Learning japanese, how long before watching unsubbed drama

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jozu
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Learning japanese, how long before watching unsubbed drama

Post by jozu » Oct 29th, '06, 01:10

For those who learned some japanese, I was wondering, how long did it took you to reach a level that allowed you to follow a standard drama ( to understand the plot & main scenes, and at least 50% of the dialogues ) 8) .

I am asking because I just had a look at the jlpt requirements and here is what I found :

- JLPT 4 : 150 hours of an elementary course ( 1 year ) =>
the basic elements of grammar, around 100 kanji and 800 words, has the ability to engage in a very simple conversation and read short, simple sentences.

- JLPT 3 : 300 hours ( completion of an elementary course = 2 years ) =>
around 300 kanji and 1,500 words, has the ability to take part in everyday conversation and read and write simple sentences

- JLPT 2 : 600 hours ( 3-4 years ) =>
around 1,000 kanji and 6,000 words, and has the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature

- JLPT 1 : minimum of 900 hours ( 6 years ) =>
2,000 kanji and 10,000 words, and has an integrated command of the language sufficient for life in Japanese society


Does this mean that between 300 to 400 hours would be sufficiant to start watching jdoramas without subs, or is it a bit to optimistic :roll ?

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maiboi7
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Post by maiboi7 » Oct 29th, '06, 01:37

It took me three years and I'm still learing. So I'd say 3 + years? My Japanese teachers says never. XD;;

I think learning Japanese (or any language) depends on exposure and vocabulary. The more you expose yourself and the more words you learn, the higher chance you'll be able to grasp the language. :)

Of course, nothing comes easily so it'll take a lot of effort and determination on your part before you can reach that stage. :)

6502inside
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Post by 6502inside » Oct 29th, '06, 06:16

For understanding roughly 50% of the dialogue I think your estimate of 300-400 hours is accurate. Of course it depends on how hard one works during those hours and also the particular drama.

chaos_seal
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Post by chaos_seal » Oct 29th, '06, 17:16

my friend need 1 year to study japanese an he can understand japanese from anime at least >60%

of course it all depend on you

what_is_the_matrix
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Post by what_is_the_matrix » Oct 29th, '06, 18:05

well I think it all depends on your aptitude for learning languages and the dramas that you watch. For instance, if you watch dramas targeted towards teens (for instance, Galcir) they tend to be easier to understand than a police, lawyer, or doctor drama, just because of the vocabulary. Most teen dramas use vocabularies that can be found in dictionaries (except for the slang), while of course lawyer and doctor dramas use very profession-specific language.

I've been studying japanese for what... over 3 years now, and watched dramas and variety shows the entire time. I'd say that I started watching raws from the start, although it's not as if I could understand any of it from the beginning. I think that I can watch a drama like "Teppan Shoujo Akane" (which just happens to be what I'm watching atm) and can understand maybe 70-80% of it. All I can say is to find a good japanese-english dictionary to fill in all the vocab that you don't know.

lanems
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Post by lanems » Oct 31st, '06, 04:07

I'd say 300 to 400 hours of watching and studying from dramas alone would give you a good understanding. Most of what you hear in a drama you won't hear in a classroom. However, taking a class with give you the grammar you most likely can't pick up on your own from simply watching tons and tons of dramas. However, you can't really just soak up Japanese by passively watching television.

I'm in Hong Kong and not able to study Japanese in a classroom, so I've been watching dramas and using them as listening practice. I leave the subtitles on to see if I actually understand what I am hearing, if I hear something I don't recognise I try to write it down and look up the word. A lot of times it won't be in the dictionary if it's too colloquial, so then I'll have to ask a friend if I heard the phrase correctly and what other contexts you can use the phrase. It helps to learn the usage of a lot of words so in a lot of ways it's better than memorizing lists of new vocabulary without having any kind of context in mind. After a while you recognise some really high frequency words and phrases and I think learning those are really important for your own daily communication.

I think a big problem for a lot of students of Japanese is that many people studying Japanese outside of Japan (and probably with the sole purpose of watching dramas, playing video games, or some other kind of hobby interest) learn from female teachers and end up speaking really feminine Japanese when they finally do try to speak the language. If you watch dramas with male leads you can learn how a male would say some phrases and really have a better model of Japanese usage (it'll be more colloquial and natural than the teacher-speak you get in the classroom).

I wouldn't recommend relying on dramas for your study, but I think if used right they can be a big help. The main bonuses of course being able to hear different styles of usage and colloquialisms that are fun to use. A big problem for Westerners studying Japanese is that if they don't have some kind of interest in the culture I think there won't be enough rewards from learning the language to justify all the effort and time it takes.

Finally, you can really pick up %50 percent of a drama/anime/variety show from the images alone, that means you don't really need to *know* Japanese to follow things. If you just want to understand a drama you probably won't need to push yourself to know every word, phrase, grunt, etc...

kaoken
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Post by kaoken » Oct 31st, '06, 04:22

Hi I'm currently taking japanese classes at my university for the sole purpose of watching anime and games etc. First off get that mentality out of your mind because if you are like me you'll try to watch an anime after learning a few words and then feel like giving up japanese because it's not helping. But other than that taking japanese is really fun, just don't expect too much.

ps:私は漢字が好きだよ!

6502inside
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Post by 6502inside » Oct 31st, '06, 07:16

many people studying Japanese outside of Japan learn from female teachers and end up speaking really feminine Japanese
Funny you should mention that. I had female teachers, but what's worse is that actresses are usually easier for me to understand than their male counterparts. To me some dramas sound like:
女優:「あたしはね、明日病院に行ってきます。」
男優:「別にmumblemumblemumbleじゃねぇよ。」
If I meet any Japanese speaking people around here I'm sure I'll have to be careful about my んだs versus のs and the like.

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Post by babakubo » Oct 31st, '06, 08:39

Man, I've been studying Japanese for 10 years, doing 3 years of Japanese in school, living 2 years in Japan, watched a bunch of jdramas, anime and movies and listened to a lot of jpop, and I still can barely understand anything without subtitles. >_< I think it really just depends on how good your memory is at absorbing stuff . . my memory is awful, maybe that's why I couldn't understand French after 10 years of study in school either no matter how hard I tried. :(

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maiboi7
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Post by maiboi7 » Oct 31st, '06, 17:13

6502inside wrote:
many people studying Japanese outside of Japan learn from female teachers and end up speaking really feminine Japanese
Funny you should mention that. I had female teachers, but what's worse is that actresses are usually easier for me to understand than their male counterparts. To me some dramas sound like:
女優:「あたしはね、明日病院に行ってきます。」
男優:「別にmumblemumblemumbleじゃねぇよ。」
If I meet any Japanese speaking people around here I'm sure I'll have to be careful about my んだs versus のs and the like.
My male Japanese teacher (who's not Japanese) says its safer for foreigners to learn polite language rather than colloquial because being too colloquial/slang can sound weird for native Japanese speaker especially if you're using 男語 (male speech).

But what you're both saying is true. It was the case for my teacher too! Thankfully it's not like that for me!

I still find it hard to differentiate between the two speeches myself. I guess I'll have to rewatch some of the dramas over again to see how people use it. Well, I'm still learning! :)

fearspooky
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Post by fearspooky » Oct 31st, '06, 17:21

well

i think you should learn basic japanese, fly over to japan and stay there for couple of months!

i know this one guy... he religiously studied japanese for 2 years and also used to stay in japan for quite a bit of time and he was super fluent in japanese.. i was pretty amazed. he understood everything i said to him.

but of course.. it all depends on how a person learns a language so..

oceansportrait
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Post by oceansportrait » Nov 1st, '06, 00:43

As someone mentioned before, it's MUCH easier to pick up Japanese if you actually go to the country and live there for a few years. The problem with learning Japanese outside of Japan is, most often you're in a classroom setting where you're just passively memorizing vocab from the textbook. Memorizing is great, you need to know the words to understand the language, but reading and listening comprehension are two completely different concepts.

Living in Japan makes it that much easier to learn the language because then, it becomes a matter of survival---you'e not going to get by speaking English unless you live in the bigger cities, and even then it's very inconvenient if you don't start picking up the language right away. Unlike if you live outside of Japan, where you can just shut the textbook and go on with your English-speaking life. Application is key to learning.

I think it's great that people starting out learning Japanese want to give it a shot at watching unsubbed dramas, listening to Japanese music, etc. But I end up cringing when I'm talking to someone in Japanese and realize he/she's picked up...well...very interesting vocabulary..from anime. Japanese dramas most of the time are in colloquial Japanese, how they speak everyday. Anime on the otherhand, can just abuse the hell out of the language. So you should never, in my opinion, try to learn Japanese from watching anime.

fearspooky
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Post by fearspooky » Nov 1st, '06, 04:03

oceansportrait wrote:As someone mentioned before, it's MUCH easier to pick up Japanese if you actually go to the country and live there for a few years. The problem with learning Japanese outside of Japan is, most often you're in a classroom setting where you're just passively memorizing vocab from the textbook. Memorizing is great, you need to know the words to understand the language, but reading and listening comprehension are two completely different concepts.

Living in Japan makes it that much easier to learn the language because then, it becomes a matter of survival---you'e not going to get by speaking English unless you live in the bigger cities, and even then it's very inconvenient if you don't start picking up the language right away. Unlike if you live outside of Japan, where you can just shut the textbook and go on with your English-speaking life. Application is key to learning.

I think it's great that people starting out learning Japanese want to give it a shot at watching unsubbed dramas, listening to Japanese music, etc. But I end up cringing when I'm talking to someone in Japanese and realize he/she's picked up...well...very interesting vocabulary..from anime. Japanese dramas most of the time are in colloquial Japanese, how they speak everyday. Anime on the otherhand, can just abuse the hell out of the language. So you should never, in my opinion, try to learn Japanese from watching anime.
i totally agree. my sister who used to be fluent in japanese when she was young, cant really speak it now. she went to japan with my mom 2 years ago and in just 3 weeks, she got her japanese back because she had nobody to talk to in english.

i think its the same concept. you have to pretty much be "forced" to speak it and then your mind will slowly transition to of that language.

i also agree that you shouldnt learn japanese from anime. very baaaad idea. drama is a much better way to learn it.

the reason in learning japanese shouldnt be limited to understanding anime or drama. it should be something bigger, like.. food, culture, or just for the language. otherwise.. people should just stick to reading subtitles.

Raeyl
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Post by Raeyl » Nov 12th, '06, 03:08

If you're a girl learning from anime and watch shounen you'll end up picking the male speech instead, and when you do speak to a native Japanese, they'll think you're a tad too impolite.

But if you decide to go overseas I think it's best not to pick a place too far from the big cities and end up having a rural accent, especially if you don't know the standard form (or Tokyo standard) that well. I went for a few months for fun and ended up picking up Osaka-ben and my teacher found it very amusing.

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Post by ckamc » Nov 15th, '06, 09:42

I have been watching anime/drama's for the past three years and I am now able to look every here and there at the subs for words that I am not too familiar with. It would be a lot easier if my friends were japanese however many of them are chinese/taiwanese and korean so it does very little in helping me.

japanese is going to be my third language, my second is spanish due to my background/family. I dont do so well with it as I rarely speak it but when the time does arise... I pick it back up within a day or two... quite helpful when we make trips down to mexico.

environment is probably the key in succeeding with any of these languages, I bet if I took some classes along with my daily watching of japanese shows I may be able to take a trip over there and enjoy it quite a bit and maybe get lost in the language for the first few days before becoming fluent in it. its all in the ears ;-)

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Post by rikki » Nov 21st, '06, 06:39

I know what people mean when you stay in a country for a long period that you pick up the language and turn out fluent in no time. My friend only went there for a year not knowing Japanese at all, and ended up being fluent after only 3 months... He had a little trouble in their school not understanding Kanji too well (He decided to attend the school his Japanese Friend was attending) but was able to pass some classes.
Also my other friend came over from South Korea to here not knowing any english at all and slowly after a year, still had a little trouble, learnt it well.
I've been learning both Japanese and Korean lightly thru Dramas, music, the odd anime here and there, and the Textbooks and study periods. My Japanese is good enough to understand around 50% of Dramas that I decide to watch (Japanese) and very little Korean when I watch K-Dramas. Next year I am picking up a Bachelor of Arts in Applied Linguistics and Languages and specialising in Japanese and Korean. I decided I should take a head start during the break now to learn 1st Year Elementary Kanji and try and get a start on 2nd Year Elementary Kanji before the new semester starts. At least Han'gul is a dream to learn. :lol

megatokyo23
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Re: Learning japanese, how long before watching unsubbed d

Post by megatokyo23 » Nov 21st, '06, 07:37

estimates for how long it takes to master a given level of japanese proficiency will vary.
a lot depends on the individual and their learning environment.

i met a lot of foreigners in japan who'd lived there for years and NEVER learned to speak japanese properly, if at all! it's remarkably easy to get by in tokyo day-to-day with little or no japanese, after the initial shock. train signs are bilingual, metro stations are numbers, menus have pictures, and store clerks are surprisingly accomodating... not to mention the number of gaijin bars where expats hang out. even j-phone/vodafone offers english-language mobile phones & counter service. so if you're too scared to TRY and speak japanese, nobody's going to make you practice, and it's easy to become disheartened when nobody understands what you're (trying) to say.

so how did all these foreigners not learn japanese after spending years there, while others have?

i think it comes down to two things:
(i) confidence ... don't worry about how awful you sound, but smile
(ii) persistence ... keep trying to learn japanese despite frustrations/setbacks

whatever the environment (work, school, restaurant), your confidence shapes your perception of that environment. and you'll need persistence to keep going when you stumble... or to follow-through when those learning opportunities arise. japanese often respect "best effort" despite the outcome, and they appreciate it when you put in effort to do something first rather than just drop it in their laps.
...well, unless you have the tennis coach from "ace wo nerae!" :crazy:


--mt23--

rika-ika
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Post by rika-ika » Nov 22nd, '06, 10:25

I started to study japanese in Oct. last year and first time I could watch drama without subtitle was in may, I think (first time I tried, because no further subtitle for the drama i´ve been watching).
About not learning japanese, when being in japan. I ´ve been in japan (only for 14 days) but when I asked somebody to take a picture of my friend and me, I got an english answer! Same with the exchange students here at my university, they only speak german or english, we try to speak japanese, but they simply won´t.
Another story, the town where i life is a little famous and many japanese visit everyday. when i saw one looking really lost (you now, turning around, looking at the map, turning the map around for sometime) and asked him, if I could help him to find his way. The answer was: "No no no", then he went away.

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Post by hikkichan » Nov 23rd, '06, 09:46

It all depends... I aced Japanese all 4 years in High School... minored in Japanese in college... aced all of those classes... and I've been in Japan for years... but, I'm nowhere near fluent... I can get by, I can understand around 50% of television shows... my ears are keen to picking up Japanese, as well... but, my vocabulary has dwindled over the years...

So... while my reading gets better from Television... my vocab is dying a slow and lonely death...

I've pretty much accepted the fact that I'll never become fluent.

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Post by mizune » Nov 23rd, '06, 19:43

hikkichan wrote:...and I've been in Japan for years... but, I'm nowhere near fluent... I can get by, I can understand around 50% of television shows... my ears are keen to picking up Japanese, as well... but, my vocabulary has dwindled over the years...

So... while my reading gets better from Television... my vocab is dying a slow and lonely death...

I've pretty much accepted the fact that I'll never become fluent.
This is pretty much exactly what my brother says after living in the Tohoku area, which isn't quite as populated with foreigners as the major metropolitan areas, for several years now... Except he also says his reading has gone completely downhill as well :fear:...
There's definitely a plateau you will reach unless you are really consciously working hard to reach fluency. But just because you aren't fluent doesn't mean you can't communicate (and vice versa :lol), so...

For TV shows, I find it really depends on the show... I find my comprehension can swing wildly from about 20% - 90% depending on the subject matter... So, meh...

Fluency in Japanese?
Heck, I have enough problems with English, and I grew up speaking that... :roll

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Post by gameday » Dec 21st, '06, 07:33

My experience in Japan learning Japanese seems different from many of the peoples' listed above. I came with somewhere around...0 Japanese, and after 8 months I was pretty set watching most dorama, understanding about 70%. Now, a year in America studying only microbiology just about killed that. I've been back 4 months and I'm starting to feel a lot more confident again.

It all comes down to how much you want it. I study about 6 hours a day, so take that for what it's worth. My recommendation? Pick a theme you like, medical dorama, sports, whatver, then watch a bunch of them in that genre, with your dictionary out. Make flashcards, read the manga. The vocabulary will overlap and after not too long you'll have it.

Keymaker
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Post by Keymaker » Dec 21st, '06, 07:41

From my experiences with people on this subject, if you have to ask what it takes to learn Japanese, you're probably not serious enough to learn the language. People serious enough to want to learn the language would already be doing it.

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Post by nhk9 » Dec 27th, '06, 06:37

Keymaker wrote:From my experiences with people on this subject, if you have to ask what it takes to learn Japanese, you're probably not serious enough to learn the language. People serious enough to want to learn the language would already be doing it.
I am sure that these people just want to know how much investment/time it would take for them to be fluent at a language. Afterall, it is a huge investment.

Japanese is a rather unique language in that even those with many hours of study are not nearly as fluent as native speakers. While after learning English for a couple of years most people can understand what is being said on ER, the same cannot be said for Japanese. One reason is that in Japanese there are many homonyms (words that sound the same but with different meanings, such as sea/see). Another reason is that there are many common specific words/phrases whose meanings cannot be guessed simply by hearing or looking at the hiragana. For example while the words for "month of May" is "gogatsu" and "rain" is "ame", a word in the middle school curriculum for "rain in May" is actually "samidare"... So unless you know what a samidare is (and most natives do know, to my knowledge), you will be at a lost trying to understand the rest of the sentence... (Yes it's a rather extreme example, but you can see the point... some of these are called "ateji")

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Post by getsuga » Dec 27th, '06, 07:44

Just some info from an article I recently read, there are those hyper polyglot people who can learn japanese in mere weeks...., and some of them can speak more than 70 language

Keymaker
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Post by Keymaker » Dec 27th, '06, 08:27

nhk9 wrote:Japanese is a rather unique language in that even those with many hours of study are not nearly as fluent as native speakers. While after learning English for a couple of years most people can understand what is being said on ER, the same cannot be said for Japanese.
Well, I don't think that a couple of years would be true for ER. Friends would be a more accurate example since the English spoken for that series isn't term specific and also more commonly used.

I believe that it's as equally difficult for a native Japanese speaker to learn English as it is for a native English speaker to learn Japanese. We take English for granted as being easy, but English is an incredibly difficult language itself. The difficulties inherent in Japanese isn't really too difficult relative to other East Asian languages. That's not to say that Japanese is easy, heh. I agree that it's a difficult language for Westerners to learn. I believe that the language isn't too difficult for Koreans or Chinese, for example.

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Post by nhk9 » Dec 27th, '06, 08:44

You are right maybe I shouldn't said ER, since afterall there are quite a few specific terms used. Friends on the other hand though, has characters that speak faster than normal? Maybe people in New York or something speak like that but since I haven't lived near that region before it just seems to me that they like to speak fairly quickly, or at least quicker than the English that you hear on CNN or BBC

Yes English is not easy, especially the pronunciation. Actually many people can't spell or pronounce correctly the word pronunciation. Yet on the other side the streamlined grammar is good news for learners. Learners of English have the benefit of much exposure to English pretty much worldwide, so it's more a matter of time before one can start to speak some meaningful English.

As for learning Japanese, Koreans and Chinese do have a huge advantage, but probably not greater than the advantage of Germans etc. learning English though. While Japanese grammar is not particularly difficult and Kanjis are not huge obstacles to the Chinese/Koreans, speaking like a native is another matter. Too often you hear people say that they hear foreigners speaking kirei (polite, beautiful) Japanese, but also that their Japanese are too katakurushii (stiff). It's not too difficult in telling who is the educated Chinese learning Japanese, and who is the native speaking Japanese.

lordViN
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Post by lordViN » Dec 27th, '06, 08:48

I've been studying Japanese for over 3 years and there's one year left to finish the "basic" level that is enough to aprove the JLPT 3. but is only a basic level, there's an Intermediate level and advanced level. here in my country it reaches only to the basic level, if I want to continue studying Japanese I will have to be on my own.

I understand like a 25% of the shows(dramas, anime, etc) and I find very difficult to speak japanese, I think I dont have enough confidence yet.
I'm planning going to japan in the future to master my japanese because is the only effective way to learn.

Keymaker
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Post by Keymaker » Dec 27th, '06, 10:43

nhk9 wrote:As for learning Japanese, Koreans and Chinese do have a huge advantage, but probably not greater than the advantage of Germans etc. learning English though. While Japanese grammar is not particularly difficult and Kanjis are not huge obstacles to the Chinese/Koreans, speaking like a native is another matter. Too often you hear people say that they hear foreigners speaking kirei (polite, beautiful) Japanese, but also that their Japanese are too katakurushii (stiff). It's not too difficult in telling who is the educated Chinese learning Japanese, and who is the native speaking Japanese.
Excellent points. It is very true that in what you said that in terms of scale, it's definitely easier for a native English speaker to learn another European language than it is for a native East Asian non-Japanese language speaker to learn Japanese.

I don't recall exactly what the dialogue speed of Friends is off the top of my head, since I haven't seen that show in years. I only brought it up because that's what my Japanese and Taiwanese classmates are watching to keep their English from getting worse, heh. They say that Friends is what they recommend in school to better their English.

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Post by Eziya Minamoto » Dec 28th, '06, 01:46

It really depends on how a person is able to absorb information. It also depends on the determination a person has to learn Japanese. I've been trying to learn for about 2 years, but things keep getting in the way. However, I expose myself to plenty of Japanese entertainment, so it makes picking up the language easier. I've also noticed that music is an easy way to pick up a language.

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Post by Prince of Moles » Dec 28th, '06, 07:52

The key to learning any language is in memorizing the vocabulary. The grammer is usually not the limiting factor, especially since people break grammatical rules when speaking anyway.

Considering that an average speaker of English knows at least 40,000 words (the English language has at least 500,000 words) and the average speaker of Japanese probably knows more (simply from knowing an ideographic script like Kanji) the big question for most people learning a language becomes how quickly you memorize and retain words.

As someone who happens to be fluent in Japanese and English because of family circumstances (I moved between the US and Japan when I was a child), I salute all of you who are taking up this task of learning Japanese. Ganba!

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Post by chochajin » Feb 4th, '07, 12:10

I´ve started to learn Japanese in 2002, but I still can´t understand dramas without subtitles and I guess it´ll take another 10 years until I´ll be able to x___X ....
But I did not constantly learn from that time until now !!!
It was at my university, but only a language course and because I had my hands full with other stuff I really did not enough for my Japanese studies and .. yesh that´s what I get now (T__T) *sigh*

I would say that I´m currently between Level 4 and 3 :scratch:

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Post by aatm » Feb 5th, '07, 00:27

I'm in the middle of my second semester of learning japanese, and out of all the raws for hyd2 that have come out, i'd say that i understood ep 5 the best...so at least i can tell that i'm making some progress. but all the advice here has been right on. total immersion is the very best way to learn a language. when it's a necessity, it'll come quicker than if you're learning just because you want/have to. learning from least to most goes like so:

have to --> want to --> need to.

今日本語を勉強したい。 それから、大学で勉強しています。

obviously, i'm not progressing along as quickly as I could be if I were to go to Japan, but I'm trying as hard as i can to immerse myself in it. listening to japanese music, watching dramas, emailing my japanese friends, taking my class - it all helps, but unless you immerse yourself, then it'll take a while.

another thing that i personally need to work on, is speaking japanese the way japanese people speak it, and not how i would say things in english. until i learn more i think that will definately be an ongoing problem.

most importantly though, don't get discouraged or frustrated or say that you can't do it. don't give up. it takes time, but you'll do much better if you are optomistic about it.

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