woes: What's hardest in Japanese?

[arbalest71]

Yudan Taiteki wrote:

arbalest71 wrote:
I don't want to dredge up old threads-

Two days is not even close to being considered "dredging up an old thread".

Ah, sorry- I meant an older thread than this. The "overwhelming" one in late February or so. Basically a thread about when you ought to start learning kanji. I didn't entirely disagree with you there, but it might have seemed as if I did.

Yudan Taiteki wrote:

I stopped replying on the "overwhelming" thread because I had said what I wanted to (and I was traveling at the time so the thread was cold when I got back to it ), but this is why I think reading is so important- there's no other way to see as much language as quickly, and I tend to see things like studying grammar and vocabulary as a necessary evil in learning a language- the real learning occurs when you repeatedly see them used in context.

On the other hand, if you don't supplement that reading with some more active practice as well, you won't be able to automatically apply what you are reading to your speech production. There are a lot of things that are much easier to understand than they are to produce.

Well, I won't disagree with you there. My passive and active abilities in Japanese are enormously different. I can (to some degree) read the Kawabata line above, though with diffculty and questions... (what pass is that? how do you say that place name? what plant (kudzu?)- what should be considered the actor in that sentence? [and I'll note that, even though the first line of yukiguni is a lot easier, it has a similar feel- both make you pass through a tunnel, of sorts, in order to enter the inaka of the author's mind.. both make you look to the side, passively, and then cut off even that view of the outside world] ... but that is much more difficult than most of yukiguni; I agree in that, to the extent I can read it, I find it beautifully written). On the other hand, I can't really speak Japanese.

I can certainly get my point across if I want to- my vocabulary is large enough to say what I want to, and I can come up with the right grammatical word if I dredge for it, though I may use it incorrectly. But I still sound like an idiot. I am not arguing that people should read rather than speak- I am arguing that they should do both. I have not had the opportunity to speak Japanese much so I read (and understand) fairly well, but I speak and write very badly. I'm quite aware that this is the case . I have a lot of classicists in my family so maybe it shouldn't be surprising that I read more languages than I speak.

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
To respond to lalaith's response: It is very, very rare for a second language learner to attain truly native proficiency in their second language. If you mother has indeed done that with English, she is the exception, not the rule.

I'll also respond to Lalaith here to keep the postcount down. You put me in a difficult position- after all, I don't want to mess with your Mom . It _is_ too bad I've never met her- I always like talking to people from pre-war Japan... it's a window into a world that is very different from mine, and very different from that of modern Japanese. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by my statement though- your Mom might be an undiscovered genius in this respect, but most people aren't.

[arbalest71]

Ezrach wrote:

But this brings up another interesting point: What is "native proficiency"? Personally, I think that being able to digest any media that a native speaker can and being able to convey yourself accurately are the only two skills needed.

Then we are not talking about the same thing at all. You are talking about basic proficiency. Native skill is something else. But more later...

Ezrach wrote:

As a native English speaker with no second languages under your belt, you could conceivably reach native proficiency within a year and a half of dedicated study, without studying grammar.

In what? If English, I would hope so. If Japanese... you are either deluded or a genius.. well, beyond genius- a true savant. I would like to see one example of a monolingual English speaker who has learned Japanese to a true native level in 18 months. It would give me hope . Or, I would despair..

Ezrach wrote:
Children don't study grammar

Children seem not to learn languages in the same way that adults do. This isn't well understood yet, but it is almost certainly the case. At any rate there are ways you can surpass children easily- vocabulary and kanji come to mind.. I can learn both far faster than Japanese children _do_ (though under different circumstances they might learn them faster than me).

Ezrach wrote:

Grammar is a posteriori area of study.

No offense but- this is both irrelevant and almost certainly incorrect. A twofer .

Ezrach wrote:

To be honest, a lot of what I've read in academic journals... [snip]

Well, that should not be surprising (assuming that you have, in fact, ever read an academic journal)... academic journals exist, mainly, to advance careers. Even in rigorous disciplines they are mostly kitty litter liner. That most academics are, to put it kindly, mediocrities, does not mean that you can dismiss the empirical work that has been done by those who aren't. At the least you should have a better argument than they do .

I'm going to elide the rest of your comment- too incoherent to hit point by point, sorry. I agree that US Universities do a terrible job of teaching languages. I think part of the problem is defective theory, but the bigger part is defective students, and that's a tough row to hoe.

EDIT: I forgot the "more later". It's true that adults can actually learn vocabulary and things like kanji faster than children. What they don't seem to be able to do is acquire true "native proficiency". I wouldn't be surprised if there were a counterexample, but this does seem to be true for almost everyone. People should stop worrying about how close they are to "native" skill- it's a pointless exercise in ego stroking, and it's one that's rarely engaged in by people who speak a language well.

[Ezrach]

arbalest71 wrote:
In what? If English, I would hope so. If Japanese... you are either deluded or a genius.. well, beyond genius- a true savant. I would like to see one example of a monolingual English speaker who has learned Japanese to a true native level in 18 months. It would give me hope . Or, I would despair..

In Japanese. Look up the blogger who goes by the name "Khatzumoto". He was a computer science student who successfully interviewed and landed a job entirely in Japanese 18 months after he started studying the language. He functions as literate in Japanese. He never studied grammar or vocabulary independent of sentences.

I just wrote about this on my blog last night, but I wrote in a more general sense: Anyone Can Do Anything

It doesn't take a genius to become proficient in Japanese quickly. Dedication is a far more important trait. (Which you've mentioned in passing in regards to "defective students") You've got to study everyday, no exceptions. And, I'm not talking about "basic proficiency", I'm talking about functioning in every aspect of your life in Japanese, fluently. Accent and fluency are not related, unless your words end up jumbled and you can't easily communicate because of it.

Edit:
A lot of the "defective students" you mentioned think that watching anime or listening to JPop in itself is going to make them magically fluent. That method won't work, just as rigid rote learning of vocabulary and grammar won't work. "Conversation classes" are a bunch of shenanigans, also. You'll end up repeating the same textbook phrases that hardly anyone uses. Instead, "live content" is what needs to be studied. You need to read sentences that people have written without the forethought of it being used to teach the language. And input is far more important than output is. After all, you may be able to ask what is in the bowl of udon, but if you can't understand the answer it's all pointless.

[arbalest71]

Ezrach wrote:

Look up the blogger who goes by the name "Khatzumoto". He was a computer science student who successfully interviewed and landed a job entirely in Japanese 18 months after he started studying the language. He functions as literate in Japanese. He never studied grammar or vocabulary independent of sentences.

You made a specific claim- native skill in 18 months. You are not describing native skill- you are, again, describing basic proficiency. I've studied Japanese for about 18 months. I can't speak the language well, but I am semi-literate- I can read Kawabata with a dictionary. I can pick up the average book in Japanese and read it... I fall short of basic proficiency, I think, but I have studied pretty casually. I'm also not impressed by "Computer Science" students- I've taught (or tried to, sadly) a few too many of them how to tell the difference between their ass and their elbow to be overawed. At any rate, I imagine I could work as a programmer in Japan.

Ezrach wrote:
I just wrote about this on my blog last night, but I wrote in a more general sense: Anyone Can Do Anything

Well, at least anyone can start a blog... do you really think anyone can do anything? Could you, for instance, become chess champion of the world? Could you even become competitive at the amateur level in 18 months- I mean rated 2300 or above. Think about it. Or go do it. It's easy to say, but harder to do.

Ezrach wrote:
It doesn't take a genius to become proficient in Japanese quickly.

That is not the same as "native".

Ezrach wrote:
Dedication is a far more important trait.

Agreed, sort of....

Ezrach wrote:
(Which you've mentioned in passing in regards to "defective students") You've got to study everyday, no exceptions. And, I'm not talking about "basic proficiency".

You are talking about basic proficiency. You are also confusing that with "native skill".

Ezrach wrote:
Edit:
A lot of the "defective students" you mentioned think that watching anime or listening to JPop in itself is going to make them magically fluent. That method won't work, just as rigid rote learning of vocabulary and grammar won't work. "Conversation classes" are a bunch of shenanigans, also. You'll end up repeating the same textbook phrases that hardly anyone uses. Instead, "live content" is what needs to be studied. You need to read sentences that people have written without the forethought of it being used to teach the language. And input is far more important than output is. After all, you may be able to ask what is in the bowl of udon, but if you can't understand the answer it's all pointless.

Good lord... if I have to understand a bowl of Udon... it is pointless.

[Ezrach]

You are talking about basic proficiency. You are also confusing that with "native skill".

I'm curious what your definition is of native-level? I'm not at a native level myself. I'm well known among my relatives to have been a procrastinator, which directly resulted in a decline in my studies as a university student. It's something I regret now, but this is far from a rare scenario. But, I do think in Japanese when I'm in a Japanese conversation, or in Japan at all, for that matter. I don't translate in my head, and I haven't for a long time.

Imagine a person who thinks in Japanese, can put into Japanese anything that they want to say, and can understand any book, movie, or conversation that the average Japanese adult can. How are they not at a native-level when they can conduct their whole life in Japanese without any problem? Accent has nothing to do with anything, because I could just as easily claim people from Tennessee are unintelligible to the majority of the English speaking world.

Good lord... if I have to understand a bowl of Udon... it is pointless.

I'm sorry, I really didn't put time into thinking up a proper example. Imagine you ask what you should do next at work, and your boss gives you instructions in Japanese, but you have no idea what he's talking about - Asking the question in the first place is pointless.

You made a specific claim- native skill in 18 months.

I said it is possible to be at the skill level that I described above within 18 months, but only if you apply yourself for a reasonable amount of time every day. A genius would only have to apply himself a portion of the time. An hour a day in class is not a reasonable amount of time, and if you tailor your environment to fit your goal, it will speed up the process. Hell, my wife became "proficient" at Japanese within a year, although she's Korean so she had a head start in several areas. She passed 日本語迫ﾍ試験1級 on her first try, and passed a university entrance exam her first try, and began studying psychology at a national university within a year of landing in Japan when she knew absolutely no Japanese at all. She's never used note cards before, and she never studied grammar rules. She just started digesting reading material (particularly バナナ吉本), and she didn't fall back to watching Korean media in her free time. She uses a dictionary sometimes, sure, but so would most of the people on this board if they wanted to know the meaning of, "Angry, the prince, in his vengeful wrath, defenestrates his insubordinate guard."

I didn't mean you could become the world chess champion if you wanted to, but you can learn how to play chess even if you're 80 years old and mentally stable. I'm sorry you don't have faith in your own potential. It's a major obstacle to overcome.

[Yudan Taiteki]

When I say "native level proficiency" I literally mean being able to speak the language indistinguishably from a native speaker. Essentially an impossible goal, although there are a very very small number of second language learners who come close.

I disagree with your thoughts on grammar teaching. Adults cannot learn language the same way as children -- this is a *biological* limitation. Trying to pretend that they can and catering the language program to that effect is counterproductive. Adults benefit from having rules to explain the building blocks of the language and how they are put together. This is especially true in Japanese, because the structure of the language is so different from English. With no grammar instruction, people will tend to just think of everything in terms of translations from their native language.

My opinion is actually the opposite of yours -- I think the majority of language textbooks are deficient because they have too *little* grammar instruction.

What you are describing is something like the now-obsolete "audio lingual approach".

[Strawberry_Juice]

Having hardly any resources here pretty much sucks. And sadly the foreign language program at my school is horribly underfunded and undermined by the rest of the school administration. They can get a $16 million theatre complex and yet can't spend a dime on proper textbooks for a few classes. I've got a brilliant teacher, but she can't just magically provide exercises and study guides with a snap of her fingers.

So yer, I guess for me the lack of resources and support isn't very fun.

[arbalest71]

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
When I say "native level proficiency" I literally mean being able to speak the language indistinguishably from a native speaker. Essentially an impossible goal, although there are a very very small number of second language learners who come close.

This is close enough to what I mean. I'd be willing to excuse an accent, in English, if it were within the range that English accents fall into, even if it weren't the accent of any actual group of English speakers. Native skill is like pornography- I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

I once tried to come up with a list of serious writers in English who learned the language after childhood (this is not as odd a metric as it sounds- no other language has as rich a literary tradition, I think). After a bit of research I scratched Nabokov off the list (spoke English well as a child- still remarkable for having written beautifully in more than one language), and was left with one name- Conrad. Well, as I said, there are counterexamples.. there just aren't many.

Yudan Taiteki wrote:
I disagree with your thoughts on grammar teaching. Adults cannot learn language the same way as children -- this is a *biological* limitation.

So far so good, though I'd (needlessly) quibble about the word biological. I spent enough time doing CogSci, and letting psycholinguististics PHD candidates use me as a guinea pig that I tend to be very careful when it comes to other people's terminology. I am a bit less careful about my own usage, of course .

Yudan Taiteki wrote:Trying to pretend that they can and catering the language program to that effect is counterproductive.

It is worth noting that you almost never hear this "native speaker" thing from people who speak a foreign language really well.

Yudan Taiteki wrote:Adults benefit from having rules to explain the building blocks of the language and how they are put together. This is especially true in Japanese, because the structure of the language is so different from English. With no grammar instruction, people will tend to just think of everything in terms of translations from their native language.

My opinion is actually the opposite of yours -- I think the majority of language textbooks are deficient because they have too *little* grammar instruction.

I've already said that I think that studying grammar is a necessary evil when learning a language as difficult as Japanese (I'm not sure that it is all that necessary when learning an "easy" language like French, but I may be biased in this regard- I was immersed in Quebecois as a child).

I do think that most University programs are too heavy on (poor, in my experience) instruction, and not heavy enough on immersion, but in the end I mainly mean that most Uni language students don't spend enough time on the language outside of class. I think that language pedagogy is still very primitive, but I don't think that is an acceptable excuse- the average recipient of a BA in an East Asian language can neither read nor speak the language they majored in- that is profoundly wrong, IMHO.

EDIT: And diving is, in fact, more than taking a lot of down stairs .

[Yudan Taiteki]

Well, it's only profoundly wrong if you make the assumption that a native speaker of a western language *should* be able to read or speak Japanese in 4 years. I think that's pretty ambitious unless you set the bar for the definition of "read" and "speak" very low. One of the problems some Japanese programs have is that the administration doesn't realize the difference between an East Asian language and a European language, so they make pronouncements like "students should be reading literature in 3rd year" (fine for French, ridiculous for Japanese).

IMO the job of the 4-year program should be to lay the foundation and teach students how to learn on their own afterwards. That's more valuable than teaching X number of kanji or vocabulary items.

At OSU, the final project the students have to do in 4th year Japanese is give a speech (I think around 5 minutes) on a topic of their choice; they can prepare the speech beforehand but they have to deliver it only from notes, not from a written script. I think that's pretty good.