As someone who’s been learning Japanese on and off for around 12 years. I finally came to the realization why so many people have problems (including myself) when it comes to truly mastering Japanese, or any other languages for that matter.
This doesn’t apply to new beginners, but for people that are in the intermediate to advanced level stage.
Have you also realized this? Once you stop trying to understand Japanese using your own native language brain, everything becomes much easier. You’ll start thinking like a Japanese person would.
We have the tendency to try to understand Japanese using our non Japanese brain and that is normal but this is a huge mistake and the reason why so many people still make errors when forming a new sentence even though the grammar may completely be correct, to a native Japanese speaker, you still end up sounding like an alien or robot. Even if you master pronunciation.
You must completely reject trying to understand Japanese with your own native language brain. Learning this way only works when the languages are kind of similar like a native English speaker learning Spanish and vice versa but even then.
You must reach a point to where you understand Japanese in Japanese. Using Japanese concepts, thoughts, and actions as if it was your native language.
Resources:
マンガで学ぶ日本語文法 (manga de manabu nihongo bunpou)
It’s the title to a book which in my opinion, is one of the best Japanese learning resource you can use. In English it is called, Japanese the manga way: An illustrated guide to grammar and structure. Although the literal translation is Learning Japanese grammar with manga.
The author was born in the U.S. but was raised in Japan and speaks both languages natively (we really need more people like him to come out with Japanese learning materials lol).
Movies, TV shows, news…etc
I believe using something like Netflix and watching something in English with Japanese subtitles, is one of the best way to learn rather than the other way around. (Although the other way does help a lot to accumulate Japanese pronunciation). You can also use certain games that allows you to change the audio and subtitles.
Learning this way, forces you to use Japanese instead to understand and it’s how a Japanese person would learn English but you have the upper hands for already knowing English. Just mute it next time and read the Japanese subtitles instead and understand it entirely in Japanese.
Thoughts?
by crowsenji