I’m a proud Japanese American, and my mother (from Japan) taught my brother and I her native language. I was also heavily exposed to Japanese pop culture, folklore, and culture. I even visited Japan throughout throughout my childhood to see family there. I could NEVER read Japanese, but could speak and understand a decent amount of the language.
Since other Japanese besides my mother and brother are essentially non-existent in my area, I don’t get to practice Japanese and it’s not practical. My only exposure to it is my mother, tokusatsu like Ultraman or Super Sentai, and anime. Despite being unable to speak with other Japanese people, this gave me quite the vocabulary. But my understanding of the language depends on the topic; if it’s something casual like in a slice-of-life anime, I usually understand up to 95% of the dialog. However if the story is centered on fantasy, science, religion/spirituality, or warfare like in Gundam, Battleship Yamato, Attack On Titan, or any Isekai anime I can only understand 40%-70% of the dialog.
On super rare ocassions I actually have had an encounter other Japanese people. When I tell them how much Japanese I can speak/understand, they either tell me that their children are the same way, or they never bothered to teach the kids Japanese at all. When I move out from my parents, I ideally want to live in an area where my people are more abundant so we can share our culture together.
8 comments
i’m just a studier of the language and i have the same issue. if it’s casual discussions (and people aren’t tossing around slang and slurring their words) then it’s far easier than a narrative exposition dump or a jargon filled slurry.
I’ve struggled with the opposite. When I was in Japan I used to buy the newspaper every day and at least make an attempt to read some articles. After a while I got pretty good at reading newspapers and formal expressions but informal Japanese was much weaker. And to this day people laugh sometimes at my overly formal choice of expressions. Well, don’t beat yourself up about it too much. If you can spend some time in Japan I’m sure you can fill in some of the gaps. Literacy would be the biggest difference-maker, though (unfortunately acquiring literacy in Japanese is no mean feat no matter how well you speak it).
This makes sense if you think about it. In slice of life anime the vocabulary is pretty standard because it’s typical to everyday life, you know the words for festival, fireworks, lunch, etc. But it’s much less common to hear the words for processor, counterstrike, overload, extraterrestrial, communion, etc.
For everyday conversation, understanding casual anime at your level is perfect. Tech/sci-fi/fantasy vocabulary is just icing on the cake
I grew up the same way. I had broken Japanese till I was in high school and I was lucky enough to have Japanese class available to me through there and then in college took courses also. The learning apps have helped me a lot in reading Kanji but it is something I should have studied when I was younger. Heavy political talk is what still gets me, but the more you watch and read the better verses you will be! Good luck on your journey.
I mean yeah. If you only get exposed to part of a language, you’ll only understand that part. My natives are Vietnamese and English, Vietnamese though is more of a native understanding, C1 speaking and B1 reading/writing, solely because I grew up talking and listening much more than literacy. I’m at a N5 level in Japanese and I can introduce stuff well, say what I like, tell the time, etc. However I can’t speak informally, etc etc.
That’s really common with the half foreign kids I teach here in Japan. Everyday conversation is perfectly smooth, but more difficult or specialized vocabulary really trips them up.
Not native at all in fact I’m probably the most white person out there when it comes to heritage but I have the same struggle with my learning, I can read and understand pretty well but producing is insanely difficult no matter how much I practice which isn’t a ton because there’s no other speakers near me! If I actually liked Spanish that’d be a different story but it’s only Spanish and English here
I’m actually in the same boat. I decided that I wanted to pursue studying Japanese and being a translator so I’m taking Japanese lessons to hopefully be able to get to N1 level. It’s really hard to find people with the same background like that. I wish there was a way to meet people who experienced the same