Becoming competent at Japanese

[newtojapan 0]

I'm interested to know how long it took for some of you long-timers to become decent at speaking Japanese. I'm not so interested in the reading/writing as much as being able to have a decent conversation.

 

Are you self-taught or took classes?

[big-will 7]

I studied quite hard when I first came here and took some classes. It certainly helped. My Japanese isn't great - just too busy with work to study in recent years. Good luck!

[bobby12 0]

if you dont study you will not get better. sounds obvious, but a lot of people seem to think they will just 'pick it up' from being here.

[indosnm 0]

Studied hard to give me a base and just spoke everyday from there.

Do an intensive course or 2. They are hard and fast but all well worth the effort.

As you get to a certain level, kanji will come into the courses so even though you aren't interested now, you might change your mind about the writing and reading side.. If you learn how to read and write it could open doors for you.

YWCA intensive courses come well recommended from me.

[Kumapix 0]

you should learn to write basic kanji, as it will help you recognize other words, even if you haven't learnt it yet. In Japanese there are many words that are spoken the same way but written differently, so if you have an image in your head it helps imo. take the nihongo nouryoku shiken test. Get the old tests and study guides for that, a good dictionary and study everyday. Speak with everybody you can.

[tsondaboy 0]

Rumour has it that my Japanese got better after I started dating J-gals.

[brit-gob 9]

Study study, definitely. takes up a lot of time. Good luck.

[IIIII 2]

Learning basic kanji can be really fun. Look on it as a fun learning process when you set about it. They are actually very interesting.

[damian 0]

If you are taking regular and expensive lessons and if this is the first language you have been taught then my advise is to get a teacher that:

 

1. Relates to the way your mind works. Some teacher's mind's don't work at all, which makes things tough.

2. Is not a native Japanese speaker, that is, they were taught Japanese themselves and can relate first hand to the concept of learning Japanese.

 

#1 is variable. As an example, for me it means having a teacher that knows how to capitalise upon my systematic style of thinking and my intellectual curiosity. Parrot fashion teachers are inappropriate for me.

 

#2 my opinion here offends most native speakers who try and teach their own language. It is perfectly do-able, but tends to lead to an unimaginative teaching technique that is not tuned into the process of learning.

 

Keep in mind that there are two very important parts of learning a language:

 

i. understanding the concept of learning a language

ii. actually learning the language.

 

Because we are not intensively taught a second language in school, most Australians (and to a lesser extent Brits and Americans) struggle with point i. Europeans learn languages much faster as their minds are familiar with the concept of what a language actually is. Much the same way that men learn how to use a new bit of machinery faster than many women: our minds are conditioned, familiar and receptive to that type of process.

 

Other points:

 

- once you get a few very basic Japanese grammatical formulas comfortably in your head all you need is 50 items of vocab and you can do heaps of very functional communication.

- forget trying to talk like a 'with it' person. Just worry about learning nice semi formal Japanese. Westerners who put so much effort into sounding like a Shibuya kid waste time and look silly. Its like a Japanese who is learning English coming up to you in Australia and saying "gday mate! howzit goin?". Learning -masu verbs is really easy, but using them is seldom very cool. Do what is easy, not cool.

- In my circle of foreigners there seemed to be some ego attached to ones Japanese skills. Ignore that basic emotion. Emanating from gaijin losers that wanted to feel better about themselves I suffered constant put downs when I attempted Japanese. Paradoxically, the most critical people of your beginners Japanese will always be other foreigners. The Japanese themselves can be very appreciative and helpful no matter how crap you are (although some will simply freeze when they see a big nosed round eye face making Japanese sounds).

- Learn the kana's in a day or two, they are easy and useful. However, the 100 hours spent learning a few Kanji is not as useful to you as the amount of spoken vocab you could learn in the same time.

 

All of these ideas have become retrospectively apparent to me as I am just now starting to learn German after having learnt a little bit of Japanese a few years ago.

[Ocean11 0]

spud, you didn't just hit the nail on the head there, you've hit the nail that sticks up and smashed the ****er right into the wood so its top is several millimeters below the surface, leaving a nice hammer-sized dent to boot! Great summary.

 

Japanese teachers can be fantastically bad. Some even profess to believe that Japanese is made up of discrete sounds, each of which is pronounced separately. They'll have you practicising 'O-ha-yo-go-za-i-ma-su' for the one day that you bother to visit them.

 

My Japanese seems to be getting worse unfortunately, although I lack any motivation whatsoever to do anything about it. I suppose I could try to take Grade 1 but I don't think I'd be much better off if I did.

 

It's also a myth that sex with a native improves your speaking ability. Having your mouth full of body parts means each syllable cannot be pronounced individually as the language requires.

[damian 0]

Thanks Ocean, I'm glad I got something right because I just royally effed up something else at work. baaaah! I feel like a tool.

 

Anyway, here are some other tips I wish someone had told me:

 

- Keep in mind that unlike English, word order is not that vital. If you ate an apple yesterday then all you need to do is use the words 'apple', 'past-tense ate' and 'yesterday'. Put in the correct particle and even if get it wrong, everyone will understand you. Imagine in English if someone said three words "apple yesterday ate". Sounds silly in English, but it will get you along ok in Japanese.

 

- Become comfortable with not starting a sentence with "I". eg, I want... I am... I went... I think....

 

- the particle 'no' is quite useful, likewise 'de'. Both of them make forming a simple short Japanese sentence much easier than the equivalent English sentence. The faster you get comfortable with putting them at the end of nouns, the faster you will be able to imaginatively create your own sentences. A really simple formula is {noun - particle - noun - particle - verbmasu}. "densha de hon o yomimasu". Saying I read a book on the train couldn't be easier. make this kind of primitive formula second nature and you can say or ask almost anything.

 

- I will say it again: -masu verbs are easy, -masu tense is easy, forming a negative is easy, combining negative and tense is easy. They are just plain easy, waaaay easier than the equivalent concept in English. Learn a bunch of them and the communication door instantly opens.

 

- referring to the existence (or otherwise) of something is very easy and a surprisingly helpful concept in basic communications. I say arimasu (and imasu) more than any other Japanese words. I miss those very simple and useful verbs in English and German. Also, 'shimasu' is an odd one to English speakers, but also very useful when you when you want to say something but simply do not know the correct way to do it. When all else fails, just fudge it with shimasu, eg, using the form {noun - shimasu}. If you can say 'gorufu o shminsu' then damit you can say 'jitensha o shimasu' as well! (but only if you simply can't remember the verb 'to ride', or what ever the appropriate one is... I can't remember myself).

 

- I bet if you learn 20 -masu verbs, 50 nouns and a bunch of adjectives then you will be amazed at how many things you can communicate to a Japanese person.

 

- Once you are up and running with the mega easy -masu verbs you can introduce reasonably easy concept of 'te' verbs. This handy little variant lets you join all your beginner sentences together, or embed them into one structured slightly more flowing and less primitive sentence rather than saying a string of multiple disjointed sentences that all end with a -masu verb. But there is no need to rush as before you get cool with the rules of turning -masu verbs into -te verbs you can use 'soshite' to link your beginner -masu sentences together.

 

A rough English example is:

 

"tomorrow we will eat breakfast, soshite, we will go to the beach, soshite, we will go for a swim, soshite, we will come home"

 

In Japanese that is quite easy: you don't need to use 'will', nor say 'we' all the time, nor many filler words (like 'for a'). Using English words it would come out something like:

 

"tommow we breakfast eat soshite beach go soshite swim do soshite home return"

 

It sounds childish to the English ear and it isn't a particularly sophisticated way of speaking Japanese, but it works extremely well and quite acceptable for a beginner trying to get comfortable with saying Japanese outloud. Besides, saying the above rudimentary sentence in Japanese is far easier than in English.

 

- I know very little Japanese and find myself relying on the terms 'kore kara' and 'koko kara' quite often. Same for 'desu kara'. I don't know why they are useful, but they help me out all the time.

 

- As a beginner, don't get caught up in Japanese ways of speaking that make no sense in English. "Sumimasen chotto" has no literal meaning in English. Leave the hundreds of seemingly meaningless phrases to advanced students or native speakers, eto desu ne. Concentrate on learning words and sentences that have an equivalent in English, desu ke dou. This will help you say exactly what you want/need to say. You can get into all those funny Japanese oddities when it comes to understanding the language from a cultural and 'Japanese personality' perspective (which is interesting and ultimately, quite important).

 

- Once you are personally comfortable with the mechanics of a bit of Japanese grammar+vocab: say it out loud as often as possible. Using it in your head doesn't work. This is vital as it will get you comfortable with making Japanese noises and it will get you familiar with the particular grammatical formula involved. The idea is to get speaking outloud anything meaningful to yourself as soon as possible. If like me you prefer to write than speak it is also helpful to get a kana keyboard and send emails to a friend, or keitai mail (I resisted the keitai for most of my time, but in the end became faster at my own brand of error ridden hiragana emails than English equivalents)

 

- trying to learn Japanese by talking to a dimwit skinny Japanese girl in a Ropongi bar is almost pointless as you won’t be yourself and so wont relax and learn. She is likely incapable of teaching you anything anyway. On the other hand, if you meet a Japanese girl who becomes your girlfriend then you may learn a bit more. The theory being that if she becomes your gf then she suits your personality and so the two of you will develop your own comfortable way of using Japanese together. As tempting as it seems, you wont learn anything by chasing (and most likely shagging) a huge number of the incredibly good looking money sucking inner city skinny Tokyo girls.

[Goemon 0]

try some of these phrases to practice, le_spud.

[damian 0]

Yeah, I like that one! In fact, if you will excuse my cynical reflection on days gone by, a person known to the both of us once sat at my kitchen table playing that amusing web thingy on his laptop whilst I was doing something else. When I heard it and enquired about it he sneered the dismissive response "you wouldn't understand". It is ironic that it came up again in this thread.

[gerard 6]

Aim high. People who study like maniacs and have high goals and take Japanese tests get reasonably good within a few years.

Also learn Kanji if you want to get good at Japanese and you're willing to put in the effort. Actually, if you don't put in the effort you simply won't get good at it--which is OK--it just depencs what you want. The vocabulary is massive but a good chunk of it is made of kanji compounds. You can guess meanings and learn new words very quickly if you know the kanji. It's daunting, but it will pay off. After a couple of hundred kanji you'll start to see the connections. But 1000 - 2000 kanji (that's lofty eh?) will really open the door. Even if you don't want to sell your soul to learn Japanese, learn a few. They're interesting.

[Goemon 0]

Oh, that kitchen table sitting person we know!

 

oh!

 

oh!

 

(I haven't enjoyed these in years! Japanese is fun!)

[gerard 6]

Cool links Goemon... If you're of the audiolingual persuasion.

[window-cleaner 0]

My Japanese is awful but I'm really interested in the kanji, they are fascinating.

[muikabochi 208]

I learnt a lot of Japanese from a Japanese girlfriend - and not just slang. That was how we actually first met, she was teaching me Japanese (but not actually a teacher). Once we started dating the learning quickly stopped.