Hello all, so this is my first post here. I have been studding Japanese for like 5 or 6 months but am still only through about 200 cards on Anki while I study on it between 30 minutes up to an hour a day. I have been using Japanese ammo with Misa to learn my basic grammar because I didn’t like Genki back when I was first starting.
So that said, I want to know what I can try and do better because I feel like something is really off with my learning speed. Like I want to be able to not completely fail at this because I have a trip to Japan in January and I really don’t want to seem like the stereotypical American tourist who didn’t even make an effort to learn the language or anything. Beyond that I also really do love Japanese media between music, anime, video games, and vtubers. So, I want to know what change would be best to make to be able to improve my rate of learning, or if it really is just the fact that I am incredibly slow with language or something. I just really want to know what kinds of changes I can make to be able to improve my rate of knowing kanji, and comfort of speaking the language too. Currently I am in the discord language exchange server and just had my first little conversation in Japanese, but I still made a complete fool of myself when I used the wrong pronunciation for the word months. So, any advice about things to add or change to improve my ability to learn this language.
I am so sorry if this seems trivial and the like.
5 comments
What’re your goals for your trip to Japan? Do you want to be able to do simple small talk or order at restaurants, completely in Japanese? Ask for directions? Be able to hold a conversation at a store?
You can always model your sessions accordingly; structure vocab and grammar to suit your goal. You can immerse yourself more; listen to podcasts, watch shows, find texts. Surround yourself with Japanese 24/7, 7 days a week. Look up “shadowing” videos on Youtube, start writing diary entries, translate simple sentences, transcribe audio, translate lyrics. The list is endless.
Learning grammar and doing vocab is just one part of it all. Using what you’ve learnt and review your knowledge is where you solidify the language in your brain.
It takes quite some hours to master reading basic texts and hold simple conversations, especially as a native English speaker. So, without wanting to discourage you, in two more months you won’t sky rocket your fluency no matter what you do. You only risk burning yourself out if you overdo the input. Better go diligently than rush it!
> 5 or 6 months but am still only through about 200 cards on Anki while I study on it between 30 minutes up to an hour a day
This seems way off, but it’s hard to give good advice without more details. A general thing I’d look into is what settings you’re using, how many new cards you schedule, and using the card type that helps you best (sentence vs word, kanji usage etc.) And if you’re on a time crunch, it’d probably be best to focus on what you need to be able to do in the short term. If you need to be able to understand speech and talk to people, then it sounds like it’d be best to take time from kanji learning and focus more on just getting the vocab and grammar going.
[Here’s a good Anki setup guide that might help you](https://refold.la/roadmap/stage-1/a/anki-setup). Specifically, using the low-key Anki settings they describe as well as ensuring you retire cards that you miss too much will help get through decks. And of course make sure you actually do all your cards for the day every day or it screws stuff up. If your reviews stack up too much to be able to get through all of them, lower the new cards per day.
> I really don’t want to seem like the stereotypical American tourist
I wouldn’t stress on that too much. Most people will be happy as long as you’re making a clear effort. The few who aren’t are dickheads, so it wouldn’t matter even if you were better because they’d still be jerks about something.
> but I still made a complete fool of myself
Perfect! Making and then recognizing mistakes is how you improve at any skill. Even better, with languages, you can screw up stuff like that and as long as it’s in the right ballpark, people will often still be able to understand what you meant. Don’t worry about each word being perfect. If you wanna talk to people, it’s more important to be good enough with enough words that you can cover the stuff you want to talk about. The people you talk to will generally care more about what you are talking about than whether or not you have good grammar and pronunciation.
6 months is very fresh still. Going to Japan will be overwhelming in that basically everything is in kanji, conversations move very fast, people contract things in ways you won’t expect at first, and depending on where you go the politeness may break your brain because they’re using phrases and words you haven’t encountered.
Don’t stress yourself out. Even something like “コーヒーください” is better than nothing.
Enjoy your trip!
It’s not a trivial question, but if you’re a native English speaker, the average length of time it takes for someone to understand Japanese with a good deal of immersion and study is approximately two years. This varies based on a variety of factors, but absent other language learning, it’s a good number to keep in mind.
Even if you move quickly and devote all your time to immersing, grammar study et. al, it will still take you a while to really pick it up.
So I would say that right now, you are still fresh, and it is simply going to take time for you to learn. It’s natural, and Japanese people will still be ok with you making an effort to speak Japanese, even if you’re not perfect; they have no expectation that you will speak at all.
I would also recommend doing immersion work with things you like because simply studying grammar and flashcards is not going to prepare you for what natives sound like. Turning off subtitles for anime, or finding japanese YouTubers is a really good way to train your ear for Japanese. It’s uncomfortable and difficult, but it does help.
You’re only learning one anki card a day? You should be doing like 5-15 a day