timcambell, that's so true. I've started to study mandarin (not really, just a miniscule hobby project I look at once a week or so) and I'm having great trouble with the tones. However, it's obvious to me that if I listen to it enough and train it enough, it will eventually become really easy to hear and just... second nature.

It does become second nature. The two biggest obstacles to learning Chinese are the tones and the kanji. You already have the kanji down, and the tones will come with time, they will start to "click." We use tones in Western languages, but we use them to distinguish subtleties of meaning and emphasis, not to completely change the word. It takes a while to wrap your brain around that concept. Once you are comfortable with the pronunciation, Chinese will be a breeze (relatively speaking.) The grammar is very simple and logical, there's limited conjugation, no irregular verbs, and the kanji generally only have one pronunciation, which is frequently similar to Japanese on-yomi

tokyostyle Wrote:

captal Wrote:I think that's a quote from Antimoon- aren't they Polish?

Yes, but everyone else chose to ignore his racist response in order to stay on topic ...

Reading back to my post and especially that sentence, i am sorry about that. I have nothing against americans and was more pissed off at what i found to be a shortsided view, especially on immigrants. But what i wrote was (though calling it racist is maybe a bit extreme,) stupid. Now I won't bother you guys anymore by going off topic. Peace.

I haven't read everything here, but a few comments.

I moved to Japan about 16 months ago. My Japanese has gotten worse since I moved here. I was just below 2-kyu level before.

Why? Maybe a few reasons.

I don't have the support structure here that I had in the US around learning Japanese. I had friends interested in learning it and many activities that revolved around it. I lost all that when I moved here. Being 'exposed' isn't enough. If know very little you'll improve, but at my level just being exposed doesn't mean improvement. Make sure you have the right job. I got placed in a company that speaks english. Very few Japanese are here, even less after the recent layoffs. Most employees don't speak Japanese. Hours are long and I'm tired when I get off. Japanese classes are expensive compared to the US. I'm sure you can find some good teachers here, but in general I've found the quality of teachers is considerably lower here.

I don't mean to say everyone's experience here will be the same, but if you are serious about studying Japanese, I'd recommend attending a school here rather then getting a job here and expect to improve. If you can get a job in a Japanese company that would probably be fantastic.

I have no doubt other countries, and probably other parts of Japan are different, but that's just my 2 cents. Time to get back to studying some during work. I vowed this year would be different then last year.

zwarte_kat Wrote:

tokyostyle Wrote:

captal Wrote:I think that's a quote from Antimoon- aren't they Polish?

Yes, but everyone else chose to ignore his racist response in order to stay on topic ...

Reading back to my post and especially that sentence, i am sorry about that. I have nothing against americans and was more pissed off at what i found to be a shortsided view, especially on immigrants. But what i wrote was (though calling it racist is maybe a bit extreme,) stupid. Now I won't bother you guys anymore by going off topic. Peace.

Another example of why i love this site. People are mature and can re-examine their statements, and apologize if they feel the need. On any other site it would be "%&^*$# You!"
Zwarte, you are a kool kat.

To add to something EnjukuBlack and I were discussing before, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that Japan has on living in another country in terms of immersing yourself is unscripted spoken Japanese, in context: citizen A talking to citizen B, without being consciously influenced by a recording process, in some everyday situation in Japan. We need to make Japan more of a surveillance/sousveillance society for the benefit of my Japanese-learning! Or more documentaries in the vein of Kazuhiro Soda. Other than that, I find that I have more Japanese media at my easy and instant disposal than I know what to do with.

cjlacz Wrote:Being 'exposed' isn't enough. If know very little you'll improve, but at my level just being exposed doesn't mean improvement.

It should be the exact opposite. When you're a beginner, you can't learn anything from exposure because you don't have the basis to build on. You can't learn through context because you don't understand it, you can't learn new words because your listening skills are too weak, you can't hold decent conversations so you can't get into the situations where you learn new things. Unless you're perfectly fluent, you should learn more and better by exposure the better you are at Japanese.

Personally, I'm moving away from traditional studies like vocabulary training, exercises etc the better I become. I'm easily above standard 2kyuu now and most of my learning, I do purely by exposure.

Get some Japanese friends and hang around with them for a while. Go see some movies at the cinemas (JAPANESE movies). Listen to radio. Watch TV. Read the newspaper.

nest0r Wrote:To add to something EnjukuBlack and I were discussing before, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that Japan has on living in another country in terms of immersing yourself is unscripted spoken Japanese, in context: citizen A talking to citizen B, without being consciously influenced by a recording process, in some everyday situation in Japan. We need to make Japan more of a surveillance/sousveillance society for the benefit of my Japanese-learning! Or more documentaries in the vein of Kazuhiro Soda. Other than that, I find that I have more Japanese media at my easy and instant disposal than I know what to do with.

It's a very big aspect though. The Japanese you are exposed to during a 飲み会 is completely different from the Japanese you find in movies, drama, manga, books, forums, blogs... it's almost impossible to get a hold of outside of Japan. Live in Japan and it's something you will get exposed to a lot. Same is of course true with more or less any natural situation in Japan.

Yes, I think it's very important and difficult to find as things stand, but I also think that for those who break up their goal to learn another language into 'learn another language for x', where 'x' is any # of things such as reading blogs, watching movies, and so on, then the benefits of getting that kind of unscripted everyday spoken input becomes less important than getting the kind of input that reflects what you'll be attempting to understand (articles, movies, manga) and produce (blogs, skype conversations, text chat, forums).

That's why I think it's best to discuss what precisely about living in Japan makes it valuable--be it the ability to structure one's time or find appropriate sources, so that folks who, even if their ultimate goal of fluency and well-rounded proficiency are the same, want or need to take different paths to get there, and can simulate Japanese living more efficiently. When the time comes that there's more media that can somehow capture unscripted everyday life, through 'home videos' and 'Direct Cinema' documentaries or whatever, then I'll remove any recommendation for learners to keep Japan in mind, other than of course simply wanting to go to Japan.

Another thing I'm interested in is 'sound walks', there seems to be little at the moment, aside from Sara Peebles and White Rabbit Press's works, though these are quite limited. Perhaps more people who are in Japan can start making these. ;p

Creating your own immersion environment is a good thing but it has definite limits you simply can't get around unless you live in the target country.

Sure, you can watch your anime in Japanese and you might even be able to browse most sites in Japanese. How about going out to the supermarket though? Whenever you leave your home, you're forced to leave your immersion behind, there's no getting around this. In Japan, it's the other way around, you can try to create an English environment around you but when you go out the door, you're in Japan no matter what.

It's extremely powerful and useful for people who know how to take advantage of it.

Ack.. I am so jealous of you who are living in Japan.. I'm the sure question of how you managed that has come up a hundred times over so I won't even ask it.

I don't think there is a single Japanese person within 10 miles of me.

The single person who is locally famous (amoungst her peers and my envy) for now spending time in Japan is a highschool Otaku who "taught herself Japanese", etc. There was a nice article about her in the paper but I hear from her classmates that most of it is BS. Priviliged Otaku brats. GAH!

Tobberoth Wrote:Creating your own immersion environment is a good thing but it has definite limits you simply can't get around unless you live in the target country.

Sure, you can watch your anime in Japanese and you might even be able to browse most sites in Japanese. How about going out to the supermarket though? Whenever you leave your home, you're forced to leave your immersion behind, there's no getting around this. In Japan, it's the other way around, you can try to create an English environment around you but when you go out the door, you're in Japan no matter what.

It's extremely powerful and useful for people who know how to take advantage of it.

Indeed. I tried to find a Japanese area here in Orlando, just so I could go in and try to talk Japanese sometime. Unfortunately, there isn't much Japanese presence here. There's a restaurant WAY south of me... But that's all I've really found. I wanted a whole community. Sure, I'd be that crazy white boy that always comes around speaking Japanese, but still... It'd be worth it for the practice.

Isn't Disneyland in Orlando? There are a TON of Japanese employees there.

I think you can recreate total immersion anywhere, because what forces you to consciously use your L1 and L2 isn't overheard conversations or labels and signs, but your own proficiency and vocation. I think there's enough gray area there for individuals that's it's impossible to say one way is better than another. Of course, there's the aforementioned limitation about certain types of Japanese, but I really think that's going to change precisely because of the type of thought that views Japanese as a media ecology rather than anchoring it to geography, and I feel that the benefits of that kind of unscripted spoken Japanese are really most beneficial once you've acquired the essentials of the language that are available through current materials available anywhere.

nest0r Wrote:I think you can recreate total immersion anywhere

How? When you go out to buy things, there's no denying the clerks etc do not know Japanese, you can't stay in Japanese mode all the time outside of Japan. Sure, you COULD be the crazy guy trying to order in Japanese even though it's clear no one around you understand it etc... but that isn't immersion, it's just being crazy.

Japan is the only place where 100% total immersion is possible, where you can live for a whole week without ever having to use or see/hear your native language.

Tobberoth Wrote:Japan is the only place where 100% total immersion is possible, where you can live for a whole week without ever having to use or see/hear your native language.

I think you're grossly underestimating nest0r's mother's basement.

iSoron Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Japan is the only place where 100% total immersion is possible, where you can live for a whole week without ever having to use or see/hear your native language.

I think you're grossly underestimating nest0r's mother's basement.

My mother's dead.

Tobberoth Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:I think you can recreate total immersion anywhere

How? When you go out to buy things, there's no denying the clerks etc do not know Japanese, you can't stay in Japanese mode all the time outside of Japan. Sure, you COULD be the crazy guy trying to order in Japanese even though it's clear no one around you understand it etc... but that isn't immersion, it's just being crazy.

Japan is the only place where 100% total immersion is possible, where you can live for a whole week without ever having to use or see/hear your native language.

Just as encountering Japanese doesn't instantly translate to learning something new, encountering English doesn't instantly translate to missing something new.

In your native country, it's a matter of 'adding' both inactive and active L2 to your daily learning, which is only going to be beneficial in how it increases your proficiency in regards to the media you're encountering on the road to fluency and well-rounded skills, and in how it reinforces what you know.

In the foreign country, your default and designed encounters of L2 will also increase and reinforce your proficiency according to what you're heading for on the way to fluency/well-rounded skills, and the rest is a matter of dismissing it/subtracting it to get back to your L1, which is going to happen through necessity or the simple fact that you think in your native language unless you're at a high level.

Either way, these will be limited by your current level and willingness to learn as well as your lifestyle necessities, which are potentially influenced by but not dependent upon geography. Obviously which side of this coin you choose will be up to you.

Because of the abovementioned things, I should think it's obvious that when one discusses 'immersion' there's no such thing as 'total' except insofar as they're learning the language with the intrinsic limitations.

Ye ol' "my parents are dead" move. Even if true it doesn't need mentioning in response to a joke. The only thing more common in online discussions is comparing people to Hitler. (If you think that you can achieve 100% immersion outside of Japan then you're worse than Hitler)

My mother was Hitler you insensitive clod!
I for one welcome our new mother overlords.
You must be new here.
In Soviet Russia, Japanese immerses you!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those mothers!

Jarvik7 Wrote:Ye ol' "my parents are dead" move. Even if true it doesn't need mentioning in response to a joke. The only thing more common in online discussions is comparing people to Hitler. (If you think that you can achieve 100% immersion outside of Japan then you're worse than Hitler)

Your mom's worse than Hitler.

My mother is dead (killed herself along with Eva Braun during the fall of Berlin).

Jarvik7 Wrote:My mother is dead (killed herself along with Eva Braun during the fall of Berlin).

Here's the thing. Hitler and 'my mother's dead', those are funny to me because they're so old and have profound implications. "Mother's basement" references unfortunately qualify for the kind of humour best left to 'Something Awful' style forums and chatrooms. There's no room for dry satire and it diminishes the user as well as the medium and the target. The only thing worse, I would say, are jokes about people who watch anime as being 'otaku'. Well, being referred to as a male is also annoying, but what can you do.

And please don't take anything I say too seriously. My more extravagantly spurious theorizing is proportionate to my laziness, oddly enough. (A matter of forgetting to maintain the nest0r alias, I suppose.)

Jarvik7 Wrote:Isn't Disneyland in Orlando? There are a TON of Japanese employees there.

DisneyWorld, and I think you overestimate how many there are.

Tobberoth Wrote:Japan is the only place where 100% total immersion is possible, where you can live for a whole week without ever having to use or see/hear your native language.

That's just because your native language isn't English. I'm not arguing that it's anywhere near the same level of incidental exposure as in, say, the US, but when you can't even take the train in Tokyo without seeing a mini-English-lesson on the monitors, it's hard to claim that you can "live for a whole week without ever having to […] see/hear your native language."

Edit: wccrawford: I wouldn't be so sure. Assuming a nominal body weight of 150lbs, a ton of Japanese employees is only fourteen.

~J

woodwojr Wrote:but when you can't even take the train in Tokyo without seeing a mini-English-lesson on the monitors, it's hard to claim that you can "live for a whole week without ever having to […] see/hear your native language."

Heh, I was thinking the same thing.

Edit: Though I'm not disagreeing with Tobberoth's overall point. I think nest0r is gravely underestimating the effect of actually living in a location where the primary language is the target language. But that part of his comment amused me.