With constant reinforcement of vocab and basic grammar, I imagine one month is enough to be able to communicate on a basic level. Words you need are: right, left, eat, drink, thank you, please, train, bas, taxi, etc.

A level of literacy (speaking, listening, reading and writing-wise) of a native person attending a college (or even primary school) is a completely different matter.

turvy wrote:

Ok, "communicate at a basic level" was pretty vague or even misleading. These people communicate very well and can produce complex sentences that take me at least 5 to 10 seconds to decode if I read them.

These people have 0 reading skills but their speaking is outstanding, yet they don't really consume much Japanese media.

Well then they are lying if what I call complex and you call complex is the same thing.  If they weren't studying and weren't being exposed to it all that much then they weren't producing complex Japanese in under 2 years.  I'm also gathering that you didn't actually know these people after they had only been here for 2 years and this it simply what they are telling you now correct?

I'm assuming that those people are from the same (Western) country as you? Because speakers of languages more related to Japanese, either through vocabulary (e.g. Chinese) or sentence structure (e.g. Mongolian) or both (e.g. Korean), have an obvious advantage. I definitely can imagine Korean speakers picking up Japanese without much concious effort.

Also it could be that the situation you saw them using their Japanese in was one that they were comfortable with, e.g. introducing themselves or something. In such a situation you can have complex sentences 'ready-made'. A real test is if they would be speaking about something completely new or complex.

And of course there are language experts, although I can't imagine how they would become proficient without a lot of practice. Perhaps they had some really helpful wives or something.

Last edited by kame3 (2012 April 03, 6:35 am)

I think they get the Japanese women who actually know a fair about of English already. Otherwise I guess it probably depends a lot how well you deal with language barriers.

I've thought about it before and I'm not sure I could do it; be with someone who didn't fully understand my language, and whose language I didn't fully understand. I guess I put a lot of emphasis on being able to express myself coherently and be understood perfectly in a relationship that I feel like it wouldn't be possible to maintain the relationship if we both weren't fluent in at least one mutual language.

But I know people who have done it just fine. It's just... not for me.

I remember one friend was with a guy who kept calling cows unicorns or something because he honestly thought that's what the word was, and he felt like an idiot when she pointed it out to him. #randomstory

In my opinion, and perhaps slightly off topic, other people's Japanese always seems way better than your own even if they are only ever so slightly 'ahead of you' in their learning. For me, Japanese is one of those things I just can't guess at, and if I don't know what someone is saying, I just don't know. Even if they only just got 'one chapter' ahead of me in my imaginary Japanese textbook they seem like some kind of genius to me.

My parents didn't speak each other's language when they first met, and neither of them took any formal classes after that - they just learned from each other and from their respective environments (and later, to some extent, from us ). Obviously, I don't know how far along their language skills were two years after they met, but now they both speak the other language completely fluently (albeit with a bit of an accent).

Exposure  is a really powerful way of learning - it's the way we learn our first language after all, so it comes naturally to us. It takes time and the right environment though, which is tricky. Textbooks etc. save some time by making use of our grown-up brains (for instance, by teaching us a general grammatical rule, which saves us the trouble of learning it implicitly through countless examples).

Another advantage from learning through exposure is that you get most practise with the things you use most, so you get to make faster progress in those areas that are most relevant to your daily life. (As a counter example, I learned English the other way, with non-native teachers and textbooks. After 8 years, I thought my English was actually quite good.  That is, until I visited a British supermarket and noticed I didn't know the names of half the things in the fruit and veg aisle ...)

Yes, some people have a talent for languages. However, learning a language after living in the country for years has nothing to do with talent. This is something every human being can do, even the less-mentally-endowed.

I would also wonder if the folks you've met in Japan know any other languages, or rather learned two languages growing up?  A child who's raised in a bilingual house will most likely learn both languages, and learning two languages while very young makes it easier to master others at an older age.

I could be wrong tho.  I just read that somewhere... :p

Merocor wrote:

I would also wonder if the folks you've met in Japan know any other languages, or rather learned two languages growing up?  A child who's raised in a bilingual house will most likely learn both languages, and learning two languages while very young makes it easier to master others at an older age.

I could be wrong tho.  I just read that somewhere... :p

I think that's more of a common belief spread by various concerned mothers who want the best for their kids and are enrolling them in as many things as possible. Being bilingual certainly has its benefits(it's always good to be fluent in another language), but it doesn't make future languages any easier. In fact, it makes learning a new language even more frustrating because you're all "haha, this will be easy I mean I learned a foreign language without even trying" and once you have to actually LEARN it you get stumped.

I studied Japanese for two years and I was able to "communicate at a basic" level after about a year of formal study.

I finally started formulating my own creative sentances (talking without using memorized phrases) comfortably after about 2 years. Ever since the two year mark, it has been a slow climb upward, but my Japanese has never improved so much as it has than in my first two years.

I guess learning a language is like an instrument. Its easy to pick up, but hard to master.

On that note, with my 6 years of experience learning Japanese, I can honstly say that some people ARE better at learning languages. Its just like some people are better than others at learning instruments.

I myself had to put A LOT of effort into learning Japanese, and I do not consider myself to be in the category of someone who is good at learning langauges. I just put the time in, did the studying, talked with the people, and now I am sure that if I met me when I was 6 years younger, I would be super impressed.

Don't give up, and remember that hard work compensates for a lack of ability~!

I'd wager that the anglosphere members of this board make slower progress on average. Most (monolingual) native english speakers just don't 'get it' at first, for lack of a better description.

maybe we could do a poll or something...

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 April 12, 7:04 am)

(Potential derail incoming )
Americans definitely suffer in the "don't get it" category, but outside America I was always under the impression that in the UK there was a bit more L2 study going on and from an earlier age than in America. I suppose Aussies (and Kiwis?) might suffer same as American's though. The more I listen to my friends from Australia the more their country sounds like some crazy offshoot of America.