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How do you process Japanese while listening to it?

I’m currently working my way through learning Japanese and I’ve realized that my aural skills are lacking a bit. My mind is trying to both translate the words as it hears them, and to come up with a “human” translation at the same time, which I think is slowing me down. For example, I hear the phrase, “今年の夏休みはどこへ行きますか” and my brain hears “This year’s summer vacation, where go?” but also tries to translate to, “Where are you going for your summer vacation this year?” at the same time. A sentence like that isn’t terrible, but it really starts to slow me down when the sentences become more complex and contain multiple clauses. Did anyone else have this problem? Is it something that just gets better/goes away with practice and exposure? How do you personally process what you’re hearing?

10 comments

  1. I used to have this problem, however once you really get immersed in a language you simply reach a point where your brain switches into “native mode” as I like to call it. There’s no need for translation in your head after a certain point. For example, I don’t translate English into my native language and I haven’t done that for about 15 years now, it’ll take a few years or less. For me, as soon as I got the grammar down I started processing the sentences differently.

  2. Just takes time, there are a lot of words to learn to know everything being said, I am on my way to 2000 and its still difficult at times. I find with songs, I will pick out individual words and get a general sense of what is going on. If there are words that come up frequently I will look them up. Its actually quite fun listening to a song trying to differentiate when one word start and another ends and beneficial imo, regardless of if you even understand it. Like listening to kpop it just sounds like one long string of sounds, but with Japanese lyrics I will actively try and listen for particles and just get a general sense of sentence structure from it.

    TLDR: it takes time, its gradual, it requires knowing a lot of words, it is fun. Don’t rush yourself!

  4. You need more Japanese language around you, so that brain would start thinking it instead of translating. Songs, anime, books, some remote or offline meetings with Japanese or another people learning Japanese and etc would help. Though I would not beat yourself too much about it, if you have some specific goal for learning it like going to Japan, reading it and etc.

  5. I’m not fluent or a linguist but I feel like I’m perceptive to how I learn new things so my take might be valuable.

    “Knowing” a word or grammar rule isn’t binary. The key is the time it takes to recall a it. I might “know” 2000 words, meaning that if I saw the word I could recall it’s meaning without looking it up. But even if it takes 2 seconds to make that connection, I’ve spent too much time on recall to be able to process the rest of the sentence. There’s a smaller set of words that I “know” which I can recall almost immediately and without thinking too long about the English equivalent, and that’s arguably a more important set to focus on.

    One tip from experience is: when you’re learning a word from flashcards, try to visualize the word in your mind’s eye in addition to linking the word to the English translation. If you do this enough you’ll make more immediate neural connections between Japanese and subconscious understanding rather than having to take the intermediate English translation step.

  7. I listen for whatever sounds familiar and latch onto that. Then try to put together what I know and fill in the gaps of what I don’t by guessing. If it makes sense-cool. If it doesn’t-eh, I tried, and glance at the subtitles. My level of understanding is pretty low, so I can’t comment too much.

  8. As some others have said, don’t translate as you go. Just listen and get the idea of what someone is saying, not exactly what it should translate to. Like in English, you don’t stop to think of what grammar points are being used and how words are stuck together, rather you focus on the inherent meaning of the entire sentence.

  9. I used to have this when I started learning but I feel like talking out loud to myself in Japanese sentences really helped switch my brain to producing and interacting with Japanese as is and not switching to English! Hope this helps!

  10. Honestly it will come with exposure. People will say don’t translate but it’s going to happen automatically until you have enough practice where it starts to shut off. I started experiencing that about half a year ago and it was definitely a bit weird to realize I was just processing. Just keep listening to things and engaging in other studies, it will come if you give it enough time.

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