Smackle wrote:

kazelee wrote:

The funny thing is... those "American TV stars" are probably Australians.

That is another thing. Often times, I find many Australian actors are able to imitate perfect American accents. It really confuses me to find out that some are Australian.

I have noticed this as well... it might be because we are exposed to a lot of different English "accents" from a young age. Australian TV has big spread of American, British and Australian programs...

littletimmy wrote:

I love challenges, so I timed myself out of curiosity.

It took me a little over 9.5 minutes to learn 20 new kanji. Since some of them were pretty easy, I'll just say 10 minutes to make it easier. So about 2 kanji/minute.

Reviewing them, of course, was much faster. Exactly 300 seconds for those same 20 kanji. 4 kanji/minute with 95% success (we'll just say 100% because I'm lazy). I'm reviewing them by drawing them on a piece of paper before I flip over the card.

JLPT1 is roughly 2000 kanji, right? So best case scenario for me, learning 2000 new kanji would take 1000 minutes (16 hours, 40 minutes) and reviewing them all would take 500 minutes (8 hours, 20 minutes) each time. Of course, it'll vary with each kanji. I'm never going to review 一, but some of those 20+ stroke beasts will take multiple times. I don't know, let's just say it averages out to 16 hours, 40 minutes of reviewing (review each kanji 2x).

So that's only 33 hours 20 minutes to learn the definitions and stroke order of 2000 kaniji. If you really have nothing else to do, it shouldn't take more than a week.

Now, for pronunciations, second/third/etc. definitions, combination definitions, grammar, and everything else, I have no idea. I would assume pronunciations would be roughly the same - another week. Going back through all the kanji to find other definitions Heisig didn't cover would probably take less than that. I have no clue on how long it would take to learn all the necessary combo kanji.

If you can do it for 5-6 hours a day, 90 days seems plausible to me.

Wow, you must be a slow learner.  I can learn 10 kanji per second and review them at 100 / second.  And this was while watching old reruns of Charles in Charge on TV Land.  So I figure preparing for 1-kyuu will take me roughly 3 hours and 17 minutes.

littletimmy wrote:

I love challenges, so I timed myself out of curiosity.

It took me a little over 9.5 minutes to learn 20 new kanji. Since some of them were pretty easy, I'll just say 10 minutes to make it easier. So about 2 kanji/minute.

Reviewing them, of course, was much faster. Exactly 300 seconds for those same 20 kanji. 4 kanji/minute with 95% success (we'll just say 100% because I'm lazy). I'm reviewing them by drawing them on a piece of paper before I flip over the card.

JLPT1 is roughly 2000 kanji, right? So best case scenario for me, learning 2000 new kanji would take 1000 minutes (16 hours, 40 minutes) and reviewing them all would take 500 minutes (8 hours, 20 minutes) each time. Of course, it'll vary with each kanji. I'm never going to review 一, but some of those 20+ stroke beasts will take multiple times. I don't know, let's just say it averages out to 16 hours, 40 minutes of reviewing (review each kanji 2x).

So that's only 33 hours 20 minutes to learn the definitions and stroke order of 2000 kaniji. If you really have nothing else to do, it shouldn't take more than a week.

Now, for pronunciations, second/third/etc. definitions, combination definitions, grammar, and everything else, I have no idea. I would assume pronunciations would be roughly the same - another week. Going back through all the kanji to find other definitions Heisig didn't cover would probably take less than that. I have no clue on how long it would take to learn all the necessary combo kanji.

If you can do it for 5-6 hours a day, 90 days seems plausible to me.

I hope you realize that looking at a kanji =/= learning it. Spending 1 minute on each kanji won't help you pass a test. The amount of strokes is irrelevant, ALL kanji has to be reviewed several times or you won't retain anything. No human being can learn 2000 kanji in 33 hours and 20 minutes, not with any useful definition of the word learn at least.

vosmiura wrote:

@littletimmy: Just out of curiosity, how many kanji have you learned up to?

If you review using the Leitner system you'll review at intervals of around 1 day, 4 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months..., so within 3 months for 2000 kanji at 15 seconds per review you have 50 hours just of reviews, assuming you never make any mistakes.

Counting everything including learning + reviewing + making mistakes, in the neighborhood of 100 hours is more reasonable, and likely to increase significantly if you try to learn too much each day.

You can find out by looking at his profile page;
http://kanji.koohii.com/showprofile.php … ittletimmy

(280 kanji, 6 months)

Half the test is listening comprehension so... 
The only way to pass it in 3 months would be (as it is multiple choice) to use the ABACADABA magician method.

ahibba wrote:

littletimmy wrote:

If you can do it for 5-6 hours a day, 90 days seems plausible to me

Yes, it's very plausible.

Everyone agree that spoken Japanese is one of the easiest languages in the world phonetically and to some extent grammatically (e.g. few and easy consonants, five vowels only, no tones, no gender or singular/plural forms, two tenses only, etc.)

Many people become fluent in more difficult languages in 3 months only, so why not Japanese?

The only problem is the writing. But it's easy to learn how to write all the 2000 kanji in 1 to 3 months as Heisig himself says.

And if you learnt the spoken language first, and you have enough vocabualry, it's easy to learn the readings at the same time.

As for grammar, because I'm not an English native speaker, I can't say it's easy for you, but it's very easy to me at least. Japanese, and Altaic languages in general, has one of the most logical grammar system.

So I'd say ur superfluent native level now, right?

Last edited by Musashi (2009 June 26, 3:06 pm)

bodhisamaya wrote:

Half the test is listening comprehension so...

Where is the problem?

kyotokanji wrote:

I find that one of the difficulties of Japanese is that it only has five vowel sounds.A wider range of sounds makes words sound more unique It means that words quickly become very similar to each other.

Fortunately, my language has 3 long vowels and 3 short vowels only. Many Caucasian languages has few vowels, Abkhazian for example has 2 vowels only!

Musashi wrote:

So I'd say ur superfluent native level right

I haven't started learning yet!

In this thread, I'm talking about what is possible and what is not, and why.

ahibba wrote:

In this thread, I'm talking about what is possible and what is not, and why.

how about you stop thinking, start doing, and get back to us in 3 months?

ahibba wrote:

littletimmy wrote:

If you can do it for 5-6 hours a day, 90 days seems plausible to me

Yes, it's very plausible.

Everyone agree that spoken Japanese is one of the easiest languages in the world phonetically and to some extent grammatically (e.g. few and easy consonants, five vowels only, no tones, no gender or singular/plural forms, two tenses only, etc.)

Many people become fluent in more difficult languages in 3 months only, so why not Japanese?

The only problem is the writing. But it's easy to learn how to write all the 2000 kanji in 1 to 3 months as Heisig himself says.

And if you learnt the spoken language first, and you have enough vocabualry, it's easy to learn the readings at the same time.

As for grammar, because I'm not an English native speaker, I can't say it's easy for you, but it's very easy to me at least. Japanese, and Altaic languages in general, has one of the most logical grammar system.

I used to believe all these claims on the simplicity of Japanese. If you're going for basic conversational fluency, yes, grammar and few sounds help, however, once you get deeper into learning the language, these things become their own little slices of hell.

To give an exaggerated example こうこうここここう WTF

Some more realistic examples: かいだん、だんかい、がいがん、がんかい、たいこ、こたい、こうたい、たいこう、がんたい、たいかい、がいこう、こうかい.

(@_@)

I think there are over 200 kanji with the reading こう. Some have similar meaning, but a lot don't.

I thought I was cool the first time I said　しなければならない. Then, while watching a show, I heard ならない all by itself and I asked myself, "where's the なければ.....you can do that?" I still don't know what a のみ is even after looking it up several times (might have to mine for many sentences with it). I only found out about the existence of のみ about a week ago, though, lol. Why's that funny? Check my join date.

Ga/ha is more than sometimes painful. 僕が幸治が犯人だと思うって事は嘘だ. Is that right?

kazelee wrote:

Ga/ha is more than sometimes painful. 僕が幸治が犯人だと思うって事は嘘だ. Is that right?

Is it grammatically correct or not? Who knows. It doesn't sound natural though, and that's the main problem. A Japanese person would probably not express themselves like that. What is the subject, 僕 or 幸治? In all probability, something like 僕が幸治のことを犯罪人と思ってる事は嘘だよ would sound better.

Tobberoth wrote:

kazelee wrote:

Ga/ha is more than sometimes painful. 僕が幸治が犯人だと思うって事は嘘だ. Is that right?

Is it grammatically correct or not? Who knows. It doesn't sound natural though, and that's the main problem. A Japanese person would probably not express themselves like that. What is the subject, 僕 or 幸治? In all probability, something like 僕が幸治のことを犯罪人と思ってる事は嘘だよ would sound better.

Of course it doesn't sound natural. I wasn't even sure if I were using the particles correctly. やっぱり

Thanks for the more natural example though .

Wait a minute how/why the hell does　幸治のこと take を?

kazelee wrote:

To give an exaggerated example こうこうここここう WTF

Isn't that the Japanese chicken sound? コキコッコウー