When I started learning japanese I set a goal of 2 years to learn(ok ish enough on the read and listening not speaking) japanese. I am wondering if that was far too ambitious.
It literally all depends on your time studying. Not the length of time. If you study for 5 minutes a day for 2 years, idk prob not. 2 hours a day for 2 years, absolutely no doubt.
To put it simply: I’ve found that you have to be on the Intermediate plateau or into Upper Intermediate level to be comfortable with it. In terms of JLPT, that’s close to N3 to N2. It IS doable in two years, but that also depends on how much time you dedicate to it
My own shame is that I’ve been in Japan for over four years, and I’m still barely N3- mostly because my study time has been drastically reduced over the years, and I’m actively working to correct that.
Depends on the definition of “ok ish enough” and the material to read/listen. I was learning with tutor once a week plus daily Anki. Took some time to find methods that worked for me, experienced some burnout (basically didn’t learn new words, but stuck with reviewing old ones). It took me 1.5 years to finally watch Tonari no Totoro in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. And it was quite comfortable IMO: I didn’t understand 100% of every line of dialogue, but I could understand most of it, get the idea behind the scene and enjoy the story. After that learning the language became so much more fun.
So yeah, it’s possible if you tone down the “I need to understand absolutely everything” and find the material that suits you.
Ot depends on a lot of things but ultimately, if you study books you’ll get comfortable reading books.
It took me nearly 10 years to get to the point of reading comfortably but not because it took me that long to learn enough of the language. I got stuck behind 2 incorrect notions.
1. If I just immerse and extensively read, with no care to understanding, I will absorb the language.
2. If I can’t seamlessly read and enjoy the content with minimal word lookup/effort then I’m not ready to read yet.
Eventually I just dove in and started picking apart things to read. No matter what level you are there’s a couple of hurdles to jump. One is reading comprehension. Learning materials don’t really prepare you for real Japanese sentences. And the second is abysmally slow reading speed which is only helped by reading.
I did have to google translate some things to make heads or tails of sentences but eventually dropped that crutch as well.
I went from not being able to read and understand anything, and having a LOT of word lookups. To reading fairly comfortably within like 6 months (on nearly a decade of study)
You can, and should, work on it from whatever your level is, and get yourself used to the process and familiar with native phrasing. Reading will still be study time… until it’s not study time anymore.
So that’s gonna depend on you, your brain, when you start, how much you already know… and so on. :3 it’s not an exact science.
Think in terms of hours, not years. 3 hours a day for 3 years sounds like a reasonable projection, assuming you start immersing after one or two years.
min. 2 hrs/day, N3 in 6months + speaking(simple topics only). Even if you do consistent 1hr per day in 2years you’ll be for sure N2 or close to N1. 2 years is such a looong time you’ll definitely be able to do anything japanese comfortably.
If you study 10 minutes a day for 2 years, no.
If you study, immerse, and engage with the language – even when it’s ambiguous and uncomfortable – and make a good faith effort to learn vocabulary, and some grammar, for at least an hour each day. Possibly.
You get out what you put in, ultimately. And putting in hours with the language – and dedicated study of the mechanics of the language, is what will get you there.
A while is the best answer I can come up with. Speaking (to me) helps with recall because you need to know the word you want in an instant. There’s not a lot of time to consult a dictionary in most speaking situations. That should help with listening because if you can respond appropriately to the sentence, you know what you heard. It doesn’t have to be eloquent for your purposes, but you can give like a simple 2-3 word/sentence response to someone watching the same show as you in Japanese you’re probably okay.
Reading takes a bit longer because of kanji. The average Japanese adult is said to know 3,000 kanji, approximately 2/3 of which aren’t given furigana in publication. Does this mean you needy to know all of them? No – but the more you know the better.
Also, as much as people tout high-input methods (“immersion”), you need a base which you can get from textbooks etc.
You don’t have to wait very long, you can start incorporating reading and listening early on. It takes some searching to find things that are level appropriate, but the easiest anime/manga/podcast content is accessible at around N5/N4. Check out [Natively](https://learnnatively.com/resources/search/?type=manga) for manga difficulty rankings and [jpdb](https://jpdb.io/prebuilt_decks?show_only=anime) for anime difficulty rankings to find easy content you’re interested in.
For anime without subs try rewatching things you’ve seen before to make it easier. For manga search for a vocab list to make word lookups faster. It will be slow at first but that’s part of learning how to do it.
How much time per day for the next 2 years are you willing to sink into this endeavor?
Depends on how much time and effort you’re willing to put in.
Depends how much you do per day.
At 2000 hours I was quite comfortable with most material but still needed to look up quite a few words.
At 5500 hours I rarely need to look stuff up anymore.
Check out manga douga lol
You can accomplish a lot in two years. Language wise. 2 years of intentional/deliberate study ( 2 – 6 hours a day) with an emphasis on speaking took me to an advanced speaking level. I was able to give tours, offer verbal interpretor work from English/Japanese, etc.
This was about 2 years of hard study with daily efforts. However, within this two year time frame, I did not pursue learning kanji. Anytime I found a new word, I wrote it down in a note pad and recited it and put it into memory and relied heavily on the context of conversation to recall specific words. In other words, I learned the Japanese language in a manner that we would learn our own native language, by speaking/listening first.
Due to focusing entirely on speaking/listening, I only had about 100 or so kanji under my belt and the hiragana and katakana. I couldn’t read almost anything of importance and due to relying on context, a lot of words were very confusing to navigate because つく could have 9 different kanji associated with that saying. This means I would confuse the living hell out of myself when I would hear すいた and ついた, because I didn’t understand the importance of Kanji and it was difficult to differentiate between words when there’s only so many ways to pronounce something in Japanese.
Either way, you can get really good in 2 years. Recently I returned to Japanese because I got very tired of letting people know I speak ペラペラ but have 赤ちゃん levels of writing/reading ability. In less than 2 months, I have learned over 200 individual Kanji characters, hundreds of complex news vocab, and have improved my reading ability by a long shot.
I would say I average about 2 – 3 solid hours daily of deliberate, focused, study time. The time is scattered throughout the day, but I’m able to Pick up my phone and do 20 minute sessions of reading the news, looking at word lists/flash cards/etc.
Takoboto on Android + The Kodansha Kanji Learners course have been my two absolute favorite go-to’s. Takoboto has all of the N1 – N5 kanji and vocabulary in list and flash card format all ready to go so I started with N5 and burned through all vocab within 2 weeks, just to memorize the kanji, and then I would study 4 – 6 kanji characters a day from the Kodansha. The kodansha is nice because it introduces the Kanji in the same manner that Japanese elementary students would receive it. The only issue I have with the Kodansha is some of the example vocabulary are bizarre and not used at all. For example…. when learning 土 one of the vocab listed it 土いじり (play around in/fiddling in the dirt). It’s really not a common use case for this kanji at all, but oh well, it’s burned into my brain now.
I’m hell bent on being able to read complex material and even a Japanese newspaper by the years end, or at least by March of next year. Either way, if you commit focused time daily, you will get there and meet your 2 year goal. Try to dedicate at least 2 hours a day. You will say major leaps and strides.
I’ll be the short comment
If you study enough, yes, 2 years is more than enough time to learn Japanese. That being said, it’ll take about 5 hours of studying a day for 2 years (estimated)
That is probably too ambitious.
I mean, it depends on what your study habits are, how much free time you have, what study materials you are using, where you live, how much daily exposure you get to Japanese, what you mean by “comfortably,” and the content of whatever it is you want to read and listen to.
But there’s only a very narrow set of answers to the above variables that come out to the conclusion of “That’s not too ambitious.”
It is quite ambitious.
It’s hard to say if it’s *too* ambitious since that depends on a bunch of specific factors, such as:
* Your definition of “ok-ish”. Is it more like, make your way through a book at a snail’s pace with the help of a dictionary (very possible) or being able to read the book fluently with at most one unknown word every 10 pages or so (not so possible). * How much time you have available each day. 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? 4 hours? more? * What you’re interested in being able to understand? Manga and everyday conversations? Sci-fi anime and epic novels? Newspapers and political debates? * Whether you have learned a foreign language before? It definitely helps if you know what the process is like.
17 comments
It literally all depends on your time studying. Not the length of time. If you study for 5 minutes a day for 2 years, idk prob not. 2 hours a day for 2 years, absolutely no doubt.
To put it simply: I’ve found that you have to be on the Intermediate plateau or into Upper Intermediate level to be comfortable with it. In terms of JLPT, that’s close to N3 to N2. It IS doable in two years, but that also depends on how much time you dedicate to it
My own shame is that I’ve been in Japan for over four years, and I’m still barely N3- mostly because my study time has been drastically reduced over the years, and I’m actively working to correct that.
Depends on the definition of “ok ish enough” and the material to read/listen. I was learning with tutor once a week plus daily Anki. Took some time to find methods that worked for me, experienced some burnout (basically didn’t learn new words, but stuck with reviewing old ones). It took me 1.5 years to finally watch Tonari no Totoro in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. And it was quite comfortable IMO: I didn’t understand 100% of every line of dialogue, but I could understand most of it, get the idea behind the scene and enjoy the story. After that learning the language became so much more fun.
So yeah, it’s possible if you tone down the “I need to understand absolutely everything” and find the material that suits you.
Ot depends on a lot of things but ultimately, if you study books you’ll get comfortable reading books.
It took me nearly 10 years to get to the point of reading comfortably but not because it took me that long to learn enough of the language. I got stuck behind 2 incorrect notions.
1. If I just immerse and extensively read, with no care to understanding, I will absorb the language.
2. If I can’t seamlessly read and enjoy the content with minimal word lookup/effort then I’m not ready to read yet.
Eventually I just dove in and started picking apart things to read. No matter what level you are there’s a couple of hurdles to jump. One is reading comprehension. Learning materials don’t really prepare you for real Japanese sentences. And the second is abysmally slow reading speed which is only helped by reading.
I did have to google translate some things to make heads or tails of sentences but eventually dropped that crutch as well.
I went from not being able to read and understand anything, and having a LOT of word lookups. To reading fairly comfortably within like 6 months (on nearly a decade of study)
You can, and should, work on it from whatever your level is, and get yourself used to the process and familiar with native phrasing. Reading will still be study time… until it’s not study time anymore.
So that’s gonna depend on you, your brain, when you start, how much you already know… and so on. :3 it’s not an exact science.
Think in terms of hours, not years. 3 hours a day for 3 years sounds like a reasonable projection, assuming you start immersing after one or two years.
min. 2 hrs/day, N3 in 6months + speaking(simple topics only). Even if you do consistent 1hr per day in 2years you’ll be for sure N2 or close to N1. 2 years is such a looong time you’ll definitely be able to do anything japanese comfortably.
If you study 10 minutes a day for 2 years, no.
If you study, immerse, and engage with the language – even when it’s ambiguous and uncomfortable – and make a good faith effort to learn vocabulary, and some grammar, for at least an hour each day. Possibly.
You get out what you put in, ultimately. And putting in hours with the language – and dedicated study of the mechanics of the language, is what will get you there.
A while is the best answer I can come up with. Speaking (to me) helps with recall because you need to know the word you want in an instant. There’s not a lot of time to consult a dictionary in most speaking situations. That should help with listening because if you can respond appropriately to the sentence, you know what you heard. It doesn’t have to be eloquent for your purposes, but you can give like a simple 2-3 word/sentence response to someone watching the same show as you in Japanese you’re probably okay.
Reading takes a bit longer because of kanji. The average Japanese adult is said to know 3,000 kanji, approximately 2/3 of which aren’t given furigana in publication. Does this mean you needy to know all of them? No – but the more you know the better.
Also, as much as people tout high-input methods (“immersion”), you need a base which you can get from textbooks etc.
You don’t have to wait very long, you can start incorporating reading and listening early on. It takes some searching to find things that are level appropriate, but the easiest anime/manga/podcast content is accessible at around N5/N4. Check out [Natively](https://learnnatively.com/resources/search/?type=manga) for manga difficulty rankings and [jpdb](https://jpdb.io/prebuilt_decks?show_only=anime) for anime difficulty rankings to find easy content you’re interested in.
For anime without subs try rewatching things you’ve seen before to make it easier. For manga search for a vocab list to make word lookups faster. It will be slow at first but that’s part of learning how to do it.
How much time per day for the next 2 years are you willing to sink into this endeavor?
Depends on how much time and effort you’re willing to put in.
Depends how much you do per day.
At 2000 hours I was quite comfortable with most material but still needed to look up quite a few words.
At 5500 hours I rarely need to look stuff up anymore.
Check out manga douga lol
You can accomplish a lot in two years. Language wise. 2 years of intentional/deliberate study ( 2 – 6 hours a day) with an emphasis on speaking took me to an advanced speaking level. I was able to give tours, offer verbal interpretor work from English/Japanese, etc.
This was about 2 years of hard study with daily efforts. However, within this two year time frame, I did not pursue learning kanji. Anytime I found a new word, I wrote it down in a note pad and recited it and put it into memory and relied heavily on the context of conversation to recall specific words. In other words, I learned the Japanese language in a manner that we would learn our own native language, by speaking/listening first.
Due to focusing entirely on speaking/listening, I only had about 100 or so kanji under my belt and the hiragana and katakana. I couldn’t read almost anything of importance and due to relying on context, a lot of words were very confusing to navigate because つく could have 9 different kanji associated with that saying. This means I would confuse the living hell out of myself when I would hear すいた and ついた, because I didn’t understand the importance of Kanji and it was difficult to differentiate between words when there’s only so many ways to pronounce something in Japanese.
Either way, you can get really good in 2 years. Recently I returned to Japanese because I got very tired of letting people know I speak ペラペラ but have 赤ちゃん levels of writing/reading ability. In less than 2 months, I have learned over 200 individual Kanji characters, hundreds of complex news vocab, and have improved my reading ability by a long shot.
I would say I average about 2 – 3 solid hours daily of deliberate, focused, study time. The time is scattered throughout the day, but I’m able to Pick up my phone and do 20 minute sessions of reading the news, looking at word lists/flash cards/etc.
Takoboto on Android + The Kodansha Kanji Learners course have been my two absolute favorite go-to’s. Takoboto has all of the N1 – N5 kanji and vocabulary in list and flash card format all ready to go so I started with N5 and burned through all vocab within 2 weeks, just to memorize the kanji, and then I would study 4 – 6 kanji characters a day from the Kodansha. The kodansha is nice because it introduces the Kanji in the same manner that Japanese elementary students would receive it. The only issue I have with the Kodansha is some of the example vocabulary are bizarre and not used at all. For example…. when learning 土 one of the vocab listed it 土いじり (play around in/fiddling in the dirt). It’s really not a common use case for this kanji at all, but oh well, it’s burned into my brain now.
I’m hell bent on being able to read complex material and even a Japanese newspaper by the years end, or at least by March of next year. Either way, if you commit focused time daily, you will get there and meet your 2 year goal. Try to dedicate at least 2 hours a day. You will say major leaps and strides.
I’ll be the short comment
If you study enough, yes, 2 years is more than enough time to learn Japanese. That being said, it’ll take about 5 hours of studying a day for 2 years (estimated)
That is probably too ambitious.
I mean, it depends on what your study habits are, how much free time you have, what study materials you are using, where you live, how much daily exposure you get to Japanese, what you mean by “comfortably,” and the content of whatever it is you want to read and listen to.
But there’s only a very narrow set of answers to the above variables that come out to the conclusion of “That’s not too ambitious.”
It is quite ambitious.
It’s hard to say if it’s *too* ambitious since that depends on a bunch of specific factors, such as:
* Your definition of “ok-ish”. Is it more like, make your way through a book at a snail’s pace with the help of a dictionary (very possible) or being able to read the book fluently with at most one unknown word every 10 pages or so (not so possible).
* How much time you have available each day. 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? 4 hours? more?
* What you’re interested in being able to understand? Manga and everyday conversations? Sci-fi anime and epic novels? Newspapers and political debates?
* Whether you have learned a foreign language before? It definitely helps if you know what the process is like.