@ RawrPK


Yes, I think you understand exactly where I am at. Immersion is great. I am "immersed" every time I walk to the kombini and ask them "what is inside this onigiri?" "can I have another set of chopsticks?" "Is that izakaya over there any good? It seems empty most of the time" I dunno. I speak in Japanese as much as possible. I find reasons to go to the store in the middle of the night and sometimes I sit around and smoke cigarettes with the night clerk and talk to him about baseball for 10 minutes even though I have practically no interest in it. Before I moved to Kanagawa, I lived in a very small town in Kyoto with only 7 other American english speakers, most of whom I rarely ever saw. Everything I did every day was in Japanese. I had to think japanese in advance to find what I was looking for when shopping. To find directions to where I wanted to go. The problem is that once you learn how to SURVIVE in japan, your inclination towards learning new things drops off. It doesn't feel important to need to explain WHY you are feeling something, or WHY you think something should be a certain way. That is the hardest plateau to overcome and I have been sitting stuck on it for about a whole year now. Most of the Japanese I learned, I picked up very quickly. Within the first 6 months of being here. That is why I wan't so badly to just study vocab such as nouns and adjectives. Japanese language is plug and play once you understand grammatical structure. It is superior subject working its way down to the least important in the sentence. If you can learn to "think" japanese, you can easily learn how to speak it. The problem is not conveying my thoughts to others. I am always understood when I speak. The problem is often understanding what other people say to me because they use words that I have no understanding of. Or they use a synonym for the word I don't know and end up using another word I dont know haha. It happens all the time and it's frustrating!!!! Anyways, sorry for the rant. I just thought I would give my two cents about immersion.

And for the record, immersion isn't burrying yourself knee deep in anime and japanese music/radio. Immersion is walking into a japanese grocery store with a list of things you need and having no idea how to find any of it because you can't read the back of a box to save your life. Immersion is learning tons of potential responses to to hypothetical conversations. Immersion is being able to competently ask for directions and actually understand them when the person tells them to you haha. Thanks

Kabukicho Wrote:And for the record, immersion isn't burrying yourself knee deep in anime and japanese music/radio.

Don't dismiss watching anime or listening to podcasts as means for immersion. Those are great for exercising your ability to understand spoken word. Also, repeated exposure to the same anime/podcasts will result in acquisition of patterns that you are not that familiar with. To give an example, I have no problems with sentences that are similar to:

「家路」が聞こえてきたらすぐに帰らないと。
【新世界より】

BTW, English is not my FL either

Kabukicho Wrote:@ RawrPK


Yes, I think you understand exactly where I am at. Immersion is great. I am "immersed" every time I walk to the kombini and ask them "what is inside this onigiri?" "can I have another set of chopsticks?" "Is that izakaya over there any good? It seems empty most of the time" I dunno. I speak in Japanese as much as possible. I find reasons to go to the store in the middle of the night and sometimes I sit around and smoke cigarettes with the night clerk and talk to him about baseball for 10 minutes even though I have practically no interest in it. Before I moved to Kanagawa, I lived in a very small town in Kyoto with only 7 other American english speakers, most of whom I rarely ever saw. Everything I did every day was in Japanese. I had to think japanese in advance to find what I was looking for when shopping. To find directions to where I wanted to go. The problem is that once you learn how to SURVIVE in japan, your inclination towards learning new things drops off. It doesn't feel important to need to explain WHY you are feeling something, or WHY you think something should be a certain way. That is the hardest plateau to overcome and I have been sitting stuck on it for about a whole year now. Most of the Japanese I learned, I picked up very quickly. Within the first 6 months of being here. That is why I wan't so badly to just study vocab such as nouns and adjectives. Japanese language is plug and play once you understand grammatical structure. It is superior subject working its way down to the least important in the sentence. If you can learn to "think" japanese, you can easily learn how to speak it. The problem is not conveying my thoughts to others. I am always understood when I speak. The problem is often understanding what other people say to me because they use words that I have no understanding of. Or they use a synonym for the word I don't know and end up using another word I dont know haha. It happens all the time and it's frustrating!!!! Anyways, sorry for the rant. I just thought I would give my two cents about immersion.

And for the record, immersion isn't burrying yourself knee deep in anime and japanese music/radio. Immersion is walking into a japanese grocery store with a list of things you need and having no idea how to find any of it because you can't read the back of a box to save your life. Immersion is learning tons of potential responses to to hypothetical conversations. Immersion is being able to competently ask for directions and actually understand them when the person tells them to you haha. Thanks

I never said anything about immersion being bad. It's just not the "magic bullet" when it comes to learning a language. Especially for those learning Japanese as a 2nd/3rd/etc language. It's a supplement to learning but doesn't replace it is all I'm saying. For example, I have a better chance understanding reading Momotaro than reading a light novel in Japanese. I'm more inclined to finish reading the story rather than get frustrated with all the unknown vocab and give up. Comprehensible input > incomprehensible input.

If you're having problems with certain words due to synonyms, you should study vocab possibly focused on synonyms and antonyms of words you already know.

Learning Synonyms in Japanese
http://thesaurus.weblio.jp/

A short article on learning synonyms in Japanese with a link to an online Japanese Thesaurus. 類語辞典 = Thesaurus of Synonyms and the tab next to it 対義語・反対語 for antonyms. You should probably navigate this website with the help of a popup J-E dictionary like rikaikun for Chrome or rikaisama, the modded rikaichan for Firefox (you can find it in these forums).

RawrPk Wrote:Learning Synonyms in Japanese
http://thesaurus.weblio.jp/

A short article on learning synonyms in Japanese with a link to an online Japanese Thesaurus. 類語辞典 = Thesaurus of Synonyms and the tab next to it 対義語・反対語 for antonyms. You should probably navigate this website with the help of a popup J-E dictionary like rikaikun for Chrome or rikaisama, the modded rikaichan for Firefox (you can find it in these forums).

While there are certainly words that are actually more or less interchangeable (and that can throw off a learner pretty fast if they hear one they haven't learned yet)-- I think that this article brings up an interesting point that ties in to the immersion discussion and provides support for its importance.

The words she gives as examples are certainly synonyms but the nuance of each (and thus, when you should and should not use one or the other) can be quite different. Every single pair on that list can be split by nuance but, using 急ぐ and あわてる as an example--

they certainly both have very similar meanings ("to hurry") BUT--
while 「急ぐ」 is simply a speed up,
「あわてる」 is a speed up PLUS a little nuance of panic or an otherwise abnormal mental state which is also present and causing the speed up.

The most glaring difference might be 言う vs 話す but I think even the most elementary student learns that these aren't the same early on in the game. "Saying" something can be quite different from simply "speaking." Although there are instances where the two can certainly be interchangeable. You can't really say 日本語を言う with the meaning of "speak Japanese," for instance. So that's not even nuance but actually a complete difference in meaning.

Things like this often aren't stated in dictionary OR thesaurus entries- making that knowledge only accessible by either having someone tell you directly or by figuring it out by "feeling" on your own through immersion. Although, if you can read Japanese definitions, the slight differences in synonym usage are often in the Japanese thesaurus entry for those words (although nuance is usually not included). I refer to the [url="http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/thsrs/]goo thesaurus[/url] quite often when I need to explain the difference in synonyms. The weblio thesaurus page is decent too with the 意義素 column showing the general usage for all the words in the 類語 column-- but, of course, even the words lumped together in that box can possibly have differences in nuance.

-> random anecdote from the opposite end of the J↔E language learning world. skip if you like.
I can't count the number of times I've asked a Japanese person what their favorite "word" is in English, only to be met with a famous quote or string of words like "no music, no life" in response because they are thinking of the Japanese word "言葉," which they have directly translated to English in this case as "word," when what we really want in English is a SINGLE WORD or 単語 (the usage of which is.. actually somewhat different in Japanese as well, but will usually get you the "one word" you're looking for!).
[[Slight derail/豆知識--- for example, in the sentence 花が咲いた in Japanese, English speakers would think of this as a collection of three "vocabulary" or "words"->「花」「が」「咲いた」, with 咲いた simply being the past tense of 咲く. Japanese speakers would see this as 「花」「が」「咲い」「た」 with 「た」being its own distinct 単語. This can be quite interesting on a number of levels if you look into it so I'll leave the definition of た here!
There are many other examples like this (た) but I won't take up space with them here!

So, yes, immersion is a supplement! But a very vital one for the more refined, high-level study of the language!
A slight slant rant to the matter at hand but.. maybe not!? Just a quick tip regarding these synonyms and their usage!

As some general advice- it's certainly harder to actively "study" while immersed. It's too easy to just.. immerse yourself and get all pruney not doing anything like in a long bath. (bad analogy? ) I would suggest actively collecting new vocabulary from everything you do (watching TV, reading, conversing, etc) and studying it to add to your arsenal of active vocabulary. This will slowly lead to the ability to enjoy more and more "things" in Japanese, which, if you continue to actively learn from, will continue to propel you forward. I guess "active immersion" could be a good phrase to use here. If you've already got the framework of grammar firmly implanted in your head and you're using it on a daily basis anyway this may be surprisingly easy (depending on how much knowledge you already have bouncing around in your head).
It's good that you're working on RTK, too. I think. Having kanji to associate with the words you already know will do you good and make it easier to learn new words that you come across!

Please excuse the long-ness of this post. I've been sick with norovirus for a minute and haven't got to talk to humans for a few days. I hope my ranting is at least somewhat useful for you, Kabukicho!

That was my problem when I started "immersing". I thought I had to "go big, or go home" type of mentaility. Just pure immersion of Japanese media. No jisho! Just tough it out til it would miraculously *click*. So yes, I was one of those hoping the power of osmosis in a "long bath" like you stated would eventually allow me to learn Japanese lol xD

I still do immersion, but in the way that you stated by actively collectìng vocab and yes, using a jisho! I don't know how I came to the idea of punishing myself by NOT using a jisho rofl