I finished “Human Japanese”.. I would say I am 75% confident moved to “Human Japanese intermediate “. Everything seems so difficult. I am not able to understand anything. I thought I will start watching anime since I am done with the introduction. I couldn’t follow anything except few words here and there. I am studying from past few months and now I feel I know nothing. I am not very keen on proper grammar. I just need to learn vocabulary and some what manage basic sentences..Please suggest how do I proceed further?
5 comments
you need grammar, vocab is important but it’s not sufficient
watching anime will not solve the problem, and it’s also not an appropriate measure for your studying – any native material intended for an adult audience will not be mostly comprehensible for many years; you can watch all you want but it’s not level-appropriate material
never heard of human japanese but maybe it’s not a great book? i’m not sure. i used genki and tae kim and a book series that doesn’t exist any more
are you actually USING the vocab and grammar you learn, or just reading it once and never looking at it again? you need to use it: read, write, listen, speak
Understanding immersion takes a really long time. It’s not something where you read a few books or study 2 thousand words and then you understand the language.
Being able to hear the spoken Japanese is a skill in itself. You might even know all of the words in a given sentence, but because your ears are not trained, you’d miss it in real-time. You can test this with JP subtitles, too.
If you watch without subtitles and understand nothing, but then go back to the subtitle file, or replay with JP subs and realize “hey, I should have known that sentence”, you’ll see the problem.
If your vocab is at level 75, but your ears are at level 1, you’re gonna miss a lot. So you have to train your ears.
This is because spoken Japanese is often slurred, just like it is in English. We don’t speak perfectly, we say things like “gonna” “shoudla” and “comfterble”, and this is enough to throw off a person looking for the dictionary, crystal-clear version of the words.
Expect to make listening and watching a part of your routine, and avoid stressing on how little you can understand. You don’t get stronger from worrying about all the weight you can’t lift, you get stronger from lifting the weights.
I’d recommend reading the manga alongside the anime if possible, and watching first with english subs, then rewatching immediately with no subtitles (or just ignore the eng subs the 2nd time).
This way you know exactly what’s going on, and you can allow the Japanese to wash over you with as much comprehensible context as possible upon rewatch. But you can vary your strategies, the point is you want to immerse a lot.
Understanding and parsing the language happens at a subconscious level. That means, you can’t force it by thinking harder. You simply need experience.
So go ahead and keep immersing. Make flashcards and use studying as a way to accelerate your memory of words and phrases. You will become better overtime, be patient and have fun with it!
Skim through a grammar guide and don’t focus on mastering the concepts. Just come back to the guide as needed when something comes up in immersion that you forgot.
My favorite grammar course is here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj&si=vj2nQSVbU2uFp1z7 Just the first 12 eps is fine to give a foundation, but take your time.
It helps a lot if the textbooks or Tae Kim really aren’t working for you.
>I am not able to understand anything.
Welcome to the club! Learning Japanese is a loooong process. The *default state* is not knowing something. Eventually through sheer brute force you’ll be able to make your way through conversations. If you stick with it for years.
> I am studying from past few months
You’ve only been at it for a few months. That’s nothing. It takes Japanese people years to learn to speak the language when they’re kids. And they don’t have another language knocking around in their heads to make it harder for them! Just keep at it.
>I am not very keen on proper grammar.
I don’t think you get to pick and choose what part of a language you’re *keen on.*
Picture your Japanese language ability as a human body. Grammar is the skeleton. Words are the organs and muscle tissue. In order to have a body that can stand up on its own and do things, you need to have a skeleton to put those organs and muscles on. Otherwise it’s just a pile of flesh. Like the scraps at a butcher’s. Hmm. Is that too gross? This metaphor got away from me a bit.
My point is that you’ll *need* to understand grammar at least at some level to proceed. You don’t mention *why* you’re not keen on it in your post, but if it’s simply that you can’t be bothered, I’m afraid you’re learning the wrong language. This is not to say that it’s impossible to learn or that you should just give up: on the contrary, I want to say that it’s *very much* doable and to encourage you!
But it seems like you have some unrealistic expectations about the level you’ll be able to accomplish with your current level of interest. You simply can’t expect to study *only vocabulary* from a *beginner textbook* for a *few months* and expect to switch on content i*ntended for native speakers* and get along just fine. Japanese learners are in it for the long haul. Are you?
You’ve only been studying for months? You will likely need study for years (including both proper and spoken grammar) and then be immersed (i.e. in Japan) for months if you want to be able to watch and comprehend Japanese media. Don’t worry, you will get there if you stick with it, but it’s not a matter of months my friend.
I highly recommend going through native content at your level just to enjoy it. And most importantly, keep at it, anything, everyday.
General advice would be to use the NHK Web Easy website and just read news articles everyday, or use an app like Todai Easy Japanese to go through similar news articles with support in definitions. I think it’s good but I know the news can get boring. Pick and choose articles of interest.
The best that I have found for me is using the Anki app (computer or phone) and downloading real anime or drama flashcard decks. Now I know flashcard decks can be monotonous but the ideal decks are ones with the actual audio and visual image of the scene in the show and the full sentence in text being voiced by the characters in the show, and then optionally the English text translation which I find is still very helpful as sometimes the phrase has a different meaning than expected. Also, because I don’t generally like doing flashcards to remember/recall (but rather see the same word again later in other content naturally), I go through the deck chronologically to proceed through the show by essentially reading and hearing every line in order – and I suspend each card as I go through and “watch” the show. If there is a very complicated sentence with many difficult words I do try and look them up but will ultimately quit and suspend the card just to keep the immersion flow going. A bonus then is to watch the real video of the show after going through an episode or short series. Now finding the Anki deck content: the key is [Jo Mako’s list](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukDIWSkh_xvpppPbgs1nUR2kaEwFaWlsJgZUlb9LuTs/edit#gid=2068266284). On the Anime Difficulty tab, column G is the language difficulty so start in the green low numbers and look to column B at the show rating. Then column C generally has the download link to get the deck for the show. I would just start at the top and work down the list for shows with a low difficulty, have a rating around or over 8, and have the anki deck download link JP + EN. Even when you download and start a show it might be weird with lots of slang or otherwise, so I just delete those decks and move on to the next show down the list. I have been doing this from the top with Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro (famous Ghibli titles, great starting point and cultural knowledge), and have recently finished Anohana (row 159). Now even better content might be on the Readability List all the way down to Movies and TV Shows because these are more likely to have “slice of life” normal conversation dialogue than anime with lots of slang and strong language, but unfortunately these don’t have a language difficulty rating like the other Anime sheet. Ideally, you’ll get very interested in a show and plow through it with passion because you want to see what happens next in the show, rather than counting cards, words, time on Japanese language learning progress that will burn you out with it being more like a chore.
You can similarly do this similar process but with Youtube content on your pc using the browser extension “Language Reactor” while watching videos – you can quickly see definitions and English translations, and have the video play/pause line by line through the video. This is also great, but I find with a long video you are likely to stop and come back later which is not as convenient on a video tab in your computer browser as picking up the Anki app and going through the next few lines of a TV show. Also with youtubers gaming the system they tend to cut out the pauses leaving jam-packed content with jittery video (and tons of distracting popups and sound effects) from the cuts so I overall don’t recommend this unless you are strongly interested in the content or it is just a normal straight video without tons of editing.