you could add the individual vocab words, and suspend the full sentence. then when you have reasonable knowledge of the vocab, you can unsuspend the full sentence.

i don't think anyone's a liar when they say they fully understand something. a lot of times they believe they understand it and then with some knowledge later, they can realize that they didn't fully understand it before.

vix86 wrote:

...if you were to quiz people on the street by reading them a passage and then asking them to paraphrase the meaning; they'd get it. But if you then go back and define some word like "antipathy" they might go "erm um...its like.." Yet they just paraphrased a passage where it was used.

That totally reminds me of this one time I was hanging out with my friend and, to test me, he hands me this Magic card entirely in Japanese and tells me to read it. I took like a whole minute going over it, barely piecing things together, until I summarized what the card does almost exactly. I was annoyed at my lack of total comprehension, but he was impressed that I figured it out. In his eyes I had read and understood the whole thing. And I don't even play Magic.

Tori-kun wrote:

I finished core6k and have learnt additionally about 4200 vocabularies I added with Rikai-chan up until now ever since January 2011. I cannot say I understand "almost everything" and what do you mean by understanding? Grasping single words, grammar and making sense of some sentences? Or understanding the whole plot line?

True understanding for me means that I get the finer point of a plot, the subtleties, and what the author left out, the implied meaning of sentences, and so on. This will come over time, for now I am happy when I understand large parts of something (whatever) in general.

Tori-kun wrote:

@Nagareboshi: It is greatly dependant on the type of anime you watch I think! Watch something like 'Arakawa under the Bridge' and you will be surprised how "bad" your Japanese is. The same counts for anime's that have a great amount of their own language like Naruto, Bleach or where there are longer dialogues (e.g. Detective Conan). I could understand 90% on the fly with the transcript, but not more. I hear occassional words, phrasings now, but that's about it. Anyway, just wondering how other users define their "understanding" or "not-understanding" when watching anime or shows.

Yes, the difficulty can vary greatly. From understanding very little, the general meaning, or almost everything without looking up words etc. It depends on the Anime, Show, Podcast, Drama, books, or websites.

For example in one Drama two housewifes were sitting around a table in the kitchen. They were talking about some thing or other, and one of started to talk about 粗大ごみ, which I thought was about large amounts of trash. Which is technically correct because that what the word means, but I wasn't aware of the other meaning, so it made little sense. The actual meaning was that she was ranting about her husband.

And I know what you mean by "bad" Japanese, which is a good indicator, that the material is too difficult right now. When I notice it, I come back to it some weeks later, and see if (whatever) has become easier. Meanwhile I keep sticking to other material that is a little less difficult but still above my level. My goal is to improve, and not to frustrate myself. Which would likely happen if I were to work with something very difficult, or way above my level, until my understanding of it reaches 100%. And considering the things I am reading, listening to, or watching at times, for instance 細胞生物学 which is cell biology (don't ask me why I read about such topics ... I don't know either :-D ) this would be a waste of time and effort. So first comes general understanding, and it will hopefully grow the more I actually learn on a broader basis.

vix86 wrote:

So finishing the 6k will put you near a middle schooler in vocabulary probably, but you still won't be anywhere near an adult's vocabulary or whats needed for the N1.

I'd say a junior higher schooler would have at least double that actually. 6k is more likely what a five year old has.

Regarding how long it takes to reach fluency (can understand most text and speech and express themselves fairly freely accross a range of topics with a decent but not perfect accent), I'd say 2-3 years is pretty respectable time for some who's reasonably consistent, maybe 1-2 years if you're a little more hardcore about it or have some previous experience (are chinese or Korean). the claims of 6 months or less come from people that are happy to call themselves fluent as soon as they are able to string together some original utterances regardless of how natural they are (ie. know basic sentence order, a couple of tenses, the words 'but' and 'because'). I've been truly amazed by the low level of some people claiming to be fluent in Japanese. As far as I'm concerned fluency includes decent comprehension too, and you're not going to have that with a passive vocabulary of only 6k.