That was the last thing I would expect to face while learning Japanese!!!
The usual problem that I can hear everybody talking about, at least outside this forum, is Kanji learning.
Now in this forum, most of the people that I met so far think that reading comprehension is the hardest thing to tackle and that it requires the longest amount of time, but....
For a mysterious reason, I'm find listening comprehension impossible to understand, and I really do have reasons for that!
The problem, unlike what beginners face while learning other languages, is not that I don't know what the speaker is spelling. The problem lies in analyzing the pronounced words.
For god's sake! Most of the Japanese words are just pronounced exactly the same!
Just to give you a glimpse of what I'm talking about: after finishing RtK1, I started learning using KO2001. Although I have around 90% retention rate when it comes to reading, I almost have 50% when it comes to listening, and the sentences I understood where mostly because I already MEMORIZE the sentence!!!
Now I am living in Japan, and I am having daily conversations with Japanese people, and I did learn using tens of other resources before using KO2001...
Still, even though I'm having fast pace learning the other aspects of the language, I keep on thinking that understanding what did my friend mean by "kyoukyuu" is impossible without writing that word!

I'm not quite sure what you're saying exactly.
Do you mean
1) Your listening comprehension is bad with words you already know
2) You hear an unknown word e.g. きょうきゅう and you can't work out what it means because there's no kanji to guide you?

Sounds like you followed my path and concentrated on reading. I, too, had trouble listening. I solved it by... Listening.

Yeah. You have to practice the skill to get better at it. It really is that simple.

pudding cat Wrote:I'm not quite sure what you're saying exactly.
Do you mean
1) Your listening comprehension is bad with words you already know
2) You hear an unknown word e.g. きょうきゅう and you can't work out what it means because there's no kanji to guide you?

Both!
Regardless whether I know the word or I don't know it, I'm having problems comprehending the meaning!
It's not understanding the words that I already know that is driving me crazy!
For example: 機会・機械・器械・etc...
I don't understand them even inside a sentence!

to reinforce what wccrawford said, I also focused on reading, which of course has left my listening, writing and speaking skills to have a lot to be desired. Learning one part does not make the other part naturally fall into place. Although some may say differently.

Want to learn to listen? Then listen constantly. Reading can not prepare you for the way Japanese speak, certainly as they love mixing words together and skipping certain parts of a word or just mumble them together.

I had the same experience originally, but it got a lot better with practice... mostly by watching the news where things are often subtitled (in Japanese of course). If it's any reassurance, I have a friend who's a professional interpreter who says he sees kanji streams running by in his mind's eye.

I also focused on reading at first to the detriment of my listening ability. But it's not all bad, reading is a fast way to pick up a lot of new vocabulary. And you'll find your ability to hear pick out those words from speech slowly improving as you get more listening practice. It's not like you need to learn them all again. I do suggest though reallocating some of your available study time to listening though (maybe like 30:70 reading:listening). TV, youtube, anime, music videos etc can be entertaining even if you don't understand a lot (and you won't at first but do it anyway). Then you can loop the audio from these things you're watching during commutes or while you clean your house etc.

wccrawford Wrote:Sounds like you followed my path and concentrated on reading. I, too, had trouble listening. I solved it by... Listening.

Yeah. You have to practice the skill to get better at it. It really is that simple.

That's what I did but out of all the skills one needs to be completely fluent. Writing is the hardest...

Irixmark Wrote:I had the same experience originally, but it got a lot better with practice... mostly by watching the news where things are often subtitled (in Japanese of course). If it's any reassurance, I have a friend who's a professional interpreter who says he sees kanji streams running by in his mind's eye.

cool

Ta Wrote:That's what I did but out of all the skills one needs to be completely fluent. Writing is the hardest...

You don't need to be literate to be fluent though. As long as you're not neglecting your listening though, being literate should help you reach fluency faster.

fifo_thekid Wrote:

pudding cat Wrote:I'm not quite sure what you're saying exactly.
Do you mean
1) Your listening comprehension is bad with words you already know
2) You hear an unknown word e.g. きょうきゅう and you can't work out what it means because there's no kanji to guide you?

Both!
Regardless whether I know the word or I don't know it, I'm having problems comprehending the meaning!
It's not understanding the words that I already know that is driving me crazy!
For example: 機会・機械・器械・etc...
I don't understand them even inside a sentence!

This may sound stupid but I'll say it anyway: the only real way to understand those on the fly is to learn them in kanji form.

But how would you understand that randomly if you heard it just from audio alone?(it depends on what they are talking about but it's just something you gain naturally if you keep studying). I know, it sounds like I'm saying you can do whatever and you'll get all those skills. I'm trying to say: Try to learn from sources that have list scripts to what your listening to (news,songs,shows,dramas,etc).

Plus don't worry too much, it get's easier over time. You'll understand all those kanji from audio if you keep going (another good way is learning to transcribe fluently but that's another battle but it can help distinguish sounds really well).

nadiatims Wrote:

Ta Wrote:That's what I did but out of all the skills one needs to be completely fluent. Writing is the hardest...

You don't need to be literate to be fluent though. As long as you're not neglecting your listening though, being literate should help you reach fluency faster.

Listening is easy for me actually but I know the only reason why is: I learned to read/understand kanji from the start and listened to native material in huge quantities. I think outside of writing, speaking is what's preventing me from being "fluent". I've noticed that speaking is easier if you've listened to a lot of Japanese. My speaking is picking up but I feel I'm only really half way to my goal of "complete" fluency.

Yeah you're far from being the only one who has this problem. I started learning Japanese mainly so I would be able to read it so I have focused mainly on the reading and writing of kanji. And like other people said in here, I would have trouble understanding words like 血球貧血 in anime without having subtitles with kanji in them. All I can say is what has already been said by other people; it seemed to improve for me when I started watching shows with japanese subtitles and after using the sub2srs software for a few anime episodes. But of course if you want to get better at x the answer is always to do more of x. Just reading will not make you fluent at the language for practical purposes.

I've been listening to Japanese music every day for a few months. When I started I did not understand a single word, now I listen to the same songs and then I suddenly realise what they are saying and its like a eureka moment. Love that feeling.

Homophonous Sino-Japanese expressions is what makes Kanji knowledge so quintessential to understanding both audio and text. For example, you could easily ask どのきょうきゅう？ Especially if no context is given. The person could mean 「供給」あるいは「匡救」。

Context should help you decide which one. This example is more obvious than the ones you seem to be frustrated with.

機械 and 器械 are basically synonymous. The former is closest to "machine" and the other is closest to "instrument". If technology of some sort is not being discussed, you can pretty much rule out that those words were intended. Sure, if you saw just kana text with no context with きかい, it would be hard to know what the person meant. Hopefully they would leave other sentences.

Reading will certainly mess with your mind when you begin to encounter all of these homonyms. But, the frequency of these words sometimes greatly contrasts that in spoken language. Not all possible interpretations are equally common. Jisho.org places "common word" in front of any search result that has a high frequency.

60% of the lexicon being 漢語 doesn't help the novice, but if you're a savant you could just stare at things and absorb them like a sponge and then spurt out brilliance. I don't have that luxury, and you might not either. However, there are some strategies that you can take. If what you suck at interpretation, you may need to be find transcripts of the text so you can read/look at them while listening.

Practice does make perfect. You're in Japan! So, if you don't know what they mean, just ask どのX? Seeing it seems to be how you learn. You could invest in a 漢英字典. You would certainly get better at 熟語. Why not have people read to you NHK articles or something? If you get lost, just ask questions.

I know that the sound back in Japanese is slim. It didn't help anything that we lost くゎand　ぐゎ and the distinction between /je/ and /e/. It also didn't help that the language lost vowels in the ancient period. We should be thankful that Chinese has allowed the language to incorporate vowel length. In some dialects, old and new sound distinctions are maintained to help. In Nagoya you can hear the vowel あぇ.

Just be patient, but don't pray for it.

Babyrat Wrote:Reading can not prepare you for the way Japanese speak, certainly as they love mixing words together and skipping certain parts of a word or just mumble them together.

Can someone please elaborate on this?

ta12121 Wrote:This may sound stupid but I'll say it anyway: the only real way to understand those on the fly is to learn them in kanji form.

Since when did Japanese use Kanji?

undead_saif Wrote:

Babyrat Wrote:Reading can not prepare you for the way Japanese speak, certainly as they love mixing words together and skipping certain parts of a word or just mumble them together.

Can someone please elaborate on this?

Colloquialisms like 行かなきゃ (行かなければならない) or the practice of ら抜き (skipping ら in some conjugations) etc.

That's completely normal fifo.I neglected listening as well so it was (is?) my biggest problem.

That being said subs2srs is AWESOME and extremely motivating way to learn listening. I feel so strongly I donated $50 to the creator (cb49...?) even though he has never solicted donations.
Try it if you haven't already, you wont regret it.

Is there any special course that can teach me how to recognize Japanese words that have similar spelling?
For now, KO2001's audio is working well for me. But, is there a course that tackles only that problem?

fifo_thekid Wrote:Is there any special course that can teach me how to recognize Japanese words that have similar spelling?
For now, KO2001's audio is working well for me. But, is there a course that tackles only that problem?

What? You mean like だいきん vs たいきん？

Yes
In addition to differentiating between 自信 and 地震