I’m not at all an advanced learner, but I feel like you’re less likely to have a single Eureka moment than you are to notice gradual progress. For me I often read something or watch a video and go “hey, a couple of months ago I would not have been able to follow that”
Not an advanced learner, but a realisation how bad most of the fan translations of manga are, when trying to read side by side
Lower your expectations, it’s a difficult language to learn. I have eureka moments with everything I can somewhat understand because I earned it, it wasn’t something I grew up with. I’m definitely not an advanced learner but I learned to take pride in what i can do.
Not eureka per se but payoff: it’s mind blowing at first to understand anime without subtitles. Especially rewatching your favorite anime after some years.
There’s also not experiencing language barrier when you visit Japan.
I’m a intermediate plateau loser right now but it feels more like a fog clearing. Sometimes, I do get excited when I read a sentence or hear something and don’t have to translate it in my head or think too hard about it
Ironically when I was cutting Japanese class to hang out with Japanese friends. Suddenly my brain clicked and I realized I had done several hours of conversation in Japanese without “thinking” about what I was saying.
My Eureka moment came so silently I literally didn’t even notice. I’m into competitive video games and I found a youtube video where they were interviewing the #1 ranked player in the world, and he basically did a mini lecture where he played a couple of matches and commentated his thought process and gave tips. Sprinkled in with proper interview questions before and after the matches by the interviewers.
Yeah this video was like 45 minutes long and I was around 30 minutes into the video when I realized the entire thing was in Japanese and I was understanding everything
I’ve had a couple
– a couple years ago, when I was studying for N2, I felt like kanji just “clicked” where I could make a pretty good guess at the onyomi of kanji I haven’t seen.
– a bit over a year ago, I realized I had gotten used to the language to the point I didn’t need anki anymore (had passed 20k words already). But I was just doing my usual light novel reading and in the middle of it I just stopped using anki. Then grabbed a Japanese only dictionary and haven’t used English to learn since
Although it’s worth noting I was already at that level, but because progress felt slow for a bit (because of the intermediate plateau) I never realized it until I took a step back and noticed. It doesn’t just happen overnight.
i’d consider myself upper intermediate in japanese, and definitely my eureka moment for me was when i realized i can “skim” through a sentence and digest the meaning afterwards which felt a lot more natural compared to going word for word, piecing together the sentence’s meaning as i go.
main reason for this is because this really helps me identify relative clauses within sentences. in japanese relative clauses succeed the verb or phrase whereas in english they usually are at the beginning (東京に暮らしている男 vs. the man that lives in tokyo). had i just gone slowly and translate the words as i read them, i would struggle to see the bigger picture and get lost midway through translation. this is on top of being able to better identify the subject/object of a sentence, and the tone/mood/connotations
once i was able to pick up and refine this skill, learning japanese for me snowballed as it felt a LOT less clunky to read material and mine words, and my confidence really skyrocketed as i understood more and more.
20+ years in Japan here. As others have said, it’s a series of small realizations. An early one was on the way home from a Japanese lesson, a station announcement that I’d heard every day just “clicked” and then I knew what it was saying. A couple of years later, I finished watching a movie and realized I really enjoyed it because it didn’t feel like a chore. Then another when I realized I could hear people talking in an elevator and understand their business conversation with no context (a lot harder than you’d think at first).
I think at some point you also have to realize that you’ll never know everything. The other day I complimented someone on what they were wearing, and he said 馬子にも衣装, and I had to ask what he meant. Especially as a second language, there will always be gaps in your knowledge, but the small realizations of how much you’ve progressed make it worthwhile.
When you are visiting Japan, popping into a shop buying some souvenirs, answering the saleslady’s questions, asking for direction to the local temple or a local attraction, later grab a taxi back, telling the driver it’s OK to drop you off in front of the 7-11 store and thanking him, then later realized you did not automatically speak a word of English.
Don’t know about advanced learners though because I’m only a beginner.
I think being able to watch Japanese TV and understand what the hell is going on was a big one. I could actually interpret it to my partner which was cool. Also walking into a Japanese book shop and being able to pick out a bunch of books that looked interesting without having to go for the kids section! Same with podcasts and tv/movies – hitting the ocean of native level content and being able to pick what you like it a huge step.
Speaking wise being able to go into a random discord and follow what was going on, and also being able to hang out with Japanese friends that don’t speak much English. In Discord I chatted to someone from Turkey who didn’t speak English at all, that is pretty cool.
For reference I passed N2 at the end of 2022. I have done a lot of language exchange and free conversation sessions with a tutor to build speaking.
Never. You just get better and better over time gradually.
When I noticed I was thinking in Japanese outside studying. That validated that I might get to the level of almost a native one day.
After moving to Japan, I remember the day I was walking home from work and realized I was thinking to myself in Japanese, but hadn’t noticed it until that moment.
The more recent one was under going surgery back in February. Coming out of anesthesia and still being able to understand and talk to the doctor and nurses was a very cool feeling
It sometimes happens when I watch a show that I saw 10+ years ago with eng sub and realize that nothing is unclear.
Doesn’t happen much anymore though. It’s been so long at this point that I actually don’t remember what it was like to not understand Japanese, and that’s a weirder thought to me than anything. It’s weird to think that I’ve been speaking Japanese for basically half my life at this point.
As everyone says, it’s not a single moment. After barely keeping my head above water struggling not to drown from the get-go. I mostly felt the gradual release of pressure, until I added more challenges and weight to keep the feeling of drowning. The moments where something felt effortless recently actually felt wrong, I’m so used to everything being such a damn struggle that I didn’t feel like I understood at all. Except I had interpreted, and was participating in round about Discord chats without even thinking about what language it was in. I was just zoned in and laughing because everyone was being funny as shit.
I had a whole conversation in my dream in Japanese
Then I woke up and went back to being terrible
It is not related to how good you are (at least it was not the case for me). I won’t call myself advanced but I work in a japanese company and use professional work language (I’m not good at keigo still :/). The only moment I think fits is when it was our first or second day of course and we’re learning hiragana. At that moment I immediately understood why all Japanese names I ever heard in all anime i had seen always ended with a, e, i, o, u and the less common n. I knew it was going to be fun going forward.
Not an advanced learner, but I still have moments where I’m watching something without actually watching and realize that I can mostly follow what they’re saying. Or when I DO watch and realize what they’re saying is actually different from how the subtitles translate it.
Opening Genki 2 for the first time in years and thinking it’s basic
22 comments
I’m not at all an advanced learner, but I feel like you’re less likely to have a single Eureka moment than you are to notice gradual progress. For me I often read something or watch a video and go “hey, a couple of months ago I would not have been able to follow that”
Not an advanced learner, but a realisation how bad most of the fan translations of manga are, when trying to read side by side
Lower your expectations, it’s a difficult language to learn. I have eureka moments with everything I can somewhat understand because I earned it, it wasn’t something I grew up with. I’m definitely not an advanced learner but I learned to take pride in what i can do.
Not eureka per se but payoff: it’s mind blowing at first to understand anime without subtitles. Especially rewatching your favorite anime after some years.
There’s also not experiencing language barrier when you visit Japan.
I’m a intermediate plateau loser right now but it feels more like a fog clearing. Sometimes, I do get excited when I read a sentence or hear something and don’t have to translate it in my head or think too hard about it
Ironically when I was cutting Japanese class to hang out with Japanese friends. Suddenly my brain clicked and I realized I had done several hours of conversation in Japanese without “thinking” about what I was saying.
My Eureka moment came so silently I literally didn’t even notice. I’m into competitive video games and I found a youtube video where they were interviewing the #1 ranked player in the world, and he basically did a mini lecture where he played a couple of matches and commentated his thought process and gave tips. Sprinkled in with proper interview questions before and after the matches by the interviewers.
Yeah this video was like 45 minutes long and I was around 30 minutes into the video when I realized the entire thing was in Japanese and I was understanding everything
I’ve had a couple
– a couple years ago, when I was studying for N2, I felt like kanji just “clicked” where I could make a pretty good guess at the onyomi of kanji I haven’t seen.
– a bit over a year ago, I realized I had gotten used to the language to the point I didn’t need anki anymore (had passed 20k words already). But I was just doing my usual light novel reading and in the middle of it I just stopped using anki. Then grabbed a Japanese only dictionary and haven’t used English to learn since
Although it’s worth noting I was already at that level, but because progress felt slow for a bit (because of the intermediate plateau) I never realized it until I took a step back and noticed. It doesn’t just happen overnight.
i’d consider myself upper intermediate in japanese, and definitely my eureka moment for me was when i realized i can “skim” through a sentence and digest the meaning afterwards which felt a lot more natural compared to going word for word, piecing together the sentence’s meaning as i go.
main reason for this is because this really helps me identify relative clauses within sentences. in japanese relative clauses succeed the verb or phrase whereas in english they usually are at the beginning (東京に暮らしている男 vs. the man that lives in tokyo). had i just gone slowly and translate the words as i read them, i would struggle to see the bigger picture and get lost midway through translation. this is on top of being able to better identify the subject/object of a sentence, and the tone/mood/connotations
once i was able to pick up and refine this skill, learning japanese for me snowballed as it felt a LOT less clunky to read material and mine words, and my confidence really skyrocketed as i understood more and more.
20+ years in Japan here. As others have said, it’s a series of small realizations. An early one was on the way home from a Japanese lesson, a station announcement that I’d heard every day just “clicked” and then I knew what it was saying. A couple of years later, I finished watching a movie and realized I really enjoyed it because it didn’t feel like a chore. Then another when I realized I could hear people talking in an elevator and understand their business conversation with no context (a lot harder than you’d think at first).
I think at some point you also have to realize that you’ll never know everything. The other day I complimented someone on what they were wearing, and he said 馬子にも衣装, and I had to ask what he meant. Especially as a second language, there will always be gaps in your knowledge, but the small realizations of how much you’ve progressed make it worthwhile.
When you are visiting Japan, popping into a shop buying some souvenirs, answering the saleslady’s questions, asking for direction to the local temple or a local attraction, later grab a taxi back, telling the driver it’s OK to drop you off in front of the 7-11 store and thanking him, then later realized you did not automatically speak a word of English.
Don’t know about advanced learners though because I’m only a beginner.
I think being able to watch Japanese TV and understand what the hell is going on was a big one. I could actually interpret it to my partner which was cool. Also walking into a Japanese book shop and being able to pick out a bunch of books that looked interesting without having to go for the kids section! Same with podcasts and tv/movies – hitting the ocean of native level content and being able to pick what you like it a huge step.
Speaking wise being able to go into a random discord and follow what was going on, and also being able to hang out with Japanese friends that don’t speak much English. In Discord I chatted to someone from Turkey who didn’t speak English at all, that is pretty cool.
For reference I passed N2 at the end of 2022. I have done a lot of language exchange and free conversation sessions with a tutor to build speaking.
Never. You just get better and better over time gradually.
When I noticed I was thinking in Japanese outside studying. That validated that I might get to the level of almost a native one day.
After moving to Japan, I remember the day I was walking home from work and realized I was thinking to myself in Japanese, but hadn’t noticed it until that moment.
The more recent one was under going surgery back in February. Coming out of anesthesia and still being able to understand and talk to the doctor and nurses was a very cool feeling
It sometimes happens when I watch a show that I saw 10+ years ago with eng sub and realize that nothing is unclear.
Doesn’t happen much anymore though. It’s been so long at this point that I actually don’t remember what it was like to not understand Japanese, and that’s a weirder thought to me than anything. It’s weird to think that I’ve been speaking Japanese for basically half my life at this point.
As everyone says, it’s not a single moment. After barely keeping my head above water struggling not to drown from the get-go. I mostly felt the gradual release of pressure, until I added more challenges and weight to keep the feeling of drowning. The moments where something felt effortless recently actually felt wrong, I’m so used to everything being such a damn struggle that I didn’t feel like I understood at all. Except I had interpreted, and was participating in round about Discord chats without even thinking about what language it was in. I was just zoned in and laughing because everyone was being funny as shit.
I had a whole conversation in my dream in Japanese
Then I woke up and went back to being terrible
It is not related to how good you are (at least it was not the case for me). I won’t call myself advanced but I work in a japanese company and use professional work language (I’m not good at keigo still :/). The only moment I think fits is when it was our first or second day of course and we’re learning hiragana. At that moment I immediately understood why all Japanese names I ever heard in all anime i had seen always ended with a, e, i, o, u and the less common n. I knew it was going to be fun going forward.
Not an advanced learner, but I still have moments where I’m watching something without actually watching and realize that I can mostly follow what they’re saying. Or when I DO watch and realize what they’re saying is actually different from how the subtitles translate it.
Opening Genki 2 for the first time in years and thinking it’s basic
That’s not how it works.