I'm taking Japanese classes in college for my minor. I've been learning it for roughly five months. I really like the language and everything, but my class is really slow when it comes to knocking out chapters in Genki I. I decided to work ahead, and I'm almost done with the entire book now. I thought, "Hey, I finished this textbook. I might be able to read some of the Japanese children's books at my local library." Boy, was I wrong. I barely understood some of the words that they were using. I could pick out a word here and there, but most of it was completely new to me. It took me nearly five to ten minutes just to get through one page (I was looking up the words on Jisho), and these are the one's with pictures.

It was a huge blow to my ego. I've been doing wanikani outside of my class for extra kanji practice, and I see my myself slowly improving on that front. Many times the instructor has put up completely new kanji on the board, and I already know it off of the top of my head. However, it's really discouraging to have almost sludged through an entire 300+ page textbook to still be unable to read books that little kids can read.

I suppose another factor that adds to the discouragement is seeing all of my friends who have taken Spanish and French to be on a way different level than me. I know that Spanish and French are pretty much Tier 1 level languages while Japanese is a Tier 5, but I don't know. I don't really know how else to improve my language abilities. Genki is somewhat dry to me, and I'm getting really sick and tired of doing flashcards to memorize these vocabulary words. I'm looking at Genki II on my table, and I don't even want to crack it open because I'm afraid I'm going to put forth all of this effort again and still get smacked back into the ground by how bad my Japanese is despite how much improvement I think I've done.

Do you guys have any tips that might help me with my studies?

[Zgarbas]

Something I tell everyone I meet who is starting out is to wait a year before they check their progress. This is counterintuitive and the reason why most people never make it past absolut beginner level in Asian languages.

Spanish, French, and Japanese are equally difficult languages. It's just that they have different learning curves for Westerners. It takes a ridiculously long time to become a beginner in Japanese since you have so many new elements to get used to before you can tackle beginner sentences (2 syllabates, kanji, words with no etyomological connection to your language, a completely different grammar system, etc.) this is obviously different to spanish, where you have a lot of common elements to lean on to as a beginner. However, around the intermediate level, the learning curve is reversed; japanese becomes increasingly easier once you have a solid foundation to build on, as Spanish becomes increasingly more difficult as you have to abandon false friends and intuition. This is why most Spanish speakers abandon study once they've reached a conversational level.

You're making amazing progress for someone 5 months in; i abandoned Japanese twice in the absolute beginner level, and it took me 3 years to make it to beginner (N4) level. From there, only 2 years to advanced (N1). Just don't let the lack of palpable results get you down; right now, you're not making your way to fluency and native materials, but towards a foundation to start from. If you just keep studying, you'll reach new plateaus.

Also, remember that mist college courses only aim for lower intermediate level at best; use the courses for more in-depth understanding and to keep you on track, but remember that you always want to be ahead of them (which you already are!). Learning languages is a matter of patience and perseverance more than anything.

Best of luck!

Children's books aren't as easy of a goal for a beginner if you think about it.

A little perspective using English as an example: My little cousin who is in kindergarten, at around age 5-ish I think, was reading simple children's books. Although his reading wasn't the greatest, by that point he was able to hold conversations (nothing complicated, just normal stuff) and watch cartoons and things of that nature in English. Why? Because he has the vocabulary and grammar necessary to do so. He learned most of it from family, TV, parents, etc over a few years of living. Chances are he probably would know maybe 80% of the words in the book if someone read it to him, but the struggle for him was actually reading it on his own. You, on the other hand, have been studying for 5 months, so you lack the vocabulary of even a little native child and you lack the intuition when it comes to seeing words and grammar. There's nothing wrong with that and it's only natural in my opinion.

You're only 5 months into learning Japanese. If you've already finished Genki 1 then you're making good progress. Grab a copy of Genki 2 now and continue studying. If you want to start reading books soon and accelerate even more then consider studying vocabulary separately in addition to your Genki studies. Maybe look at JLPT N5 and/or N4 material as a way to figure out what to study next (even if you don't take the test).

Not being able to read children's books after five months is a big warning sign! Are you sure you're doing enough? Sure, Genki might be enough for college courses, but the dedicated people on this forum go out of their way to do frequency-based flashcard decks every day and learn how to write the kanji every day.

Vocabulary is a huge obstacle in every language, not just Japanese. No matter what, you're going to have to get yourself through the grind one way or another! 

You're obviously ahead of your college class, but even then it's not enough to satisfy your urge to learn!

The logical solution and only way through is for you to put your nose to the grindstone and learn learn learn! 

If you ever feel discouraged, just think of all the people in this forum who put in way more effort than both of us and let that motivate you to do more!

Children's books are actually really hard to read, and mostly not worth it.

First of all they don't use kanji, which once you've learned kanji text without it is harder to read because the kana all run together, so you have to find the word boundaries ... which is really hard for a beginner because there will be many words you don't know, or even if you do know them, you aren't so familiar with them that you can predict where they would naturally appear. Net result - you end up looking up a ton of words that may not even exist in an attempt to find all the word boundaries.

Secondly, they use children's vocabulary -- there are tons of words that people use as children, when speaking to children, and when writing children's books that will never, ever appear in adult conversation.

Thirdly, they use made up words. Onomatopoeia being an integral part of the language makes this especially rough in Japanese children's books because making up words that just 'sound like what they mean' is much more natural for a writer and is very common. I recall an NHK show where a children's author was teaching some other people how to write a children's book and his praise for this technique... anyway, you'll never find such words in a dictionary. Understanding them relies on you already being intimately familiar with hundreds of existing onomatopoeia so that the made up ones just naturally sound like what they mean. (The same problem appears in sound effects, but those are usually easily deduced from the context in prose or from the picture in manga, while in a children's book the made-up words are just as likely to be adverbs and adjectives as they are to be sound effects).

Anyways, good job getting out and studying on your own and trying to tackle native materials! Unfortunately you fell into the common trap of thinking children's books would be easy. Don't feel bad - I did too, and so do many learners of second languages.

Instead, though, I would start with the manga "Yotsubato!" and NHK's easy news, http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ ; also, if you haven't used it yet, check out Erin's Challenge, https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ which is great listening practice and in any case a set of fairly natural and engaging dialogues acted out as skits, along with vocab building tools and such.

Also, Genki II has some fundamental grammar points, like ～たら、～ば、～ても.
When I completed Genki I, I tried to do the same thing as you and I was discouraged because I wasn't even able to parse words correctly because I didn't recognize many grammar endings and grammar words, so I didn't understand where a word ended ._.
I was like "if with Genki 1 I understand 5%, it means that with Genki 2 I will understand only 10%", but it didn't worked like this.
About words, you need a lot of them, we all know that, and it is the most intimidating aspect of learning japanese (or any language), at least for me.
Those school books introduce only a bunch of words, and some of them are too school related. I suggest you to compete Genki II and after you know the Genki I + II grammar, you can dedicate yourself to learn as many words as you can

(2016-03-14, 10:32 am)risu_ Wrote: Vocabulary is a huge obstacle in every language, not just Japanese.

Yes, but for English speakers the fact that the two languages aren't related makes vocab a rather bigger hurdle than it is with many other languages. For instance I have never even started learning any Spanish, but looking at a random article from El Pais which starts "La temperatura media global batió el mes pasado un nuevo récord para un mes de febrero desde 1880" it's pretty obvious that this is something along the lines of "the mean global temperature has reached a new record for february since 1880". Obviously there are problems with false friends and with a lot of words which aren't helpfully related to similar English words, but the learner of Spanish has a huge initial advantage over the learner of Japanese (or Chinese, or Korean) even ignoring the kanji issue, and correspondingly less of a motivational block. So it's not a huge obstacle in the same way in every language, I think.

While Genki I definitely has some useful grammar and vocab., I felt that a lot of the real "meat" of the beginner section was in Genki II. There are a lot of forms and key grammar points that are necessary to know in it.

I also did not feel ready to read much after Genki I, not even a real, written for Japanese children children's book. What might be better for you is to get one of the levels of graded readers. I prefer this series (this is the link to level 1) http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Graded-Re...r+japanese
They go from level 0 (knowing relatively little japanese) all the way to level 4, and offer a good, structured way to start reading that is probably more in line with what you might learn in Genki.

You're doing well, there's nothing to worry about! Like the others said, children's books aren't as easy as you'd think (especially coming from textbook Japanese). You know, I took an entire year of French in university, and afterwards French children's books were still too hard.

You mentioned how much of a slog working through Genki I got to be, so maybe you should use a different resource for now. I'd recommend studying some grammar with Tae Kim's website, and maybe work on your vocab. You can find something to read like Yotsubato (or even a children's story? I'm not sure what the best beginner materials are anymore) and study the new words and structures you come across. It won't be easy, but getting used to natural Japanese will definitely help in the long run.

You sound like me (took 4 years of Japanese courses (starting with Genki I and II), majored in Biology) then I lived in Japan for 2 years and have been back half a year doing translation.

here's advice that worked from my experience:

-you are at the right pace, good work.
-learn kanji as early as possible (using the Heisig method modified order as below

1. Learn the method (play with the first 150 or so frames)
2. find a list of the Joyo Kanji, pick out every one you recognize the meaning of already, and learn it using the RTK method
3. find a list of the Joyo Kanji by grade, and learn all the grade 1 kanji, then all the grade 2 kanji... up to grade 6
4. Learn the rest after you have seen them used in texts that you read at least once.

This worked for me (I did it in my 5th year of study, it was my 3rd attempt at RTK and it has stuck. I've since done RTK 2 and 3 as well). It took me 8 months to complete the process, and I was doing it every day for over an hour. I am not efficient, but I think there are some unrealistic standards set on this site that don't apply to everybody. good luck!

[Zgarbas]

Regarding 3) on that list...
*blush* I found it really useful to put kanjis by grades in places where I was bound to be bored and looking at the walls (I would go to the kitchen to smoke, so I started from there, next was my desk... and in front of the toilet). Went from grade 1 to grade 6, and I would just read aloud each kanji by meaning, then by reading, eventually started marking down ones where I always knew one and aimed for 2, stuff like that. I think that was pretty much my most useful kanji learning exercise. My friends say that when they think of me studying Japanese, they think of the kanjis plastered on my bathroom wall.

I may be a bad example but I didn't even look at native books until I did Genki I,II, Tobira and almost all of Core 10k. And at that point I read my first light novel and added a whopping 1.2k or so words from that first book. After about 100 light novels, it's down to about 50 new words per book. You need to set your expectations because it takes a long time to learn this language.

(2016-03-14, 4:28 pm)Zgarbas Wrote: Regarding 3) on that list...
*blush* I found it really useful to put kanjis by grades in places where I was bound to be bored and looking at the walls (I would go to the kitchen to smoke, so I started from there, next was my desk... and in front of the toilet). Went from grade 1 to grade 6, and I would just read aloud each kanji by meaning, then by reading, eventually started marking down ones where I always knew one and aimed for 2, stuff like that.  I think that was pretty much my most useful kanji learning exercise. My friends say that when they think of me studying Japanese, they think of the kanjis plastered on my bathroom wall.

That's awesome! good idea. I've done it on a smaller scale and enjoyed it.

That is the nature of French and Spanish or German vs Chinese and Japanese.

There is that list of languages by that US gov organization that trains people in foriegn languages. From memory Spanish takes something like 600 hours whereas Japanese will take 2200 hours plus I guess another 70% of non class time.

The question you have to ask yourself is do you fell lucky. Well, do you, punk.

Oh wait, that's Dirty Harry.

The question you have to ask yourself is, how much do you want/need to know Japanese and is it worth learning say German, French and Italian at the same level, or 2 languages and a musical instrument or... well whatever.
If it is, expect it to take much longer before you can reach the milestones of a person learning Spanish.

Consider this from the Chinese world.
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
"The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming)."

"At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline."

I sure as hell hope this isn't true but exaggeration to make a point.

The thing about that Chinese article is that it left me confused. Unless Chinese is much more difficult to read than Japanese (which it might be) then I don't see how someone can study for 10 years without being able to read a novel. No wait, if they learned kanji/hanzi the long & confusing way the university I went to wanted me to learn them, then I can see how it might take a lot of time. I didn't make much progress in reading until I discovered RTK, but after I finished I passed N2 a year later, and N1 two years after that. I was reading easy light novels around the time I passed N2.

[Zgarbas]

I know people who've been studying for 10 years and can barely read nhk easy news. It's called 'intermittent study' and 'blaming it on the language rather than admitting that you're lazy'.
I've technically been studying German for 15 years and can't make my way through basic conversation... It's called 'studying 5 hours per year doesn't count'

(2016-03-15, 3:53 am)Zgarbas Wrote: I know people who've been studying for 10 years and can barely read nhk easy news. It's called 'intermittent study' and 'blaming it on the language rather than admitting that you're lazy'.
I've technically been studying German for 15 years and can't make my way through basic conversation... It's called 'studying 5 hours per year doesn't count'

This is exactly why I don't understand why people measure how long they have been studying in months and years.  Technically I've been studying since 2004 - with short break from late 2004-2012.    Calibrating in hours would be a much more useful metric.  I can see if someone is studying with paper flashcards or some other way that is hard to estimate hours, but it's so easy when the majority of your time is spent in anki.  Even a rough estimate in hours is much more useful than an exact number of months because I don't know if someone has been studying a few hours on the weekend, or grinding 10 hour days 7 days a week.

(2016-03-14, 6:58 pm)Dudeist Wrote: That is the nature of French and Spanish or German vs Chinese and Japanese.

There is that list of languages by that US gov organization that trains people in foriegn languages. From memory Spanish takes something like 600 hours whereas Japanese will take 2200 hours plus I guess another 70% of non class time.

The question you have to ask yourself is do you fell lucky. Well, do you, punk.

Oh wait, that's Dirty Harry.

The question you have to ask yourself is, how much do you want/need to know Japanese and is it worth learning say German, French and Italian at the same level, or 2 languages and a musical instrument or... well whatever.
If it is, expect it to take much longer before you can reach the milestones of a person learning Spanish.

Consider this from the Chinese world.
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
"The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming)."

"At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline."

I sure as hell hope this isn't true but exaggeration to make a point.

No offence, but the entire article sounds like a guy listing out excuses for his laziness or lack of motivation. It's like fitness. "I don't exercise because my genetics makes it harder for me. Research has shown that people of my race/gender/height/ANYTHING are poorer at reflexes/jumping/explosive power. I have long limbs which makes it harder for muscle to show." YES the excuses are valid. But does complaining really help in any way?

Knowing the problems you have with the more difficult parts of the language you're trying to learn is helpful, but only if you intend to use that knowledge to make yourself learn faster, better and more efficiently.

At the end of the day, what we all want to do is learn x language or complete y goal. Bemoaning the inherent difficulty of achieving the goal does nothing to help us in the short and long run.

The only way through is to pinpoint our weaknesses, chip away at them day after day and slowly crawl up the steep slope bit by bit.

Most of it is effectively an argument for writing reform (unsurprisingly given it was written for a volume of essays in honour of John DeFrancis, one of whose interests was writing reform). The rest is a mixture of the usual sorts of mutual commiseration about the difficulty of the task that learners everywhere indulge in from time to time.

And I would argue that it *is* helpful to do this from time to time -- it provides reassurance that you're not alone in finding this difficult, that setbacks or apparent lack of progress are something we're all dealing with and therefore you shouldn't conclude that you're somehow not cut out for languages and give up.

The barriers to entry are definitely higher in Japanese than in Spanish or French (for an English or other West European language speaker).

In the long run I think Japanese is actually easier than either. It is a much more logical language, not filled with endless exceptions that you "just have to learn". The vocabulary gets much more intuitive as you go on. Unlike European languages, most Japanese words are badged with their etymology (in the form of kanji), which, while difficult at first, becomes a huge asset later on.

I wrote something about the difficulty level of Japanese a while back and didn't post it until I was actually in Japan (it was my aim not to use English much while I was there so I wrote some articles in advance). As it happened, my experiences at the time made me break my rule add a big addendum based on my experiences there and realizing in how many ways Japanese is easier than English and other European languages.

But the OP's experience is not at all unusual. Not knowing half the words in a small children's book isn't at all surprising. I sometimes see small children's material and usually have to look up some words (what is a cat's-cradle in Japanese for example?)

At your stage I started working through anime with Japanese subtitles and reading Genki 2 (and other grammatical material) as a kind of addendum. It is very tough and vocabulary especially is a barrier at first, but one does start actually using Japanese from early on, which helps to overcome the doubt and frustration of that difficult early stage.

At least it did for me. I realize that the initial difficulty of this approach could have the opposite effect. You have to be a bit stubborn and a bit in love with Japanese, but if you are, it really does help one get over the part where Japanese seems like a sheer cliff-face and into the part where its logic and beauty actually makes it one of the easier languages to learn.

(2016-03-15, 3:53 am)Zgarbas Wrote: I know people who've been studying for 10 years and can barely read nhk easy news. It's called 'intermittent study' and 'blaming it on the language rather than admitting that you're lazy'.
I've technically been studying German for 15 years and can't make my way through basic conversation... It's called 'studying 5 hours per year doesn't count'

The 10 year thing refers to a grad student. One would assume that said person did 4 years of undergrad plus an unstated amount of work at a masters or phd level, either 6 years of grad school, or less with enough interest in the language to work at it before undergrad.

It would be inconceivable to find a grad student in French or Spanish having similar problems. I'd also think it would be very disappointing in a Comic Book Guy saying he has wasted his life just before he is killed kind of way if say, you were at a dissertation stage of a language and still unable to function in it.

I do find it hard to believe though. I call either exaggeration or extreme outliers.

(2016-03-15, 3:08 pm)CureDolly Wrote: The barriers to entry are definitely higher in Japanese than in Spanish or French (for an English or other West European language speaker).

In the long run I think Japanese is actually easier than either. It is a much more logical language, not filled with endless exceptions that you "just have to learn". The vocabulary gets much more intuitive as you go on. Unlike European languages, most Japanese words are badged with their etymology (in the form of kanji), which, while difficult at first, becomes a huge asset later on.

The Japanese Language Education Center, the Alliance Francaise, and from memory the Instututo Cervantes all disagree with you. Estimates for the N1 JLPT which doesn't even test production are 3000 to 4800 hours. Estimates for Spanish, French, and even English and German tend to be under 1200 hours for the C2 level. Granted the Euro numbers might not include self study, but from what I understand the N1 JLPT not only tests about half the language but is estimated as being a C1 level.
Also the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State who might as well put a sign on their front lawn saying we teach languages because it is their ahem business.
They say 600 hours for Spanish and French, and 2200 for Japanese and Japanese for some reason is marked as being a bit above that level compared to other languages in that class. Add about 70% for study.
Now maybe for some reason Japanese just clicks for you in which case, distance high five, but I think the FSI in particular as well as the other organizations listed above are in a much better position to judge what it takes to pick up a language and how difficult a language is for us muggles.

(2016-03-14, 3:15 am)Rikkyou Wrote: I'm taking Japanese classes in college for my minor. I've been learning it for roughly five months. I really like the language and everything, but my class is really slow when it comes to knocking out chapters in Genki I. I decided to work ahead, and I'm almost done with the entire book now. I thought, "Hey, I finished this textbook. I might be able to read some of the Japanese children's books at my local library." Boy, was I wrong. I barely understood some of the words that they were using. I could pick out a word here and there, but most of it was completely new to me. It took me nearly five to ten minutes just to get through one page (I was looking up the words on Jisho), and these are the one's with pictures.

It was a huge blow to my ego. I've been doing wanikani outside of my class for extra kanji practice, and I see my myself slowly improving on that front. Many times the instructor has put up completely new kanji on the board, and I already know it off of the top of my head. However, it's really discouraging to have almost sludged through an entire 300+ page textbook to still be unable to read books that little kids can read.

I suppose another factor that adds to the discouragement is seeing all of my friends who have taken Spanish and French to be on a way different level than me. I know that Spanish and French are pretty much Tier 1 level languages while Japanese is a Tier 5, but I don't know. I don't really know how else to improve my language abilities. Genki is somewhat dry to me, and I'm getting really sick and tired of doing flashcards to memorize these vocabulary words. I'm looking at Genki II on my table, and I don't even want to crack it open because I'm afraid I'm going to put forth all of this effort again and still get smacked back into the ground by how bad my Japanese is despite how much improvement I think I've done.

Do you guys have any tips that might help me with my studies?

My Japanese class didn't start reading children stories until my 4th class (2nd year, 2nd semester) which was around Genki 2 book level. With only Genki 1 under your belt, it's normal to still not be able to read children stories like Momotaro the Peach Boy. Hell, I struggled reading it while I was in the level 4 class because it was out of the norm of the usual dry conversations between 田中さん and ブラウンさん(゜-゜)

With audio: http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/08/01.htm
Picture book version: http://www.e-hon.jp/bmomota/momj0.htm

Graded readers or an easy manga are better reading resources for reinforcement of what you've learned/learning new words as other have stated.

This site might help get you started with manga reading: http://anime-manga.jp/index_english.html

It reminds me of Erin's Challenge in manga mode where you can click on a speech bubble and can hear the audio for it when you click! It translates said word(s) and cultural notes for more depth if necessary.


Hope this helps!

@Dudeist

Sorry if I was confusing. Even though I was a little questioning of the State Department estimate in my article I certainly was not meaning to question the fact that Japanese does take longer than European languages to learn.

I do contend that it is essentially an easier language in terms of structure, but that can't compete with the massive advantage that comes from West European languages being so closely related to English (and each other).

As I said in the article "Inherently Japanese is not difficult. But it is not at all related to English or other European languages. So if your first language is English, learning French can be likened to learning to play badminton when you already play tennis. Learning Japanese is like learning Kendo with tennis as your “native sport”."

It is partly because it takes so much longer to learn that I personally favor learning it by immersion, so that the long period of learning becomes a journey and an adventure rather than a race (and a slog).

[Zgarbas]

Dudeist, I don't know if you've ever actually learned a different language and have personal experience to back it up, but the FSI are hardly a good reference point for a muggle... I think that most people who finish a 1200 hour course in English (a.k.a. the entire educated population of my country), enforced by constant immersion, are roughly B1 level. Ease is a highly subjective factor. The FSI and certificate hour requirements are just a general guideline, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with most people's experience.

As for the grad student, you can easily go to grad school in foreign literature without knowing the language and getting by without reading any native materials. The friend that I was talking about also did her BA in Japanese and MA in East Asian Studies. It's not like University level courses rely on language acquisition . It depends on your research. I've met a lot of people with BAs in foreign philology, and very few were fluent...