Hey guys! I’ve been learning Japanese for a year today :D🎉.
It’s been quite a journey. I, like many of you, have poured a lot of time into it. I like reading these posts a lot, so I thought I would make one.
I started learning Japanese a year ago to…eavesdrop haha. My boyfriend is half-Japanese, and speaks Japanese with his family. (Both of his parents speak Japanese). I had a little experience with language learning at the time that I picked up Japanese. I was eight months into self-studying Spanish. I took it in school for like 7 years with little progress. Very sad. But in those eight months that I was self-studying I think I made more progress than in those 7 years. It was immersion that did it, of course. Here was my logic: since I already know quite a bit of vocabulary, if I watch a show that I’ve seen in English a bunch of times, I’ll already know what they’re saying and be able to pick up new vocabulary from context. And it worked! Of course, I had a lot of vocabulary under my belt already, but when I started watching the show in Spanish, I was not able to follow it. By the end of 1.5 watches of a seven-season show (Gilmore Girls lol-I think it’s about 150 hours total), I could understand almost everything. I switched over to other media in Spanish and found that I could also understand it. I ended up reading a couple of Harry Potter books in Spanish too. So this was how I figured out how language learning works, to an extent. I thought that it was really impressive that my boyfriend’s dad learned Japanese from scratch at 20 years old. And I was like, “hey, I’m 20, maybe I can do that too.” So I started learning Japanese. I knew from the start that it would be way harder to pick up than Spanish, so I set my expectations for progress pretty low. From the start, I would watch things in Japanese, or listen to podcasts. I learned hiragana and katakana, then I bought Genki. Didn’t last terribly long. But I learned about 20 useful phrases haha. いただきます! Anyway, after I gave up on Genki, I started learning vocabulary, since it had been my best friend when I was learning Spanish. So I made some paper flashcards (300ish) with words from an 800 word N5 list. My hands got tired so I downloaded (the wrong version 😡) of Anki on my phone and added a couple hundred more there. I sort of memorized those. Looking back, I definitely shouldn’t have had like 80% of them in hiragana only because I didn’t know any kanji. Probably would have helped me learn kanji…
Anyhow, I started actively learning Kanji in October of last year. Wanikani was my tool, and I still use it. Honestly I don’t love how slow it has been, but I do find it effective for learning kanji, so it is what it is. [I just got to level 20 :,)].
So immersion: I started tracking my hours in January of this year. I didn’t for the first five months, but I’m sure that I did at least 200 hours in that period. It was lighter than everything that came after because I was in college. After I graduated in December, I had a lot more free time, so I bumped it up quite a lot. I have now recorded 984.4 hours of immersion and study, but I estimate it being closer to 1,200 hours.
I’m not going to lie, my immersion sources were probably not the best, because I did the exact same thing that I did with Spanish, and just watched Gilmore Girls over and over. I listened to other things occasionally, like YUYU’s podcast and other YouTube channels, or anime, but uh…it was mostly this. It was just a lot more fun to listen to since I already knew what was going on. I knew it worked, to a certain degree. And it kind of kept me going. It was something that was easy to just turn on and listen to. So I started listening to Japanese for many hours a day. Upwards of 11-12 hours if I was feeling particularly crazy, but probably an average of 4 or 5 a day since this year started.
The things that I think have helped me the most so far, in order of significance:
1. Immersion
2. Anki 2k/6k deck (although I stopped a couple days ago at 2,819 words learned to start sentence mining instead)
3. Wanikani
Here are my current [official] stats in terms of vocabulary and kanji:
Vocabulary from Wanikani: 2,100 words
Vocabulary from 2k/6k: 2,819 words
Vocabulary from sentence mining with language reactor: 71 words (just started)
Kanji from Wanikani: 701
There’s a lot of overlap between Wanikani and 2k/6k Anki and I’ve learned a lot of words and kanji from immersion that I have not recorded, so this is not the best record, but it’s what I have haha.
So in terms of my understanding…it’s hard to describe. I would say when I’m listening to something I probably hear a new word every other sentence. Occasionally, if I don’t know the context, I’m still pretty lost.
By my best estimate:
At 300 hours: bits and pieces, almost never understood the whole of anything
At 500/600 hours: usually understood parts of most sentences
At 1000 hours: I would say I usually understand an approximation of the whole, but sometimes don’t catch an important part. Or in spite of not catching a part, I am able to figure it out from context.
I found that I can understand enough of some jokes to find them funny, so that was heartening!
Overall, it’s hard to quantify, but I know that there was a point at which I could pick out about three words total, so it’s gotten better :).
I’m happy with the progress that I’ve made, especially since it’s so proportional to the amount of time that I put in.
In the beginning it was really hard to imagine that I would be able to understand as much as I do now, so sometimes blind faith pays off haha.
Hopefully progress in my second year will be a bit faster since I’m doing more immersion.
One thing I’d like to do more is read. All I really read now is subtitles. I like reading in English too much :,).
As for speaking, I haven’t really tried at all. Maybe one day haha. My goals are definitely more in line with understanding at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll try to speak in the future. Plus, it seems like output should come pretty naturally with enough input. I hope.
If you read this, thanks! This has been a fun experience so far, and I’m looking forward to doing it more in the future. Please continue sharing your stories because they’re super motivating! It’s great to have a community of people that are doing the same thing. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. If you’re new to learning a language and you feel like you’re not making progress as I did initially, I would say immerse, look up words, and give it time. It’ll definitely come.
by Flashy_Membership_39