raharney Wrote:self-referential episteme about language that works on a number of traditional but outmoded Romanticist assumptions:

Define your terms, please. None of this makes any sense by the definitions that I know of for these words, so you must be using special jargon.

Quote:(1) Culture is something that is “deep” and only understood when you “penetrate it deeply” over time.
[This is an annoyingly vacuous metaphor. Cultures are not “deep”. They are created constantly at the local level in ongoing social interactions. There is nothing more xenophobic and insular than obsessions with the “depth” of cultures.]

Huh? Are you saying that history, tradition, and literature don't matter? And how does believing that other cultures as well as one's own equate to 'xenophobic'? You do know that xenophobic means 'fear of the alien' not 'deep and obsessive interest in the alien' right? Because if I didn't know the word and read your sentence, I'd think you meant the latter.

Quote:(2) Learning a language is about understanding the ways of thinking and inner-processes of a people.
[No its not. There are no hidden ways of thinking. People say what they say, whether they are being truthful or not. When you understand what they say you understand them. There is no telepathy in this world.]

Learning the ways of thinking is not the same as telepathy, and there is good evidence from studies of non-lingual (ie, deaf-mutes without sign) and lingual-but-non-verbal (ie, deaf-mutes with sign only) people that strongly suggest that language and thinking are closely linked. That is, it seems you can only understand expressions that are possible in your language, and if you have no language, then you can only understand very simple and immediate things. It's hard to prove but seems likely that certain modes of thought are easier in one language than in another even in very advanced languages that can seemingly express anything that humans have yet found a way to express.

Quote:(3) A language is about a people’s history, culture, traditions, heritage, and whatever other clichéd word you can think of.
[Nationalist claptrap at its most superficial.]

You do know that 'nationalist' means a belief that one's own nation and the people of that nation are superior to all other nations and peoples, right? I don't see how a belief that a language and the culture of its speakers are deeply linked can possibly be 'nationalist', but again, perhaps if you defined your specialized terms it would make sense.

Quote:What Benny is aiming for, perhaps, is a pre-nationalist Romanticist situation where being able to speak a few languages and dialect, with no worries about professional accreditation or the condescension of the bourgeois intelligentsia caste, was simply the norm. Or perhaps he is aiming for a postmodern condition where language acquisition is wrenched out of the claws of the singularity and finitude obsessed crypto-apartheidist gatekeepers of linguistic nationalist discourses and returned to the people: i.e. us peasant, workers, and peregrinating flâneurs.

Okay, I get it. You're just f---ing with us. You don't actually expect to be understood, you just want to express your anger in a manner so incomprehensible that nobody can retaliate. Nobody could possibly expect the average guy on the internet to make sense of these phrases, even if they were being used in their usual sense, which they don't appear to be. At least the terms that I recognize, but, although I think I'm quite well read, I have no idea what 'peregrinating flâneurs' could possibly refer to.
'peregrinating' isn't even a word as far as I know, and 'flaneur' appears to be a french word meaning 'loafer' that was used in English back in the 19th century. At least the other phrases are actual English, just not used in any way that makes any sense.

@SomeCallMeChris
You are zoning in on individual words, either declaring to be not really proper words (could you just google a few of them if their rarity upset you so much) or giving them slanted definitions that (both you know and I know) don't fit the sentences they have been used in.
Not a great way to argue ideas.

Anyway, Look, if you do hold the Romanticist assumptions I was describing, what more can I say. We are just going to enter into an endless "yes it is" "no it isn't" style 水掛論.

[s0apgun]

Benny Lewis,

It appears you have underestimated the intelligence level of the members on this dearly beloved forum. We are not here to chastise you, it is perfectly okay for you to have different opinions and methods about language acquisition. However, instead of simply ignoring our ideas we've carefully developed regarding Japanese, I ask that you please THINK about how we do things here.

Please, do not come here to point fingers at others because they disagree with you. We want to hear what you have to say so in return listen to what we have to say too! I hope you can continue to contribute to this community of Japanese learners without any further issues. Discussion of your 3 month goal is welcome to continue along with or without arguments, just keep it friendly. That means you too, Surreal.

Kind regards,

A MODERATOR.

Wow. This thread is beyond ridiculous and is well into the _embarrassing_ category.

Seriously, this community used to be a particularly interesting one as it "invented" quite a few approaches and developed quite a few study materials (anki decks etc) always trying to be as efficient as possible. I don't know what changed but its becoming a bit of a joke now.

Comparisons to AJATT are amusing, I don't know if all the posters here even remember but this forum used to be absolutely in love with him and it was a huge circlejerk. Then at some point people started getting irritated and there were some bigger bitching threads about it, it seems now we've mostly finished the 180 and everybody hates him. It absolutely wasn't always that way though.

Besides, Benny's website and AJATTs are different in that Katz has tried very hard to make money from it and that's very obvious on everything you read "Take my silver spoon blablabla". I've come across Benny's website mostly when I was studying some Spanish, and if he even has a product he sells then I didn't even know - and still don't know - because I've genuinely never seen him market or try to sell anything at any point.

The guy has got a passion for learning languages and talking to people, his blog "took off" and is now a top link for searching for most things language learning related - so of course he'll want to keep going and add his experiences with Japanese. And that is just fine, I don't understand what everyone seems to be getting upset about.

This poster Surreal thinks hes being very clever and insightful by "taking apart" Benny's posts so well, but the huge chip on his shoulder can be seen from miles away.

==================================================================

Benny,

I'm suprised you actually came back to read anything on this forum because you are supposed to be studying Japanese, not reading about studying Japanese!!

Good work on your first video and I'm looking forward to watching it once you have uploaded it.

What you have probably already realised is that the Japanese learning community is quite different to probably any other language learning communities you will come across.

Its hard to explain exactly why this is, but you see it a lot when you are on the ground in Japan speaking with other foreigners too. There is a massive amount of competition when it comes to Japanese, who speaks the best and gets there the quickest, who can complete whatever JLPT level the soonest, "how many Kanji you know" and all this nonsense. I was probably guilty of it too when I first started out, although at some point when you see the huge size of the task in front of you you quickly stop caring.

That makes people *extremely* sensitive to criticisms of how they study, and what their values are. I don't really know why.

I suspect its mostly due to the type of people that first get interested in Japanese. A big part of Japanese learners are those who get interested purely from Anime or computer games, and often these aren't the most 'sociable' types, and so when it comes to learning Japanese "because I want to move there and live there forever", they perhaps tend to take a strategy you otherwise wouldn't. Having to speak is bad because its scary, but if you can find a mega super efficient system to learn Japanese in super fast time, then you do that and must defend your decisions to the death. And be sure to put down anyone else that does it differently.

This forum is special because its the website people use to go through Heisig's Remember The Kanji book. Personally I'm not a fan of RTK and see it as a complete waste of time, but its not easy to write that on this forum because you will get quickly shot down as to why that opinion is outright wrong.

And of course since this forum is all about RTK, and RTK is all about recognising the characters used in writing, it means immediately your goals are almost polar opposite to everyone posting on this board. That's why they will tell you you are "wrong", and you can't know Japan without being able to read all its literature. Which I agree with you is nonsense, but its the values people here have set themselves and you will be heavily criticised for not agreeing.

Sadly though this forum is just another piece of the wider Japanese language community, and I think its very similar everywhere. Even on the ground in Tokyo you come under the same pressures when it comes to learning Japanese, and people are very protective of their progress.

Once you do go to Tokyo, if you are speaking Japanese relatively well then people will generally feel somewhat attacked when you tell them you did it in 3 months. You can expect either a lot of excuses about their own level "Oh I've not had the time and you don't need it anyway" or others that will put you down with "Yes but you can't read X, you don't know the Y Kanji that I know, and you aren't a part of Japanese culture like I am" or whatever other nonsense.

And of course its all just that, nonsense. The Japanese language learning community is a strange and tricky one compared to any other I've been part of, and I genuinely feel the others have had a far healthier mindset.

Anyway this turned into a mini essay so sorry for that. You know this already, but the more time you spend studying Japanese and the less time you waste reading forums like this one the better =)

Again, good luck!

[s0apgun]

NightSky, you stated a lot of truth in your post but I don't believe we're as edgy here as you make us out to be! I love this place for its friendliness and desire to help each other succeed with their goals. There might be quite of few of the competitive types but they are a part of the reason this forum has such a vast collection of knowledge and techniques to make things easier on us casual guys.

@NightSky

Nice comment. Agree with everything you say (except "Personally I'm not a fan of RTK". Personally I am. 十人十色=)). Your analysis of why Benny's cheerful language-learning adventurism irritates Japanese learners seems spot on.

I also agree that this forum used to be very welcoming of alternate SLA strategies. I have learned about stuff (e.g. 4:3:2 method) that I have been able to use in my own language teaching work.

Pitty we can't keep the openness open.

NightSky Wrote:You know this already, but the more time you spend studying Japanese and the less time you waste reading forums like this one the better =)

Again, good luck!

This forum certainly does eat up a lot of my time that I can be spending on studying Japanese, it's really hard to stay away though. I always check on this site hoping to find new and effective methods or ideas in relation to my studying, but in fact it's just acting as a poison killing valuable time. I have to limit my time on this site and youtube, maybe find a program which only allows me to enter these types of sites during set times.

Xanpakuto Wrote:

NightSky Wrote:You know this already, but the more time you spend studying Japanese and the less time you waste reading forums like this one the better =)

Again, good luck!

This forum certainly does eat up a lot of my time that I can be spending on studying Japanese, it's really hard to stay away though. I always check on this site hoping to find new and effective methods or ideas in relation to my studying, but in fact it's just acting as a poison killing valuable time. I have to limit my time on this site and youtube, maybe find a program which only allows me to enter these types of sites during set times.

Yeah, there's one Benny mentioned in one of his first posts on this thread.^^

EDIT: does anyone have the link to Benny's blog specifically about his Japanese quest? I'm quite curious to follow along.

Also, Nightsky, that was a lot of good truth you said. Cheers!
I think perhaps why people on this forum get so defensive about RTK is that really this is kind of the only place where people who find RTK to be very effective can go and talk about it. I feel like everywhere else people aren't into it, so those who post here want to defend their tiny corner :p

At any rate, I'm glad someone more eloquent than I finally jumped on here to speak some sense. This thread got abusive fast T_T

raharney Wrote:@SomeCallMeChris
You are zoning in on individual words, either declaring to be not really proper words (could you just google a few of them if their rarity upset you so much) or giving them slanted definitions that (both you know and I know) don't fit the sentences they have been used in.
Not a great way to argue ideas.

Anyway, Look, if you do hold the Romanticist assumptions I was describing, what more can I say. We are just going to enter into an endless "yes it is" "no it isn't" style 水掛論.

No, I'm quite sincerely saying that I do not understand your post.
My response began with the sincere intention of saying 'perhaps you should communicate more clearly', but by the end of responding to you and looking at your post closely turned into 'Actually, you really not trying to communicate.'

And although the conclusion was out of irritation, this response suggests to me that that was correct.

Also, please... I'm a well-read native English speaker. 'googling' words is pretty freaking useless, and the rare words you used that I know you were misusing, and the rare words that I don't know I looked up in the dictionary (or tried to. As I say, one doesn't seem to have a dictionary entry.)

And what the f--- do you mean by 'A romanticist assumption' and what exactly were you describing? In plain English please. I'm aware of romanticist art and literature, but not of romanticist linguistic theory. You can't just throw it on like it was a general adjective. It doesn't mean -anything- in this context.

I'm not even disagreeing with you... I'm saying you make no sense and are misusing fancy words, apparently because you don't -want- to be understood. To prove me wrong, you need to re-explain yourself in plain language.

irishpolyglot Wrote:Please keep trolling at a minimum. This has been such a friendly community until you charged in and made stuff up. I only delete comments on my blog/Youtube when they are genuinely hateful. This is a standard on blogs and channels.

Just curious - other than the places you control, has there ever been a Benny mission thread that didn't get "hateful"?

I think you are not open to constructive criticism, motivated mainly by money, not possessing superior learning techniques, and don't reach the levels that you claim to reach. You think I'm a troll. I guess it's pointless to type anything more until your 3 months are up. Good luck learning 6000 words in 90 days, amongst other things.

wulfgar2 Wrote:Just curious - other than the places you control, has there ever been a Benny mission thread that didn't get "hateful"?

I have to say that, while this leading question is not quite 'trolling', it's certainly nothing that can lead to productive conversation and is only likely to make matters worse. As I said earlier, Benny is marketing himself and as such, has made himself a fair target for criticism as if he were a product. This kind of question though, doesn't raise any interesting concerns and only serves to challenge Benny to engage in a flamewar with you. (Or, if he's mature enough, to ignore you or shrug you off with a quip, but in any case, not to further anyone's understanding of language learning.)

This may be a hopeless observation at this point in the thread, but, still. I'd really like it if people tried to keep it constructive because I think there -are- interesting issues here.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

raharney Wrote:@SomeCallMeChris
You are zoning in on individual words, either declaring to be not really proper words (could you just google a few of them if their rarity upset you so much) or giving them slanted definitions that (both you know and I know) don't fit the sentences they have been used in.
Not a great way to argue ideas.

Anyway, Look, if you do hold the Romanticist assumptions I was describing, what more can I say. We are just going to enter into an endless "yes it is" "no it isn't" style 水掛論.

No, I'm quite sincerely saying that I do not understand your post.
My response began with the sincere intention of saying 'perhaps you should communicate more clearly', but by the end of responding to you and looking at your post closely turned into 'Actually, you really not trying to communicate.'

And although the conclusion was out of irritation, this response suggests to me that that was correct.

Also, please... I'm a well-read native English speaker. 'googling' words is pretty freaking useless, and the rare words you used that I know you were misusing, and the rare words that I don't know I looked up in the dictionary (or tried to. As I say, one doesn't seem to have a dictionary entry.)

And what the f--- do you mean by 'A romanticist assumption' and what exactly were you describing? In plain English please. I'm aware of romanticist art and literature, but not of romanticist linguistic theory. You can't just throw it on like it was a general adjective. It doesn't mean -anything- in this context.

I'm not even disagreeing with you... I'm saying you make no sense and are misusing fancy words, apparently because you don't -want- to be understood. To prove me wrong, you need to re-explain yourself in plain language.

Ok. Here we go.

Point 1
Romanticism: This was not just about art and literature, but was an entire intellectual movement that emphasized nations as organic wholes. Language = Nation (or nation’s “soul”, “genius” etc.)
I have outlined at least three core assumptions of Romanticism regarding language. These should not be controversial. My rejection of them, obviously, is.

Point 2
Before the rise of modern nationalism, there were no national languages as such, although there were court languages, sacred languages, classical languages, and so on. The norm for non-ruling class people was to be able to use a number of neighboring languages and dialects (language/dialect distinction being extremely vague of course). Use would be oral as literacy campaigns were not such a priority for governments in them [sic] days.
So, questions like “do the peasants of Lorraine really understand the inner soul and culture and thought processes of the people of Alsace when they attain mere fluency in German without ever studying the literature and history of Germany?” would be inane.
So, Benny, from a long historical perspective is not such an outlier. [“Outlier” is a word, by the way.]

Point 3
The post-Romantic post-modern world we live in now is all about (or should be about) sustaining multiple identities defined by our loose fluttering through a variety of localized cultural contacts experienced each day and throughout our days. (i.e. we do loads of different things-jobs, hobbies, scholarly projects, artistic explorations-without being stuck in any one of them).
So, from a post-modern perspective Benny is not such an intlier. [“Intlier” is not a word. I made it up!!!]

NightSky Wrote:Comparisons to AJATT are amusing, I don't know if all the posters here even remember but this forum used to be absolutely in love with him and it was a huge circlejerk.

Just gotta say, I remember those days. It was like blasphemy to say you weren't doing the sentence method. This place was pretty much the only reason I took anything that guy said seriously, which ended up being a rather unfortunate choice. I think the change in tone is more just because the old guard moved on, though. Obviously they all just got too fluent for us and moved on... But eh, this place has introduced me to enough other stuff to make up for it.

But I think the current model of stuff we advocate is pretty good. I think its more suited to the layman. Benny seems like the type to rely on charisma and improvisation to make it through all those awkward situations caused by insufficient language skills. Some can do it, but I'd say its not for everyone. It requires a lot of thinking on your feet, and not everyone's an improv comedian. I imagine it works quite well though, for the really common stuff, in a sort of trial-by-fire way. If he enjoys that, meh, all the more power to him.

Our methods are more traditional. More the slow and steady approach, but they work. You just gotta make no bones about the fact that it'll be a while before you reap the payoff. Certainly not 3 months. And that is why we aren't so Benny-friendly.

edit: i heard gifs so i bestow upon thee this artists rendition of the scene here. the horse represents the collective sanity and the road represents the thread

*ollies outie*

[Zgarbas]

This went downhill quickly, innit? Shall we throw in the funny .gifs and call it a day?

Seriously though; calm down, everyone.
I have no idea who to individually chastise as this thread is madness, but please refrain from antagonizing one another or getting unnecessarily impassioned, using pompous (fairy sure they are either misused or made-up) terms which make your arguments become gobbledegook, antagonizing Benny (and Benny, please don't be rude to the forumites), and just generally being silly ^^'.

Edit: Are we seriously starting this? FINE!

raharney Wrote:Point 1
Romanticism: This was not just about art and literature, but was an entire intellectual movement that emphasized nations as organic wholes. Language = Nation (or nation’s “soul”, “genius” etc.)
I have outlined at least three core assumptions of Romanticism regarding language. These should not be controversial. My rejection of them, obviously, is.

... controversial or not, you can't possibly expect the average forum-goer to be aware of them. Wikipedia does discuss a concept of 'romantic nationalism' that was apparently part of the romantic movement. That's a pretty peculiar subset of the romantic movement for you to fixate on or to expect anyone who isn't a studying the romantic period in particular to know about it.
I can only suppose you're rejecting the idea that language affects the culture that speaks it, in which case I can only disagree. There's plenty to suggest that our thinking is guided by the language(s) that we speak (or sign).
But then, since you persist in being obscure, perhaps it's actually something else you're rejecting.

Quote:Before the rise of modern nationalism, there were no national languages as such, although there were court languages, sacred languages, classical languages, and so on. The norm for non-ruling class people was to be able to use a number of neighboring languages and dialects (language/dialect distinction being extremely vague of course). Use would be oral as literacy campaigns were not such a priority for governments in them [sic] days.
So, questions like “do the peasants of Lorraine really understand the inner soul and culture and thought processes of the people of Alsace when they attain mere fluency in German without ever studying the literature and history of Germany?” would be inane.
So, Benny, from a long historical perspective is not such an outlier. [“Outlier” is a word, by the way.]

... okay... so... apparently we're pulling out a reference to two adjacent provinces of France, one that spoke a Frankish dialect and one that spoke a Germanic dialect, without bothering to explain that fact?
Well, that's what I get from 20 seconds on wikipedia.
I can see that it's likely, and I believe you intend to communicate without bothering to explain that it's likely, that most of the legends, folklore, and traditional wisdom of the region would have been carried in both dialects and most people would have spoken the neighboring dialect anyway. That's nice. I don't know what it's supposed to prove or how it relates to learning Japanese in general or Benny learning Japanese in specific.

Quote:The post-Romantic post-modern world we live in now is all about (or should be about) sustaining multiple identities defined by our loose fluttering through a variety of localized cultural contacts experienced each day and throughout our days. (i.e. we do loads of different things-jobs, hobbies, scholarly projects, artistic explorations-without being stuck in any one of them).
So, from a post-modern perspective Benny is not such an intlier. [“Intlier” is not a word. I made it up!!!]

Uhm. That's a beautiful picture, and while I don't totally disagree with it, as a persistent 'flutterer' who changes jobs and hobbies and scholarly projects regularly, I can pretty clearly see that this is A) a direct route to financial mediocrity and B) not what most people are doing.
In other words, that's not what society supports or rewards, not what most people are doing, and not what society is about. Whether it's what society -should- be about is debatable, I suppose, but I'm not taking a side in that question.
In practice, people -do- essentially identify with one career, one religion, one locale, and one or maybe two hobbies. Many people in privileged first-world nations have the luxury to switch these up in their twenties a bit before settling down with whichever set they decide to fix on.
I have no idea what -that- has to do with learning Japanese or any language, though, it seems totally off the track.

Also, for what it's worth, while 'intlier' isn't a word, 'inlier' is. The dictionary only supports it as an antonym of 'outlier' for geological formations, but I could see it being pushed to be an antonym for any meaning of 'outlier'. It's a pretty reasonable use, I'd think.

1. Some people here spend too much time arguing and antagonising about language learning that would be better spent on actual language learning. I value my time too much for my comments to be more than terse.

2. I have no doubt that Benny can reach level that will allow him to effectively communicate in Japanese in 3 months. At the same time, I’m very doubtful he will be able to produce (or understand, for that matter) elaborate sentences that many here can comfortable read in Japanese media on daily basis.

Good luck to you Benny, it will be interesting to see how far you can get.

@SomeCallMeChris
I knew this would end up as endless.
Either you get my point or you don't.
Ciao.

So let's see . . . Benny's on Day 3 of his "challenge" and this is where we're at? Oh, it's gonna be a great three months! I can't wait till he starts posting some videos.

Mods can you please clean this thread up a little bit? Particularly EVERYTHING written by Raharney, its just complete rubbish throughout and a complete waste of everyone's time.

(and you can delete this post by me too!)

This thread has potential to actually be quite interesting, so its a shame its been ruined so quickly.

NightSky Wrote:Mods can you please clean this thread up a little bit? Particularly EVERYTHING written by Raharney, its just complete rubbish throughout and a complete waste of everyone's time.

(and you can delete this post by me too!)

This thread has potential to actually be quite interesting, so its a shame its been ruined so quickly.

That's not a fair comment. Why are you attacking me? (Especially as I wrote something nice about your comment).
My ideas are not rubbish. They are coherent albeit scattered and fragmented among many postings. I have no idea why they would freak you out so much.
And anyway, most of my recent comments were in response to a request for clarification.

Don't I like long threads!!!
It saves me a lot of time not to read them.

Here's another thread about Benny Lewis (closed); I haven't read it either.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...31842&PN=3

What I like about YouTube polyglots is the fact that I don't watch YouTube.
Good luck everyone.

raharney Wrote:That's not a fair comment. Why are you attacking me? (Especially as I wrote something nice about your comment).

Sorry I'm mostly going off this last page, I haven't seen how you replied to mine before.

Quote:My ideas are not rubbish. They are coherent albeit scattered and fragmented among many postings. I have no idea why they would freak you out so much.
And anyway, most of my recent comments were in response to a request for clarification.

Your ideas are probably fine. Unfortunately though I genuinely don't understand anything you wrote and have no idea what you are talking about. It mostly seemed pretty unrelated to Benny's progress anyway.

NightSky Wrote:

raharney Wrote:That's not a fair comment. Why are you attacking me? (Especially as I wrote something nice about your comment).

Sorry I'm mostly going off this last page, I haven't seen how you replied to mine before.

Quote:My ideas are not rubbish. They are coherent albeit scattered and fragmented among many postings. I have no idea why they would freak you out so much.
And anyway, most of my recent comments were in response to a request for clarification.

Your ideas are probably fine. Unfortunately though I genuinely don't understand anything you wrote and have no idea what you are talking about. It mostly seemed pretty unrelated to Benny's progress anyway.

They don't relate to his progress. They are a defence against criticisms levelled at Benny earlier that his understanding of Japanese would be superficial no matter how fluent he got because he doesn't know the culture. I was linking that criticism to a certain what I believe to be modern misunderstanding of the nature of language and society.
You don't have to agree with me or even read me. But I think banning me is just simple intolerance.

Now, I want to stop talking here. As I am sure everyone else does. So ciao.

buonaparte Wrote:Don't I like long threads!!!
It saves me a lot of time not to read them.

Hurry up and don't read this one too:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?...-mandarin/

and this one:
http://www.lingq.com/forum/1/13245/

Thank you very much to those of you pointing out how ludicrous and full of venom some replies have been. It gives integrity to the forum in general

I simply haven't read replies from certain members. I'm automatically ignoring whatever they write from now on as intentional time wasting, but going through a few points from the rest of you:

@NightSky Don't worry, I am only "allowed" to access certain sites in the morning and at night (using the plugin Leechblock), so I simply can't spend huge chunks of time on this site, or Facebook etc. and am forced to learn the language instead. Great, isn't it!

Also, thanks so much for your well thought out reply. It certainly explains a lot. I've already learned however to not discuss my three month projects when on the ground because it distracts the conversation way too much, and I get caught in the exact same thread that I've had a million times already (talking about my project, the blog, why I did it etc.). People compliment you no matter what your level is, and I'll just thank them for the kind words and change the subject to have a REAL conversation that I can uniquely have with this person, and not make it about talking about me. When I was haggling prices, talking with guides in the Sahara desert, and hearing women explain their unfortunate plight in Egyptian society this year, how long I had learned Arabic had never entered the conversation because there are more important things to talk about. That's something I share with the Internet, but ignore in person. Your explanation that people may view it as a competition of some sort reminds me even more to avoid this conversation in Japan too.

@JapaneseRuleOf7 If you think THIS is bad, wait until you see people tear me apart when they see the video I'm going to upload tomorrow :/ . It's super basic and slow (of course! I've just started learning Japanese from scratch!) but I know how mean people can get in criticising beginner language learners online. I can take it since I'm used to it, but it's so misleading because in person you get nothing but encouragement and the energy to charge forward. I'm always annoyed because other people see this reaction and presume that they would get it themselves if they ever dared use a language early, not realizing that the Internet and how easy it is to criticize with an anonymous username and then run is NOT the same as meat world.

@Zgarbas Well said, sorry about the JLPT disagreements (my opinions stand, but I apologize if my wording of them offends anyone, as that was not my intent), and please keep the GIFs coming!

@ktcgx Just search "アイルランド人がスペインにいながら、3ヶ月で日本語ペラペラになれるのか " on Youtube and subscribe to the channel for weekly updates. There will be a link in the description to a blog post each time that goes into much greater detail. The content of tomorrow's video will be slow and painful to watch, but the blog post will be more explanatory.

@Zarxrax "What all are you actually doing to study?"
I was focused almost entirely on Kana on day 1, 2 and 3. I had Skype lessons but they were to read general stuff and then two sessions to try to read my own script for the video.
Now that I can read Kana (veeeery slowly, but I can do it. Now that I have a base, with all the practice I'll be getting, I'll be reading it much faster soon enough), I can focus on learning vocabulary and sentences and am going to be spending several hours a day going through flashcards in Anki to absorb them. This will be leading up to a spoken session where I hope to use what I've learned and keep the conversation in Japanese. I was only able to make the switch to 100% Arabic on day 16 of my project this time last year, but am hoping to do that this first week with Japanese, since I still have to refer back to English at the moment due to a complete lack of vocabulary from focusing on Kana and not on learning chunks of conversations. Once I finally make the switch, then I won't use English in any Skype session for the full 3 months and will have to work with what I've got.

While vocabulary studying will be the bulk of my work (speaking in fragmented sentences is not pretty, but it gets the point across), I realize grammar is important in Japanese, so I plan to study a handbook that will give me an overview first, over the next days. I learned some Turkish and Hungarian, so I have a bit of an edge there on post-positions (rather than prepositions) and somewhat reversed order of a sentence, so this isn't actually that strange to me. Even so, I'm going light on grammar this month, so my side of the conversations will be somewhat Tarzan-y. I'll get to studying "A dictoinary of basic Japanese grammar" in a few weeks when I have a base to work it off. For now, the focus has to be learning words to fill my conversations with.

In a few weeks I'll have enough words to have basic chats and can expand on that. I'll explain my process as it goes on, but I change my strategy depending on my level. What I do this week will be completely different to how I'm studying and using my Skype sessions in a month and in the last week of the project.

"How much time are you dedicating per day, and do you have any other real responsibilities in your life?"
I'm devoting about 8 hours per day, 6 days a week to this project. I implement the pomodoro technique of working in 2 hour blocks, separated by 25 minute sub-time-blocks.
Yes, I realize this isn't something everyone can do. Having lots of time is not a requirement for language learning, it just means you can get further quicker. I have in the past learned languages with VERY little spare time, such as when I had a 63 hour work-week in Italy (yes, really), but used the little free time I had to do nothing but focus on improving my Italian.

"And regarding languages in general, do you basically just drop a language once you finish getting it to a certain level, or do you try to maintain your current level or keep improving?"
I am definitely learning Japanese for life. The way I work is to have 3 months intensively learning a language to get it up as high as possible, and then slowly improve it from there. Although I did the reverse with this in Spanish and slowly improved it over 9 months and then had a 3 month burst to prepare for the C2 exam.

There is something to be said for bursts of focusing on your project. They may not be sustainable in the long term, but they can make a HUGE difference overall.
The focus on Japanese means that my language level in OTHER languages will drop over the next 3 months. This is unavoidable. However, next year I won't be learning any new language until September again (or perhaps even later than that and postponing the next one until 2015), so I can spend 9 full months maintaining ALL my languages. This requires reading, vocab studying, skype sessions, socializing in the language, watching movies in that language etc. Just a month ago I was maintaining my French over Skype and debating gay rights for instance, as an exercise in making me implement relevant wording.
Maintaining a huge number of languages gets very challenging, so there have been well over a dozen that I've had to drop over the years (Hungarian, Czech, Quechua, Thai etc.), but there have also been 11 that I have decided I don't want to lose and try to give at least 3 hours a week to when I don't have focus on one language. This 33+ hour investment is huge, so being a polyglot is simply not practical for most people. Maintaining 5 languages was still realistic when I had a full time job though. Now I write about language learning, so this gives me a unique advantage in the scalability of what I do, and I realize that.
Learning ONE language well definitely is possible though, so that's all I focus on discussing on my blog.

I hope this answers your questions!

Now, time to activate Leechblock and get some work done. Today I'm doing tonnes of basic conversation vocab learning and then getting a start on Chapter one of "Japanese for Busy people", which I couldn't touch until now because it's the Kana version. I hope you are all similarly working and focusing on your languages, or at least encouraging others to do so. Cheers!