


Like Zgarbas I don't like reading unless it's relatively pain free, and I prefer to keep my vocabulary study separate if I can, so I don't have to look up words while reading. I lurched through 3 novels until now over the last 2 or 3 years, but it was pretty slow because my personality wouldn't let me skip the opportunity to learn new words.

Nowadays my vocabulary is in the the 20-25k range a new word only pops up once every few pages of 狼と香辛料 (for example), so at last there's not much lost by me blitzing through. For new vocab acquisition I'm using more focused sources like the 3300四字熟語　shared Anki deck and native aimed vocab/kanji books.

Stansfield123 Wrote:I have no idea how many words I know... (etc.)

In other words, you don't actually understand the Japanse. You understand everything besides the Japanese, and you can still enjoy yourself based on that alone. Conversations with people who know only 1,000 words go along the lines of "I like tennis. What sport do you like?" and that type of stuff; it's not exactly the level of language a show can be built upon.

Maybe you even know as much as three thousand words. That still low enough to not really understand anything beyond the most basic of conversations.

dizmox Wrote:But, a graph can't lie!!


Nowadays my vocabulary is in the the 20-25k range a new word only pops up once every few pages of 狼と香辛料 (for example), so at last there's not much lost by me blitzing through. For new vocab acquisition I'm using more focused sources like the 3300四字熟語　shared Anki deck and native aimed vocab/kanji books.

20-25k words is impressive. Did you get all those words by mining books? I'm at around 8000 words in Core 10000 so I only have a little bit to go in that deck. I don't think I plan on using any more pre-set decks like Core after this. It seems that with reading novels with yomi-chan/rikai-sama, I can add a large number of words to a deck pretty quickly. Did you do the same?

As to starting light novels after a year of studying and going on from there, I see no reason why not. I started RTK1 on my start date here (around Feb 1 last year) and am through the 8000 words I stated above, along with the Genki books, Tobira, Kanzen Master 1kyuu and 2kyuu and Japanese the Manga Way. So that's about 1 year and 2 months worth. I'm starting to read light novels now but don't be surprised by the number of unknown words because it'll be a lot. In the spirit of full disclosure though, I have spent nearly no time on listening practice. I kinda of sacrificed it to get to reading faster. I'll have to concentrate on that next.

I like learning from native media even if you have to look everything up its much better than studying.

My problem with "accessible" native material was that I found it even less interesting than ploughing through more reviews. Light novels are just not my thing. Variety shows even less so. Good for you if you like that stuff. Reading anything prior to Core6k was just not fun, and it has only become really enjoyable (as in, making me pick up that novel and reading a few pages even though I'm dead tired) beyond 10,000 words. Fortunately I was forced to read a lot a lot of reasonably interesting newspaper articles because of my work and couldn't just give up.

I do, however, think that there's a level below which SRSing vocab/sentences is still more efficient than reading native materials, probably somewhere below 3k-5k words. As in, you'll get to a good grasp of Japanese in an overall shorter time by first SRSing most of the time, then moving to SRSing less and less and spending more time with native material, than by spending most of your time on native materials from the start.

Light novels aren't necessarily more accessible than regular novels. Some novels are very simple to read (I don't read much, but can give スティル・ライフ　by 池澤 夏樹 as an example).

Quote:20-25k words is impressive. Did you get all those words by mining books?

Went through Core 6000, then all the remaining common words in the jdict corpus (think there are about 20,000 total?). Add to that another few thousand I've met reading and hearing native materials and going through other word lists over the years.

I estimate a reasonably well educated native probably knows about about 30k... lately I'm adding 50+ a day to my vocabulary deck from various sources with no end in sight. Of course there is the matter of consolidating everything and bringing as much as possible of this vocabulary into one's active repertoire.

"Etc." is an abbreviation of the Latin "et cetera," which means 'and so forth.' His post was long so I included one sentence of it (so people would know what post I was talking about), and then added 'etc.' to let people know I was referring to his whole post.

dizmox Wrote:I lurched through 3 novels until now over the last 2 or 3 years, but it was pretty slow because my personality wouldn't let me skip the opportunity to learn new words.

I'm not sure why people feel that they have to learn/look up/understand every new word they come across. Think back to when you were learning English (or whatever your native language is) - did you look up new words in a dictionary when you were reading a book? I remember just glazing over them - you pretty much understood what was going on anyway, and the reading was still enjoyable and still very helpful to your reading abilities. If you've ever read a book over your reading level in English you should understand. The same should apply to Japanese.

(not that dizmox should take this as a criticism or anything seeing he's significantly more successful in learning Japanese than I am, but still - I find the 'can't watch/read anything because I don't understand everything' attitude really strange)

Tzadeck Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:I have no idea how many words I know... (etc.)

In other words, you don't actually understand the Japanse. You understand everything besides the Japanese, and you can still enjoy yourself based on that alone. Conversations with people who know only 1,000 words go along the lines of "I like tennis. What sport do you like?" and that type of stuff; it's not exactly the level of language a show can be built upon.

Maybe you even know as much as three thousand words. That still low enough to not really understand anything beyond the most basic of conversations.

Seems this is pretty much the case yep. Honestly I actually felt better for reading his explanation, since I realised that my problem isn't that I understand less of a TV show, its that everyone else is pretending to know more.

I think a lot of other posters on this forum did that a lot too (ta12121 comes to mind as one) who would regularly say things like "I understand all TV without needing subtitles", yet 18 months later they would go on to fail N1.

I'm somewhere around N1, can read plenty, understand a fair bit, and last night I was out with a Japanese speaking friend and could speak fairly quickly, although not elegantly. If I watch a TV program in Japanese I'll always know what its about, but do I understand completely everything?? Absolutely not, and when people ask me about my Japanese level I usually say its crap and I don't understand very much. Because by my standards, its true. I don't understand 100% of the words being used, I don't get all references, and I have lots of other problems. My Japanese is terrible I think. Yet I'm pretty sure I understand more than Stansfield123, who is willing to at least imply he can watch TV shows without subtitles because he understands everything without.

(sorry if this ended up sounding a bit like a rant, this might just be a pet peeve of mine)

NightSky Wrote:I'm somewhere around N1, can read plenty, understand a fair bit, and last night I was out with a Japanese speaking friend and could speak fairly quickly, although not elegantly. If I watch a TV program in Japanese I'll always know what its about, but do I understand completely everything?? Absolutely not, and when people ask me about my Japanese level I usually say its crap and I don't understand very much. Because by my standards, its true. I don't understand 100% of the words being used, I don't get all references, and I have lots of other problems. My Japanese is terrible I think. Yet I'm pretty sure I understand more than Stansfield123, who is willing to at least imply he can watch TV shows without subtitles because he understands everything without.

Yeah, this is right. I'm around N1 also, and there's no way my understanding of a drama approaches 100%. I just watched through GTO finally, and there were certainly chunks of dialogue that confused me in every episode, and some of those chunks were pretty large. I was watching without subtitles; I'm sure my understanding would be much greater with subtitles.

Aikynaro Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I lurched through 3 novels until now over the last 2 or 3 years, but it was pretty slow because my personality wouldn't let me skip the opportunity to learn new words.

I'm not sure why people feel that they have to learn/look up/understand every new word they come across.)

One can either read a text for deeper understanding of Japanese and improved vocabulary OR you read primarily for enjoyment and general reading practice. I was just doing the former until now, since I wouldn't have enjoyed it very much with my previous ability (I'm not a big in my native language to begin with).

It's been 2 years since I passed JLPT1 and it's only just now that I can understand 90% of 四畳半神話体系 easily.. back in 2011 it was impossible for me to enjoy it without subs.

Quote:Think back to when you were learning English (or whatever your native language is) - did you look up new words in a dictionary when you were reading a book? I remember just glazing over them - you pretty much understood what was going on anyway, and the reading was still enjoyable and still very helpful to your reading abilities. If you've ever read a book over your reading level in English you should understand. The same should apply to Japanese.

That way probably takes at least a decade really to reach native level though. D:

Tzadeck Wrote:In other words, you don't actually understand the Japanse.

In other words, the Moon is orange and your mother lives there. Either that, or I just made an unrelated statement to yours, prefixed it with "in other words" for no apparent reason.

I understand "the Japanese" just fine. That's why I watch variety shows: because if you know the context well enough, the spoken language becomes easy to understand.

Yeah... I can't follow the more gossipy variety shoes because I don't know (and am not interested) so much about celebrities.

It's like trying to follow the every day chatter of two people you hardly know.

NightSky Wrote:I'm somewhere around N1... and when people ask me about my Japanese level I usually say its crap and I don't understand very much

Then you're not somewhere around N1, because the DEFINITION of N1 is The ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances. That's a direct quote from the official JLPT site. So something's amiss here.

N2, btw, is the ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree

If it's true that you don't understand very much, then you're not N2 either.

So, which is it, do you understand Japanese used in everyday situations (like on a TV SHOW), or are you not even N2?

(to me it sounds like you're fibbing about not understanding stuff, rather than your level, just to try an prove me wrong - which is hilarious).

NightSky Wrote:. Because by my standards, its true. I don't understand 100% of the words being used, I don't get all references, and I have lots of other problems. My Japanese is terrible I think. Yet I'm pretty sure I understand more than Stansfield123, who is willing to at least imply he can watch TV shows without subtitles because he understands everything without.

You're missing the point. I understand what the show is trying to communicate to the audience (the only thing one needs to understand). My point is that you don't have to understand every single word to understand that. Most words people use are not essential to communicating their message.

For instance, your post could easily have been reduced to "I misunderstood what Stansfield was saying and here's a self-contradicting reason why I think he's lying".

dizmox Wrote:On 4chan there was some guy saying he had read 50+ LNs in the space of about 6 months, after having been learning Japanese for about a year. Not sure about the veracity of the claim or how much he really understood of them, though, but he had a nice graph of his progress, so I guess it might have been true.

It's not exactly a superhuman feat...

dizmox Wrote:That way probably takes at least a decade really to reach native level though. D:

Took me 3 or 4 to have a better command of the English language than most natives. Pretty much just did what Aikynaro was describing in my free time + a few hours of listening to American radio every day, during commute, lunch, that kind of thing.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Then you're not somewhere around N1, because the DEFINITION of N1 is The ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances. That's a direct quote from the official JLPT site. So something's amiss here.

N2, btw, is the ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree

If it's true that you don't understand very much, then you're not N2 either.

So, which is it, do you understand Japanese used in everyday situations (like on a TV SHOW), or are you not even N2?

N2 and N1 are qualification exams. If you pass them, you are N2 or N1 level. What you quoted is a summary of the linguistic competency required to pass each level. It's not a definition. It's what the makers of the test are shooting to assess when they make the test.

I assess myself about the same as NightSky in terms of ability, and I'm N1 level, because if you gave me the test next week I could pass it (I got a 99 last time I took the test--one point shy of passing--and I think I've improved a good amount since then). In a more techincal sense I'm N2 level, since I have actually passed N2, about two years ago.

As for your other post, I just don't believe you. I know you understand those shows thanks to a lot of context clues, but if you say you understand the Japanese, I don't think we mean the same thing by 'understand.'

Also, it's hard to decide whether you putting down the Japanese of someone who has better Japanese than you is more rude than hilarious, or the other way around. I'm guessing it's more rude.

[Zgarbas]

まあ、まあ. Can we please not turn this into another Stansfield123 discussion?

Just one thing

Aikynaro Wrote:I'm not sure why people feel that they have to learn/look up/understand every new word they come across.)

Because people are different and they have different ways of reading as well. I have done my fair share of skimming books, sometimes because of the vocabulary (Shakespeare before I was into etymology), sometimes because I didn't feel like really reading that book. What they had in common is that I was left with nothing after finishing it. Aside from the most basic outline of the plot, there was nothing but a waste of my time pretending to read it. I'm not saying others must always come to this conclusion, but for me reading a book superficially just doesn't cut it. And for me, skipping 5-50% of the book's words cannot be anything but superficial.

Say I'm reading something written by Fitzgerlald(who uses simple language, so aside from archaic slang you're unlikely to come across unknown terms) and a random bit about his society comes up, referring to people as flappers. It's not like I'll ever need dated slang. And it's certainly not hard to know what the general definition of a flapper would be after reading enough Fitzgerlald and context. I'd still check the dictionary for it, because randomly skipping unknown words just isn't my thing.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:On 4chan there was some guy saying he had read 50+ LNs in the space of about 6 months, after having been learning Japanese for about a year. Not sure about the veracity of the claim or how much he really understood of them, though, but he had a nice graph of his progress, so I guess it might have been true.

It's not exactly a superhuman feat...

I think it's pretty impressive if true (unless they were just very easy LNs). Certainly blows anyone I've heard of (including myself) out of the water. I haven't even heard of a Westerner passing JLPT1 in under 2 years (yet), which should be a joke if you can read that fast. Everyone here must be doing something terribly wrong. (BTW I think don't think that passing JLPT1 is a great indicator of ability either - a lot of the passing population is comprised of Chinese people who have been studying for a year or two).

Quote:

dizmox Wrote:That way probably takes at least a decade really to reach native level though. D:

Took me 3 or 4 to have a better command of the English language than most natives. Pretty much just did what Aikynaro was describing in my free time + a few hours of listening to American radio every day, during commute, lunch, that kind of thing.

How does one end up with a better command than natives just by doing the same thing that natives have been doing every day their whole lives for a significantly smaller portion of time?

[Zgarbas]

By overestimating their own ability, starting from the assumption that natives are all uneducated 10-year-olds and ignoring their own Eastern-European accent. In my experience, at least.

Zgarbas Wrote:By overestimating their own ability, starting from the assumption that natives are all uneducated 10-year-olds and ignoring their own Eastern-European accent. In my experience, at least.

Experience? You don't know me. I guess I'm not like you, or the people you know, since I don't have an accent.

P.S. There of course is no such thing as "an Eastern-European accent". Shouldn't take all that much experience to figure that one out, either.

dizmox Wrote:How does one end up with a better command than natives just by doing the same thing that natives have been doing every day their whole lives for a significantly smaller portion of time?

Again, same answer as to Zgarbas: not everyone is the same, and not every method of study is the same. Some people people go through 12 or 16 years of schooling and come out illiterate, while others never go to school and end up famous authors or scientists. Some people work their whole life for minimum wage, while others own a jet at 25.

It's not about how long you do something, it's about how you do it. I have a better command of the English language than most native speakers because I read literature and pay attention to the details, while most native speakers only read the Internet and text messages, and don't even pay attention to those.

@dizmox
That guy on 4chan was, most likely, me. Unfortunately I don't have the deck anymore, but I have another statistics* to show that I, indeed, read through about so many books. However, it must be noted that I have utilized yomichan quite a lot during that period and most of the books were part of the same Marimite series (less vocabulary and style variance). Also, please don't forget I'm Turkish. While I suck at producing meaningful Japanese (which I haven't worked on much, since it simply is not something I need), I don't have the problem most native indo-european language speakers have regarding the Japanese grammar/sentence patterns being so alien to them. So going through the books were not exactly that big of a hassle. You, on the other hand, were quite right about doubting my understanding of those books in the earlier period of my study. Which, admittedly, were quite spotty.


* here: http://book.akahoshitakuya.com/u/177950/graph

dizmox Wrote:I think it's pretty impressive if true (unless they were just very easy LNs). Certainly blows anyone I've heard of (including myself) out of the water.

Have you heard of anyone try and fail to do it? You'd be amazed at how fast you progress, once you start spending several hours a day with your nose in a foreign language book.

It's amazing, and I don't think anyone who hasn't tried it can appreciate just how well it works. The written language is much, much easier to learn than the spoken one, because of the quality and consistency of the learning material compared to spoken language. It just happens to require much more willpower at the beginning, because of the absence of the many non-language cues spoken language has, that I listed yesterday.

But, once you get going, progress is very fast.

Stansfield123 Wrote:And that's just direct communication. Then there's the environment, people's behavior, how people look and are dressed , the actual faces and names of the participants!!! etc. (missing just this last aspect, and failing to easily recognize and know the backstory of the participants in a show, would set someone's understanding back more than not knowing a good 10 percent of the words people use).

I have to agree with this. If you notice while listening, depending on the WHOLE context (including the topic, the sentence, the person and their ability in the language...), you expect many words and sometimes even fully recognize the heard word after maybe a second without having a lag in the understanding. I noticed this while talking to someone through a noisy phone call or somewhere noisy, we fill most of the gaps even if we fully understand the talk, we only take "hints" from a part of the sound of the word. Nothing scientific here, only my own experience.

Another example, I was talking to Japanese people lately and on different occasions I speak the beginning of a word (one syllable!) and stop and they instantly complete it.

The idea is that there's much more to understanding others than the count of known vocabulary.

Zgarbas Wrote:まあ、まあ. Can we please not turn this into another Stansfield123 discussion?

Hah, this made me laugh. I haven't posted on here much or read the forum much lately so don't know who this guy is, but I guess already I can be sure this isn't worth wasting too much time on

Stansfield123 Wrote:Then you're not somewhere around N1, because the DEFINITION of N1 is The ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances. That's a direct quote from the official JLPT site. So something's amiss here.

I can understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances.

Stansfield123 Wrote:N2, btw, is the ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree

If it's true that you don't understand very much, then you're not N2 either.

So, which is it, do you understand Japanese used in everyday situations (like on a TV SHOW), or are you not even N2?

I passed 2kyuu more than 4 years ago ...

Stansfield123 Wrote:You're missing the point. I understand what the show is trying to communicate to the audience (the only thing one needs to understand). My point is that you don't have to understand every single word to understand that. Most words people use are not essential to communicating their message.

For instance, your post could easily have been reduced to "I misunderstood what Stansfield was saying and here's a self-contradicting reason why I think he's lying".

This is fine, whatever. I'm not disagreeing with you, what my post was about was seeing this:

Stansfield123 Wrote:I'm at 1k in Core (also did Tae Kim, RtK). I can read several manga comfortably (I'm on volume three of Yotsubato! for instance, and at this point I very rarely have to consult the English version). I also read blogs, and can watch variety shows without subs.

This is a forum about the Japanese language, in saying something like this you are implying that you rarely have to consult the English version because you understand all of the Japanese no problem. What you really should be saying is something like "Because I can look at the pictures and know a few key words, I don't have to consult the English version".

Which is fine, its just your post is very misleading regarding your actual ability and capabilities.

Much of the problem is obviously there is a whole lot of grey, even natives don't understand everything (for what its worth I'd say my English is terrible too, according to some vocab testing thing I only know 17000 words which isn't so hot for a native). If you understood Japanese at the exact same level I do, you might tell everyone you are shit hot and understand completely everything no problem, whereas I tend to say I'm not that good because I'm still all too well aware of how much I don't understand.

I guess sometimes I just wish people had the same level of subjectivity when it comes to judging their own language skill, otherwise when people say "after completing Core I'm capable of XYZ" its kind of meaningless if they are just trying to exaggerate their own ability for the sake of their own egos.

Maybe its even just about having a little modesty, I'm not sure.

You don't seem to have a whole lot of that either.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I think it's pretty impressive if true (unless they were just very easy LNs). Certainly blows anyone I've heard of (including myself) out of the water.

Have you heard of anyone try and fail to do it? You'd be amazed at how fast you progress, once you start spending several hours a day with your nose in a foreign language book.

It's amazing, and I don't think anyone who hasn't tried it can appreciate just how well it works. The written language is much, much easier to learn than the spoken one, because of the quality and consistency of the learning material compared to spoken language. It just happens to require much more willpower at the beginning, because of the absence of the many non-language cues spoken language has, that I listed yesterday.

But, once you get going, progress is very fast.

I guess you're right, but it does indeed sound painful if you're just forcing yourself to read.

@qwarten, how many hours did you read a day?