Man there are always great people who do such great things. Khatsu-san became so fluent that basicly he could function as an adult japanese native.
I guess if we TRULY want to be fluent we need to trade away our foreign language for Japanese.
I can see why its so easy for kids because they don't have things to do all they are doing is being immersed in it 24/7.
  Please someone define 24/7 for me cause I don't see how you could go 24/7 of Japanese. Kinda impossible....
Lets take a moment brainstorm somethings we could change in order to become fluent.

Last edited by Sarius24 (2008 May 19, 11:57 am)

Ah, I just forgot to mention that one of the parties might not even be a person. It might be a book, a movie, manga, videogame...

Sarius24 wrote:

Man there are always great people who do such great things. Khatsu-san became so fluent that basicly he could function as an adult japanese native.
I guess if we TRULY want to be fluent we need to trade away our foreign language for Japanese.
I can see why its so easy for kids because they don't have things to do all they are doing is being immersed in it 24/7.
  Please someone define 24/7 for me cause I don't see how you could go 24/7 of Japanese. Kinda impossible....
Lets take a moment brainstorm somethings we could change in order to become fluent.

Going 24/7 simply means playing Japanese audio or movies all the time when you are at home unless you are actively studying Japanese in some other way.  Your friends and signifigant other might complain at first about the incessant noise, but they will either learn to accept it, or you are better off without them.  What kind of friends/lovers are they if they can't support your obsessive foreign language goals?!?  When you are at class/work, you should either be listening to an mp3 player with Japanese audio if you can manage it or pretending to be reading something work-related, when in fact you are reading a japanese textbook or manga.  You should seriously consider growing out your hair to conceal your earbuds from the misunderstanding masses.  Not everyone will appreciate your zeal.  If you honestly can't get away with either of these, you should at the very least begin mentally chanting all of of the Japanese words or stock phrases you can think of.  Or perhaps you could pretend the walls are Japanese and talk to them.  For any commutes you have throughout the day, the mp3 player will no doubt work best.  Just make sure you have a backup for when the batteries go dead.  When it is time for bed, dont forget to leave that audio on!  Who knows if it helps, but it can't hurt.  At the very least, it will be something to listen to when you have to get up to go to the bathroom at 2 AM.

P.S.  This probably goes without saying, but you will need to equip your bathroom with a sound system as well.  Unfortunately, most mp3 players are not water-proof.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 May 19, 2:14 pm)

Hey, I already saw many articles discussing about how to get fluent on languages. They all seem to get to a coomon point: Immersion.

Check this article about raising bilingual kids:
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articl … lkids1.htm

A kid is required to have contact with a language for at least 30% of its waking time to learn it properly.

Now, I _personaly_ believe it is only hard for an adult get fluency on a language because it is hard to be exposed to a language 30% of its waking time. I try very hard and I'm getting only ~ 4 hours/day.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2008 May 19, 3:08 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

Hey, I already saw many articles discussing about how to get fluent on languages. They all seem to get to a coomon point: Immersion.

Check this article about raising bilingual kids:
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articl … lkids1.htm

A kid is required to have contact with a language for at least 30% of its waking time to learn it properly.

Now, I _personaly_ believe it is hard to an adult get fluency on a language because it is hard to be exposed to a language 30% of your waking time. I try very hard and I'm getting only ~ 4 hours/day.

30 percent sounds about right for a kid.  Although I do think some adults may be able to get by with as little as 20 percent.  My only concern with articles like this is that they often equate "exposure" with "immersion".  In my opinion, true immersion only occurs when there is at least the potential for two-way communication.  Although the article implies that the parents will be talking with the kids, a lot of monolingual parents get the idea that if they play Spanish music or dump their kid in front of a Spanish video for most of the day, he or she will magically become fluent.  Even though some people consider AJATT method to be a type of immersion, I strongly disagree.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 May 19, 3:16 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

Hi Dragg, so you are lowering much more our chances =P
I'll never get at least 1h/day our of your kind of imersion.

Unless you attend an immersion language camp, have Japanese relatives or very close friends , or live in Japan, true immersion is indeed very difficult to obtain.  And that is probably one of the biggest reasons why almost nobody here claims to be fluent yet.  Fluency through non-immersion methods is possible I'm sure, but they strike me as allowing much much slower progress and are relatively painful in comparison.  Services like Skype, Paltalk, and other chat programs are probably your best bets for immersion emulation outside of Japan.  Having internal conversations with yourself in Japanese might help a little as far as improving output and enabling you to start thinking more in Japanese, but it doesn't count as true immersion because its pretty tough to correct all your own mistakes.  Sometimes when I go for walks in the evening I try to think of the Japanese words for all the the things I see around me, and I mentally compose short sentences to describe them.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 May 19, 6:18 pm)

sutebun wrote:

Dragg wrote:

Going 24/7 simply means ....

Don't forget to obtain Japanese videos for when you need to get off. There's 5 precious minutes to be had there and you might learn phrases which could be useful in the future.

Anytime you need to buy anything, you should also see if you can get it online from a Japanese website. Instead of going to the mall to buy a pair of sunglasses, order it from a Japanese website and get practice. It's worth the international shipping if it helps your environment.

Very good tips!  I must admit that you are several steps ahead of me in the quest of achieving the state of Ultimate Japanification.

Hahaha. That is because this site is for starters. Learning all the kanjis is just the beggining!

Sarius24 wrote:

But he really doesnt stress the part about putting fun into learning.

Actually he did say things like "read what you like, not what you should be reading, as long as it's fun". You have a point, though, in that he seems to enjoy SRS a lot more than most people

The thing is... Khatz didn't spend his time on English language message boards discussing his approaches to studying. He went to Japanese language message boards and read them. He put a Japanese version of XP on his computer, and just suffered until he figured it out. He did everything he could to put himself in an environment where he HAD to understand Japanese, or just fail to get stuff done.

That, more than anything else, is probably why he did so well. That, and he never missed an opportunity to use the language he was learning. If you adopt the mindset of, "If I have an opportunity to use Japanese here, I'll use it," I think that alone would speed along your development. (Perhaps more extreme would be, "Every time I use English, I'm wasting a chance to learn how to say it Japanese." or even "English is poison." )

I know that when I was in Japan, whenever the hotel had English-language TV, and I listened to it, it hurt my Japanese. If it just had JP TV, my Japanese got better. Weird, huh?

Do all of you don't like to review? I have to be honest, reviewing kanji isn't that much fun (but it does make up for it if you get a good recall rate)... but I *love* reviewing sentences and words... Which reminds me I have to add more sentences, because lately I've been feeling "Awww, was that the last sentence already?" at the end of my review...

Just install firefox, thunderbird and msn etc in Japanese It does help though... Small bits at a time maybe, but I know what 更新 is because my language preference at livejournal is Japanese...

Though most of those things, you just click away without reading anything anyway (you know where the 'send' button is in your e-mail application, hm?)

Think about it... Khatz says he reached fluency in 18 months studying 18 hours a day, or so his site says. = about 9720 hours spent on learning Japanese.

If I study every day for four years for four hours, I've only racked up around 5840 hours.

So far it's hard to count how many hours I've actually put into studying Japanese. I've been at it for 18 months, the same time that Khatz has. However, some days I do around six hours, other days none. But I think it'll take me less time to learn Japanese than it did for Khatz. A longer time frame, but less active time studying.

One could perhaps say that it takes dedication to obtain fluency, but I'd say dedication can take many forms.

As to reaching fluency, I'm not there yet, what ever the word may mean. I'd say the key to it would perhaps be using a wide range of methods and activities, with primary sources the most important (for actually understanding the language) and then finally, interaction as the final test of fluency. As for time, how long it takes would depend on the effectiveness of your method and the amount of time you spend learning Japanese.

Sorry if my maths is way off. Not my strong point.