Today, really for the first time, I went out to a japanese-english exchange group meeting and found it more difficult than expected. I thought I would understand more than I did and found myself saying not much more than individual words. It was a little bit discouraging although the people were very nice.
What was your first time like? Did it go as planned or not so much?
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The first time doing anything is usually a dud for anyone try not to get too discouraged about it.
I remember hearing someone’s concept of language learning one time and I really liked how they broke it down, it goes a bit like this.
There’s two broad categories in language, input and output. Dividing those categories further, there’s recognition and recall. Beyond that, there’s also the matter of whether the language is being spoken/heard (auditory communication) or read/written (visual communication). Each of these skills need to be trained in tandem otherwise there will be an imbalance in the communication.
In your case, it sounds like the recognition of your input of spoken words (understanding speech) is not as trained as say, maybe, recognition of input of written words (reading)
And that’s okay! If you find yourself lacking in one branch of that fluency tree a lot more than others, then realizing that is a good way to gear your studies toward fixing that imbalance! No one should be expected to do everything right the first time and it sounds like your group was supportive of the difficulty curve you’re facing, so going out and doing that repeatedly will only help you improve and strengthen that skill. Good luck!
It never goes as planned lol. Nowadays when I’m learning a language, I just talk and if I’m wrong someone corrects me hopefully and I learn.
Anyone that answers anything other than “a complete disaster” is lying.
Jokes aside, how can you expect to speak more than a few individual words at a time if you have no practice speaking? Fluency in speech is only achieved after *at least* dozens of hours of practice, if not hundreds or thousands, depending on your vocab size and your command of grammar.
Was the exact opposite for me imo. Went to a similiar group, and could explain myself much better then I expected to. Of course, not without errors in sentence forming and grammar, but it all went well.
I could bring my point across.
Brutal lol but it was good to get the first time over with. It made all other interactions much easier.
I’m fortunate enough to live in Okinawa for work. Whenever I have a chance to utilize the extremely basic Japanese that I know the locals are thrilled and very encouraging. It’s a little frustrating when you can’t fully enjoy the conversation, but I count even using or understanding individual words a major victory.
Keep it up OP.
The only way to succeed early on is to do comprehensive research and prepare an elaborate dialogue and lists of phrases that more or less cover the topic at hand (e.g. talking about a news article, reacting to news, talking about music, talking about family), then rehearse beforehand to keep things fresh. You know, something to draw on so as to have something to talk about and minimize the time spent thinking.
Thankfully, finding material for this is ridiculously easy compared to 30 years ago.
I was so happy to understand 熱い as a warning when being served takoyaki, that I proceeded to immediately forget that advice and burn my mouth.
So yeah, not great 😂
I found language partners at my uni last week. They speak Japanese and want to learn German. I speak German and want to learn Japanese. The first time talking to them in Japanese was awful. I struggled so much making any sentence and I spent a lot of time remembering words. When I ask for a word in Japanese or I used a wrong one and the corrected me, they often said a word I already knew but simply forgot in the heat of the moment. Remembering words in Anki or when writing them in chats is completely different than remembering them when speaking.
Being able to actually converse properly is one of the most difficult things in language learning. It comes as one of the last things.
The brain needs to learn to listen, and consider what to reply, and formulate that sentence in the foreign language you are learning, and say it, more or less at the same time. That means that all necessary words, both in listening and speaking, and thinking basically, must be available for quick access (so not like reading a kanji and thinking for a while “aaahh what does this one mean….”).
Anyways it takes time and effort to learn specifically how to speak – I feel like my written Japanese is waaaaaaay ahead of my spoken (which is very poor), because I can take time to look up words and think about how to create the sentence, move things around if it didn’t fit in the end, etc. There is no time for that in a conversation.
Just don’t get discouraged. The next time you do it, you will notice a big improvement 😉
Have fun learning 😉
がんばって !
The first time having a casual conversation with a group of Japanese people who weren’t teachers or otherwise professionally connected was a bit surprising.
It was my first visit to a public bath (super public bath really) on my first visit to Japan. It was in the city of Obu in Aichi prefecture. I dare say they hadn’t seen anyone from out of prefecture before :-). Anyway, several guys came and chatted while we were drying off/getting dressed. They assumed I must have had a Japanese girlfriend etc. It was an easy conversation because they were chatty and curious but spoke good standard Japanese and did not talk too quickly.
My first attempt to talk to a random Japanese person was to one of those children’s guards who line streets in the early morning with flags etc. I wanted to talk a picture and on the way was rehearsing exactly what to say (I thought “shashin wo totte mo ii desu ka?” was the right approach, but he then thought I wanted him to take a picture of me. Utter failure. I got better.
Ganbatte.
Have you ever met a foreign exchange student trying to speak English for the first time or for their first year in the US. Or maybe some other person from another country having a go at it? If they are a complete beginner, you can usually tell if they don’t sound too too amazing at their English and you correct them right? An at other times they will say something that is completely, grammatically incorrect, BUT you still caught the meaning they were trying to convey, the gist. This will be you for a while. This phase of language learning is like the awkward phase of hair growth in between having short hair and long hair. No matter WHAT you have to go through that awkward in-between phase.
You’re going to be that foreigner learning English, making mistakes, having weird or long awkward pauses because they are trying to figure out what to say and how to communicate. You’ll be fumbling words just like them. It is humbling tbh. But the ones that stick with it eventually learn. The first step to being really good at something is to be really bad at it first. My advice, continue and keep having awkward conversations. Keep going!! Keep doing this. You will get better.
My advice to get some kind of flow is to learn some “How to” phrases like:
どういう意味ですか？ ー what does that mean?
Or
“x”はなんという意味ですか？
Here’s one variation I like to use. In this example, I am talking to someone and they say a word I do not know. Let’s say 残業(ざんぎょう) ー a word I JUST learned about recently in my LAST language exchange call in real life from just talking to people. The language exchange parter and I were talking in Japanese about our jobs and work and they mentioned the word 「残業」. Immediately, I asked 「あ、xさん、ざんぎょうはなんという意味ですか？」, translation: “what does “zangyou” mean? After I asked she explained. I use this one A LOT myself but it is a basic phrase you should try to get down. Sometimes they explain in Japanese. Sometimes they explain in English depending on who you talk to. Either way, you learn as you talk. If you don’t learn it after your first encounter and if it goes in one ear and out the other, you will surely encounter it again and it will stick.
Another one of my favorites:
どういう状況(じょうきょう)でこの言葉を使いますか？ ー what situation do I use that word in?
Learn some set phrases like these and utilize them like tools (hammers, drills, screw drivers) from your tool box. Remember you are going to sound like a caveman at first but that is okay because EVERY language learner goes through this ritual and rite.
You won’t see improvement overnight but you will start to see it after weeks to months and it will be very incremental. Good luck!
I was drunk as hell but everyone else was so it was fine
I’ve been learning Japanese for about three years and I’m currently in Japan. When I arrived here in March, I was all like “Yeah, I feel pretty confident, I’m sure I’ll be able to handle most situations.” Boy, was I disappointed in myself after my first encounter with a Japanese person. It’s not that I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, it’s more that I really struggled to understand the answers because it was just way too fast for me, even after I asked them to please speak slowly. Unfortunately, I’ve now kind of developed a fear of striking up a conversation with Japanese people because I’m scared of not understanding their reply. It’s really tougher than I imagined. 🙁
It was brutal for me. I remember feeling SO cool about myself and SO confident. We were in an actual social setting with Japanese people and preemptively said that oh, yeah, I can hold a basic conversion, no worries.
When the time came, I literally panicked and basically pretty much screamed at the poor people EIGOSUJIN. (Yes I know the world doesn’t exist! It was a panicked mix of eigo with igirisujin)
Mortifying, I know I know.
Luckily, everyone started laughing and asked me what my name is (in Japanese). It was super bumpy but managed to recover. The shame will stay forever, tho.
It was a lot harder than I had expected, but managed to understand my teacher and express myself. I got some mokuhanga printing lessons with the head printmaker at the Yoshida Hanga Academy, so there were a lot of craft-specific terms, words and counters I had not studied in a standard japanese language course.
I’m not very far along, but I made some online friends in japan. Usually we chat through this translation layer, but depending on the situation, sometimes I just do my best to communicate in japanese. (It’s discord, and the translation layer doesn’t cover all the channels.)
It’s kinda fun I guess, but also annoying, and looking back at my old messages, even as early on as I am I can see I was doing terribly xd