More like 117 or something. I didn’t reset all the way back to level 1 the first time.
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i actually knew hiragana and a lil bit of katakana because i took a four month intro to japanese course in uni, but i ultimately got a c in it. then i moved to japan to teach english, but didn’t really study until about half a year in. but after signing up for the JLPT, taking classes, self studying intensively, and going to language exchanges, i was at the point where i could speak with some basic understanding of the language and learn new vocab and sentence structure passively.
after two years of living here, i can explain lesson plans to my coworkers, teach simple grammar, have basic conversations about what i did today, explain some of my feelings, and joke around a bit, all in japanese. i’m not at the point where i could order food in keigo, read a newspaper, or date a monolingual japanese guy, but i am conversationally fluent enough to not die here and to sound passably okay while doing it.
is this what you meant by semi-fluent??
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Like the others, I’m going to say it depends on what is meant by (semi)fluent.
In my case, I considered myself semifluent when I reached the point where I could read basically anything I want without pain and work completely in Japanese. Getting there took me almost exactly 8 years, but it’s not like I was exactly studying the whole time. I have spent about 3 of those 8 years just consuming Japanese media and trying to talk to people in Japanese. In that sense, I guess I could say I was semifluent even before that mark. 8 year is just the point were I managed to read painlessly 1Q84 by Murakami and around the same time successfully passed a technical job interview in Japanese. Both of those achievements made me think that, okay, I can say I speak Japanese.
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I’m semi fluent in conversation and listening only. Living not in Japan, but in a japanese bubble for more than 10 years now, speaking and listening skills were more important for my daily life.
Of those ten years, I spent maybe around 2-3 years actively studying so most points were learned through conversation and my daily tasks.
It makes working with textbooks a bit more difficult, because I know how to use most grammar, but can not explain - and the given explanations sometimes confuse me because I tend to overthink.
And Kanji… I just ignored them as good as I could. That’s why I’m here now.
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While reading’s by far the easiest, I can hold a normal conversation pretty well nowadays and last time I went to Japan I could get by mostly in Japanese, but my Japanese is far from perfect so I’m still not sure if I’m semi-fluent or not 
Also I agree that you shouldn’t assume someone can’t be whatever semi-fluent means just because they’re level one, they may speak perfect Japanese and just need to brush up on their kanji for all you know.
Something I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, is that while the current dictionary definition of fluency includes literacy (reading and writing), the common understanding of the word usually does not. There are people who are 100% fluent in their mother tongue (they can communicate verbally just fine), but never learned to read or write. We wouldn’t tell them that they’re not fluent. We’d tell them that they’re illiterate. A lot of people learning Japanese as a second language has a problem with the opposite occurring: becoming literate, but not fluent.
I think the simplest definition of fluency that most people can agree on is being able to verbally communicate about everyday topics without too much effort, and being able to learn new things using monolingual materials of appropriate difficulty (including audio and video materials for the illiterate students).
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This is the boat I’m in. 
Though I can fairly easily read up to N3 level stuff, I’ve spent so much time working on listening and speaking that I will have people think I’m better than I am, which will get me lost because my good ole 語彙力 is pretty poor (thus wanikani). However, I can, for the most part, have every day conversations without needing to translate in my head.
One nice thing about my wife not being able to speak any English is that I’m so used to speaking Japanese all the time that I often don’t think in English anymore… which is really weird to think about. It can sometimes be super frustrating to be able to remember the Japanese word when talking to English speaking friends, but not the English one, however.
Looking up an English word using Japanese because you can’t remember it is a bizarre experience as an English native, and it’s been happening more and more recently.
Wouldn’t consider myself fluent at all, but I do get the 聞き取りやすい compliment when I speak to someone new, which I like a million times more than 日本語上手.
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Yeah. I have a long way to semi- or even quarter-fluency 
But, staying with the convention of this thread, maybe after three years I’d call myself semi-literate. Or make that quarter too
I am able to do some basic communication, say, via comments/posts on social media etc, and can read some things I’m interested in, but have to look up lots of words. Rikai-chan is my best friend 
It seems that currently vocabulary is my main problem - I seem to be okay with most grammar I encounter.
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I went with this definition and decided that I was floundering a bit too much during my first trip to Japan, but I felt pretty confident during the second, so it probably happened somewhere in between…
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I choose to vote with the loose definition of being able to somewhat comfortably consume native content of the more forgiving kind. (as others pointed out semi-literate is really what this is about, but i’ll roll with it since i suspect the point of this thread is to explore learning strategies)
With dedication i achieved that in about 1 year of actual selfstudy with some limited exposure to the language previously (I didnt find my previous knowledge very useful tho, only somewhat comfortable with kana before i started)
Nowadays im chilling because my actual degree is consuming a lot of brain capacity (who needs a degree anyway).
Put another way, im probably at the early parts of semi-fluent, but im sure i will stay “just” semifluent for a few more years.
Elaboration on achieving whatshamacallit-fluency
First i had a read through Tae-Kims grammarguide, while its useful as a handbook it didnt help me get much better understanding how the language works on a more fundamental level.
I started WK shortly after and have been doing that since.
Got familiar with the japanese grammar wiki - This one in particuarly really gave me a good overview of the language (I usually have a top-down approach to my formal studies, this helped me do the same with japanese)
Watched some cure dolly on YT.
Im very happy i did that because the explanations given are easy to understand and gives some more structure to understanding stuff, and i wasnt bothered by the overselling and general quirkyness of the videos.
She(i think) strikes the perfect balance of simplicity and coverage for someone getting started. Doesn’t cover everything but surely limits the initial confusion, which i believe is key to getting a good start in a subject.
Finished up to and including N3 on Bunpro
Read a bit on NHK-easy
Read some light novel (it wasnt very fast but i did pick up a few things, i also never finished)
Watched some anime with JP subs.
Periodically listening to japanese radio (rajiko chrome extension)
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These are what I consider the highlights on my ongoing “Japanese journey”:
After 3 months: basic greetings, ordering food (mostly independent study at the time)
After 2 years: writing emails to host families
After 3 years: having conversations with strangers in izakayas
After 5 years: passing JLPT 2級 (equivalent to current N2)
(then there’s a big gap when other stuff happened)
After 12 years: Getting a university certificate in Japanese
After 14 years: Failing JLPT N1 (not a highlight)
After 15 years: Failing JLPT N1 (not a highlight)
After 16 years: Passing JLPT N1
After 17 years: Noticing that I can watch most Japanese TV content for entertainment, Getting a job at a Japanese company, Dealing with banks and Japanese institutions in Japanese (I moved to Japan that year)
After 19 years: Getting business cards with 課長 writen on them, Making big strides in keigo.
After 20 years: Attempting the Japanese to English translator’s exam. (Currently waiting for results. Passing would be another highlight.)
Things I still can’t do:
Reading, writing still very slow and inefficient. Writing polite emails to customers takes all my mental strength. Business presentations completely drain my energy. Keigo is still hard. My kanji writing ability is at primary school 3rd Grade level (handwriting that is, no problems typing). I take notes in English, even if the entire discussion is in Japanese. Still have trouble following the news on the radio. Still not at WK L60. Still lots of room for improvement, so little free time.
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Exactly. There is no proof what so ever on this forum.
I haven’t seen a single person here post any proof lol.
wow that’s was a long journey.
I’m curious about how you actually get from N2 to N1.
May I ask what would you say that contributed the most to your N1 achievement?
I guessed it wouldn’t be drilling Japanese exercises or cramming textbooks.
would it be immersion?
I wasn’t living in Japan at the time, the test was my ticket to get there. If there was a final deciding factor, it was reading, if anything. The rest of it was purely cramming. I used the 新完全マスター series, dividing them into daily to dos, trying to get through grammar, vocab, kanji, reading and listening in a year, so that took up all of my study time. I blame my pitiful kanji writing skills on this cramming, if writing was assessed in the N1, I’d be a lot better at it now. My goal was to get a job in Japan, and I knew my chances were much higher if I had the N1, so I was focussed only on what was on the test.
In Australia the tests are only held once a year. I failed the first time, did it all gain, failed the second time a year later, by less than 10 points. I noticed that if I had more time for the reading I could scrape through. So I focussed on the JLPT reading texts, also read a Japanese novel (“Out” and “Grotesque” by Natsuo Kirino, great books!) on the train to work, got used to guessing meaning, reading for general comprehension. That got me over the line.
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I forgot to add a proud achievement. Going to Karaoke with friends and singing only Japanese songs all night was definitely one.
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This has to be common in pretty much every language. I took a Spanish literature course in college and got an A. I was reading literature as if it were English: no translation, the story appearing in my mind’s eye. I could even write well enough to get an A.
But if I turned on Spanish TV, it was like a different language. I couldn’t catch any of it. I just never activated the speaking/listening part of the language in my brain.
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haha, very interesting to hear that.
I’m about to take JLPT N1 this December (if Covid is not the case)
I don’t prepare much so well this is my first attempt so I just tried to figure a way to get around…
thanks for your advice~!
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Being able to do this would be enough for me to consider myself fluent, provided I’m able to use that knowledge in my own speaking and writing i.e. that knowledge has to be both passive and active. However…
This. Nonetheless, I’m pretty amazed by your achievements. Congratulations!
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I consider myself semi-fluent since I can read some NHK news articles without too much difficulty and catch most of the words in my favourite anime (which I’ve admittedly watched a few times, so I guess you could call it a ‘practice effect’) without subtitles. I’m also able to have fairly lengthy exchanges over WhatsApp in Japanese without making too many errors that my friend studying at university in Japan feels the need to correct. (He’s fluent, but he’s not Japanese, and we’ve known each other for a long time, so I’m not worried about him not correcting something that ought to be for the sake of politeness. He knows I want to be corrected.) I’ve been able to get through most of the Tobira lessons fairly rapidly while often finding that they contain little new grammar for me, even if I need the dictionary to supply me with extra information on nuances I’m not familiar with. I’m relatively used to searching for grammatical explanations in resources written in Japanese, and I’ve dug through several studies on Japanese grammar and usage available on Japanese university websites searching for answers to my questions without relying too much on a dictionary. I’ve been studying for about two years (I started in July 2018) with extremely long, random breaks in between due to a busy schedule. About the only thing I’ve consistently done since I’ve started is watch anime. (At least one episode a week, I think?) I also check the dictionary (both in English and in Japanese) whenever I feel the need to look up a new word. If I add up the periods when I consistently studied Japanese, I’d say they total about 15 to 18 months?
Things I still can’t do:
- I’m not really confident of having a conversation in Japanese. I’m fairly slow when sending messages to my friend, even if I’m fast enough for it not to hold up the exchange, and I’m not sure I’m as verbally fluent as I am on my computer.
- I’m not really aware of real Japanese social conventions, so I’m not really sure exactly how formal I ought to be when speaking to other people. I once spoke to a Japanese native speaker younger than me in 丁寧語, only to have my friend tell me afterwards that it’s normal for students at the same academic level to use タメ口 (and we were speaking as students, and she’s technically my 後輩). Oops. I know some 敬語, I’m fairly comfortable in 丁寧語 (since like everyone else, that’s the first thing I learnt), and I chat with my friend in タメ口. However, how one should speak to someone who’s in between ‘acquaintance’ and ‘close friend’? I have no idea.
- I can’t handle genuinely complex and technical topics. For example, I have an article on Justice Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court open, and even though I have some idea of what happened in the US, I’m rather confused by all the technical terms.
- I’m not very good with Classical Japanese even though I’d like to know more since it’s what many proverbs are written in. I know about the 未然形 and 已然形, and I’m aware of some structures like 〜えど（も）、〜り、〜ず、〜む、〜ぬ・ん and the like, but that’s not enough to tackle poems or understand jokes in anime that make references to famous poems.
I still have quite a way to go before I’m properly fluent. I guess I should immerse myself in more difficult Japanese so I can learn faster, but I don’t really have the time at the moment. Maybe once I’m done with my entrance exams next summer, I’ll be able to lock myself in a room and study all the Japanese I want…
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