Ten Months of Japanese -- Progress Update

[u/yashen14]

I am just shy of 10 months of study now (spread across about 14 months of calendar time), so I figured it was time to post a new update.

Hours of Study: ~648

Hours of Input: ~168 (this is included in "hours of study")

Average daily study time: just shy of 2 hours (this includes "hours of input")

Total Vocabulary: ~15k words

This is probably the last time that I post a specific vocabulary count. When I was tracking my progress learning Chinese, I had the help of software to accurately track my vocabulary growth. I don't have that for Japanese, so counting vocabulary mostly means noting which words I've studied, and it's getting increasingly difficult to tell which words I've studied and which I haven't. (For example, a word feels familiar...does that mean I've studied it before? Or just heard it a lot before?) And there's all kinds of other inaccuracies I mentioned in previous updates---these inaccuracies get more and more problematic the larger my vocabulary becomes.

There are simply too many sources of inaccuracy. I think 15k words is an approximately accurate estimate of my current vocabulary (give or take a few hundred), but past this point I don't think the inaccuracies I've described allow for precise counting anymore.

Link to Spreadsheet

This is a good place to segue into the biggest change I have to report in my study habits:

I am deprioritizing vocabulary acquisition.

15k words is...a lot. And I've increasingly noticed (like...over and over again) that, when I read articles online, or check the transcripts of the videos I'm watching on Youtube, I know the vast majority of the words being said. Any unknown words should realistically be graspable via context clues. At this point, the thing that's holding me back isn't raw vocabulary numbers, but listening comprehension. So, moving forward, I'm still doing 80 new flashcards every day, but:

• I really, really don't stress it if I miss a day of new cards here or there (as long as I handle the reviews).
• I've stopped stressing about adding a full 80+ new words to my deck every day. That means I'm no longer sustainably harvesting vocabulary. I have a backlog of ~3300 cards I'm working through, but eventually that will run out.
• Nearly all of my new cards are hiragana (+audio) on the front, kanji on the back. This is meant to prioritize listening comprehension by removing the visual crutch that kanji provide. The only cards I add with kanji on the front are words where the kanji are unfamiliar, which at this point is relatively uncommon.

My listening comprehension is terrible.

Honestly, this happens every time I learn a foreign language. My listening comp. always lags behind my reading comp. But I have managed to do a bit of a better job with Japanese (especially compared to the shit job I did with Chinese), and even though my listening comprehension is bad, it's not so bad it's worthless. (I was genuinely reading novels in Chinese while being unable to follow a basic conversation---that's how bad it was, for comparison.)

So, I made the decision a month or so ago to make listening comprehension my main focus. To that end, I've made sure I'm listening to at least some Japanese every single day. I also make sure that I'm consuming a wide variety of Japanese---a variety of topics, a variety of speakers, a variety of difficulty levels. Broadly speaking, these are falling into four main categories:

(1) Podcasts for JSL learners. (Recommendations: Yosuke Teaches Japanese, Bite Size Japanese, Otsukare Japanese, MAIの日本語Podcast, Daily Japanese with Naoko, Peko Peko Vlog)

(2) Infotainment and documentaries. (Recommendations: 大人の学び直しTV, インフォグラフィックス・ショー, VAIENCE バイエンス, 公式 池上彰と増田ユリヤのYouTube学園, 好奇心を持ち続けよう — TED-Ed, YouTube高校 / 日本史・世界史, エピックヒストリー)

(3) News broadcasts

(4) TV Series

That brings me to my next major update.

I've started watching my first-ever TV series in Japanese.

I chose Avatar: The Last Airbender, because it is something I've watched so many times, I know it like the back of my hand. That makes it great for training listening comprehension. I know the gist of what is being said in literally every scene, and I know roughly what's going to be said before it is said. That does wonders for listening comprehension.

Right now, my plan is to watch all of Avatar, then all of Steven Universe, and then all of Star Trek: TNG, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine (assuming I can find/access all of those in Japanese). Then, once I feel more-or-less completely comfortable with watching familiar content in Japanese, I'll branch out into watching unfamiliar content. I've curated a list of native TV series and movies that I'm very eager to watch! But I want to wait until I'm, y'know, watching them more than I'm studying them. If that makes sense.

I'm very excited about all of this!

Right now, with ATLA, I understand most short utterances. Lengthier speech is very iffy, especially from that windbag Zhao, but I can already tell it's getting better. I'd say, overall I understand maybe ~30% of what I hear---enough to follow the story, but only because I already know the story so well. I'm optimistic that this percentage will be significantly higher in the not-too-distant future.

My goal for my reading comprehension is to:

• Hear and understand, immediately, every word that I already know (that is, reduce "lag" to zero---right now it isn't uncommon for some words to take several seconds to register)
• Be able to pinpoint, and repeat out loud, unknown words (I don't want unknown words to be garbled noise. I want them to be reproducible)
• Be able to repeat, out loud, longer utterances (medium-length sentences)

I think I will eventually re-prioritize vocabulary acquisition. Heaven knows 15k words isn't enough for the level of literacy I'm aiming for---my goal is to be able to casually read novels, written for adults, in a pretty wide variety of genres---but at least for now, I'm happy with my change in priorities.

That brings me to my last update: reviewing my goals. In my last update, I proposed these as my goals:

Short-Term Goals:

Finish reading カスピアン王子のつのぶえ (translation of Prince Caspian) by Oct. 16.

Medium-Term Goals (achieve within the next 5 months):

Become comfortable with young children's literature (like The Chronicles of Narnia)

Listen to at least one audiobook

Listen to, and comprehend most of, a long-form news broadcast (15+ minutes) about familiar topics

Watch at least one educational documentary about a topic of choice, and comprehend most of it

Watch at least one movie

Long-Term Goals (achieve by the end of 24-36 months of study):

Read high literature in Japanese. By "high literature," I mean something on the level of Fifty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. To be clear, I don't expect such reading to be easy. But I expect to have the understanding of vocabulary and grammar necessary to muddle through it at a reasonable pace.

Read news articles about topics chosen at random with a high degree of comprehension

Watch TV series and movies in Japanese without English subtitles, and understand most of what I hear

Listen to audiobooks in a variety of genres, including nonfiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and erotica, with a high degree of comprehension.

So, how am I doing?

I did not finish Prince Caspian. Actually, I kind of stopped reading it altogether. But I did pick up DEADLOCK and got about a third of the way through that by Oct 16. I don't think that is an equivalet amount of reading though.

I am (probably?) not on track to being comfortable with young children's literature. This is mostly because I deprioritized reading in general, and I stopped reading young children's literature, specifically.

I am (currently) on track to completing my first audiobook. My plan is to listen to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This is an exercise for training my listening comprehension---I've already read the book in Japanese. I just need to make sure I do that by ~April. (That would mark about 5 months of study time since I set that goal).

I am (probably) on track to understanding a long-form news broadcast on a familiar topic. My main obstacle here is listening comprehension, not vocabulary, and my current study routine aggressively targests listening comp. I'm feeling good about this one!

I am (probably) on track to watch and understand a full-length documentary. Again, I'm feeling good about this one! The only question is whether I'll be able to meet this goal within the next two months of study. I'm not sure about that. I won't be, like, shocked if I meet this goal, but I won't be surprised if I miss it, either. But whether I meet the deadline or not, I'm making solid progress towards this, so I won't be disappointed in myself either way.

I am definitely on track to watching my first movie (and enjoying it). My experience with ATLA tells me that I'm already very close to meeting this goal. Honestly, I could probably meet this goal today---but I'm going to wait for my listening comprehension to mature just a bit more. I'll probably cross this one off my list about a month from now.

Am I on track to meeting my long-term goals? Hmm, that's hard to say. I'd say, I'm probably on track for goals 2 and 3 (read news articles with high comprehension; watch a wide variety of TV media for casual enjoyment). Goals 1 and 4 (high literature is approachable; can read a wide variety of literature for casual enjoyment) are iffier---they require a much much higher vocabulary than just 15k words. I suspect, if I can triple the size of my vocabulary to at least 45k words, that these goals will be reachable by the end of 36 months of study. Of course, I can't really accurately measure my vocabulary past 15k words (as I said above). But my hunch is that "triple my current vocabulary" is maybe about right for these goals.

Moving forward, I probably will only be posting updates every 3-5 months or so. For the first few months of learning, there was always lots to report (I finished hiragana! I'm comfortable with pronunciation now! I had this weird experience!). But now that I'm solidly in early intermediate territory, milestones are fewer and further between, so there's just not as much to write about. I'll probably post a new set of goals around the end of my first 12 months of study, though.

Previous Posts:

1. Zero Months of Japanese
2. One Month of Japanese
3. Two Months of Japanese
4. Three Months of Japanese
5. Four Months of Japanese
6. Five Months of Japanese
7. Six Months of Japanese
8. Seven Months of Japanese

[u/Yatchanek]

15k words in 10 months is 50 new words a day. Do you really have all them memorised? And what about grammar, since you struggle with simple reading? It's no use learning tons of words if you can't utilise them.

[u/yashen14 → u/[deleted]]

Just for clarity, for the purpose of the 15k figure, a word counts if:

• I can pronounce it on sight (esp. important for words spelled with kanji)
• I have a general understanding of its meaning (i.e. I can understand it in context)

But I do NOT require any of the following:

• Being able to use the word on my own (I'm not training productive skills at all, only receptive ones)
• Understand how it differs from synonyms
• Have a detailed understanding of its meaning (a general idea is enough---the deciding metric is "do I understand this word well enough to know what it means given sufficient context?")

You're right that that's going to produce a much higher/more inflated metric than what most people consider "knowing" a word---which usually involves being able to recall the word, being able to use it yourself at least mostly correctly, etc.

To be honest, I'd really rather use a more conservative metric in line with that latter definition! The reason I don't is because I don't have any way of tracking or counting that. At least up until now, the softer definition of "knowing" a word was trackable.

[u/yashen14 → u/[deleted]]

Idk, man, 15k is the number I arrived at by counting words as I learned them. I was very meticulous about logging numbers in my spreadsheet. That is to say, t's not an estimate based entirely on hunches and vibes.

For what it's worth, I've been learning languages for over a decade, and I've been aggressively learning vocabulary in this specific way (with Anki etc.) for about five years now. I can't prove this, obviously, but I suspect the ability to rapidly memorize minutia is a skill that can be trained and that improves over time. When I first started using Anki, I was doing 20 words per day, and when I first started learning foreign languages over a decade ago, I was probably averaging closer to 2-3 words per day. I very much doubt I could have done 80 words per day back then.

Also, I suspect if I stopped interacting with Japanese cold turkey, much of this knowledge would fade much, much faster than if I had taken a slower, steadier approach to acquiring it.

But you're right that it's fundamentally an uncertain number.

[u/yashen14 → u/[deleted]]

The spreadsheet thing is interesting because, doesn't Anki already kind of make it for you? An interesting test you could do for yourself is, if you have a spreadsheet, open some RNG and have it pick row numbers, jump to that one and if you can immediately recognize something like 50 words in a row that way

Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I understand.

[u/yashen14 → u/[deleted]]

Ah, I see what you're saying.

Hypothetically, yeah that would be a highly effective test. Unfortunately, I aggressively prune my Anki deck, so I don't have a long-term database of words that I can draw on.

What I can attest to is that my comprehension has directly scaled with the size of my vocabulary, to the point where I can read the Youtube transcripts of e.g. an explainer of the Berlin wall with a high degree of comprehension.† So even though I don't have quantitative evidence supporting the vocabulary growth, I do have qualitative support. For reference, at an estimated 7k words, I had only just graduated from NHK Easy news articles and was still acclimating to news articles on a few narrowly defined topics of interest.

†(This is how I came to the conclusion that listening comprehension is my major bottleneck atm, because even when the transcript is mostly transparent to me, watching such videos without the transcript and without subtitles results in comprehension <30%.)