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Time to become fluent

rajs20

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Hi,

I'd really love to become "fluent", or at least at the level of the average Japanese high school graduate. So, I could translate anime/manga, watch movies, listen to radio, read Japanese literature, get a job in Japan, and communicate effortlessly (not fumbling to form sentences or recall vocab, etc).

Anyways I have 3 questions:

1. Assuming you took 1 Japanese college course per semester, how long would it take to gain fluency?

2. Say it takes 3 years to achieve JLPT 1 (i.e. 6 college semesters), then how much longer would it require to reach fluency?

3. How many vocab words do you suppose an educated Japanese person might know? I'm guessing something like 20,000... As far as Kanji goes, I imagine it'd be something like 3,000 so that's what I'm aiming for.

Thanks very much! Any input would really be appreciated.

Raj
 
The only way to become fluent in any language is to first study it to the point where you are comfortable reading the language and holding a conversation with the language.

To sum up an answer for you first two questions: You'd have to live there to become fluent. Two or three years (not class-years, 365 day years) of study and about one year living there to be 100% fluent.

To answer question #3, there are some 1,900 + Kanji recognized as official by the Japanese government, and an excess of 2,000 used by the media/people. How many total vocab "words" will you need to know? Japanese isn't like English or Spanish or any roman-based system. One character can mean several words, add a new character in front of or behind the first character and you've got a new batch of meanings. For example:
Ni (窶堙? can mean red earth, two, baggage/cargo, etc. I hope you catch my drift~
 
Well, first it depends on your definition of fluent. What Nosferatu is pretty much head on for the standard definition of "fluent" which I personally think is very low. (IE, you probably wouldn't be able to interpret at a high level, but can live your life on your own in Japan). I lived in Japan for 7 years and still had troubles with certain topics. The news and newspapers, are particularly difficult to understand 100%, whereas 70-80% is pretty attainaible.

6 college semesters is nowhere near JLPT 1... in most cases, just barely able to pass 3 really.

Langauges are weird. Some people catch them, some don't. I can really only comment on my own experiences, and those I've witnessed. For me:

-3 years in university (this was over 24 credit hours though mind you -- my 3rd year I took two courses per semester)
-3 months in an exchange trip. This is where you would 'double-up' so to speak. I took 3 courses, and studied about 3-4 hours a day
-Back in university, I finished all the normal classes so did private study and turned work into a professor.
-1 year in Japan, self-studying (I had a job at this point) and I was able to pass JLPT 2. Some year or so after this is when you start feeling fluent, although Japanese people will tell you after 2 years of university that you "speak great Japanese."

Note that to pass Level 1, you will need to be able to read Japanese like you read English. Pick something up, read it and digest about 80% of it (tiny details included) in one pass. Get the other 20% or so in the 2nd pass. This is very hard - by far the hardest part on the test, and the grammar is sick as well.

As before, it's different per person. To be honest, I think the biggest variable is how you spend your time in Japan. You can really excellerate, but it doesn't happen by accident. I spent a lot of weekends locked away in my room.
 
Fluency...

Just be patient, and things will come!

I've only taken 1 year of college level Japanese, but I've been living here in Japan for nearly 3 years now and studying on and off on my own. I hope to pass level 2 of JLPT this year, but I'm still having a hard time with the practice tests. If I can give you any advice, it's don't give up and be persistant. Things will come with time.

According to a navy friend I have the standard for native level usually comes after living in that country for 7 years.
 
native level
Click to expand...

Well, I can tell you that if you moved to Japan after high school, then native will never come. This is true for pretty much most langauges. If you don't start early enough, you'll never get the accent. A shame the way our brain works.
 
Never say never!

I agree it is much more difficult, but for all practical purposes you can get so close no one would know the difference.
 
mad pierrot said:
According to a navy friend I have the standard for native level usually comes after living in that country for 7 years.
Click to expand...

And according to a lady I worked with at Domino's Pizza in the U.S., there is no need to study a foreign language since spending two months in a country will give you native fluency.

Let's just say that at the time she told me that, I had spent well over two months in Japan and hadn't achieved native fluency. Let's further say that at the time I read your post I have spent well over 7 years in Japan and have still not achieved native fluency.
 
there is no need to study a foreign language since spending two months in a country will give you native fluency.
Click to expand...

That's the biggest load of crap I've heard all week.
 
orochi said:
That's the biggest load of crap I've heard all week.
Click to expand...

It remains one of the largest loads I've heard in my entire life.
 
Hey man, no need to get your panties in a wad. Just passin' on what I heard. I've also heard that Janet Jackson is a man, but I doubt that's true.



-----------------------------------
edit*

I'll ask my amigo for more details just for the hell of it. I should also add that I think he implied living and studying the language during that time period. I'll be clearer next time.
 
rajs20,

There are some people who become near-fluent after living in Japan for six months, but they are the exception. I always tell everyone it will take about two years of living in Japan to get to the level you want.

The more you study now, the faster it will go.

You need to know all the jouyou kanji, and the other specialty kanji in people's names. (Many Japanese people would fail a test on all of the jouyou kanji.) I would not worry about other "semmon" kanji.
 
Last edited:
2 months???

mikecash said:
It remains one of the largest loads I've heard in my entire life.
Click to expand...

I second that.

Only a prodigy can reach native level proficiency in that short a time!

http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=12166

Girl from St Petersburg is child prodigy in Japanese - 02/27/2004 16:26

Students of School 83 in St Petersburg have the best in the world knowledge of hieroglyphs.

To hear greetings in Japanese, one does not have to visit Japan, but can attend School 83 of Vyborg District of St Petersburg. For 10 years the school has had the status of the ⌠institution of profound learning Japanese■.

Unique Alla.

The school students are considered to have the best proficiency in Japanese in the world. The school has won the last global competition in Tokyo. Students from St. Petersburg surpassed Chinese and Americans.

Alla Shevela has the best proficiency in Japanese among senior grade students.

The girl has been awarded with a trip to Japan.

■I have been to Tokyo, Osaka, Kioto and Hiroshima and had much practice in Japanese■, Alla said.

The girl started learning Japanese when she was 14 years old - she entered School 83 when her family moved to Vyborg neighborhood of St Petersburg. She has always wanted to master Japanese. The girl could quickly keep up with her classmates: she mastered 5-year course of studying Japanese in two months!

■The family I was staying with in Japan, was not typical for this country■, says Alla. ⌠There are two members in this family: mother and daughter. They have a three-room apartment in an apartment block. According to Russian living standards, they are rich, according to Japanese ones, they live below the average level■.

Alla believes that Japanese young people are very similar to Russian ones. Japanese girls and boys even smoke and drink beer! As for schools, almost all tuition there is fee-paid and has narrow specialization.

Methods of learning Japanese.

Students of School 83 start familiarizing themselves with Japanese in first grade by studying karaoke, origami and tea ceremonies. Every year the curriculum becomes more complicated. Classes in grammar, hieroglyphs, Japanese literature and history are introduced. There are optional studies of ikebana art, martial arts and Segi chess. Many classes are taught by Japanese coming to St. Petersburg on invitation of Russian-Japanese Yamato Foundation ⌠XXI Century■ Committee. School students perform plays in Japanese in the school theater.

Everything in Japan is different from Russia.

For six years School 83 has had the exchange program with prestigious ⌠Aoyama Gakuin■ school in Japan.

As a rule, little Japanese come to St Petersburg at the height of summer holidays for Russian schools √ in July. The problem is that school year in Japan starts only in April. Russian students go to Japan in April and May.

Principal of School 83 Natalia Polyakova said that everything in Japan surprises Russian students: streets are extremely clean, there are traffic lights for the blind and deaf, the Japanese bow and thank you about every minor thing. If you were caught in rain, a passer-by will present you an umbrella. Japanese children are amazingly polite and obedient to adults.

Russian students perceived all this as positive examples. The only point which raised their objections was mandatory school uniform.

Irina Prishedko
 
Buntaro said:
rajs20,

There are some people who become near-fluent after living in Japan for six months, but they are the exception. I always tell everyone it will take about two years of living in Japan to get to the level you want.
Click to expand...
Two years is what I've heard as well and seen of Japanese students here in the US. My personal experience has been self-study with a tutor off and on for about five years now, a three month homestay/exchange trip two years ago returning back since to see friends/boyfriend five times going on six for 1 week intervals. And am only now beginning to feel completely comfortable with general conversation, picking up 60-70% of general newspaper articles, writing freely without having to look up every third word and form. This next
excursion should solidify all of these in an extreme way.

rajs20 is dead on about the importance of organization (ie courses) and setting attainable goals -- As a first-third year learner, I basically did myself the great disservice of letting an impatience for mastery devastate any semblance of disciplined study habits or realistic expectations by plunging headstrong into advanced materials (ie magazine articles) without first being able to read the ads.

Another thing being online helps with is listening -- my pc is tuned to Japanese radio news stations all the time at work and mostly at home. Gives a great feeling of being able to commune with the cultural values and what is going on there -- of course getting to that point of comprehension takes years of study, but if you can't move to Japan immediately it may be the next best thing. And with news stories, you can always use the printed text to connect yourself on any unclear dialogue. Same holds of course with listening aids that complement written passages at any level....highly recommended as a way to solidify your vocabulary and get used to the weird 'machine-gun' pronunciations.
 
Wow, this forum is really active It's been awhile since I stopped by this site. Thanks for all the helpful replies!

Well looks like I got my work cut out for me, haha... I didn't realize JLPT was so hard as you guys are saying. They put those numbers out like JLPT 1 = "900 hours of study", and JLPT 4 = "150 hours of study". Well, since JLPT 4 is supposed to be equivalent to 1 semester of Japanese (afaik), I then figured that JLPT 1 is 6 semesters, or 3 years in other words...

Oh well, thanks again!
 
First: Mike -- you change avatars more than some people change bed partners. I do like your current one though.

Second: Six months? A prodigy maybe, but most of my friends in Japan are in the 5+ year club... many in the 10+ and a few in the 20+. None of them speak close to native, but they are all fluent. I'm going to guess that that's the norm.

Third: Elizabeth brings up a good point which should probably go into another thread, but... does anyone think the current toys will help or deter people learning. (Not just the internet radio thing, which is actually a good idea.) As I'm the ripe old age of 30, I looked up all my kanji in the Nelson for my first 5 years of study. I had to go out of my way to the special lab on campus (one of the biggest campuses in the US mind you) that had Japnaese enabled computers (and they were Macs!). I don't know... no doubt looking up words is now much quicker, but do they stick is the question.
 
GaijinPunch said:
Well, I can tell you that if you moved to Japan after high school, then native will never come. This is true for pretty much most langauges. If you don't start early enough, you'll never get the accent. A shame the way our brain works.
Click to expand...
now there's a difference between fluency and accent .I'm very good at accents..iow talk with an accent(exept american, I wonder why :S) My friends from Japan say my accent is very good, almost fooled them to think I was japanese...but I'm not fluent enough to pull the trick It's great to fool people with a different accent...they never know
 
Japanese accent is pretty easy though (relative to the other hard parts of the langauge). Maybe only Spanish (besides the rrrr) is the only other one I can think of that English speakers can pick up easy. When I say easy though, it's easy not to butcher. You still have to start easy to make it perfect. "very convincing" is pretty easily attainable me thinks.

I can only imagine what non-native German speakers sound like.
 
I would say, good or bad, that about 500 Kanji is the average ammount a casual Japanese youth knows these days. I'm just basing this on my own friends... I haven't done a JD Powers & Associates review....
 
Actually, yukio_neko^_o, the amount of Kanji necessary to so much as read a newspaper is 1,945 (+ or - a few, I'm hazy on the correct number). 500 is equivalant to Kindergarten/young childrens books. However, some media outlets include the furigana, which is the breakdown of Kanji into Hirigana above the word in Ruby-colored letters.
 
I'd say high school kids in the mist of their juken exams can probably hold their own up 2000 kanji. The girls with the caked on makeup are probably hovering somewhere around 1000. My wife used to tease me if I got something wrong, saying, "コギャルも知らないよ"
 
I've been writing on my PC for nearly 20 years that I can no longer remember the strokes correctly, although reading remains OK. I'm afraid to try how many kanji I can handwrite correctly :shiver:

Yes, I'm pretty sure you can beat those "ko-gals" in Shibuya.

One exception--in the days when X Japan was immensely popular, those "visual-kei" fans responded to a quiz on difficult "kokugo" questions and other academic subjects and became champions!!
 
rajs20 said:
1. Assuming you took 1 Japanese college course per semester, how long would it take to gain fluency?
Click to expand...

Do you mean intensive course ? How many hours a week ?

2. Say it takes 3 years to achieve JLPT 1 (i.e. 6 college semesters), then how much longer would it require to reach fluency?
Click to expand...

Starting from zero, it took me less than about 2 years to reach the JLPT2 without taking lessons (well, just 4 months to get the basic grammar and vocabulary at the beginning) nor studying (just by checking words and kanji I wanted to know with my dictionary and listening to people in Japan). I don't have much time or motivation to learn more now, but if I had only that to do, I could certainly reach JLPT1 within a 6 months or 1 year.

3. How many vocab words do you suppose an educated Japanese person might know? I'm guessing something like 20,000... As far as Kanji goes, I imagine it'd be something like 3,000 so that's what I'm aiming for.
Click to expand...

I'd say the same.
 
If you live in Japan it makes a big difference, as you're constantly being bombarded by the language. TV, radio, signs, conversations of people around you, and you're forced to speak it as well. It's almost like you're spending a large amount of your waking hours studying, even if you don't sit down at a desk with a book.

If you're taking Japanese while living in your home country, you don't have any of those advantages.

Outside of Japan, JLPT L2 is roughly the level you'll be at if you get a bachelor's degree in Japanese language at a decent university.
 
Starting from zero, it took me less than about 2 years to reach the JLPT2 without taking lessons
Click to expand...

Wow, that's pretty good

Do you mean intensive course ? How many hours a week ?
Click to expand...

Err, good question..... I don't know how many hours exactly, I guess whatever pace is necessary to cover the "Genki" textbook in 2 semesters. (volume I and II)

I've assumed a college student studying Japanese sits in class for 5 hours per week, then studies for an additional 10 hours outside of class (assuming he/she is a good student and does the homework!)... A semester is something like 14 weeks, round that up to 15, for a total of 15*15 = 225 hours of study per semester = 450 hours of study per year. (Fall semester + spring semester)

Then, I figure if I study for 75 minutes per day (=1.25 hours), then in 365 days, that's 365*1.25 = 456 hours of study. So, basically every year, I'm trying to complete the equivalent of 2 college semesters of work. So maybe in 6 years or so, I'll be more or less fluent, perhaps around the level of someone who majored in Japanese in college... If I decide to move at Japan at that point, I'd probably keep up studying but probably not so seriously since I'd be speaking it every day anyways.

Thanks again!
 

Maciamo -- that's 2 years of intensive studying in Japan, right?

As m477 stated, being in Japan is like being on steroids. 2 years studying in the US is like 2 months of studying intensively in Japan. The further from Tokyo the better.
 
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