Given everyone learns at a different pace, and using different resources, this isn’t really a question that can be answered
do you know how long a piece of string is? yes, that long.
There is no finish line. You always learn something new during the journey.
Considering that even natives learn something new, then it’s whole our life.
It can be learned in 1 year if all these are true:
* you have no other obligations
* you have perfect economic conditions
* have perfect social conditions
* you can concentrate for long hours
* you are willing to do nothing but study Japanese all day every day
It can also be learned rather quickly if you are either a Korean person educated in Korea, or Chinese person educated in China.
However the 1-year goal isn’t too realistic. If you study a rather normal amount of let’s say 2 hours a day you’ll probably be good enough after like 6 years or so.
I have heard it said that you need ~2,000 hrs of study to become passable and ~4,000 hrs of study to become good. But since everybody’s aptitude for learning languages differs, nobody can know what it will be for you.
It isn’t how long because if you learn the language, love the language, you will continue to use the language. It’s not how long.
For you specifically, 1173 hours.
Depends on your goals… Some people have high standards and say you haven’t learned Japanese until you have a native level vocabulary size, pitch accent, reading speed, etc. Meanwhile, others just want to pass N1.
At least two weeks
Everyone has different goals (ie what they count as having learned Japanese), different time available, and so on.
One benchmark of interest — the US State Department categorizes languages on a scale of difficulty into 4 tiers based on the amount of time it believes, in the experience it has with training foreign service staff in languages, it takes to achieve a working proficiency, what it calls “Professional Working Proficiency”. Japanese is one of the four in the “hardest” category, with the State Dept saying it takes on average 2200 class hours (88 weeks worth, following their schedule) to reach that proficiency (if you do the math, that’s 3.5 hours every day for 88 weeks). Just for comparison, Spanish takes 600 hours (24 weeks) to reach the same proficiency level, again using State’s estimates based on its own training program for its foreign service staff.
So … people will disagree about how long it takes, but suffice to say that for most people who are native English speakers, it takes a hell of a long time.
Your progress isn’t measured in years, it’s measured in seconds. The more seconds you spend learning per day the faster you’ll have reached the seconds you need to be fluent
L2 speakers who strike me as well-rounded, insightful, clever, and not at all limited by language barriers almost always have 10+ years of experience. This is a very high standard though.
The “dude, they actually do speak Japanese” level is possible in 2 or 3 – that’s someone who works their butt off and makes a Japanese-speaking friend group.
Legitimately doesn’t need subtitles for the anime they like? About a year.
These are all closer to minimum times. It’s possible to take a *lot* longer – and in fact most people will fail entirely.
There’re many variables.
a lifetime
I’m a native English speaker and I still learn something about the language every now and then if that tells you anything.
How do you define “Learn Japanese”?
You can be functional with maybe 1 year of really hard study, 2 and a half years if you study like the average person that is serious about learning the language. To be “good” takes many more years. People I consider “good” have studied for 6-8 years at least to get there.
know your getting a lot of joke answers, but what i hear is people reach a general fluency/good ability to read and write japanese after 3 ish years. it’s a long time, but it really never ends. you’ll always be learning new stuff
19 comments
Given everyone learns at a different pace, and using different resources, this isn’t really a question that can be answered
do you know how long a piece of string is? yes, that long.
There is no finish line. You always learn something new during the journey.
Considering that even natives learn something new, then it’s whole our life.
It can be learned in 1 year if all these are true:
* you have no other obligations
* you have perfect economic conditions
* have perfect social conditions
* you can concentrate for long hours
* you are willing to do nothing but study Japanese all day every day
It can also be learned rather quickly if you are either a Korean person educated in Korea, or Chinese person educated in China.
However the 1-year goal isn’t too realistic. If you study a rather normal amount of let’s say 2 hours a day you’ll probably be good enough after like 6 years or so.
I have heard it said that you need ~2,000 hrs of study to become passable and ~4,000 hrs of study to become good. But since everybody’s aptitude for learning languages differs, nobody can know what it will be for you.
It isn’t how long because if you learn the language, love the language, you will continue to use the language. It’s not how long.
For you specifically, 1173 hours.
Depends on your goals… Some people have high standards and say you haven’t learned Japanese until you have a native level vocabulary size, pitch accent, reading speed, etc. Meanwhile, others just want to pass N1.
At least two weeks
Everyone has different goals (ie what they count as having learned Japanese), different time available, and so on.
One benchmark of interest — the US State Department categorizes languages on a scale of difficulty into 4 tiers based on the amount of time it believes, in the experience it has with training foreign service staff in languages, it takes to achieve a working proficiency, what it calls “Professional Working Proficiency”. Japanese is one of the four in the “hardest” category, with the State Dept saying it takes on average 2200 class hours (88 weeks worth, following their schedule) to reach that proficiency (if you do the math, that’s 3.5 hours every day for 88 weeks). Just for comparison, Spanish takes 600 hours (24 weeks) to reach the same proficiency level, again using State’s estimates based on its own training program for its foreign service staff.
So … people will disagree about how long it takes, but suffice to say that for most people who are native English speakers, it takes a hell of a long time.
Your progress isn’t measured in years, it’s measured in seconds. The more seconds you spend learning per day the faster you’ll have reached the seconds you need to be fluent
L2 speakers who strike me as well-rounded, insightful, clever, and not at all limited by language barriers almost always have 10+ years of experience. This is a very high standard though.
The “dude, they actually do speak Japanese” level is possible in 2 or 3 – that’s someone who works their butt off and makes a Japanese-speaking friend group.
Legitimately doesn’t need subtitles for the anime they like? About a year.
These are all closer to minimum times. It’s possible to take a *lot* longer – and in fact most people will fail entirely.
There’re many variables.
a lifetime
I’m a native English speaker and I still learn something about the language every now and then if that tells you anything.
How do you define “Learn Japanese”?
You can be functional with maybe 1 year of really hard study, 2 and a half years if you study like the average person that is serious about learning the language. To be “good” takes many more years. People I consider “good” have studied for 6-8 years at least to get there.
know your getting a lot of joke answers, but what i hear is people reach a general fluency/good ability to read and write japanese after 3 ish years. it’s a long time, but it really never ends. you’ll always be learning new stuff
At least 23 minutes