How good are you at Japanese?
So how good is everyone at Japanese? How long did it take you to get that good?
posted by sumiko1
Comments 31
I'd say my Japanese is equivalent to a 9 year old native Japanese kid and it took me like 3 years? (1 year self-study, 2 years of attending classes)
ah well. :p
I really don't know my level, maybe a 2nd year of College class level.
I lived in Japan for 1 year and my wife is japanese, so I speak japanese at home everyday.
I have only been studying seriously for the last 6 months on my own. Before that it was just for fun when ever I had free time. =) How well is your Japanese?
Oh, for me, I have been seriously studying ever since 1 and a half years ago I think. I am still only a quarter of knowing everything there is to know in the language. XP
I am very, very good at Japanese. Been doing this for a long time, lived in Japan for a number o' years. But I also drink too much and am a crass fool when I'm posting online, as I am doing now. Point is, I kept at Japanese when people said it was "impossible" for a native English speaker to learn it. BS. Took me about five years to get to where I felt comfortable using it, a couple years more to get polished enough to stop using English altogether. I've met people who were much better than me at the 5-to-7-year mark, and those who were much worse than me, too. Point is, that mark was a long time ago. Anyone who says you can learn a foreign language in 21 days or whatever is a liar. It takes time. Don't give up. Stay thirsty, my friends.
myself living in tokyo long time . I never had the time to really study full time , because of work , business travel, profession and career, etc
took a 2 months intensive class few years ago that started with the basic kanjis so on. and then the infamous private lessons ,bussiness japanese lessons for few years after that . to be honest i could not really learn much after work , and 2 hours a week is not enough for this language ! it was more of self teaching and locked myself long nights ripping off kanji books . finally i have the time now to enroll in a intensive language college i did the placement test and i was put in the 1 kyu group ! . folks . prepare for brain bleeding after each gramma class and reading the culture section of a japan newspaper . i had seen students sweating and fingers shaking when the teacher starts asking questions haha . try to have some fun in the process otherwise you die of boredom if u cannot have fun then find a school /friend or teacher who does!
i have no idea, but i know that i started like 4 years ago
it's between beginner and intermediate, i can understand some grammar and i read LOTS of manga
I love this question. I will come out of the closet. I feel I am a very slow learner. I have studied Japanese for 5 years in earnest. I have learned soooo much. I study hard, but I don't talk to people much, and I tend to bounce around instead of following a linear course. So my speaking ability is very rudimentary.
I believe that if you had a difficult time understanding the concepts of grammar in your native language it will slow you down a great deal with your new language. If you are older (I'm 42) it will slow you down too. Young people learn languages a lot faster. It's also good to be social, and blabber a lot, and make mistakes, and learn from them.
I love the journey though. Some fluent speakers will tell you they were really excited during their studying years. When you learn the language you are at the top of the mountain and you have a great skill, but the the "chase" is over.
I learned for about a year and I can say basics like How I feel and weather and understand set phrases in anime such as tanomu yo or arigato or onegaishimasu. :p i really suck
I'm ok at Japanese. My level is intermediate, and I speak it better than my first language. (English is my second language.)
I can understand some anime, mainly Azumanga Daioh and Ouran High School Host Club.
I started studying Japanese this year. When school started we spend 2 weeks on learning only the hiragana and katakana. After the holidays, we start in lesson 12. So I've had actual classes for 11 weeks now. Though I'm far from close to a native, I can go through a very basic conversation.I think my level is now around the level of a 5 year old or so o^-^o
Not as good as I had hoped. Feeling good about my progress, I tried a mock test for the JLPT N3... and I got a bit less than half the answers wrong. Although I've only been learning for 10 months, I'm still kind of disappointed. I guess I can only try harder.
Regardless, I have a lot of fun studying and practicing my japanese. I can't say I've ever invested so much time into something before, and it feels great.
Eh decent.
Was glad to move to a different primary school in my first year, which happened to teach japanese, but when I moved on to high school, comparing them, it's as if I forgot 95% of primary school's japanese classes (Only retaining the alphabets and a few phrases).
So a couple short classes a week, for a looong time (in my last year of high school now, it's gonna be tough), i'd say my japanese is a -bit- decent. Found this website on some forum and I'm glad i did find it :)
Grammar taught at my school isn't so bad, but sometimes i wish the pace were faster.
Vocabulary is my big weak point though...
Almost advanced, ~7 months.
Unlike the majority, I didn't go to a Japanese course because there's none. I also couldn't get most of those great Japanese learning books because none of them couldn't be shipped to my country. (I don't know if it's still like that, tho.) So, I studied things via Anki, our good ol' friend.
I think Japanese isn't an impossible language, personally I think Russian is much harder. And since my mother-language is Turkish, I could learn Japanese a little bit easier because both of them comes from the same language family, have similar grammar rules and even vocabularies.
Right now, I can read various novels, talk about linguistics, write texts in Japanese and so on.
I genuinely don't think I'm very good.
I developed an interest when I was twelve (almost three years ago, now), but only seriously started about May of 2012 when I decided I wanted to become an interpreter.
I have been self-studying and would say I'm a beginner but with a grasp on some intermediate words/rules? :3
I have a BA in Japanese and I use Japanese with the office staff at work, so I'm fairly fluent but I still have a lot to learn.
I've been studying japanese in my spare time as a sort of stress-relief and/or challenge as needed. So far, it's been two and a half years. It only took me about a year to begin reading sentences and adequately, albeit slowly and inaccurately, translating complex sentences.
Right now, I can glance at any sentence and see the general grammatical structure, but my vocabulary is lacking, so I often need a dictionary when any uncommon kanji appear, or when an uncommon figure of speech is used. I'm beginning to pick up on spoken japanese; right now, I can comprehend about 60% of normal everyday japanese sentences. I still have a bit of an interpretation lag as some words take a few moments to recall when hearing, though I know them well in writing.
After 2 and a half years of focusing on grammar, it is no surprise that I excel in grammar alone. The only thing that trips me up grammatically is causative/passive verbs, which I often mix up. In grammar, I am advanced; in everything else, I am early intermediate. I have gained quite a lot of vocabulary by learning to sing along to my favourite anime music and comprehend it. Anki works, but mostly for nouns and verbs; adjectives, adverbs and figures of speech are a bit too abstract for rote memorization (they need a slight bit more context). Grammar, Speaking, Listening, Writing, Reading; those are practiced.
I learnt a bit of Japanese up until the end of year 12. Helped greatly that I got hooked on watching anime in year 10! My listening skills are now pretty damn awesome, if I do say so myself. But because I graduated year 12 about 4 years ago now, and haven't practiced any kanji writing/reading since then, my written skills kind of suck (but this website is helping me with my reading skills!! Then onto writing!).
Listening skills > spoken skills > reading skills >writing skills.
Thanks to watching subbed anime, I can actually get through some episodes not even realising there are no subtitles until halfway through!! It's seriously awesome! And learning 'new vocab' on this site is really easy because I know what the romaji is!
I would, however, like to improve my written skills. Not necessarily for my career; just because it's an awesome skill to have. :)
I'm pretty bad at Japanese, but I've been learning for half a year. I know basic phrases and some verb conjugations. I need to spend more time on grammar, and my kanji isn't the best. However, I'm better at vocabulary and I have memorized all the kana.
When watching anime or reading raw manga, I can pick up a few words, but not understand full sentences unless they're really easy.
However, I hope to get better at it with hard work!
I am studying Japanese for almost a year now
and still trying hard to make some progress in the grammar.
I bought a N4 book . I took two test already on it. Unfortunately , I am always failing on the grammar part.
I do not know why.
Maybe the foundation is still not enough to get my aim.
Right now, I have many Japanese movies and I am always listening to Japanese songs . I can understand some of the lines and some I do not.
My problem is, I understand some of it but I am not good in speaking.
is there any one here can give me some advice? :)
I am still holding on to my goal and never give up!
I'm okay, I just need to improve my kanji, verb forms, and vocabulary.
I would rate myself as a beginner overall. I've studied on and off for roughly 2 years, about 6-8 months of which was during college classes on the subject. I will be taking two more classes later this year which will hopefully help me speak and listen to the language. I'm quite confident with my grammar, but I lack in almost everything else. Though my handwriting is much neater in Japanese than it is in English Haha.
I just started this and I'm really happy!!!
I'm terrible, especially after 2 years living in Japan.
I can get by in daily life just fine but for conversations....sometimes I get what is going on and can manage all night, other times I have a brain fart and forget a really common word.
Kanji is easy, vocabulary less so, spoken impossible.
Gonna try n3 this summer though, just to see how badly I fail.
I'm not really good. Especially with kanji. : D- いっぱいな答えに僕の上げっていますけど…
I'm relatively good and I can string sentences together, but I have a hard time keeping up with spoken Japanese the moment they stray from metaphorical objects. Any vocabulary you often encounter in artistic works, like tears, water, fire, love, I'll recognize instantly, but ask me to order a happy meal and I'll be stuck because I lack concrete verbs. I have yet to take formal classes, but I know that I'll probably be able to skip into the second or even third year of my school's Japanese course, which I will be enrolling in next year.
What has impressed me is how much my vocabulary has grown over time, especially since I began introducing anime and J-pop into my regime. At times, they speak so fast that I can't recognize words I only know slightly, but I can understand 60% if they don't throw in too many unusual words. I know at least 400 different kanji (to varying degrees), and I have a relatively decent vocabulary of about 600-800 words, but I haven't been in a memorizational state lately. I've been focusing on listening skills, but when I began, I put a humongous emphasis on understanding grammar to the point that I can translate anything with the aid of a dictionary. Of course, dialects occasionally trip me up still. 
Kinda decent, around the N4 JLPT level.
I've been studying it on and off by myself for years now. I'm not all that good at stringing along a conversation or kanji, but I can get the gist of what's going on especially while I'm reading it. I think I need to spend more time practicing it in conversation.
Right now I can read websites but I still feel weird trying to speak. I feel like all this time, I didn't study as hard as I needed to, even though I was always motivated to learn as much as possible. That means I wasted time with bad teachers and resources telling me the wrong thing. I just want to learn how to express myself and carry a conversation, and I'll consider myself "good" at Japanese, even though I still have a lot to learn.
I could understand most anime and series without subtitles on before really studying Japanese. Now after 3 months of following Japanese lessons from a teacher my vocab is better now and kanji is much easier as well, but the problem is remembering the words I have learned. I recognize them, but that's all. So I'd love to see a function for tests like English words to Japanese to practise it both ways on this website. :)
I recently started so you could say I talk like a toddler XD
