I speak Spanish and English, but then I moved on to Japanese and now find myself stuck. I'm not confident in any scenario involving Japanese. Perhaps I should explore other languages (likely French, Portuguese, or another Romance language), then revisit Japanese. From there, I might transition to Mandarin and Korean.
Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to impact my cognitive speed.
Has anyone feeling this? or maybe I overestimated the time I should have been investing into this?
I went from Portuguese and English to Japanese and I can tell you: that is entirely normal.
So many words in English are from Latin origin, so you got so many shortcuts when learning English (and I’m sure you are exposed to it for more time than you realize, as time spent passively learning a language dominates in the end).
It took me some time to realize the amount of work (in terms of hours put into it) that are needed to learn Japanese.
But then what I look for in language learning is not what polyglots look for. I want to understand the language deeply to appreciate its beauty fully while communicating with natives in a deep level, so I’m OK with putting the hours and leaning it within many years, even if it means it is the last language I learn. I’m in for the depth, not for the number of languages.
I unstuck myself by moving to working with a tutor (on Preply). That paired with anki cards (of the words I would try to use during a normal conversation but didn't know them) boosted my skills tremendously.
I went from just knowing how to read hira/katakana and say a few sentences (after studying it on my own for many years) to being able to hold a conversation for 1 hour after just a couple of years.
Now I'm moving onto playing easier games for kids which seem fun to me too in Japanese (e.g. some pokemon games). I pick up a lot from animes already but they can be tough, depending on the target audience.
Japanese is in the top tier of language difficulty according to official rankings. Don't despair because you are learning the most difficult language ever and you are not even Chinese or Korean to have familiarity with images vs alphabet.
East Asian Languages are tough for Westerners, or at least that has been my experience. The biggest problem is really the barrier to reading especially with Chinese and a lesser extent Japanese.
Would love any tips from someone who has mastered all those characters without full immersion or a structured University curriculum.
Been learning Japanese for...uhmmm...30 years? Not at a consistently intense level, but i started at age 12 with a book my grandpa got me for my birthday when i was a full on anime nerd.
I am fluent in a handful of languages so i know i have it in me but, Japanese, oh boy, it's a tough nut to crack. I am conversationally fluent but I'm aware I must sound like a monkey half the time.
Japanese is deceitful because the basic grammar rules are pretty simple once you get your head around them, not a lot of tenses or conjugations to learn, not even plurals or gender for the most part.
But something about how simple it is makes it actually harder to understand, like the meaning is all these nuanced expressions that take forever to learn, and then of course the completely alien vocabulary, which because of the lack of phonetic variety there's lots and lots of ambiguity, too many similar words. And then there's all the speaking registers as used by different classes of people...
Either the path I chose is too complex, or age is beginning to impact my cognitive speed.
Has anyone feeling this? or maybe I overestimated the time I should have been investing into this?