Thank you so much! The continued support, through Japanese or other stuff, has meant a lot. On the time side, I can guarantee I just outright have more time to throw at this than you do, haha. Your consistency is still great. Beyond that, with how much I enjoy art/media of all kinds, itās really easy for me to transition my interests into things I just do in Japanese. Thatāll be a lot better when I can more comfortably handle movies finally; thatās still the white whale.
Japanese dropout rate being what I imagine it must be, no doubt a lot of people have disappeared as you say. Itād be nice to give back more when the chances arise ā Iāve gotten a lot of help along the way here. Not sure where Iād be without it a few times when I really needed it. Absolute beginner club people might remember, not that long ago, when I was hitting a bit of despair still trying to figure out how reading is supposed to work, haha.
Big congratulations! I think if you managed to get this far after 1 year, thatās really impressive. It personally took me around 2 years, but Iām still not confident enough I would pass the N2, because of the sheer amount of grammar and the trickiness of the listening sections. But ćććććŖć and if I fail in July, I can try in December. I guess .
I think compared to news articles, those reading comprehension exercises are miles more interesting . However, incidentally reading news articles does help.
I think you can do it if you have no problems with the listening section on N2. The dialogue lines in Judgment 2 are surprisingly clear.
I honestly think interacting with natives is less difficult than it may seem. I recently started going to a local (read: several stops by å°äøé from my place) shop and talking to natives and on a day-to-day basis they use really simple language. Itās the JLPTs that make it seem like itās a massive hustle .
Oh, I missed this while I wasnāt really around the forums the last week
Congrats on making it to one year! I have to admit, seeing your posts and you commenting on my study log has been a great motivator for myself, especially since we started around a similar time. Hope to see you continue to stick around
Thank you! Good luck!!! Iāll be hoping for you. Seems Iām kind of on the verge of it and a little luck in either direction would tip me in or out right now, but Iām happy to be right here at the edge all the same. Interesting that the listening is the concern because in total that somehow was the section I did best on. Though I did fail almost every part of that first mini section (which felt like the trick question zone lol) but I did really well on the rest.
Yeah you know, I might agree there, but as you can probably tell I havenāt been dipping into that stuff at all. I briefly read some NHK Easy when I was transitioning to reading real stuff but at the time it was a barrage of Olypmics or depression. I assume now itās exclusively depression
When I really think about it, there were just a ton of words I didnāt know in a lot of those JLPT essays. Too many to work around often. But again, I think that reflects that a ton of my SRS is dumb slang and just, you know, domains that donāt overlap with news/business style stuff.
Great to hear! Iāve been getting the impression so far from watching the playthrough of the first (which Iām still at!) that yeah, the speaking is surprisingly light on tricky slang or anything that Iāve caught. My problem is just vocab at times, which I guess will be true for agesā¦ but itās not going to be a convenient game to look things up in and I feel like where I am might require a few too many lookups, or too much ambiguity, to not drag the experience down. All the same, Iām really itching to play itā¦ weāll see!
Oh, sounds really fun! Thatās great for you that you can do it. Unfortunately I have no one I know of near me, and demographics of my area support that pretty strongly. At this point I think itās less worrying about understanding them (though I do have some social anxiety thatāll pile on top of the whole undertaking) and more that my output practice is literally zero so Iām going to have to work up confidence in that. But I think the way my priorities lie, I donāt want to put in the time it needs for me to feel comfortable (ie like itās not going to cause me more self consciousness and anxiety than benefit) just yet when weighed against more input.
Thank you so much! I know you got kind of busy, but you are definitely someone whose success Iām really rooting for here, too.
As always, I follow up positivity with a slump and frustration, heh. Have never rapidly oscillated my feelings towards doing something so much.
Iām just so, so aggravated with how many readings kanji have. Iām sure everyone can relate to that but Wanikani REALLY simplifies a lot of them, brand new readings for kanji I semi learned here come up all the time. But the worst is just that feeling that my knowledge is outright decaying by learning more. Like, everything is just forming a big congealed slop in my head because as I keep learning more exceptions, itās more opportunities to apply them in the wrong place.
Iāll keep it short, just needed a quick bit of venting. Reviews have been harder recently, reading/listening feels harder, so it goes. Still hanging in there but itās been a while since my frustration was directed towards the language as much as it is now and I donāt like it.
Not sure if it helps any, but Iāve been in a similar slump some time ago and the short answer is: donāt worry .
The more items you have in the SRS churn and the more you learn, the more youāll be getting wrong, because your vocabulary is in a constant growth phase. You can clip it by not adding new items and after a couple of weeks youāll start plateauing and forgetting less and less until you reach a steady state.
But yes, kanji readings blending together is totally a thing and I wouldnāt worry about it too much. If you see a word often enough, eventually it will stay in your memory for good.
Well, I guess itās time. So Iāve been having more health problems ( ) which ended up kind of wrecking my mood and left me kinda depressed feeling and, after doing nothing for a bit yesterday evening/night, really wanting to shake SOMETHING up. So, I went ahead and got Lost Judgment. Turns out itās about half off right now! I intended to just test it and felt like Iād probably end up finding it too much of a pain and put it aside for a while, as I have quite a few things, and Iām not going to say that wonāt happen yet.
But what I played last night was alright! So far the most annoying stuff, as it has often been when I try games, are just the walls of text for tutorials. Iām making some effort at reading them, but also somewhat hoping there arenāt any core mechanics too different from the first game, heh. Looking forward to when these stop. I also worry a little about the ability upgrade tree, or even the text when accepting side quests if itās like it was in the first, but weāll see! I made a decent effort at reading them, but still came across a few too many unknown words.
The cutscenes were largely fine though? A very nice thing I learned is I can actually pause them at any time and pull up the log, so when lookups are necessary, itās friendly enough (just no furigana so I have to trust my knowledge of readings or try to listen for the sounds really well). So far Iāve followed everything I need to! Had to stop to look a few things up because often a whole conversation would revolve around the word I donāt know, then I stop to look it up and itās like a term for stores that illegally overcharge people, or a slang for sex work or something. Canāt beat myself up too much for not knowing those, heh. I did fail to take one of the pictures of someone because I couldnāt read the requirements fast enough before he left what he was doing, oops. Hopefully I can keep things at a tolerable balance of not looking up too much but still following.
Oh hey, Iāve been on the forums for 1 year today too. Neat.
Gotta say, Iām in my biggest slump. Funny how predictably that goes back and forth every week or two heh. This isā¦ different though.
Iāve posted enough in the complaint threads and whatnot about my health issues, quite heavily suspect some sort of immune disease, but things have to really warrant trips for healthcare when youāre in America. Eventually, Iāve been bothered enough that it did, and as I recently posted there ā I got some blood tests, not really what I wanted cause the guy wanted to insist on running the basic ones separately first before immune screening. Fine, whatever, I guess. But uhh, mentioning that this problem was possibly caused or exacerbated by having covid more than a year and a half ago was met with him immediately trying to tell me I should take Ivermectin. You know, the drug that people latched onto as the cure āthey donāt want you to know about.ā The drug recommended against by the FDA, the WHO, and with meta-analyses showing that it has no benefit in the treatment of covid. I also thought even among the people wild about it it was a thing you take when you have covid and not randomly a year and a half later. Soā¦ I clearly need a new doctor lol. If I can find the enthusiasm (and money) to keep going after this experience.
But you know, Iāve managed to keep up with Japanese through so much of this. Quite literally did my reviews right after returning from the hospital once, Iāve done a lot of reading while fighting off migraines and distractions from body tingling and aches and on and on. After this last insult though, I dunno, something kinda broke inside me suddenly and I very much could not face Anki at all that day. I finally, through rushing them as much as I could, caught up on the ~300 anki reviews that left me with yesterday, and Iām kind of rolling ahead in absolute minimum maintenance mode right now. Just donāt have the energy to do it.
And then I think about how itās going and I mean, relative to how hard Japanese is, Iām doing well. What do I think about it though? Sometimes I think Iām enjoying it. Other times now I look around at not having a bunch of hours eaten up between reviews, daily reading, etc and just like to be able to exist a bit more freely. I think about how even when my comprehension is kinda sorta ok enough at some things, the moments people arenāt clear enough or the 1000s of specific terms I canāt expect to know for ages crop up. I think about how even the people who have been doing this for years and years who I look up to as so much better still seem to have loads of material out there they canāt really follow or just skate by like āyeah I got enough of it more or less, kinda.ā And I just step back and wonder when I mostly am just consuming media (realistically Iām not going to be in situations to talk to Japanese people outside of making efforts to go out and find them online, so thatās been very secondary), if Iām truly getting enough benefit when I see how easy it is to turn on those English subtitles and actually understand everything. Probably just depressed but decision making is hard, heh.
As almost some sort of sign, a fan patch was released literally today for the expanded Japanese-only version of Summer Pockets Iāve been reading, heh. It was never really about just having access to totally non-English things, but itās a sign of how vanishingly small non-English stuff is becoming.
As I said, itās all very sudden, so who knows exactly where my real feelings lie. Maybe Iāll get back into it soon. But even simple review maintenance is becoming a drag and I do have myself a little paralyzed about just how worth it it is to me.
Of course, I was just attempting to start that VN club so impeccable timing for me to start questioning the whole thing lol. Bit obnoxious
Sorry to hear youāre going through a tough time at the moment
If youāre not feeling up to doing study, itās probably best that you donāt force yourself. You can always come back to studying at a later time if you feel up to it again
For me, the way I see it is that even in English - my native language - thereās material like this. Where I read it and question whether or not that was even English. This will obviously be much more complex material than the equivalent situation in Japanese (at my current level), but the goal in learning is to raise that threshold as much as possible until youāre at a place where you can engage with what you want to engage with comfortably. An example is when I read the book Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, the prose felt quite dense and I did struggle at points to keep track of what some sentences were saying without rereading. It was probably the most Iāve had to crack out a dictionary in my English reading in a long time, and I often did just kind of skate by on getting the gist. The point is that thereās always going to be some nuance lost, but the same is true of your native language - only the author can ever truly know the full meaning they intended to convey, the reader just has to construct a version from the words they read
The temptations of English subtitles are alluring to be sure, but Iāve found personally now that I start getting annoyed if I try looking at an English subtitle and theyāve simplified some nuance thatās present in the Japanese (assuming I understand it). For me personally it was never about the exclusive content, since if Iām interested in it the chances are someone else is and thereāll be some way of experiencing it at least. Rather, itās about being able to engage with works without the extra layer of interpretation that translations are filtered through
These are just my thoughts, no idea if theyāre of any help to you - as I say if youāre not feeling it then maybe itās worth taking a break. You donāt need to devote yourself 100% to learning Japanese if you donāt want to - some learning resources like to give the impression youāll never make it anywhere if you donāt, but really youāll just get there a little later and thatās fine
Thanks for the input. My hope at the moment is that Iām just gonna take a few days off from anything but maintaining reviews, and I think I can visit home this weekend? Been meaning to but both car and health problems have prevented me. Car is still questionably reliable but Iāve had it checked out and at this point Iām just waiting to see if the suspected problem presents more so, what can you do. Anyway, Iām hoping with that as a bit of a chance to relax and reset, I can see how I feel about coming back to it after. Hopefully that gives me some energy back. Got a club to run.
All very true, I feel like Iāve even said similar things before heh. Just you know, more concretely, people who seem to have been at this for very long who are very good, doing things like watching movies ā well it depends on the movie and even within them there might be some particularly complicated discussions that they donāt follow, you know? Guess I never got good enough at that tolerating ambiguity thing, but if the goal is indeed to engage with stuff exactly as it was made, without the layer of interpretation and whatnot, then throwing out parts you donāt get wholesale doesnāt work, haha. And I know youāre not advising that but you know, definitely loads of work to get to the point where that doesnāt have to happen regularly with materials that are just at the level of, say, aimed at the average adult.
I feel like I go both ways with this section. Like right now Iām reading Umineko in English and that translation is super literal (the VN is significantly longer than the Bible so I donāt blame the poor translators haha). Regularly aggravates and I can straight up read lines in English and figure out what the Japanese wording was. Theyāll very directly translate the way Japanese is phrased sometimes, the sort of things like āit wouldnāt be weird if Xā that Japanese uses in places where thatās mildly unnatural in English.
And for a while that was a super strong motivator but sometimes I wonder how much being the original needs to be considered best when dealing with things that were translated well. Especially keeping in mind the gap even between more or less āfull understandingā on a surface level and actually having a strong enough intuitive grasp of Japanese to get the full emotional, below the surface reaction to phrasing and the like. On a particularly depressed day I went back and played some Lost Judgment with the English instead and sometimes I found it quite clever how they wrote character into the English with things that technically werenāt there before. Sometimes, localizations even add flavor, like the way Dragon Quest works or other art where they give more regional flair or that kind of thing that doesnāt commonly exist in Japanese. It certainly has to be remembered that it is not the original, but as a sort of collaborative piece, the re-interpretations can be interesting on their ownā¦ sometimes. Plenty of translations are rough. I donāt know, I seem to go back and forth on my opinion with that.
I donāt exactly think Iām burnt out on Japanese as much as Iām just burnt out onā¦ doing things that involve effort while I keep feeling like this, heh. But the two can be hard to parse when the ultimate outcome is still going to be feeling frustration at Japanese if I fight through it. Iām self aware that I could pretty solidly argue the opposite perspective on some of this at another time, heh. My emotional reactions are definitely being altered on days when I feel worse so who knows. Tough times all around.
For what itās worth, those first tests showed low B12 levels (which I suspected between being a vegetarian and a medication Iām taking interfering with absorption of B12). I donāt believe thatās the cause of all my problems, but itās likely contributing a bit. Otherwise, on what was tested, I look very healthy. I guess thatās good, but not super helpful for improving things, heh.
The other day I was watching a show (in my native English), and at one point I couldnāt make out what a character said. I was about to rewind, but lazy as I am, I decided, āNah, Iāll wait and see if I can follow along without that line.ā Turns out I didnāt need to hear whatever it was that character said.
For Japanese, I do like to understand more than not. And if Iām really struggling to follow along, Iāll switch to reading something else.
We've come a long way.
(Wait, that was only 2016.)
Regarding how easy it is to switch to English, I think I got āluckyā with the manga I started learning kanji to read. When the first volume eventually came out in English, I found a lot of issues with the translation, and then the company that licensed the series went under.
Sorry to hear about the issues youāve been having, I hope your situation improves soon.
Regarding motivation, it is a bit of a tough thing since everyone is motivated by different things. Sometimes just slowing things down and taking time to enjoy other hobbies can help. I know I get fatigued mentally at times when I read for too long, especially when I come across more lookup heavy sections.
Also, while more things do tend to get translated nowadays, there is still a huge catalog of untranslated things (especially the farther you go back).
Even in some cases like this, it took about 2 years for a fan translation to come out, so I think it is a perk to still be able to read it ahead of time on your own (fan TLs are questionable to begin with too). Thereās even some cases like with Sumaga that was announced for an official TL over a decade ago and still isnāt out And while I do appreciate all the effort translators put into their work, it can be hit or miss if something youāre looking forward to is translated by someone proficient etc.
I think that looks like Fire Emblem? Havenāt played too much of them but now Iām wondering if everyone there has customizable hair or something, considering the pretty big image discrepancies heh.
Generally agree with everything youāre saying, and I know it has to be true that fan translations are really variable in quality ā Iāve just been lucky enough that Iāve only used really good ones, heh. Fan translations were how I played stuff like the original Danganronpa before it had a release in the US. For what itās worth, it sounded like whoever did this Summer Pockets one is well regarded from the comments I stumbled on! Not that thatās the point, haha.
That bit for sure, yeah, I know what thatās like back when I had some I was waiting on. I treat them as basically not real until theyāve already been released, for my sanity.
Iām sorry to hear about all the troubles. I hope whatever decision you stick with it, you are happy with it! And of course, I definitely hope you stick around! I also hope for your sake that the American healthcare system doesnāt continue to fail youā¦ For a country so proud of its medicine, it fails an awful lot. I still canāt wrap my head around why folks tout it so widely as some massive successā¦ I guess itās a success with shareholders and for private insurance companies, and makes money = successful in the US, but Iām so frustrated for you seeing the doctor being absolutely useless in what they ought to be there to do: trying to help you figure out what is happening. I truly hope something gives for you soon.
It is Fire Emblem, yes. Fates, to be exact. Kanna is the player characterās (the one on the right) child, so their appearance varies based on the other parent, if I remember correctly (itās been a while since Iāve played that one). The player character is customizable, for sure.
Are we talking about official English releases or scanlations? I know that some scanlations try to be more faithful to the original Japanese text, but some contort the text and add too much fluff that was never there in the JP version. So if there is a situation that seems confusing and somehow not meaningful or too meaningful later on, itās probably because the translators messed up .
Iām sorry that things are extra hard for you right now. Hopefully improving your B12 levels will also improve your mood. My depression/anxiety got better when I started cutting sugar out of my diet ā¦
Iām also really sorry to hear about your experience with that doctor. Thatās justā¦ unbelievably awful, honestly! I donāt even know what to say, because I donāt think thereās anything I can add to make that better. I hope youāll have better luck with your next doctor.
Doing minimum maintenance mode for a while definitely seems like a good idea. Iāve done that several times with Anki, where I stop adding cards for a bit when the going gets hard, and it has definitely helped lighten the load.
Iām not sure how much help Iāll be with motivation/encouragement, since I think weāre coming at this whole thing from such different places, but for me at least, the thing that consistently helps keep me going with Japanese is being very invested in a perpetually ongoing medium with only limited English translation. It might be worth branching out a little and looking for some Japanese-only media from a direction you hadnāt considered?
You could try dipping your toes into some nonfiction subjects (personally, Iām interested in a lot of types of Japanese crafts, the papermaking/bookbinding ones especially, but Iāve also been having a good time following the tools thread here), or even just do some google deep dives into some Japanese creators whose work your really enjoy.
Even if the works themselves have been translated, thereās probably loads of interviews and such that will never get translated. You could read Japanese reviews of some of the media youāve been enjoying, and maybe search for recommendations in Japanese. I bet youād find loads of stuff that has thus far yet to filter down to western audiences.
I think part of why wrestling works so well for me (as a motivator) is because it weaves the wrestlersā real lives into the story and characters, so thereās this whole rich world of tweets and interviews and autobiographies that arenāt just pieces of fiction, but are real parts of the world, which real people are engaging with. At the end of the day, languages are how people communicate with each other and interact with their world. And this part of it is never perfect! People misinterpret and misunderstand each other all the time, even when perfectly fluent.
When I get discouraged, I think about how much Japanese fans love it when an English-speaking wrestler cuts a promo in Japanese. Itās often very stilted, beginner Japanese, haha, but it gets an amazing crowd reaction because the audience is just so touched that someone went through all that work to try to reach out to them by learning their language.
A few days ago, my coworker (whose native language is Spanish) told me how much she appreciated that me (as well as my mom) and our boss have been trying to work so hard on our Spanish. Iām still far from being remotely fluent, but Iām at a point where I can watch a show entirely in Spanish (with Spanish subtitles), and get enough of it to understand what my coworker is talking about when she makes fun of the upper class way of talking that one of the characters uses.
Sheās very fluent, but I help her with her English sometimes, too, mostly by explaining phrases like āsecondhand embarrassmentā haha. I think the thing about language learning is that itās a process that truly never stops. There are always cultural intricacies that you donāt get at first. But, by learning the language, you gradually get the tools to understand. There are plenty of cultural intricacies in English that I donāt understand, either, but Iām well-equipped to have them explained to me.
I think sometimes the trick is just learning to love the process, as messy and as frustrating as it sometimes is. Youāll have plenty of victories, but also make plenty of mistakes. But even just attempting it is a really, really cool thing, and your efforts will be greatly appreciated by other people, no matter how far you get. I think thatās actually what the frequently resented āę„ę¬čŖäøęā remark means. Itās expressing appreciation for the effort that you made regardless of the results.
It might be a good time for you to try communicating more directly with other people in Japanese? That for sure would not be a kind of media with any sort of official English translation, haha.
My other recommendation would be to maybe dip your toes a little into doing some translation. Itās something that scared me a lot at the beginning, because I felt so utterly ill-equipped (which, I mean, I am), but thereās something about it thatās really satisfying. It really forces you to think about things in a different way. Itās also so cool to make Japanese stuff available to people (even just your friends) who wouldnāt have been able to understand if it wasnāt for your efforts. You can watch someone else get excited over something that was exciting to you, or laugh at a joke that you thought was hilarious.
Even just translating senryu here on this forum has been a lot of fun. Iāve shared some of them with my mom, and with some of my other friends, and folks really enjoyed my translations of the poems.
I guess maybe most of my advice boils down to it might be a good idea to look for a way to connect to the Japanese language in a way that goes beyond just passively enjoying media? I think itās easy to get discouraged with media alone because, yeah, you can get more or less the same experience with a good English translation and 0% of the effort it would take to watch/read in Japanese. But the other stuff, though, thatās the part that is a totally unique experience that you can only get by learning a language.
.
. However, incidentally reading news articles does help.
.
.
) which ended up kind of wrecking my mood and left me kinda depressed feeling and, after doing nothing for a bit yesterday evening/night, really wanting to shake SOMETHING up. So, I went ahead and got Lost Judgment. Turns out itās about half off right now! I intended to just test it and felt like Iād probably end up finding it too much of a pain and put it aside for a while, as I have quite a few things, and Iām not going to say that wonāt happen yet.
I also hope for your sake that the American healthcare system doesnāt continue to fail youā¦ For a country so proud of its medicine, it fails an awful lot. I still canāt wrap my head around why folks tout it so widely as some massive successā¦ I guess itās a success with shareholders and for private insurance companies, and makes money = successful in the US, but Iām so frustrated for you seeing the doctor being absolutely useless in what they ought to be there to do: trying to help you figure out what is happening. I truly hope something gives for you soon.
.
