Just over a year and change in now with roughly 4-5k words and i find it a much bigger issue than grammar or kanji personally. Grammar is “just” a matter of study and repetition, and the more kanji and vocabulary you know it becomes exponentially easier to learn more.
Structure though? Actually surprised how difficult this still is, its like the final boss at this point particularly as a native English speaker there is no shortcuts, no special method it essentially means rewriting the brain because if you think about it its almost entirely backwards.
I figure this is actually the reason why people say you shouldn’t be thinking of Japanese in English terms, im sure a lot of you have experienced knowing everything in a sentence yet struggling to understand it right?
Consequently most of the time now i would say my understanding of a particular sentence (especially if im not pausing and reading) is more and more of a “intuitive feeling” than anything else, and its this that you can’t fake nor can you really study it just slowly builds.
Anyway yeah just a shower thought i had, quite curious if it was universal or not, no doubt its different depending on what languages you already speak.
by martiusmetal