I know around 1500 words and 350 kanji and finished Genki textbooks a couple of weeks ago. I’m currently at that level where I can understand most daily conversations and every time I’m watching anime/dorama my brain goes fully on “let’s try to figure out everything we can”. The thing is I don’t know enough so understanding is smooth and easy. As a result, an activity that used to be pleasing has become stressful to me.
I don’t understand why this is happening, since that was not a problem when I was learning English. I could pretty much “ignore” the spoken language and focus only on subtitles.
Has this ever happened to anyone else here?
15 comments
Who said language learning was supposed to be fun?
1500 words is nothing. That’s only about 81% comprehension (at max- solely based off of used words. Most likely you are at a much lower comprehension level) of words that you need to know to read at a native speaker level.
For perspective, 81% known words is about 62 unknown words per page for a given book- that’s a fucking nightmare. That basically requires you to look up 2 words every single sentence. Tbh, Even 20 unknown words a page is hell. Reading only starts to be fun when you have like 1 word every couple pages to look up.
You simply lack vocabulary and time listening to and reading the language.
If you want to get good at Japanese expect it to take at least ~4000 hours to reach an N1 level (which is still very mid compared to native speakers). That’s about 2 years of 6 hours everyday, or 4 years of 3 hours everyday. I wouldn’t recommend studying below 3 hours a day for a language like Japanese- that’s just the harsh reality.
I find it hard to believe that you “understand daily conversations” but struggle to understand anime or dramas without it being a chore.
You need to keep plugging away. GENKI I isn’t enough, neither is GENKI II.
It seems you try to maximize learning time. It’s partially good, but also easy to burn out. Try to switch between learning and having fun, in other words, just because it has Japanese doesn’t mean that you need to focus on it and when you unintentionally understand some bits, just treat it as a bonus. You don’t miss much such way, if translator made a good work, it’s all where outside of some rare nuances that are very hard to translate. At the same time you need to be quite proficient in Japanese to understand such nuances to begin with.
Realistically, 1,500 words won’t get you all that far unless you intentionally don’t stray “all that far” from what you know from Genki. Anki decks ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 words exist to try and close the gap. Anime will almost never be tailored to what you know, so it’s not really too surprising that you might feel so lost.
Also, unless you have a good grasp of kanji and have access to Japanese subtitles, subtitles won’t necessarily help. If I had to guess, you probably learned English by watching with ENGLISH subtitles rather than your native language’s subtitles, right? Same thing with learning Japanese. English subs don’t really help with learning Japanese because (1) Japanese and English sentence structures are very different and (2) ways of thinking and expressing are also different and word-for-word translations are a rarity.
Going back to what I said about having a good grasp of kanji, even if you were to
>”ignore” the spoken language and focus only on subtitles
it would still demand a fair bit more literacy. You’d have a much easier time if you had 1,000 to 1,500 kanji plus associated vocabulary under your belt.
What anime do you watch, anyway? If it’s something like Naruto or Death Note, then yeah, Genki will totally not prepare you for either of those. If it was something like Doraemon or Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san, you might have more of a fun time.
I’m glad im not the only one.. I was watching Komi Can’t Communicate, but got too distracted wanting to read every text box that popped up and understand every sentence the characters read. Unless I know I won’t understand completely (say, i don’t get this by watching Attack on Titan) I will just feel like having to take time to understand everything.
Yes, I can’t read for pleasure any more because I feel like I should be reading a Japanese book, but they take me longer to read and I lose interest. So now I’m not as keen on reading in general as I used to be.
It’s okay, keep going, it’s amazing to learn a
new language! Good luck!
Bro I’m at 12k+ and still come across new shit everyday, around 2000 kanji atm.
Might you have obsessive compulsive disorder? I’m serious. I have it myself.
anime is no longer just for fun. you are now learning Japanese.. anime is for studying. how can one turn off the brains thirst for knowledge?
Your post has been reviewed.
Analysis has confirmed this is a “First world problem”.
Fortunately the cure is… well just study more and relax?
I guess that’s kinda the same for me? Except learning Japanese is part of the fun of watching anime for me tbh
The longer you keep at it the easier it gets. I can watch anime in Japanese almost normally now
Switching to watching anime raw fixed this for me
Yeah. I have this weird subconscious mentality, that I have to spend my free time improving myself in any way. I even have to play games in Japanese, so I can justify playing them. Time is precious, and relaxing is a waste of time. Hell, even sleep is just an obstacle to your studies, unless you’ve learned to dream in Japanese.
Learn contractions and grammar
Vocabulary doesn’t clear things up