How I Learned Japanese, What I Recommend

I am sometimes asked how I learned Japanese.

The short summary:

I picked up the basics as a missionary in the Kanto area. Then I tried to continue studying it in America while trying to focus on becoming an engineer. Not having much access to real, modern Japanese, my modes of expression never became natural. (This was in the days before the Internet.)

In fact, after we were married, my wife told me my Japanese was pretty strange when we met. (I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised.)

I did study Japanese when I was a student at Brigham Young University, taking as much as was available at the time.

I don't recommend choosing a spouse just to learn a language. Marriage should be guided by higher things, really. But my companion has been one of my primary teachers. Unfortunately, I have not returned the favor.

After she brought me back to Japan, I was immersed in Japanese all day long, both at work and at home. And Sundays, at Church.

She listens to the radio several hours a day. Her favorite talk show host, Dōjō Yōzō, has essentially become one of my primary sources of patterns. Another is the collection of teachers for the NHK foreign language programs. I picked up a lot of Japanese grammar terms there.

We needed to listen to more English radio programs, for the kids and for her.

We occasionally watch videos. I try to get her and the kids to watch in English, and I find myself watching in Japanese. Newspapers, too. We sometimes take English language newspapers, but mostly it's Japanese. And I sometimes check Japanese novels out at the library.

There's a certain amount of sink-or-swim motivation, but, more than that, there is exposure.
Exposure is important.

You can't develop natural usage patterns without lots of exposure. You need good models, and you need many different models and you need lots of words and expressions from them to model your own language against.

One very useful thing is to read the scriptures in parallel. I have the scriptures in both English and Japanese. One verse in English, same in Japanese. Next verse in Japanese, and then English.

If you don't like scriptures, you can do similar things with Rowling's Harry Potter books, or Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

There are even some books you can buy with the English and Japanese in parallel, the English on one page and the Japanese on the facing page. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince is one that has been available in that format, I'm not sure if it is still in print. 

(One of these days, when I start publishing my novels, I plan on doing that with some of them. Some of my Random Eikaiwa scraps, I've either annotated or translated, and I've translated some of my posts here, as well. I don't guarantee my Japanese in those, however. Japanese to English, I'm good at. English to Japanese, I'm not quite as good at.)

Another thing that is helpful for students of Japanese, but not available for students of English, is books with furigana (振り仮名). This is the kana pronunciation of many of the Kanji in the book printed (as ruby) above the characters or to the right. It's very common in books printed for junior high and upper-elementary grade students, and it's very useful for foreign students of Japanese, as well.

For students of English, I don't know of any books that have such ruby throughout as it is available for Japanese. But it's not as necessary. Looking up Kanji words whose pronunciation you don't know requires dictionaries with stroke-radical indexing, and a modicum of familiarity with the radicals. 

(The Internet can help with that.)

With English, it's all in the spelling. Your ordinary pocket dictionary can carry you quite a distance. But that can be counter-productive, if you look up too many words. Be careful not to do that. That much, books oriented towards a younger audience can still help you in English, as well.

Grammar? Dictionary definitions? How do you know what it all means, so you can remember and use it?

Believe it or not, adults can pick up a lot of meaning from context and non-verbal cues, just like children. Mistakes, too, but dictionaries can also invite mistakes just fine.

Yeah, the bare-bones grammar I got from the Church's Missionary Training Center was important. So were the basics of vocabulary, pronunciation, and the hiragana and katakana. That was easily done in two months. Studying more at college was helpful, when I got there.

Buying a couple of semi-advanced texts to study before I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam was also helpful. But reading a couple of Japanese novels while I was studying the texts was what made sure the grammar stuck with me.

How much writing things down did I do?

There were some things that were important, but I found myself progressing a lot faster when I was not writing everything down. You have to pick things that are important, otherwise writing things down just gives you more ways to forget things.

If you're tempted to worry about losing all the words you spent all that effort learning, believe it or not, being willing to let a lot of it go is important. Being able to do throw-away reading, listening, and watching is important.

Why? It's a bit technical to really get into here, but, first, the things you let go do stick around in your less conscious memories. Second, what you are doing when you let things go, when you throw things away, is selection. Selection means you are dealing with meaning. Meaning is what helps you remember things.

You don't remember things that don't mean that much to you, and you (usually) shouldn't try very hard to remember them. You will, in fact, remember them better for thinking about them just enough to choose to throw them away.


So what about tests?

Well, tests can be useful as tools to motivate yourself to study.

Preparing for tests can be an excellent way to raise your game, as long as you are not studying the test itself.

Fluency building? Skill building? Evaluation? No, not so much.

This is another place where I could get lost in the technical details, but just think about it.

Say there are 1000 vocabulary words on a test. True fluency requires at least 10,000.

Say there are 100 grammar principles on a test. True fluency requires at least 1000.

Fluency requires being able to think about and discuss concepts in the target language. Say a test includes long readings and summary paragraph answers on ten topics. Real fluency requires being able to work with hundreds.

Getting the picture? Even the most torrid of tests can barely cover a narrow, thin, ridiculously one-dimensional piece of the target language.

Tests are a necessary evil. Use them, but do not let them rule you.

If you've taken a test recently, say in the last several years, it's likely to be more beneficial to use your time reading more novels and watching more movies in the target language. 

And don't forget to keep building your fluency with your mother tongue. Learning a foreign language does help your skill with your mother tongue, but only if you let it.