I’ve been attempting to learn Japanese on an off for a very long time. I burn out a lot due to lack of meaningful progress and feeling frustrated. Realizing my biggest problem is that the grammar fundamentals aren’t sticking for me, my most recent try involved going in on Bunpro and fully focusing on grammar guides and such. I think ultimately, my problem is that nothing is sticking because I’m not processing sentences and explanations the right way at all.
What I mean is, when I read something in Japanese (including the example sentences and such in guides and texts), I keep falling into the trap of trying to parse it in English to understand what I’m looking at. I read a grammar explanation, try to understand it and then proceed to try rearranging it in my head to fit in English every time I come across it again. Like it’s math.
I know this is the absolute wrong way of doing it, but I’m at a loss for trying to train my brain into working it out properly as I’m not exactly trying to do it on purpose. I just keep falling for the same trap and it’s really causing a roadblock for me. I’m sure I’m not alone here, but does anyone have any advice about getting over this hurdle and avoiding these pitfalls?
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I can’t speak for everyone but for me personally I got out of that rut by reading reading reading. You will keep unpacking things in your head until they become second nature and you start reading bits of text as whole pieces rather than individual parts once your brain can process them faster.
This particular skill isn’t bad, although it does make things kind of difficult when you’re constantly doing it.
The more you practice Japanese, the more automatic it becomes so you rely on “translation” less.
It sounds like you’re aware of the problem. Japanese to English translations most of the time do not work so you have to get out of the habit of trying, and instead think purely in Japanese. I know that sounds easier said than done but just stick with it. I was at that level for about a year bit then all of a sudden it felt as though a switch in my brain just clicked and I got it. Sounds cliche but it’s true. My advice would be just read as much as possible without looking at English translations. Go as slow as you need, just really focus on the Japanese sentence – all the verbs, particles and grammar points and try and work out how they are interacting with each other. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
I’m casually learning Japanese but as someone who has learned a second language already, maybe this can help.
When learning a language, I didn’t think of words as direct translations, but basically as synonyms. When you learn synonyms in english, you don’t translate from one word to the other word, it just has its own meaning, and it’s related to another word. It’s kind of the same with foreign words. Associate them with their own meaning and idea but treat them as a synonym.
For example, mizu shouldn’t mean the literal word “water” in your brain, it should mean the same things you think of when you hear water. The thing you drink, could be blue, covers the world, etc.
The other thing that’s so important in immersion is learning the way that other people think and phrase expressions. This kind of piggy backs off the last idea in the sense that translating doesn’t work for an internal model. You’ve got to associate expressions with new ideas.
Overall, learning a language is learning a new way of thinking, and expanding your ideas. That being said, leverage things that are in common to help map to things that aren’t. For examples, learning expressions that use English loan words can be helpful.
Yep I can also confirm “read read read” (or “listen” “listen” “listen”). Basically just get to the point where you’ve heard the words/grammar so many times that you’re tired of mathing it out.
“You don’t learn a language, you get used to it.””
習うより慣れよ
I’m in exactly the same place. Having spent a couple of years learning the language with stuff like Duolingo, wanikani, genki etc etc I’ve found that despite roughly understanding the individual grammatical elements, when reading actual native content I have *no idea* how to parse a sentence because I keep trying to fit it into some sort of romanised concept of word order. Actually I nearly cracked it the other day while reading a short news article – I found that by sort of “unfocusing” my mind in a similar way to unfocusing your eyes when looking at a magic eye picture, it started to come together in a kind of intuitive way. I guess you have to think of a Japanese sentence as a kind of ramen bowl full of particles and concepts that you have to take in all together in a sort of broth of meaning
You have managed to perfectly phrase exactly why I am also stuck myself.
I have been studying Japanese on and off for 4 years, and I done a year abroad in Japan. My comprehension was coming on leaps and bounds whilst I was there. Now, almost 3 years later I feel like I have slid back to a level similar to before I even went there.
I think because I am just trying to learn from books, my brain automatically attempts to translate everything into English, whereas when I was living in Japan, if someone was speaking to me in Japanese I didn’t have the time to translate every part of their sentence, I just had to connect the dots in the moment and that really helped me to develop language patterns.