@dizmox
Well, it ranges from 1 hour a day to 12 hours a day, but it was usually something around 2 to 3 hours a day.

Edit: And to put things into perspective, at the very early periods of my study, this* would take an hour to read. After a few books I could read 4 times faster. Now I'm something near to 8 times faster, which is still painfully slow compared to how fast I read in english or turkish.


*http://pastebin.com/rrMea9Jw

Tzadeck Wrote:

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.

I would put myself in the same category. If I am reading or watching a drama/variety show there will always be a few words are some dialogue that I do not know or understand but I don't get hung up about it. If it is critical to understanding the sentence I'll look the word up or use rikaichan. In terms of speaking I think I can speak quite fluidly and at a good speed, though I tend to use simpler vocabularly (ie. yamato-centred words) over kanji compounds and proverbs etc unless I am talking about something specificially.

When people ask me if I am fluent I say no, because as I mentioned above, I don't consider myself to be so as there is always something I don't understand, although I can function perfectly well in a conversation or business-context.

Stansfield123 Wrote: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.

I disagree with you completely on this statement. What you are doing is inferring the meaning of the spoken language based on what is occuring on the screen. I do not doubt that you can indeed understand some of what is being said, but if you have only done Taekim and Core 1k there is no way you would be able to understand in full what is being said.

I took a French beginners class last year for a semester and gained a bit of vocab and grammar. When I watch a French movie I don't claim to understand what is being said. Sometimes I will understand a phrase or sentence, but I can work out what is happening by watching the footage and not by understanding the dialogue.

The real test is whether you can turn the screen off, or walk away from the TV while it is running in the background and follow along with what is happening. That is understanding Japanese, not making educated guesses based on what you see.

[Zgarbas]

@qwarten: That is an amazing feat . Congratulations! How would you rate your Japanese at the moment, if you don't mind my asking?

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:By overestimating their own ability, starting from the assumption that natives are all uneducated 10-year-olds.

You don't know me.

...

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.

Apparently I do.

Thread derailing alarm!! It's so pathetic, it's almost funny (again).

I cannot confirm or check how good his/her command of Japanese is, nor how much he/she actually comprehends that is being said in Japanese, but Stansfield123 is good at trolling and wasting our precious time.

@Stansfield123: Stop boasting -- nobody buys what you are saying here. I kind of even felt offended when you claimed saying you can understand (and by that I do not mean just getting along with what is said and kind of guessing what the topic is, but being able to reproduce what is being said by repeating it in spoken words) just by knowing core1k for sure and a few more words outside the deck..
You know, I struggle very much understanding spoken Japanese, but then again I think I am too modest and too perfectionistic to admit I understand actually more than 50%...

Tori-kun Wrote:Thread derailing alarm!! It's so pathetic, it's almost funny (again).

Sigh, and here I thought the thread might derail with a flood of people replying to what I said and debating which is best for reading: Rikaisama or Yomichan.

Timing is everything, I suppose:
Reply #19 - Yesterday, 3:23 pm (Tashippy)
Reply #20 - Yesterday, 3:34 pm (Stansfield)

@Zgarbas

I can read stuff like these on paper without using a dictionary (not that I understand everything, far from it, I just learned to gloss over stuff I don't know and guess from context now relatively well):
心霊探偵 八雲
No.6
神様のメモ帳
バッカーノ!
鋼殻のレギオス
とらドラ!

I can watch and to most extent understand majority of slice of life, drama and comedy series. But for the most part anything scifi or fantasy is difficult to follow without subs.
And the above do not apply to stuff like Yondemasu Azazel-san where they may speak too fast, or to stuff with gags relying excessively on references or word/kanjiplays, which I know excludes many shows. Then again I haven't done as much listening as I've done reading.

In other words, I can comprehend stuff relatively well if it's basic or about something I know/like. Otherwise, I suck.

Or to be concise, while I'm better at it now, I still suck.

[Zgarbas]

tashippy Wrote:

Tori-kun Wrote:Thread derailing alarm!! It's so pathetic, it's almost funny (again).

Sigh, and here I thought the thread might derail with a flood of people replying to what I said and debating which is best for reading: Rikaisama or Yomichan.

Both! Rikaisama is great for stuff on Firefox(articles and what not), Yomichan for books. They essentially do the same thing, so they cooperate perfectly <3.

qwarten: That's a bit beyond my idea of basic =). SF&F seems really hard to me due to all the katakana and improvised terms. I keep expecting them to be real words instead of being made-up, and I find it difficult to associate a made-up word in katakana with something that makes some sort of sense. Keep up the great work!

Tzadeck Wrote:"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.

In my defense, I had not read Stansfield's whole post. My apologies.

Thanks again @zgarbas. New question: Is it better for a thread to derail out of control or to stop completely...

tashippy Wrote:

Tori-kun Wrote:Thread derailing alarm!! It's so pathetic, it's almost funny (again).

Sigh, and here I thought the thread might derail with a flood of people replying to what I said and debating which is best for reading: Rikaisama or Yomichan.

Timing is everything, I suppose:
Reply #19 - Yesterday, 3:23 pm (Tashippy)
Reply #20 - Yesterday, 3:34 pm (Stansfield)

Timing didn't matter, it's because no one's gonna get motivated to have a fired up discussion about some tools we all know are great already When Stansfield shared his experiences on the matter, he made it so that others could interpret it like he was belittling the tools and the experiences of others. Which of course makes people defensive.

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.

Tori-kun Wrote:Stop boasting -- nobody buys what you are saying here. I kind of even felt offended when you claimed saying you can understand (and by that I do not mean just getting along with what is said and kind of guessing what the topic is, but being able to reproduce what is being said by repeating it in spoken words) just by knowing core1k for sure and a few more words outside the deck..
You know, I struggle very much understanding spoken Japanese, but then again I think I am too modest and too perfectionistic to admit I understand actually more than 50%...

NightSky Wrote: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.

This thread is about preparing for "the jump" into native material. OP writes about wanting to stick to technical material until native stuff is completely accessible to him. Stansfield said that while he was for example doing Core at the 1k mark (which doesn't say anything about anything he's learned outside of technical studies), he was also reading and understanding Yotsubato--Yotsubato was accessible to him.

Where was the necessity in digging into his "actual" Japanese ability?

They were probably so reliant to core10k that "core1k" is the only thing they take into account regarding his abillities.

(This is a joke, of course.)

Aikynaro Wrote: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.

I dont think its the same. When you started reading in your native language you could already speak and everything.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:Where was the necessity in digging into his "actual" Japanese ability?

Basically, what happened was this:
He gave us a very brief idea of what he's done to study, and then an assessment of his ability to understand variety shows. Someone said, "Hey, you can understand an awful lot for that amount of study. Can you really do that?" He explained, but basically came up with the fact that there are so many context clues and gestures in variety shows that he can figure out what's going on. So I responded, "Basically, you're saying you don't really understand the Japanese, you understand everything else about the show and it fills you in on the meaning." I didn't mean it as criticism, or as a diss on his Japanese, I just thought that the way he was phrasing it would be misleading to other learners. Then he was pretty snotty to me, and the he was rude to NightSky and sort of dissed his Japanese.

But, basically, it's because he's really arrogant and rude, and it makes people argumentative. I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but I did.

What I'm doing now is taking a few seconds when I encounter a new word every few pages to jot it down and add it to Anki later. Seems harmless.

Tzadeck Wrote:But, basically, it's because he's really arrogant and rude, and it makes people argumentative.

That's a bit of a cop out. Regardless of how arrogant or rude someone may be, they do not make you argumentative. You make you argumentative by taking things personally on an internet forum. Would you bother arguing with someone on the street, or would you ignore them and keep on your business? It's even easier to ignore someone online, because they have no physical means to get in your way like a street preacher or some punk-arse teenager can.

uisukii Wrote:You make you argumentative by taking things personally on an internet forum.

Haha, I don't think I've ever taken anything on this forum personally. That has nothing to do with why I'm being argumentative. I have no hard feelings against Stansfield123 whatsoever.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

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.

true that.
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/5239/shabe.png
context with real people talking is pretty helpful. people don't ALWAYS make their body language match what they say to an exact degree etc etc but they do sometimes... people just have a natural urge to sometimes express what they're saying with body language too.

and besides talk/variety is daily conversation japanese/common japanese for the most part. it depends on the show too though obviously.

and even if you don't undersatnd the japanese you can look it up most likely because so much of it is subbed. in other words, jump to native material asap. don't go after some ridiculously difficult book that even japanese have trouble reading or whatever... just something enjoyable, reasonable to your level or even way below your level (if that's the way you want it)

I found this thing that this geinin said to be really interesting profound (I'm not sure if he's talking about kobun exactly, he didn't mention what kind of books exactly. he just said books but his favorite author　太宰治 is hard to undersatnd as far as i know - have not tried reading his books). I mean it's not all applicable to people at all reading levels but it's definitely something you should take into consideration if you do ever plan on getting to a high level with literary japanese (whether it's fiction or classic japanese or nonfiction etc). No matter how much you study vocab or grammar or textbook japanese You still have to read a lot of books to increase your understanding/appreciation/interpretation skills. no amount of prepping is going to make the number of books you have to read to reach the "literaly level?" any less. I remember AJATT saying you need to read 200 books to get fluent. For me I'm at 60 books right now and that's because I'm not reading that consistently and i'm just doing other stuff in japanese. going at this rate, I feel like i will be by the time i reach 200 lol (Not counting manga).

it was from ame talk:

又吉「読書脳がキレキレの時は、開いたら途中の箇所とか。
　　　最大限にキレキレの時は、読んで難しかったり、
　　　今の自分じゃ理解できない箇所があれば置いておいて、
　　　１００冊くらいほかの本を読む。そのあと読むと、
　　　文字がむちゃくちゃデカく見えて「うわ！読める！分かるぞ分かるぞ！」
　　　って読んでいくと、良く「活字が躍り出す」って言いますけど、
　　　あれを越えて本にこう…「分かるぞー！」っていう。
　　　（本の見開きへ潜り、頭の上でページがめくられる動きw）
　　　難しいとか俺に合わへんとか、面白くないと思ったとしても、
　　　それは自分がまだその本を読むタイミングじゃなかったり、
　　　能力が無かったりする。面白くない本はないんじゃないかって思う」