Today, I thought I’d start writing about my Japanese studies: what I’ve done, what’s been good, what’s been bad, and what I need to do in the future.
I first came to Japan a little more than 3 years ago. When I arrived, I knew next to no Japanese. My knowledge was limited to a few greetings and a vague familiarity with the two phonetic scripts, hiragana and katakana. Now I am approximately at the level of the JLPT 2kyuu. I took the test earlier this month and either barely passed or barely failed, but however the test turns out, my level is in the ballpark.
When I started studying Japanese, I didn’t really know how to study. Looking back now, I think my first two years here were a wasted opportunity. My studying was inefficient and largely ineffective, so this first post isn’t a place to look for good advice, but rather a cautionary tale of what not to do.
One of the first mistakes I made was to buy the romaji version of the textbook Minna no Nihongo. One of the teachers at the free Japanese class in town recommended it because I could barely read the hiragana version. However, as anyone who seriously studies Japanese will tell you, romaji is nothing but a hindrance to learning Japanese. It took me only a week to realize I had bought a totally useless book. Although I wasted 2000 yen, I learned a good lesson — you just have to tough it out with real Japanese. Hiragana will take care of itself. For most people, katakana takes a while longer since the script appears relatively infrequently, but that too will come in time.
Which brings me to the next obstacle in learning Japanese — kanji. Once I got my hands on a proper version of Minna no Nihongo, I began the exercise in frustration that is learning kanji.
Simple kanji can be learned easily enough.
口 mouth (Hey it looks like a mouth!)
山 mountain (Hey, it looks like a mountain!)
However, one very quickly bumps up against two major problems: 1) Simple kanji with multiple readings. 2) Basic words with difficult kanji.
The first point can be illustrated by the character 下 which has a general meaning of “down”. If you were learning English, the word would take very little time and effort — only 4 letters. fairly easy pronunciation, and a simple meaning. In Japanese, 下 confronts you with a multitude of readings: した げ さがる しも さげる, among others. Now, I think this is all very basic, but at the time it was overwhelming. Almost every character, no matter how simple, seemed to come with with a multitude of readings. For example, consider “up, down, left, right” 上・下・左・右, words a beginning student would surely want to learn. I can think of 15 readings for these characters off the top of my head うえ・じょう・かみ・あげる・あがる・のぼる・した・しも・さがる・さげる・おりる・みぎ・ゆう・ひだり・さ. For a beginning student, I think it is very difficult to sort through all this to figure out what is important.
A second problem is that simple concepts often have difficult kanji. The first chapter of Minna no Nihongo teaches “How old are you?” 何歳ですか. It is easy to learn how to say it なんさいですか/nan sai desu ka, but the character 歳 is pretty daunting for a first chapter also covering such topics as “This is a pen” and “The dog is brown”. I can’t count how many times I wrote 歳 trying to remember it. Eventually, I got to where I could recognize the character, but I could never remember how to write it for very long. That modest progress for only one character came as the result of an unreasonably large amount of effort.
Starting out, different aspects of Japanese — reading, writing, speaking, listening — competed for my time and attention. If I focused exclusively on speaking, I’d remain unable to read anything, even if I made progress with vocabulary and grammar. So I ended up working on reading and writing as well, but that slowed my acquisition of new language to a crawl.
So, overall, it was a pretty rough start.
I know how you feel, as in many ways I also had a little bit of a rough start. US College Japanese is very good, but it lacks two important aspects I needed to boost my level to 2 kyuu. One of which you had from the start thankfully, immersion. My first few years of study was in classrooms at UT, and to be honest the chances to speak real Japanese conversation was quite low. Plus even though I had classes every day each week, one hour of a combined vocabulary, grammar, and kanji lesson was both daunting and limiting.
That all changed for me when I went to Sophia in Tokyo. When I arrived my Japanese was at the basic conversation level. The whole year I spent completely focused on my studies, taking intensive courses in Japanese. 5 hours a day, including a kanji only class which I think should be mandatory in all Japanese curriculums in America. Plus actually being immersed in the language, using it everyday, did more for my retaining vocabulary, kanji, and grammar than any bit of studying did. Just seeing the kanjis in everyday life was enough to help me retain their meanings and sayings and writings. I still to this day wish I could’ve stayed at Sophia. Another year or 2 of intensive studying there would’ve gotten me to 1 kyuu I believe. The program was that good.
One of the best rewards, and gages of my Japanese ability I can think of was actually from this past Monday night, when I went out with some old friends from Nova. They had never heard me speak Japanese and had been waiting for this day. I spent the entire night speaking it, and I was told quite frankly it was really high level, few or no mistakes, and I had amazing pronunciation and intonation. And it wasn’t the “あなたの日本語は上手ですね！、” comment you hear always, it was a real compliment. They truly were amazed.
[...] my first post about learning Japanese, I described some of the problems I encountered as a new student of Japanese, one of the main [...]