EnjukuBlack Wrote:Although I'm not putting down the 'immersion in your own country' approach - I admire anyone who has the perseverance to do so - I just feel that immersion in-country can't be beat for it's authenticity and constant exposure.

There are plenty of ways to talk to regular Japanese people without moving to Japan. I have a few really good Japanese friends that I talk to online all the time.

If I'm not mistaken Khatz has never been to japan.... at least until he reached the fluency level he talked about on his blog.

And 15 years to master japanese ? One word : BS.
I don't intend to spend more than 5 five years on it , 3 of wich in japan : by 5 years I mean within the frame of a totally devoted study . Nukemarine was totally right , we should not be talking in terms of year but hours . 90% of language studies are done by dabblers who start on a whim , give up after 3 months/weeks/days and for the rest of their life have a on/off love affair with the language but not the drive to act properly . Right now I've been on japanese for 1 year and 4 months and I'm way better than most of my fellow camarads that have studied it for 4-5 years in college . I can read mangas , watch news , play games , etc... But in spite of some temporary drop of pace I spent day and night on it .
And consider something else : 15 years for a SINGLE language ???! well except if you're as tough as mathusalem you won't have much time to learn a lot of languages pal....
No matter how much I love japanese it would be heartbreaking for me to let go a language like Chinese . And I hope to learn a fifth and maybe a sixth language after that (german language and culture is so fascinating , and I just dig the arabian and the korean alphabet)
Take a look at all the famous hyperpolyglott : guys like barry farber , mezzofanti , .... All of them said to be native-like fluent in a dozen of language or more . (mezzofanti likely the greatest polyglott ever , if you don't include unchecked claims like al farabi and guy bragging like john bowring , was able to speak 38 language of which 28 were perfectly mastered including knowledge of their dialects !An assertion which was checked on a regular basis as every litterate man of his time and from every civilised country of the world came at rome to challenge him . Ok maybe he was a genius.... ) If any one of them was around here now he would be laughing his guts out....

@EnjukuBlack
You made a good point there I can't deny it, but you also said "there are things I habitually say in Japanese that are wrong", and Japanese in drama, movies, anime, news, from web friends, etc.. is Japanese

smujohnson Wrote:If you did do 3 hours a day nonstop, learn the kanji with Heisig, and find an effective way to learn the language (ie, sentences and stuff), read kana books out loud (manga is good practice)... and NOT taking classes....

I don't see why you wouldn't be fluent in about 1.5 years at a very competent level.

Cool, that's a new figure

@ghinzdra
Thanks, that was motivating

You're all wrong. The correct answer is 3 forevers plus or minus infinity.

(There is no agreed upon definition of fluency and the time it takes to reach that goal even if it was defined depends entirely upon the person. Thus there is no point in talking about it.)

Jarvik speaks some sense.

Stop speculating and get back to studying.

undead_saif Wrote:@EnjukuBlack
You made a good point there I can't deny it, but you also said "there are things I habitually say in Japanese that are wrong", and Japanese in drama, movies, anime, news, from web friends, etc.. is Japanese

You say that as if all those different forms of Japanese are the same.

Do you really want to go to Japan and speak Japanese like a news anchorman? Or an anime character? Or a B-actor from some daytime drama?


Back when I taught high-school Japanese in the States, I had a student whose mother was Japanese. His Japanese was very good (not fluent, but close to it).

The thing is - he spoke Japanese like a girl. Or more specifically, like a mom. His exposure to Japanese was so limited, having grown up in the US and being exposed to Japanese from only a few sources, that he had no other model on which to base his own Japanese. I.e., he didn't have exposure to a breadth of different spoken registers with which to judge the best way to speak in a given situation.

Immersion in-country would give you ample examples on which to base your own speech patterns. Something a couple of television shows, a few songs and some time in a chat room can't do.

EnjukuBlack Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:@EnjukuBlack
You made a good point there I can't deny it, but you also said "there are things I habitually say in Japanese that are wrong", and Japanese in drama, movies, anime, news, from web friends, etc.. is Japanese

You say that as if all those different forms of Japanese are the same.

Do you really want to go to Japan and speak Japanese like a news anchorman? Or an anime character? Or a B-actor from some daytime drama?


Back when I taught high-school Japanese in the States, I had a student whose mother was Japanese. His Japanese was very good (not fluent, but close to it).

The thing is - he spoke Japanese like a girl. Or more specifically, like a mom. His exposure to Japanese was so limited, having grown up in the US and being exposed to Japanese from only a few sources, that he had no other model on which to base his own Japanese. I.e., he didn't have exposure to a breadth of different spoken registers with which to judge the best way to speak in a given situation.

Immersion in-country would give you ample examples on which to base your own speech patterns. Something a couple of television shows, a few songs and some time in a chat room can't do.

What kind of Japanese are you referring to, that is not contained in any form of media that's obtainable by those outside of Japan? Could you give some examples, and differentiate it from the Japanese that can be accessed through different genres of manga, novels, essays, plays, articles, films, television programs, journals, skype, et cetera?

Edit: After reading your earlier comments, I take it you're not saying it's impossible, just that it's more difficult? I agree, but that's what makes it so fun! And it's getting easier every year.

What I was going to write earlier before I decided to get snarky, was that I do wish there were more 'unscripted', slice-of-life media sources with no particular aim, extensive and prevalent enough to be easily obtained online.

I think many people here are making the assumption that people speak exactly the same as they do in movies. That the ordinary Joe on the street talks just like the characters from a television drama. That your friends and family have the same speech patterns as characters in a literary novel or a stage play.

The fact is, however, that the people who write film and television scripts, the people who write novels and plays, even the people who write manga and anime are engaged in a craft of very carefully selecting their words. This is very different from off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment (sorry for all the cliches) conversation being spoken by intelligent, educated people (like many of the upper execs in my company), or by salt-of-the-earth people (like my carpenter friends or the guy that drives the garbage truck through my neighborhood), or by any of the honestly drunk, angry, happy, in-love or otherwise ambivalent people that I meet on a day to day basis (not the people who are acting drunk, happy, in-love or otherwise ambivalent in plays, movies, television, etc.).

And yes, I never said that learning the language outside of Japan is impossible. I merely wanted to make an argument for the efficacy of in-country immersion. The aforementioned antimoon article seemed to suggest that learning a language outside of the native culture was preferable to going to the country and learning - a view which I think is, to put it as nicely as possible, mistaken (I wanted to say bullshit, but I'll refrain ).

To say that 'X immigrant in America has lived there 20 years and still can't speak English, ergo, you should learn English in your home country before going there' qualifies as a big, fat non-sequitur in my book. If you are driven, intelligent, focused and are employing effective methods and texts (like AJATT and Heisig), then I think you are much better off being IN Japan than OUT. This was the crux of my argument.

It's definitely MUCH easier and better to learn a language in-country, I find it hilarious that Antimoon claims otherwise. You don't even have to put in any effort, you get extremely broad and useful exposure constantly.

I was watching a Japanese soap opera, ( J-dorama, right?) and I think they offer you a lot of linguistic variety, guy talk, girl talk, boss talk, casual, dramatic, (It's a drama, remember?). A bit like watching soap anywhere in the world.There's all kinds of situations, with professionally spoken, correct tone and form. It has to be appropriate, because the target audience is native and they would laugh at any incongruities. I learnt a lot of English watching Coronation Street and Eastenders. And a lot about the mentality, since they show you what happens behind closed doors, when the "natives" are in familiar environments or under pressure.
The only thing I don't know is if J dorama is naturalistic, like its Western counterparts, of more affected and overacted.

J

EnjukuBlack Wrote:I think many people here are making the assumption that people speak exactly the same as they do in movies. That the ordinary Joe on the street talks just like the characters from a television drama. That your friends and family have the same speech patterns as characters in a literary novel or a stage play.

The fact is, however, that the people who write film and television scripts, the people who write novels and plays, even the people who write manga and anime are engaged in a craft of very carefully selecting their words. This is very different from off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment (sorry for all the cliches) conversation being spoken by intelligent, educated people (like many of the upper execs in my company), or by salt-of-the-earth people (like my carpenter friends or the guy that drives the garbage truck through my neighborhood), or by any of the honestly drunk, angry, happy, in-love or otherwise ambivalent people that I meet on a day to day basis (not the people who are acting drunk, happy, in-love or otherwise ambivalent in plays, movies, television, etc.).

And yes, I never said that learning the language outside of Japan is impossible. I merely wanted to make an argument for the efficacy of in-country immersion. The aforementioned antimoon article seemed to suggest that learning a language outside of the native culture was preferable to going to the country and learning - a view which I think is, to put it as nicely as possible, mistaken (I wanted to say bullshit, but I'll refrain ).

To say that 'X immigrant in America has lived there 20 years and still can't speak English, ergo, you should learn English in your home country before going there' qualifies as a big, fat non-sequitur in my book. If you are driven, intelligent, focused and are employing effective methods and texts (like AJATT and Heisig), then I think you are much better off being IN Japan than OUT. This was the crux of my argument.

I agree with the crux of your argument, though I think that folks are aware of the limitations of medium-specific and/or scripted materials, it's merely that their goals are oriented towards understanding precisely those materials, with the naturalized aspects more of a bonus or something on the horizon. It reminds a bit of Jarvik7's recent underscoring of 'rationalization' versus fully 'understanding'. Personally, I hope that instead of having to travel to Japan in the future, Japan will be such a surveillance state with nonstop transparent recordings that I can just spy on whomever I wish! Right now, recording devices are apparently quite obtrusive entities in Japan, tsk tsk.

Maybe we need more Kazuhiro Soda-style documentaries! He's got a new one called Mental, I believe. I haven't seen any of his work, however, and come to think of it, I've little knowledge of Japan's 'documentary scene'.

Jeromin Wrote:The only thing I don't know is if J dorama is naturalistic, like its Western counterparts, of more affected and overacted.

J-drama, and, to a certain extent, Japanese film, is extremely melodramatic and over-acted.

nest0r Wrote:Personally, I hope that instead of having to travel to Japan in the future, Japan will be such a surveillance state with nonstop transparent recordings that I can just spy on whomever I wish! Right now, recording devices are apparently quite obtrusive entities in Japan, tsk tsk.

Sheesh. Remind me never to give you my email address or home phone number.

enjuku black is just outdated and I mean no ill .
you've got all the major news japanese company broadcasting about every issue possible 24 hours a day on internet .
you've got dvds , movies , dramas, shows all around your belly :all your favorite movies which have been redubbed in japanese on a systematic basis owing to the intense dislike of japanese people for english. And a national production so insanely various that it has made the japan mindset famous for being completely bucked up (the so called tv reality is several light-speed year behind some of the japanese concept ) because they just record everything worthy and a lot of things totally unworthy : I don't think there's a single aspect of the japanese life that hasn't been scrutinized and broadcasted on the tube. That's why they come up with those insane concept , because they've already been through everything likely to happen in a normal life from every point of view possible.
you've got some of the most active social network in the whole world with things like mixy to which myspace and facebook pales .
you've got podcast and blog made by every step of the social ladder , from your layman-average guy salary man or otaku who try to make up for his pathetic life to the most distinguished litterate people in japan .
you've got the world biggest internet board , 2ch , with a daily content (several millions of post) you won't be able to read in a lifetime .(ok some of those aren't very useful . It's still japanese though and even after removing useless comments you still have enough to fill up the congress library.)


I could have considered his stance a quarter of century ago for at least a minute . Right now with internet it's just plain wrong.

EDIT :my bad . I didn't read the following comments .... if the crux of his argument is it's WAY easier to learn your target language in the country it is spoken .... I cannot but agree . But it's a bit obvious don't you think ?

Mixi is nothing compared to Facebook and myspace. Mixi only has 10 million users, Facebook has 150 million.

EDIT: And since Mixi stands for 80% of Japanese social networking sites, I'd say Japan is actually pretty weak in that area compared to what you posted.

You're right on this point . But it makes me think of something else
let's be honest : how many guys on facebook and myspace are american ? or at least from a english speaking country ? for sure there are some gaijin wandering on the japanese network but you'll be damn unlucky if it tops 1% . On the other hand off the top of my head I would be totally unable to assess how many guys are native on english speaking network.... not to mention the fact that your 150 millions include the foreign branch right ? wich means there are several millions who never ever utter a single word of english ..... on the other hand mixi is only located in japan. It's 10 " pure" million .

ghinzdra Wrote:You're right on this point . But it makes me think of something else
let's be honest : how many guys on facebook and myspace are american ? or at least from a english speaking country ? for sure there are some gaijin wandering on the japanese network but you'll be damn unlucky if it tops 1% . On the other hand off the top of my head I would be totally unable to assess how many guys are native on english speaking network.... not to mention the fact that your 150 millions include the foreign branch right ? wich means there are several millions who never ever utter a single word of english ..... on the other hand mixi is only located in japan. It's 10 " pure" million .

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

So yeah, probably about 25% or so of Facebooks users are from the US. Over 30 million people.

And Mixi is not 10 but 19 ... more close to 20...
The gap is narrowing


" The site boasts over 19 million members and gets over 14 billion page views monthly (July 2008)."http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mixi

ghinzdra Wrote:And Mixi is not 10 but 19 ... more close to 20...
The gap is narrowing


" The site boasts over 19 million members and gets over 14 billion page views monthly (July 2008)."http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mixi

Nah, that's if you count deleted and multiple accounts. However, even so, that's still only halfway to Facebook, counting just people in the US (I'm sure the UK stands for a considerable amount of people as well).

http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009-facebo...old-users/

EnjukuBlack Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:@EnjukuBlack
You made a good point there I can't deny it, but you also said "there are things I habitually say in Japanese that are wrong", and Japanese in drama, movies, anime, news, from web friends, etc.. is Japanese

You say that as if all those different forms of Japanese are the same.

I didn't mean that, I meant that all those different forms of Japanese are Japanese! They talk and write Japanese in those 'forms' right? You will gain all benefits from hearing Japanese, specially fluency in hearing and talking, and if we came out with a little weird way of talking, it can be easily corrected, I think.
But you didn't say those things aren't useful, you meant that they aren't natural.
I think that you pointed out a good point everybody should be aware of, Thanks.

And enough talk about Mixi, Facebook and myspace, please!

EnjukuBlack Wrote:

Jeromin Wrote:The only thing I don't know is if J dorama is naturalistic, like its Western counterparts, of more affected and overacted.

J-drama, and, to a certain extent, Japanese film, is extremely melodramatic and over-acted.

Well, right now I can't get a word they're saying, but if at some stage they help me improve, I'll take the over acted style as a minor trade off. I can always compensate by mimicking the robotic news broadcasters

J

No more than 10,000 hours.

JLPT3?!? I`m around JLPT2 level and I found it rather tough to make my way through his books. That`s why I put his books back to my shelf to spend more time with the works of Yoshimoto Banana, which is significantly easier.

I know that his work is not as difficult as, let`s say Mishima Yukio, but JLPT3?!?

I don`t even think that light novels are an easy read for someone at JLPT3. Wouldn`t stop anyone from doing this though, I think that it`d be a great way to improve one`s Japanese. It just won`t be that easy. And it takes time to reach the level where you can enjoy these novels.

He didn't say it was easy at JLPT3 level, he said you can get through them. Looking up words is the easy part of reading Japanese, as long as the grammar is simple enough, it shouldn't be that hard if you put the time in.

tokyostyle Wrote:

watashimo Wrote:He told me that he`s reading Murakami Haruki in Japanese just for fun.

Murakami is notorious for using simple, plain and easy to read Japanese. It's one of his trademarks. Anyone around the JLPT3 level can get through one of his books. I definitely recommend them.

Murakami Haruki developed his particular writing style by first writing in English (he started his career as an E-J translator), and then translated his own writing into Japanese. And so the result is that, even though he may be using complex words, metaphors and idioms, his Japanese is very un-Japanese.

Since he translated it (often on the literal side) from English, it tends to read a bit more like English (and thus can be more accessible to an English speaker).

Nowadays, he has internalized his style, and so no longer needs to write in English and translate into Japanese, but writes directly into this 'voice.'

Because of this peculiar way of writing, albeit it may easier to read for a beginning Japanese student, I don't know that I would recommend it for study.

As I alluded to in previous posts: newscasters speak like newscasters; daytime drama characters speak like daytime drama characters; anime characters speak like anime characters. And these registers can be very, very different from real Japanese people speaking like real Japanese people. The difference in English may not be as pronounced, and so this issue may be hard to see, but the difference between a Japanese newscaster and the average guy on the street in Japan is tremendous.

Likewise, if you learned how to speak Japanese from Murakami Haruki, you would sound very strange, indeed.