Can one learn all the kanji, all the vocabulary, all the grammar in 1kyuu in 3 months only (started from scratch)?

Give reasons for your answer.

Starting from no knowledge?

I don't actually know all that much about exactly what is in the JLPT 1 but:

RtK 1, 100/day: 2042/100= 20 days
+1 day for Kana

KO2001 Books 1+2, 1100 kanji, ~3300 sentences: 110 sentences per day (~35 kanji per day)=30 days.

どんな時どう使う 日本語表現文型辞典
(From what I've read this is basically an all in one book for JLTP Grammar?)
~40 days

I haven't got this grammar book or seen it, so I have no idea how many sentences it is but your 3 month target gives you around 40 days to finish it after RtK+KO.

Total: 91 days

I don't know whether this would be enough to pass JLPT 1 but I would assume RtK is enough for the kanji, there is a thread about KO2001 and JLPT level so I assume it will take you at least a bit of the way there for vocab, and of course the book I mentioned is supposed to be an all-in-one compendium for JLPT grammar.

EDIT: But no, I personally doubt its possible. I just thought it was an interesting thought excercise to see how much could be crammed into 3 months study :-)

not unless you are a savant.

Is it possible? No. Reason- because it would be impossible. I don't want to sound rude but such a goal is pointless.

Enjoy your study and enjoy what you are learning, just forcing like a lunatic will get you nowhere. I would say just go for level four and get the fundamentals of the language organised in your mind. At the end of the day, if know all the level three grammar and vocab internalised completely, you can do an awful lot. That being all the vocab and grammar of Minna no Nihongo I and II.

re OP: hahaha

You'd be doing very well to get 3kyuu in 3 months.
Nice troll.

Why are you so sarcastic ?
before khatzu how many of us would have thought that it was a near to impossible task to speak a fluent japanese in 15 months ? and tim ferris learned chinese in 6 months ....

and contrary to learning a language 1kyuu is a very defined task ... You can set clear goal .
Impossible ? no .... Extremely hard . BUT with a totally free schedule (forget about friends,family,work etc...) , huge work capacity (uberman sleep and all this stuff... pavlina and other guys have sucessfuly tried this kind of method to cut down on the sleep without any side effect on a long term ... which means 21H of activity a day and once functionnal needs are fulfilled at least 17 hours remain for something like learning a language ) , SRS , heisig rvk ,KO2001-like frequency list,various memory method (dominic method , palace memory , kanji town ,etc...) , AJATT lifestyle,.... mmmhhh why not ?
But you have to realize what it means : olympic champion lifestyle .

and here's the key : mental strenght . The kind of thing you need to build up .The irony lies here : most of the time you reach this level by pulling off an apparently impossible feat , like learning a so called difficult language at light speed..... Khatz or pavlina have probably enough discipline and mental strenght now to give it a shot.... but it's impossible for 凡人
You need to reach a level of focus and confidence that comes only through practice and ordeal. The very thing that our society teaches us to avoid .

Yeah, impossible. You can learn to recognize and write all the kanji in that time, maybe even learn their on'yomi using something like the movie method. But at the same time learning 10 000 words? XD No, not going to happen. You'd have to spend every waking moment just doing that, you'd have no time to exposure yourself. No exposure = No listening nor reading comprehension. Physically impossible.

ghinzdra Wrote:Why are you so sarcastic ?
before khatzu how many of us would have thought that it was a near to impossible task to speak a fluent japanese in 15 months ? and tim ferris learned chinese in 6 months ....

and contrary to learning a language 1kyuu is a very defined task ... You can set clear goal .
Impossible ? no .... Extremely hard

I hate to say it but...
successful troll is successful.

Wheew, I don't know what to say.

I don't know about you, but for me, memorizing vocabulary is a process. You need to forget and remember each word again and again many times, until it "cooks".

In 3 months you can get enough of it in your head, but you won't get enough of the forgeting/remembering for each item.

Also you need to build your listening and link the vocabulary to the sounds.

So the actual work is more than just putting 13000 cards on your SRS. You gotta experience the process.

ghinzdra Wrote:Why are you so sarcastic ?
before khatzu how many of us would have thought that it was a near to impossible task to speak a fluent japanese in 15 months ? and tim ferris learned chinese in 6 months ....
.

1. he's sarcastic because it's absurd to think that you can pass 1級 in 3 months starting from scratch. perhaps they could memorize all those kanji (doubt it). but there is absolutely no way their reading skills and listening skills would be up to par. i can say that with 99.999% certainty (because, of course, there is that .001% out there with super-brains).

2. tim ferris didn't learn the chinese language in 6 months. bullshit. he may have learned "tourist level" chinese in 6 months, but i doubt he learned anything marketable... then again, tim ferris professionally markets himself, so i suppose anything he learns is marketable.

Nowadays, with the latest learning tools and techniques, combined with superb mental strength, my guess is the answer is no. But I would not discourage anyone from giving it a serous go. Mr. Heisig faced the same resistance in his day. What he did in one month was not considered doable; he met with shock and disbelief. And now, !00 kanji a day is accepted as tough but realistic in this forum. I know a few students of Chinese who say it's "physically impossible" for a Western adult to memorise that many characters and a basic English meaning at that rate.

Didn't the KGB teach a foreign language fluently, from scratch, in six month? I hear Putin's German in amazing. Waking up at 4 am everyday with a cold sweat at the prospect of a Siberian work camp must really focus minds.

Doable or not, some people like to push themselves. Not everyone is into "enjoying the process". Six months, on the other hand...

Yeah, I'm sure I could do it if I wasn't so lazy

Tobberoth Wrote:But at the same time learning 10 000 words? XD No, not going to happen. You'd have to spend every waking moment just doing that, you'd have no time to exposure yourself.

They're not 10 000 words. They're less than 8000. (I don't know why they say 10,000!)

In average, one can learn 300 words if the language is distant linguistically, or 1000 if it is in the same language family.

It means that one needs 1 month to learn that amount of vocabulary and 2 months for review.

It doesn't need more than 3-5 hours/day.

ahibba Wrote:[
In average, one can learn 300 words if the language is distant linguistically, or 1000 if it is in the same language family.

300 Japanese words a day? How? I'd love to know, because I'm progressing much more slowly than that.

Jeromin Wrote:Nowadays, with the latest learning tools and techniques, combined with superb mental strength, my guess is the answer is no. But I would not discourage anyone from giving it a serous go. Mr. Heisig faced the same resistance in his day. What he did in one month was not considered doable; he met with shock and disbelief. And now, !00 kanji a day is accepted as tough but realistic in this forum. I know a few students of Chinese who say it's "physically impossible" for a Western adult to memorise that many characters and a basic English meaning at that rate.

Didn't the KGB teach a foreign language fluently, from scratch, in six month? I hear Putin's German in amazing. Waking up at 4 am everyday with a cold sweat at the prospect of a Siberian work camp must really focus minds.

Doable or not, some people like to push themselves. Not everyone is into "enjoying the process". Six months, on the other hand...

"some people like to push themselves."

that s what i m talking about....
of course the average guy is unable to learn at this pace....except the average guy is mediocre in a lot of ways : even the simplest task are performed in a poor way ; sleeping , eating , speaking even breathing can be dramatically improved.... 10 times out of 10 average just means mediocre.
we've got now a lot of extremely powerful tools available for free or a very cheap price (compared to what the language school are asking you) on internet. Except all of them needs to be dedicated . Awareness , mental strenght , focus are not for sale . If you don't like to sweat then nobody can do it for you . I agree that in 3 months you've got to sweat a lot .... but as long as somebody proved it's impossible physically I won't acknowledge it . I just admit nobody did it before . So what ?
I'm all the more surprised of the global reaction than everyone here follow heisig and most of us ajatt both method having met the same skepticism ... common guys! where is your open mindedness ? if heisig or khatz had gave in to this kind of consideration we would'nt be here.

Or 1000 words of German or French etc for an English speaker!! I can't believe that for one moment. There are moments where it's good to say "Great idea, do what you can" but the suggestion of 300 Japanese words a day is not quite right.

People are sarcastic because this is an internet forum. If this is your first one, you may want to explore others. It's simply inevitable that people will be asses because you can't see their faces. See! Even I'm being a smartass *right now*. Don't be too harsh on them.. it's really hard to avoid.

ghinzdra Wrote:that s what i m talking about....
of course the average guy is unable to learn at this pace....except the average guy is mediocre in a lot of ways : even the simplest task are performed in a poor way ; sleeping , eating , speaking even breathing can be dramatically improved.... 10 times out of 10 average just means mediocre.
we've got now a lot of extremely powerful tools available for free or a very cheap price (compared to what the language school are asking you) on internet. Except all of them needs to be dedicated . Awareness , mental strenght , focus are not for sale . If you don't like to sweat then nobody can do it for you . I agree that in 3 months you've got to sweat a lot .... but as long as somebody proved it's impossible physically I won't acknowledge it . I just admit nobody did it before . So what ?
I'm all the more surprised of the global reaction than everyone here follow heisig and most of us ajatt both method having met the same skepticism ... common guys! where is your open mindedness ? if heisig or khatz had gave in to this kind of consideration we would'nt be here.

Vocab and kanji aside. Grammar and listening would be utter murder. Grammar can't be crammed. The mind has to adjust to it over time. Even if you mastered the concepts on an intellectual level, you'd waste time on the test as you try to apply the information you've gathered and slowly decode the meaning of each sentence.

The ear has to be trained, not only to hear vocab but recognize the grammar. Even if you managed to learn every word necessary, how could readily discern, by ear, the plethora of similar words and master their individual and or unique usages.

It's very possible to memorize large amounts of information. The difficulty lies in the application. I'm one of the most optimistic people you'll ever meet and I have to say, this is beyond pushing it, lol.

kyotokanji Wrote:Or 1000 words of German or French etc for an English speaker!! I can't believe that for one moment. There are moments where it's good to say "Great idea, do what you can" but the suggestion of 300 Japanese words a day is not quite right.

Oh yeah ???
so mark my words :in 1991 Bruce Balmer at the memoriad event (world championship memory) learned 2000 foreign words in 18 hours....
and dominic ferris learned 320 german words in one hour and he apparently did something similar in chinese except I can't get my hand on the datas.

"Blondie like" :There are two kind of people in this world my friend : those who think it's impossible until someone else do it and those who do it.

Setting aside the amount of material that would need to be covered, 3 months just isn't enough time to internalize it. So even if you had crammed all the words, grammar, kanji, you probably wouldn't be able to read(let alone listen) and understand it.

kazelee Wrote:

ghinzdra Wrote:that s what i m talking about....
of course the average guy is unable to learn at this pace....except the average guy is mediocre in a lot of ways : even the simplest task are performed in a poor way ; sleeping , eating , speaking even breathing can be dramatically improved.... 10 times out of 10 average just means mediocre.
we've got now a lot of extremely powerful tools available for free or a very cheap price (compared to what the language school are asking you) on internet. Except all of them needs to be dedicated . Awareness , mental strenght , focus are not for sale . If you don't like to sweat then nobody can do it for you . I agree that in 3 months you've got to sweat a lot .... but as long as somebody proved it's impossible physically I won't acknowledge it . I just admit nobody did it before . So what ?
I'm all the more surprised of the global reaction than everyone here follow heisig and most of us ajatt both method having met the same skepticism ... common guys! where is your open mindedness ? if heisig or khatz had gave in to this kind of consideration we would'nt be here.

Vocab and kanji aside. Grammar and listening would be utter murder. Grammar can't be crammed. The mind has to adjust to it over time. Even if you mastered the concepts on an intellectual level, you'd waste time on the test as you try to apply the information you've gathered and slowly decode the meaning of each sentence.

The ear has to be trained, not only to hear vocab but recognize the grammar. Even if you managed to learn every word necessary, how could readily discern, by ear, the plethora of similar words and master their individual and or unique usages.

It's very possible to memorize large amounts of information. The difficulty lies in the application. I'm one of the most optimistic people you'll ever meet and I have to say, this is beyond pushing it, lol.

Cardinal mezzofanti lived in 19 th century and he spoke perfectly 28 languages with all their dialects and 38 fluently according to the various testimony of travellers who came from all over the world to challenge him http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/m...table.html .... I bet big money that once you have the method there isn't more difficulty in learning "grammar" than learning "vocabulary" . Sure he did have more time than mere 3 time but you can find some account of the level of mastery he could reach within an extremely short time :Byron, in his "Travels in Italy" refers the story of how Mezzofanti mastered one language in 48 hours, without prior knowledge of it and give a whole paragraph with authorities ans witnesses for such a feat, finishing by telling that he
himself asked the Cardinal about it. In Russell's biography you will find testimony of how he dedicated 15 hours to sardo (from the island of Sardinia) and could mastered it. And there's another story about two criminals whose language Mezzofanti was able
to learn overnight .... I agree that the exact level of mastery has still to be determined but most of the witness were brilliant minds , the kind of which you won't deceive by poor tricks and who have high standards ....If we put aside the vocabulary issue (already tackled before ), I can infer from this speed that mezzofanti had developed an ability to get over grammar at light speed...


And mezzofanti didn't have all the powerful tool available now ....

But as I already said I acknowledge it's not a challenge for the average guy .

Interesting question, I like epic challenges, but I don't know whether it would be possible since for me I have to have massive exposure to internalize all the grammar rules, common words ect like people have said.

If you asked could you go from JLPT3 -> JLPT 1 in 3 months I'd say probably with 100% AJATT it would be possible since at that point its much closer to straight memorization whereas with JLPT 3 you're getting all the basic rules of the language down.

I did RTK in 10 days with about 75% recall and guess which kanji I forgot, the rare, less important ones. I absolutely believe in learning language in massive chunks and learning what sticks and forgetting a lot. Language is not meant to be learned too slowly and methodically. As someone said learning language is like climbing a steep mountain, it helps to be propelled by a rocket pack.

ghinzdra Wrote:...uberman sleep and all this stuff... pavlina and other guys have sucessfuly tried this kind of method to cut down on the sleep without any side effect on a long term ... which means 21H of activity a day and once functionnal needs are fulfilled at least 17 hours remain for something like learning a language...

There have been no studies on the long term effects of polyphasic sleep, so you can't say 'without any side effect.' For all we know polyphasic sleepers could drop dead 10 years after starting.

Of all the polyphasic sleeper's testimonials I've read, none of them were memorising large amounts of information at the same time. 7-8 hours of sleep helps a lot for moving stuff to long term memory, and I haven't seen any anecdotes to suggest that polyphasic sleep can replace this aspect with similar results.

I'd love to be proved wrong, I think polyphasic sleep is a fascinating concept, but I'd caution against telling people there are no side effects when we really don't know.

uberstuber Wrote:

ghinzdra Wrote:...uberman sleep and all this stuff... pavlina and other guys have sucessfuly tried this kind of method to cut down on the sleep without any side effect on a long term ... which means 21H of activity a day and once functionnal needs are fulfilled at least 17 hours remain for something like learning a language...

There have been no studies on the long term effects of polyphasic sleep, so you can't say 'without any side effect.' For all we know polyphasic sleepers could drop dead 10 years after starting.

Of all the polyphasic sleeper's testimonials I've read, none of them were memorising large amounts of information at the same time. 7-8 hours of sleep helps a lot for moving stuff to long term memory, and I haven't seen any anecdotes to suggest that polyphasic sleep can replace this aspect with similar results.

I'd love to be proved wrong, I think polyphasic sleep is a fascinating concept, but I'd caution against telling people there are no side effects when we really don't know.

mmh true enough.... well pavlina did 5 1/2 months which even it's not long term is quite significative....and fuller did 2 years! and what can you exactly perform in the meantime is still to be determined :for instance pavlina said he was still doing sport on a daily baisis .
so I cannot but acknowlege there is a risk but anyway it's an unknown territory .... and well you know we're meant to die so I guess there are more stupid ways to decease than dying for science and with a lot of fun...

ghinzdra Wrote:I bet big money that once you have the method there isn't more difficulty in learning "grammar" than learning "vocabulary" .

Memorizing grammar rules and understanding grammar are two different things.

ghinzdra Wrote:Sure he did have more time than mere 3 time but you can find some account of the level of mastery he could reach within an extremely short time :Byron, in his "Travels in Italy" refers the story of how Mezzofanti mastered one language in 48 hours, without prior knowledge of it and give a whole paragraph with authorities ans witnesses for such a feat, finishing by telling that he
himself asked the Cardinal about it. In Russell's biography you will find testimony of how he dedicated 15 hours to sardo (from the island of Sardinia) and could mastered it. And there's another story about two criminals whose language Mezzofanti was able
to learn overnight .... I agree that the exact level of mastery has still to be determined but most of the witness were brilliant minds , the kind of which you won't deceive by poor tricks and who have high standards ....If we put aside the vocabulary issue (already tackled before ), I can infer from this speed that mezzofanti had developed an ability to get over grammar at light speed...

He had an absurd repertoire to draw from. Also, I think Spanish and Mexican are the same language.. could be wrong though, what with it being the 19th century and all.

nm.
Think you meant to post this as well.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/m...lated.html


Note: It took him four months alone (of uninterrupted study) to get a grasp of Chinese (hinted that it was due to the writing system). This was after a failure 2-3 years earlier. Four months (and some change) for Chinese, the language most people thought was impossible at the time.

He then looked at Japanese and was like, no f#$ing way I'm going through that again! LOL jk. But imagine if he'd tackled Japanese first.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/m...study.html

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/m...inese.html

ghinzdra Wrote:And mezzofanti didn't have all the powerful tool available now ....

But as I already said I acknowledge it's not a challenge for the average guy .

It's not a challenge for the above average or even the gifted. This guy was a freak of nature (and he struggled to learn the Chinese). Either that or the suppos'ed brilliant minds of the time were actually morons.