Tigoris
New member
From: Florida
Registered: 2011-07-15
Posts: 8
I thought you guys might find something helpful in this.
-From: http://livingjapanese.blogspot.com/
--
I know why you're here. You're worried that you're not going to make it. That you're going to fail at learning Japanese and all of your effort will be wasted. You don't know what to do and there's nobody to guide you. And it's not that you don't care enough to find what to do, you care a LOT. You care so much that these doubts keep you up at night. Perhaps you find yourself thinking, “Maybe I should start over. Do I need to research other methods? Am I doing any of this right?” And guess what.
These doubts are a good thing.
For all that they make you feel like crap, they're also a sign that you really want to learn Japanese. No, that you NEED to learn Japanese. But what should you do? What can you do when you suddenly find yourself buried in kanji, sentences, and lists of words with no end in sight. How can you possibly know that any of this is working; that you're on the right path and headed for the finish line?
Learning Japanese has no final goal line. There's no point at which you cross some mystical finish line and suddenly cheering crowds appear to present you with a plaque that says “JAPANESE MASTER.” While it sounds ridiculous, I think we find ourselves expecting this. We expect to see some loud, obvious sign that we're doing it right, but in reality we ignore the true signs of progress.
If you have an immersion environment, then you should be using Japanese media, right? Books, songs, shows, whatever. These are the signs of progress. If you're wondering if you're on the “right” path, if you're doing things “right,” then just pay attention to what you do each day. Do you read manga? Watch anime? Browse articles on the Japanese Wikipedia page? Sing along with J-Pop? Whatever it is you're doing, realize that you're doing it in Japanese. You're reading in Japanese. You're listening to a song and understanding the lyrics. Well guess what...
That IS the end goal! You've done it! Look at you! Immersed in Japanese and understanding so easily that you forget how absolutely amazing you are!! Learning Japanese can be so sneaky in the way that it happens; it's incredibly easy to forget how much progress we've made. So remind yourself. If you're feeling these doubts, then pause for a minute. Think about what you can do, what you've achieved. And then...
Take the next step.
When you're feeling this way, it means that you need to move. So take the next step. Grab that book off your shelf that you've been avoiding and give it a shot. Start watching that TV series that was "too difficult" for you before. Find that next thing in Japanese and do it. And when you do it, realize that this IS the end goal. This is it! If you can take something Japanese, be it a children's story, a manga for teens, or a tome on organic chemistry, and understand it - that is learning Japanese. You've done it. If you can read even one sentence, one word, one kana, then you've already learned Japanese. Now do it again with the next kana, word, sentence, or story.
So if you're feeling worried about your progress, just remember what you've already accomplished. Think of how far you've come. Then go forward. It doesn't matter what you go to next, just do something in Japanese. Don't worry. You're on the right path.
Now get walking.
Tzadeck
Member
From: Kinki
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2484
HonyakuJoshua wrote:
surely native level proficiency would be a final goal? I do think language learning is finite and it would be overly romantic to say otherwise...
I actually agree with him on there being no concrete finish line of mastery. How many learners actually reach native level proficieny? Surely it's far less than one percent. Defining the goal as something practically unachievable doesn't make sense to me. My goal is certainly not to be native level.
(My own thoughts would be more that you can establish a concrete goal for yourself, or you don't have to, depending on your situation.)
A lot of the way he and a few others talk about Japanese seems pretty inspired by self-help books, and it's that kind of fluffy talk and the ideas that go with it that are a turn-off to me.
Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 July 04, 1:36 am)
Tzadeck wrote:
HonyakuJoshua wrote:
surely native level proficiency would be a final goal? I do think language learning is finite and it would be overly romantic to say otherwise...
I actually agree with him on there being no concrete finish line of mastery. How many learners actually reach native level proficieny? Surely it's far less than one percent. Defining the goal as something practically unachievable doesn't make sense to me. My goal is certainly not to be native level.
I agree with HonyakuJoshua that native level proficiency is a good goal. About 150,000,000 people in the world have reached this goal.
However, for those of us that have started towards this goal significantly after being born, it's hard to measure native level proficiency. Are you aiming for the proficiency of a middle schooler? A high schooler? A college graduate? A 文系 college graduate? A 理系 college graduate? I imagine all of them would have vastly different things that they could understand.
Tigoris
New member
From: Florida
Registered: 2011-07-15
Posts: 8
My apologies if the post is misleading, but I'm not saying that people should settle for partially understanding the language. What I'm saying is that for people who are somewhere along the way to native level, the process can start to drag on. In the beginning recognizing anything at all is a big deal, so you notice it. Halfway to the end? Not so much. So the point of the post is to remember that you've already learned so much of the language - of COURSE your methods are working. So stop questioning yourself and keep moving along - don't let your doubts hold you back.
"If you can read even one sentence, one word, one kana, then you've already learned Japanese. Now do it again with the next kana, word, sentence, or story."
This line in particular is the idea I wanted to convey. If you can learn one kanji, then you can learn EVERY kanji. Japanese isn't one big thing, it's billions of smaller units - kana, kanji, words, etc. And if you've already learned one of those units, then there's nothing to stop you learning more of them (all of them).
karategirl09
Member
From: London
Registered: 2009-01-12
Posts: 16
Thanks for this Tigoris, I do find it motivational and it's well-written.
I love making goals for myself, to the extent that I often have too many goals and many of them are overwhelming. I guess my long-term Japanese goal is also to become native level - as Ash said, the level of proficiency of someone in Japan with a similar life and education background to me.
But this is a very long-term goal and doesn't help to motivate me day to day. Measuring everything in terms of this goal, could make all my achievements seem small and insignificant. To avoid losing motivation I think it's really helpful to keep looking back at how far we've come since we started learning, and find satisfaction simply in doing normal activities in Japanese.
faneca
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2010-06-30
Posts: 96
I think vileru's being pretty serious (although one can never know for sure with this kind of statements ;-). In fact, I can't really speak of Japanese people (I only met one, and she was a really smart person), but if they are like the rest of the human race I do know, I totally agree with him.
While I was reading all these posts, I thought to myself "Forget about Japanese, I will never learn everything about my own two mother tongues". Not because they are infinite (which, as stated above, are enormous but finite fields of discrete elements -sorry about the pedantic way of expressing it-) but because of my limited lifetime to do so (i.e. because of practical matters). I have so much to learn and so little time... (Or as Clint Eastwood would put it: "So many goblins, so few bullets"). Yet I have a level (or at least I like to think so, even if it's not very humble) which is far beyond the mean of the native speakers of my languages (At least, I don't think "The Da Vinci Code" is a good book X-PPPP -- sorry, missed a little trolling ;-).
BTW anyone here (i.e. anyone interested in learning foreign languages) deserves exactly the same consideration on my part (I like to think of all of you being far beyond the mean of your respective languages). I mean, just watch the interviews to "people of the street" in the news to see what my point is ;-).
In summary, I agree with all of you in that the final goal is very different for everyone, and while I hate a lot all the "self-help" stuff (Is that expression even logically correct? Can anyone help himself, or is help, by definition, inherently given to others?), I think its motivating the point of "just look back sometimes, to see how much you did, and focus on achieving the next small intermediate goal". Specially whenever you feel you lost your way a little.
I liked your post as well as the style it's written, Tigoris. I just finished RTK1 when I got here, so I was feeling a little lost myself, and you helped me, so thank you ;-)
Oh, and if we are currently placing orders, a 理系 graduate for me, please :-P...
vileru
Member
From: Cambridge, MA
Registered: 2009-07-08
Posts: 750
nadiatims wrote:
vileru wrote:
The most advanced text that the average native speaker can comprehend is a newspaper or maybe a novel that uses common vocabulary and a simplistic, linear plot.
lol
or are you actually being serious?
I'm dead serious. I taught at a university. Plenty of students can't use "they're, their, there" and other basic grammar correctly. They struggle with Plato's early dialogues, which are like children's books compared to Kant or Hegel. I remember watching Fight Club during a philosophy class while I was in undergrad. Several people didn't realize that Tyler Durden and the protagonist are the same person... and they were university students. Imagine how much worse it must be for those who never graduate from a university (over 70% of the U.S.).
We're talking about the average native speaker here. I think many here come from privileged positions, and so they only interact with equally competent and literate persons. However, if you just browse the rest of the Internet, you'll quickly realize that the quality of dialogue on this forum is far beyond the average fora. Many of the conversations that we have here on linguistics, language acquisition, and language software would be incomprehensible to most of the rest of the English-speaking Internet.
Last edited by vileru (2012 July 05, 12:02 am)
Tzadeck
Member
From: Kinki
Registered: 2009-02-21
Posts: 2484
vileru wrote:
Then explain why practically the entire U.S. thought Japan had become a nuclear wasteland after Fukushima. Despite having read and watched the news, several people expressed grave concerns over my safety before I arrived in Japan. This tells me that they had minimal comprehension of the articles and reports or only listened to the headlines until the panic alarms started glaring in their heads.
Well, to a certain extent the stereotype of Americans being dumb is true. Especially when it comes to science and knowledge of foreign countries.
When I lived in America I was constantly frustrated with dumb people around me. I don't feel that way in Japan at all, although there are certainly still some dumb people. So arguing that Japanese people are stupid based on Americans being stupid isn't going to convince me of much.
(But, anyway, I think it's very hard to get as good at Japanese as a not-so-bright 18 year old Japanese guy. Certainly having the speaking ability of a 18 year old Japanese kid takes years and years and years of study, and most langauge learners will never achieve it. It's not a good goal for most people, who generally have lots of other responsibilities in their life.)
Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 July 05, 1:23 am)
vileru
Member
From: Cambridge, MA
Registered: 2009-07-08
Posts: 750
I agree that Japanese are more well educated on average than Americans, especially up until high school. Likewise, I agree that reaching the proficiency level of even an 18-year-old slacker takes years and is beyond what most language learners are capable of or even desire. However, the members on this forum tend to have the dedication, time, and resources to attain such a proficiency, so why discourage them from doing so?
That's a pretty high standard for near-nativeness, innit? (general language talk over here, btw).
Even natives make grammar mistakes every now and then, and don't tell me you don't know any native English speakers who don't misspell even basic words such as definitely, misspell, etc. Reading speed is an individual trait rather than a native/non-native one, as I'm sure you've met people who read a page in a few minutes and some who read almost 100 per hour. Of course, what they read also affects the reading rate, but let's ignore that. Though I get what you mean by the E>J translation issue.
Also, I fail to see how accents fit into this. Everyone has an accent. Why would anyone be wasting precious time imitating someone's accent (which would only be "right" in a certain area) for a bit of credibility, when much more credibility would be given by the actual use of the language?
Zgarbas wrote:
Why would anyone be wasting precious time imitating someone's accent (which would only be "right" in a certain area) for a bit of credibility, when much more credibility would be given by the actual use of the language?
I don't want to start a 標準語 debate here, so I'll attack this question from a different angle.
When I'm listening to foreigners speaking English, I would much rather talk with someone who has poor grammar but great pronunciation/accent than someone who has poor pronunciation/accent but perfect grammar. I believe there is a lot to be said about pronunciation and accent.
(Bare in mind, by "good accent" I mean an accent that is close to the accent used by newscasters on the national news in America.)
