I think you guys are missing the point of one Hans Moleman here, in that it test shouldn't really be an issue for native speakers.

That aside, it's isn't really an obvious lie. There are a few things which could be said about the post. One is that "something" months could be any number of months. That could easily mean one month as it could mean 11 months and 25 days. Also, the user did not state that s/he ONLY studied Japanese for said period, only that during that period Japanese was "intensively" studied.

For all anyone can say, Mr Moleman over here could have been studying Japanese daily, for the past ten years, just not intensely. Half an hour a day is pretty casual - do that for ten years and damn, that's a lot of hours of study.

It could also be the case that this user is a native speaker of Korean or Mandarin, or something which is similar to Japanese in many ways more than English.

Or that he himself has Japanese speaking parents but was raised in a non-Japanese environment (like in America or something). Or has a lot of Japanese speaking friends or has spent a lot of time surrounded by Japanese and has had a lot of helpful corrections, etc. but not technical study.

You have no logical grounds to claim it was a lie, or an obvious lie. In fact, this was probably a good exercise to highlight how people on language learning forums can get defensive and put emotion before reason. You have to go and fill in the blanks with intention and motive for it to be a lie. Blanks which have not be presented in that simple little post, because on face value all that was said that for a period of a year and some undefined number of months, "Japanese" was intensely studied and the N1 JLPT was sat, completed in half the alloted time and the test taker napped for the rest of the duration.

Nothing about a score or anything else with is vital in order to drawn any assumptions about any claims made. It would be a lot different if the post was that "I studied intensively for a year and x amount of months, with no prior experience in Japanese (not in JLPT tests/grammar books), without any prior contact with the language, sat the the N1 test, finished early enough to fall asleep and passed the test."

Obvious assumptions, maybe.

uisukii wrote:

...

Uhh, you may have over-thought this a little bit.

Vempele what's your native language?

I mean it's impressive and all, but when I wrote that I had meant that my friends, who are not that aggressive, but simply practical language learners (e.g. A korean who learned English by going to college in the U.S. and then living here for 6 years) couldn't pass it.

Fellow posters from a language learning website are not as surprising, not to diminish your results at all. It's just that people who are very accomplished at languages are attracted to this site. zgarbas could also pass that test easily I'm sure.

dtcamero wrote:

Vempele what's your native language?

Finnish. Ten years of English at school, plus the Internet (and books and TV (passive listening with subs)). Mostly the Internet.

I also studied German and Swedish, for 9 and 6 years respectively. Never found a reason to use either of them, never got fluent.

Last edited by Vempele (2013 October 09, 11:42 am)

uisukii wrote:

Tzadeck wrote:

uisukii wrote:

...

Uhh, you may have over-thought this a little bit.

Could it be that I over thought it while you under though it? Either way, one response opens up points for further discussion, while the other shuts it down. Egos aside, which is better for a dwindling forum: deflection or dialouge?  What harm is there in exploring ideas?

I think you are still over thinking it.

Yeah, I did misread it, since I didn't notice that... In which case you could simply tell me that I misread it.

uisukii wrote:

What harm is there in exploring ideas?

Opportunity cost.

Xanpakuto wrote:

True. But what if you find a new method that increases your learning efficiency? Time spent researching for a new method will be compensated.

*coming from past experience

Yeah, it can be useful to explore new ideas because it may yield unexpected results... but actually, Uisukii and I were just talking about whether or not Moleman was lying about his language gains.  I can't really see me and Uisukii debating about it leading to anything positive for the amount of time invested... if Moleman wants to defend himself he's more than able to do it by himself, in a much quicker way since we wouldn't just be speculating.

uisukii wrote:

Though, if it is an opportunity cost, why are you still responding?

Simple posts take literally less than a minute to type.  Like this one.  Actually arguing on a topic takes up a reasonably long amount of time.  Hence why I'm not actually responding to your arguing.  I care 0% about this discussion.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2013 October 11, 9:47 am)

Hey guys, I did not expect my post to cause so much commotion.
I said "1 year and something months" because it is really challenging to mark the point when I first started to officially study Japanese. Although, my first post here was around July 2007.

Here is a post that I made in 2009 about my experiences.
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=3972

It is an extremely long post, so I will summarize it here in a few sentences. I studied Japanese day and night, and I mean that in the literal sense of the word.  I was working full time as a porter at a university. Aside from when students come into my office to ask for their spare key, I was not really working but just reading something in Japanese.

I am not Japanese nor did I have prior knowledge of Asian languages.
In my last post, I said " I would certainly imagine that any other Japanese person can do it as well". Maybe it's because I'm surrounded by Japanese things all the time that subconsciously, I par myself up with Japanese people.

Here are my scores by section.
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary,Grammar)
52/60

Reading
42/60

Listening
34/60

Total Score
128/180

I spent most of my time reading Japanese, hence the low score in listening.

Last edited by mr_hans_moleman (2013 October 13, 1:22 pm)

mr_hans_moleman wrote:

That was the point of my post. Passing N1 is not that hard. A few people told me that I was lying without even bothering to look at my old posts before being so outspoken with their judgements. I have been a member of this site since 2007. I don't post a lot or argue about whether it's possible to become fluent in 1.5 years because I would rather spend that time on learning Japanese.

I am now learning Chinese which figuratively means that my mind is back to being a blank slate of paper. It got me all nostalgic and made me think back on my humble beginnings learning Japanese.

Passing N1 does not necessarily mean you can function just like any fully grown Japanese person. I remember going for an interview with NTT a couple of months after arriving in Japan and embarrassing myself in front of the 3 Japanese managers interviewing me.

Everybody should just get over N1 and aim for higher things.
The truth is it's not that hard, and people are making it out to be the holy grail of studying Japanese.

It depends on your definition of hard.  I think spending hours and hours a day, singlemindingly concentrating on the subject, for a long period of time pretty hard.   Now it may not be problem solving like hard.  I graduated from two ivy league universities here in the US (undergraduate and masters).  My undergraduate was at the engineering school of the university.  Trying to figure out the solution to 3rd year physics and mathematics problems is very hard in another way.  You may not have to spend so many hours studying those subjects but the calculation and deduction is hard.  I guess I'm saying that even if the N1 test is lenient in some ways, the sheer amount of effort you have to invest to prepare for it is what the majority of people would say is "hard". 

  Anyway, if you did indeed pass in such a short time period,  I have to congratsulate you.  It is a great achievement even if you are downplaying it a bit.

mr_hans_moleman to be honest, I think what you did is really what this 'fluent in 3 months thing' should have been. Your time frame is more reasonable, and results more encouraging. While its good to hear about people who are able to obtain good results within a short timeframe, it seems like whether it takes you 4 years or 1 year, everyone who reaches a high level in this language has put in their hours, in one way or another.

..and that's what I was getting at before. I figure once you start this language, and get a sense for the immensity of the task before you, you can't really fool yourself into thinking it will be easy anymore. So its not encouraging to hear anyone telling you that it is. What's encouraging is hearing that, if you put in the work, you'll get there eventually.

Last edited by Haych (2013 October 13, 3:21 pm)

mr_hans_moleman wrote:

Everybody should just get over N1 and aim for higher things.
The truth is it's not that hard, and people are making it out to be the holy grail of studying Japanese.

You were practicing Japanese for something like 7.5 hours a day, you said, because you had a job where you could.  And now you're acting like N1 is not at all difficult despite the huge amount of time you invested.  Most people don't have that kind of time, and very few people would want to invest that amount of time per day studying even if they did.

I also like how you are so dismissive of N1, all the while pretending you're not bragging, yet you need to mention that you remember sleeping through most of the test.

Anyway, nobody is pretending it's the holy grail of studying Japanese.  I passed it, and I know that my Japanese needs a lot of work.  But it IS hard.  I know people who have spent years studying seriously and haven't managed to pass it despite trying to.  And it took me a long time too.

Finally, your original post is misleading.  Obvious lie is still obvious.