That graph makes me a bit sad and hopeless. It make me realized that I would not be able to use Japanese comfortably until I pass N2. However, it does help me motivate myself to keep study harder to reach N2 as soon as possible.
Just popping in from lower intermediate land to say hi. You got this.
I’m staying in the intermediate hole for the foreseable future.
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Is there any threshold that you could know you are intermediate? I know there would be no universal indicator to it. It’s just would be nice to know where I’m at.
I’m think I’m still a beginner. I still don’t fully understand any anime or TV shows. I just get the general idea of what they are talking about without a subtitle, and I still struggling on reading shonen manga.
Just my own criteria
4 years studying
Beginner class that goes up to N4 level is boring now.
Still suck spectacularly at everything.
Just going to go with lower intermediate
July 23, 2021 update
Nope I suck nevermind. Lower intermediate status revoked
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Aw nah, I wouldn’t say that’s the case? I’m not entirely sure of my own level but I speak/hear/read/write some Japanese pretty comfortably on a daily basis and I’m definitely not at N2 yet. I’m far from being able to read a book with any speed, but I can read a lot more now than I could’ve a year ago.
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I really have no idea what the average learner looks like, but I would say it’s doable in ~2 years if you put in roughly the same daily work it takes to get lv 60+N3 grammar covered in a year. If you work faster then you can get there faster. If it takes you 2 years to get level 60 and n3ish grammar I would say maybe double that and expect around 4 years? Its just very dependent on the work you put in and I have no idea how much the average learner puts in per day.
So, a few things that might not be immediately obvious:
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Novels are the hardest medium ime. They come in a wide variety of difficulties, but on average they’re definitely the hardest. Manga and Anime with JP subs are significantly easier to consume and you’ll feel comfortable reading them a lot earlier.
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If you’re the one speaking in japanese, you’ll obviously stick to words you are familiar with and the person you’re talking to will be aware of the fact that you’re a learner. They will likely use easier language and you can always ask to clarify. Compare that to books meant for fluent native japanese people where you can’t even ask for clarification. So again, speaking will also be more doable in general.
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You can still have fun while reading at that early intermediate level (and even beginner). Some of the most fun I’ve had while reading was when I sucked and had to break each sentence down.
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If you stick to one series, comfortable reading will come a lot sooner for that particular series. I think it took me 3 volumes of oreshura and like 2,500 learned words from that series and I was comfortable enough to just read it laying down on my bed using my kindle rather than on my computer with jisho and google. Just keep in mind the difficulty will go back up when you move to a different series.
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How comfortable you are also depends on how ok you are with not knowing something. Some people have a much higher tolerance for missing stuff or not being able to read words.
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Intermediate is the entire span between “too good to call myself a beginner” and “can’t read novels on a dime”
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Pretty much but theres really no actual meaning to it anyways so its not like its worth worrying about what you can call yourself. Intermediate doesn’t even mean halfway through your studies necessarily. Using the milestones in my previous post, if I scale the length of each section to the actual time it takes it would probably look something more like this
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Aye agreed. The one primary advantage of novels if you’re reading digitally is the ability to select text. OCR for manga just isn’t a thing for the most part.
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I’m a slow durtle, and it took me about 8 years to go from 0 to that point, including 4 years in the intermediate plateau.
Then I got in the “advanced” plateau and progress has been reaaaally slow. However, thanks to recording what I am doing (especially reading) on the forum, I can still see that I am making progress, even though it doesn’t feel like it anymore.
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Nah. The reason there’s a ‘plateau’ is that language learning looks like a tree. Once you’re past all the basics, the only way to reach high proficiency (which I’d say starts at the C1 level of the European framework, if you’re familiar with it) is to broaden your knowledge greatly: climbing up the trunk of a tree is relatively simple – you only have to go one in one direction – but reaching all the branches on the same level is going to take a bit of time.
I think you should perhaps try to focus on a particular area of the language that interests you. It should ideally also be an area in which you feel you’d like to know more words, and which you can use (to some extent) in your everyday life. When I was learning French, that area was science, and I consumed lots of content related to it every single day: I read the news for about 3h a day, I listened to radio podcasts about health issues, and I had books in French about cellular biology and physics. I also watched the MythBusters in French when I was preparing for a proficiency diploma exam. The point is that when you focus on a specific area, certain words start coming up repeatedly, and that helps you to get familiar with them. (Yes, OK, this sounds surprisingly similar to what Refold recommends, which is ironic since I’m not a huge fan of MattvsJapan… but hey, I think the approach to immersion that he promotes on Refold is mostly correct and very good.) Try to find something similar for you in Japanese and start checking out materials from which you can learn. For example, try looking for newspaper articles relevant to what interests you. If what you like never makes the news, no problem: try looking for blogs instead. If what you love is anime and dramas, then try looking for transcriptions or, if you already have subtitles, dedicate a few watch sessions to pausing the videos every once in a while and looking up as many new words as you can be bothered to. What matters is that you continue to find a way to learn and to consolidate new words.
Honestly… good! Keep checking it! However, don’t just stop at reading translations: if your phone’s dictionary has example sentences, read them as well. Look out for other definitions for each word and ask yourself if there’s a common theme, so that you’ll get a broader, more intuitive sense of what the word means. If the word is made of kanji or multiple shorter words, try breaking it down and asking yourself if you can figure out why it means what it does. If the dictionary you’re using now skimps too much on the details, then I’d recommend you check out https://ejje.weblio.jp, which has translated definitions and example sentences – tons of them. You can even search entire phrases to see if and how they’re used.
That aside, my advice is to shift to a monolingual dictionary as quickly as possible. It will be painful at first, and you might not want to do everything in Japanese only in the initial stages: when I first started using French monolingual dictionaries, my definition hyperlink chains could be as long as… what, 10 words? That means that I’d tap on a word I didn’t know and get referred to another definition up to 10 times before I’d finally see something basic enough to understand without English. As such, you might still want to use an EN-JP dictionary to help you from time to time. However, don’t worry, it gets better with time! That aside, if you’re wondering why you should bother with the extra effort involved in using a monolingual dictionary… because monolingual dictionaries use good Japanese, and you’ll learn more expressions per look-up. It’s good reading practice and it accelerates your learning. I advanced faster than everyone else I knew in my French class, possibly just because I was the only one who used monolingual dictionaries and nothing else. Dictionary definitions allow you to pick up formal Japanese expressions because of the language used, and under each word, common expressions and structures are listed, so you get to learn those to. Most EN-JP dictionaries, on the other hand, only provide a few common expressions at most, and are much more concerned with translations.
Getting off the plateau will take some time and effort, but it can be done, and I think it’ll only get easier as you pick up more kanji. Just keep at it! 
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Seeing this post intimidates me but it’s oddly motivating??? Anyone else feel the same way?
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You / we are progressing all the time but perhaps not always capable of sensing it. If you are used to setting massive PBs, the PBs are going to get smaller and smaller, until you manage another breakthrough.
Maybe time to cross-train a little. 
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Do you do a lot of reading? Not textbooks or news articles but novels and things? I don’t think I’m quite at your level of Japanese yet (aiming for the N2 test next month) but I’ve found that reading novels has helped my Japanese a lot. It’s also a good way to measure progress!
I bought a novel a bit over a year ago and could get through maybe a page before my brain said “nope. its nap time now.” But now I’m on the second volume of the story and actually enjoying it! I’ve noticed that since I started reading more, I make fewer mistakes with particles (though I still make a lot, I hate particles…) and I’ve been more naturally incorporating grammar I’ve studied in textbooks because I see it in the novels and get a better feel for the contexts it’s used in. Also the grammar stays in my head easier because I keep seeing it over and over without the stress of trying to cram it into my brain like I would by regular studying.
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wow…so I literally have to be an ice-breaker?
Thank you!!! I can do that now that I know that’s the only way forward. 
I’m in the same boat as you! But for me, it’s just a lack of motivation. I know what I need to do. My suggestion for your specific case is to try practicing specific grammar points with your study partners if you’re just having general conversation practice. Bring a sheet with a bunch of grammar you don’t usually push into conversation and tell them that you wanna practice implementing them. Reading Japanese books out loud is useful, too, and then write down useful, short phrases that you like and practice them (what I do is record my weekly notes every Saturday and then listen to that recording all the next week). Maybe not all the phrases will sound natural, but it’ll get you using different vocabulary from just hearing it all the time (an example of a phrase I recently saved for recording is: 定かではない for “I’m not really sure”).
I wish us both the best of luck getting out of this rut!
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omg yes often I find that I’ll be saying a katakana word over and over again, and my husband (who speaks almost no Japanese) nearby will be like “oh you mean this word?”
and I just
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yes lol my wife does this for me so often xD
(perfect gif of that feeling btw)
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We watch a lot of japanese youtube and my husband speaks no japanese but has picked up lots of katakana and aizuchi, and I have a horrible feeling when he get back there he’s going to get a lot more 上手ですね than me 
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Reminds me of when I had to learn phonemics i english class, trying to understand what /fɔːk/ ment. Both me and my friend giggled, thinking it was a non-PG word. Turns out it was just the old regular フォーク 
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