The Everchanging Pinned Comment Disclaimer; I speak casual Japanese because that’s what we spoke at work. I can speak Formal/Keigo but I really don’t care to. Also watch my other content in Japanese (mostly shorts). Part 2 is up. ua-cam.com/video/gJwdKgDe_ws/v-deo.htmlsi=pQGN8URTaWTVusnP And PLEASE do not make the language your whole personality. Learn it, use it, but have a life outside of it. Go learn guitar, learn other things, go outside in general. Do not be one of those people who make Japanese their whole life. & Note 1: Fluency means your ability to use the language and communicate back and forth about whatever you want smoothly. It does not mean you are a Native Speaker. I address guys like the dude below in the comments in Part 2 of this video linked above (in Japanese). Enjoy the language! It's life changing when you can use it without thinking about it! Note 2: Watch Part 2 - Note 3: Disagree on Kanji? = Watch part 2 Note 4: After you watch my stuff, get off UA-cam and go practice.
To be clear, your japanese is good and I can understand what you're saying, but calling yourself fluent is an absurd stretch. Your accent is poor and the MAJORITY of the words you spoke in the video were pronounced with the wrong pitch accent - it seems you have not studied or listened for pitch accent at all. It makes it very difficult to follow along as your pronunciation becomes stilted and unnatural. Your pronunciation of ひ in 人 is not affricated. You pronounce 理由 as りよう and not りゆう. This is all from the first 30 seconds of the video before I had seen enough. Japanese is not easy to learn and I think you should be proud of what you are accomplished, but titling your youtube video as "fluent" and giving advice when you are still solidly in the 'intermediate' camp is a bit ridiculous to say the least.
@@ZulayagosIscool “Black guy doesn’t sound like a Native Speaker” is a better way to write that Lol. There you go champ 🤝 And if you ever went to Japan, many of them don’t use “correct” pitch accent. And to add, if someone has an off English accent but can do ANYTHING in the language, that doesn’t disqualify fluency. If you can make a better version of this video tho, feel free to do it. I’ll be waiting 👌
@@ZulayagosIscool @lilywertee You guys decided to nitpick all because he made a clear disclaimer lol. And for the people who are curious about this interaction. I am Japanese, and this is from my perspective. Have you seen an Italian guy with a weird accent but can speak English MORE than as a dumbass local who can’t even take an SAT? Yeah, well you still call that fluent. There are many people like that around you believe it or not. Just because someone can’t pronounce like a native doesn’t mean they aren’t fluent at the language. Also, just because they miss a few words don’t mean anything
so to summarize: -learn the basics of gramar (utilize chat gpt) -learn 2000-4000 of the most commonly utilized vocabulary (use mnemonic association to help remember) -use the sentence structures you have learned and utilize the vocabulary you know Listen and repeat with native speakers to learn proper context. Make a list of +100 sentences for every category of your life and drill those sentences to become fluent in topics that matter to you. (utilize chat gpt) The goal of this method is to reach subconcious verbal fluency, being able to utilize your target language like your native language. Perfect gramar is overrated, use what you know, people will get it. For japanese specifically: learning hiragana and katakana will get you very far, learn kanji once you're able to speak. As somebody who's at a beginning conversational level of fluency in japanese - this video is very helpful and emphasizes a lot of the most important points I've found in language learning myself. I'll definitely try out making extensive lists of sentences on topics I will use japanese in! My go to has been "shower talks" where I just have a made up conversation with myself. But like you said at the beginning: I need to seek more discomfort in my practice.
Yeah there’s a time for more relaxed shower talk like you said but the discomfort during practice is one of the best things to go for 👌, really leads to good changes. And thanks for the summary! Edit: make sure you all still watch the video though. Not for my sake but for yours, or you will miss out on things that will save you a lot of time.
Thank you. But what a shame, I won't use chat gpt nor support it in any way shape or form. Sure there's very little we can do to be completely ethical in life, but that's an easy one to just not use generative AI.
I have an example of this from learning English - I am Brazilian. When I was 14 years old I started playing Grand Theft Auto. I had no clue what they were saying. I asked my mother to buy me a dictionary. I started writing down the sentences in the game, replacing some words with new words and I completed the game understanding everything. I continued to do it for other games and music, singing in English as well. Fast forward 2 years, I was working on a clothing store when some Australian tourists arrived. I was in a really small city back then and everyone (including vendors in other shops) was panicking because they couldn't communicate. I stepped in - this was my first time ever speaking English outside of my own house and to myself - and very naturally, with no difficulties, helped the tourists find everything they wanted, asked them about their trip and wished them well. I didn't even have internet (poverty) so I definitely didn't even know what pitch accent even means. But they understood me flawless, there was little to no repetition, and I did not feel scared or concerned at any point. It was truly magical and today I can confidently say my English level resembles that of a native speaker - and it all started with little grammar, just a few sentences and imitation.
I am a Canadian learning Quebec French right now and this story is so good it almost reads like a copypasta lol. Hopefully I can be fluent in French someday, my goal is to be able to speak it with Quebecois that come to the music festival every year on some level. I got further in swedish but never got to use it with anyoen in my small hick town.
Australian tourist: "Excuse me, do you speak English?" Brazilian shop assistant: "Sup, dawg, whatchu want?" Australian tourist: "I'd like to buy a bottle of water please." Brazilian shop assistant: "Hell, yeah. I'm down with that, homie."
Thank you! I hope others can use this advice to learn the languages they want. & I’ll continue to improve. Edit: I may also do a video completely in Japanese to help English learners.
For romance language speakers, agglutinative languages like Japanese and Turkish are the easiest to learn, they are technically much less complex so its easy to learn basic structure quickly then just build up vocab. Its MUCH harder for a native agglutinative language speaker to learn Romance languages
I don't speak Japanese but actually feel I wouldn't struggle with it. Perhaps due to the fact that there are some Japanese words that are similar to my language Setswana. Also has similiraties with Kalanga which is spoken in the northern part of my country
@@thejasonrk I am a native Spanish/English speaker (stronger in English though). It is insane how casually I encounter Japanese but end up feeling like I pick up words and structures here and there without having tried. I might attempt to learn it soon with all this fantastic information I keep coming across.
As a speech language pathologist, it is so refreshing to hear you speak about language acquisition this way! Deliberate practice is key for adults! For people with weak auditory processing skills (like myself) kanji at the beginning is helping me make sense of the language much faster BUT I am also supplementing with visual novels so I can have a visual and verbal model to practice along with the vocab knowledge I am practicing daily! Such a wonderful video, I will certainly look into chat gpt!
@@morganrowland377 I’ll talk more about Kanji in the next video, I mostly go off my exp but I see a lot of others saying it’s useful for them to learn vocab. So in that case I support the basic Kanji for sure! And yes, deliberate practice is key!
KANJI is a form of EMOJI for native speakers. "EMOJI (絵文字)" literally means "picture & text/script." A native child in Japan would absorb the language in a similar manner as you mentioned. We look at an 絵本 and our parents would often read it for us before bed. TV programs for children also combine visual and hearing, which I presume is the same in most cultures. So I'd always recommend watching TV programs or reading books for children to absorb a new language, to mimic the learning process of a native child. Japanese education system is highly centralized, so Ministry of Education has a list of KANJI to learn for each grade. It's called 『学年別漢字配当表』, and 1st grade is 80 KANJI, 2nd grade is 160 KANJI, 3rd and 4th grade is 200 KANJI respectively...and we learn a total of 1,000 KANJI up to 6th grade (or 12 years old). So text books for each grade only contain KANJI for that grade and below. Mandatory education up to 9th grade (or 3rd year of junior-high school) would expose us to nearly 2,000 KANJI, which is known as 常用漢字. Japanese newspapers, government documents, or school textbooks will not deviate from the 2,000 KANJI (although there are many more but the usage is less frequent in daily life). KANJI learning gets increasingly easier as many KANJI are a combination or derivative of basic ones. The reason why KANJI education is essential in Japan is because we cannot understand the cognate of many Japanese words without understanding the meaning of KANJI. The word for contradiction 矛盾 (むじゅん) is a classic example. Contradiction is written as 矛 (SPEAR) & 盾 (SHIELD) because it's based on a story about a merchant who claimed he's selling the strongest spear that can pierce anything as well as the strongest shield that can block anything. (It's from a Chinese tale from 2,000-2,500 years ago.)
@@yo2trader539 That last example you brought up - of the origin of the meaning of "contradiction" - is truly fascinating. Thank you for your enlightening comment.
This is one of the best videos about language learning I have ever seen in my life. Your video is packed with a ton of great tips and advice. Thanks. I want to add that part of your success is the result of your character. Piano, Gym, etc, so you are proud of yourself, and you like challenges. You don't seem to feel the pain. Probably, you follow the idea behind the motto: no pain, no gain. Unfortunately, not so many people are ready to follow your advice. Anyway, thanks again. I'll apply your suggestions to improve my Japanese and German as well.
Thank you! 🙏 And yeah I can be a bit extreme Lol, but as long as people can take the concepts and cater their own approach to it, that’s just as good. The deliberate practice is all I want to push.
I’ve lived in Japan for over 33 years now. I’m 70 years old and recently retired as of April 1st. My wife is Japanese. I only spoke English at home as I wanted our sons to be bilingual. I was teaching English every morning, afternoon and night. I taught from early morning to late night 6 days a week (plus half a day on Sundays for the first 8 years or so). During and after the pandemic I lost most of my work. Things slowed down quite a bit. I always speak Japanese when I encounter Japanese outside of teaching. However, it’s just basic everyday Japanese. Now that I’m retired, I’m looking forward to traveling a lot around Japan. I want to be able to become fluent enough to have deeper conversations with Japanese I meet during my travels. I want to learn more quickly as I’m old and have no idea when I’m going to croak. I’m mostly interested in speaking and understanding what I hear. I understand more than I can speak. My hobby is bird photography and I’ve learned the names of birds first in Japanese from other birders. Most birders have no desire to speak English. Over the years it’s given me a chance to practice Japanese with them. Thanks for your video and your advice, much appreciated.
Really cool to hear. You got it 👌, Older Japanese people are typically always looking for someone to talk to, so you’ll have plenty of time to practice.
I enjoyed your video a lot. I came to Japan in my 30's. I am married to a Japanese man and we raised 4 sons here. We moved here with a 2 1/2 yr. old toddler. We came in January and our 2nd son was born in March, and the next year our 3rd son was born in April and then there was a gap of a couple of years and the 4th son was born. I was busy, busy, busy....no time or energy for study. I had to work to help make ends meet, too. My husband was not a salary man or anything. He quit his work in the US to move here, also in his 30's and we had to start from zero. I could not always have my husband around to translate so I was really desperate to be able to communicate with nursery school teachers, then elementary school and junior high school and high school teachers. I was desperate to communicate with people at the supermarket and anywhere else I went. So it took about 3 years to make a foundation to be able to communicate in Japanese, then I had some kind of breakthrough and could become pretty fluent. I have been living here since before we had computers in our home. We moved here in 1987 and there were not many non-Japanese in our area. We live in a small town in Okayama Prefecture. I am only semi-literate. I basically don't study Kanji....I can read more than I can write though. But hiragana was the first thing I memorized and then katakana....I am 69 years old now, in a couple of months I will turn 70. None of our kids are bi-lingual, they speak, read and write Japanese. In my personal experience, if you need the language to survive and function, you will learn it. For me, the key was NECESSITY. I didn't have people around who were fluent in English to communicate with. I didn't have money for international phone calls, I didn't have internet and a pc, it was too hard to go to the post office to mail things, and it was really financially hard so I couldn't spare the cost of postage anyways. I had to make due with what I had and challenge myself to be grateful rather than complaining. I am so grateful for all the challenges I had to digest while raising a family here. Those things pushed me to learn to communicate in Japanese. I could not not be a passive learner, but I also could not have study time....I had to practice within my own family with my kids and with the people nearby. My oldest son spoke only English when we came here. He went to nursery school and within 6 months, he was speaking Japanese. I think urging people to find a NEED for learning could be very helpful. You, yourself experienced that when you worked hard to gain the language skills you needed for that gym job in just two weeks. A friend of mine from America came here with 6 kids ( and her husband) and lived in our area but it was so very hard for her and after a year and a half, they moved back to the States. I think you did a great job. My acquaintances thought we were crazy to move here since I had zero skills with Japanese. But we needed to be here for my husband's parents. I found that even the smallest efforts at leaning and communicating in Japanese brought kindness, encouragement and generosity from the people around me.
A Need will definitely outweigh something that's a hobby that's for sure. No denying that. I don't think it is the only choice however if someone wants to see drastic results. Just a reason in general for learning and a day by day approach is all we need. Good insight too!
Thanks for mentioning my channel! Good video and excellent advice in general. Happy to see I'm not the only one recommending mnemonic associations and deliberate practice instead of just "immersion".
So true, I'm an Italian 15 year-old, During the last year I focused so much on getting the C1 In English, and I DID IT🥹 now I started studying Japanese and after three months I'm able to listen to simple podcast and understand the most!
@@vaughngene oh my God 頑張ってよ! Italian might be a bit tricky with all the irregular verbs and tenses It has but you can do It, the pronunciation is also very similar to the Japanese one
Man, what a great dude. Very insightful, and consciously aware of the fluidity of life. Aside from the content purpose, it felt like I was listening to/having a conversation with a trusted friend.
You are dead on bro. Been learning Korean for a little bit now and everything you said fits perfectly. Well done and congratulations on learning a language thats harder than Korean. 😁
@@sfrezo Because too many exceptions in rules. When I started learning English at the age of 10, I found it easy. I've been living and working in England and Canada more than 20 years, but I find leaning English difficult and still studying it.
You sound amazing!!! I’m Japanese, and my American husband is having a hard time learning the language even though I never asked him to do. I will show him this video and hopefully, he can learn Japanese better and quicker. Thank you so much!
Thank you! 🙏 I admittedly don’t care about my accent much because I was getting paid so well in Japan Lol, but I’m glad to help! This is indeed a very fast way to learn any language 👌
Thanks for the great video! I’m in Japan right now learning Japanese and it’s hard and yet really fun. Anyway, may I ask what kind of work you did in Japan? :)
DUDE YOU ARE A GENIUS. I can't believe you just gave me the answer to all of my questions. Now I'll go and try to write some storys in japanese (The active practice is what I was missing. So simple but so effective)
I seldom leave a comment but I really want to leave my compliments and gratitude to you. You have brilliant ideas and are down to earth at the same time. Your presentation is well structured and it comes with the right amount of examples without being distracting. The most important thing is that you genuinely want to share the best ideas and experience with the audience without any unnecessary tricks and exaggerations, and we can feel it. The fact that you made a half-hour video just sitting there shows your style and the value of your content. Thank you bro ❤
4:35 Exactly bro. What's the point of learning all that vocab if you can't actually use it in a conversation, you NEED the most used and fundamental vocab first
Someone learning Norwegian here. I know myself, I know that simply forcing myself to watch Peppa Pig in norwegian is not gonna work out to build familiarity with words. I love how you began with learning 2000 - 4000 words so we can watch any content we want in our new language and immerse ourselves profously. I'll try this method, thanks man.
@@gat0anonimo Lol the peppa pig reference is funny. That’s awesome to hear though, I think easy approaches are pushed because people are too afraid to say what I am saying (naturally it won’t get as much clicks as the “easy actually” nonsense.). But I find this works, and it really sticks.
日本語の発音、上手ですね。 日本語は日本人の私にとっても難しいです😅 私は今、英語の勉強中です。 あなたの動画を観ながら、勉強しています。 スケートボードの練習もしています。ギターも何年も前から弾いています。 あなたの動画のおかげで、モチベーションもあがりました。 ありがとうございます。 Thank you for the video. That boosted my motivation to study English. I will continue to make efforts.
I’m Japanese but English is mostly my first language and had to relearn Japanese as a youngster. I also picked up Spanish as well. I fully agree with everything you say on how to learn a new language in a short time. When people ask me to teach them English I basically tell them to do pretty much all of the mentioned things such as learning basic structure but a heavier focus on vocab of popular words and mimicking tv, movies and songs to get the sounds similar enough to where it’s understandable. For anyone who wants to learn a new language this is a great way to do so.
Yep practice is key. Sadly a lot of things 'feel' like practice in the language learning space but they are a complete waste of time. Nothing beats real practice though.
Mate you are doing everything I wanted to do simultaneously where I failed. Japanese, guitar, gym! I taught myself guitar when I was young but now I don't have time to play any. I studied Japanese during covid for 6 months and then I stopped because of heavy work schedule. I restarted "studying" lately and I am surprised that a lot came back easily and for some reason I understand way more than before although I had forgotten a lot of vocabulary! After covid I had gained so much weight that I needed to make a change and I trained and ran my first marathon! Now I am back to being fat again and I really need to hit the gym but doing all these 3 things together for me is impossible with heavy work schedule and 3 kids! I really like your approach about Japanese though and I am basically doing this for the past month. Memorizing vocab alone (with anki) and immersing and it's quite enjoyable at the moment. Hope I can keep it up.
Just start from a clean slate and you’ll be fine! Life happens, it is what it is. But you’re still here and sounds like you are on the right track so that’s good. Just a day at a time.
Awesome video! I have been studying Japanese for the past few months and this has been one of the best learning processes I've found on UA-cam. Thank you!
Thanks for using visual prompts along with the verbal. I find my brain grabs info better in this way. I improved my vocabulary in Spanish by reading the Spanish version of a book I already love and read in English. I used a Spanish-English dictionary while reading it and took it everywhere with me. I began to compose simple notes and listening to native Spanish speakers I began to think in Spanish. For the most part having a large vocabulary helped me to communicate ideas even though my Spanish is not conversational. I like this method. It's helpful to have friends that are willing to correct you as your speak.
this is the singular greatest japanese learning video I've ever watched. Ive memorize about 1.5k words straight in 2 months, I have a buff because I know all kanji from being fluent in mandarin, and all katakana words from english. Imma try to speedrun. Subbed.
Nice, the Mandarin buff is super cool too Lol. You'll definitely be able to speedrun the language quite fast. Maybe even 3 months tbh. And thank you! I really want people to use the language with confidence and not thinking much about it when using it!
@@whyriceofficialhow many new words per day or per week are you learning? Are all those words in hiragana or Katakana or just Hiragana or just Katakana or both?
@@BestTrader-hp2sd I am learning kanji. I just got Anki and a few friends of mine are showing me how to use it. Ive been memorizing maybe 70 words a day of N5, N4 vocab a day for the past month
Both are good yeah, speed wise, active is better. But like I said, passive here and there is perfect too. I think a mix of both, opting for more active, will give the same returns in the long run.
@@史安达 I’m not saying it’s completely ineffective, don’t take it that way. (As a beginner though yeah I think it’s trash.) But maybe very effective when you have a base. This point of view I have is from my experience. But I also do 20 things in a day so I literally have NO time for passive anything. So I have a heavy bias. If passive listening helps you speak and understand better though then I’m all for it 👌.
Hey Vaughn! I just want to say thank you for your videos, they've helped me so much! Your hobby videos really got me to settle in with not overwhelming myself with hobbies, and I've been making significant and steady progress in Chinese. This video is so helpful, thank you so much for producing such good quality content!
Loved this. This is essentially _spaced repetition_ and _active recall;_ the most effective way to learn new content, scientifically proven. I used it for my medical studies in the form of a flash card program which focused on the cards I struggled with until they were all effectively ticked green. This makes it so that information comes to mind second-nature instead of having to back-track and sort through tons of memories to find what you're trying to remember. Edit: I also used it to learn fluent French & German! But despite having this knowledge, I always felt apprehensive about learning an Asian language because I felt overwhelmed at the thought of learning all the new symbols that come with it. This video is what I needed to go ahead and give Mandarin a shot as my 4th language!
Nice! Mandarin is popular too so you'll have plenty of things to use for that. And yeah I'm going to discuss Active Recall vs Recognition in terms of learning and when when to use each. Active Recall has definitely been the most useful for me overall. Just very humbling because you quickly realize how much you really don't know Lol
As a native Turkish who has been mastered in mnemonics, I found your exemplification highly valuable and accurate. You are so right, I have used mnemonics in programming, language and music theory learning etc. good work
Hello! I just finished watching this video and I loved it! I can’t even remember how I got into this stuff (Japanese culture, anime, traveling, etc. I even draw anime art cause of it!😂) I’ve loved it for a couple years. Since then, I’ve always wanted to speak Japanese. I decided to start learning it on my own but I had no luck. This video is the first one out of 100+ other videos I’ve watched that has significantly helped. After I’m done commenting, I will join your discord and IMMEDIATELY start practicing and taking notes. Thank you for sharing this with us sir! You have my thanks and respect.
You are right about the grammar thing. Ive been watching anime for like 15 years and unknowingly picked up the sentence structures and thousands of words of vocabulary.
Tremendous video. I speak Spanish, French and Portuguese and I'm now on to Serbo-Croat as I just moved to Belgrade a week ago. Using a more 'guerilla' active style approach for the new language as I don't have even the option of formal classes. I hadn't even thought of using ChatGPT so cheers suggesting that.
This topic you've made is the most advance effective and accurate in terms of language learning or I should say acquiring the Japanese in fastest way. I'm on my 3 year mark of benkyou and I say I'm 85% fluent now in nihongo as per as speaking, reading (hiragana/katakana) 30% basic kanji readings like you've said there is furigana I can say that your method really works I've been doing this for about 3 years now, it's just my own realization to do like the way you are doing it. Acquiring a lot thousands of vocabs is the real deal. And memorising hundreds of common phrases sentences, grammars and in no time you will woke up one day you are able to speak like a native Japanese and can understand very well.. And also take note I am not an American I am a Filipino and my native language is tagalog. By using English to translate into Japanese I also become fluent in English as well so 2 birds in one stone, 2 languages I acquired in 3 years how cool is that? hell yeah \m/
This actually so awesome! I've heard many things about these methods but this was the best explanation of it I've seen so far! I have to move to Japan soon and I've mostly been learning basic grammar and some random vocab words. I decided to write a little story in Japanese though i had to search up many words. However, I was really surprised when i was able to read the story without translating it into English. Like, the meaning just came to me. And some of the words i accidentally used mnemonics for and I remembered them so easily! Like めざめる (I think) means wake up and I remembered it because it sounds like mesmerized! I was so proud of myself. Tysm for this video.
I love how you said “rest of the fretboard” instead of language 😂 my husband is a guitarist so if you didn’t correct yourself I totally would have went with it because it made complete sense to me even though that was music and not language. Same, same! Music is a language in itself so it works! Thank you for this video! As a bilingual English/Spanish speaker struggling to get into the vocab learning of Japanese, I’m sure your tips are going to really help get me back into the groove of learning it so thank you, ありがとう ございます
I often mix language and music a lot funny enough Lol. I think the same principles apply to both. Especially at a subconscious level (Repetition until you can do it without thinking much). And no problem!
Thank you so much for this video! All of this is so true. I’ve been living in Japan for the past three years and I’ve found that active immersion is much quicker than passive. People are allergic to hard work. Keep putting videos like this out here! Blessings to you!
Yeah it helps a lot! I think the hand holding clickbait content has kinda ruined people's ability to work but hopefully we can get all that out of here someday.
I’ve been studying Korean on and off for a decade and I forgot how well mnemonic devices work. I think it works best for those of us who are naturally creative. Visualizing and making unusual connections comes easily to us and gives that dopamine hit, and I think that helps cement the information in our minds.
Yeah it’s a lot easier to attach new ideas to older ones I find! Maybe some people do it better than other like you mentioned with creativity but I think everyone has it in some way 👌
I came into this video thinking it's going to be "another one of those" mindlessly praising the immersion method ones. "Just watch everything in Japanese all the time and trust the process" kind of thing. But I gave it a shot, because for some reason I had a feeling that MAYBE there's going to be something here that I haven't heard before and I'm really glad I did. To be completely honest, I think most of the things said in this video were things I already knew/suspected, but I wasn't convinced by my own "hunches", because I suck at Japanese and most of the advice praising pure immersion is coming from people who seem to be fluent in Japanese. I noticed though, that most of the people who "learned kanji just by looking at words" and "learned vocab just by consuming Japanese content" have actually done some heavy-lifting at some point beforehand, and just discarded it like it wasn't helpful because they didn't *feel* like they improved. But at the same time I always felt like I made much more improvement after just drilling a whole bunch of vocab with Anki than I did by watching anime that's way above my level and trying to mine sentences. The only thing that kind of surprised me in this video was that you advise not to learn kanji in the beginning. I used to avoid kanji like the plague in the beginning of my studies, and after reading through RTK and doing an RTK deck in Anki, I feel like I wasted a lot of time just being too scared of kanji, and I think I could have saved a lot of time if I did it sooner. But anyway, based on your advice I might just go ahead and change my Anki deck a bit (right now it's: word in kanji on the front side, sound and meaning on the backside), and that might allow me to get through the core 6K deck faster. Thank you for this video! I think it might be the most honest and helpful one on this topic.
Glad you gave it a shot! And yeah If Kanji helps I’m all for it, I’ll address that in part 2. Because I didn’t know so many people got good results out of it. They have been lighting me up in the comments Lol so I’ll address it. But I’m also an auditory learner so that makes sense why I have a bias.
This video is totally spot on. People have different learning objectives but my goal is to comprehend written and spoken Japanese, and that requires lots of input: vocabulary and in context grammar . I know this because that's how I learned English. I can understand pretty much anything in English. My output is not that good because I never practice it, but that's the easy part when you completely understand the language. The same applies to Japanese, if your goal is to understand, you are wasting time trying to output, memorize grammar or use textbooks. If down the road you decide you want to take the JLPT then you can use textbooks and memorize grammar rules and that will take no time and will be a breeze, because you already understand the language. If your primary goal is to pass the JLPT then maybe it's more efficient to start with textbooks from the beginning.
Yeah definitely goal dependent! I’ll probably make a video for people who just want to understand the language, rather than use it to speak. And funny thing about JLPT is that a lot of them actually can’t speak Japanese Lol. Even N1. But I don’t want to sound rude. Many of them use it as a flex. But countless times in person I have seen them fall apart in conversations. This is why I like the more deliberate approach. It just works.
@@vaughngene Yeah, you are on point. You are not rude at all, that’s just the reality. I can write and speak in English, just not very well lol, but that was never my objective. This year I want to get the C1 Cambridge certificate so I will need to practice a lot. The thing is that I’m very satisfied with my level because the goal was comprehension of English content, so with Japanese I will take the same approach.
*looks for pinned comment then relaizes this was 2hrs ago* THE KING POSTED... I SWEAR YOURE IN MY MIND EVERY SINGLE TIME YOUR VIDEOS POP UP WTH..... (ily bro)
Thank you for the video , I’m moving to japan to study my masters in English. Very valuable advice , this definitely uplifted me a bit when I get discouraged at slow progress that comes without much structure People often give different views but I strongly believe you’re right
I am so grateful to God for already being bilingual. The idea of being able to intentionally learn a third language is so inconceivable to me, that the day I watch anime/play a Japanese game and realise I can understand it will be an incredibly rewarding day.
@@garythebard God selected my parents for me ;) Actually my Dad always spoke to me in English lol. Unfortunately, I used to think it was much cooler -- but that's another story.
Japanese feels unrealistic until you get the reps in. Then after a couple months you start to realize that it’s actually one of the more straightforward languages! Which makes it less scary. At first though, yeah it’s wild Lol.
I downloaded Duolingo 3 days ago and started learning Japanese, but I skipped a day yesterday. After watching this video, I feel super motivated again! Seeing how you taught yourself Japanese is really inspiring, and now I’m pumped to keep going and not fall behind.
As a Special-ed teacher and being mixed with Japanese, I truly agree in your guidelines and principles in learning another language. This is a great video and very informative!
I´m mixed, japanese dad and brazilian mom, I lived in japan basically all my childhood, still I didn´t managed to learn much Japanese. This is probably duo to the fact that I studied at a Brazilian school in Japan and only interacted with Brazilians. I constantly feel embarrassed for not being able to speak it, like i failed, since even my non japanese friends can communicate way better than myself. Now, I´m really trying to study it, but it became really difficult, not just because I´m older, but because i made myself associate japanese as a traumatic thing. So i hope that using this method might help me
Boa sorte!!! Adoro encontrar brasileiros com objetivos semelhantes ao meu, quero aprender japonês para eventualmente morar no Japão, vamos dar o nosso melhor e alcançar nosso objetivo!!!
I'm already decently fluent in Japanese but every once in a while i'll watch videos like this to see if I might be able to improve my method. I swear by reading more and Anki for vocab, and listening in my free time. I started reading when I got like 1.2k vocab size, just suffered my way through and grew my vocab that way. I actually think passive listening is good, at least for me, walking around campus while listening to podcasts does help with my listening skills and getting myself to think in Japanese. Took a few stuff here that i'll try to use, especially the AI stuff. Keep it up man! Your channel resonates a lot with me, idk man. Your interest in languages, music, weeb shit and just having a shit ton of interest... like fam, that's me. Wait you're in soft eng, lmao. YT algorithm is crazy.
Nice! Yeah as long as you are getting the results you want that’s what matters. I think some people mistake what I say for “ONLY DO THIS” but I just kinda showcase my own exp. I think many things have their place for sure though! And yeah I have a lot more to share so thanks! 💪 Will do.
I am trying to learn Korean and I get really frustrated with a lot of the youtube videos they have out now because I find them boring. The amount of grammar every one throws out there is crazy. I always get unmotivated and do not really try because of it. Luckily you posted this at the right time. This will probably change the way I look at things and I hope I can improve since I want to talk to my wife in her native language. You earned yourself another subscriber!!
I’m so glad I found your channel. Your videos have been so very helpful. Good, clear actionable things I can employ to learn Japanese. I’ve wanted to learn since I was a young girl, but became overwhelmed every time. 👏🏾 Thank you!
i like the way you explain things, very digestible! i agree with the vocabulary especially, you can easily piece things together. acquiring vocab is so hard tho 😢
Always apricate hearing more takes on how to learn Japanese. I'd argue though that learning how to read hiragana and katakana should be the very first step and exposing yourself to kanji is important along side learning vocab. Vocab is more fun to me when I see things like "量子" and I understand "quantity" and "child" means quantum. Since I understand the english meaning of Japanese kanji, I can understand what I read easier and my focus has always been leaning how to read and understand since I have no need to speak it. I think your situation is different. Might be worth noting that if your goals are different the way you learn has to be different.
Yeah it that's what helps you then definitely go for it! I just lay out what works for me and my recommendations, but like any piece of content, mold it to fit your style. That's more important than anything else.
Thank you! This came up in my feed & it’s the best training ever!! I’ve never thought about using AI and learning 4k vocable words & the sentences . Thank you! Honest excellent content
I think I’m the only one on the internet who will actually believe you because I know the power of deliberate practice. If you say that to anyone else tho, be ready to be attacked 😂
@@wasabi128 Prior to leaning it, he read the novel "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer along with using mnemonics to help him learn the basics and advanced forms of Japanese. He also wasn't working during that time so he pretty much put all of his time and effort into learning it. I'm pretty sure he also used some of the tips that were similar to those used in this video.
@avocadofever6850 I've used audio programs to great effect in 3 months, to learn my 3rd and 4th languages. I believe it. But... I'm an obsessive learner. Those who think 5 minutes on the duo app for 3 months won't believe you, ever. Their loss tho
Greetings from me, David,Malaysia.Will be 72 next month and way back in 1975 Sept, I went to Japan and had a 5-weeks Romaji -based Japanese Language Orientation. After that, I did self-study and thankfully,due to me working with Toyota,I had numerous trips to Japan for technical training and I used those opportunities to learn and practise Japanese as best as I can. In 1985 when I was 33 yrs old, I started to learn Kendo in Malaysia and that, also served as a good platform to improve my japanese proficiency as all instructions at the dojo,were in Japanese. Glad to make it to 4th dan during the 10 World Kendo Championship in 1997.The dan grading exam was held in Kyoto.After working 46 yrs in the automotive industry, I resigned and moved to an 'inaka-small town' where the cost of living is lower than the crazy capital city of Kuala Lumpur where I had spent many years there. I appreciate your unselfish sharing of your approach towards learning Japanese. Thank you very much. Will follow your advice as best as I can.
I’ll add a part two next week if I can, maybe mostly in Japanese. To address some other stuff. (Partially doing it in Japanese because the annoying comments from people who don’t wanna watch my shorts or other videos Lol).
I speak Spanish and it took around 12 years to achieve true fluency in English, lots of trial and error, making mistakes and challenging myself, but I think one of the things that helped me the most was the fact that I met tons of native speakers that liked the things I liked and that helped me connect with the language way more. When I was a kid I spoke Catalan as well, but I stopped using it overtime, however once I actually challenged myself to re-learn it, I acquired it so fast that I was impressed. Now I'm learning Korean (been studying for over 10 months) and I'm definitely grateful that the algorithm showed me this video, it's been an eye opener!
Thank you for the great uploads! I'm starting to get into eating healthier foods thanks to your last video! I'm starting to really like oranges! Fijne dag! 😄
Great pieces of advice. I've been learning and practicing languages most of my life (I'm 52). And I can tell you those "hacks" really work. As you said Gene, "deliberate practice" is key to your success. This is an ACTIVE process. Actually, the more active the process, the more fun and engaging it gets. P.S. Gene, you've got a great voice pitch. And you're pretty articulate, too. So, I'd recommend your videos to anyone working on their English listening skills. Keep up the good work and keep playing music.✌🏻🇺🇲🇨🇷
Nice! So you have more experience than I do for sure. I hope more people get on the side of Active Practice. That way they don’t feel like they are incapable of learning. And thank you! 🙏
Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been watching a lot of videos on the immersion method lately, but always thought that there had to be a faster way than just watching and learning slowly like a child. We have the ability to leverage our language and skills to pick things up faster as an adult; things like grammar and vocabulary through simple searches and practice, like a shortcut kids don’t have. Going to apply this to my current language learning regimen. Thanks again!
Yeah I think that works for very young people, and then old people, because they both have too much time and nothing to do. Anyone in between needs deliberate practice for sure Lol
This is good stuff! Thank you! I moved to Japan in 1988 and returned to the States in 1998: the dark ages of language learning. Learning Japanese taught by native Japanese speakers using textbooks was slow and painful. I got more from advice from native English speakers who'd learned Japanese. I was glad to have plenty of Japanese friends in my neighborhood to help. (I also worked as a personal trainer at a gym in Nagoya.) I think the real advantage of your videos is that you've done something Japanese teachers haven't done: you learned Japanese as an adult. Thanks again!
This is pretty much how my Japanese has gone. I spent a few days (like 3 or 4) reading through a grammer app. I decided to skip genki for an app called "Human Japanese" which honestly is a great fast grammar resource for starting out. I spent two months grinding out vocabulary and listening to podcasts or watching UA-cam while really paying attention and repeating everything and it helped a lot. I'm fortunate to have some native Japanese family that live in Osaka and I was able to understand nearly everything that people said to me. My speaking sucked because I had only been studying for like two months, but hell, I was able to get my point across.
I have a fluent friend who started with Human Japanese just like you, the iPhone app. and he said it was a HUGE help to him. And that’s awesome! Seems like you were doing this approach the best way possible right away. Speaking is just a form of muscle memory at the end of the day, but since you have a base, that’s literally only a matter of repetition. Then it will stick just fine.
This Video helps me so much, you could articulate, what was on my mind, but i couldn't fully think to the end. I learned hiragana and katakana in less than 2 weeks and then tried immerse myself to japanese passivly all the time with no results. But pumping in lots of vocab, helped me understand more and more of podcasts and tv shows like avatar. This is where i noticed progress and got this motivation boost. Thanks for your video, it helps a ton! P.s. also looking forward to this mnemonic vocab lists :P mnemonic learning helped me speedrunning the alphabet :)
Nice! Good you had some success with it intuitively! It really helps when it comes to conveying deeper thoughts to. Because in Japanese it’s very hard at first, then you realize the frameworks are actually quite simple.
I watched your whole video, and by the time it was finished, I felt that it was almost possible that I could do "the impossible"and learn a second language. Now that your video is over, this 60 year old English speaker feels it's impossible again. It doesn't necessarily have to be Japanese, but I did get the essence of your learning style. I applaud you for your eloquence, but your you can do it calmness which actually left me feeling it was possible. I've always wanted to learn another language since it seems to help welcome you into a whole other culture. Thank you.
Love this video! Thanks ! Love the fact that in this AI area, people are still encouraging others to learn languages ~ probably gonna try your method to get back on my Japanese!
The thing about what you said about Kanjis: It depends If your goal in Japanese is mainly watching anime and reading japanese novels and manga there is not much of a reason to learn all these sentences/frameworks for speaking directly. It's more worth to learn Kanji instead (besides vocab ofc which should always be the main thing) so you can watch with japanese subtitles/read books etc
Not to sound rude 🙏 but Kanji is the very last thing to learn. Actually Japanese people even learn this last. However what you said about reading is correct. If THAT is someone’s goal then absolutely, learn Kanji. But someone would have to pick ONE route. You either want to understand and/or speak well. (Which could just be understanding it only to watch anime, that’s fine). Or Reading. But not both.
Yea I went with a middle of the road type approach were I learned like 5-8k vocab in pure kana then did the RRTK anki deck and started only adding kanji vocab to my anki. After starting kanji my retention rate got A LOT better and doing anki was a whole lot less frustrating. Also you are omega limiting yourself by not incorporating kanji, you cannot read manga (oh but furigana, yea stick to your fucking shitter shounen then), you cant read LNs or normal books and you cant play videogames. You will be pigeonholed into a subsection of what the language has to offer which will in turn make it easier to burn out or just not be as fun as it could've been. Also this mf even mentioning romaji... At this point I believe it is best to start kanji when you're able to watch low level shows such as slice of life high school anime without too much of a headache. Also people over value the difficulity of kanji. I learned one third of the base 2.2k kanji in 3 months during downtime in videogames (effectively 0 time investment) and another third the following month intensively. At that point I had gotten through the entirety of the RRTK anki deck but had tagged suspend on like 1/3 to 1/4 which were kanji that wasnt as frequent. I have now been slowly un suspending these kanji as I find vocab including them.
@@slippyy4252 don't know just grabbed one , you might want to do a little bit more research than I did though since I just wanted to get to work as soon as possible so I grabbed the first thing I saw. I've seen some dude using kanjidamage and it looked kinda pretty, not sure how effective it is though.
This is by far the most helpful video I've seen on learning a language in a long time! It makes it seem possible and not out of reach. Thank you so much for this, I can't wait to start implementing! 🙏
Thanks for putting this together. I've been doing Japanese study for about a year and half and my speaking/listening ability is not that great. I do read a lot and I really felt the benefits of being able to read kanji and know many words, but I am now acutely feeling the effects of my weaknesses. I'm going to watch this video a couple times and put your approach into action over the coming months. I'm arranging to study in Japan for a year starting in April next year, so I have lots of work to do. Once again, thanks for your time and wisdom.
Yeah it will work well for you, I'll do more content completely in Japanese just to kinda do it also. You can have a lot of results by April for sure, if not near-fluency.
When I started, I said I was gonna do these 5 things without overcomplicating it: 1. Learn how to read/write Hiragana and Katakana 2. Memorize 2000 vocabulary words along with hundreds of the most common phrases/sentences, the most practical. (I have a few apps that Ive been jogging with, working out with, using the rest room with, taking a shower with, cooking with, you name it) 3. Learn grammar, formal/informal, sentence structure and all the boring stuff here and there. 4. Try my best to be more conscious of the anime subtitles I'm reading, it's very easy to memorize common short phrases or singular words. 5. Do no skip a day unless I absolutely have to or im super sick. Do this for a year and see where it leads me. So far so good 6 months in. Very interested where I will be on April 1st 2025. (My 1 year anniversary when I started) Already seeing results 6 months in, if I practice even a little harder I can potentially tripple my abilities in these next 6 months. This video I think just shows you the power of being a " contextual speaker " and using that as a gate way to becoming an actual speaker. I go at my own slow pace, but whats important is consistency. Chip away at the mountain one day a time.
Sounds good! just number 5 don’t get too crazy on it. Rest is just fine. Sounds like you are on the fast track though and resting your limits, which is great 👌
ok how did you memorize the 2k vocab and phrases? i tried anki a few months ago, finished a 2k core deck of it and got exausted and tired/angry at it hahahah dont want do use anki anymore, saw this video and he recommends the mnemonic strategy, sounds good but for ex: Asked for the list for chatgpt, in the list we have Taberu, i read it, make the mnemonic, know the meaning and than done? next? never come back to it? ok the immersion will help with the repetition but is really just it? read the words, make the mnemonics, know the meaning and than bye bye next?
After learning multiple languages and having trouble I totally agree. I'm Polish but I've forgotten polish and had to relearn it. Now everytime I listen or speak it, the only thing stopping me is vocab words, like someone saying "I went to this 'place'", do they mean a train station, a dentist, what did they say? Learning vocab first is so good as then you can easily pick up grammar from movies and real life convos, compared to learning grammar first means you'll have to be pausing a movie every 5 seconds and getting frustrated as you don't understand any of the vocab. This method seems so common sense but i've never heard it said before! I disagree with the kanji, I think maybe learning the first 200 kanji could really help as they come up so often and it's not so difficult, otherwise you'll be that person who only reads romanji which i think is stupid. You'll naturally learn kanji along the way and you shouldn't avoid it or be scared of it, just look at them as you see new words and you'll memorise them naturally. Kanji are a big part of Japanese, even if you mostly speak or listen. They'll help you think better in the language.
Yeah my views on Kanji will naturally be conflicting but if that helps you then I support it for sure! As with most of my videos, I mainly how "I" did it. But like anything, take what you need, discard what you don't and get the results. But that's awesome you are getting back into where you were! It will probably come back a lot faster than you think too. And yeah I think the 'experts' have really screwed up common sense on the internet these days Lol. So we often overthink everything. I'm victim of this too.
I just want to say, as a black pianist, guitarist, language learner myself, I'm glad to see we out here killing it. I'm definitely in the "good at reading japanese, but can't speak" camp, but it aligns with my goal so far. I think I'm reverse leveraging your point. My goal was to read Visual Novels, and once its time to speak, I have the knowledge in the brain. I think I'll work on that 100 sentences thing though. I could use that for spanish and japanese just to be able to hold my own a little better. But i have faith in just throwing yourself out there once you have a base. I am hosting a japanese exchange student who went from needing google translate for most interactions to being able to speak and understand in one week. She just needed to activate all of that stored away knowledge from reading and watching American TV.
Watched a couple of your videos now and you be smashing it good sir! This video translates really well to all language learning. Why have I not been leveraging AI 😄 Have a magical day!
It's crazy, I can read probably 10k-20k words but when it comes to speaking and listening I'm still a beginner. I wish there was more content I was interested in listening to or people to speak to.
Yeah it’s just a skill you’ll have to develop, But that many words is an amazing base. That’s probably more than me tbh Lol. But Japanese fortunately has a translations for almost anything. So you’ll find things you like soon enough. And again the fundamentals carry over.
Have you tried Japanese with Shun? His podcast is for Genki I - Genki II beginners so the grammar is pretty simple but the topics are interesting and he’s got some interesting vocab sprinkled in too
@@Kitkat915e I've heard of him, but there isn't really much on youtube that interests me besides jp vtubers and even then I get bored after a while. There's always anime, just have to find one you're really interested in.
Thank you so much for making this video. I am travelling to Japan in about two weeks' time to stay for up to a year as part of a working holiday programme. I'm super excited to try my best at studying rigorously while working a part-time job in Japan. I aim to hopefully reach a solid conversational level of Japanese so I really appreciate all of the insightful advice and direct mindset to learning the language :D
You can be conversationally adept in a month tbh. Just make lots of sentences that cater to conversational Japanese and drill them along with vocab. A few weeks really.
@@vaughngene Wow that's really fast. I've been casually learning via Duolingo so far and it's not the most effective learning tool in terms of vocab but I've enjoyed it for hiragana and katakana. Will definetly be trying out the mneumonic association method but it also sounds like hard work - guess there's no way around that though hahah
Great video. Thank you for all of your effort and dedication. You have inspired me to keep working on it. (As a bonus. It’s awesome you play guitar and piano. I do too!)
The Everchanging Pinned Comment
Disclaimer; I speak casual Japanese because that’s what we spoke at work.
I can speak Formal/Keigo but I really don’t care to.
Also watch my other content in Japanese (mostly shorts).
Part 2 is up.
ua-cam.com/video/gJwdKgDe_ws/v-deo.htmlsi=pQGN8URTaWTVusnP
And PLEASE do not make the language your whole personality. Learn it, use it, but have a life outside of it. Go learn guitar, learn other things, go outside in general.
Do not be one of those people who make Japanese their whole life.
&
Note 1: Fluency means your ability to use the language and communicate back and forth about whatever you want smoothly.
It does not mean you are a Native Speaker.
I address guys like the dude below in the comments in Part 2 of this video linked above (in Japanese).
Enjoy the language! It's life changing when you can use it without thinking about it!
Note 2: Watch Part 2
-
Note 3: Disagree on Kanji? = Watch part 2
Note 4: After you watch my stuff, get off UA-cam and go practice.
To be clear, your japanese is good and I can understand what you're saying, but calling yourself fluent is an absurd stretch.
Your accent is poor and the MAJORITY of the words you spoke in the video were pronounced with the wrong pitch accent - it seems you have not studied or listened for pitch accent at all. It makes it very difficult to follow along as your pronunciation becomes stilted and unnatural.
Your pronunciation of ひ in 人 is not affricated.
You pronounce 理由 as りよう and not りゆう.
This is all from the first 30 seconds of the video before I had seen enough.
Japanese is not easy to learn and I think you should be proud of what you are accomplished, but titling your youtube video as "fluent" and giving advice when you are still solidly in the 'intermediate' camp is a bit ridiculous to say the least.
@@ZulayagosIscool “Black guy doesn’t sound like a Native Speaker” is a better way to write that Lol.
There you go champ 🤝
And if you ever went to Japan, many of them don’t use “correct” pitch accent.
And to add, if someone has an off English accent but can do ANYTHING in the language, that doesn’t disqualify fluency.
If you can make a better version of this video tho, feel free to do it. I’ll be waiting 👌
@@ZulayagosIscool @lilywertee
You guys decided to nitpick all because he made a clear disclaimer lol.
And for the people who are curious about this interaction. I am Japanese, and this is from my perspective.
Have you seen an Italian guy with a weird accent but can speak English MORE than as a dumbass local who can’t even take an SAT?
Yeah, well you still call that fluent.
There are many people like that around you believe it or not.
Just because someone can’t pronounce like a native doesn’t mean they aren’t fluent at the language.
Also, just because they miss a few words don’t mean anything
@@vaughngene I gave you three clear examples of your lack of fluency. Insinuating I am a racist from my comment is really, really weird.
@@ZulayagosIscool He literally talked about it at 14:30
Fluent level and native level are two different things.
so to summarize:
-learn the basics of gramar (utilize chat gpt)
-learn 2000-4000 of the most commonly utilized vocabulary (use mnemonic association to help remember)
-use the sentence structures you have learned and utilize the vocabulary you know
Listen and repeat with native speakers to learn proper context.
Make a list of +100 sentences for every category of your life and drill those sentences to become fluent in topics that matter to you. (utilize chat gpt)
The goal of this method is to reach subconcious verbal fluency, being able to utilize your target language like your native language. Perfect gramar is overrated, use what you know, people will get it. For japanese specifically: learning hiragana and katakana will get you very far, learn kanji once you're able to speak.
As somebody who's at a beginning conversational level of fluency in japanese - this video is very helpful and emphasizes a lot of the most important points I've found in language learning myself. I'll definitely try out making extensive lists of sentences on topics I will use japanese in! My go to has been "shower talks" where I just have a made up conversation with myself. But like you said at the beginning: I need to seek more discomfort in my practice.
Thx
Yeah there’s a time for more relaxed shower talk like you said but the discomfort during practice is one of the best things to go for 👌, really leads to good changes.
And thanks for the summary!
Edit: make sure you all still watch the video though. Not for my sake but for yours,
or you will miss out on things that will save you a lot of time.
I’m doing it as if I was a child, children’s videos and books and progressing as I learn
The 100 sentences is a great tip. That allowed me to become conversational in Korean very quickly
Thank you. But what a shame, I won't use chat gpt nor support it in any way shape or form. Sure there's very little we can do to be completely ethical in life, but that's an easy one to just not use generative AI.
I have an example of this from learning English - I am Brazilian.
When I was 14 years old I started playing Grand Theft Auto. I had no clue what they were saying. I asked my mother to buy me a dictionary. I started writing down the sentences in the game, replacing some words with new words and I completed the game understanding everything. I continued to do it for other games and music, singing in English as well.
Fast forward 2 years, I was working on a clothing store when some Australian tourists arrived. I was in a really small city back then and everyone (including vendors in other shops) was panicking because they couldn't communicate. I stepped in - this was my first time ever speaking English outside of my own house and to myself - and very naturally, with no difficulties, helped the tourists find everything they wanted, asked them about their trip and wished them well.
I didn't even have internet (poverty) so I definitely didn't even know what pitch accent even means. But they understood me flawless, there was little to no repetition, and I did not feel scared or concerned at any point. It was truly magical and today I can confidently say my English level resembles that of a native speaker - and it all started with little grammar, just a few sentences and imitation.
I am a Canadian learning Quebec French right now and this story is so good it almost reads like a copypasta lol. Hopefully I can be fluent in French someday, my goal is to be able to speak it with Quebecois that come to the music festival every year on some level. I got further in swedish but never got to use it with anyoen in my small hick town.
@@AmazingRebel23 I'm sure if you love the language and follow the tips, you'll get it in no time! Ganbatte :) I am now learning Japanese 🤞🏻
Australian tourist: "Excuse me, do you speak English?"
Brazilian shop assistant: "Sup, dawg, whatchu want?"
Australian tourist: "I'd like to buy a bottle of water please."
Brazilian shop assistant: "Hell, yeah. I'm down with that, homie."
@@atomicdancer 😂
Nice! Practicing alone really does transfer to real life almost immediately. Glad you had that experience too
hi im Japanese. I think learning Japanese is very difficult but your Japanese is almost perfect. I'm so impressed!!
Thank you! I hope others can use this advice to learn the languages they want.
& I’ll continue to improve.
Edit: I may also do a video completely in Japanese to help English learners.
@@vaughngene please do! I have no Japanese people I can converse with and I've been trying to learn. It's so difficult!
For romance language speakers, agglutinative languages like Japanese and Turkish are the easiest to learn, they are technically much less complex so its easy to learn basic structure quickly then just build up vocab. Its MUCH harder for a native agglutinative language speaker to learn Romance languages
I don't speak Japanese but actually feel I wouldn't struggle with it. Perhaps due to the fact that there are some Japanese words that are similar to my language Setswana. Also has similiraties with Kalanga which is spoken in the northern part of my country
@@thejasonrk I am a native Spanish/English speaker (stronger in English though). It is insane how casually I encounter Japanese but end up feeling like I pick up words and structures here and there without having tried. I might attempt to learn it soon with all this fantastic information I keep coming across.
As a speech language pathologist, it is so refreshing to hear you speak about language acquisition this way! Deliberate practice is key for adults! For people with weak auditory processing skills (like myself) kanji at the beginning is helping me make sense of the language much faster BUT I am also supplementing with visual novels so I can have a visual and verbal model to practice along with the vocab knowledge I am practicing daily! Such a wonderful video, I will certainly look into chat gpt!
@@morganrowland377 I’ll talk more about Kanji in the next video,
I mostly go off my exp but I see a lot of others saying it’s useful for them to learn vocab.
So in that case I support the basic Kanji for sure!
And yes, deliberate practice is key!
I’m a speech pathologist too and I’ve found kanji to be immensely helpful in learning vocabulary! Nice to see another speechie in in the comments 😂
KANJI is a form of EMOJI for native speakers. "EMOJI (絵文字)" literally means "picture & text/script." A native child in Japan would absorb the language in a similar manner as you mentioned. We look at an 絵本 and our parents would often read it for us before bed.
TV programs for children also combine visual and hearing, which I presume is the same in most cultures. So I'd always recommend watching TV programs or reading books for children to absorb a new language, to mimic the learning process of a native child.
Japanese education system is highly centralized, so Ministry of Education has a list of KANJI to learn for each grade. It's called 『学年別漢字配当表』, and 1st grade is 80 KANJI, 2nd grade is 160 KANJI, 3rd and 4th grade is 200 KANJI respectively...and we learn a total of 1,000 KANJI up to 6th grade (or 12 years old). So text books for each grade only contain KANJI for that grade and below. Mandatory education up to 9th grade (or 3rd year of junior-high school) would expose us to nearly 2,000 KANJI, which is known as 常用漢字. Japanese newspapers, government documents, or school textbooks will not deviate from the 2,000 KANJI (although there are many more but the usage is less frequent in daily life). KANJI learning gets increasingly easier as many KANJI are a combination or derivative of basic ones.
The reason why KANJI education is essential in Japan is because we cannot understand the cognate of many Japanese words without understanding the meaning of KANJI. The word for contradiction 矛盾 (むじゅん) is a classic example. Contradiction is written as 矛 (SPEAR) & 盾 (SHIELD) because it's based on a story about a merchant who claimed he's selling the strongest spear that can pierce anything as well as the strongest shield that can block anything. (It's from a Chinese tale from 2,000-2,500 years ago.)
@@yo2trader539 That last example you brought up - of the origin of the meaning of "contradiction" - is truly fascinating. Thank you for your enlightening comment.
This is one of the best videos about language learning I have ever seen in my life. Your video is packed with a ton of great tips and advice. Thanks.
I want to add that part of your success is the result of your character. Piano, Gym, etc, so you are proud of yourself, and you like challenges. You don't seem to feel the pain. Probably, you follow the idea behind the motto: no pain, no gain. Unfortunately, not so many people are ready to follow your advice. Anyway, thanks again. I'll apply your suggestions to improve my Japanese and German as well.
Thank you! 🙏 And yeah I can be a bit extreme Lol, but as long as people can take the concepts and cater their own approach to it, that’s just as good.
The deliberate practice is all I want to push.
I’ve lived in Japan for over 33 years now. I’m 70 years old and recently retired as of April 1st. My wife is Japanese. I only spoke English at home as I wanted our sons to be bilingual. I was teaching English every morning, afternoon and night. I taught from early morning to late night 6 days a week (plus half a day on Sundays for the first 8 years or so). During and after the pandemic I lost most of my work. Things slowed down quite a bit. I always speak Japanese when I encounter Japanese outside of teaching. However, it’s just basic everyday Japanese.
Now that I’m retired, I’m looking forward to traveling a lot around Japan. I want to be able to become fluent enough to have deeper conversations with Japanese I meet during my travels. I want to learn more quickly as I’m old and have no idea when I’m going to croak. I’m mostly interested in speaking and understanding what I hear. I understand more than I can speak. My hobby is bird photography and I’ve learned the names of birds first in Japanese from other birders. Most birders have no desire to speak English. Over the years it’s given me a chance to practice Japanese with them.
Thanks for your video and your advice, much appreciated.
Bless your soul
Really cool to hear. You got it 👌,
Older Japanese people are typically always looking for someone to talk to, so you’ll have plenty of time to practice.
@@vaughngeneThanks, much appreciated.
日本在住で既にリタイアされて時間があるようでしたら、住んでいる市区町村で行われている英語を日本人に教えるヴォランティアの集まりを探してみてはどうでしょうか。
英語を喋りたいけど喋れない日本人は沢山います。長年日本に住まわれているなら、是非日本人の考えていることも直接日本人と会話して理解して頂けると有難いです。英会話ができないコンプレックスを持っている沢山の日本人側にとっても有難いことです。
Ooh hapa kids! Or hafu. The most attractive
I enjoyed your video a lot. I came to Japan in my 30's. I am married to a Japanese man and we raised 4 sons here. We moved here with a 2 1/2 yr. old toddler. We came in January and our 2nd son was born in March, and the next year our 3rd son was born in April and then there was a gap of a couple of years and the 4th son was born. I was busy, busy, busy....no time or energy for study. I had to work to help make ends meet, too. My husband was not a salary man or anything. He quit his work in the US to move here, also in his 30's and we had to start from zero. I could not always have my husband around to translate so I was really desperate to be able to communicate with nursery school teachers, then elementary school and junior high school and high school teachers. I was desperate to communicate with people at the supermarket and anywhere else I went. So it took about 3 years to make a foundation to be able to communicate in Japanese, then I had some kind of breakthrough and could become pretty fluent. I have been living here since before we had computers in our home. We moved here in 1987 and there were not many non-Japanese in our area. We live in a small town in Okayama Prefecture. I am only semi-literate. I basically don't study Kanji....I can read more than I can write though. But hiragana was the first thing I memorized and then katakana....I am 69 years old now, in a couple of months I will turn 70. None of our kids are bi-lingual, they speak, read and write Japanese. In my personal experience, if you need the language to survive and function, you will learn it. For me, the key was NECESSITY. I didn't have people around who were fluent in English to communicate with. I didn't have money for international phone calls, I didn't have internet and a pc, it was too hard to go to the post office to mail things, and it was really financially hard so I couldn't spare the cost of postage anyways. I had to make due with what I had and challenge myself to be grateful rather than complaining. I am so grateful for all the challenges I had to digest while raising a family here. Those things pushed me to learn to communicate in Japanese. I could not not be a passive learner, but I also could not have study time....I had to practice within my own family with my kids and with the people nearby. My oldest son spoke only English when we came here. He went to nursery school and within 6 months, he was speaking Japanese. I think urging people to find a NEED for learning could be very helpful. You, yourself experienced that when you worked hard to gain the language skills you needed for that gym job in just two weeks. A friend of mine from America came here with 6 kids ( and her husband) and lived in our area but it was so very hard for her and after a year and a half, they moved back to the States. I think you did a great job. My acquaintances thought we were crazy to move here since I had zero skills with Japanese. But we needed to be here for my husband's parents. I found that even the smallest efforts at leaning and communicating in Japanese brought kindness, encouragement and generosity from the people around me.
A Need will definitely outweigh something that's a hobby that's for sure. No denying that.
I don't think it is the only choice however if someone wants to see drastic results.
Just a reason in general for learning and a day by day approach is all we need.
Good insight too!
こんにちは。私は日本人で、英語を勉強しています。日本人にとって英語はとても難しいです。同じように外国人にとっては日本語が難しく感じるのは理解できます。
日本語に興味を持ち、日本語を話してくれる外国の人がいるのはすごく嬉しいです。
初めまして、僕は日本語を話せるルーマニア人です。漢字がむずかしいそうに見えるけど声で日本語を話すことがちょっと楽しいと思っています。
みんなで頑張りましょう。
@@kenichiotaku3693 コメントありがとうございます😊 漢字難しいですよね。日本人にとっても読めない漢字が有ります。人によりますが。
@@kansha2私の母国語はアラビア語で、日本語は素晴らしい言語だと思います（これはGoogle翻訳から書きました）
@@مُحَمَّدٌ-غ2ص2و 皆さん日本語でのコメントありがとうございます😊
アラビア語も素晴らしい言語です! 今、duolingoというアプリで英語を勉強してますがアラビア語も学びたいです。
Thanks for mentioning my channel!
Good video and excellent advice in general. Happy to see I'm not the only one recommending mnemonic associations and deliberate practice instead of just "immersion".
@@NaturalLanguageLearning I’ll be sending more people your way!
I think more language learners need to know what actually works.
Great content! 🙌
So true, I'm an Italian 15 year-old, During the last year I focused so much on getting the C1 In English, and I DID IT🥹 now I started studying Japanese and after three months I'm able to listen to simple podcast and understand the most!
😅
Awesome! Congrats! English is difficult so I admire that.
I’ll be speaking your language on this channel soon btw 👌
That is impressive for an 15 years old dude. Congrats👏🏻, enjoy the process btw
Thank you so much
@@vaughngene oh my God 頑張ってよ!
Italian might be a bit tricky with all the irregular verbs and tenses It has but you can do It, the pronunciation is also very similar to the Japanese one
Most chill and based language learning guide so far on youtube. Great advices, right to the point! Great content, man!
🙏 thank you! It’s definitely a demanding process but it’s given me the absolute best results. And not only in Japanese either.
Man, what a great dude. Very insightful, and consciously aware of the fluidity of life. Aside from the content purpose, it felt like I was listening to/having a conversation with a trusted friend.
That's the vibe I want here so thanks! I can't stand all that zooming and swiping and b roll nonsense. So I want none of that here.
💯
You are dead on bro. Been learning Korean for a little bit now and everything you said fits perfectly. Well done and congratulations on learning a language thats harder than Korean. 😁
Thank you! and nice, within a year or so you can be quite advanced if not fluent.
なんでこの動画がオススメに出てきたのか分からないけど（日本人）
勉強になりました！笑（英語勉強中なので, yes im the crazy one lol）
動画の雰囲気もとても落ち着いてて素敵だと思います
ありがとうございます！
Lol well welcome! And thank you, really glad it helps.
English is difficult but you can do it. 💪
@@vaughngene I'm European. How can you find English difficult when it's your native language?
@@sfrezo it can be a difficult language for Japanese speakers, and maybe not to someone who has been hearing it since they were born.
@@sfrezo high level English is difficult even as a native speaker, there are some really difficult books out there
@@sfrezo Because too many exceptions in rules. When I started learning English at the age of 10, I found it easy. I've been living and working in England and Canada more than 20 years, but I find leaning English difficult and still studying it.
This is hands down some of the best advice for language learning on the internet
Thank you! I think it will take a while for people to wake up and not doubt it, but I humbly agree.
It’s fast, effective, and makes it flow.
You sound amazing!!! I’m Japanese, and my American husband is having a hard time learning the language even though I never asked him to do. I will show him this video and hopefully, he can learn Japanese better and quicker. Thank you so much!
Thank you! 🙏 I admittedly don’t care about my accent much because I was getting paid so well in Japan Lol, but I’m glad to help!
This is indeed a very fast way to learn any language 👌
Thanks for the great video! I’m in Japan right now learning Japanese and it’s hard and yet really fun.
Anyway, may I ask what kind of work you did in Japan? :)
Damn you have blown up man, I knew your content was heavily underrated.
Aye I remember your pic and name.
Yeah I think when I saw you it was less than 1K Lol.
Then something happened.
Thank you! 🙏
i like your aura! and the idea with making a soundtrack for the video yourself is so cool!
Thank you 🙏, it’s a neat way to kind of practice two things at once so thanks!
DUDE YOU ARE A GENIUS. I can't believe you just gave me the answer to all of my questions. Now I'll go and try to write some storys in japanese (The active practice is what I was missing. So simple but so effective)
Yeah you are going to notice how well it translates to real life!
Almost instantly tbh.
I seldom leave a comment but I really want to leave my compliments and gratitude to you. You have brilliant ideas and are down to earth at the same time. Your presentation is well structured and it comes with the right amount of examples without being distracting. The most important thing is that you genuinely want to share the best ideas and experience with the audience without any unnecessary tricks and exaggerations, and we can feel it. The fact that you made a half-hour video just sitting there shows your style and the value of your content. Thank you bro ❤
Thank you! Means a lot. That’s the vibe I look to give.
Something like you would get if you saw me in person.
Glad the info helps!
Best video I've come across today, as i am learning Japanese.
ありがとうございます！
4:35 Exactly bro. What's the point of learning all that vocab if you can't actually use it in a conversation, you NEED the most used and fundamental vocab first
Someone learning Norwegian here. I know myself, I know that simply forcing myself to watch Peppa Pig in norwegian is not gonna work out to build familiarity with words. I love how you began with learning 2000 - 4000 words so we can watch any content we want in our new language and immerse ourselves profously. I'll try this method, thanks man.
@@gat0anonimo Lol the peppa pig reference is funny. That’s awesome to hear though,
I think easy approaches are pushed because people are too afraid to say what I am saying (naturally it won’t get as much clicks as the “easy actually” nonsense.).
But I find this works, and it really sticks.
日本語の発音、上手ですね。
日本語は日本人の私にとっても難しいです😅
私は今、英語の勉強中です。
あなたの動画を観ながら、勉強しています。
スケートボードの練習もしています。ギターも何年も前から弾いています。
あなたの動画のおかげで、モチベーションもあがりました。
ありがとうございます。
Thank you for the video.
That boosted my motivation to study English.
I will continue to make efforts.
ありがとう！英語は難しいけど、あなたを信じているよ！私のコンテンツが役に立っていることを嬉しく思います。 🙌
I’m Japanese but English is mostly my first language and had to relearn Japanese as a youngster. I also picked up Spanish as well. I fully agree with everything you say on how to learn a new language in a short time.
When people ask me to teach them English I basically tell them to do pretty much all of the mentioned things such as learning basic structure but a heavier focus on vocab of popular words and mimicking tv, movies and songs to get the sounds similar enough to where it’s understandable.
For anyone who wants to learn a new language this is a great way to do so.
Yep practice is key. Sadly a lot of things 'feel' like practice in the language learning space but they are a complete waste of time. Nothing beats real practice though.
Mate you are doing everything I wanted to do simultaneously where I failed. Japanese, guitar, gym! I taught myself guitar when I was young but now I don't have time to play any. I studied Japanese during covid for 6 months and then I stopped because of heavy work schedule. I restarted "studying" lately and I am surprised that a lot came back easily and for some reason I understand way more than before although I had forgotten a lot of vocabulary! After covid I had gained so much weight that I needed to make a change and I trained and ran my first marathon! Now I am back to being fat again and I really need to hit the gym but doing all these 3 things together for me is impossible with heavy work schedule and 3 kids! I really like your approach about Japanese though and I am basically doing this for the past month. Memorizing vocab alone (with anki) and immersing and it's quite enjoyable at the moment. Hope I can keep it up.
Just start from a clean slate and you’ll be fine!
Life happens, it is what it is. But you’re still here and sounds like you are on the right track so that’s good. Just a day at a time.
Awesome video! I have been studying Japanese for the past few months and this has been one of the best learning processes I've found on UA-cam. Thank you!
Glad to hear 🙌, and thank you!
I’ll have more on this eventually as well.
Thanks for using visual prompts along with the verbal. I find my brain grabs info better in this way. I improved my vocabulary in Spanish by reading the Spanish version of a book I already love and read in English. I used a Spanish-English dictionary while reading it and took it everywhere with me. I began to compose simple notes and listening to native Spanish speakers I began to think in Spanish. For the most part having a large vocabulary helped me to communicate ideas even though my Spanish is not conversational. I like this method. It's helpful to have friends that are willing to correct you as your speak.
Well said!
I'm on the right path, but what you just gave me here, dude... pure gold. Thank you!!! 🤯🤯🤯
🙌
this is the singular greatest japanese learning video I've ever watched. Ive memorize about 1.5k words straight in 2 months, I have a buff because I know all kanji from being fluent in mandarin, and all katakana words from english. Imma try to speedrun. Subbed.
Nice, the Mandarin buff is super cool too Lol. You'll definitely be able to speedrun the language quite fast. Maybe even 3 months tbh.
And thank you! I really want people to use the language with confidence and not thinking much about it when using it!
@@vaughngene thank you 🤣 it’s lowkey hard rn, im doing a year abroad at keio rn
@@whyriceofficialhow many new words per day or per week are you learning? Are all those words in hiragana or Katakana or just Hiragana or just Katakana or both?
@@BestTrader-hp2sd I am learning kanji. I just got Anki and a few friends of mine are showing me how to use it. Ive been memorizing maybe 70 words a day of N5, N4 vocab a day for the past month
Love seeing fellow language learners. Another brother in the language world.
🙌
Passive listening help get an Ear for the language. Active help understand it. We need both.
Both are good yeah, speed wise, active is better.
But like I said, passive here and there is perfect too. I think a mix of both, opting for more active, will give the same returns in the long run.
@@vaughngeneI think you’re definitely underestimating the power of passive listening, used for times when you literally can’t do active listening
@@史安达 I’m not saying it’s completely ineffective, don’t take it that way.
(As a beginner though yeah I think it’s trash.)
But maybe very effective when you have a base.
This point of view I have is from my experience.
But I also do 20 things in a day so I literally have NO time for passive anything. So I have a heavy bias.
If passive listening helps you speak and understand better though then I’m all for it 👌.
I think it's much more viable if you read over lyrics or transcript before listening
@@jsigns5899 ideally you’d only be passively listening to things you actively listened to/watched in the past
Hey Vaughn! I just want to say thank you for your videos, they've helped me so much! Your hobby videos really got me to settle in with not overwhelming myself with hobbies, and I've been making significant and steady progress in Chinese. This video is so helpful, thank you so much for producing such good quality content!
Hey that’s awesome to hear! I think a realistic approach is the best way to get results overall.
And thank you 🙏,
Mnemonic associations are so useful! Thank you so much!!
Loved this. This is essentially _spaced repetition_ and _active recall;_ the most effective way to learn new content, scientifically proven.
I used it for my medical studies in the form of a flash card program which focused on the cards I struggled with until they were all effectively ticked green. This makes it so that information comes to mind second-nature instead of having to back-track and sort through tons of memories to find what you're trying to remember.
Edit: I also used it to learn fluent French & German! But despite having this knowledge, I always felt apprehensive about learning an Asian language because I felt overwhelmed at the thought of learning all the new symbols that come with it. This video is what I needed to go ahead and give Mandarin a shot as my 4th language!
Nice! Mandarin is popular too so you'll have plenty of things to use for that.
And yeah I'm going to discuss Active Recall vs Recognition in terms of learning and when when to use each.
Active Recall has definitely been the most useful for me overall. Just very humbling because you quickly realize how much you really don't know Lol
Great Video! I am going to apply this method to learning French :)
Sounds good Mom! ❤️
One of the best videos on UA-cam today about language learning.
🙌 thank you! I think so too humbly speaking Lol.
I really think it’s made my results so much more useable.
As a native Turkish who has been mastered in mnemonics, I found your exemplification highly valuable and accurate. You are so right, I have used mnemonics in programming, language and music theory learning etc. good work
Nice! It’s cool that you were already doing it for several things.
And thank you! 🙏
Hello! I just finished watching this video and I loved it! I can’t even remember how I got into this stuff (Japanese culture, anime, traveling, etc. I even draw anime art cause of it!😂) I’ve loved it for a couple years. Since then, I’ve always wanted to speak Japanese. I decided to start learning it on my own but I had no luck. This video is the first one out of 100+ other videos I’ve watched that has significantly helped. After I’m done commenting, I will join your discord and IMMEDIATELY start practicing and taking notes. Thank you for sharing this with us sir! You have my thanks and respect.
You are right about the grammar thing. Ive been watching anime for like 15 years and unknowingly picked up the sentence structures and thousands of words of vocabulary.
Tremendous video. I speak Spanish, French and Portuguese and I'm now on to Serbo-Croat as I just moved to Belgrade a week ago. Using a more 'guerilla' active style approach for the new language as I don't have even the option of formal classes.
I hadn't even thought of using ChatGPT so cheers suggesting that.
Thank you! And nice!
Yeah ChatGPT is AMAZING! I’m going to do more videos about it in the future. It shortcuts so much work.
This topic you've made is the most advance effective and accurate in terms of language learning or I should say acquiring the Japanese in fastest way. I'm on my 3 year mark of benkyou and I say I'm 85% fluent now in nihongo as per as speaking, reading (hiragana/katakana) 30% basic kanji readings like you've said there is furigana I can say that your method really works I've been doing this for about 3 years now, it's just my own realization to do like the way you are doing it. Acquiring a lot thousands of vocabs is the real deal. And memorising hundreds of common phrases sentences, grammars and in no time you will woke up one day you are able to speak like a native Japanese and can understand very well.. And also take note I am not an American I am a Filipino and my native language is tagalog. By using English to translate into Japanese I also become fluent in English as well so 2 birds in one stone, 2 languages I acquired in 3 years how cool is that? hell yeah \m/
Nice! Very nice! It definitely works when you take an intentional approach.
This actually so awesome! I've heard many things about these methods but this was the best explanation of it I've seen so far! I have to move to Japan soon and I've mostly been learning basic grammar and some random vocab words. I decided to write a little story in Japanese though i had to search up many words. However, I was really surprised when i was able to read the story without translating it into English. Like, the meaning just came to me. And some of the words i accidentally used mnemonics for and I remembered them so easily! Like めざめる (I think) means wake up and I remembered it because it sounds like mesmerized! I was so proud of myself. Tysm for this video.
Hey glad it helps!
I think with an optimized routine, someone can really be fluent in less than a year.
Like actually fluent.
I love how you said “rest of the fretboard” instead of language 😂 my husband is a guitarist so if you didn’t correct yourself I totally would have went with it because it made complete sense to me even though that was music and not language. Same, same! Music is a language in itself so it works! Thank you for this video! As a bilingual English/Spanish speaker struggling to get into the vocab learning of Japanese, I’m sure your tips are going to really help get me back into the groove of learning it so thank you, ありがとう ございます
I often mix language and music a lot funny enough Lol. I think the same principles apply to both. Especially at a subconscious level (Repetition until you can do it without thinking much).
And no problem!
Thank you so much for this video! All of this is so true. I’ve been living in Japan for the past three years and I’ve found that active immersion is much quicker than passive. People are allergic to hard work. Keep putting videos like this out here! Blessings to you!
Yeah it helps a lot! I think the hand holding clickbait content has kinda ruined people's ability to work but hopefully we can get all that out of here someday.
I’ve been studying Korean on and off for a decade and I forgot how well mnemonic devices work. I think it works best for those of us who are naturally creative. Visualizing and making unusual connections comes easily to us and gives that dopamine hit, and I think that helps cement the information in our minds.
Yeah it’s a lot easier to attach new ideas to older ones I find! Maybe some people do it better than other like you mentioned with creativity but I think everyone has it in some way 👌
Smashing it buddy 🍾
🙌
I came into this video thinking it's going to be "another one of those" mindlessly praising the immersion method ones. "Just watch everything in Japanese all the time and trust the process" kind of thing. But I gave it a shot, because for some reason I had a feeling that MAYBE there's going to be something here that I haven't heard before and I'm really glad I did.
To be completely honest, I think most of the things said in this video were things I already knew/suspected, but I wasn't convinced by my own "hunches", because I suck at Japanese and most of the advice praising pure immersion is coming from people who seem to be fluent in Japanese. I noticed though, that most of the people who "learned kanji just by looking at words" and "learned vocab just by consuming Japanese content" have actually done some heavy-lifting at some point beforehand, and just discarded it like it wasn't helpful because they didn't *feel* like they improved.
But at the same time I always felt like I made much more improvement after just drilling a whole bunch of vocab with Anki than I did by watching anime that's way above my level and trying to mine sentences.
The only thing that kind of surprised me in this video was that you advise not to learn kanji in the beginning. I used to avoid kanji like the plague in the beginning of my studies, and after reading through RTK and doing an RTK deck in Anki, I feel like I wasted a lot of time just being too scared of kanji, and I think I could have saved a lot of time if I did it sooner.
But anyway, based on your advice I might just go ahead and change my Anki deck a bit (right now it's: word in kanji on the front side, sound and meaning on the backside), and that might allow me to get through the core 6K deck faster.
Thank you for this video! I think it might be the most honest and helpful one on this topic.
Glad you gave it a shot!
And yeah If Kanji helps I’m all for it, I’ll address that in part 2. Because I didn’t know so many people got good results out of it.
They have been lighting me up in the comments Lol so I’ll address it.
But I’m also an auditory learner so that makes sense why I have a bias.
Bro made my thoughts on learning languages practical ! And even with an actual syllabus !!
That’s a treasure !
I try, especially in todays world of clickbait and not actually caring about viewers
This video is totally spot on.
People have different learning objectives but my goal is to comprehend written and spoken Japanese, and that requires lots of input: vocabulary and in context grammar . I know this because that's how I learned English. I can understand pretty much anything in English. My output is not that good because I never practice it, but that's the easy part when you completely understand the language.
The same applies to Japanese, if your goal is to understand, you are wasting time trying to output, memorize grammar or use textbooks. If down the road you decide you want to take the JLPT then you can use textbooks and memorize grammar rules and that will take no time and will be a breeze, because you already understand the language.
If your primary goal is to pass the JLPT then maybe it's more efficient to start with textbooks from the beginning.
Yeah definitely goal dependent! I’ll probably make a video for people who just want to understand the language, rather than use it to speak.
And funny thing about JLPT is that a lot of them actually can’t speak Japanese Lol. Even N1.
But I don’t want to sound rude.
Many of them use it as a flex. But countless times in person I have seen them fall apart in conversations.
This is why I like the more deliberate approach.
It just works.
@@vaughngene Yeah, you are on point. You are not rude at all, that’s just the reality.
I can write and speak in English, just not very well lol, but that was never my objective. This year I want to get the C1 Cambridge certificate so I will need to practice a lot.
The thing is that I’m very satisfied with my level because the goal was comprehension of English content, so with Japanese I will take the same approach.
*looks for pinned comment then relaizes this was 2hrs ago*
THE KING POSTED... I SWEAR YOURE IN MY MIND EVERY SINGLE TIME YOUR VIDEOS POP UP WTH..... (ily bro)
🙌 I’ll be working on the discord tomorrow unless something comes up.
Ayo sweet🙏 Goodluck on making it
@@Theracconkarlfiremojisomething came up 😂, eventually though.
Thank you for the video , I’m moving to japan to study my masters in English.
Very valuable advice , this definitely uplifted me a bit when I get discouraged at slow progress that comes without much structure
People often give different views but I strongly believe you’re right
It’s a bit of a “tough” method, but it really really works. I find that it’s worth the struggle though for sure.
I am so grateful to God for already being bilingual. The idea of being able to intentionally learn a third language is so inconceivable to me, that the day I watch anime/play a Japanese game and realise I can understand it will be an incredibly rewarding day.
You should be grateful to your parents and upbringing. ;)
Be grateful to God. You know where grace comes from
@@garythebard God selected my parents for me ;) Actually my Dad always spoke to me in English lol. Unfortunately, I used to think it was much cooler -- but that's another story.
Japanese feels unrealistic until you get the reps in.
Then after a couple months you start to realize that it’s actually one of the more straightforward languages! Which makes it less scary.
At first though, yeah it’s wild Lol.
you're welcome
I downloaded Duolingo 3 days ago and started learning Japanese, but I skipped a day yesterday. After watching this video, I feel super motivated again! Seeing how you taught yourself Japanese is really inspiring, and now I’m pumped to keep going and not fall behind.
As a Special-ed teacher and being mixed with Japanese, I truly agree in your guidelines and principles in learning another language. This is a great video and very informative!
🙌
I´m mixed, japanese dad and brazilian mom, I lived in japan basically all my childhood, still I didn´t managed to learn much Japanese. This is probably duo to the fact that I studied at a Brazilian school in Japan and only interacted with Brazilians. I constantly feel embarrassed for not being able to speak it, like i failed, since even my non japanese friends can communicate way better than myself. Now, I´m really trying to study it, but it became really difficult, not just because I´m older, but because i made myself associate japanese as a traumatic thing. So i hope that using this method might help me
Boa sorte!!! Adoro encontrar brasileiros com objetivos semelhantes ao meu, quero aprender japonês para eventualmente morar no Japão, vamos dar o nosso melhor e alcançar nosso objetivo!!!
I see I see, yeah try not to let that deter you. That’s just life sometimes.
This is a really effective method though.
Difficult but effective.
Você consegue!
I'm already decently fluent in Japanese but every once in a while i'll watch videos like this to see if I might be able to improve my method. I swear by reading more and Anki for vocab, and listening in my free time. I started reading when I got like 1.2k vocab size, just suffered my way through and grew my vocab that way. I actually think passive listening is good, at least for me, walking around campus while listening to podcasts does help with my listening skills and getting myself to think in Japanese.
Took a few stuff here that i'll try to use, especially the AI stuff. Keep it up man! Your channel resonates a lot with me, idk man. Your interest in languages, music, weeb shit and just having a shit ton of interest... like fam, that's me. Wait you're in soft eng, lmao. YT algorithm is crazy.
Nice! Yeah as long as you are getting the results you want that’s what matters.
I think some people mistake what I say for “ONLY DO THIS” but I just kinda showcase my own exp.
I think many things have their place for sure though!
And yeah I have a lot more to share so thanks! 💪
Will do.
Looking forward to part two.
🙌
This probably the best "how to speak fluently" video ever. He tells fact and hardworks.
still, i don't buy that he's "not superhuman", the music and fitness mean his brain can think differently.
I am trying to learn Korean and I get really frustrated with a lot of the youtube videos they have out now because I find them boring. The amount of grammar every one throws out there is crazy. I always get unmotivated and do not really try because of it. Luckily you posted this at the right time. This will probably change the way I look at things and I hope I can improve since I want to talk to my wife in her native language. You earned yourself another subscriber!!
It’s a “strange” process but I find that it really makes the language feel natural.
And even when you make mistakes it will be easily understood!
My experience is that if you immerse yourself and get your vocabulary built up, the grammar will come intuitively. After a while it just clicks.
@@BigLikeDaNose how are you doing so far ?
I’m so glad I found your channel. Your videos have been so very helpful. Good, clear actionable things I can employ to learn Japanese. I’ve wanted to learn since I was a young girl, but became overwhelmed every time. 👏🏾 Thank you!
Glad they help! 🙏 And yeah just come back for a refresher when you need to.
It’s a lot of work but it really pays off.
i like the way you explain things, very digestible! i agree with the vocabulary especially, you can easily piece things together. acquiring vocab is so hard tho 😢
Yeah it takes time, but it really helps a lot!
Always apricate hearing more takes on how to learn Japanese. I'd argue though that learning how to read hiragana and katakana should be the very first step and exposing yourself to kanji is important along side learning vocab. Vocab is more fun to me when I see things like "量子" and I understand "quantity" and "child" means quantum. Since I understand the english meaning of Japanese kanji, I can understand what I read easier and my focus has always been leaning how to read and understand since I have no need to speak it. I think your situation is different. Might be worth noting that if your goals are different the way you learn has to be different.
Yeah it that's what helps you then definitely go for it! I just lay out what works for me and my recommendations, but like any piece of content, mold it to fit your style. That's more important than anything else.
That was the best video I've ever seen since I started to learn english, thank you so much
Thank you! This came up in my feed & it’s the best training ever!! I’ve never thought about using AI and learning 4k vocable words & the sentences . Thank you! Honest excellent content
Know someone who became fluent in Japanese in 3 months and it was absolutely crazy.
I think I’m the only one on the internet who will actually believe you because I know the power of deliberate practice.
If you say that to anyone else tho, be ready to be attacked 😂
@@avocadofever6850 disclaimer: he was Japanese so has become fluent in 3 month.
@avocadofever6850 do you know the process or steps they did to become fluent in Japanese in 3 months?
@@wasabi128 Prior to leaning it, he read the novel "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer along with using mnemonics to help him learn the basics and advanced forms of Japanese. He also wasn't working during that time so he pretty much put all of his time and effort into learning it. I'm pretty sure he also used some of the tips that were similar to those used in this video.
@avocadofever6850 I've used audio programs to great effect in 3 months, to learn my 3rd and 4th languages. I believe it.
But... I'm an obsessive learner. Those who think 5 minutes on the duo app for 3 months won't believe you, ever. Their loss tho
Greetings from me, David,Malaysia.Will be 72 next month and way back in 1975 Sept, I went to Japan and had a 5-weeks Romaji -based Japanese Language Orientation. After that, I did self-study and thankfully,due to me working with Toyota,I had numerous trips to Japan for technical training and I used those opportunities to learn and practise Japanese as best as I can. In 1985 when I was 33 yrs old, I started to learn Kendo in Malaysia and that, also served as a good platform to improve my japanese proficiency as all instructions at the dojo,were in Japanese. Glad to make it to 4th dan during the 10 World Kendo Championship in 1997.The dan grading exam was held in Kyoto.After working 46 yrs in the automotive industry, I resigned and moved to an 'inaka-small town' where the cost of living is lower than the crazy capital city of Kuala Lumpur where I had spent many years there. I appreciate your unselfish sharing of your approach towards learning Japanese. Thank you very much. Will follow your advice as best as I can.
Man that is awesome, what a cool journey so far.
And no problem! I have more in the next video coming up!
Coldddd, been waiting for this video Broski since i asked about your Japanese in a previous one.
I’ll add a part two next week if I can, maybe mostly in Japanese. To address some other stuff.
(Partially doing it in Japanese because the annoying comments from people who don’t wanna watch my shorts or other videos Lol).
Thank you for all of your excellent language learning tips. I'm totally subscribing to your channel right now.
I speak Spanish and it took around 12 years to achieve true fluency in English, lots of trial and error, making mistakes and challenging myself, but I think one of the things that helped me the most was the fact that I met tons of native speakers that liked the things I liked and that helped me connect with the language way more.
When I was a kid I spoke Catalan as well, but I stopped using it overtime, however once I actually challenged myself to re-learn it, I acquired it so fast that I was impressed.
Now I'm learning Korean (been studying for over 10 months) and I'm definitely grateful that the algorithm showed me this video, it's been an eye opener!
Nice 🙌 and glad you’re here!
What this bro is talking about is 100% true. Works with any language
🙌
Thank you for the great uploads! I'm starting to get into eating healthier foods thanks to your last video! I'm starting to really like oranges! Fijne dag! 😄
Nice! That’s good to hear. Sometimes I wonder if people will actually listen Lol.
Nutrition is key for maximizing your skills 🙌
Great pieces of advice. I've been learning and practicing languages most of my life (I'm 52). And I can tell you those "hacks" really work.
As you said Gene, "deliberate practice" is key to your success. This is an ACTIVE process.
Actually, the more active the process, the more fun and engaging it gets.
P.S. Gene, you've got a great voice pitch. And you're pretty articulate, too. So, I'd recommend your videos to anyone working on their English listening skills.
Keep up the good work and keep playing music.✌🏻🇺🇲🇨🇷
Nice! So you have more experience than I do for sure. I hope more people get on the side of Active Practice.
That way they don’t feel like they are incapable of learning.
And thank you! 🙏
Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been watching a lot of videos on the immersion method lately, but always thought that there had to be a faster way than just watching and learning slowly like a child. We have the ability to leverage our language and skills to pick things up faster as an adult; things like grammar and vocabulary through simple searches and practice, like a shortcut kids don’t have. Going to apply this to my current language learning regimen. Thanks again!
Yeah I think that works for very young people, and then old people, because they both have too much time and nothing to do.
Anyone in between needs deliberate practice for sure Lol
This is good stuff! Thank you! I moved to Japan in 1988 and returned to the States in 1998: the dark ages of language learning. Learning Japanese taught by native Japanese speakers using textbooks was slow and painful. I got more from advice from native English speakers who'd learned Japanese. I was glad to have plenty of Japanese friends in my neighborhood to help. (I also worked as a personal trainer at a gym in Nagoya.) I think the real advantage of your videos is that you've done something Japanese teachers haven't done: you learned Japanese as an adult. Thanks again!
Nice works man, the effort shows in the video
Thank you 🙏
This is pretty much how my Japanese has gone. I spent a few days (like 3 or 4) reading through a grammer app. I decided to skip genki for an app called "Human Japanese" which honestly is a great fast grammar resource for starting out.
I spent two months grinding out vocabulary and listening to podcasts or watching UA-cam while really paying attention and repeating everything and it helped a lot. I'm fortunate to have some native Japanese family that live in Osaka and I was able to understand nearly everything that people said to me. My speaking sucked because I had only been studying for like two months, but hell, I was able to get my point across.
I have a fluent friend who started with Human Japanese just like you, the iPhone app.
and he said it was a HUGE help to him.
And that’s awesome! Seems like you were doing this approach the best way possible right away.
Speaking is just a form of muscle memory at the end of the day, but since you have a base, that’s literally only a matter of repetition. Then it will stick just fine.
@@vaughngeneis the iPhone app different from the android app?
@@jamueI I'm on android, pretty sure it's the same
This Video helps me so much, you could articulate, what was on my mind, but i couldn't fully think to the end. I learned hiragana and katakana in less than 2 weeks and then tried immerse myself to japanese passivly all the time with no results. But pumping in lots of vocab, helped me understand more and more of podcasts and tv shows like avatar. This is where i noticed progress and got this motivation boost. Thanks for your video, it helps a ton! P.s. also looking forward to this mnemonic vocab lists :P mnemonic learning helped me speedrunning the alphabet :)
Nice! Good you had some success with it intuitively!
It really helps when it comes to conveying deeper thoughts to.
Because in Japanese it’s very hard at first, then you realize the frameworks are actually quite simple.
I watched your whole video, and by the time it was finished, I felt that it was almost possible that I could do "the impossible"and learn a second language. Now that your video is over, this 60 year old English speaker feels it's impossible again. It doesn't necessarily have to be Japanese, but I did get the essence of your learning style. I applaud you for your eloquence, but your you can do it calmness which actually left me feeling it was possible. I've always wanted to learn another language since it seems to help welcome you into a whole other culture. Thank you.
Glad it helps. It becomes more realistic the more you practice.
Love this video! Thanks ! Love the fact that in this AI area, people are still encouraging others to learn languages ~ probably gonna try your method to get back on my Japanese!
The thing about what you said about Kanjis: It depends
If your goal in Japanese is mainly watching anime and reading japanese novels and manga there is not much of a reason to learn all these sentences/frameworks for speaking directly. It's more worth to learn Kanji instead (besides vocab ofc which should always be the main thing) so you can watch with japanese subtitles/read books etc
Not to sound rude 🙏 but Kanji is the very last thing to learn.
Actually Japanese people even learn this last.
However what you said about reading is correct. If THAT is someone’s goal then absolutely, learn Kanji.
But someone would have to pick ONE route.
You either want to understand and/or speak well.
(Which could just be understanding it only to watch anime, that’s fine).
Or Reading.
But not both.
Yea I went with a middle of the road type approach were I learned like 5-8k vocab in pure kana then did the RRTK anki deck and started only adding kanji vocab to my anki. After starting kanji my retention rate got A LOT better and doing anki was a whole lot less frustrating. Also you are omega limiting yourself by not incorporating kanji, you cannot read manga (oh but furigana, yea stick to your fucking shitter shounen then), you cant read LNs or normal books and you cant play videogames. You will be pigeonholed into a subsection of what the language has to offer which will in turn make it easier to burn out or just not be as fun as it could've been.
Also this mf even mentioning romaji...
At this point I believe it is best to start kanji when you're able to watch low level shows such as slice of life high school anime without too much of a headache.
Also people over value the difficulity of kanji. I learned one third of the base 2.2k kanji in 3 months during downtime in videogames (effectively 0 time investment) and another third the following month intensively. At that point I had gotten through the entirety of the RRTK anki deck but had tagged suspend on like 1/3 to 1/4 which were kanji that wasnt as frequent. I have now been slowly un suspending these kanji as I find vocab including them.
@@Hoppitot what rrtk deck u use?
@@slippyy4252 don't know just grabbed one , you might want to do a little bit more research than I did though since I just wanted to get to work as soon as possible so I grabbed the first thing I saw. I've seen some dude using kanjidamage and it looked kinda pretty, not sure how effective it is though.
@@Hoppitot if that’s works for you then great 👌, Your goals aren’t the same as this video so just be okay with that.
Great video and very relatable for someone like me who is 31 and only starting now.
Early start imo 👌
Got addicted to your videos! You're my inspiration :)
Really glad they help 🙌,
I’m not sure why YT suggested your video but I clicked on it and watched.
You seem very humble and you give great advice!
I try to keep it chill and useful here so thanks!
This is by far the most helpful video I've seen on learning a language in a long time! It makes it seem possible and not out of reach. Thank you so much for this, I can't wait to start implementing! 🙏
Glad it helps!
Thanks for putting this together. I've been doing Japanese study for about a year and half and my speaking/listening ability is not that great. I do read a lot and I really felt the benefits of being able to read kanji and know many words, but I am now acutely feeling the effects of my weaknesses. I'm going to watch this video a couple times and put your approach into action over the coming months.
I'm arranging to study in Japan for a year starting in April next year, so I have lots of work to do. Once again, thanks for your time and wisdom.
Yeah it will work well for you, I'll do more content completely in Japanese just to kinda do it also. You can have a lot of results by April for sure, if not near-fluency.
When I started, I said I was gonna do these 5 things without overcomplicating it:
1. Learn how to read/write Hiragana and Katakana
2. Memorize 2000 vocabulary words along with hundreds of the most common phrases/sentences, the most practical. (I have a few apps that Ive been jogging with, working out with, using the rest room with, taking a shower with, cooking with, you name it)
3. Learn grammar, formal/informal, sentence structure and all the boring stuff here and there.
4. Try my best to be more conscious of the anime subtitles I'm reading, it's very easy to memorize common short phrases or singular words.
5. Do no skip a day unless I absolutely have to or im super sick. Do this for a year and see where it leads me. So far so good 6 months in. Very interested where I will be on April 1st 2025. (My 1 year anniversary when I started) Already seeing results 6 months in, if I practice even a little harder I can potentially tripple my abilities in these next 6 months. This video I think just shows you the power of being a " contextual speaker " and using that as a gate way to becoming an actual speaker.
I go at my own slow pace, but whats important is consistency. Chip away at the mountain one day a time.
Sounds good! just number 5 don’t get too crazy on it. Rest is just fine.
Sounds like you are on the fast track though and resting your limits, which is great 👌
ok how did you memorize the 2k vocab and phrases? i tried anki a few months ago, finished a 2k core deck of it and got exausted and tired/angry at it hahahah dont want do use anki anymore, saw this video and he recommends the mnemonic strategy, sounds good but for ex: Asked for the list for chatgpt, in the list we have Taberu, i read it, make the mnemonic, know the meaning and than done? next? never come back to it? ok the immersion will help with the repetition but is really just it? read the words, make the mnemonics, know the meaning and than bye bye next?
After learning multiple languages and having trouble I totally agree. I'm Polish but I've forgotten polish and had to relearn it. Now everytime I listen or speak it, the only thing stopping me is vocab words, like someone saying "I went to this 'place'", do they mean a train station, a dentist, what did they say?
Learning vocab first is so good as then you can easily pick up grammar from movies and real life convos, compared to learning grammar first means you'll have to be pausing a movie every 5 seconds and getting frustrated as you don't understand any of the vocab.
This method seems so common sense but i've never heard it said before!
I disagree with the kanji, I think maybe learning the first 200 kanji could really help as they come up so often and it's not so difficult, otherwise you'll be that person who only reads romanji which i think is stupid. You'll naturally learn kanji along the way and you shouldn't avoid it or be scared of it, just look at them as you see new words and you'll memorise them naturally. Kanji are a big part of Japanese, even if you mostly speak or listen. They'll help you think better in the language.
Yeah my views on Kanji will naturally be conflicting but if that helps you then I support it for sure! As with most of my videos, I mainly how "I" did it.
But like anything, take what you need, discard what you don't and get the results.
But that's awesome you are getting back into where you were! It will probably come back a lot faster than you think too.
And yeah I think the 'experts' have really screwed up common sense on the internet these days Lol. So we often overthink everything. I'm victim of this too.
Thorough. Thank you, man.
Definitely the best 'Black guy on the internet' for language related tips and frameworks! :) Thanks!
@@vladimir193 Is that the best comment you can contribute?
I just want to say, as a black pianist, guitarist, language learner myself, I'm glad to see we out here killing it.
I'm definitely in the "good at reading japanese, but can't speak" camp, but it aligns with my goal so far. I think I'm reverse leveraging your point. My goal was to read Visual Novels, and once its time to speak, I have the knowledge in the brain. I think I'll work on that 100 sentences thing though. I could use that for spanish and japanese just to be able to hold my own a little better.
But i have faith in just throwing yourself out there once you have a base. I am hosting a japanese exchange student who went from needing google translate for most interactions to being able to speak and understand in one week. She just needed to activate all of that stored away knowledge from reading and watching American TV.
Yeah definitely cater your approach to the underlying concepts here! And much respect to you too ✊🏾.
And that’s awesome to hear!
Watched a couple of your videos now and you be smashing it good sir! This video translates really well to all language learning. Why have I not been leveraging AI 😄 Have a magical day!
I’m going to talk more about AI soon because it literally gives you weeks worth of practice material right away Lol. It’s so amazing.
It's crazy, I can read probably 10k-20k words but when it comes to speaking and listening I'm still a beginner. I wish there was more content I was interested in listening to or people to speak to.
Yeah it’s just a skill you’ll have to develop,
But that many words is an amazing base.
That’s probably more than me tbh Lol.
But Japanese fortunately has a translations for almost anything. So you’ll find things you like soon enough.
And again the fundamentals carry over.
Have you tried Japanese with Shun? His podcast is for Genki I - Genki II beginners so the grammar is pretty simple but the topics are interesting and he’s got some interesting vocab sprinkled in too
@@Kitkat915e I've heard of him, but there isn't really much on youtube that interests me besides jp vtubers and even then I get bored after a while. There's always anime, just have to find one you're really interested in.
Thank you so much for making this video. I am travelling to Japan in about two weeks' time to stay for up to a year as part of a working holiday programme. I'm super excited to try my best at studying rigorously while working a part-time job in Japan. I aim to hopefully reach a solid conversational level of Japanese so I really appreciate all of the insightful advice and direct mindset to learning the language :D
You can be conversationally adept in a month tbh.
Just make lots of sentences that cater to conversational Japanese and drill them along with vocab.
A few weeks really.
@@vaughngene Wow that's really fast. I've been casually learning via Duolingo so far and it's not the most effective learning tool in terms of vocab but I've enjoyed it for hiragana and katakana.
Will definetly be trying out the mneumonic association method but it also sounds like hard work - guess there's no way around that though hahah
Thank you, Vaughn.😊
Thanks, I'll apply this for my learning in Spanish :D
I may be learning that soon myself!
Great video. Thank you for all of your effort and dedication. You have inspired me to keep working on it. (As a bonus. It’s awesome you play guitar and piano. I do too!)
Glad it helps! And nice,
I still have much to learn in all of this but it’s a fulfilling life for sure.
Your pronunciation is really good
Thank you! I may work on it more someday when I stop learning other languages
But thank you 🙏
i love the way you speak man. thanks for the words