If a Japanese girl I date knows what an SRS is, I would drop down on one knee on the spot!

As for kanji study and dating, Japanese girls I meet love it when I show them my current list of kanji in my notebook.  She often picks the useful ones and gives me sentences.  So I guess I'm sentence mining from girlfriends.

My wife is 二世. She grew up in here in the US but mostly spoke Japanese with her parents. Her speaking ability is essentially native-level.

Having a wife who speaks Japanese has provided me with motivation but has not helped me learn the language more quickly or differently from anyone else. She answers any specific questions I may have, but right now we always fall back into speaking English as my Japanese is still quite limited. I hope that as I get better I will be able to initiate and maintain more conversations in Japanese. At that point, having a wife who speaks the language could be a tremendous advantage.

Pursuing a girlfriend for linguistic purposes is probably unethical, but if you must, then my advice would be to find one who doesn't speak English.

Linguistic purposes are a plus!
Well, gotta but this in the hopper method schedule.

How do you put a girlfriend into your SRS?

Perhaps someone a bit farther along than I can comment, but I've heard that the Japanese spoken by men and women differs considerably, and that men who learn from wives and girlfriends often sound effeminate as a result.

I've heard the same thing. It would be fine to have a JP girlfriend as long as you take everything with a grain of salt and have male Japanese friends to learn from.

IMHO, getting a Japanaese boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband is only useful if you're living in Japan.

Otherwise, your partner will either:

a)make you their permanent English teacher(and so you'll hardly speak much Japanese)
b)will refuse become your Japanese teacher

In the end, it's really about YOU. So don't depend on other people to teach you their language. I am qualified to say this, since I helped lead a large Japanese/American social group(150+ members) where there were many hook-ups over 3-4 years.

The only people that ever learned Japanese(and had gf/bf/wife/husband) were those that lived in Japan. There wasn't a single case where having a Japanese significant other helped significantly. To be honest, I was really surprised, but that's just the way it seemed to work.

Personally, I think that TV shows, manga/novels, and a lot of experimentation with the language will give you much better results. Of course, going to Japan is really the best experience.

Anyway just my 2 cents.

Last edited by chamcham (2008 August 12, 6:37 pm)

Clint wrote:

Perhaps someone a bit farther along than I can comment, but I've heard that the Japanese spoken by men and women differs considerably, and that men who learn from wives and girlfriends often sound effeminate as a result.

This is very true. As language learners we tend to copy what we hear. Unfortunately for Japanese, this means men often unwittingly pick up female styles of speech. A Japanese girl I was talking to on the weekend said that Japanese even expect foreign guys to speak somewhat like girls, since they frequently learn through wives/girlfriends. Guys: Make sure you find good male role models for your speech.
Whether wives/husbands/significant others make good teachers depends on a number of factors, but I've found that their level of English makes a big difference. Someone who is less fluent in English is more likely to get tired at times of thinking in a foreign language (which we all understand) and will feel comfortable if they can slip into their mother tongue. If they are fluent in English, the desire to speak in Japanese with you may not be so strong.

The best solution is just to make some Japanese friends instead of looking for a relationship.  Friends don't mind helping you with something and you don't have to have all the strings that are attached to a relationship.

Last edited by cracky (2008 August 12, 9:45 pm)

_Qbe_ wrote:

I was going to find a Japanese girlfriend to help me learn Japanese more quickly, but my wife didn't approve of the idea

LULZ

Nothing she don't know won't hurt her. If she finds out just tell her it was all in the pursuit of knowledge. (I know this comment proves how unmarried I am) ;P

sutebun wrote:

I always hear this theory that your Japanese will get too feminine if you depend on your girlfriend.

I'm not suggesting that you will get awesome fluent Japanese by having a Japanese significant other, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that's true.

Wouldn't it better to have feminine, fluent, awesome Japanese instead of crappy Japanese? And if you get to such a  high level, couldn't you correct it easily?

This always boggled my mind.

(Of course, this assumes your Japanese will become really good by having your SO. Maybe your Japanese will end up girly while not improving too much. Either way, someone who has the drive to get to a near native level probably doesn't need a SO to speak Japanese with.)

Well, that depends. Can you change your accent that easily without constant attention? I think Mel Gibson completely voided his Australian, but Swarzenegger kept a strong portion of his (to bring about two well known examples).

Subconscious habits like accents are difficult to change, but not impossible.  That said, you kind of made a good point that fluent feminized Japanese is better than little to no Japanese.

PS: I'm not learning much Japanese from the Japanese lady I'm seeing now. I prefer to think I'm learning cultural things from her instead. That said, I'm saying "Gomen" a bit too much now, which is something she says alot.

On the other hand, she felt embarrassed about how high my kanji writing ability was compared to her that she did go out and buy a kanji study guide. Luckily, I convinced her that Kanji was my hobby, much like Flamenco was her hobby. I'm not expecting her to have my level of something I'm actively studying, nor should she expect me to learn to dance.

Okay rule #1 is: either get a monolingual or forget it. If you get one that speaks English, most of the time you are both going to take the path of least resistance and speak English and then you are going to end up resenting her for it! It will be lame, so forget it.

Got to China -- got a monolingual GF, learned Chinese very rapidly (she called me every night for like 1 hour, and insisted on talking on and on though I couldn't understand much of anything at the beginning).

Got to Japan (2-3 years later) -- wanted to repeat the formula for success -- got a monolingual GF, she was very quiet and I am not the type to initiate conversations when I'm getting minimal responses back... After many many months I hadn't improved, left Japan, completely forgot Japanese after some years. (I went through texts in Outbox in my old Japan cell phone and saw I was using everyday words that now I don't even remember).