Did I permanently scar my brain or something? I can’t speak Japanese…

34 comments

1. I’m still a novice at Japanese so this advice could be completely dogshit, but honestly… just practice? Speaking is hard but the only way to get better at constructing sentences is to just *do* it. Go on Japanese forums or some shit, HelloTalk, hire a tutor, doesn’t matter. Try and make a Japanese friend through a video game or discord or something. Put yourself out there man. If you’ve got 80-90% comprehension then you’re basically already there.

2. Shadowing/focused shadowing and output practice (conversation, monologues) should improve your situation. More input will also be beneficial, but obviously not as good as speaking to get better at speaking.

   In short: Do x to get good at x

3. > I speak Japanese worse than a 3 year old.

   I know that’s not the point of your question but I have been using English for 20 years and I speak worse than a 3 year old. I know complicated words for sure but within the set of vocab we have in common my English is clearly inferior. In that regard your situation does not strike me as the exception but the norm.

4. You speak that bad because you didn’t practice it. It takes time to get fluent in any of those habilities, and JLPT doesn’t practice AT ALL speaking.
   Just hire a teacher in italki and focus in conversation, you’ll see how it gets better in no time!

5. Hi.

   I am a native Spanish speaker. But I learned English on the way and by the time I was your age I had the same issue, I could read, write and listen but I was unable to speak fluently and to actually think in English.

   It wasn’t until I decided to move for a year to Ireland that this got fixed. I was forced to fend for myself and find a house, get services and stuff and a lot of that was done over phone calls too, so I couldn’t rely on gestures.

   At this point I catch myself thinking in English sometimes ( a lot actually) and it only happens when you are fully immersed into the language ( my job is in English now too so..)

   At this point I am a total noob at 日本ご but I know that if I want to get to the same level of “thinking” in japanese I will have to spend a while there and actually force myself to react to situations on the spot. And to be honest ( and since my company does have some Japanese language spots) I am even thinking on a few years to change roles to include Japanese on my actual work and force myself.

   So.. long story short : trow yourself into the water , no lifepads.

   Hope this helps.

6. knowing theory will never give you the hability to speak because you have to actually use the language actively to achieve it.

   I can also understand 85%-95% of everything I listen or read and never cared too much for anki so maybe I’ve done like 200 cards I guess the point is that big numbers will not make you a fluent speaker. If you dont use it as you use your native language you will never be abke to speak

7. Slavishly copy natives speaking Japanese until you spontaneously make the same noises at the same time.

   Spoken Language is noises that have meaning. They only work when you make the same noises natives use.

   Stop trying to produce word salad. Slavishly copy what Japanese people do, until you make the same noises in the same situations.

8. Speaking is entirely different skill. It’s like writting and drawing. You need to put some consistent practice into it and you’ll be good ^_^

9. English is my second language and I was afraid speaking until I met a foreigner and had no other choice of communication. That’s when it clicked. Of course I let him know I’m not used to it and might make mistakes but it was fine and now I even forget to speak my native language because I always think and speak English.

10. I have an advice BUT this worked for me when I was “learning” English. I started to speak to myself in English. I’m the type to talk to myself though, but basically, ALL my internal thoughts were in English.

    I started young too since I kinda learned English passively though media, but all my daydreams would also be in English. When I played (like pretending to be superheroes and stuff), also in English.

    So my point is, think in Japanese. You can try coming up with a topic and an outline in English, something like:

    How to cook hotdog:

    * how to choose the best hotdog
    * storing the hotdog
    * thawing the hotdog
    * cooking the hotdog
    * condiments vs naked hotdog

    ​

    Then you can move on to something more complex like explaining how to play chess. Again, you can have outlines in English so the prompts will be easy but talk (think) to yourself in Japanese.

11. just do some shadowing. get some lines from a drama or something. pretend to be the characters and say the lines. then try it without looking. this will train speaking to feel natural to you faster than you think.

12. You need to practice speaking to get better at speaking.

    Imagine reading a thousand books about piano and complaining you can’t play the piano even though you’ve read and understood so much theory

13. Try journaling and making poems and shit like that in your notebook, keep a japanese diary

14. It’s subreddits like this that make me appreciate what you’re all going through. I’m at a school right now in Shibuya that is *kicking my ass* — as in my main issue is particles. *But*, whether I do well or not, I’m still learning something new that will help me speak Japanese in the long run. I have a lot of respect for you all. Let’s all keep going and improving.

15. My experience is that outout skills come woth more input. In English I have no problem communicating no matter what the subject is even though I never deliberately practiced output. My accent and the ease of speaking are not native level obviously but I’m not limited in any way. In German however I do have trouble speaking even though I understand most things. The major difference between the two is amount of input I’ve had. My advice to you is to ditch anki (ditch the training wheels basically) and focus all your time on reading and listening. Since you still had a considerable amount of mistakes with both on the test there is still lots of room for improvement.

    Even though I think it’s not the best tot do at the moment, in time you might want to practice output specifically if you feel you’re not improving by more reading and listening (you will). Reading out loud is great for your accent but telling stories or explaining randomly selected subjects to a camera is great to practice conversation. Italki is something that could help but it’s not free and I don’t feel like it would be superior to just talking to a camera.

16. Practice practice practice. There are apps like HelloTalk that allow you to talk with natives at any given level if you so desire. You’ll only be good at the things you do all the time.

17. Everyone in here is saying the obvious, that you need to speak more. However, I suspect deep down you already know that. You list a bunch of stats, but none of them related to time you’ve spent speaking. Why is that?

    You could easily speak Japanese for an hour+ a day online in exchange apps or with a paid tutor. Does the thought of that make you uncomfortable? Why? Just for example (I’m not saying this is you), are you a perfectionist and afraid of showing your mistakes? Social anxiety? Frustrated by small talk? Always second guessing yourself but you actually speak Japanese fine? Too much hassle to find partners?

    The thing that will help most is drill down into the cause of aversion to this practice and address it. Your brain isn’t broken.

18. At no point in your post did you ever say how often you talk to people.

    All those people who said that “output doesn’t matter” lied to you.

    Tldr; talk more

19. I think you’re being too harsh on yourself.

    I’m a complete Japanese newb, but I have a *lot* of experience with other languages, including Chinese, Korean, French, and Spanish, to varying levels.

    If you don’t get a chance to use the Japanese language regularly, you won’t be able to produce the sounds and express the ideas you want to express.

    Speaking is related to, but not the same as, reading and writing, which you are clearly skilled at.

    Good luck!

20. Take this from someone who is thought to be a japanese wizard by his classmates but is actually in the lower half of the class in terms of grades: Speaking proficiency and knowledge of a language are two independent skills to acquire. You’ve got the book smarts, now it’s time to learn how to use it on command.

    You’d be amazed at just how much you can express in spoken japanese with as little as just grammar and vocab up to N3.

    Try to employ your knowledge of the language directly to the thought you wanna express. You can start slow, maybe say a few short sentences in your mind like “I want coffee” or “I will sleep when I get home” in japanese. If you need to, pretend you’re having conversations with someone else in your head.

    For someone with as much study as you, once you start speaking you’ll probably sound like a native.

21. How much time have you invested in speaking?

22. The only way to get better at it is to do it more. You’re going to suck at it for a while, sorry. You just have to accept that and keep sucking at it until eventually you realise you can do it.

23. If you don’t need to speak then don’t worry about it. If you have regular interactions that require Japanese then you will get better with practice.

24. Loads of people have talked about improving speaking by practicing speaking, one person brilliantly suggested tackling the reason *why* you haven’t done that yet (really important!) but I don’t see anyone addressing the translation aspect…. This is where I’m going to focus because I think it is really important and will get in your way if you want to improve speaking. You simply won’t be able to have a decent conversation with an adult at the level you should if you keep up with the translating.

    This is paraphrase from my native Japanese tutor, who has achieved native proficiency in her English and Spanish and has advanced degrees in second language pedagogy and worked as a translator for years: Translation, specifically while speaking, is a young person’s game. As the human brain ages, it just won’t be able to keep it up at the pace the job demands without more and more rest. Eventually it will just hurt and be too slow for usage in conversation. This isn’t true for written translating, I’m just talking about spoken translation during a conversation. The extra energy may be true for other forms of translation but without the time pressure it’s not as obstructive. I know translators work at the job late into life – my neighbor is a French translator in her 60s – but the job changes in that case (her focus is on written communication now).

    What’s more concerning is that this is how you are interacting with the language *100%* of the time. You got into this habit that will stop you from reaching your goal. You’re good at it because you are young. But it will take more and more energy. I’m old, and not as technically as proficient as you are though I’ve been studying longer, and I don’t translate in my head – I can’t. It takes a lot more energy to do that than to simply… read. Or listen. I still do it while speaking a little, but that’s falling away as I improve. You want to get to the point that it’s a choice, not something you *have* to do.

    The ages of your study (most likely after college) and the fact that you are asking here instead of asking your teacher make me wonder… do you have a trained tutor? If so, do they know you are just translating? If they are trained in second language acquisition, and not just a bilingual speaker with a side hustle, they will know how to address this (and the speaking issue). If you don’t have one, I recommend getting one – the good ones are expensive, but worth it. Tell them about the translating in your head and they’ll discover the speaking issue and figure out a plan you can afford to solve the problem. It might just be that you’ve got some gaps in your training due to lack of a trained teacher.

25. That just seems perfectly normal to me. When I was at university in the US, we had these brilliant Chinese grad students who could watch TED videos and write out good explanations of them. But their spoken english was so, so bad and broken, they were barely intelligible.

    Basically, speaking is almost a completely different skillset. The only way you’re going to get good at conversing in a foreign language is to do it – talking to people regularly. It’s the hardest thing to grind because you need other people involved. This is usually when the committed student moves to the foreign country to provide a lot more of those opportunities.

    Think about how kids learn languages – they don’t learn vocab and reading/writing first. Conversing comes through natural interaction with others.

26. Funnily enough, there are foreigners that can speak it but not read or write. Like someone else here said, it’s a totally different skill and one you don’t seem to have much experience on

27. I had similar feels yesterday. Second day in Japan after learning for about two years with varying amounts of dedication but never a lot of it. Thanks to pimsleur I thought I’ll be ok. Landed here and can’t understand crap. Can’t come up with saying anything. Bik problem. 😐

    Then I remembered that I had the same issue with English. Could write a lot and quite well but couldn’t understand what people say and didn’t know what to say.
    Few years later Spanish – the same even though now I’m more freestyle with it despite knowing very little of it and not really learning it anymore. Few times a week I meet Spanish speaking people who aren’t speaking much of English so I’m just trying to have fun. They are cool too! 😀

    I just know that I need to keep trying saying stuff and listening. I’ll get better with time. 🙂

28. I’m still a novice in japanese, but I can share a bit from my experience learning english, it’s not my first language.

    Basically you’ve made it, so don’t worry. You probably don’t need to study in the traditional sense anymore, but make sure you have enough immersion. Find a japanese podcast you like, turn your pc language to japanese, find japanese music you like, follow japanese youtubers, go to japan on vacations if you can, if you know people who speak japanese only speak to them in japanese from now on. Thinking in your new language is like a switch that needs to be turned on, the brain is lazy so it won’t do it unless you show it japanese is important enough to bother.

    What finally worked for me was having my first job interview in english. I was in the same place you are now and I had never had a conversation longer than 2 sentences in english, but I put myself in a situation where I would be talking in english for at least 40 minutes and getting the job depended on it. Try to get yourself in that sort of situation, you’ve already made it as easy as possible so what’s left to do is raising the stakes.

29. To stop constantly translating you have to immerse your brain in the language. Easiest way is to move there but I know that’s difficult. The second best I’ve found is to force yourself to do everything outside of what you can’t ‘in Japanese’ set your phone language to Japanese only watch Japanese tv/movies, etc. it’ll immerse your brain to the point that it starts making direct associations with the Japanese words.

30. 1. translating in your head is probably what’s killing it for you, it’s a bad habit and should be squashed early before it becomes ingrained, it’s going to take a lot of effort but you can undo this
    2. practise speaking. period. it’s not the same skillset as reading any more than reading hiragana will somehow teach you to read kanji. n1 means literally nothing for speaking ability

31. > I never practiced speaking
    > now I can’t speak
    > pikachu.jpg

32. I’m in a similar position in terms of level.

    I think output itself is its own skill. Have you ever tried journaling? Or writing essays on something? What about a short story? What about rerewriting a story that you’ve read? Extra points if you can get it proofread by a native.

    There’s also muscle memory for your voice (I’m not joking) that needs to develop. It’s kind of painful, but what helped me a bit was to record myself repeating stuff that I hear, and listening to it. It hurts to hear one’s own voice, but any unnaturalness becomes really apparent.

33. As an N1 who became fluent, studying in a bubble doesn’t mean as much IRL.

    Your speaking and other productive skills don’t really reach their true potential until you practice in real life situations where you can’t back out. The ability to think in Japanese, react in Japanese and speak Japanese without any forethought comes from experience. No matter how many drills you do at home it won’t match practical experience.

    Right now, your best bet if you’re not in Japan is to get a native speaking partner and make it a hard rule to have them speak natural speed and never use English for **anything**.

    If you do live in Japanese, challenge yourself and get into situations where you have to speak to the natives and learn new words, phrases, and/or skills.

    When I first arrived to Japan, I was overwhelmed by how well educated I thought I was compared to my practical skills. The real world is brutal and nothing like a textbook. However, I kept at it and eventually my speaking (and anything else lacking) quickly leveled up.

    It might be hard at first, but it is doable.

    Tldr;
    ***Speak more.***
    Find a native speaking partner or if you’re in Japan, get out more and force yourself to use Japanese. Speaking is a productive skill and can’t be skilled up running textbook drills.

34. That’s perfectly normal. You can’t speak a new language without a bit of practice, first. The good news is, it’s not a huge amount of practice. At least not compared to what it takes to get where you are: understanding the language at 80-90%.

    So just put in the practice. Write, speak, vlog, whatever. Should take a few dozen hours to see results, and a couple hundred altogether.

    This is however separate from pronunciation. To get that right (and you definitely should, asap, because it goes a long way), that’s another 150 hours of specialized training. But pronunciation training is its own thing, very different from language learning. So look into it. There are ways to get it 100% right (native accent that makes people think you were born and raised in a middle class family, in the capital of the country who’s language you’ve learned). Actors do it all the time. If those idiots can do it, anybody can. It’s like learning how to play a sport. Really, anybody can do it. It doesn’t take any special skills, high IQ, or anything except functioning vocal cords and some work ethic.

    P.S. Your biggest issue is STILL listening comprehension. “I typically understand 80-90%” is a big achievement, but it is still only about half way to where you wish to be, if your goal is to speak at native level. Even if you practice, and learn to pronounce things perfectly, you’re still a few thousand hours of input/immersion away from actually understanding the language as well as natives do.

    So, in reality, you’re a few hundred hours of speaking/pronunciation work away from native level…but still thousands of hours of input away. Just be aware of that, and keep doing input while you practice speaking and train pronunciation.