Are some people just better at learning languages (Japanese)?. I have met several people here in Japan (25 to 35 year olds) that swear they have never studied from a textbook or anything, they say they just learned from living here, having wives and "being open to the language", also they claim it didn't take them more than 2 years to be able to communicate at a basic level.

2 years to be able to communicate at a basic level? even without textbooks that's a lot.

With constant reinforcement of vocab and basic grammar, I imagine one month is enough to be able to communicate on a basic level. Words you need are: right, left, eat, drink, thank you, please, train, bas, taxi, etc.

A level of literacy (speaking, listening, reading and writing-wise) of a native person attending a college (or even primary school) is a completely different matter.

Ok, "communicate at a basic level" was pretty vague or even misleading. These people communicate very well and can produce complex sentences that take me at least 5 to 10 seconds to decode if I read them.

These people have 0 reading skills but their speaking is outstanding, yet they don't really consume much Japanese media.

turvy Wrote:Ok, "communicate at a basic level" was pretty vague or even misleading. These people communicate very well and can produce complex sentences that take me at least 5 to 10 seconds to decode if I read them.

These people have 0 reading skills but their speaking is outstanding, yet they don't really consume much Japanese media.

Well then they are lying if what I call complex and you call complex is the same thing. If they weren't studying and weren't being exposed to it all that much then they weren't producing complex Japanese in under 2 years. I'm also gathering that you didn't actually know these people after they had only been here for 2 years and this it simply what they are telling you now correct?

In any area, you will find "naturals", but persistence is king.

I'm assuming that those people are from the same (Western) country as you? Because speakers of languages more related to Japanese, either through vocabulary (e.g. Chinese) or sentence structure (e.g. Mongolian) or both (e.g. Korean), have an obvious advantage. I definitely can imagine Korean speakers picking up Japanese without much concious effort.

Also it could be that the situation you saw them using their Japanese in was one that they were comfortable with, e.g. introducing themselves or something. In such a situation you can have complex sentences 'ready-made'. A real test is if they would be speaking about something completely new or complex.

And of course there are language experts, although I can't imagine how they would become proficient without a lot of practice. Perhaps they had some really helpful wives or something.

[Zgarbas]

How DO westerners get japanese wives? I mean, given how the average Japanese person won't be too good at foreign languages, and these people say that they didn't know Japanese prior to getting a Japanese wife... how do they even keep a conversation?

I think they get the Japanese women who actually know a fair about of English already. Otherwise I guess it probably depends a lot how well you deal with language barriers.

I've thought about it before and I'm not sure I could do it; be with someone who didn't fully understand my language, and whose language I didn't fully understand. I guess I put a lot of emphasis on being able to express myself coherently and be understood perfectly in a relationship that I feel like it wouldn't be possible to maintain the relationship if we both weren't fluent in at least one mutual language.

But I know people who have done it just fine. It's just... not for me.

I remember one friend was with a guy who kept calling cows unicorns or something because he honestly thought that's what the word was, and he felt like an idiot when she pointed it out to him. #randomstory

[Zgarbas]

I dunno, so far I've talked with about 3 japanese people who were at a pretty high level in English/Romanian (one has been living here for the past 20 years, before anyone in the country knew any Japanese, one had spent about 2-3 years in Canada), but the language barrier was still there. As in, when at one point we started discussing a bit more seriously I had to really strain to understand what they were saying and vice-versa. I imagine that with the kind of talks you'd have with a romantic partner serious enough to marry it would only be harder.

Not to mention grocery shopping. I still have problems with certain types of foods (had to look up basil the other day cause I keep forgetting what it is). Making a shopping list would become a major source of frustration >.<

btw, topic related... once you pick up a few languages it gets easier and easier to get to a basic level in a new one. Not saying that you get magic language-learning skills, but for example in 4-5 months of 1-hour-per-week Swedish I could keep basic conversations. No immersion, little home practice. Getting to a more intermediate level is just as hard, but the basics gets easier to pick up, and you learn to adapt a bit quicker.

In my opinion, and perhaps slightly off topic, other people's Japanese always seems way better than your own even if they are only ever so slightly 'ahead of you' in their learning. For me, Japanese is one of those things I just can't guess at, and if I don't know what someone is saying, I just don't know. Even if they only just got 'one chapter' ahead of me in my imaginary Japanese textbook they seem like some kind of genius to me.

From my experience there are people who have a predisposition to language study. Nonetheless, I think your post is lumping a few different issues together.

Study in home vs foreign country: Take America for example, I've known immigrants from Pakistan/China/Korea/Africa/South America (among many others) that came to here with no, or very little English ability, and two years later were functional members of society. I've also met half a dozen people who spent 5-10 years in Japan and knew less Japanese than a high school student taking his/her first Japanese class.

Talent and effort: As the "10000 hour rule" has shown, one doesn't get anywhere without a lot of effort. This includes virtually all fields, including music, sports, and language study. At the same time, I have met many, many talented people in just as many fields whose talent I could never completely emulate with effort alone. Of course this includes talented language learners.

Then are a bunch of other issues, including the people you surround yourself with. When I was in Japan the people who had the best Japanese ability were the ones whose circle of friends/acquaintances/colleges/girlfriend/boyfriend were Japanese. The ones who surrounded themselves with foreigners made little progress, and stayed within their bubbles/comfort zones.

My parents didn't speak each other's language when they first met, and neither of them took any formal classes after that - they just learned from each other and from their respective environments (and later, to some extent, from us ). Obviously, I don't know how far along their language skills were two years after they met, but now they both speak the other language completely fluently (albeit with a bit of an accent).

Exposure is a really powerful way of learning - it's the way we learn our first language after all, so it comes naturally to us. It takes time and the right environment though, which is tricky. Textbooks etc. save some time by making use of our grown-up brains (for instance, by teaching us a general grammatical rule, which saves us the trouble of learning it implicitly through countless examples).

Another advantage from learning through exposure is that you get most practise with the things you use most, so you get to make faster progress in those areas that are most relevant to your daily life. (As a counter example, I learned English the other way, with non-native teachers and textbooks. After 8 years, I thought my English was actually quite good. That is, until I visited a British supermarket and noticed I didn't know the names of half the things in the fruit and veg aisle ...)

It comes down to how much time you invest. If someone invests 24/7 of their time to Japanese, then I wouldn't be surprised if they become fluent in only 2 years time. Most people can say there are different levels of skills in any language and there is the whole complete package (reading,speaking,writing and listening). How long does this take the average person? Most say 10 years, some say less but the point of the matter is pretty simple here: if you invest the time and effort, it will pay off eventually.

Languages are one of the many subjects that people tend to do bad at it (like math or the sciences). It's not because they can't do it, it's most likely they are not interested in it or not putting in the time. Don't be afraid to go back to the basics and master them (even if your at an advanced level).

Yes, some people have a talent for languages. However, learning a language after living in the country for years has nothing to do with talent. This is something every human being can do, even the less-mentally-endowed.

I think, except in the case of some very small percentage of genuine geniuses, talent plays some part but not all that big a part (maybe a 1.1x multiplier on time spent). Having said that, I think the more languages one learns the better they are at noticing differences in sound and figuring out meaning when it is expressed in unfamiliar ways. So in a sense I think anyone learning an l3 does have some level of advantage that is perhaps describable as talent. A much larger factor I think is flexibility and the ability to recognize when an approach is or isn't working. effective methods x time spent x past experience.

I would also wonder if the folks you've met in Japan know any other languages, or rather learned two languages growing up? A child who's raised in a bilingual house will most likely learn both languages, and learning two languages while very young makes it easier to master others at an older age.

I could be wrong tho. I just read that somewhere... :p

Merocor Wrote:I would also wonder if the folks you've met in Japan know any other languages, or rather learned two languages growing up? A child who's raised in a bilingual house will most likely learn both languages, and learning two languages while very young makes it easier to master others at an older age

Learning a second language makes it easier to learn another, but speaking 2 languages as a native speaker does virtually nothing.

[Zgarbas]

Merocor Wrote:I would also wonder if the folks you've met in Japan know any other languages, or rather learned two languages growing up? A child who's raised in a bilingual house will most likely learn both languages, and learning two languages while very young makes it easier to master others at an older age.

I could be wrong tho. I just read that somewhere... :p

I think that's more of a common belief spread by various concerned mothers who want the best for their kids and are enrolling them in as many things as possible. Being bilingual certainly has its benefits(it's always good to be fluent in another language), but it doesn't make future languages any easier. In fact, it makes learning a new language even more frustrating because you're all "haha, this will be easy I mean I learned a foreign language without even trying" and once you have to actually LEARN it you get stumped.

Merocor Wrote:I think that's more of a common belief spread by various concerned mothers who want the best for their kids and are enrolling them in as many things as possible. Being bilingual certainly has its benefits(it's always good to be fluent in another language), but it doesn't make future languages any easier.

I think it goes kind of both ways. Yes in some ways it's most likely overhyped (not the best word to describe it but can't think of anything else right now), but I do believe that being bilingual does make future languages somewhat easier. I don't think it's largely a perceptible change though. Reading through some language learning literature it seems that being bilingual does help with being ready to accommodate overall flexibility and vagueness that pervades learning a new language.

Also interestingly enough in an informal study within one of my classes, most people who had attained a reasonable proficiency in a third or second language had multiple language exposure growing up. For those studying a second language, they were not functionally bilingual as they were not equally proficient in two languages but dominant in one with the other being lacking to say the least.

I studied Japanese for two years and I was able to "communicate at a basic" level after about a year of formal study.

I finally started formulating my own creative sentances (talking without using memorized phrases) comfortably after about 2 years. Ever since the two year mark, it has been a slow climb upward, but my Japanese has never improved so much as it has than in my first two years.

I guess learning a language is like an instrument. Its easy to pick up, but hard to master.

On that note, with my 6 years of experience learning Japanese, I can honstly say that some people ARE better at learning languages. Its just like some people are better than others at learning instruments.

I myself had to put A LOT of effort into learning Japanese, and I do not consider myself to be in the category of someone who is good at learning langauges. I just put the time in, did the studying, talked with the people, and now I am sure that if I met me when I was 6 years younger, I would be super impressed.

Don't give up, and remember that hard work compensates for a lack of ability~!

They've lived in an environment that has allowed them to get exposed to the language constantly for years, and you're surprised and assume that they're naturally predisposed to learning languages?!

I'd wager that the anglosphere members of this board make slower progress on average. Most (monolingual) native english speakers just don't 'get it' at first, for lack of a better description.

maybe we could do a poll or something...

[Zgarbas]

Man, I watched Mila Superstar at least 5 times(the series has about 100+ episodes) in German, along with a few other shows, when I was at the magical learning age (<6yo), but once I started learning German I was just as confused... though I could pronounce "volleyball spielen" and "die beste Spieler in der Welt" like a pro .

Also "Potere de cristalo di luna" (sp?) thanks to a non-subbed Italian dub of Sailor Moon.

(Potential derail incoming )
Americans definitely suffer in the "don't get it" category, but outside America I was always under the impression that in the UK there was a bit more L2 study going on and from an earlier age than in America. I suppose Aussies (and Kiwis?) might suffer same as American's though. The more I listen to my friends from Australia the more their country sounds like some crazy offshoot of America.