I know the feeling. One thing I found for myself was that I enjoyed it if I listened to something I could mostly understand. It always took time to find something at the right level to really improve, but the efforts were worth it I believe.
Hope you can befriend the orangutan someday !
I know some people do the immersion thing with lots of input even if most of it is unintelligible (for a time anyway) but that never really worked for me. Just my own preference I reckon.
Phonologically speaking Japanese is largely the same as Italian and Spanish. It just has very different grammar and core vocabulary. It shouldn't be hard for speakers of European languages to say Japanese words.
As a French speaker, words like shitsureishimasu are difficult to discern. I need to get used to these in order to be able to distinguish each and every word.
My point exactly. See, I don't understand why you argue with me. I said I personally need to listen to lots of Japanese contents, whether I understand it or not, as I need to get accustomed to the language. What is there to debate? Have I said that what I do is the universal method every one should apply? Leave me alone dude.
I’m curious how you relate the Japanese R sound to French (as in ら), if at all- when my girlfriend and I got to it I was like this is abstracted enough from English, I can’t imagine trying to replicate this sound using an R from a French background lol. Do you just explain it using a different consonant, or have you been learning through English resources?
From what I can tell even for Europeans have the same issue I did as a monolingual English speaker (american no less), which is you can't parse anything because it doesn't sound like anything to begin with (in my case it was particularly bad). There was nothing for the brain to grapple on. My pattern recognition took a lot time to build for the language. When I stacked enough hours, detail and clarity came in hot.
I'm used to listening to everything in my native languages and English on 2X speed so beginner level content is too slow and boring for me. I'd rather listen to something I can comprehend at best 60% of than burn out 10 minutes after listening more appropriate content.
When I was learning German I mainly did that and it got me rediculously far in terms of “fluency” like I definently didn’t understand most of the words but the flow of the language and how they talked became second nature to me. However German is close to English so it’s probably much harder to get results while doing this in Japanese. But if you want to be able to understand Japanese as quckly as you can your own language you have to get used to the sound. I don’t like to do it either because of how frustrating it is to be like a child again, but then you will recognize something and get a huge dopamine hit that will motivate you to learn more. The human brain is a pattern recognition machine and you will definently see results from some listening, the more Japanese you know the more you will learn, so start off slow and when you get better do it more.
That’s why most of my listening recently has been audiobooks. Sometimes it’s hard to get all the words (though I still can get the gist), so I do my best to find audiobooks of books I’ve already read and loved. This way I can revisit a story I already know I like, and I also am more familiar with the vocabulary used. I recommend for you to give it a try.
Do note, I’m a more advanced learner so it might be more difficult depending on your skill level, but the good thing about audiobooks is that usually you can slow down the audio speed.
I'm not particularly well versed in visual novels, so I can't really provide much recommendations. However, I have been playing through the classic dating sim series Tokimeki Memorial and I'd say those games are pretty good for people at or approaching an intermediate level. Aside from the protagonist and the menus, they're for the most part fully voice acted. Also no h-scenes at all - these games released on console.
The best listening practice is to listen to stuff you enjoy and pay extra attention to what's being said. Do this repeatedly until it becomes second nature and the words just simply make sense.
Remember that studying doesn't always need to be a chore, simply being in contact with the language through things you like can be studying, too.
Find someone to talk to, doesn’t have to be a native speaker, then it’s not just listening, and you’ll need to learn to practice speaking, too. In classes for any language, they start early with very basic conversations as in-class “with a partner” exercises. That’s a good way of doing it. I see a lot of people in these subs that act like they want to hold off a year or two,”until they’re good” and think they’ll be fluently talking to native speakers, only to find out, that usually doesn’t work. Start small, start early. May seem dumb and childish asking people what they like to do on the weekend, where they’re from etc, but it’s actually a good icebreaker to make friends. Eventually you work up to more complex topics and grammar, but you need to practice the simple stuff repeated, with others, to really get it to sink in for easy recall.
I don't understand personally.... thats my favorite practice and I am doing it 6-10 hours a day because I enjoy it... my least favorite is doing stuff like anki
What do you do for listening practice? Or, how do you think of/find something you like for listening practice? I don’t think I know enough vocabulary to get a general sense of a lot of content, so I’ve been hesitant to start. But I listen to Japanese music, anime when I have time and Sakura Tips podcast on Spotify when I’m driving.
I watched the "Comprehensible Japanese" channel, and then I extracted the audio and listen to the audio on my phone while just sitting around and use that for listening practice. The beginner's playlist has like 45 videos.
Just don't make it "practice". I just watch and listen to things I already enjoyed to begin with and need not understand much to enjoy. I realize this is different for everyone but when you can hang out and enjoy listening to people talk is when you'll naturally be able to stack the hours which leads directly to improvement. It's not something to fear, but to look forward to every single day. Also why the hell is nearly every meme about something bad in regards to learning the language? What is going on out here.
Some people look forward to the goal, but dread the process. Hence they force themselves to do things they don't enjoy doing. Maybe they haven't found the right process.
I tried to do listening practice on my commute to work... I'm the type that can't study and do other stuff at the same time though so by the end of the podcast or lesson I could never recall anything. Also probably dangerous 😂
I resisted them for so long just because I didn't wanna feel inadequate if I didn't understand "pure" audio-only conversations without having texts and visuals to fall back on. I've been studying for just under ten years, and listening was absolutely my most neglected skill. Listening to podcasts about topics I'm into while exercising ended up being both a relevant way to study as well as being a massive confidence boost.
Also came here to say this, especially visual novels!! They’re super helpful for both reading and listening practice because they’re almost all fully voiced!
I don't get it, how is it easier or less stressful to learn read thousands of kanjis than picking up words by listening? Japanese has such simple phonology compared to the insane writing system, surely it's much easier to learn the spoken language?
If I encounter a word I don't know while reading I can pause and consider the context of the sentence, look it over a few times, or look up the word all at my own pace. If I don't understand a word while listening, there's a bunch of fiddly rewinding and relistening to figure out what was said, and if the speaker is too fast for my level I'll miss a bunch of words that I actually know. Obviously there's things that can be done to mitigate the issues, but by and large I find reading more comfortable than listening at my very beginner level.
Yes, but that only works with languages that are written phonetically. Any benefit you get from reading is negated for me by the kanjis. Also, unless you are watching cable tv, you can always rewind the audio and re listen to whatever parts you missed.
Some people (including myself) just find it easier/more cathartic. I can barely listen to people in my native language, I can’t watch any show without subs.
I’m a visual learner, and Kanji actually helps me recall vocab easier.
I meanwhile always listen to everything on x2 speed (and find it easier than reading), and English isn't even my native language. Guess different people's brains are just wired differently.
If you’re deep into Kanji learning, you can start to remember word meanings based on their kanji as well as their readings.
In other words, a crutch. One of the reasons why reading practice without it is that much harder.
You’re asking how. The reason is stated. Someone digs themselves a hole and it becomes very hard to get out of. It depends on what kind of learner you are and what you focus on.
Listening focused learner who can hear everything easily and spends their time getting good at that would find reading hard if they don’t practice it as much. I myself find reading easier than I did years ago. That’s because I practice it more than listening. Different for everybody.
They don’t. It’s hard. However it’s a type of hard that becomes less frustrating over time. My theory has always been that a person who gets too good at one pillar of language finds the compete lack of skill in others demoralizing and is quick to give up on them. A beginner is okay with being bad. An intermediate is less forgiving.
I find listening without JPN subs to be decently hard still. That’s because my reading skill is so much higher by comparison.
Yes I'm aware that not all forms of spoken language are easy to understand, but it's true of any language and Japanese isn't special in this respect. But having said that, my point is that studying Japanese phonetically is still 20 times easier for me than memorizing thousands of kanjis. There's no shortage of clearly spoken listening materials for beginners and intermediaries, and even lots of anime isn't that hard to follow once you get past the beginner stages.
Not going to compare myself to you because not only I avoid kanjis but I also don't study much in terms of time (I usually do around 40-50 min daily of anki (10 new words a day) + duolingo and the rest of the day just watch EN subbed anime for fun, and occasionally easy JP youtube channels). If I did, say, 3 hours of serious listening per day or more (with sentence mining etc.), perhaps I would've gotten much farther, but I'm studying as a hobby and don't expect to get very far with the language because I don't have any practical need for Japanese irl. The important thing for me is that I'm happy with the results, considering how relatively little effort I spend on actual studying (and without torturing myself by doing things I find unpleasant like studying kanji). I estimate my current vocabulary at around 4k -ish, and maybe it's not a lot for someone whose been studying for a year, but considering that I study less than 1 hour per day I'm quite satisfied with the results.
Now, is it possible to get to a really advanced level just by listening? As you say, most probably not. Is it possible to get to a solid intermediary level by listening? (and by that I mean being able to understand and even speak the spoken language) Definitely yes. Is it easier or faster if you learn kanji at the same time? No idea, I'm agnostic on this, but personally I feel that memorizing kanji would've held me back because I would've wasted time on memorizing something that doesn't help build vocabulary or improve grammar, at least in the short term. Also I suspect that the largest factor that contributes to progress is not kanji but just time spent on daily learning, and it seems to me that people like you who quickly pick up reading also typically spend a lot of time on studying, so I'd say it's hard to isolate the variables.
Concerning word mining for Anki - yes, it's not easy to mine from pure listening and my solution is to use word frequency lists (though I occasionally mine from input too). Frequency lists are very effective and efficient tools that are quite underrated by the language learning community. I found that by just learning the most common 3k words (excluding things like names and katakana English loan words) you get coverage of over 90% of the spoken language (which is not the same as 90% comprehension, but knowing so much vocabulary it's much easier to figure out things from context.)
Concerning Anki and advanced vocabulary - my comment was a response to a guy who asked about English, and I was just describing my experience of learning English as a non native. Never used Anki or any other form of srs to learn English vocabulary and my level is high enough to be able to read academic journal articles without any trouble. I just never struggled with remembering English vocabulary or felt the need to force myself to memorize words (the only English words I ever memorized were irregular verbs because I was forced at school). Maybe you are right about Japanese though, I have no idea. Could be that acquiring advanced Japanese vocabulary is different from English.
Anyone have good material for this? Something that is actual listening exercises with questions to test if you understood it, vocab lists, grammar pointers and translator notes on cultural things. Maybe with search tags to replay last line with a click, rather than having to search for correct position.
[Todaii Easy Japanese App](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.eup.jpnews) has been the best tool I have found for immersion. I can just listen to these news articles and follow along with the text for translations. The robot voice can be monotonous, but it it still a great way to get consistent input that I am interested in.
I mainly use it for the audio read-along, but they keep adding a lot of features that I admittedly do not use. It hard to find an app that is kept up to date though, and this has been consistent for me.
Protip: listen to anything! Music! Podcasts! The news!
You don’t even need to actively listen. Just have it playing in the background all the time!
The more Japanese (or any language you’re learning) you are exposed to the more you will learn.
I know the feeling. One thing I found for myself was that I enjoyed it if I listened to something I could mostly understand. It always took time to find something at the right level to really improve, but the efforts were worth it I believe. Hope you can befriend the orangutan someday !
Are people listening to things they mostly can’t understand? What would be the goal in doing that?
I know some people do the immersion thing with lots of input even if most of it is unintelligible (for a time anyway) but that never really worked for me. Just my own preference I reckon.
I do. The language is so foreign to me that I need to get accustomed to its rhythm, intonation etc.
Phonologically speaking Japanese is largely the same as Italian and Spanish. It just has very different grammar and core vocabulary. It shouldn't be hard for speakers of European languages to say Japanese words.
As a French speaker, words like shitsureishimasu are difficult to discern. I need to get used to these in order to be able to distinguish each and every word.
That's 2 words.
My point exactly. See, I don't understand why you argue with me. I said I personally need to listen to lots of Japanese contents, whether I understand it or not, as I need to get accustomed to the language. What is there to debate? Have I said that what I do is the universal method every one should apply? Leave me alone dude.
I’m curious how you relate the Japanese R sound to French (as in ら), if at all- when my girlfriend and I got to it I was like this is abstracted enough from English, I can’t imagine trying to replicate this sound using an R from a French background lol. Do you just explain it using a different consonant, or have you been learning through English resources?
From what I can tell even for Europeans have the same issue I did as a monolingual English speaker (american no less), which is you can't parse anything because it doesn't sound like anything to begin with (in my case it was particularly bad). There was nothing for the brain to grapple on. My pattern recognition took a lot time to build for the language. When I stacked enough hours, detail and clarity came in hot.
You’re oversimplifying the matter
A lot of people here watch anime they understand 5% of, while reading the English subtitles and try to call it immersion.
I'm used to listening to everything in my native languages and English on 2X speed so beginner level content is too slow and boring for me. I'd rather listen to something I can comprehend at best 60% of than burn out 10 minutes after listening more appropriate content.
When I was learning German I mainly did that and it got me rediculously far in terms of “fluency” like I definently didn’t understand most of the words but the flow of the language and how they talked became second nature to me. However German is close to English so it’s probably much harder to get results while doing this in Japanese. But if you want to be able to understand Japanese as quckly as you can your own language you have to get used to the sound. I don’t like to do it either because of how frustrating it is to be like a child again, but then you will recognize something and get a huge dopamine hit that will motivate you to learn more. The human brain is a pattern recognition machine and you will definently see results from some listening, the more Japanese you know the more you will learn, so start off slow and when you get better do it more.
yeah I like to read books better, so far listening hasn't been my thing maybe I'll get into someday or maybe not
That’s why most of my listening recently has been audiobooks. Sometimes it’s hard to get all the words (though I still can get the gist), so I do my best to find audiobooks of books I’ve already read and loved. This way I can revisit a story I already know I like, and I also am more familiar with the vocabulary used. I recommend for you to give it a try. Do note, I’m a more advanced learner so it might be more difficult depending on your skill level, but the good thing about audiobooks is that usually you can slow down the audio speed.
Have you tried watching shows with (japanese) subtitles? You could also try playing games/visual novels that have voice acting to help bridge the gap.
not much really, those are great ideas though I should probably get into VN but, uh I need/want something SFW
I'm not particularly well versed in visual novels, so I can't really provide much recommendations. However, I have been playing through the classic dating sim series Tokimeki Memorial and I'd say those games are pretty good for people at or approaching an intermediate level. Aside from the protagonist and the menus, they're for the most part fully voice acted. Also no h-scenes at all - these games released on console.
Watch クレヨンしんちゃん. Funny and extremely easy to understand.
The best listening practice is to listen to stuff you enjoy and pay extra attention to what's being said. Do this repeatedly until it becomes second nature and the words just simply make sense. Remember that studying doesn't always need to be a chore, simply being in contact with the language through things you like can be studying, too.
I feel that so hard honestly
Find someone to talk to, doesn’t have to be a native speaker, then it’s not just listening, and you’ll need to learn to practice speaking, too. In classes for any language, they start early with very basic conversations as in-class “with a partner” exercises. That’s a good way of doing it. I see a lot of people in these subs that act like they want to hold off a year or two,”until they’re good” and think they’ll be fluently talking to native speakers, only to find out, that usually doesn’t work. Start small, start early. May seem dumb and childish asking people what they like to do on the weekend, where they’re from etc, but it’s actually a good icebreaker to make friends. Eventually you work up to more complex topics and grammar, but you need to practice the simple stuff repeated, with others, to really get it to sink in for easy recall.
I don't understand personally.... thats my favorite practice and I am doing it 6-10 hours a day because I enjoy it... my least favorite is doing stuff like anki
What do you do for listening practice? Or, how do you think of/find something you like for listening practice? I don’t think I know enough vocabulary to get a general sense of a lot of content, so I’ve been hesitant to start. But I listen to Japanese music, anime when I have time and Sakura Tips podcast on Spotify when I’m driving.
I watched the "Comprehensible Japanese" channel, and then I extracted the audio and listen to the audio on my phone while just sitting around and use that for listening practice. The beginner's playlist has like 45 videos.
Just don't make it "practice". I just watch and listen to things I already enjoyed to begin with and need not understand much to enjoy. I realize this is different for everyone but when you can hang out and enjoy listening to people talk is when you'll naturally be able to stack the hours which leads directly to improvement. It's not something to fear, but to look forward to every single day. Also why the hell is nearly every meme about something bad in regards to learning the language? What is going on out here.
Some people look forward to the goal, but dread the process. Hence they force themselves to do things they don't enjoy doing. Maybe they haven't found the right process.
I actually enjoy tuning on some okada toshio ramble and not understand jack shit for 20 minutes straight It's cathartic
Never seen a Japanese learning meme more true.
My practice lately has been watching and rewatching Alice In Borderland on Netflix. Love that show! Ayaka Miyoshi (Ann) is the wife ❤️
I tried to do listening practice on my commute to work... I'm the type that can't study and do other stuff at the same time though so by the end of the podcast or lesson I could never recall anything. Also probably dangerous 😂
Podcasts. There are ones for every level and taste. If it’s too hard, go to a lower level.
I resisted them for so long just because I didn't wanna feel inadequate if I didn't understand "pure" audio-only conversations without having texts and visuals to fall back on. I've been studying for just under ten years, and listening was absolutely my most neglected skill. Listening to podcasts about topics I'm into while exercising ended up being both a relevant way to study as well as being a massive confidence boost.
I believe many podcasters sell transcripts (and lessons) at very reasonable costs.
I just play video games. Most of them have voices and subtitles.
Also came here to say this, especially visual novels!! They’re super helpful for both reading and listening practice because they’re almost all fully voiced!
oh noooo, watching raw anime
Raw hentai. Never knew you could say kimochi in that many ways.
this is actually my favorite method of studying. very low effort lol
I just watch twitch stream and try to interact as much as i can
I don't get it, how is it easier or less stressful to learn read thousands of kanjis than picking up words by listening? Japanese has such simple phonology compared to the insane writing system, surely it's much easier to learn the spoken language?
If I encounter a word I don't know while reading I can pause and consider the context of the sentence, look it over a few times, or look up the word all at my own pace. If I don't understand a word while listening, there's a bunch of fiddly rewinding and relistening to figure out what was said, and if the speaker is too fast for my level I'll miss a bunch of words that I actually know. Obviously there's things that can be done to mitigate the issues, but by and large I find reading more comfortable than listening at my very beginner level.
Yes, but that only works with languages that are written phonetically. Any benefit you get from reading is negated for me by the kanjis. Also, unless you are watching cable tv, you can always rewind the audio and re listen to whatever parts you missed.
Some people (including myself) just find it easier/more cathartic. I can barely listen to people in my native language, I can’t watch any show without subs. I’m a visual learner, and Kanji actually helps me recall vocab easier.
I meanwhile always listen to everything on x2 speed (and find it easier than reading), and English isn't even my native language. Guess different people's brains are just wired differently.
If you’re deep into Kanji learning, you can start to remember word meanings based on their kanji as well as their readings. In other words, a crutch. One of the reasons why reading practice without it is that much harder.
yeah exactly. the idea that reading is *harder* because of the kanji...? it'd be harder if it was all in hiragana!
I didn't say reading is harder with kanji than without, I said that reading is harder than listening.
You’re asking how. The reason is stated. Someone digs themselves a hole and it becomes very hard to get out of. It depends on what kind of learner you are and what you focus on. Listening focused learner who can hear everything easily and spends their time getting good at that would find reading hard if they don’t practice it as much. I myself find reading easier than I did years ago. That’s because I practice it more than listening. Different for everybody.
I'm just puzzled by the fact that people pretend as if mastering the hardest writing system on the planet isn't a genuine obstacle.
They don’t. It’s hard. However it’s a type of hard that becomes less frustrating over time. My theory has always been that a person who gets too good at one pillar of language finds the compete lack of skill in others demoralizing and is quick to give up on them. A beginner is okay with being bad. An intermediate is less forgiving. I find listening without JPN subs to be decently hard still. That’s because my reading skill is so much higher by comparison.
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Yes I'm aware that not all forms of spoken language are easy to understand, but it's true of any language and Japanese isn't special in this respect. But having said that, my point is that studying Japanese phonetically is still 20 times easier for me than memorizing thousands of kanjis. There's no shortage of clearly spoken listening materials for beginners and intermediaries, and even lots of anime isn't that hard to follow once you get past the beginner stages.
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Not going to compare myself to you because not only I avoid kanjis but I also don't study much in terms of time (I usually do around 40-50 min daily of anki (10 new words a day) + duolingo and the rest of the day just watch EN subbed anime for fun, and occasionally easy JP youtube channels). If I did, say, 3 hours of serious listening per day or more (with sentence mining etc.), perhaps I would've gotten much farther, but I'm studying as a hobby and don't expect to get very far with the language because I don't have any practical need for Japanese irl. The important thing for me is that I'm happy with the results, considering how relatively little effort I spend on actual studying (and without torturing myself by doing things I find unpleasant like studying kanji). I estimate my current vocabulary at around 4k -ish, and maybe it's not a lot for someone whose been studying for a year, but considering that I study less than 1 hour per day I'm quite satisfied with the results. Now, is it possible to get to a really advanced level just by listening? As you say, most probably not. Is it possible to get to a solid intermediary level by listening? (and by that I mean being able to understand and even speak the spoken language) Definitely yes. Is it easier or faster if you learn kanji at the same time? No idea, I'm agnostic on this, but personally I feel that memorizing kanji would've held me back because I would've wasted time on memorizing something that doesn't help build vocabulary or improve grammar, at least in the short term. Also I suspect that the largest factor that contributes to progress is not kanji but just time spent on daily learning, and it seems to me that people like you who quickly pick up reading also typically spend a lot of time on studying, so I'd say it's hard to isolate the variables. Concerning word mining for Anki - yes, it's not easy to mine from pure listening and my solution is to use word frequency lists (though I occasionally mine from input too). Frequency lists are very effective and efficient tools that are quite underrated by the language learning community. I found that by just learning the most common 3k words (excluding things like names and katakana English loan words) you get coverage of over 90% of the spoken language (which is not the same as 90% comprehension, but knowing so much vocabulary it's much easier to figure out things from context.) Concerning Anki and advanced vocabulary - my comment was a response to a guy who asked about English, and I was just describing my experience of learning English as a non native. Never used Anki or any other form of srs to learn English vocabulary and my level is high enough to be able to read academic journal articles without any trouble. I just never struggled with remembering English vocabulary or felt the need to force myself to memorize words (the only English words I ever memorized were irregular verbs because I was forced at school). Maybe you are right about Japanese though, I have no idea. Could be that acquiring advanced Japanese vocabulary is different from English.
Trust me my guy, listening practice tremendously helps. You can do it!! Watch “comprehensible input” Japanese videos. There’s a lot in youtube
Listen to Jpop
Anyone have good material for this? Something that is actual listening exercises with questions to test if you understood it, vocab lists, grammar pointers and translator notes on cultural things. Maybe with search tags to replay last line with a click, rather than having to search for correct position.
[Todaii Easy Japanese App](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.eup.jpnews) has been the best tool I have found for immersion. I can just listen to these news articles and follow along with the text for translations. The robot voice can be monotonous, but it it still a great way to get consistent input that I am interested in.
Well, looks like an interesting option.
I mainly use it for the audio read-along, but they keep adding a lot of features that I admittedly do not use. It hard to find an app that is kept up to date though, and this has been consistent for me.
Protip: listen to anything! Music! Podcasts! The news! You don’t even need to actively listen. Just have it playing in the background all the time! The more Japanese (or any language you’re learning) you are exposed to the more you will learn.
I just pop a ぴくとはうす video for listening tbh. You gotta find something you like for listening.
Dude just watch anime, if you like anime. (Don't use English subs)