Where does the time go? I’ve personally become interested in Japanese by their animation(initially when I started). I remember watching the anime called “Bleach” in English (the dub). After I got to a certain point, the subs was only available (the English dub didn’t reach the where the Japanese one was, at the time of course). I remember watching anime at that time, subtitled of course for some time. I was still interested in learning Cantonese but went onto Japanese since I failed learning Cantonese (not enough resources, not enough interest and I didn’t know about the srs at the time). I initialled watched subtitled anime for around 1 year; I definitely know it didn’t do much for my learning. But I soon after decided to take a level 1 Japanese course as an elective course. That class taught me a few things but nowhere near what I know now from immersing, use of a srs, reading, writing and listening. The class was 4 months long and 3 hours long per week. I learned hiragana from there (but soon forget it). The class was only taught in romaji or partial hiragana. No kanji, no katakana, no immersion factor, no real-life Japanese texts, news, films, etc. That right there taught me, something is wrong here. (It was purely text-book style learning, nothing else)

I learned if I really wanted to become fluent in this language, I’d have to do it myself. Whenever I think about back then, I tell myself(learning by yourself is pretty much the only way of getting good in another language).A lot of people say “If you really want something,, you’ll get it done no matter what” I have to say in terms of learning a language, this makes complete sense. So it comes down to the time, putting in the time will equal amazing progress and eventually fluency in another language. We also need strong motivation (this will vary per person, but I don’t really have strong motivation). When I say this, I mean I’ve gotten so used to learning Japanese, immersing in it and overall the feel of getting better at it. Learning Japanese has taught me the annoyances of mastering another language and how my native language needs to improve a lot as well (English).

Now I’ll tell you what has worked for me and how it can help you get good at reading and listening. I’ll be sure to tell you how to get better at speaking and writing when I get there first. But for now, I’ll explain tips on how to get really good at listening and reading. First off: you must equip yourself with the knowledge of kana (hiragana and katakana). There are plenty of ways of mastering this. You can use remembering the kana books or you can use an srs (anki is my choice)

What I did for kana:
Question card: (Have the sound of the kana) (Your testing hiragana)
Answer card (has the hiragana character and its romaji equivalent)
You can use the same format but for katakana (There are decks in anki that this)
You test yourself on writing from memory based on sound and you also can write down its romaji equivalent, so you can equip familiarize yourself with kana sounds (with romaji assistance)

There is another deck that one can use for learning how to write from hiragana to katakana or vice versa (i.e. just download another deck and reverse question with the answer card around). It has a hiragana character on the question side and katakana character of its equivalent. You can reverse this format and get katakana to hiragana and memorize there equivalent.

I’d say these are enough to learn how to master kana for the long-term. If one were to add 20-30 new kana cards per day, you’d master it all within a few weeks to a month max (yes it does seem rather slow for kana, but remember. This is for the long-term. Now for kanji, if you’re of non-Asian decent like me, then you most likely don’t know any characters of any sort (kanji wise). So you must familiar yourself it. This is where Remembering the Kanji books comes in to play here. This book teaches you to write kanji and associate an English meaning with it(most of the meanings are really close to its Japanese equivalent but later on this will become less useful, since you will be able read/understand Japanese by itself, assuming you keep learning that is) The format of which you can use this is:

Question card (Make a story that you can visual for each character and write it here. You’ll use this story to write kanji)
Answer card: Contains the kanji
I recommend one just go up to all the kanji in Volume 1. As you can just learn kanji in Volume 3 by context or vocabulary based learning. Once these are done, you’ll know kana (mastering it, which means you can write it by heart, hear it and be able to write it and be able to read it and distinguish all the sounds). Remembering the kanji Volume 1 should take between 2-3 months if one adds at a pace of 20-30 a day. You could do these at the same time and go at a slow pace, it’s really up to you. I recommend doing a little from both (learning kana and learning kanji). So you can get two things down within 1-3 months.

Now for context-based learning and vocabulary –based learning: first you should do context (adding sentences into a srs of your choice). So you can familiar yourself with basic context and kanji here. Plus add short sentences into your srs, so you can do it faster and have more time to immerse. In the beginning it’s recommend you add basic grammar, so you can get a solid foundation from the beginning phases of learning Japanese.
Example:
顎を出す
あごをだす
to get exhausted

The sentence that contains kanji in the question portion and the kana is the question part and the last section is the meaning section. This teaches you vocab and basic kanji, this is purely for recognition skills here. I recommend tae kim’s guide to grammar, as it’s freely available in PDF format. Now one needs to keep adding sentences daily for one to improve in terms of recognition. Most learners say the more they immerse, add context, add vocab and it will improve if one maintains it daily. It’s worked for me, so it will work for you. Now how will this improve my listening skills? Get transcripts and add context or vocab from there, into srs. Overtime you will notice if you keep listening and keep breaking context down, you’re listening, recognition will sky rocket. Also give it time, you will only improve if you keep at it, so don’t stop for one day. Life does get in the way at times, but the most you could do is maintain your srs reps.

Now lastly, I’ve come to realize that: just putting in the time and getting used to the language is all one needs to master it. You also have to experiment and find out what works for you the best. Everyone learns differently. Now to end this post: I’ll post my srs deck stats: As I recently reformatted and have new decks:

Vocabulary Deck: 単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：1.9 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 20921
ファクトの合計数： 20921

カードの習熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 1110 (5.3%)
復習期間の短いカード: 1038 (5.0%)
まだ見ていないカード 18773 (89.7%)
平均間隔 26.3 日間

正解率
復習期間の長いカード: 97.9% 243)のうちで(238
復習期間の短いカード: 68.7% 10562)のうちで(7258
初めて答えたカード： 61.1% 2183)のうちで(1334

Recent Work
ここ一週間前 2192 reps/5 days
ここ1ヶ月前 9211 reps/21 days
In last 3 months 12988 reps/43 days
In last 6 months 12988 reps/43 days
In last year 12988 reps/43 days
今まで 12988 reps/43 days


Average Daily Reviews
今まで 201.4 枚/日
これから一週間 124.3 枚/日
これから一ヶ月 59.3 枚/日
ここ一週間前 313.1 枚/日
ここ1ヶ月前 307.0 枚/日
In last 3 months 141.2 枚/日
In last 6 months 71.4 枚/日
In last year 35.6 枚/日


平均追加数
今まで 375.1/日, 11254.3/月
ここ一週間前 0 (0.0/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 1173 (39.1/日)
In last 3 months 6593 (71.7/日)
In last 6 months 17307 (95.1/日)
In last year 17307 (47.4/日)


初めて見たカードの枚数
ここ一週間前 137 (19.6/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 1211 (40.4/日)
In last 3 months 2183 (23.7/日)
In last 6 months 2183 (12.0/日)
In last year 2183 (6.0/日)


カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 2.02
平均難易度： 2.51
最大難易度： 2.88

Sentence Deck:
単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：1.9 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 2148
ファクトの合計数： 2148

カードの習熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 254 (11.8%)
復習期間の短いカード: 492 (22.9%)
まだ見ていないカード 1402 (65.3%)
平均間隔 16.7 日間

正解率
復習期間の長いカード: 0.0% 0)のうちで(0
復習期間の短いカード: 65.2% 3231)のうちで(2106
初めて答えたカード： 63.7% 747)のうちで(476

Recent Work
ここ一週間前 785 reps/2 days
ここ1ヶ月前 3916 reps/17 days
In last 3 months 3978 reps/22 days
In last 6 months 3978 reps/22 days
In last year 3978 reps/22 days
今まで 3978 reps/22 days


Average Daily Reviews
今まで 80.6 枚/日
これから一週間 51.1 枚/日
これから一ヶ月 23.5 枚/日
ここ一週間前 112.1 枚/日
ここ1ヶ月前 130.5 枚/日
In last 3 months 43.2 枚/日
In last 6 months 21.9 枚/日
In last year 10.9 枚/日


平均追加数
今まで 38.5/日, 1155.5/月
ここ一週間前 0 (0.0/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 30 (1.0/日)
In last 3 months 51 (0.6/日)
In last 6 months 51 (0.3/日)
In last year 51 (0.1/日)


初めて見たカードの枚数
ここ一週間前 50 (7.1/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 725 (24.2/日)
In last 3 months 747 (8.1/日)
In last 6 months 747 (4.1/日)
In last year 747 (2.0/日)


カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 2.31
平均難易度： 2.51
最大難易度： 2.73
Production Deck:
単語帳の統計
単語帳が作成された時期：1.8 ヶ月 前
カードの合計数： 3337
ファクトの合計数： 3337

カードの習熟度
復習期間の長いカード: 2834 (84.9%)
復習期間の短いカード: 284 (8.5%)
まだ見ていないカード 219 (6.6%)
平均間隔 267.5 日間

正解率
復習期間の長いカード: 70.1% 521)のうちで(365
復習期間の短いカード: 73.9% 3251)のうちで(2402
初めて答えたカード： 48.7% 437)のうちで(213

Recent Work
ここ一週間前 423 reps/2 days
ここ1ヶ月前 2885 reps/16 days
In last 3 months 4209 reps/35 days
In last 6 months 4209 reps/35 days
In last year 4209 reps/35 days
今まで 4209 reps/35 days


Average Daily Reviews
今まで 67.5 枚/日
これから一週間 49.1 枚/日
これから一ヶ月 29.3 枚/日
ここ一週間前 60.4 枚/日
ここ1ヶ月前 96.2 枚/日
In last 3 months 45.8 枚/日
In last 6 months 23.1 枚/日
In last year 11.5 枚/日


平均追加数
今まで 62.1/日, 1864.3/月
ここ一週間前 0 (0.0/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 0 (0.0/日)
In last 3 months 0 (0.0/日)
In last 6 months 122 (0.7/日)
In last year 122 (0.3/日)


初めて見たカードの枚数
ここ一週間前 0 (0.0/日)
ここ1ヶ月前 315 (10.5/日)
In last 3 months 437 (4.8/日)
In last 6 months 437 (2.4/日)
In last year 437 (1.2/日)


カードの易しさ
最低難易度： 1.62
平均難易度： 2.76
最大難易度： 3.27



Now if you need me to answer any questions, I'll be more than helpful. And if you guys can give me any good tips to improve, I'm willing to do it. I'm basically pro to everything, as long as it helps me improve in my Japanese(obviously nothing extreme or anything)

"And if you guys can give me any good tips to improve, I'm willing to do it. "

I think that you definitely need to improve your pronunciation. I don't know if it's extreme...

this thread was kinda sudden...
I wonder how much I have improved in the last 5 months...hmmm...

So you said that you don't have much motivation but the environment did it for you. Any good links for creating a motivating environment?
Esp. reading!

jettyke Wrote:"And if you guys can give me any good tips to improve, I'm willing to do it. "

I think that you definitely need to improve your pronunciation. I don't know if it's extreme...

this thread was kinda sudden...
I wonder how much I have improved in the last 5 months...hmmm...

So you said that you don't have much motivation but the environment did it for you. Any good links for creating a motivating environment?
Esp. reading!

Pronunciation of course, but I was wondering how one would do this. I know some basic things: read out loud, have audio to compare with. And shadow and copy exactly how they say things. And try to copy it at their speed. Plus my voice is low-tone, so should I compare with a famous Japanese actor who is also has a low-tone voice? (Male)

As for the environment, I just listen to a lot of Japanese, put all my things in Japanese and kept doing my srs reps. I guess the audio did it for me. Listening works as well, but with fun material.

I make these threads every 5 months, so it wasn't really that sudden.

"Plus my voice is low-tone, so should I compare with a famous Japanese actor who is also has a low-tone voice? (Male)"

No difference here, it just has to be a god damn fun voice to play with.
You basically have to get rid of that distinct gaijin accent, in my opinion. Which means that right now you have many syllables which you pronounce incorrectly.

Thus I'd recommend you to take some very slow audio and figure out the syllables one by one and repeat those syllables themselves separately hundreds and thousands of times, until they are damn perfect and easy to pronounce. Then start reading aloud very slowly with those new perfect sounds. It will be hard at first, but you'll get used to it. Don't speak faster until you're sure that you speak slowly with perfect pronunciation.

Warning: Don't speak a word of Japanese to anyone until you can read texts aloud with those new perfect sounds comparatively fluently.

If you will speak during that trial time, you will be back in the old sack or whatever (just made this phrase up lol).

Tip:Start a new self, a self with perfect pronunciation.

"As for the environment, I just listen to a lot of Japanese, put all my things in Japanese and kept doing my srs reps. I guess the audio did it for me. Listening works as well, but with fun material."

Any immersion for reading (not srs) ? Damn, ta, I wanted links lol !!!

huh? i dunno how you can really tell anything about pronounciation, he only put up a 3 second clip...? (have i missed something?)

Actually, i thought it sounded fine... only the る sound sounded particularly strange to me, it sounded more like an english "ru". But again, since there was only 1 of them, it's hard to tell...

i would say, don't worry tooooo much about pronounciation, and just get speaking!!! You can improve your pronounciation along the way. Participate in that thread, but actually answer the questions rather than reading something. It's a nice way to practise speaking about different topics...

jettyke Wrote:"Plus my voice is low-tone, so should I compare with a famous Japanese actor who is also has a low-tone voice? (Male)"

No difference here, it just has to be a god damn fun voice to play with.
You basically have to get rid of that distinct gaijin accent, in my opinion. Which means that right now you have many syllables which you pronounce incorrectly.

Thus I'd recommend you to take some very slow audio and figure out the syllables one by one and repeat those syllables themselves separately hundreds and thousands of times, until they are damn perfect and easy to pronounce. Then start reading aloud very slowly with those new perfect sounds. It will be hard at first, but you'll get used to it. Don't speak faster until you're sure that you speak slowly with perfect pronunciation.

Warning: Don't speak a word of Japanese to anyone until you can read texts aloud with those new perfect sounds comparatively fluently.

If you will speak during that trial time, you will be back in the old sack or whatever (just made this phrase up lol).

Tip:Start a new self, a self with perfect pronunciation.

"As for the environment, I just listen to a lot of Japanese, put all my things in Japanese and kept doing my srs reps. I guess the audio did it for me. Listening works as well, but with fun material."

Any immersion for reading (not srs) ? Damn, ta, I wanted links lol !!!

Nice tips, so I should get those syllables solid but using slow audio and separate sounds for each syllables. "Don't speak faster until you're sure that you speak slowly with perfect pronunciation." Makes prefect sense. I'll get right on it.

As for the links, I gotta say I got a lot from the AJATT site and this forum.

IceCream Wrote:huh? i dunno how you can really tell anything about pronounciation, he only put up a 3 second clip...? (have i missed something?)

Actually, i thought it sounded fine... only the る sound sounded particularly strange to me, it sounded more like an english "ru". But again, since there was only 1 of them, it's hard to tell...

i would say, don't worry tooooo much about pronounciation, and just get speaking!!! You can improve your pronounciation along the way. Participate in that thread, but actually answer the questions rather than reading something. It's a nice way to practise speaking about different topics...

In terms of pronunciation, I just need some audio to follow. Thanks to anki there are a lot of decks that have audio. So I'm going to download a lot of them and work on my pronunciation that way. And as a side project, I will try to read a few audiobooks along with the reader.

I'll try them but a lot of them are hard. I know being able to read/listen is only half the battle. Speaking and writing come next. But like anything, if you could get good at either one, then the other shouldn't be hard to get good at too.

yeah, they're hard for me too. but, when you think about how much time & effort you put into reading & listening, probably you're going to have to put in a ton of effort at actually speaking too.

if it's too difficult to speak freely, try writing it first & getting it checked at Lang-8 before you speak.

Honestly though, i think it's a bad idea to wait until you have perfect pronounciation to speak. An accent really isn't that much of a big deal, it's much better to be able to speak with an accent than only be able to read with a perfect accent. Anyway, you can improve both at the same time, so...

IceCream Wrote:yeah, they're hard for me too. but, when you think about how much time & effort you put into reading & listening, probably you're going to have to put in a ton of effort at actually speaking too.

if it's too difficult to speak freely, try writing it first & getting it checked at Lang-8 before you speak.

Honestly though, i think it's a bad idea to wait until you have perfect pronounciation to speak. An accent really isn't that much of a big deal, it's much better to be able to speak with an accent than only be able to read with a perfect accent. Anyway, you can improve both at the same time, so...

It will most likely taken me the same time or maybe half the time to get better at speaking/writing(Another 1-2 years probably). In terms of writing kanji from memory, with the srs it's not hard at all. But writing in the correct context is key. And speaking is a whole other battle. As for speaking until I have a prefect pronunciation, I won't wait till that happens but I will mufti-task. Give practice to each part, while maintaining the general things I do(listen a lot,srs and maintain those reps)

For me, singing along to Japanese songs really helped my pronunciation. I think because of the music it's easier to hear the words as sounds particularly if I didn't know the actual lyrics. Also with slow songs where the words are drawn out it's easier to hear the vowel sounds.

pudding cat Wrote:For me, singing along to Japanese songs really helped my pronunciation. I think because of the music it's easier to hear the words as sounds particularly if I didn't know the actual lyrics. Also with slow songs where the words are drawn out it's easier to hear the vowel sounds.

i love singing along with songs. I've found as long as you have a transcript of what your listening to. You can get a lot done with pronunciation,context and vocab.

Singing along to songs

You know I was thinking about this for a while, about srs decks. I'm slowly seeing a pattern, or at least for me. You start to get familiar with Japanese as your deck number increases. (Number of cards I mean). I obviously don't mean, adding 10,000 straight=fluency. But I'm saying if you add slowly and learn grammar,vocab,kanji. You will notice things getting easier and easier.

I estimate in terms of how I learn. Per deck will be about 20,000 to reach fluency. I.e. vocab/sentence deck will be enough to reach fluency in reading/listening. I also have a production deck, which I will experiment around of course. I want to see if I could include some production style cards for things like keigo or basic stuff. So per deck 20,000 to reach fluency. I estimate 30,000-40,000 to reach native-level fluency or it might just be higher. But like I said before, these numbers are purely theoretical. Just because one has this numbers doesn't equal native-level fluency. I'm just saying, the more you put in the time, the more you will get rewarded.

jettyke Wrote:Singing along to songs

My mistake,I should have said singing along to Japanese songs

jettyke Wrote:"Plus my voice is low-tone, so should I compare with a famous Japanese actor who is also has a low-tone voice? (Male)"

No difference here, it just has to be a god damn fun voice to play with.
You basically have to get rid of that distinct gaijin accent, in my opinion. Which means that right now you have many syllables which you pronounce incorrectly.

Thus I'd recommend you to take some very slow audio and figure out the syllables one by one and repeat those syllables themselves separately hundreds and thousands of times, until they are damn perfect and easy to pronounce. Then start reading aloud very slowly with those new perfect sounds. It will be hard at first, but you'll get used to it. Don't speak faster until you're sure that you speak slowly with perfect pronunciation.

Warning: Don't speak a word of Japanese to anyone until you can read texts aloud with those new perfect sounds comparatively fluently.

If you will speak during that trial time, you will be back in the old sack or whatever (just made this phrase up lol).

Tip:Start a new self, a self with perfect pronunciation.

"As for the environment, I just listen to a lot of Japanese, put all my things in Japanese and kept doing my srs reps. I guess the audio did it for me. Listening works as well, but with fun material."

Any immersion for reading (not srs) ? Damn, ta, I wanted links lol !!!

I think focusing on pronunciation is a waste of time unless you already have a near perfect understanding of the language already. Besides, unless you're planning on moving to Japan it's really the last thing you should ever worry about, just like how writing is a useless skill outside of Japan. And even if you were to move to Japan, you're never going to sound like an actual Japanese person no matter how much you practice by yourself, the only way to achieve that is to actually live there for an extended period of time.

Kuma01 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:"Plus my voice is low-tone, so should I compare with a famous Japanese actor who is also has a low-tone voice? (Male)"

No difference here, it just has to be a god damn fun voice to play with.
You basically have to get rid of that distinct gaijin accent, in my opinion. Which means that right now you have many syllables which you pronounce incorrectly.
Any immersion for reading (not srs) ? Damn, ta, I wanted links lol !!!

I think focusing on pronunciation is a waste of time unless you already have a near perfect understanding of the language already. Besides, unless you're planning on moving to Japan it's really the last thing you should ever worry about, just like how writing is a useless skill outside of Japan. And even if you were to move to Japan, you're never going to sound like an actual Japanese person no matter how much you practice by yourself, the only way to achieve that is to actually live there for an extended period of time.

Well this type of question differs per person. Writing is important but It's not as important as let's say listening,reading and speaking. Actually you could probably get really good before you go because just going there doesn't' equal one learning Japanese to fluency. So it really differs per person on that. I'd say practicing/hanging out with natives that live near you or a direct way is just going there and living there for while. But like I was saying, it differs per person. Someone might go to japan and use it to it's fullest and someone might go there and do little. So it differs.

Personally I'm giving myself 5 years to reach fluency in every skill. So until that time comes, I'll be working on my Japanese everyday

ta12121 Wrote:Personally I'm giving myself 5 years to reach fluency in every skill. So until that time comes, I'll be working on my Japanese everyday

What I like about these statements is that as time goes by your "prediction" is moving further and further. Seriously, I think you've started with khatz's 18 months or 2 years and now you're at 5
Not necessarily a bad thing but shows that you were very eager but naive/inexperienced at first and now that you've matured you can put things into perspective and actually estimate something. But it also invalidates your current estimate since a year from now you'll be smarter and more experienced in learning Japanese and also more aware of things you still cannot grasp.

"I know that I know nothing"

I understand that when you're young its very hard to swallow goals that require significant amount of time and its your way of coping with that fear, but maybe instead of getting crazy about whether its 4,5 or 12 years you should just enjoy life?

Also I feel like you're often abusing the word "personally", shouldn't its use be connected with a statement expressing your opinion on a matter somebody else expressed theirs? Here you're talking to yourself, nobody said "I'll be fluent in 2 years" but you shove "personally" anyway I'm genuinely interested if I'm correct, any native English speaker can share his/hers thoughts on this?

Edit: Surprisingly current xkcd is on topic, look at alt text under/over the comic:
http://xkcd.com/907/

It just implies that others might have different opinions. It's not necassary for someone have expressed an opinion already, but it does require something preceding it for you to express an opinion on.

Kuma did express an opinion though.

thurd Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Personally I'm giving myself 5 years to reach fluency in every skill. So until that time comes, I'll be working on my Japanese everyday

What I like about these statements is that as time goes by your "prediction" is moving further and further. Seriously, I think you've started with khatz's 18 months or 2 years and now you're at 5
Not necessarily a bad thing but shows that you were very eager but naive/inexperienced at first and now that you've matured you can put things into perspective and actually estimate something. But it also invalidates your current estimate since a year from now you'll be smarter and more experienced in learning Japanese and also more aware of things you still cannot grasp.

I know I kept changing it but that's because I have a better grasp on what fluency means to me. I just matured as I kept learning more Japanese. I'm giving myself 5 years to become fluent in this language but I believe this comes down to the time you invest. I went from 1 year to 2 years then to 3 years and now I'm estimating 5 years. But I won't really know until I reach the next year. The more I get deeper into learning this language, the more I see it isn't a hard goal but a goal that requires time and effort.

I am enjoying my life but I also want to get good at Japanese. There is no reason why I can't do work. I have school, so I have plenty of time. In a few years I might not have much time to do Japanese. But like anything, I will make time.

I'm learning Japanese so I can prove to myself, I'm capable of achieving great things if I put the time in. When I think about how long it really does take to learn a language, it comes to around: 1-10 years. But most people who put in the time, come out fluent around the 3-5 year mark. Although I won't know how far I've gotten until I get to that point. So I'll just wait until that time comes and be sure to keep people informed.

ta12121 Wrote:In a few years I might not have much time to do Japanese. But like anything, I will make time.

This are actually very good words, Ta
Makes me think about continuing it with Mandarin while I still have the time.

jettyke Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:In a few years I might not have much time to do Japanese. But like anything, I will make time.

This are actually very good words, Ta
Makes me think about continuing it with Mandarin while I still have the time.

I want to learn mandarin as well but that will be another project. My goal for languages is to become fully trilingual. Anything outside this, I won't learn all the skills necessary to become fluent.

Yeah, I kind of doubt that it will be possible to be actively native-level fluent in more than 3-4 languages anyway...

jettyke Wrote:Yeah, I kind of doubt that it will be possible to be actively native-level fluent in more than 3-4 languages anyway...

Well I've stopped worrying about that. I just want to keep learning and let the results do the talking, nothing else. I've met someone who learned mandarin to native-level fluency in 4 years. He even knows more Chinese than a regular native he's age(he's 26). He said 90% of he's studying was done outside of the country. That's why I've learned to stop worrying about when it will happen and make it happen.