Anyone doing / did AJATT?

True. However as adults we have the benefit of experience and context that speeds up the process. The problem with AJATT is that if you have a “normal life” with responsibilities and stuff it’s hard to fit it into that. I know it’s only anecdotal but I used immersion to learn Spanish. There’s an “incubation period” where nothing’s happening and suddenly it just explodes and you understand almost everything.

Well, one of the reasons it takes so long is because for most of that “silent” period they’re just training their ears to only pick up the sounds that are going to be necessary. We can’t afford to discard the sounds of our native language, so we’re always going to be “cursed” with our original sound inventory.

So we start with the sounds we already know and “save some time.”

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That’s a good point. We’re lucky that Japanese isn’t that phonetically challenging. Apart from the weird L/R and pitch accent it’s pretty straightforward.

True, people generally have no issue producing the Japanese sounds that are required, but they often unthinkingly fall back on the sounds that exist in their language, but not in Japanese, in specific scenarios. They may not even be able to hear that they did it if you ask them.

And yeah, I agree that pitch accent is straightforward in theory. But again, I think some people have a bigger issue with not stressing than they have an issue with adding pitch. It’s just a habit we have in our speech in English.

Yeah, we all do that. I don’t worry about it too much. Out of the hordes of people I’ve spoken to who speak English as a second language only one person managed to fool my ears. There will always be something that gives the game away. As long as you’re not speaking the target language in your own accent you should be fine.

I’ve picked up elements from AJATT as well. The MP3 player with the audio playing while commuting or doing shores at home. Immersion with shows and no english or L1 subs.

I’m not able to do that many hours though, I find the material I use for immersion has to be very particular for me to be able to cope with the “not understanding” part. Either something I’ve already watched with subs before (for the MP3 player immersion) or something I’m extremely familiarized (shows I know almost by heart) or have a fairly simple plot (Terrace House :sweat_smile: ) for the series binging part.

Anyway, I think, eventually the whole concept of AJATT gets mixed with the immersion you’re later able to do once the understanding part gets better, so the rest of the method and how everything must be striving to reach a supposed japanese “perfection” following the “most effective path” probably just helps with the current image of been a radical method, rather than a logical continuation to a diversity of ways to get up to a point… so called fluency.

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I normally hate shows like this but for some reason I love this!

I would say fluency is simply understanding most things most of the time and being able to express any concept at least in a simple way without loads of umms and eehs. The most important part of AJATT is constant exposure. Hearing and seeing WK items in “the wild” has taken care of quite a few leeches I had.

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I know!! It beats me why I like it so much. :sweat_smile:

Maybe because I’m going through the 7 season from Boys & Girls Next door and so far everyone has left on their own when the times was right. Not shamelessly stealing camera time, without making any scene, just good people behaving like normal human beings.
Funny that this is what it is a rare encounter nowdays :smile:

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