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Please share your Japanese language experience here

nhk9

先輩
27 Aug 2004
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Hi all,

I would hope to hear about your experiences learning the language and what you found particularly easy or difficult. I would also like to know what you think was the most/least enjoyable part of studying this language.

I will start with myself

I have studied Japanese rather for 4 years self-studying and in college in Canada. My reason for starting to learn the language was probably similar to yours -- I liked Japanese cuisine, and doramas. Well, after that many years of studying at a rather serious pace, I still find myself struggling to really speak smoothly. That is probably because I don't really get to speak it aside from going to school once a week to do just that. But I think the more important factors that contribute to my weakness in expressing myself and understanding others are the following:

1 There are too many set phrases that one must rely on brute memorization to learn: e.g. one should say "bougen wo haku" instead of "bougen wo iu" etc.

2 Too many of these idioms in daily speech involving body parts and ki etc. that are not used often, but usually understood by natives when used.

3 Too many of these archaic words entering into daily speech: e.g. nakinishimoarazu, yokaranu, kokoronarazumo etc.

4 Tameguchi (slang) and dialects entering into daily conversation. Slang can be of many forms, and can be difficult to understand depending origin of the slang and the ability of the speaker in using the slang. Nowadays many Japanese people can't even use their language properly, which adds to the problem. The mixing of dialects by youngsters is particularly troublesome for the listener.

5 Tendency of mumbling words by older males (usually 30yrs and up). If only everyone spoke like NHK announcers :)

6 Last but not least, way too much specific usage on gitaigo and giongo. No matter how much I try to learn, there seems to be always that gitaigo right there in the next page while reading a fashion magazine.

After starting to learn the language and also starting to teach English to the Japanese, I started to understand why sometimes they struggle so much at speaking English. They have to memorize a lot of these archaic, onomatopoeia, n number of pronouns for You and I, and certain dialects, they just have no more energy/space in their head to store another language. I don't know, but I found myself quite drained learning the language. It's common to see foreigners to speak Japanese well, but not very common to see foreigners speaking it REALLY well (except those with Japanese spouses).

Just my 2 cents.
 
Well, I've been learning Japanese for less than a year, so I can't really comment on what is easy and difficult! 😊 (Actually I started self-learning one year ago, but I only had classes for 2 terms, so I couldn't say I spent a whole year learning.) And I am not very good yet, needless to say! 😌

So far, I think the kanji are the hardest part! Although I have a good visual and linguistic 'memory' for that kind of thing, and can learn pretty fast, there are just so many kanji that no one could actually learn them 'quickly'! Not even Japanese kids who study them at school! :auch: (Although I have to say I'm enjoying learning them; it's really satisfying even to remember just a few! ^^)

Grammar points are difficult of course, like verb/adjective endings and such, but that happens for every language, it's not particular to Japanese. 😌

On a positive note, things I find easy so far are the pronunciation (yay! Not a tonal language! XD), learning the hiragana and katakana, and the basic level grammar (not that the grammar in general is any easier than other languages, but construction of sentences at a simple level is easy compared with, for example, English or German ^^).

As for most enjoyable/least enjoyable . . . So far, for me there hasn't been anything not enjoyable. The only problem is that I don't have anywhere near as much time as I'd like for studying. :( And the most enjoyable part is the satisfaction of feeling new knowledge sinking into my brain! :)
 
I have been actively learning japanese for half a year now, and here are my problems:

me, being a chinese, should have no problems in writing/recognising the kanji. the problem comes from the pronunciations of the kanji. in chinese, one hanzi(kanji) only have 1 pronunciation, at most two in rare cases. in japanese, one kanji can have up to 10 different pronunciations. you really have to see what kanji/kana is next to the kanji before reading it out.

the verb conjugations are also confusing. english and chinese weren't as confusing as this. and the conjugations i mean includes the 6(or so) forms, like the 'te' forms etc.

i can't seem to get the perfect explanation for the distinction between the particles. i often mix up を/に for actions; に/へ for directions; に/で for actions at a place; は/が for topic/subject. and when i ask for explanations, it seems that no one have a very clear distinction on these particles.
 
tanhql said:
i have been actively learning japanese for half a year now, and here are my problems:
me, being a chinese, should have no problems in writing/recognising the kanji. the problem comes from the pronounciations of the kanji. in chinese, one hanzi(kanji) only have 1 pronounciation, at most two in rare cases. in japanese, one kanji can have up to 10 different pronounciations. you really have to see what kanji/kana is next to the kanji before reading it out.
the verb conjugations are also confusing. english and chinese weren't as confusing as this. and the conjugations i mean includes the 6(or so) forms, like the 'te' forms etc.
i can't seem to get the perfect explanation for the distinction between the particles. i often mix up 窶堙ー/窶堙 for actions; 窶堙?窶堙 for directions; 窶堙?窶堙 for actions at a place; 窶堙?窶堋ェ for topic/subject. and when i ask for explanations, it seems that no one have a very clear distinction on these particles.

Yea I encountered much problems with particles when I started to learn it. You just need a good book. One is called "all about particles" which you can get on amazon. The verb conjugation isn't as bad as you might think, well at least compared to some european languages like russian or polish 😌 One would have to be really grammatically oriented in order to explain minute differences. Most Japanese don't know (or forgot) differences between "nikui" and "gatai" (hard)... so it's always good to consult a book, or a teacher.
 
nhk9 said:
My reason for starting to learn the language was probably similar to yours -- I liked Japanese cuisine, and doramas.

My reason was that I live here and it is a necessary tool of daily life.


1 There are too many set phrases that one must rely on brute memorization to learn

You'd be surprised how much of your daily interactions can be covered by set phrases.

3 Too many of these archaic words entering into daily speech: e.g. nakinishimoarazu, yokaranu, kokoronarazumo etc.

We must have radically different ideas of "daily speech". I've never encountered a single one of those. Ever.

It's common to see foreigners to speak Japanese well, but not very common to see foreigners speaking it REALLY well (except those with Japanese spouses).

We tend to be the ones who actually stay here and have some daily need for it.
 
nhk9 said:
It's common to see foreigners to speak Japanese well, but not very common to see foreigners speaking it REALLY well (except those with Japanese spouses).
Depends how define these things to a degree. I personally (and this is nothing more than a personal opinion) don't think it's very common to see foreigners speaking Japanese well in day to day life as a regular joe in society.

If you go to universities and the such, then it's probably fairly common. (Actually I know it is, at least with the colleges that I have any experience with.)

I'm just trying to say that I am personally suprised to see a foreigner who can speak Japanese well on those rare occasions that I see it.

But this could also be influenced by our definitions of "well" and "very well".
 
It's common to see foreigners to speak Japanese well, but not very common to see foreigners speaking it REALLY well (except those with Japanese spouses).
For me at least, in reality, I rarely have relied upon my wife for translation assistance. In fact I relied on her to be able to speak English with me and not Japanese. Throughout my life and experiences of living in Japan I needed my wife to be the ONE person I could talk to in English, my native tongue. She was the one person that I could talk to daily in English and understand everything she was saying.

For us at least, we found that attempting to teach each other our "native" language was difficult to say the least, and we found ourselves communicating in English.

Currently it doesnt matter, I learned the Japanese language not because of my spouse but because of the people around me, NOT including her.
 
I suppose, though, that the reason why people with Japanese spouses might speak better Japanese than those without, is that someone married to a Japanese person is more likely to either go live in Japan or visit there often. So, even if they speak another language to their partner, they'd still be exposed to more Japanese.

I think it's the case, though, that anyone who actually lives and works in Japan and has a serious interest in the language will achieve greater fluency in a shorter time than those who are studying in a class in their own country or studying by themselves.

There's bound to be people living in Japan who still don't make very good progress in Japanese, but that's probably because they either don't have enough interest to learn, don't need it for their job and/or social life, or have unusually poor language learning skills (or a combination of all those).
 
After starting to learn the language and also starting to teach English to the Japanese, I started to understand why sometimes they struggle so much at speaking English. They have to memorize a lot of these archaic, onomatopoeia, n number of pronouns for You and I, and certain dialects, they just have no more energy/space in their head to store another language. I don't know, but I found myself quite drained learning the language. It's common to see foreigners to speak Japanese well, but not very common to see foreigners speaking it REALLY well (except those with Japanese spouses).
Just my 2 cents.
確かに、日本語は分かると面白いんですけど、あまり分からないと、
いやになり、飽き飽きしてしまってね。。
でも、どの言語でもそうでしょうね。:(
いつも、疲れたような声をしていますね。

さて、基本的な文法を勉強するのが大切ですね。それが出来てから gitaigo and giongo Tameguchi (slang) and dialects entering into daily conversation (I've never personally heard dialects in normal conversation, it doesn't seem likely or even possible really unless you mean an area where a dialect is naturally spoken and then of course it will be heard) :?, archaic, onomatopoeia, etc. 日本語も学んだら、一番いいですね。

Sorry if I get lazy when writing the same advice over and over to everyone. It really is true, though, in the case of language learning and a lot of other things : concentrate thoroughly on mastering 正しい日本語 first before
worrying about つまらない日本語。ですよね。:) 😅
 
I'd say my experience supports what has been said already. I started learning Japanese on a bit of a whim. I'm not ashamed to admit when I first started, it was partly because of anime and samurai movies and all the other stereotypical crap that people assume. But it also was a way for me to connect with my grandmother (my father is Japanese), to gain some perspective on the Nisei activities that are so popular in LA, and to expand my horizons. Plus it sounded nicer than Chinese (my mom, who's Chinese, very lightly urged me to learn it).

I took about a year of classes in college, then studied abroad for 6 months or so. I had been to Japan to do a homestay for 2 weeks in high school, and while I had fun, I had no real way to interact on anything other than a superficial level with most of the people. My study abroad days were different, what with the daily 3 hour intensive language courses, the "buddy" they assigned to each of us, joining a basketball circle, and just meeting random folks. Obviously I learned a lot from immersion and felt pretty confident in my improvement from raw amateur to early intermediate Japanese speaker. After returning to the States, I skipped 3 levels of Japanese and still passed the advanced class easily. Unfortunately, due to my schedule and desire to get out of school at the 4.5 year mark, I stopped 2 classes shy of a Japanese minor. I haven't so much as looked at a book since.

On my trip back just last October, I met up with old friends and rediscovered a bit of the language I thought I had lost, particularly when drinking. It was painfully obvious, though, that the desire to be really good was gone. The motivation just wasn't there. Like Mike says, it's far more common to see a foreigner handle the language well when they don't really have a choice NOT to.

I still entertain thoughts of doing something like JET, if only for the life experience. Teaching is a career I had given serious thought to, and JET seemed an easy way to get at least a taste of it without having to dedicate myself to getting a credential, going back to school, and all that jazz. The extent of my Japanese study now, though, is occasionally looking at message boards like this and ordering in Japanese at restaurants in Little Tokyo.
 
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