The fastest/best way to learn japanese

The fastest and best way is to be born Japanese. :wink:

Outside of that, I’d say you could reach a working proficiency in 2 years at a moderate pace. That’s enough time to get close to finishing WK and getting to N3 level for grammar.

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When it comes to “fastest” I found this reddit post to be pretty insightful - this person reached a pretty damn impressive level in Japanese and passed the N1 in about 16 months

Interestingly the top comment in that thread is by Stevi / Stevijs3, who has been interviewed about his Japanese-journey in a few YouTube videos. He took a whole 18 months to reach N1 though, pathetic

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Hey thanks for sharing the post!! At least now I know it’s not impossible. I know I’m not nearly as smart as that guy, but I will keep aiming high.

The things I always regret when reading a post like this is; I really feel ashame of my past self. I was too lazy and don’t live as hard as these guys. I’m not that old but I still feel bad. My life could be much better than this. Well it’s never too late just keep going!!

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We all know that the true fastest way is get to Platinum on Duolingo and to try mimick the speech pattern of those people doing the clickbaity ‘White Man STUNS Elderly Couple by speaking in PERFECT JAPANESE’ etc videos on YouTube

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I agree with the reddit post’s summary of “read a lot, use anki, and be consistent,” but I do feel like leading with that and then talking about attending a four-year university in Japan and multiple personal tutors is a bit like the language-learning equivalent of a “I bought a house in my 20s, financial literacy pays off!” headline with “my parents loaned me half of the down payment” in the body (albeit less egregious).

Like, “Congratulations, that’s a big accomplishment and I appreciate the tips… I’m now going to actively try to not think of that as a benchmark.”
Which is kind of what bugs me about speed discussions in general… The guy’s lasting accomplishment wasn’t the speed he passed a test, it was the experiences he had, the habits he formed, and the dedication and enthusiasm he clearly applied to them.
That I think anyone can strive for with even an inefficient system and find some progress to be proud of.

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What you’re saying is very true, but he did pass the JLPT N1 just 1 year and a half into the 4-year stay, so I’d still say that’s quite an impressive accomplishment!

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Oh yeah, I definitely agree!

I just it’s a tough line to walk to celebrate that accomplishment and give advice without like, making people shoot for unrealistic goals or regret that they weren’t an impressive aerospace engineering candidate in high-school with an impressively put-together idea of the goals they wanted to pursue, (which I don’t think is a reasonable regret) is all.

Honestly, my biggest takeaway is just that the ultra-fast pace of 18 months to N1 is still 18 months, which is long enough to be “long-term.” (and it’s not like that’s the ultimate stopping point)
There’s just no getting away from putting the time in in one way or another. I figure without a huge impending deadline (And admittedly from my post-college perspective where time stretches out there are fewer obvious ones of those), 18 months is much the same as 19, or 5 years, or even 10 years when you’re standing at the end looking back at it, a point which will come either way…

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It’s more important to be disciplined and stick with it than it is to go fast. The #1 issue that people have with language learning is simply giving up. That said, going too slow can also lead to giving up when people don’t see the results that they want.

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That guy just played some visual novels learned some kanji and passed n1 really? Well maybe some people are just really smart.

just immersion. You have to bear in mind that the overwhelming bulk(90%) of any language learning process is just vocabulary. Solid proficiency is around 10k words. By learning 20 new words a day you will reach 10k in 500 days. But you also need grammar. This is where native material comes into play.

Playing games/watching animes with japanese subtitles, reading novels with voice acting- you will easily start to remember many words and grammatical structure by engaging in a recreational activity that you like.

The only major caveat is that as a beginner you cant start with immersion, you need a base. Good thing though- it won’t take that long. You need to know at least 1000 common words and know grammar points of n5-n4 levels. Words can be covered by torii/WaniKani. Grammar by cury dolly chanel or wasabi/tae kim guide. If you are diligent ( devote at least 2 hours a day for it)- you can cover the base in 3-4 months.

after that, you should slowly taper off from textbooks and learning programs. Maybe leave wanikani ( for kanji drilling) and 1 srs program where you gonna write all new words/sentences from your recreational media. The First 3-6 months are going to be hell, but eventually, with consistency you will reach massive progress. You will be miles ahead of anyone who just tries to * learn* language through JLPT textbooks and 10x of different Anki decks.
very common in r/ learn japanese, where people study genki/tobiras for years without stepping a single foot into native material and eventually give up.

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Looking at his choices, he was actually pretty smart with them. Started with nekopara which isn’t bad and has a toggle to see an english translation, then read the second novel for that series, then switched over to island which is another good vn to learn from.

I don’t think its the guy just being smarter than other people, but rather just the fact that he put in the work and did it the right way. Maybe after reading that people will start to be enlightened to the power of VNs.

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So I should just throw out my japanese learning textbooks and spend all my time just playing visual novels. Thanks for the advice @Vanilla 先輩

I would love to try that but I fear my japanese may not improve that way. I will have my next japanese test soon. Depending on the outcome I will see if I continue my current approach or if I have to change it.

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Like not being the memey Vanilla for a second, yeah I mean that would actually be a more effective approach in my opinion. What you described though is really one of the reasons people don’t opt for that method. We tend to go for what feels like it helps rather than trusting in what has worked the best historically speaking. And I mean thats perfectly understandable for something like learning japanese were you are dedicating a lot of time and it feels like a big risk. Like sure all these other people who got good/improved quickly all say that immersion is the way to go, but how can you be sure that it’ll be better for you?

The other big thing is ambiguity tolerance. You gotta be able to chill out and let it go when you can’t understand something or get stuck. Usually if you can’t find out relatively quick, just move on and don’t let it weigh you down. Problem is, thats not easy for some people. Sometimes people get discouraged and frustrated when they are struggling to understand something.

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