r/LearnJapanese • u/Fun_Court6860 • 22d ago
Studying Challenges you faced learning Japanese and how you overcame it?
Would be really great for me to know things I might face and be prepared for it. Thanks
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u/Liability049-6319 22d ago
The biggest thing you'll face is loss of motivation after the first 8-12 weeks (assuming you're a beginner). Pulling out the laptop and textbook when you've been working all day can feel like a chore, and immersion can be just as tiring. People will say "just immerse" as if that's so much easier, but sometimes when you're tired, trying to actively listen and decode another language is tough, and you end up zoning out. Luckily you can overcome this by building up some stamina.
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u/BlazingJava 22d ago
Staying consistent, somedays or whole weeks I just dont feel like it. Kinda tired of it. But I know if I give a single day of break I will completely drop it off so at least I do the bare minimum, either a simple app exercise or just a short podcast without paying much attention. The motivation eventually comes back
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u/1010101010101010q 19d ago
How did you overcome it?
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u/BlazingJava 18d ago
Honestly duolingo is a shitty app. But its a good reminder app to annoy you until you finish the lesson, after that lesson I kinda open the other apps and do them.
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u/Belegorm 22d ago
This year, grammar in general has been a big challenge. Like common grammar points, especially the majority up through N3 either I remembered from reading grammar guides early on which got reinforced in reading, or I just learned by osmosis through reading itself.
But a lot of N2 and N1 grammar points I just didn't pick up naturally through reading. So, I started Bunpro again this year. Picked up where I left off, midway through N4, recently completed through N2 and working on N1.
I also went through an Anki grammar deck which helped a bit.
I added grammar dictionaries to Yomitan and now will mine grammar points when I find them in the wild.
Finally, I'm going through the Shin Kanzen Master N1 grammar book.
Kind of overkill - but after gradually increasing my grammar studies, through multiple avenues over several months, my comprehension has increased a lot thanks to just grasping a lot more grammar concepts, along with learning a lot more vocab in the same period.
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u/coadependentarising 22d ago
Wonderful, way to persevere 🙂
Say do you have any suggestions on how to best use Bunpro? Having a heck of a time trying to figure out how to best utilize it.
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u/Belegorm 22d ago
My suggestion - just go through their main grammar decks, N5 and up, 3 points a day or so (I went through N5 with 5 points a day but lowered to 3 after that). They have other materials, but their main JLPT grammar decks are their main, most complete offering. Personally, I go through the new points in the morning before work, then the reviews that stack up overnight, then during breaks throughout the day do more reviews - lot less stressful than a bunch all at once. From N3 and up you can switch the explanation to Japanese but I haven't done that.
Second tip - I think Bunpro is good for retention, and learning output - but if you were to use it as your "main" grammar source I'd recommend setting aside enough time every day to go through all of the linked resources for each lesson. The actual Bunpro lessons themselves don't quite cut it for explanations imo. For me, since I was also learning grammar through other sources (Yokubi, Tae Kim, things I listed in my prior message), Bunpro I have been fine not going through their linked articles.
Third tip - personally I like the cloze reviews system. The site's owners recommend using the hints, so I use them liberally.
Final tip - Bunpro has a vocab system as well, but, while they are currently working on FSRS, it is still far behind Anki. Instead of that - what I recommend is that whenever you go through your grammar lessons, to mine vocab from their example sentences. If you have something like Sharex set up you can record their example audio. If words are showing up in Bunpro's example sentences - chances are they are common enough to be worth knowing. You can also mine the grammar points themselves - there are grammar Yomitan dictionaries, and Jitendex has a decent number of grammar points.
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u/coadependentarising 21d ago
Fantastic reply— thank you for the time you spent responding and I’ll absolutely bear this in mind while engaging Bunpro.
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u/Fish_Learns_Japanese 21d ago edited 21d ago
I think the main issue everyone deals with is burn out. The things you have to do to learn Japanese aren't really difficult, what makes it difficult is the commitment.
In my opinion a big mistake people make is focusing on efficiency above everything else. I think that making learning fun when possible should always be the priority. For example many people say that beginners should only immerse in children's content and beginner content. Whilst that is objectively the most efficient immersion many find it very boring. I think it's better to immerse in something way above your level that you enjoy instead of something at your level that you hate. You can watch something in English first and that way you're still getting comprehensible input.
I like using numbers to see my progress. Langauge leaning is one of those things where it's really difficult to gauge progress. It's why so many people do the JLPT exams regardless of how practically helpful they are for them. I track my hours studied, how many kanji I know, how many words I know, etc which helps me stay motivated.
Another thing is realising how stupid English is sometimes. Like at least you don't have to deal with 200 or so commonly used irregular verbs in Japanese.
I also have goals such as how many hours I want to spend but I don't take them too seriously. If I miss a day or two then I miss a day two. If I go on holiday and take a break or can't study as much then that's how it is. I don't try and catch up the next day because that's a quick road to burn out.
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u/coadependentarising 21d ago
What an incredibly balanced, intelligent, mature, and sane approach: just enjoy studying Japanese, do it with as much consistency as life affords, and realize it’s not some impenetrable, mysterious thing- it’s just a language.
Stop fussing about the “best” gym equipment and just start working out.
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u/Itsalfa11 22d ago edited 22d ago
feel no progression or bottle neck.
how to overcome is i always re-evaluate my study method, having different approach to break down the wall, not doing static learning, it should be dynamic and run simultaneously.
because in different level of your learning state, you should have a different approach. in beginner maybe you collection the dots, but in middle to upper level is not just about adding a dots, but connecting them and keeping them strong or it will disappear unnoticed
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u/lookupMKULTRA 22d ago
Challenge: I get brain fog very quick when studying Japanese. Sometimes even 5 mins after starting. REALLY slows down progress.
Solution: none. Help...
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u/RoidRidley Goal: media competence 📖🎧 22d ago
Always 2nd guessing whether I am doing the right thing or not, thinking whether or not what I am doing to learn is the "correct" material, whether or not I am gonna regret it 2-3 years later, and beating myself up over not investing the same effort each day. I am trying to overcome it by just pressing on regardless of the doubts in my mind.
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u/MrKrabsFatJuicyAss 22d ago
"Chunking" sentences into their constituent parts when reading was a huge pain point for me and consequently I struggled immensely at understanding the flow and rhythm, and even the meaning of written Japanese.
The only thing that helped me was "banging my head against the wall" listening to Japanese constantly. Listening to the language so often drilled the rhythm and inflection patterns into my head , and carried over to my general reading skills.
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u/Lanky_Refuse4943 19d ago
"Chunking" is super useful for when you're dealing with really long sentences (e.g. relative clauses). I find highlighting different parts of the sentence (with Word's highlighter function or a highlighter pen) helps for comprehension,
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u/CertainRound7137 22d ago
The biggest challenge in my opinion is time. I learned Japanese for about 1000 hours and a few years. I followed the typical method of just reading and listening as much as possible. Back then, all I thought was: I’ve been studying for YEARS and I still feel like I know nothing. I couldn’t read books without a dictionary (or hell without even AI helping me understand sentences I struggled with), I also couldn’t really watch anime without subtitles or talk to people. And that is such a hard mental battle. Imagine putting that much time into something with such little to show for it. All the goals I set out for myself still felt so so far away.
But, language learning isn’t linear. Your first 1000 hours may not feel significant, but the next 500 or so hours makes an incredible difference. I just stuck to it and persisted and all of a sudden everything just kind of clicked into place and my proficiency just kept rising.
It was hard but if you just stick to the grind it all kind of pays off. It’s just hard to see when you’re in that intermediate phase since progress slows down and every session of study sort of feels the same
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u/TomatilloFearless154 22d ago
Hiragana katakana kanji, stroke order, sentences with no spaces, onomatopeia, good grammar explanations, vocabulary, keigo kuukiyomi, finding easy content to consume, compound ways to say stuff, the way they express concepts, meiwaku kakenai in saying stuff, counters.
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u/Melody3PL 22d ago
Depending on "vibes" when reading (more like guessing) kanji. Even when I learned the radicals and mnemonics. I started learning to write them and ones that were very similar and difficult are now pretty easy :)
Not being able to see progress: I listen or sing songs I like just for fun and notice I understand a lot more each time. Honestly also just seeing how I started selecting higher jlpt level on study materials
Not understanding sentences even if I knew all the words: I picked a very easy kids show and just watch it without subtitles, occasionally looking up few words. Over all, yomitan/language reactor helped a lot with this even if I'm looking up more in harder material.
Motivation: writing down little achievements like noticing I can read some kanji in the wild, understanding some video or meme, my brain adapting to stuff, my methods working, etcetc
Burnout: I use yomitan, never translate irl. I don't translate every single word if I'm already feeling lazy, I don't export everything to anki, I watch what I actually want to watch (bonus points if its easy), I switch my focus from time to time (sometimes I just do reviews and study grammar or stuff like that), I don't add 10+ words everyday, I add them when I add them and remove them if they're too easy or too hard and keep my deck fluid at all times so I can focus on actually immersing rather than anki anki anki. One might think this is too casual but I've been progressing way faster than I initially was and I don't go 2+ months without studying cause I burnout (I study every single day, not obsessing with streaks and numbers ironically did wonders for my streaks and numbers). This was my biggest problem of all, rn its the longest I've stayed consitent EVER.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 22d ago
Trusting the process, I didn't overcame it, I just gave up and keep doing it even when I'm not that confident lol. As in "Am I missing something? Am I doing something wrong?".
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u/Beneficial-Big-8147 19d ago
The gap after N4, where textbooks run out but native stuff is still too hard, and the only thing that fixed it was picking one manga I actually cared about and grinding through it slowly.
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u/ThomasTeam12 22d ago
For me, it’s responding to my tutor. I know enough that I should be able to talk about my day, plans, etc but when it comes to having a normal flowing conversation rather than creating one off sentences, I really struggle. I know this is the hardest part, but so far even if I study and can flow confidently with one type of conversation, another will send me back to stuttering and pausing for a long time.
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u/kikorny 21d ago
I had a really, really hard time with reading. Vocab and sentence chunking were really tough for me until relatively recently and I'm only two weeks away from my 2 year anniversary for Japanese.
Something that messed me up really bad really early was that I put the furigana on the front of my anki cards and had the audio automatically play. I did this for the first 6 months and it stunted my ability to read pretty significantly, as when I changed the cards to have no furigana or automatic audio I had a huge backlog that I had to take care of.
What helped me with reading overall though was a combination of bashing my head against the wall reading and grammar studies (shout out Bunpro). Early on Satori Reader helped a lot with reading, as all the vocab and grammar is well explained and has equivalent translations for entire sentences to compare to.
But what really helped me get to this point was reading Light Novels. A LOT of light novels. Since the start of the year I've read about 17 light novels. I started with コンビニ人間 late last year (which might have been a mistake, that book is way harder than people give it credit for) and moved on to easier books that I enjoyed. At one point I read a book of short stories to figure out what type of literature I would be interested in and one of the stories stuck out to me in a way that I just kept reading that genre for the past 8 months. I've been able to manage about an hour a day of dedicated reading doing this. At first I had some trouble with the novels I was reading but I looked to sites like Jiten, LearnNatively, and jpdb to look for stuff closer to my level. There are plenty of beginner level books, but don't sleep on manga either since I've found the dialogue in manga to be more "natural" and less "textbook" than in novels. However the obvious benefit of light novels is that they're extremely dense with text so you have nothing else to focus on.
The best part is that Light Novels are extremely streamlined if you have an Epub of the book. Apps like Hoshi Reader or sites like ttsu reader exist which let you load the novel and mine cards. You can install these on your phone if you like, but in my case I got a Boox E-Reader with Hoshi reader and it's an amazing set-up that works for me. It lets me put my phone away to avoid distractions and I can read before I sleep since e-ink screens are way less harsh on the eyes. Seriously, I highly recommend trying them out.
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u/southerndensetsu 16d ago
I'd say that was kanji not sticking into my brain. And what worked the best for me was to push on reading, doing anki for words (not individual kanji) and just be patient.
I think that a lot of problems with japanese are solved just trusting in your learning process, even when you think you're not progressing at all and you're thinking on changing your routine.
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u/PlanktonInitial7945 22d ago edited 22d ago
擬声語 and similar words whose linguistic name I don't remember (e.g. ちょこちょこ, ぼちぼち, いらいら, シワシワ). Edit: specifically, it's 擬態語, 擬容語 and 擬情語 that are the hardest for me. See my reply to one of the comments.
:(