Hey guys, i have a bit of a question about dealing with bad mood concerning my own japanese skills.
Today i had a party with a friend that can speak japanese decently well (he spent 5 years in japan and his wife is japanese with 2 children) and 2 japanese students that are learning my native language here. We were doing this party cause they are about to go back to japan for context.
Obviously ye was much more able than me and was the one “translating” but i was expecting to be able to hold a bit of conversation at least, yet i just couldn’t.
The whole purpose of me studying a language was to talk and interact with people, talk and joke with them and tonight i felt like i just couldn’t and i felt short of my own expectations.
While i’m trying my best to listen and speak i just couldn’t do it very well despite 3years of studying.
To be honest i’ve started picking up the pace maybe 10 months ago (not that i haven’t done anything before) and before i wasn’t studying that much but got the basics. But i’ve been putting so much energy into it recently i’m sad to see i’m barely able to interact properly.
I’m wondering if someone here had issues like the one i described and how you managed to push forward…
Maybe i’m expecting too much of myself ? Idk really.
I will still keep going with japanese, this isn’t a “i’m giving up” thing but i feel at my lowest in my language learning journey.
I can’t be the only one can i ?
7 comments
Don’t feel too bad. Depending on how you’ve been studying, and who and what you’ve been studying with, it’s not too surprising. You’re not living in Japan, and there’s a good chance you don’t use Japanese at every waking moment of your life outside Japan. Am I right?
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You need a rather high level in a language before you can comfortably engage in more complex conversations.
The issue with language is, that the most common words also convey the most simplistic meanings. Which means that even if you understand 90% of the words being used, you don’t actually understand 90% of the text or dialogue. Because that last 10% you don’t understand likely conveys the most meaning and is most crucial to the whole sentence or passage.
Because of this it’s hard to feel comfortable in following conversations and interjecting unless you know like 95+% of the words being used.
Native level is like 99% comprehension. Meaning you understand almost every word and those you don’t, you can reason out from context.
Once you drop below 98%, you’ll struggle to hold a proper in-depth conversation with natives or understand regular media properly.
And when you consider 98%+ involves probably around 20-30k words, you can see why it’s an absolutely insanely difficult level to reach.
That said, you can totally hold a conversation and converse, even read and write with as little as 1000-2000 word knowledge. It’s just that people you interact with, will need to actively facilitate your shortcomings.
I’m 100% certain that if you asked to talk face to face with your friends and they heard your speaking level, they would automatically simplify their speech to facilitate you, and you could all have a conversation together that could discuss the topics in reasonable depth, without the advanced lingo. Most of the less common words can easily be broken down using simpler words. It would be more clunky, but totally doable.
Like instead of saying: “I’m constantly depressed”, you could say: “I feel sad, all the time”. It doesn’t exactly capture the meaning and nuance of the more niche word, but it’s close enough and the simpler words would make the sentence, even though it’s longer, far easier to understand.
1. Learning Japanese is not a race.
2. Learning Japanese is not a contest.
3. What you experienced is common and normal
It’s totally normal to have setbacks like this when learning a language! It’s good that you’re still determined to carry on because you clearly have an excellent basis to really excel at the language if you keep at it.
Would you say you can read Japanese texts, follow shows, and have a conversation by text to some extent, but speaking is the thing you struggle with? Perhaps it’s just that speaking is the part you’ve not had as much practice with? It can be slow at first, but if you just start out with some simple conversation practice (discussing set topics you can easily handle), you will see your confidence build for sure!
Being decent at conversational Japanese requires regular practice. If you don’t have someone to speak with then I would recommend a tutor or language exchange.
Your experience is normal and very much unsurprising. I’ve experienced your feeling dozens of times after bombing it in Japanese social situations.
The first thing to understand is that you inadvertently fell into an EXPERT++ difficulty scenario because [group conversation] [with ONLY higher skilled/native speakers] [in an unstructured party conversation environment].
This typical scenario results in you being unable to think fast enough to interject, probably Japan-specific cultural references that you don’t understand, and too much momentum in a party environment for the other speakers to slow their conversation enough to help you. You don’t get thrown a bone, and you end up sitting there passively feeling depressed.
You will improve your speaking in lower difficulty environments first. One-on-one with a native speaker, structured setting like a language exchange, in a casual setting with half similar skilled learners so enough people are slowing the conversation, etc. And hey, don’t give up with parties, sometimes you do actually find people with similar interests and find that you can follow a native speed conversation about a topic you care/know a lot about!
One other point, my wife is Japanese, she’s lived in the US for near a decade, she is business level fluent in English. But if native English speakers are talking about pop culture, using all the slang back from their high school days, etc, she can’t follow and hits the same sadness and self-doubt. It takes a LONG time to shoot the shit about anything with native speakers.
I can see clearly you are doing fine, don’t set the bar unrealistically high for yourself. Find more favorable speaking opportunities and you’ll feel great about yourself!