I keep seeing people claiming all sorts of impossible nonsense about what they supposedly did around here and other places.
“I got N4 in 3 weeks”
No you didn’t. You didn’t learn 70 completely new vocab words every single day, plus grammar, plus 300 kanji with multiple readings. I don’t care how many hours a day you say you studied.
“I became fluent in 6 months”
No you didn’t, not even by your fake, made up definition of fluency.
“I could understand anime without subs in 3 months”
No you couldn’t. And you probably still can’t after 5 years.
Now I am sure there will be a few trolls who will claim these ridiculous things are possible (don’t bother lying), but my real question is why people do this?
For one thing, everyone I have seen that has claimed outrageously fast and short fluency times has turned out to be liars who took way longer than is claimed or obviously grew up around Japanese and decided to grift off of it (Khatz, Matt, Ken Cannon. Also notice they VERY carefully restrict what you are allowed to see of them speaking, as opposed to people like George Trombley or Oriental Pearl.) I get people who are selling something having reason to lie, but some rando here fluffing his ego just doesn’t seem to add up to me.
Anyhow, curious as to what people think.
18 comments
Why over think it? The same reason people lie on any other sub, or tell lies in person, or cheat at sports or video games. It makes them feel superior. They just want validation from upvotes and comments, and possibly enjoy irritating people that don’t believe it.
Of course, some people are actually just not very smart and think they know a lot more than they do…
The problem is, you often can’t tell the difference between a moron and a troll, so why bother trying? Just let them crack on. Just downvote and keep moving.
I’m just a beginner myself, but I don’t think it’s as impossible as you think. It probably depends a whole lot on the person doing the thing and how much time they can actually do the thing.
These people get more satisfaction from making people believe these things rather than actually accomplishing them. If they are really capable of these incredible feats, they should be helping and explaining for this community and not just bragging.
I don’t see many people making these claims, but if I did, I can’t imagine being bothered about it.
Superiority, ego, whatever. Japanese is cool, trendy and considered a flex these days
Most of them are probably lying but I think you can get somewhat fluent in 6months, if you’re a natural polyglot.
Saw it happen while I was studying in Japan. It was unreal.
To be frank because I’m kind of sick of these posts, hyperbole aside, those fast learners are just more efficient than you, and don’t subscribe to the “Japanese is inherently difficult, my learning style is unique, slow and steady wins the race” mentality that 95+% of people have.
Who cares lol
Literally don’t care.
I think it’s feasible to pass the n4 test in 6 months of studying, but I don’t think it’s possible to have mastered the language you studied to pass in that amount of time. I think said persons ability to output the language and recall wouldn’t be very good but their recognition could be sufficient.
No offence but this post comes off as salty and bitter. There are definitely people who lie about their achievements but to say that people can’t do 70 new vocab a day etc just isn’t true. It’s very unrealistic but there are definitely people who have done it. During my peak of using Anki I did 60 new cards a day. Why belittle their struggle just because you’re unable to do it?
Maybe I’m fabricating it to make my opinions and answers convincing. For example, the persuasiveness of health care advice is different between hospital doctors and ordinary people.
In the same way, I think it’s because respondents are persuasive by exaggerating success stories when answering their experiences to the questioner.
> “I could understand anime without subs in 3 months”
> No you couldn’t. And you probably still can’t after 5 years.
I can understand doubting someone who claims to be fluent after 6 months, but why doubt it after *5 fucking years*? It doesn’t even take nearly half that much time to become fluent.
I don’t recognize all the names, but would love to see a very short summary of the “fraud” of Khatz and Matt? Thank you
Well I started with Mandarin, at my “peak” I did have a summer month where I did 70 brand new Hanzi a day. That’s writing from memory, 1 or 2 definitions, and 1 correct pronunciation with tone. (I was trying to finish off the most common 3000 with the delusion that after doing that “fluency” would be around the corner.)
It wasn’t a waste of time but there are some caveats. Had no self-control and life was run by the chaos of short lasting obsessions at the time so it was a few more years when I finally finished my 1st novel. Basically, characters are not vocab. But having all those latently in my memory did help a shit ton when I tried to plow through a novel and was able to often learn vocab by deep context + knowing the rough meaning of the characters. Saved so much dictionary time or made dictionary look-ups take only seconds.
Because these people are geniuses.
Turns out that’s what geniuses do: stay in their room and watch anime all day long 🙂
More like you need to stop comparing yourself to others or not take what they say too seriously.
I wouldn’t rule it out as completely impossible- but of course extremely unrealistic. I haven’t seen anybody claiming these things here though, so I’m not sure where you’ve seen them.
IMO no reason to get frustrated about it, that’s their business and nothing to do with you. You just keep doing you 🙂
>”I got N4 in 3 weeks”
>
>No you didn’t. You didn’t learn 70 completely new vocab words every single day, plus grammar, plus 300 kanji with multiple readings. I don’t care how many hours a day you say you studied.
Believe it or not, some people have that thing called time. Some people are also just better at memorization. I’m unfortunately not one of them, since it took me about 6 weeks to learn 300 kanji but there are definitely people like that.