Maybe my bar for “ordinary conversation” is lower than everyone else’s.
This seems like an ordinary conversation to me. Like, I might have 3 or 4 of these at school per day.
“Good morning”
“Good morning”
“What did you do over the weekend?”
“I saw a movie with my family.”
"Oh? How was it?
“I really liked it. I want to see it again!”
“Cool, well, see you later.”
“Okay, bye”
And I feel like you should be able to do that at N5.
Obviously, ordinary conversations can go longer, or be more in-depth, but this is a type of conversation that basically anyone should be able to do, and so maybe people are not imagining something this simple when they say that.
The higher levels are a bit different. I think grammar wise, following the jlpt routine is probably one of the best ways to go. This is in line with lower levels. Vocabulary, not so much. That is because after a certain amount, maybe 7000-9000 words, you should be almost entirely reading material for your vocabulary acquirement. First of, there is one official list anyways so specifically studying vocabulary for N1 is diffficult. Secondly, after that point I mentioned vocabulary becomes a lot more specialized. Depending on what items you read you might encounter some words commonly while others next to never. Coupled that with the fact that N2-N1 require you to know the subtle differences of the words anyways and it just seems pointless if you are not either testing your knowledge or needing of a certificate to work.
Well, not that my grandparents have taken any of the JLPT tests, but them (and my other relatives in their generation) grew up with Japanese-speaking parents, and thus are able to understand Japanese at a fluent level, however, are completely unable to speak. I was a little disappointed since I was planning to practice with them, but they can’t really teach it either =P They said that since they never speak, they have difficulty thinking of the correct words.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to reply directly to you, but… I’m too lazy to back out and hit reply at the end, so sorry!
Id imagine writing could help make up for speaking but not so much the other way around. Recalling how to write kanji is completely different from recognizing it and memorizing its info. Honestly I couldnt tell you how to write 新 but I can recall it without a doubt.
Ah, yeah - it’s just a difference in terminology I guess. I’d classify that more as “small talk”, I guess, and consider “conversation” to be more along the lines of being able to have a decently in-depth discussion about something - work, current affairs, whatever.
I totally agree that there aren’t any N1 holders running around who can’t say they enjoyed a movie with their family
Well, I mean, there’s that thing where the more you learn the more you are aware of your deficiencies in the grand scale of things. So, some beginners can be bolder simply because they don’t grasp how bad they are. Then when you learn more, you can become more self-conscious. So, like @nath was talking about with worrying about mistakes, I wonder how many people possess the skill set to speak with more fluidity, but just think that if they can’t put the sentence into perfect Japanese they don’t want to say anything at all.
I remember learning about pitch accent, and how that makes it seem like it’s basically impossible to speak without any mistakes (as long as you define a mistake as something a native would notice as being non-native).
I’ve met lots of people who are non-native English speakers, and I’ve never thought less of someone who spoke quickly with occasional mistakes.
Never thought about that, no
I live in Japan, though, so maybe regular class might be better? I can see how paying for it would help though. The reason why I don’t ask my relatives to correct my Japanese is for that reason: it’s not their job.
WK teaches recognition, which for Kanji is big part of the work (unless you wanna hand write).
I think that speaking would help writing and vice-versa. The problem is that going from speaking => writing implies knowing Kanji. When you’re already able to write, you already solved this problem. Both writing and speaking are recalling processes.
I think I’ve spoken less than 50 times in my entire life in English and here I am. My speaking basically needs some practice. 5 minutes into a conversation and it’s a good enough warmup. It’s more a matter of not feeling scared.
Yeah, not sure. Based on the knowledge you’ve already shared on the forums, I would guess you don’t need that much practicing. If you have your writing done right, fixing speaking is more a matter of not feeling fearful. Listening requires practice to process the words at the same speed one is speaking, so that might take more time. Idk
Also, how well regular classes would work for you depends on the type of person you are. Talking in front of other people might be a problem, for example. On the other hand, if you see that other people have a slightly lower level in speaking, you might feel motivated to “take the risk” more often.
I heard something the other day about this from a youtuber living in japan. He said a lot of his colleagues would never speak any english, until they got drunk. After drinking they could speak english perfectly fine, seemingly because they got over the fear of doing it, but they would never do it while sober.
It might be helpful to clarify what “writing” means: the physical handwriting and kanji mental mapping skills are different from composition skills like smooth transitions, literary devices, etc. the second set of skills I imagine probably would help one’s speaking skill because it’s similarly output communication.
Yeah, I’m not aware of any test aimed at Japanese learners that contains composition questions.
There’s another test, called the J-Test, which I’ve talked about before and am taking again this weekend, that contains sections that require writing. But they are merely kanji reading and grammar questions that don’t have multiple choices. They don’t test you on how well you compose Japanese.
There are tests with composition that you can take, but they’re all for natives, that I know of.
If you’re in Japan, most places have community run free, or dirt cheap classes.
Anyways, I just wanted to come in here to say the bar to being a translator (broadly speaking) is very low, that’s why there are a ton of official garbage translations out there. Especially in non-specialist fields. The bar to being an interpreter however, is extremely high.
Is this really the case for official translations of novels and such? I’d imagine you would need a degree in both the language you are translating to and from, no?
Depends on the novel, obviously people like Murakami have established and notable translators. Or native bilinguals (Tokugawa Iehiro is one). (
Also especially in English, it’s much easier to find a native Japanese person with a high level of English than even bother to look or go the other way around. So many good jobs go that way.) But the general perception is that it doesn’t really require “specialist knowledge” at least on the lower levels. Also, it’s really become a race to the bottom in more open categories and it’s more about a portfolio.
Obviously whether or not this is the actual case is a different story, but that’s often how it is perceived.
I think everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes it takes a while for one skill to catch up to the others. I know a lot of people that can speak very well but struggle to write, for example.
Totally different field than literature, but in technical translation this is uncommon particularly when you’re translating from non-native to native language and are familiar with the subject material.
A couple examples:
My department occasionally asks me (~N4 level) to put together rough translations for test methods or batch records from our Japanese parent company, then we have one of our bilingual colleagues check it over to make sure I didn’t miss anything major. Usually this is so that we can discuss something internally and when we need to have a decent idea what’s in the document quickly.
For official documents we have someone on-site who is bilingual (usually from our parent company) do the translation, then have a couple native English speakers check the final wording. AFAIK nobody at my site doing this has a degree in English or Japanese, mostly chemistry or biology - I work at a pharmaceutical development company.
I pay a tutor. It has done wonders for my speaking and learning, even though I’m still quite a beginner. It also makes sure that I actually talk to someone once a week.
