Hello world, I'm still terrible at Japanese even though I've lived in Japan for five years
So if you're looking for advice on how to succeed at learning, don't look at me.
At five years old, my niece had me beat when it came to speaking Japanese, even though I had been in the country for that number of years
Although not to brag or anything, but I can totally blow her out of the water when it comes to reading. Kanji. Yep
I'm like a third or fourth grader in that department. Just don't ask me to write it
what I have learned to master is failing so I can provide some good help on what not to do and
Despite all my ineptitude,
I have found a couple things that have worked for me, which I'll share at the end
but for now
Let's talk about why I still suck at Japanese after five years of living in Japan
As an English speaker, Japanese is hard
Let's travel back to a couple years ago sucking at Japanese sucked
It was such a downer. Can't read the newspaper to find out that it's hot in the summer
Can't read the ingredients to find out what's in my Onigiri
Can't read these magazines. Everything's so blurry. I'd try to study an hour a day, but I still sucked
But it stopped sucking so much once I did a little internet research
And discovered that the British had found out the reason for my woes
The estimated kept for a foreigner to learn basic English that would take them 360 hours
I had studied Japanese hours that much, but for Japanese it was
1,000
Oh, I hadn't studied that much. So that was a kick in the butt the brain I felt winded for a moment
But once I recovered I realized I wasn't running a 10k but instead a marathon and you know
I only made the running analogy so that I could reuse this running footage. I labored so hard to capture
I mean just listen to the panting
So I was sitting here at my computer trying to find this 1000 hours study to provide evidence for all of you
But I couldn't find it instead what I found is that you need
2200 hours of study to become proficient
Yeah
there are 4 categories of difficulty: Category 1 languages that are more similar to English and it's 600 to
750 class hours to gain professional working proficiency, then there's Category 2, Category 3 and then Category 4
2200 class hours, which they label super hard languages
Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. On the one hand, this is great for my ego
I mean, it's not my fault. I suck. It takes 2200 hours. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Yet, that doesn't change the fact that my Japanese language
Marathon just got upgraded to ultra and yes ultra marathons do exist
They're 100 kilometer affair that appealed to the running masochists at heart now now I know what you're saying.
Hey Mr. White sounding Mexican guy. You have to read the fine print. Okay, that's true. De acuerdo, eso es verdad.
The 1000 hours was to be basic. The 2200 hours was to reach a professional working proficiency.
It is assumed that the student has above-average aptitude for classroom learning of foreign languages
Lower aptitude language learners who will typically take longer.
Oh, but come on what sham sources is
2200 hours of study coming from? It turns out it's from the US Department of State's foreign service institute school of language studies
Which I like to call the USDSFSISLS.
The instructional program reflects 70 years of experience in teaching language to US diplomats
I know there's a lot of fake news in the US. As your president so kind of reminds me
And fortunately we tend to record stories now so we have it for your enjoyment if you'd like it, but we record when we deal with reporters
It's called fake news Thank You. Mr. President. So knowing this I searched harder on the Internet
And found this guy and he says I could have been fluent in three months
So I must be doing something wrong because I could have been speaking just like this
Nihon no Shuumatsu e Youkoso (Welcome to the weekend in Japan)
Nikka ketsu kan (In the past two months)
Skaippu de (using Skype),
Hanasedeshita Ga, Kyou wa Hajimete (to practice speaking Japanese. Today for the first time)
Hajimete, nihongo (.. first time, I..)
Chakkusetsu desu ( ???? Japanese)
Now to be fair
He said he didn't get to study the entire three months because he got real sick and then he was busy on his book deal
On learning languages in three months. So this is only his two months progress
He was initially aiming for N2+ on the Japanese language proficiency test
But then he found out it had no spoken component and reasoned
It doesn't measure language scales to a good enough level to work for him
But he was still aiming for a B2+ on the CEFRL scale
This would mean that he would have been able to
Interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible. I think he got pretty close. So
Sumimasen me nihongo (Sorry is there anyone..)
Hanase Hito ga Imasuka (who can speak Japanese here?)
Okay, so I got a little sidetracked, where were we. Oh yes, why is Japanese hard?
Let's start with the Japanese writing systems. There are three writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji
Hiragana is not so bad. It has 46 base characters and the same can be said for Katakana
So that's 92 characters to learn versus the 26 in English. So it's only like three times as much. No biggie
And then there's Kanji. It's from China and they've gotten many thousands of these characters which are a bit more complicated
But you know what despite there being over 50,000 of them. There's a set called Jouyou Kanji, or regular Chinese characters
There are only number of 2136. It only takes the Japanese child until graduating high school to learn them all
But of course there's a hack for it. It only takes a smart person 97 days
Okay, so it's gotten a little bit shady here. So let me try being straight up for a bit
Japanese grammar is both difficult and not I'm told it makes much more sense than English grammar
But if you're already a fluent English speaker, Japanese grammar is all backwards
So if in English I wanted to say would you like to eat pizza in Japanese?
I would say "Anata wa Piza wo Tabetai Desuka"
Which is like "You Pizza eat". Except Japanese people wouldn't say that. My family would be more like "Piza Taberu?"
Which is "Pizza eat?" I admire the simplicity
But if it was a waiter asking me they would say
"Piza wa Ikaga Desuka?", which translates to "Pizza like to have?"
There's no "you" in the sentence because both you and the waiter know who he's talking to
So why say it but the "desuka" is that it
Because that's the polite way to do it and the waiter is below you. You see Japanese is very contextual
Meaning there's a lot of things you should just know and be aware of and you need to know how to say things
Honorific speech (Keigo) falls under three main categories: Sonkeigo (Respectful Language),
Kenjougo (Humble Language) and Teineigo (Polite Language). I know what you're thinking
What's the difference between respectful humble and polite language?
You got me, but if you want a crash course and feeling like you're set up to fail the subtleties of the Japanese language
Scroll through the Wikipedia page. Be my guest... be my guest... because you also learn about Teichougo (Courteous Language)
and Bikago (Word Beautification) and that's not to mention Tamego, which means same age language
Which is how kids would speak and how you talk to those close to you in life like friends and family
This is the type of language. I generally pick up because that's who I talk to most.
Shouko, Keiki wa Doudesuka? (How's the cake, Shouko?)
Oishii. (Delicious). Oishii honto? (oh really?)
So when talking with people outside the group I sound like an impolite
Disrespectful and egotistical child. Speaking of children by the time a kid is in elementary school
They know about 5000 words. No wonder why at 5, my niece trounced me at speaking Japanese
I probably knew half the word she did. Learning Japanese is two steps forward one step back
There are things in life where progress doesn't regress like running a marathon
When you're running even if you get tired and stopped to have a drink of water
You don't end up further from the finish line. You're merely standing still
in fact
once you're refreshed you'll have more ability to get to that finish line and
There are some skills that don't tend to go away
Even if you've learned it a long time ago
Like bike riding. You cannot ride a bike for a decade and be back in the saddle again in a matter of minutes
There are even some languages that you can get basic competency in within a matter of days like HTML which stands for hypertext markup language
Which you can use to display a basic website
But with the Japanese language if I stop studying for a month
I have to review a few previous chapters before I could start off where I left off. Bro, you're doing Japanese wrong
Despite all my talk about how hard it is to learn Japanese
The big elephant in the room is that I suck because I'm doing it wrong
Sure, you can wash greasy dishes with cold water and eventually get the job kind of done
But if I had used a drop of dawn, maybe my language problems would have been gone
I've made so many mistakes, but let me share a few with you today
I didn't properly learn Katakana and Hiragana right away. Those are the two basic Japanese writing systems. Remember?
It's like trying to read English without knowing what some of the letters in the alphabet are
Even though the Hiragana syllabary contains 46 monographs and pronunciation is straightforward as it's a phonetic lettering system
Unlike English: Ka-nite
Nigit. Nite.
There are also 21 digraphs 25 diacritics and 15 digraphs with diacritics
Now the thing is you can't get very far with only Hiragana and Katakana. You also need Kanji
Before I used to think why not get rid of the complicated Kanji and stick to a single writing system like Hiragana
The problem is that Japanese writing doesn't use spaces. So it's kind of like trying to read this sentence right now
It can be done, but it's kind of hard to read, isn't it?
This is what reading Hiragana and Katakana is like when you're not using Kanji. Very hard to read especially when your lack of vocabulary
Means you don't know where one word ends and the other starts
So yeah learning Kanji is necessary because it makes reading sentences without wanting to tear your eyes out possible
And of course, it's something I've avoided doing for way too long, unfortunately
Like English words Kanji can be read in multiple ways
Making Japanese super super hard Japanese is super hard. But like I like extreme sports
So I thought like let's make it super super hard
The best way I found was to avoid making mistakes
Especially when speaking and the best way to do that is to not speak at all
think about it: if you're gonna kick it up a notch on a difficulty scale not speaking a language is
Lit pro tip - another
Hundo P way to make language learning super super hard is to have a brain that's not wired to do so
French and English were my worst subjects in school. In fact, the only course I've ever failed in my entire life
Who is Japanese 102.
Whether what that study suggests will be scientifically proven
The fact is I don't generally enjoy studying languages whether it's English, French or Japanese
And anyone will tell you it's much harder learning something new when you'd rather be doing something else. Let me give you the down-low
despite everything I've said before my honest answer for why I still suck at Japanese is
Because I don't need to be good at it
It's not something I'm proud of. It's just more a matter of what my current reality is
I work from home and it's almost all in English
the most difficult thing I have to deal with in life in
Japanese is probably the government or the doctor and my wife can and does step in to help when needed
Raising bilingual kids is also non-intuitively a detriment to my learning (of) Japanese
I speak to them in English so that they could continue to learn the language
(Shin) I don't know to say it, but it's like if you want it to put on something on it.
That takes to potential language learning partners out of the equation for me
And then there's my wife you'd think she'd make a great Japanese language learning partner being a native
Japanese speaking person and all
But consider this I'm stuck at home all day all by my lonesome
I don't talk to anybody else and so my wife comes home and
I just want to connect really that's that's what I want to do
I want to connect and the easiest way for me to do that is in English and
That's what we default to. While pondering in my terrible Japanese given the number of years I've lived in Japan
I came up with a list of priorities and it was easy to find out why
Mine were,
Family, work, health, household duties, gotta cut that grease, kids English education, Japanese
but I still want to learn Japanese. I want to understand the country I call home better
I've tried many tools a lot of them. I'd recommend like japanesepod101.com
Genki books, Thai Kim's grammar guide, Onki SRS, NHK easy news and Rekaikun
I think they all work when used consistently
But my biggest problem has always been keeping track of my progress and knowing where to start when I fall in behind.
That and fear of failure. Out of all those things I've managed to stick to two. The first is Wanikani
It helps me recognize and pronounce Kanji. I use it because it keeps track of my progress
Teaches me in a structured way and I can do it anywhere at anytime as long as I have an internet connection
It doesn't teach you how to write Kanji, nor does it teach you how to spontaneously use the words in a conversation?
It's not some silver bullet
However, I can now read Kanji at the fourth grade level if I'm being generous with myself. - "Senior?"
Now, the second is Pimsleur Japanese
The main part of Pimsleur is the graduated interval recall of speaking Japanese or in other words
The program gets you to think and speak in Japanese in a matter that lets you remember stuff
(Machine and Greg) Kikoemasen deshita (I did not catch that)
(Machine) Your neighbor says, he said he'll be arriving at 330
(Greg and Machine) Sanji-han ni Tsuku to Iimashita (He says he'll arrive at 330)
What it's helping me with the most it's getting over my fear of speaking as it makes me do it over and over and over
(Machine) You say that the daughter lives in Kyoto?
(Greg and Machine) Musume wa Kyouto ni Sundeimasu (My daughter currently lives in Kyoto)
Even if I get it wrong half the time.
Sanjikan (no? / ni?) Tsuku to Iimashita
A tip I learned about Pimsleur is that they have their lessons on Audible because audible has the largest selection of audiobooks on the Planet
This let me fill my summer with learning Japanese like how I sled writing to mentioning audible
Which is the sponsor of this video.
Yeah, you can go to audible.com slash life form from our text live where I'm from to five hundred five hundred to get started
I've actually had an audible subscription for many years now and was quite excited that they would be my first video sponsor
Audible wants you to know that you can listen to them while doing summary things like running or enjoying a sunset by the beach.
I prefer listening to audible while doing dishes
But whatever floats your boat
Amazon Prime members can get audible for four ninety-five a month for the first three months
That's like getting three months for the price of one after that
It's only fourteen ninety-five a month this offer ends, July 31st, 2018
And so the interesting thing about the audible price is that with the Pimsleur Japanese audiobooks
It actually turns out to be cheaper to go through audible than directly through penslar
That's because the audible subscription lets you get any book for your monthly credit regardless of length or price
So go to audible.com slash life where I'm from or text life where I'm from - 500 500 - get started
Thanks for watching. See you next time. Bye. How's your language learning quest going?