oh, also! is it a good sign if you can sing your way through an album in Japanese?

>>>>>>.<<<<<<<;;;;;

When I read this I was so jealous of the fact that you CAN say that, and ofcourse my instantaneous reaction to this statement of yours was a very eloquent one: “You beotch.”

>are you serious?
Very. There’s sleeping time in there, too. But most of it is waking hours.

>now that I hear things like 5 figures of listenting to Japanese its more scary than motivating for me
The hours are there. They will pass anyway. Simply redirect as many of them as humanly possible.

Its just, now if we talk about mathematics, I don’t think I have anywhere near the time to rack up that many hours.

I know, I know… you’ve said before, no lame excuses, and that you were busy and had a life too.

The thing is I am really enjoying Japanese and I can do it all day long without getting bored, so whenever I can, I get in some study or listening to something or trying to read something. However I can’t do it when I’m working… if I put on my iPod to listen to Japanese I can’t concentrate much on my work. Or well… I can focus on only one or the other. How much good will it do me to listen to Japanese while my mind is on something different?

Outside work I spend time with my wife & kid and I can’t neglect that.

So, out of my waking day I can usually put in a couple of hours of focused study, and maybe a couple more not so focused. That was fine for polishing off RTK1, no problemo. 10s of thousands of hours of listening? Big probemo!

To quote “For the record, I have logged about 20,000 hours of listening since June 2004″.

Ok lets do some mathematics… 20,000 hours in about 3.5 years, so you’re counting pretty much every waking minute of the day every day as “listening to Japanese”. Hmm, are you serious?

Somehow I hope you’re not so serious, and that my puny ~4 hours a day is actually significant.

I’ve been wondering about this for awhile. In terms of listening and in your opinion, how long should one continue to listen to the same podcast/news/drama before moving on to something else? I mean I have some podcasts that I’ve listened to over a hundred times and my comprehension definitely increases as the repetitions increase. However, I can’t help but think that exposing myself to new listening material might be just as beneficial. So I guess the question is, when would you say is a good time to chuck out the old and bring in the new?

Pay particular attention to section 9: 9. 記号・略語一覧
that explains symbols and abbreviations…

An article on that would actaully be really good! I really liked your “…there was a time when…” article, so that would be a great addition.

(Phase 0 is sooo important, I think - and I think it runs concurrently with every other step until you have finished phase 4!)

Mark

In time you’ll get the accessories, a mountain of cool games and you’ll learn to kick ass. If you miss the payments, they’ll slowly take your stuff away. The closer you are to $500, the more you can afford to fall back with the payments although it’s never a good idea.

Both “hard” and “easy“are much abused words. In 9 out of 10 cases people will concentrate only on “useful,” “important,” “sensible – you name it” and ignore “fun” and a high percentage will fail and ask themselves why. This goes for both choosing the right language and the right way of learning it. The “right” way is a very tricky issue. You see I appreciate grammars and vocabulary lists – probably to your utter horror- but I also have high regard for “fun”.

Thanks so much for your comment.

You’re definitely right about that definition of “hard”.

Do you ever get the impression, though, that when people say “hard”, they’re not thinking of time, they’re thinking of “possibility for anyone but the ‘talented’”?

And then there’s the idea of “thought”. All you have to do with learning a language is have fun in that language a lot. You don’t have to think that much at all. You don’t have invent a new algorithm, you don’t have to solve P=NP, you don’t have to create anything ex nihilo. All you need do is walk the path. All you need do is copy — plagiarize — native-level users’ ways of writing and speaking. You don’t have to solve any significant problems, all you need do is “show up” to your language. Just be there. If toddlers do it without complaint and gnashing of teeth, does it not seem that just about anyone could?

People are trying to buy PlayStation 3’s for $50 (2k -4k hrs). All this is saying is…PS3’s cost $500. All we need do is stop whining about the cost and just pay it. We want PS3s, right? Save up a bit and you can do it. 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k hours are going to pass anyway. Rather than a matter of difficulty or lack thereof, don’t you think perhaps it’s merely an exercise in time management?

I don’t know…

Thanks again for commenting.