A reader named X-star sent me an email today. Here it is, slightly abridged, and with sections added to ease referencing.

Hey. I found your site very motivating, but slightly confusing at times. I’ve dabbled in a bit of Japanese, learned the kana/a very small amount of kanji, picked up words here and there, textbooks and classes (which I agree, suck). I’m now highly considering your method, though I have some uncertainties with it that I’d like you to clear up if you don’t mind.

(A) Learning general use kanji first. I’d understand if it was learning the readings, but if you’re only learning the meaning, I don’t see how it could be much help without knowing how to read them. By the time you could actually put your knowledge to practise, wouldn’t you just completely forget the kanji? The kana seem hard-wired into my brain now, but that’s only because I spent a lot of time on each letter - just one gyo a day, if I tried to do 25+ a day, of an even more complex writing system with a lot more strokes, I don’t think I could keep it in my long-term memory. Maybe I just have a bad memory, though.

(B) No English subtitles. I suppose it sounds logical. I watch a lot of anime, and even if I say “I’ll try to actually LISTEN this time” I usually forget in a few minutes and just stare at the subtitles, though I’ve picked up a little of the shorter phrases/words that are repeated a lot, maybe I’d pick up even morefrom discarding subtitles. My only problem with it is, I don’t see how it’d be much fun watching something and not understanding what is going on most of the time, and like you say, you should always be enjoying yourself. Even something you’ve watched before would seem quite stale. Wouldn’t it be better to just put more of an effort into actually listening to the dialogue while reading subtitles? Also, I’ve heard, albeit from an unreliable source (Internet forum know-it-alls), that learning from anime and such is a bad way to learn Japanese. I can see why it could be true though, if a foreigner was learning English completely from media, with little actual contact with English-speakers, they might sound a little dramatic and out of place. For example, “temee” and “kisama” are supposed to be very rarely used, though they’re used a lot in anime, even among friends (love/hate friendships?). Though that’s probably obvious as there is a lot more drama and hatred in anime than real life. I don’t know. What are your thoughts on it?

(C) Hypnopaedia. Were you serious about listening to Japanese when sleeping? “Sleep learning”, I’veheard, is a theory that has been debunked for years now. Do you feel it actually helps? Or do you just mean listen to Japanese in the little time between while you’re trying to sleep, and until you’re sleeping?

(D) Oh and one last thing, if I follow your methods to the letter, completely immersing myself in Japanese while doing a significant amount of SRS, how long on average should it take me to be semi-fluent? As in, just know enough to understand enough sentences to say, understand the basic plot in an anime/manga/whatever? I think if I could get to the point where I can read/comprehend a decent amount of sentences, I’ll find it infinitely harder to quit than I will to keep going.

Thanks.

I actually found his questions quite difficult to answer in a way that would be satisfying to a complete beginner. I’ve been doing this Japanese thing for a while now, so a lot of it seems blindingly obvious to me. That, and, I tend to go with “the justification is in the results” style of thinking. But these are legitimate questions, and it would be nice to get an answer. Some of you who read this site have just finished Heisig, others have been working on sentences/phrases for a short time, perhaps a few months. It is to you who have just finished “Phase 2″ or just started “Phase 4″ that I make this request: could you answer some or all of X-star’s questions, from your personal experience?

Thanks for your help!

For my part, I did attempt to answer X-star’s questions, but I feel like my answers have the air of someone removed from the process and who’s forgotten what it was like for him, and keeps wondering why people’s questions even keep coming up in the first place. So, I would very much appreciate any help you can give!

I don’t think I could keep it in my long-term memory. Maybe I just have a bad memory, though.

Short answer is: “You can. Use an SRS”.
Long answer: You don’t have a bad memory, you simply lack memory tools and techniques. If you’ve never ever read and applied something like The Memory Book, then you can’t blame it on your memory any more than a farmer who’s never planted a single seed can honestly say: “the soil isn’t fertile”. Well, try planting a freaking seed, farmer! No water? Live in the desert? Build a canal and irrigate the mother! OK, that’s kind of preachy.

I don’t see how it could be much help without knowing how to read them.

A lot of people don’t before they do it.
Short answer: Try it first, and you’ll understand.
Long answer: kanji primarily have meaning. That’s why Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Korean…all can use the very same kanji despite pronouncing them completely differently. That’s why a single kanji in Japanese can have multiple readings. Because the meaning is the same. You can understand so much through “only” knowing the meaning and writing. For example:

機種名であるYS-11の「YS」は輸送機設計研究協会の「輸送機」と「設計」sの頭文字「Y」と「S」をとったもの。
machine-type-name: model name
輸送機
transport-send-machine: transport plane
設計
establish-plot(plan): design
頭文字
head-writing-character: initial (letter)
自己複製
self-ego duplicate-manufacture: self-replication
火山
fire-mountain: volcano
花火
flower-fire: fireworks

Parts of this example were taken from here.

When you know and understand the parts, a logical composite whole is often much easier to understand. When you don’t know the parts, you’re just lost. But what about readings, you say? I’d learn those later…Seriously. There is not enough un-fuzzy logic there, see for yourself:
火山/か-ざん
花火/はな-び

For more on kanji, get it from the horse’s mouth. Read the intro and “note to the 4th edition”. Pay particular attention to this:

One only has to look at the progress of non-Japanese raised with kanji to see the logic of [this] approach. When Chinese adult students come to the study of Japanese, they already know what the [individual] kanji mean and how to write them. They have only to learn how to read them. The progress they make in comparison with their Western counterparts is usually attributed to their being “Oriental”. In fact, Chinese grammar and pronunciation have about as much to do with Japanese and English does [Khatz: no, really…this is not an exaggeration]. It is their knowledge of the meaning and writing of the kanji that gives the Chinese the decisive edge. My idea was simply to learn from this common experience and give the kanji an English reading. Having learned to write the kanji in this way — which, I repeat, is the most logical and rational part of the study of Japanese — one is in a much better position to concentrate on the often irrational and unprincipled problem of learning to pronounce them. [Emphasis and silly side comments added].

Another thing I will add is that there are plenty of words you simply cannot grasp if you don’t know the kanji; the author of the book The Kanji Way to Japanese Language Power refers to it as a sort of glass ceiling. Not only that, but a lot of times in conversations in Japanese (and Chinese), when people hear a word they don’t understand, they will ask “what’s the kanji for that?”. Kanji is the foundation of Japanese. Kana themselves are nothing but kanji mutant children. Returning to your questions:

though I have some uncertainties with it that I’d like you to clear up if you don’t mind.

I don’t know if I can clear up your uncertainties for you…what you are asking me to do is to demonstrate my powers of persuasion, and that may not work out well. Even if you remain uncertain after reading what I have to say, which you may, I would recommend you get to work, rather than stand around thinking about it. Quite often the worst crime isn’t doing it “wrong”, it’s not doing it at all. As I discuss in the FAQ section and in this article, your time should never be wasted attempting to believe or not believe in a method; your time should be spent getting results. Belief and opinion are irrelevant. Japanese is the goal. So just do something, try something.

I’ve heard, albeit from an unreliable source (Internet forum know-it-alls)

Well, there you go. You already know those guys are idiots only writing to inflate their egos.

What are your thoughts on it?

Anime’s fine. Just do what you enjoy. Sure, there is some “specialist vocabulary” and usage unique to anime — every field has its tropes. I mean, it’s like saying you should never read academic papers because you’ll end up starting all your sentences with “近年” and saying “著しい発展を遂げている” several times a day and qualifying your speech with “と考えられる” — wives’ tales are great until their wrong. The fact is, despite the presence specialist patterns, the remaining 90-95% [rough stat] of the vocab and structure in any genre, whether anime or even a period drama, is still so-called “standard”/”normal” modern Japanese. The specialist topping is just icing on the selfsame cake.

Were you serious about listening to Japanese when sleeping?

Yes.

Do you feel it actually helps?

I do. At the very least, it kept me doing Japanese all the time — from first thing in the morning to last thing at night with no time wastage (even an extra 20 - 120 minutes per day really adds up over 6 months or 1 year), it also sometimes helped me dream in it or be thinking about/in it, especially in those half-asleep half-awake states.

how long on average should it take me to be semi-fluent?

Hard to answer…It depends on how much work you put it. I’m not sure because I don’t remember when it was for me…And I don’t really know what “on average” means. Plus it doesn’t take much knowledge to understand the basic plot of anything. Besides, it’s never ignorance of the basic plot that trips you up, it’s those little twists and nuances — the things that actually make the story unique and different and interesting. Cop-out answer?

I don’t see how it’d be much fun watching something and not understanding what is going on most of the time, and like you say, you should always be enjoying yourself

Again, best to try it first. I can’t really explain it to you fully. The best I can come up with is: you still learn sounds, rhythm and other non-lexical patterns. Also, you put yourself in a position to learn incidental vocabulary. Your powers of inference are greater than you might assume. For example, I forced my English-teacher friends who want to learn Japanese to watch Japanese TV one morning, and they kept hearing the word “ほかほか” used on TV. Someone would be advertising longjohns — winter underwear — and talk about how “ほかほか” things were, and then there would be a food commercial and there’d be this piping hot rice and that word “ほかほか” would come up again. This all happened in the space of like half an hour, and these guys pretty quickly figured out the meaning and of ほかほか. But, yeah, I do recommend movies you’ve seen before.

People are always whining about how “if only I’d been raised in Japan”, or “if I lived in Japan I would be immersed in it and it would be so much easier and quicker to learn it”, right? Now, I don’t know any of the theory behind language immersion, but I decided to simply take that excuse out of the equation — I would put myself in a Japanese environment all the time, no exceptions, no excuses. What I discovered was a confirmation of both my hunch at the beginning of the process and my personal life experience up until that time: getting good at a language is not only the cause of doing stuff only in that language, it is also the effect. You will be able to do stuff in Japanese because you did stuff in Japanese, rather than the other way around. Anyway, what worked when and how much is an interesting topic…for a linguist…but I am not a linguist, I’m just a guy who wanted to know a language so well that there would be zero language barrier between me and a native speaker, so that I could control the language at will, like the finely tuned machine that it is, like a musical instrument or a program, manipulating people’s feelings and perceptions with razor-sharp precision, pushing just the buttons I wanted when I wanted, all based on what I said or did not say, and how I said it.

My intuition tells me that there may be more to it than that, but I do not know for a fact whether or not that is the case. Whether or not I have read the law I will continue to avoid killing people, whether or not I understand electromagnetics I will continue to watch my TV. Research both inside and outside linguistics, is a moving target; it is a living organism. For one thing, people are always disagreeing with each other. Textbooks would lead us to believe that the truth is all cut and dry; what’s known is known and set it stone that’s all there is to it forever and ever amen. If you go out and read some actual academic papers in any field, you’ll find that everyone’s disagreeing with each other on everything, even on some of the fundamentals — virtually nothing is sacred; nothing is not up for question. Not only that, but new information is coming out all the time. All the time. Your best bet, at least in language learning, is to ignore anything that tells you what you can’t do, and just keep running experiments for and on yourself, usually using “common sense” — but sometimes going directly and deliberately against common sense. Try. Do. Always remember that Arthur C. Clarke quote: “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” If you live anything resembling an interesting life, you will quite likely find yourself doing things that no one’s ever done before. It may take some time for the rest of the world (and for you) to catch up and figure out just what you did and just how you did and why it worked, but that shouldn’t stop you doing it. We — humanity — simply do not know everything yet, so as long as you don’t do something stoopid like do drugs and/or join a cult and/or kill yourself, then you’re pretty much good to go, I say.

Even something you’ve watched before would seem quite stale.

1. Have you tried it?
2. It’s not only a matter of having seen it before, it’s also helps if you enjoyed it at some level.

Wouldn’t it be better to just put more of an effort into actually listening to the dialogue while reading subtitles?

In my experience, the subs always took over.

And now, I open the floor to everybody’s comments, suggestions and advice .

Comments are posted, questions are asked, responses get long and become articles.

Are you of the school of thought that a person can only learn X languages to complete fluency? Perhaps that was a bad explanation, but I guess would you say that you can use your method multiple times for different languages or would you advise a student to just concentrate on learning, say only Japanese, to complete fluency instead of learning a lot of language to a pretty good fluency?

Second question is, what would you advise someone to do if they studied a language for a good amount of time but they are reluctant to continue because of… whatever. Bad experiences with the culture and/or people of the language? Or perhaps that is an issue for a psychoanalyst, who knows?

Great questions. These are issues I’ve been thinking about myself for a while now, and especially deeply over the past few months. These just my present thoughts, they may well change in the future; I’ve only taught myself one language so far, and so I cannot and do not claim the right to discuss the issues you’ve raised with any authority or particularly deep experience.

How Many Languages?

There’s a lady called KIN Birei, whom I love and hate at the same time. You see her on Japanese TV now and then. Typical fiery, illogical, right-wing, Japanese woman, right? Wrong — she’s Taiwanese, living in Japan in exile since her college days (1958); back then, the government of Taiwan didn’t like it when you said “Taiwan”, because Taiwan = China and cetera. Her Japanese is perfect — at the risk of stating the obvious, just because someone’s East Asian, that doesn’t by any means give them a free pass to other East Asian languages, so her effort is impressive and as praiseworthy as any other learner’s.

Anyway, in one of her recent books, she discusses raising her children here. They were born and raised in Japan by her and her fellow Taiwanese husband, but since Japan doesn’t presently have jus solis, they are Taiwanese. KIN Birei said that she believes, languagewise, it’s “better to have one or a few sharp knives in your kitchen, than many blunt knives“. To the point that she focussed more on teaching her kids Japanese than Mandarin or Taiwanese; I’m not sure how much Chinese her kids know; they may well know some, although it sounds like they might not know ANY. In any case, she said that the most important and useful language in Japan is Japanese, so she thought it crucial that her kids’ Japanese be spot-on, even at the expense of Chinese. I was shocked…To find that I agreed with her. Like I said, I usually hate this woman [she makes baseless and disparaging marks about Chinese people and civilization that feed into the “Chaana’s gon’ git us!” book circuit on the far right: “Chinese people only care about getting the most done for the least effort”, no kidding, it’s called rational thinking]. But I think she’s right about language and kitchen knives.

Too many of us language learners are dabblers, dilettantes, hobbyists. Of course, it depends on one’s goals. But if we really want the maximum benefits of knowing a language, I think those max benefits only come with (native-level) fluency. If you want to be able to actually cut stuff, you need a sharp knife. You want to be able to use your languages to do (cut) ANYTHING. And fast. Understand everything from standard to regional dialects, read fast, speak fast and correctly, write fast and correctly. Otherwise you just have a collection of blunt mental; it looks good on paper, but it doesn’t do anything or it doesn’t do enough. Then there’s the social aspect — again, this is related to language as a social tool — you want to be persuasive. And to be persuasive, it helps to be funny, I think. To be funny takes some cultural plugged-in-edness, and being plugged in takes time — you do have to plug in. Anyway, when I learn a language, I want to know it so well that I would be perfectly OK if it were the only language I knew. Again, it is a matter of goal. At one time, my goal in Japanese was to be able to function completely as an adult in Japanese society, to be comparable to a native speaker in terms of being able to do anything a “typical” Japanese adult could do in terms of language; I reached and passed that goal a long time ago. Now my goal is to be better than most native speakers — to persuade, to amuse and even to linguistically intimidate if necessary for being taken seriously [”how thick is yooour kanji, Mr. Yamaguchi?”]; I plan to live in Japan a long time if not permanently, so this is both my desire and my social responsibility.

Another factor is, personally, I don’t want to spend my whole life learning languages from the bottom up…It takes time and highly focussed energy. I want to spend my time enjoying what I’ve learned, extending what’s already been built. I already get to do that in Japanese; it’s a great feeling just to be able to read or watch anything, talk to anyone, in Japanese. After Cantonese and Mandarin, I’m out of the game, at least for several years…except maybe just enough Russian to travel through Central Asia, if that. Otherwise it’s chill, write, watch, read, talk and just generally “be” — in Japanese and Chinese.

Language skill isn’t only a matter of “get it once, and you’re done”. It’s not catching a ball. The moment you stop using a language, you start losing it. I no longer function in two of the three languages of which I was a native speaker as a child, because of disuse. Last week, after I went for some days without hearing large amounts of Japanese (long story short: hanging out with Americans and their vegetarian Thanksgiving), I knew and my Japanese friends knew — it just took longer to “come out”, and it didn’t come out cleanly. Now, if you are strongly rooted enough in a language, then…you may never experience appreciable loss; I’m sure if I never spoke or read or heard another word of English after today, I’d still be fine. But, such rooting takes time, I think. So, you can get good at other languages, you can acquire several, but neglect may seriously weaken the ones not being focussed on, unless they have deep roots.

So, learning a language is like building and owning a house all by yourself, in that not only do you have to do the construction, but you also have a maintenance burden — a burden that no one else can bear, you can’t get a real estate agent to do if for you — you need to, essentially, live in the house throughout the year, even if not every day. Otherwise, it gets dusty, termites come in and start chewing stuff up, and eventually the house may fall. Technology may one day solve this problem (stimulating the brain directly? I dunno), I think SRSes are a step in that direction, but for now you’re on your own.

I don’t think anyone has the right to say what’s impossible, anyone who does is generally asking to be embarrassed by future generations. I’m just saying there’s a price to be paid for everything, including true multiple-language fluency.

Bad Experiences and Abandoning a Language

As for bad experiences, the International Society of Jerks and Richardheads (ISJR) is a worldwide organization. Wherever there is a language or a culture, ISJR members can be found in it now and then. But good people, lots of good people, far more good people than ISJR members are there, too. Be sure to surround yourself with them. Be sure that you’re not letting individual richardheads represent/taint a whole language and culture for you. And if you still don’t like it, then, yeah, drop the language. But be really sure you’re sure, because it is a large investment of time and resources both mental and physical; it’s not something to throw out lightly.

You know, every now and then, here in Japan, I’ll meet someone who’s a jerk, and I’ll think “what am I even doing here? why did I even bother? Japanese people are so X”. But…that’s unfair; it’s unfair of me to slam all of Japan and Japanese people because of the occasional drunken middle-aged man, or housewives who stare, or even the lady at immigration who is, in fact, a retard [you can talk to her in keigo, and she will respond in baby talk; she is clearly a first-degree retard], or whatever. As it turns out, these people are (1) ISJR members and (2) tend to carry out ISJR activities on Japanese people, too. There are entire creative works more or less dedicated to the things Japanese ISJR members do to Japanese people in Japan (Obatarian about selfish old women, Densha Otoko about drunken men in trains). In the vast majority of cases, it seems to me that if someone is a jerk to you [for being a foreigner], they are generally jerks to fellow countrymen, too — this is a fact. When Momoko and I were trying to get married here (looong story), there was this…creature…at city hall, and I had my Japanese friend T-star talk to him to see if City Hall Creature could be tamed, and T-star calls me back after attempting to negotiate with City Hall Creature and says: “Khatz, that guy…he’s…a richardhead; I have never had to deal with someone so unreasonable. Japanese people aren’t supposed to act this way, and don’t take him as an example for the whole country”. ISJR people aren’t picky.

Most of the time here, old women are telling me that I’m a “nice young man”, more than once older guys have randomly said: “Khatz, you can’t leave Japan! You know so much about it now, it would be a huge waste. You should just stay here forever; you’d be a good Japanese person.” One time, a schoolkid came up to me and went “Harro (hello)” and I said “欧米かっ？！[stop trying to be American!]” and we had a huge laugh about it. I’ve only bought rice twice since I came to Japan because T-star’s family sends me HUGE bags of fresh rice and vegetables from their fields. People will *thank* me for speaking Japanese because they were worried that they were going to have to use their rusty English. The taxi drivers by my train station always take the time to say hello, and update me on what’s happening in Prison Break. The people at the Japanese Consulate in Denver processed my visa with incredible speed, and then said “good on ya, kid; ganbatte in Japan” to me. The other week, I was pausing from a walk to read manga, and a random man stops his minivan and goes: “[You can read Japanese manga?]” and I’m all “…yes?” and he says: “Good job!” and then drives off. So…if you really put your negative experiences into perspective, you’ll probably find that they are easily cancelled out by the positive. Perhaps it’s time to recall what made you want to learn the language in the first place. No matter how many retards get employed at immigration, one person like T-star trumps them all.

There is a new FAQ page up. Feel free to give it a look, it might save you having to send an email and wait for a reply. Of course, if your specific question is not answered, feel free to ask! When this site first started last year, I was getting these questions for the first time, so I can’t say they were “frequent”. Now, thanks to people reading and asking, I can!

This is in answer to an email which raised some really cool questions, so here it is for your benefit (I’m all “because I know what’s best for you!!”)…Whatever, anyway:

“…I can certainly see how an emphasis on reading sentences leads to a large vocabulary and an intuitive sense of grammar and usage. However, what about listening and speaking? To what extent have you found that reading skills transfer over to these areas? On the site you talk about surrounding yourself with Japanese TV, movies, and music, but unlike reading material, real-world sources of audio and video are more difficult to capture in an SRS. I can imagine how intermediate students might be able to learn something from TV & movies, but as a beginner, things like TV Japan just go over my head without helping me to learn very much. Do you recommend the use of simple (yet admittedly contrived) audio resources like Pimsleur, JapanesePod101, or something else?”

Perhaps there’s nothing intrisically wrong with your typical language-learning tape, but:
1) I never used them
2) The people I have met who have used them, have trouble with real Japanese as it is spoken by actual Japanese people…
…because, as you said, they ARE contrived. So contrived as to be almost useless. Have you heard the kinds of tapes people in Japan and other countries use to learn English? Let me give you an example:

“How do you do? My name is Smith”
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Tanaka.”

The same Japanese people who listen to this kind of thing are the same ones who can’t successfully order fast food at a Wendy’s in America, or follow an episode of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. These are the people who blame English for being “hard”, blame people for “talking too fast”, and/or buy into some quack-science nihonjinron theory that “the Japanese ear cannot process those frequencies”, because, well, it certainly couldn’t be the case that their learning methods were deficient to begin with, since they spent so much time and money on them, right? Hmm…

You see, the stuff on those English tapes, it’s not that it’s not English, it’s just that it’s the dead corpse of English injected with linguistic formaldehyde(?)…that was a spectacular failure of a medical metaphor…Anyway, it’s not alive. It’s like a wax sculpture of the actual living person that is English. I mean, who in their right mind goes around saying: “how do you do”? The English tapes would have you believe that that’s normal. And to top it off, those tapes tend to be about as entertaining as watching nails grow. Fake and boring — not a great recipe for learning.

“unlike reading material, real-world sources of audio and video are more difficult”

Aha! There’s a contradiction. Most people go around wailing about the perceived difficulty of written language. Now it’s spoken language that’s the problem. It can’t be both. Which is it? Well, in truth it’s neither one. I will admit that listening to real Japanese and reading/writing real Japanese require attention, effort and some time. Which is exactly why you can’t afford to put them off. You HAVE to start with them as soon as possible because they are “difficult” (which really only means “different” — you just need to get used to them). So start with real Japanese audio-visual sources right now. Of course, you won’t understand most of what’s said, but I guarantee you will understand at least one word. That’s how you start. With one word. For the longest time, you’ll only be able to pick up individual words. But from words you’ll grow until you pick up whole phrases, then sentences and then, eventually, the entire show. It takes months, but it is a finite process. And it’s not just words — the rhythms and cadences of real Japanese are important for you to hear, too. There are sounds that Japanese people naturally shorten, lengthen or combine. There are places in the sentence where you pause or don’t pause. The visuals — the facial expressions, the shape of the face/mouth, the bridges (”さあ”, “ええ”）. The hand gestures, the body movements. All of these are part of Japanese, too — a part that is a heck of a lot more easily, more enjoyably and more effectively (in terms of memorization) learned by direct observation than by having some textbook just list them for you.

Of course, it’s rough when you start, but it gets easier. In the beginning stages, take words you hear on TV and get short sentence examples of those words, then build on that. Nouns of course are a big part of any language — always learn a noun together with a verb that acts on it. Adverbs with verbs. Adjectives with nouns. Pay attention to what particle (wo, ni, de, etc,) is used with it. Start taking small, single steps every day while literally keeping your eyes and ears on the prize (reading, speaking and understanding REAL Japanese), and you will get there. It’s not a matter of “whether”, but of “when”. And the more time you spend on it on a day-to-day basis, the sooner “when” will come. The more you are exposed to real Japanese, the more comfortable you will become with it. It will become your default daily reality because you’ll have made it so.

I don’t actively oppose audio-learning tapes like I oppose classes, but it seems to me that they give you a false sense of security and achievement. In reality, Japanese is never going to be spoken as slowly, clearly and precisely as it is on those tapes. People (especially women) are going to talk FAST. Men are going to mumble. Things are going to be shortened — “azzaimass” is as common and natural as “arigatou gozaimasu”. Better that you face reality on a daily basis from the beginning than be lulled into safety only to have it pounce on you suddenly. The fact that people who listen to language tapes of Japanese/French/whatever are STILL floored when they go to the country only underscores the fact that those tapes can’t have been such great preparation in the first place.

“I can imagine how intermediate students might be able to learn something from TV & movies, but as a beginner, things like TV Japan just go over my head without helping me to learn very much.”

Right. That is true. But I would still recommend that you watch as much TV as possible. Having said that, understanding only bits and pieces can be unsatisfying after a while. That’s why I also recommend JAPANESE-DUBBED VERSIONS of movies and TV shows you already know and like. In my case, that meant lots of things like “Star Trek”, “CSI”, “Monk”, “The O.C.” and “Independence Day”. You know the premise; you understand the relationships; you know the plots and you may even have all the dialogue memorized. So it becomes a matter of seeing and hearing the stories you love recounted in Japanese. Since you know what’s happening, you can focus on the Japanese. I’ve found it to be fun, effective and satisfying. Even crappy B-movies turn to gold in Japanese because the predicability of the plot and dialogue frees you from figuring out “what the heck is going on here?”, allowing you to focus on “oh THAT’s how to say ‘arm photon torpedoes’ in Japanese”. You never know when you might need to have a photon torpedo armed :).

In terms of learning languages, cause and effect behave strangely . If you want to get good at listening to real Japanese then the way do it is by listening to real Japanese. In other words, being able to function in real Japanese settings is both the effect and cause of exposure to real Japanese settings.

Language tapes make you feel like you are really learning something; they give you a sense of progress and achievement…But again, sometimes, I’m afraid this is a false sense. For one thing, you will almost never hear or have the same conversations as are on those tapes. Even if you ask a question that you learned from the tape verbatim, will you get the same response? Almost certainly not. But those tapes don’t prepare you for the asymmetry of reality — there are a myriad of ways to say the same thing; other people are going to use words and expressions in a quantity and variety greater than you personally ever will. Your ability to understand can’t just be on a par with your ability to produce, you have to understand much more than you will ever produce. Going back to the Japanese people who’ve learned English but have trouble at fast-food restaurants: “Here or to go?” and “Shall I supersize that” were the questions that stumped them.

What was the problem? You could fill reams of paper with the answer to that question. They didn’t know about the “verbing” of nouns, compound words, slang…whatever.

What is the solution? Put more fast-food sections on the English tapes? No. That’s simply patching a problem without actually solving it — treating a symptom without curing the disease.

You can’t just increase the amount of vocabulary either, at least in part because the obvious basic features of a language (standard grammar structures, noun vocabulary) alone will not allow you to function smoothly in that language. Not even close. As much as the more obvious features of a language are necessary, equally necessary is a deep or deeper understanding of the underlying logic of a language. I don’t know what this understanding should be called, some people call it an instinct or an intuition, but that almost sounds too intangible because whether or not someone understands this underlying logic very tangibly makes or breaks them in a language. Not understanding this underlying logic is the cause of translations that are grammatically and syntatically correct but that just don’t “work”. They just don’t “sit” right. They’re awkward, stilted. They’re not “wrong”, yet they are completely wrong. For proof, watch any Japanese TV commercial with English in it: “For your number one”, “Inspire the next”…Hurrrnnh?

There are linguists who devote their careers analyzing and explaining this underlying logic. And that’s a good thing. Meanwhile, textbook writers try (and almost always fail) to codify this logic, which leaves a student confused; or they ignore and sidestep it, leaving a student ignorant and defenseless: after months or years of fake, whitewashed textbook-style Japanese, some students never recover from the shock of “real” Japanese and give up, mystified and mystifying this “impossible Eastern language”, because, you know those East Asians, so “inscrutable” (*eyes roll into back of head*).

I believe that the individual wanting to become a native-like speaker is best off training her brain’s instinct to simply DO it. To get it right and “keep it real” from the beginning. Leave the analysis for the academic discussion because it’s too long-winded and clumsily-worded to be useful anyway — you need to know real Japanese and you need to know it soon. You need to be flexible, fast on the uptake and quick on your feet. The way to do that is to expose yourself to authentic, by-and-for native-speakers Japanese on a constant basis — to observe, understand and imitate real Japanese. Face reality from the beginning.

And that’s not all. Don’t even get me started on different regional accents. Where’s the tape for those? Just think of how many accents you as an English speaker can deal with, even though you may only speak with one. Japanese has dialects, too. You don’t need to use them, but you can’t pretend they don’t exist.

Just because you feel like you’re learning, that doesn’t mean that you really are. Just because you feel like you’re drowning, that doesn’t mean that you won’t swim and live. Feeling that you know Japanese because you can follow fake tapes of it is like feeling like you know an animal because you’ve seen it stuffed in a museum or tamed at a circus. It just doesn’t work that way. You need to see the critter “alive” and in “the wild”. Build yourself a “hidden observation post” ( i.e. acquire and surround yourself with real Japanese materials whether or not you are in Japan) if you need to. Or, if you’re in Japan, turn on the TV and radio; go down to the video store. Whatever it takes. You can take this “language as animal” analogy further. Who are the Western world’s greatest experts on gorillas and chimpanzees respectively? Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall. Both these people literally surrounded themselves with the subject of their study. They didn’t go to the circus, the museum or the zoo. They went to forests in Cameroon and Rwanda to see the real thing. It’s not that they were smarter than their colleagues — they just had better methods. The same goes for language, except that language has the benefit that you don’t have travel to it in order to “feel the realness”. The very nature of language allows you experience it across space and time. In other words, you can bring the language to you; you can turn wherever you are into a little Japan without any fundamental loss of authenticity.

I know I’ve said some harsh things here, and it’s not meant as an attack on any particular audio publisher. They are all trying their best to help people. And there are, in fact, realistic audio tapes out there (I used some for Chinese once), but I definitely get the impression that these are few and far between, the exception rather than the rule — the same company will produce one or two good (realistic) tapes, but then put out a lot of cookie-cutter stuff, too. When learning a language HAVING FUN is crucial. If something gets boring, take a break. If something is always boring, throw it out. Life is short, so do things that are fun and productive.

A baby is born into the world. She doesn’t know ANY language or ANY customs. Three years later, she’s not only talking, she has to be told to shut up. “Well, babies are magical”, people say. Bollocks. Babies are stupid and ignorant. But with that ignorance comes an ignorance of embarassement, of fear, of limitations. 24/7/365 for 2-3 years, they are exposed to their native language(s) and as toddlers “suddenly” become quite fluent in it/them; no one ever tells them that it’s “hard” or that “it can’t be done”.Nothing is ever expected of babies but success. There is no magic to it; it’s not a “miracle”. If you take a seed, plant it, water it and give it light, don’t act surprised when one day things suddenly start shooting up out of the soil. If we really look at the conditions under which babies are working we see that their success is virtually inevitable. When we as adults work with the daily devotion and unshakeable conviction of a baby combined with our extensive knowledge, life experience and abstract reasoning abilities, we also inevitably succeed; we work our own “miracles”. You and I have to believe that we adults have a lot more going for us cerebrally than babies. What, then, stands in our way? Only ourselves.

Spoken and written language are not hard: if given the chance, they come naturally to all of us. Just think of all the idiots you’ve met in your life ;)…most could speak and write just fine.

1. How do you decide which sentences from your input to copy over to your SRS?
• This is a tough one! If you’re like me, you’re a greedy little hobbit who wants to know everything. So here are some tips:
• Pick the ones that stretch your knowledge slightly, not so much that you’re lost, and not so little that you’re simply tagging “です” on the end. One vague guideline when you learn, say, a noun, is to learn it with the verbs that act on it.
• Picking the ones you’d like to say or write one day is an excellent start. There are many sentences out there and you’ll have to get pretty selective. Don’t be like me and feel like you have to learn everything you see. Go for what seems the most valuable.
• The other thing about picking sentences from your input is that it takes a lot of mental energy. So the key there is to just keep going until you drop. Go until you’re tired of it, then take a break from picking sentences but never take a break from getting Japanese input. As far as possible, you should spend every waking hour (and maybe even sleeping hours, if you it doesn’t keep you awake) receiving Japanese.
2. Where do you get the sentences? (internet, etc?)
• The short answer to that is anywhere and everywhere that native Japanese is spoken and written. More concretely:
• When I first started, I got them from the Starter Oxford Japanese Dictionary. As the name implies, it’s very good for starters, but you will soon outgrow it.
• 2ch is perhaps the most famous Japanese forum site. It’s got a forum for every interest. Here, you can read a lot of the words of just regular Japanese people. There’s lots of both slang and more formal-toned discussion. As you may be aware, it was thstarting point of the Train Man phenomenon.
• Electronic dictionaries, like the Canon IDF-3000 and later the Canon V-80, have been key sources of sentences. These can be quite expensive, so do shop around a bit.
• Internet dictionaries. If you don’t yet have an electronic dictionary and/or a software dictionary, the Yahoo online dictionary is a decent substitute. It has tons of example sentences in both the bilingual Japanese/English and the monolingual Japanese sections, respectively. BUT!! BE CAREFUL OF ANY EXAMPLE SENTENCED LABELED “[慣用表現]” — these are awkward; do not use them.
• Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC is the place to look up the pronunciation of Japanese names, in the “Translate Words” section. However, the example sentences on the site sometimes contain errors. They are mostly good, but I would avoid them to be safe; you don’t want to go learning erroneous Japanese, and when sentences are your primary learning medium, you need to be able to trust what you read 100%. The Yahoo online dictionary is mostly based on highly-regarded, rigorously edited paper dictionaries that have been around for a while (decades?). WWWJDIC is a bit newer and more open source. Don’t get me wrong, though, I mean no disrespect to Dr. Breen.
• In February 2005, I installed the Japanese version of Windows XP on my computer. This was an important move. It is also a reversal of our typical idea of cause and effect in that: it’s not that you know so much Japanese that you can use a Japanese OS. Rather, it is by using a Japanese OS that you learn a lot of Japanese. If you use a computer a lot, consider turning it fully Japanese.
• And, of course, there are the usual suspects: movies, books, dramas (dramedies and soap operas), news and videos.
• Fuji News Network’s online newscast can be depressing, but it’s how I learnt to understand the news.
• Yomiuri Online recently (2005-ish) started podcasting a lot of both audio and video content for free. You don’t need an iPod to watch/listen to it. They also have a superbly written geek section.
• If you’re a fan of BitTorrent, then the good people of D-Addicts record shows from Japanese TV, sometimes complete with commercial breaks. uTorrent is a good BitTorrent client.
• When it comes to movies, I watched a lot of dubbed Hollywood movies, because (a) I knew I already liked the movie, and (b) I already knew the situation and what dialogue to expect. Dubbed Hollywood movies can guarantee you both enjoyment and learning.
• I love Star Trek, Seinfeld and Will Smith. You can find Japanese versions of these on Amazon.jp. These generally come with Japanese/English audio and Japanese/English subs.
• If you don’t have a Japanese DVD player, then a PC or a region-free DVD player will work for playing DVDs purchased in Japan. You can score a region-free player in the $50-$100 range (shipping included) without breaking a sweat. J-List and Amazon.com are good places to start.
• A word of caution: never use English subtitles. You won’t learn any Japanese, you’ll just depend on the English subs. In my case, I have watched Japanese movies with English subs but then had memories of watching it in English. So if you have English subs, turn them off and keep them off.
• As far as books are concerned, manga are the absolute bomb for learning real Japanese. Personally, I prefer stories that are somewhat grounded in reality. In fact, there is even some very good non-fiction manga out there, such as the “Life: A 4.6 billion year journey” series produced by NHK. Anything written by Kaiji Kawaguchi will be very interesting. Again, Amazon.jp will be happy to sell to you.
• Japanese translations of good English books abound. Just like with dubbed movies, they give you the advantage of having a clue what to expect going in. About half my book collection is Japanese translations, the other half is homegrown Japanese books. In college, I even got Japanese editions of my computer science textbooks. Once again, Amazon.jp will hook you up.
• It is important that, when you hear spoken Japanese, you get independent written confirmation of what was said. So if you hear a sentence in a movie, you want to confirm it with the Japanese subtitles. Of course, there aren’t always Japanese subtitles for you to confirm with, so some solutions are to:
• Ask a Japanese person to confirm.
• Get a dictionary, look up the words you think you heard and use the dictionary’s example sentences, instead of the sentence you think you heard.
• Here’s a little dictionary trick: if you ever come across a word that you want to learn but that has no example sentence, then use the definition itself as your example sentence.
3. Do you make example sentences for grammar points or just vocab?
• Yes. (Both). One of the best books for that is Naoko Chino’s All About Particles. Back in the day, I learned at least one example of every grammar point in the book. For a solid foundation in Japanese grammar, few books can be more highly recommended.
• Tad Perry’s legendary, free Quick and Dirty Guide to Japanese Grammar is also a keeper, in terms of the example sentences. Read the explanations, but don’t bother to memorize them and don’t worry if you don’t understand them. Focus on getting the example sentences.
• Last but absolutely not least, Tae Kim offers brilliant, lucid explanations of Japanese grammar in his Guide to Japanese. Great for example sentences, and a good place for you to go find out stuff that I had to figure out.
4. I have a decent level of skill, do you think I should jump into the J-to-J cards?
• Yes! Absolutely! Start as soon as possible and reap the rewards! Or sow them :). Or whatever farming metaphor you like best.