It’s embarrassing to say how many years relative to how poor my skills are haha. Like if I had genuinely kept my practice up this whole time I would be a near native speaker
Started in high school, like 2001. Lived in a small town so was self teaching via instruction online and help from the somethingawful adtrw dc++ hub and what eventually became 4chan
Took a some classes in college but didn’t minor or anything. Did get a chance to go to Japan at the end of college (around 2007ish) though. My Japanese was pathetically bad, despite having spent 6 years at this point. I had a somewhat decent vocabulary but I had a mix of: didn’t practice grammar enough so I couldn’t speak with any kind of confidence, didn’t practice speaking enough so when I did actually speak I was often unintelligible, and I was a huge weeb so I kept saying cringe shit
That was a pretty disheartening experience (still loved Japan though) so then I basically didn’t practice for a few years. At this point I was starting my career and then went to grad school so it fell by the wayside
Then I started to pick it back up in like 2016 but mainly to read manga. I was done grad school by then so I finally had some time again and started to brush up again, but passively
Then covid happened and I reconnected with some people from Japan I knew. They wanted to work on English, I wanted to work on Japanese, so we’ve been doing that. Now I’m realizing that was 5 years ago and my speech still sucks
It’s persistence too. The language exchange is great to hear, that’s huge.
I’m much better now from daily chats with my Japanese friends. That’s really what was missing from the many, many, many years I spent before imo. I would study flash cards and eventually Anki decks once that was a thing, I would have practice conversations here and there with other weebs or in class during the brief period I had that. But for the most part I just read manga, which isn’t really all that challenging (usually), and I would listen to anime while reading subtitles. It was so passive
But now it’s the study daily instead of when I feel like it. It’s chatting every night with my friends and having them be like oh no, it’s actually もう一つの, not もう一つ. Or it’s “so-reh” or whatever I’m saying wrong. The constant feedback is essential
So…how many years deep are you haha
It’s embarrassing to say how many years relative to how poor my skills are haha. Like if I had genuinely kept my practice up this whole time I would be a near native speaker
Started in high school, like 2001. Lived in a small town so was self teaching via instruction online and help from the somethingawful adtrw dc++ hub and what eventually became 4chan
Took a some classes in college but didn’t minor or anything. Did get a chance to go to Japan at the end of college (around 2007ish) though. My Japanese was pathetically bad, despite having spent 6 years at this point. I had a somewhat decent vocabulary but I had a mix of: didn’t practice grammar enough so I couldn’t speak with any kind of confidence, didn’t practice speaking enough so when I did actually speak I was often unintelligible, and I was a huge weeb so I kept saying cringe shit
That was a pretty disheartening experience (still loved Japan though) so then I basically didn’t practice for a few years. At this point I was starting my career and then went to grad school so it fell by the wayside
Then I started to pick it back up in like 2016 but mainly to read manga. I was done grad school by then so I finally had some time again and started to brush up again, but passively
Then covid happened and I reconnected with some people from Japan I knew. They wanted to work on English, I wanted to work on Japanese, so we’ve been doing that. Now I’m realizing that was 5 years ago and my speech still sucks
God I’m so depressed now
LOL, I’m so sorry, didn’t mean to be a debbie downer.
I’m much earlier on, maybe around a year and a half so far, just via self-study and language exchanges, so I feel your pain somewhat.
Like you said, it isn’t exactly…“hard”, per se, it just takes a lot of time and dedication.
It’s persistence too. The language exchange is great to hear, that’s huge.
I’m much better now from daily chats with my Japanese friends. That’s really what was missing from the many, many, many years I spent before imo. I would study flash cards and eventually Anki decks once that was a thing, I would have practice conversations here and there with other weebs or in class during the brief period I had that. But for the most part I just read manga, which isn’t really all that challenging (usually), and I would listen to anime while reading subtitles. It was so passive
But now it’s the study daily instead of when I feel like it. It’s chatting every night with my friends and having them be like oh no, it’s actually もう一つの, not もう一つ. Or it’s “so-reh” or whatever I’m saying wrong. The constant feedback is essential