Why Learning Japanese in 2 Years Was a Bad Idea
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- Опубліковано 15 чер 2024
- #japan #japanvlog #vlog
This is Why Learning Japanese in 2 Years Was a Bad Idea. I learned the Japanese language on my own in only two years and studying hiragana, katakana, kanji, romaji, and kawaii words was getting to me. This video is about why in Japan you should not learn Kansai dialect Tokyo dialect Kansai-ben Japanese language in Japan how to learn Japanese in 2024 Learning Japanese and other various keywords. SUBSCRIBE!!!!!1
In this Tokyo vlog, I'll share why learning Japanese in 2 years was a bad idea. Watch to find out my experience and tips for language learning! 🇯🇵
In this video, I'll explain why learning Japanese in just 2 years was a bad idea. Trust me, it's not as easy as it sounds! Whether you're a language learner or just curious, you'll want to hear this cautionary tale. If you're a Japanese beginner, this is great for you.
クリーム is cream, not claim. クレーム is claim/complaint
Bruh I'm a fraud
@@BecomeAnything. I was going to say the same thing but then I remembered how many words I learned incorrectly. It doesn't change the point of the video which is well taken.
@@BecomeAnything. No, but you're not about N2 level 😘 You either got it or you don't
@@POLICESTARBODYCAMS tbf JLPT is not the greatest test to define your Japanese skill, it's way too differ from the Japanese people currently are using
@@BecomeAnything. Bro studied on luodingo 😂
Im 64 years old and have been studying Japanese for six months. I find it very interesting and it keeps my mind active. My trip to Japan last year was amazing and I wanted to learn more about the culture and language. I enjoy it and I’m having fun with it. I don’t expect I’ll ever be fluent, but that’s ok. It’s not a waste of time!! Any endeavor to learn is not a waste of time!!
absolutely agreed. i hope my video didnt give the impression that i considered it a waste of time, but that it takes a lot more time than most i've seen are willing to put in to reach their goal.
also i think it's awesome that you're joining the game at 64, it's very inspirational. I can only hope that I have the discipline to keep myself sharp past like age 30 haha
thanks for sharing your story!
I wonder why so many people publishing videos on how they went crazy on japanese language and finally gave up ... maybe the problem is they stay with these strange courses instead of keeping to practical sources, who knows ...
Instead of discouraging me from learning Japanese, this video just made me think about how valuable time is.
Like the vlog style by the way, I think the cuts are a bit too frequent, but that's just my take, other people might like it.
Hell ya. I think the main goal of this video was to warn those who are not serious to avoid wasting time, and a calling for those who have made up their mind to the extreme. Only the people most motivated won't be discouraged by this video.
“ the abyss looks back with cold, dark, meaningless eyes”😂😂😂
Chinese learners laughing at Japanese learners complaining about Kanji 😂
AND I RESPECT THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE LEARNING THE GREATEST MOST BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY THE GREATEST PEOPLE 🇨🇳🇨🇳🇨🇳
@@BecomeAnything. Building that social credit score huh?
@@briddenattech did he mean he is a learner of chinese, and thus japanese kanji is less demanding than what you would have to remember when doing chinese in comparison
@@ambarvalia9757 Almost certainly not. Hanzi is at least consistent in pronunciation. The 'onyomi' pronunciation is based on the Chinese sounds they make, but as they were mapping an already existing alphabet system onto a completely different language, the characters often have the same meaning, but with completely different sounds... making kanji a much MUCH more complex system.
My personal, bias opinion, kanji is actually my strong point. I completed almost all N2 Kanji/vocab, N5 in speaking/listening comprehension.
EDIT: Nothing to be said for the Chinese tonality when pronoucing words. Most people say Japanese is easier to learn for speaking/listening, but much MUCH harder to read/write.
@@briddenattech well that is one facet. however chinese also has tones and multiple readings for the standard chinese
Japanese gets pretty easy later on tbh. I never thought it was difficult anyway. I just consumed a ton of content and now books and series are not that hard to understand.
3 years of study for those who may ask.
yeah it's much easier past the learning curve
Not trying to be billy badass or anything but I’ve trained in martial arts my whole life and what it’s taught me is how to be consistent, be patien, and to enjoy the journey. I love the idea of learning something that can never be mastered. There’s always something new to learn. That’s how I feel with martial arts. So I see Japanese as something that I’ll never be able to master but it just makes me love it more. It’s the mountain that never ends but the views just get better and better
You don't have to try to be a billy badass, you ARE one!
Nah but I love that mindset, that's currently where I am with UA-cam right now. It's given me a constant hunger for more, and even knowing that I may never be full, I strive forward every day. Japanese for some is much the same, but for those who just want to "know it" and move on, it's one hell of a chore haha.
best of luck on your martial arts and japanese journey, you definitely got the right headspace for it and this was an awesome comment
I'm newly married to a Japanese woman and we plan to move to Japan in about 5 years (we live in the US now). I'm just starting to learn the language...yep it's hard! She told me it will take decades to become native-level...
She is indeed correct. Although if you are VERY active you can achieve that level in 4 or 5 or 6 years with intense MIA/AJATT. Learn to enjoy the journey, not the destination and you won't fail.
@@BecomeAnything. thanks
maybe have a look at stuff with practical approaches, usually you can read a newspaper with 200 characters already and daily vocabulary is usually around 2000 characters. if you want to go to advanced stuff etc. you somewhere end with 10 000 to 20 000 etc. the question is if you really need it, even in english people do not use the full scope of vocabulary. You could as well rather go military linguists books that have to pick up languages fast instead of the usual school exam stuff.
Maybe just stick with necessary stuff, have a look at some movies like samurai trilogy, even porn is kind of legit depending on what you plan. There are series too, like tokyo vice has both Japanese and foreign characters, the script is roughly half in Japanese and half in English. Most characters also speak both languages, where formal speech coaching helped to make the intonation of the characters come off as natural.
Important thing is, that you understand it and can use it, not that they learned it formally like in school
So glad this Chanel just popped up on recommendations, UA-cam finally got “1” right 😂💀
haha that means a lot
3 years into my Japanese language learning experience and I can say it was worth it. I want to go to a language school in Japan next year to really immerse myself in the language.
go for it !
474th sub here. I stopped learning japanese years ago but now I decided to learn this language again. I want to become fluent in a year
it's totally possible. idk what your definition of fluency is but look up "ajatt" and "sentence mining", it's useful tools and i promise you can do it with them. glad this vid could push you in the right direction, you got this!
Lol 1 year? good luck mate im 7 years in have N1 which doesnt even measure your skilll level. i can perfectly communicate with my Japanese gf and friends, read all kanji and im still far from fluent and basically dumb af when they start to speak kansai dialect
Been studying Japanese for over a year now. I'm 34 with 2 kids and very little free time. If I can go back I would definitely not do Japanese. By far the hardest thing I've done is try to learn this language. But now I'm at a point where it's like, I'm in too deep. I do love seeing my progress and mostly have fun while studying.
Great Video, good luck with this UA-cam path. I'll be checking in for more !
yep haha at some point the sunk cost fallacy takes over and you just gotta keep going
best of luck with japanese while raising kids though, i can barely do it in college so kudos for that. thanks for dropping a comment and glad to see you'll stick around !
English has kanji. It's called english spelling
Nah that's romaji
I caught myself in the thought, that even in languages, where writing better represents how the word is said, like Russian, in the end you end up reading words as a whole without paying attention to the letters it consists of. So you essentially learning a word in a written language. So it is not dissimilar to what you do with kanji words. It's just a pain to lookup :) As a multiple readings of a kanji, I've heard advice to not to learn kanji separately and to learn words instead. You eventually learn separate kanji as a side effect and it would help you to lookup and even read new words that share kanji with ones you know
Tru tru
Woah, I've actually never thought of this before, I think you're completely right! @@EvGamerBETA
If only it were that simple.
The way you describe standing on the edge of the abyss, as the universe stares back with its uncaring eyes, is so much gold. It's how I've felt learning any language. The world is vast, and when you begin to realize how little you know, that's when it starts to eat at you, and you feel the desperate hunger for more, and/or you run in fear from it. I'm at the spot where I'm beginning to have the kana right, and have begun adding kanji. I think there's a lot of context use in Japanese, so having a teacher, or at least a native speaker to help provide context to make things make more sense.
I read something about "leveling up" in life. If you are 20 years old, and you've spent your whole life speaking one language, you have 2 literal decades of language learning under your belt, with lots of public and private support to do so. After only a few years of studying hard, you still won't have had that support structure of constant immersion and home education for years before a public education took over the reigns. You've levelled up in Japanese past that of the language acquired by native speakers in the same amount of time (given they are infants incapable of speaking for years) to be capable of conversing and understanding what is going on around you.
You have this comparison in your head, but it really isn't fair to you to compare yourself to an adult who's spent their whole life learning the nuances of interaction in their home culture and language. It is much more accurate to compare yourself to a toddler or a small child, since you're working with a similar amount of time dedicated. But even that comparison is limited and really inaccurate at best. Just keep consuming media and learning like you did with English by constant exposure and practice. You will get to your goals in time. Maybe lots of time, but some things are worth it. You said you let your UA-cam ideas sit on the backburner for a while. Maybe this is time well-spent in pursuit of those dreams. But maybe it comes into play elsewhere in your life later, too. In a way you didn't expect.
I enjoyed this. I hope you enjoyed making it.
Holy crap, the Videos are so enjoyable to watch.
I'm currently learning Chinese, but I always enjoy watching People in Japan. After I watched the video, I think in the Future I'll probably go through the pain. But until then, I would've already mastered a lot of other Languages.
Haha glad you enjoy them, and yeah if you feel a calling to learn then go for it but its definitely a time sink. Being familiar with
Hanzi meanings will help a lot tho
Another absolute BANGER
hell ya glad you enjoyed imma keep them coming
As I just got out of my online Japanese class, this video weirdly made me feel a lot better about my apparent lack of progress. Or, perhaps, this was the 4D chess of motivational speaking all along!
It could be 👀 only the most determined will see it.
Hi from Fukuoka 👋 I really like you video cutting style!
I've always wanted to go to Fukuoka!! thank you for watching and leaving a nice comment :)
I love how every sentence has a new camera angle
glad u like it ! Will be using it in future vids too
skill issue japanese is easy if you just grow up there
yeah I literally just get mogged every day by japanese ppl when they see my studying
And if you just live with japanese, without having the pressure to learn it complete as fast as possible. Just live your life using/listening japanese, it will get better over the years.
oh then let have a call kid
As a Chinese speaker, learning Japanese kanji is pretty easy, some of the readings are pretty similar to Chinese, and most kana are foreign words or basic words, so I can basically read Japanese 🤷♂️
yeah I hope when I learn chinese it'll work out for me that way too lol
The effort u put in to change the background for the video, every 10-20 secs, so cool
gotta keep that retention graph up somehow haha
happy to hear u appreciate it, means a lot
Can you make a video on how you learned Japanese? Thank you! Also the quality of your videos are really nice 💗 keep up the hard work !
it's on the way :) thank you for the kind words !
Well, I speak Portuguese, English and French, but in the process of learning French I lost my passion to learn languages. I had to learn French to live here in Québec, BUT since I was a kid I wanted to learn Japanese, I've been postponing it since then. I just started, like 2 weeks ago, I feel I'm in the right track again, maybe what I needed was a good challenge, and it seems that I've found it xD Thanks for the video!
it's considered one of the biggest challenges in language learning. seeing how you've picked up some other languages I think you got it! best of luck on the journey
man you made a really high quality video, I like your style
thanks so much!
Great video! I'm currently in the process of transitioning from N2 to N1 myself.
best of luck ! its a very difficult spot to be in
And even after all 17 min, i still use my one and only brain cell to push through kanji lol, great video, really enjoyed.
Found your channel by pure chance, imma stay here, excited to see you next video!
lol at least you have one brain cell left I'm currently running on empty
glad to have you here now! thanks for the comment :)
after coming to Japan after learning japanese for 1 year only, i regretted that i did not learn more japanese lol after moving back to my home country i sticked to learning it everyday until i come back to jp
don't stop studying either, japan is a whole different experience if you speak the language. can't wait to hear when u make big progress!
On my second and last week in Japan, bouta go home tmrw, so I've been getting a lot of Japan related videos recommended on my TL
Really glad I stumbled upon your channel cause I really respect the amount of effort you've been putting into them
I believe you got a lot of potential so you earned yourself a sub! Looking forward to more content being put out from you 🙏🙏
that means so much! glad you like the videos
I'm learning Chinese and Japanese at the same time. I can confirm Japanese is way harder in terms of word structure. The verbs can change based on situation and emotions. While Chinese in my experience I had trouble with the pronounciation and writing. Chinese word structure was slightly more predictable. I like to learn Japanese more due to how cool it sounds and the writing wasn't as complicated as Chinese.
Bro good luck I've tried learning Chinese before at the same time and I got burnt very quick, you're a beast if you can take on both
no it going to take a decade or more to learn it well and still you will not fully know it, stop listening to what books say stop trying to rush it and just enjoy life instead of stressing over where your at, you will progress slowly and naturally in time
yeah books are pretty useless ngl
Yo dude, this video is Amazing, especially considering that your channel is new. All the best for you. Underrated channel for sure.
That means a lot ! thank u :)
Good video man rather interesting.
thanks so much, glad u found it interesting
Loved the last sentence, but hey, even if AI can let us speak with anybody across the world without speaking their native languages, I still want to pursue my dream of learning Japanese ✌Actually, I've been watching/listenning to your video while doing my kanji exercises, lol, hope to watch more of your content to practice my japanese audio skills 💪 ánimo!
keep up the grind! if you are willing to learn despite it potentially being "rendered useless" by AI (which some ppl will think) then I believe in you and you got what it takes to learn
Whilst studying my kana I stumbled onto this video. Loved it! fml at the ending lol
keep it up, i remember when I was studying kana.. takes me back. but yeah if you're down to get a microchip in ur brain then that's a different story 😭
I hope you blow up man. This content is looking really cool and its all so well shot!
Thanks so much. I hope we do too but just thankful for all we are getting right now 😭
After watching this video I am even more willing to learn it and I am learning it every day bit by bit! Just want to make sure, you said that you could learn only 30% of native japanese speaker, but you meant in those 2 years am I correct? There is a way to surpass even that, there has to be right?
I just mean by N1 level it's approximately 30% of the vocabulary and language skill a native would know. but then again, languages aint math so don't take it too literally, it's mainly just to show that even the highest score on JLPT isn't that good haha
glad to see your motivated though, i believe in you if nothing else!
To anyone worried about kanji, I strongly suggest trying the free levels of wanikani. If you haven't heard of it, it works by first teaching you the radicals of each kanji, then pre-made mnemonics to cement them in your memory. On top of that, it uses a spaced repetition system to maximize your retention over long periods of time while minimizing study time. You don't need motivation, just show up every day, do the bare minimum and you will learn the joyo kanji in a year and a half plus 6000 vocab words. In my experience, it's unreasonably effective at teaching you to read. If you've just learned the kana and don't know what to do next, I strongly suggest giving wanikani a try.
HUGE advice, that's how I learned actually. I made it to level 60 and plan on promoting it once the channel is bigger, if a sponsorship is ever on the horizon that would be dope but even if not I'll promote it one day
Thanks for the laughs 😂❤
If you accomplished this much Congrats on your progress!!
I'll probably share this to anyone I come across who is interested in Japanese
sharing is extremely helpful so I appreciate that ! glad I could make you laugh too
14:30 we dont do things because they are easy. We do them because of the challenge.
that's the type of mindset it takes !
Congrats sir, your vid hit like a truck.
I'm planning on living in Japan in the next years, and I'm totally decided to keep going on learning, your video simply stated perfectly what I believe about Nihongo study, but also gives even more value to this decision, and tests the limit of the one who's passing trough these issues rn.
Also I'm really impressed by the editing, the cuts and all, must have taken a lot of time and editing, nice damn job!
I was a bit worried the message wouldn't go through right, so I'm relieved you heard it well. i made it just for people like you, so if youre still determined enough to jump in the abyss then you're already halfway there
good luck with the content you are trying to put out man. pretty sure you are gonna kill it
that means a lot to hear I appreciate it
congrats on 200!!, when youre good you can do what xiaomanyc does and pretend your a tourist then start speaking fluent japanese that would be great content
WHITE GUY SHOCKING LOCALS IN RURAL JAPAN (HE GAVE ME KEYS TO HIS HOUSE)
@@BecomeAnything.would watch/10
Good video, this needs more views! :)
thank you! whether or not it gets more im glad u found and enjoyed it
As someone who's been learning Dutch, French, and Japanese for the past few years, it's true that learning germanic and romance languages takes less time and faster acquisition, but I feel like knowing Japanese has more practical value. English is the lingua franca of Europe, so most places in Europe will be able to accommodate english speakers, in fact if they sense you're not a fluent speaker, they'll switch to English, which gives you less opportunity to practice the language. Whereas in Japan, on average there's far less people who are able to speak English to a conversational level. Being able to speak Japanese in Japan has helped me far greater than being able to speak French/Dutch in France and in The Netherlands.
Yeah that's true and honestly I think it's sad that English became like that. That's why I like being in Japan, their culture still revolves around their language and while English is kinda being forced into it, it's much less than those counties so far.
thanks for the comment, u made some good points !
Funny thing it goes both ways, Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for native English speakers, and English is one of the hardest languages to learn for native Japanese speakers, for mostly the same reasons (very big grammatical and cultural differences). Japan has consistantly scored among the lowest in Asia on standarized English tests.
i don't know how this got reccomended to me but i watched the entire thing. I hope you'll make the videos you want now that you've spent all the time learning japanese!
imo you've already gotten the video part down, lets see if japanese can help you get more content out!
thank you!! I'm excited to see what type of content I can come up with here on out :)
Not only is Japanese considered by the FSI a very difficult category V language, it gets an asterik, denoting "a language that's more difficult for native English speakers than other languages in its category". So more like category V+.
oh hell na
You have high school energy in the way you think about things, you really reminded me of people I knew back then.
I have some advice, it seems like you've been passionate about studying Japanese. A better way than studying a language is to acquire it. Other people talk more about this on UA-cam if you're interested. Like you correctly identified that studying kanji readings isn't the optimal way to learn, but rather learning words.
Secondly, learn the framework to put words into. People use their preexisting frameworks from their native language and put foreign words into them and it leads to problems. When 文法 rhymes with うんこ in your mind it's not a good sign. Unless you meant 運行. Learn building blocks of Japanese, kana rhythm: ua-cam.com/video/J_HLY0Rss-g/v-deo.html and pitch accent: ua-cam.com/video/K8E-cU19PMsU/v-deo.html19PMs Good luck.
wow please call me anything but a high schooler this is the worst hate comment ive ever gotten
anyway this video honestly doesnt represent my japanese journey. you actually gave very good advice, especially acquisition vs learning and pitch accent and mora. this video is just a play on how long it takes to "traditionally learn" japanese, the way ive gone about learning japanese is not represented in this video at all. i havent even spoken the language more than a few times lol i just stay quiet and ajatt with flashcards
like i said tho, good advice just please dont ever say the word "high school energy" in this comment section again lmao
Thank god I'm a Mandarin speaker, which massively shorten the time requirement for learning in Japanese
Ya I wanna learn Mandarin one day and I think knowing kanji meanings will help me pick hanzi much quicker
中国語と日本語の漢字の意味は全く異なりますが
@@ClaroKirari 一部の意味か似ている、多数漢字の書き方は極めに似ています
@@BecomeAnything. That's the language learning equivalent of New Game +
Hey bro! Watching from Brazil here, haha. Loved the way you record the video, in random places and random positions lmao It's jsut perfect! Continue making content like that, it's very original! And even after watching your video I'll continue learning Japanese, I'm trying to get a software dev job there and I love the place haha
glad you liked it! and happy to hear that you got the drive to learn. I know a lot of people from Brazil here - yall are the most fun people ever and I was surprised to learn how much japanese is spoken there.
anyway sounds like you got the drive to keep learning so i believe in you, hope to see you here one day :)
what if I just learn japanese without any kanji? Is it possible to speak with someone at a good level of understanding w/o knowing any kanji?
You maybe be fine talking with someone. But if you got to read stuff... Then you're screwed.
It's certainly possible. About 90% of the population in any country, including Japan, was illiterate before 1900, and they got by just fine.
@@noseboop4354 that is actually crazy, to be required of such an INSANE amount of study to just be able to read... that must be a really sad childhoods w/o being able to read anything but simplest fugirana kids books
Lolz great video. I'm at the N5 going on N4 level now. It's great to know that I will still feel like an idiot two years from now, but at least I'll be able to watch shonen without subs hahaha
yep and I will also feel like an idiot 2 years from now 😭
I'm thankful for this video. But yeah, I can't give up. I'm gonna live there sooo...yeah....
don't give up then you got this
Now would you say this is a criticism of learning Japanese or the n5 to n1 system? I’ve been studying Japanese for maybe about 2-3 months but am still getting off the ground and from what I gather most people see the n1 especially as not worth it and those tests as a bad measurement. Maybe the metric shouldn’t be testing but what you’re able to accomplish entirely in Japanese?
the tests are meant to estimate what you can accomplish based on your score, which uh yeah horrible measurement system haha.
it's mainly a criticism of the traditional route of learning japanese
the difficulty of it makes it fun
tru tru
This does explain why in spite of how much I've learned over the past 5-6 years I'm still not content and keep going. The abyss fully has it's grip on me. Help.
Wish I had the answers 😭
I'm only a year in, but this is such a vibe. This is the language I want to learn though. Hoping to make the move one day myself 🙌
yeah man hope to see you here one day! sounds like you got the right mindset to learn the language so you should go for it, once you move here it'll be so rewarding being able to understand what's around you
@@BecomeAnything. First visit is going to be in a couple weeks actually! Looking to get some serious language immersion in.
@@mdb39602 Brooo that's so exciting I hope you have a blast, the nightlife here is next level so you'll find some ppl to chat with for sure
Hey, I just gotta ask this really quick... Are you by any chance of Finnish and or Scandinavian descent?
no clue haha
@@BecomeAnything. lol The ONLY reason I ask is because I am from a part of the United States that has A LOT of people who are of Finnish descent and for SOME reason you seem to talk like them an slightly look like them. Anyhow, haha carry on.
The amount of sarcasm in this video was quite refreshing
hope you're not being sarcastic...
@@BecomeAnything. まじです
@@BecomeAnything. まじです
The first language that I really studied is japanese(I know English growing up) and boy it's a huge task when compared to my recent experience studying French.
I had a clear goal of learning jp, to read raw Manga and play VNs
Same bro LMAO (editor and camera man Bjorn here)
@@BecomeAnything. I started learning in 2016 and got my N2 in 2023. I stopped attending formal classes in 2017 but I try to read games regularly. Cheers to the channel, shoutout to my japanese learning warriors. I remember people ditching the shokyu class after the godan conjugation hahaha.
I graduated from engineering school this year and I studied Japanese for fun when I got bored of studying the equations, I thought it was pretty fun, maybe I don’t see the big deal😂
I also am bilingual English and Spanish. I can pronounce most sentences in Japanese as fast as natives😂 I think I’m just lucky
yeah if you speak spanish you may be pretty used to the sound because the vowels are very similar sounding
Thank you for this information. I did study Japanese in college for a year and only dabble in Hiragana and Katakana, while also learning some grammar along the way. I totally agree with everything you have said. Japanese is hard. I also think it can be fun and rewarding given how you can be very expressive with what you can say. I also decided to learn it because i want to watch anime without subtitles ahahahahah. Can't wait to see more of your content sir. Look forward to seeing you speaking more Japanese.
Yep it's a struggle, I been there too. You gotta have a real strong reason to keep going every day but it's very rewarding.
thanks for dropping another comment! always looking forward to em
People on MAL have racked up 10,000 plus hours watching niche anime so that means 10,000 going to studying and then not having to juggle subtitles with watching is worth it, especially since you could funnel those anime into the input exposure required to reach proficiency
Hello(Bjorn filmer here) that's actually what I do! I mainly do Ajatt and MIA/ sentence mining from anime. I have made about 5k sentence cards and almost 10k total words mined. I want to get to around 20k cards before I stop so still got a long way to go. Here is my mal: myanimelist.net/profile/Bjornaman
giving up on the right time is honestly the best you can do when learning languages…I spent two years in Russian with zero improvement and I understand the feeling of the time wasted without moving a bit…i felt the most freedom in my life when I dumped the Russian mess…I’m intermediate in Spanish now after six months!!…
Haha yeah. Thats the thing is a lot of people criticize us for taking this stance, but we are really trying to say that if you are not serious about learning a language for many many years very seriously it would better for 90% of people to just stop while you are ahead because you will just come out of it with little to nothing as brutal as that sounds.
I studied Japanese for 6 years. I started to be proficient at around 4 or 5th year. Now I can almost do anything like playing rpgs, go on forums , look for jobs, and talking with Japanese people
damn well congrats, I'm not quite there yet but it's inspiring to know there's a horizon
@@BecomeAnything. Thank you, as long as one does not give up, he's fine. I think it was not a bad idea, I could have spent this time more uselessly like playing video games or working a dead end job
Honestly I'm content with learning just enough to stumble through ordering food at restaurants
that's where it's all at
88 weeks, like classroom hour weeks or like how is it calculated?
just according to Foreign Service Institute idk what they're on tbh
12:25 After 462 hours learning Spanish, you would most likely be at a workable but basic level, not a "very advanced level", and you would probably feel the same frustration with your Spanish level as you describe for your level in Japanese. There are no easy languages to learn, just hard ones and harder ones.
Facts
@@BecomeAnything.
Well not me cause I speak portuguese and I understand already most of the things that they say
What a genuine and honest video, also nice style and play with the dark, lights and shades. Nice and chill narration. My story: always wanted to learn Japanese but started to learn Chinese instead. Everything you said about the Japanese learning process applies also to Chinese learning process. It's fun but the constant questioning if you made the right decision with learning this language is huge. I could've learned Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (all three easily) instead and what's sad about it is that my Chinese is still very miserable (let's say A2 level). Positive thing is that if I started to learn Japanese one day, I would already know the majority of Kanji so the learning process would be much smoother and quicker. Not sure what my motivation would be though. I wanted to learn Japanese when I was a teenager and was watching anime. That is not the case anymore. I still like the way the language sounds, sometimes I listen to some Japanese music but I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to learn a language. The same with Chinese. Since my level is extremely low, I can't really use it and profit from it fully for example at work. All job opportunities come at higher level (at least B2) and I am far away from that! It was just recently when I came to my local Chinese restaurant and wanted to order beer in a bottle to take it home. My good friend Chinese owner didn't understand me even though he knows me and I always say the same sentences to him. So that was embarrassing, after learning Chinese for around 8 years or so 😅 (not continual, there were long breaks inbetween but still lot of time that could've been invested otherwise).
wow I was definitely able to relate to a lot of what you said haha. I'm in the opposite position, I wanna learn chinese just to say I know it but I don't have too many reasons. I guess what keeps me going is just the sunk cost fallacy, I've already put so much time in and already told people I'm learning, so i may as well just keep going.
best of luck on your own journey !
Been doing it for 3 years ...still keep going
Yep gotta keep up the grind
@@BecomeAnything. Not even a grind. It's my life now. It's just who I am as a person. I work at Japanese job now here in the U.K and my channel has a siginificantly larger Japanese focus. I wanna respond to your video at some point
Interested in what you'd have to say. This script doesn't entirely reflect on my japanese experience, I took a different route than just "studying and learning", and I'll soon make another video about the language that's from a different light. this one is sort of just the general consensus of what learning japanese is like yk
I honestly only have an interest in learning romance languages lol. I see my Japanese mate reading Japanese and it just blows my mind. Even he struggles when it comes to the more traditional writing of Japanese, the one that is more influenced by the chinese. I just love the look of the latin alphabet, and it's hard enough just learning german
Haha I feel ya. We got a joke here when Japanese gets rough we just tell our mates "I am moving to Spain". Since its just so much easier. But still hard, any language is. Actually surprisingly for Traditional Chinese MOST of the characters are identical to Japanese Kanji. But there are many that have been simplified by the Japanese.
From what I have seen you need to do learn and use properly about 20K words but honestly now with all the tools created to streamline the process it pretty easy and you have endless amount of content with a VPN and streaming. It is easy but time consuming but it still better than having to put up with terrible subtitles. Also Musk predictions are off by double or triple the amount of time. I would also mention that Pokemon is a great way to learn kana since they have spaces.
yeah 20k words is about where im planning on stopping, and there's a lot of big tools in the making right now making language learning exciting
@@BecomeAnything. I am going to be in the three year mark by the time I go to Japan in late September for 2 months so I hope I at least I will sound legible good luck to you and your channel.
Good content!
thank you !
i realy love your personality and i am on n5 :D/:( LOL
KEEP going big bro :D/
aw this the nicest comment I've gotten thank you so much
Keep pushing through, just don't let yourself stop and I promise you'll get good !
When you look at the abyss, abyss looks back at you. 😂
no matter how much u learn japanese ,no matter how much you are good at it ,they wont feel that u r one of us ,and this is the reason i lost my enthusiasm in learning japanese ,am living in japan for almost 5 yrs but still didnt cleared jlpt n2 ,you are right about the jlpt test its weird , i would pass if the test had interview instead of dokkai
yeah it sucks knowing there's always going to be a wall no matter how much history culture and language you know. you may just have to look at it from a different perspective if you still have the drive for learning japanese, the way I started to see it, not being japanese means i don't have to try to act the same as everybody else and i can use that to be more expressive in the language.
but yeah that's been demotivating for me in the past as well, and ive only been here 2 years haha. best of luck on your journey!
Really nice video, I didn't know it was that difficult. I mean, I just learned some of it for fun and was thinking about diving in. Kanji learning looks painful.
If not for the adoption of english in europe, I would definitely prefer learning 3 or 4 european languages instead of japanese, but, at the moment, I would rather learn japanese for watching anime or enjoing my holidays in japan than learn french or german for...what? Yeah they're fascinating and super cool languages, but I wouldn't really have a use case for them unless someday I decide to move there (which I doubt).
you should def learn the basics, the hardest part is just keeping up every day and being willing to put in the time if you choose to study rather than immerse. If you have a strong enough reason that's all it takes to push through and keep it up
Tbh there are people i want to talk to that are japanese and shows id like to watch
that's all it takes sometimes , go for it !
Good video brother
appreciate it !
I wonder how many hours Japanese speakers have to put in to become fluent in English? 🤔
probably the same if not more
I am not discouraged x) I see it as a fun and rewarding thing to do. I speak french and english currently and learned a lot through my english learning journey about how to go about learning a new language. Also im skipping kanjis because f.. that aint nobody got time for that x) im not planning to live in japan, my life is in quebec. I just want to be able to interact with and understand japanese people. Also im recently single, live far from families and friends because of work so i have a lot of time to spare. I got nothing to lose and i dont need to improve my job situation so like :p
hell yeah, that's what it's all about. it really is fun though, ive learned some french and spanish before but japanese is just different, something about the way it sounds and looks makes it a blast to learn. hope you keep up your studies!
i love japanese 💛
honestly i dont regret starting on japanese almost 4 years ago. its the only language i find interesting, fascinating even. i feel like my time is well spent whenever i study or immerse myself
really i dont think japanese is that hard to learn, just time consuming. theres so much material (anime, manga, games, etc), im definitely not running out of content to get immersed in
living in japan or communicating with its people isnt really my goal, i just like what theyre producing, and thats fine by me
my opinion? try it, maybe youll love it. especially if its on your mind often or if it ignites some sort of spark in your brain. and if you give up? try again maybe. i gave up on japanese at least twice before finally committing
of course you dont have to bother if you don't want to, that's a viable option too 👍
anyone can learn a language ✌️
real spill
tbh what I found out after 6 months of learning that spoken Japanese is quite easy and fun, but writing is a nightmare!
It depends on your strengths and what you spend the most time perfecting! But if you are serious, you will be good at all in the end and all aspects work hand in hand to get someone to fluency. At least to varying degrees.
@@BecomeAnything. agreed!
Mastering Japanese was so much easier back in the day when we only had to learn 1945 kanji. (Sarcasm intended) But seriously, I learned the meaning of the kanji and more importantly learned the components of the kanji first -- before studying Japanese (there was some overlap) and it took me 2 years living in Japan (and working) to get to N1 level. But N1 level is far from "mastering Japanese" I've learned way more AFTER passing the JLPT than I needed to know to pass N1. I agree with you that it takes a lot of time to get proficient in Japanese, but knowing kanji makes gaining vocabulary so much easier -- the first time I saw the word 糖尿病 I knew what it meant because I knew the kanji, even though I had never seen the word before (and at that time I didn't even know how it was pronounced). But again, if I could have all the time I've spent on learning Japanese and use it for learning Python or Web development or real estate or whatever, how different life would be. But, knowing Japanese is really really useful if you live in Japan -- both for convenience, for making your life richer, and for social reasons. If you don't live in Japan or have some very personal reason for learning it, I agree that spending that time is probably not worth it.
Deciding what to study next was always the hardest part of Japanese. Studying kanji meant I didn't make progress on grammar. Studying grammar meant my conversation skills weren't improving much. Besides front-loading my studying with learning the (English) meaning of kanji, generally following the JLPT curriculum seemed to work for me, and of course living in Japan I took all opportunities I could to hang out with Japanese people and use Japanese. If you just study but don't use it, it's like reading a book about playing tennis but never actually playing games. Of course you're not going to get good doing that.
Kanji are of course complicated, but there's a lot more logic to them than you would think. First grade kanji have a lot of "pictographs" 火 fire 日 sun 水 water (even though the "pictures" don't really look like the thing). But more complicated kanji usually have a reading and meaning component (for onyomi only). Yeah, it's complicated, but knowing the system makes it much easier than just trying to remember 2000+ kanji without systematic knowledge. Who would try to learn to read words without first learning the alphabet??
that's stupid to say there's 75,000 kanji. The hardest Japanese test (for Japanese language professionals, native speakers) has 6600 kanji on it (Kanji Kentei) and 99% of Japanese would never pass it. 99.99%. I think smart native speakers can read 3000 or a few more kanji, and if you know the systematic rules I pointed out, you can often read kanji you've never seen before. 鮟鱇 for example. never seen it? No problem. Maybe you can't write it, but you can read it and understand it even if you've never seen it.
Only 2-3 hours per day??? But going and hanging out with Japanese people for 2-3 hours a day in addition to studying with textbooks or apps or whatever for 2-3 hours a day would probably more than double your progress. If you live in Japan and want to get good at Japanese you definitely should do both.
Your point that the time spent learning Japanese could be better spent on doing other things is well taken. As someone who has spent decades learning Japanese (while living here), I often think of what else I could have done with the time. I think for someone who really wants to be in Japan though, you could get very close to N1 and know 2000 kanji in 2 years, and have a good time doing it, and have a great sense of accomplishment. I don't know if N1 is 30% of what a native speaker knows, but I do know that it is nowhere close to what native speakers know. But it could be enough to make life in Japan convenient and fulfilling -- but not enough to work on equal footing with Japanese people in a Japanese company (but the pay sucks, so probably not what you should be shooting for anyway). Maybe a way to put it is to say: be aware of the size of your investment (your time) compared with what your returns are (the level of Japanese you achieve), which will be far from native.
For you, if you want to live here longterm, I'd say keep studying. If you don't, I'd say cut your losses and find a way out sooner rather than later. Time is limited, as you point out.
Good luck with your studies, and I hope you make the right choices and can be at peace with them. No matter what you do, you may find yourself second-guessing your decisions in the past, but all you can do is act in the present. Nice video.
Hello! (This is Bjorn here the camera man)
I have been learning Japanese for around 2 years and I agree with most of your points. I actually study a lot more than Corf does even since he gave up a bit recently. I closely follow and advocate for the MIA/Ajatt method. For it's adoption of Steven Krashen's "Comprehensible input hypothesis". As for your point about kanji being essential to easier creating a path to learn words I 100% agree with. Kanji is not something to fear, but its a tool that should be used to create ease for learning the rest of the language. For this reason kanji I have made my focus for a long time at the start and it paid off a lot because I can understand almost all 2200 essential kanji. Also since my approach is MIA I do a lot of watching content and create around 15 sentence cards a day. (Currently at 5k cards, but also know over 10k words.) Also Ajatt with MP3 etc. But STILL no where near native or even at a level where I can understand everything easily. Something language learning has taught me is that in order to become a master you need to enjoy the journey and not get so focused at the end. Because there is never truly an end. The #1 way to win is to not quit and be smart about the way you learn, not so much about how much you read textbooks and if you decide to study for 10 hours a day on a random weekend to "grind it out" like a lot of people try and do.
Anyways thanks for the comment, since Japanese is still a major goal in my life I liked reading what you had to say ^^
I'm with you :)
THANK YOU
I totally disagree, you can apply this to anything you want to learn.
Pick out the bad parts, say "its a waste of time", keep on focusing on how much you have to learn, and there you go, you've just convinced thousands of people to stop learning whatever they're trying to learn.
Ive been studying this language for the past 11 years, I so no point as to why you made a video that says "studying japanese is a waste of time because of all the shit you have to study". Ive had the craziest opportunities in my entire life because I decided to study this language, and no I do not regret it.... If you made this video for the attention, ok great, but at least have a bit more compassion towards Japanese learners. I wouldn't call thing "trying to save you", it's actually just straight up rude tbh. The parts you pointed out are what I found to be fascinating, and it's actually what kept me motivated to study. It's such a beautiful, rewarding language, completely different from English, or any other language to be honest.
Try again buddy, I don't think this was the right approach.
Yep!
I have to admit my personal experience with learning Japanese doesn't entirely match up with what you dedcribed. In my experience, I picked up Japanese relatively naturally over the years by regularly watching anime, with only an intensive learning period of a few months at the beginning. However, I've recently felt a similar sense of frustration and discomfort as I've started learning Russian. This video has made me reflect on my perception of the difficulty in language learning. It's quite thought-provoking.
One thing I've noticed about my experience is that I had a much lower standard for Japanese back then. I began conversing with native speakers using only around 500 basic words, without fear of making mistakes. I thoroughly enjoyed watching anime despite my limited proficiency, and felt satisfied with a basic understanding, easily connecting with Japanese people on an emotional level. I relied more on context and the speaker's intention rather than kanji for interpretation. I believe this mindset is what made Japanese relatively easy for me to learn, whereas the lack of that same mental state has made Russian significantly more challenging.
glad this vid was able to get you thinking, that's always the goal with my videos
and yeah everybody takes a different approach to picking up the language but this is just for those who take the "studying" route
I'm starting to learn japanese and I feel like most of the points in this video can be related to any language that are differs a lot from your native one. Like for me, learning french was really painful, there were just so many strange grammar that make no sense. Same with the english to some extent, though it's not so hard in most parts.
Apart from kanji, I don't think (really hope at least) that japanese would be so hard. Your comment reassure me a little, thanks.
And for the russian, I dont know what are learners are making as a goal, but it's a shame that there are no similar to manga/anime things. Probably most valuable part of russian is 18-19 century books, that are one of the hardest challenges of any language. Anyways, удачи во всех начинаниях :3
@@hulponot29 Спасибо. Мне так приятно, что я могу понять это предложение после месяца изучения русского языка. 😄
Good luck to you as well. The difficulty of Japanese is like an illusion, and kanji are just symbols. Their meanings in translation can provide hints, but can also be misleading. The true meaning is often rooted in the culture and the emotional intention of the speaker. It's like the emoji 🍎 - you can translate it to "apple", but it would be hard to accept its meaning as "laptop" if you don't know the cultural context.😂
Russian does feel very difficult, and I'm struggling to remember the words. But when I look back at learning Japanese, it felt just as difficult to memorize at first. The difference is that I enjoyed every moment of learning Japanese without any unrealistic expectations, while I'm trying to pick up Russian as a quick challenge. And so far, so bad😅. But on the positive side, I've found Russian sci-fi movies to be quite stunning. I likely wouldn't have even watched them if not for this Russian learning challenge.
@@Leo-54ly yea and i guess i can say that i got fluent in japanese within 3months because japanese is relatively easy lmao
@@TheRedFoxMcCloud 3 months contain a lot of hours. Theoretically speaking, 12 hours of study/immersive learning per day for 3 months would sum up to over 1,000 hours, which definitely exceeds the international standards for acquiring a language. With the right approach, I bet reaching a decent level in Japanese within 3 months is totally possible. But the journey is like a rabbit hole. The growth in the intimacy with the language never stops, constantly setting a new high baseline for the fluency one defines.
Most problems that lead to failure come from the inexperienced, rigid mindset and inefficient input. So yeah, Japanese is a constant factor that can be defined as easy. Those carrying the baggage of fear of the unknown and dwelling on the wrong approach are doomed to give up at some point before reaching the minimum criteria for fluency. So you are right that you can say you made it because it is easy. But on the surface, people can always say it's hard as an excuse for their own failure or as a great achievement if they have conquered it.😏
は ([ha] read as wa) = is
が (ga) = is the thing that is
空は青い（そら は あおい sora wa aoi) = the sky "is" blue (general fact)
what color is the sky? It's blue. Haven't you seen it? (は wa situation)
空が青い（そら が あおい sora ga aoi) = the sky "is the things that is" blue (current state of sky)
something is blue(right now)! what is blue? the sky is the thing that is blue (が ga situation)
君は好き（きみ は すき kimi wa suki) = I do like you (as opposed to others subject doesn't like)
君が好き（きみ が すき kimi ga suki) = You "are the one that" I like (this is how people usually phrase it instead of kimi wa suki)
My friend said kanji make japanese easier than korea , because in korea and japanese have many homonime and kanji make it easier yo distinguish the word.
Yeah once you learn it kanji actually makes japanese very efficient. Korean used to use Chinese characters and I think they still do in some parts but ya I'm scared to learn that language now haha
@@BecomeAnything. what the difference between colloquial vocabulary and jlptn vocabulary, becsuse there some vocabulary which doesn exist in jlptn, and which one should i memorize.
@@gaspol6124 JLPT is a horrible way to determine what words to learn imo. I would recommend the site "JPDB" instead, it will give a much better guide for what words are common. but basically colloquial just means words that are used in conversation but not in literature
@@BecomeAnything. thanks for suggestion
Other thingWhat makes japanese hard i think because the english translation in youtube vidio dont match with japanese word order, unlike spanish to english which have same word order thus make it easier to improve vocabulary even only using youtube subtittle.
Kichijyoji ❤
Please consider coming on my podcast to talk about your experiences ✨️
Great content but PLEASE focus on improving your lighting. It’s seriously lacking. Keep grinding 🙌
ya it sucked in this vid, more recent videos took care of that a little better. ty for the honest feedback !
im wondering so are you going to continue ??
Yeah i'm in too deep now
i just want to learn enough to watch non dubbed shows and play games. i have no plans to move to Japan, im learning for fun 🙂🙃🙂
best of luck doing so !
You got this.
appreciate it dawg
I really like Japanese literature and there’s only a limited amount of literary works that are translated. Also I feel that the translations don’t hit the same as the originals
It sucks cause ik I have to memorize a ton more kanji than most that just want to converse and watch anime
Maybe because I'm trying to learn japanese just to communicate with people I've had as acquaintances for years, I've been studying since February 2023, and I am still very motivated to keep it up.
I honestly don't really watch anime or read manga, which makes me such an outlier compared to every other Japanese language learner I know lmao.
まだ僕の日本語は上手じゃない
yeah I didn't really like anime much before japanese but it felt inevitable to get into after a certain point haha
keep it up tho you got the right headspace!
I am where you are, finishing up with N2, having learned a ton of kanji and still struggling at times. It's a tough pursuit for sure. But at the same time it is rewarding. I think too often people lose sight of the goal and get lost in the process. You can burn out fast on SRS. You can kill yourself trying to study, study, study. But once you reach this level it's totally possible to consume and enjoy content where you're still learning but actually having a good time. So that's what I've been focusing on. Reading books, watching movies, anime. It's a good place to be. Yeah it takes time, but to compare it with having accomplished other tasks isn't quite right. Although I totally get the insanity and doubt you feel lol
yea i think I'm just losing my grip on reality ngl i got way too many anki cards
@@BecomeAnything. Anki cards are like your dbz power level
MOST TRUE COMMENT I HAVE EVER GOTTEN LMAO
how old are you? how do you have 2-3 hours every day?
18 i don't rlly have time anymore with youtube and other stuff tho
the way I see it, just learn it for life. the journey what makes it interesting, not the comparison of the time it takes to with other language.
yeah that's the best mindset honestly
17 minutes is kinda long. I watched the first 6 minutes and then skipped to the end. I really liked the unique style of having each sentence spoken with a different background. Never seen that before, so well done.
HOW DARE YOU SKIP RAAHHHH
nah I get it, was trying something new and will probably go for shorter next time. Thanks for the feedback and nice comment !
nah your attention span is just cooked go meditate😭😭
@@michaelmathews4385 💀
@@michaelmathews4385 shut up 🙂