Japanese in one year?! - Not your usual study log

[NeoArcturus]

@SpiderWeb

From a little bit of experience I’m always skeptical of anything that aims to reach fluency in a year (I realize your goal in the first post wasn’t fluency) but you seem to be making bonkers improvements just from what I’m reading in the log. Nice work. This could be a very eventful year for you if you don’t burn out.

Thanks a lot! You’re actually not that far off with fluency, as when I joined this community, the first thing I did was telling everyone that I wanted to get fluent in one year (this is so cringe, looking back at it now). But the people here instantly told me that this was not going to happen, and so I changed the goal to what you can read in the OP of this study log.

@SpiderWeb

How much time do you put into Japanese each day and is it more reading or srs heavy?

I’d say it would be about the same without iKnow, but since I use it as well, it’s definitely more SRS heavy… for now! I aim to start また、同じ夢を見ていた before end of May, and I think then, it will get more balanced again.

@SpiderWeb

You said you’re homeschooled so you have a flexible schedule and probably a decent chunk of time to be making this kind of progress.

Yes, I don’t think my progress would even nearly be possible for me if I wasn’t in homeschooling.

@SpiderWeb

If I can give some unsolicited advice, try not to do too much all at once. It’s easy to lose a few years by keeping track of yourself to the hour.

I don’t really have a lot going on my life currently anyway Also, I’ve been playing piano for a little more than four years now, and actively for about two years (had two big breaks in between). If I had to rate myself, I wouldn’t call myself intermediate, but I’m not quite advanced yet as well, so something like late intermediate / early advanced is more accurate. I was able to make the recording of vivaldi’s winter, which I posted earlier in this thread, about three weeks after starting to learn the piece for the first time, and while it has some minor flaws, I’m pretty happy with it overall.

@SpiderWeb

I’m just getting back onto the wanikani wagon after a little while. I’m curious since you’ve already learned English from being German, how hard is Japanese in comparison? I know some Spanish from school but never really got to the point with it where I could hold a conversation in real time, only reading. I guess what I’m asking here is what it’s like to go from the low intermediate level of a language to being fluent, because you certainly passed as an English speaker to me when I first saw this thread before realizing you were a native German.

First of all, welcome back!

I still have to expand my vocabulary knowledge in English a lot, but I think that’s the only aspect of English where I am really bad (that I am aware of at least) I’ve been able to use English the way I do now for a long while now, but from what I remember, the transition from intermediate → fluent was rather smooth. It’s just something that happened over time, and I didn’t even really notice it.

Comparing Japanese to English in terms of difficulty is a pretty hard task because of how different the languages are. The biggest difference is, of course, the writing system. While English has 26 letters, Japanese has thousands of kanji. But let’s put that aside. In terms of grammar, I definitely found Japanese to be easier so far, although there are some grammar points that can easily be confused. In my (little) experience, though, keeping track of the nuances is the bigger challenge, especially when trying to produce Japanese. So, I guess they are about the same for me in terms of difficulty.