So it’s been two weeks so far of trying to learn Japanese. So far it hasn’t been too painful mostly because the APPs I’m using have made it quite easy. I’ve restricted the number of sources I use in an effort to concentrate on only a few things at once and learn them thoroughly. Here is the breakdown:
Spreadsheet
My spreadsheet tells me I’ve spent about 29.5 contact hours with the language. I use the term “contact hours” because it includes both the intensive study of using a couple of APPs and the passive listening I do in my spare time. Here’s a look at my time so far:
Duolingo
The APP says I spent almost 4 hours studying the language last week completed 70 lessons. The number of words learned in the screenshot below only show the results for the last week, not the entire time I’ve spent using the APP. Further, the difference in hours spent studying from my spreadsheet and from the APP is probably due to the fact that the APP only counts the actual lesson time, whereas I count the block of time I spend on the APP. For example, it might only take a minute to go through a lesson but it might take 10 seconds to load. Over the course of half and hour, that would add up.
Apparently the Duolingo Japanese course has about 185 lessons total, but that may be an old number since they only recently updated the Japanese course last year. The current iteration of the APP boasts the following stats:
- Total Skills: 75, up from 40
- Total Kanji: ~950, up from ~100
- Target JLPT level: N4, up from N5
- Total Vocabulary Words: ~2,000, up from ~1,000
The “JPLT level” is similar to the HSK levels in Chinese but they count the other way around. So, N5 is easy and N1 would be difficult. But, as you can see, the number of targeted words and characters to be learned has been increased from the previous edition of the APP so I’m not sure how long it will take to complete. Here is my “tree” as it stands in Duolingo:
Considering all of those levels, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to complete them all within 34 hours, which the APP claims to be equivalent to one semester at university. Given that it’s taken me about 10 hours to get through 1.5 levels (out of a total of 7 levels), it should take me about 46.5 hours total to get through the whole tree. It might get easier, it might get harder, I don’t know, but it remains a target at the moment. It also means that I would just be finishing the APP as I’m getting ready to go to Japan.
Write it! Japanese
In addition to using DuoLingo for my studies, I also downloaded a writing APP called Write it! Japanese so I could practice the Hiragana and Katagana characters, also known as “Kana”. These are the phonetic representations of Japanese words for both the native and foreign elements in the language.
It took me about ten days to get through the Hiragana and I am able to recognize most of them. Katagana, on the other hand, took me an hour to complete, but I don’t think I’d be able to remember and pronounce the characters if I was tested.
I’ll continue to review those over the next few weeks with the idea that I’d like to be able to read basic sentences and words so if we happen upon a restaurant or somewhere that doesn’t have any English available, then we might be able to at least get by.
Out of the two systems, Hiragana was more difficult to get through because, I don’t know how else to put this, there were more squiggles. The Katagana system, however, was much more restricted in its use of characters and followed a much easier-to-follow pattern of consonant+vowel combinations. It might also be because I’d already gone through the Hiragana that made the Katagana much easier to follow. Duolingo uses both systems so I’d already encountered a few of the characters using that APP while writing the characters separately with Write it! Japanese.
Listening to the Radio
And the final element I’ve been working on in the last two weeks is simply listening to the radio using the Radio Japan APP available through the Play Store. I’ll either listen with my headphones while out and about or I’ll put on a Japanese news channel on YouTube and have it play in the background. This is mainly for familiarization and to begin to understand the intonation of the language.
What are the challenges I’ve had so far?
First, I’m actually surprised at how useful knowing the Chinese characters has been for knowing or understanding the meaning of a word or a sentence. The most notable examples are with time since Japanese uses the Chinese characters for their numbering system but adds come characters as “particles” to define the time. So, reading and understanding what time it is is easy enough, but saying it has been more difficult.
Unlike Chinese wherein the sounds of the characters don’t change, the Japanese language modifies the sound of a character based on its use within the sentence. For example, “七時です” is made up of the characters for “seven” (nana), “hour” (ji) and “is” (desu) but, it’s pronounced “shichi ji des”. So the word “seven” and “is” have changed form. The result is that I’m able to understand what the sentence means but wouldn’t pronounce it properly if given the chance.
In addition to having the numbers change pronunciation in a sentence, other words also change form when put together with others in a sentence. Even some of the characters are taught to be spoken in standalone form but then drop or elide a sounds when spoken in the sentence. Examples include です (desu = des), 学生 (gakusei = gaksei), and many of the numbers change form based on their position in the sentence.
Am I learning anything?
Yes. Although it’s still very basic I do think I’m progressing in at least becoming familiar with the language. The words I’ve learned are still rather basic and probably won’t do much if I were to leave today. That being the case, I have not lost interest and so I’m looking forward to continuing my studies over the next two weeks when I’ll have a lot more time. I really have no barometer with which to measure my success or progress since I’m mainly interested in getting by in the language and not looking to write a test or be fluent any time soon. If anything, this current attempt at the language would mainly be a foundation from which I could build on later should I so choose.
Are you able to say anything?
Basic words, yes. Basic time said at a snail’s pace, yes. Basic phrases with terrible grammar, yes. Basic phrases with Chinese thrown in, also yes. Remembering to use the particles in the spoken language has been a challenge and also getting my mouth to move in the Japanese language fashion, rather than in its typical English-speaking fashion, has been a bit of a challenge. I don’t think this is impossible to overcome and, given the APPs above, I’ll continue to work on saying phrases and chunks of words that will hopefully help others understand me.
Are you able to understand anything?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa no. Since Duolingo repeats a lot of its sentences over and over again, it’s getting easier to understand those words. But the news? Ha, not a chance. So far I’m gearing up for a bunch of one-way conversations that hopefully communicate what I need while completely not knowing what said in response to what I’ve just said. I think this is pretty common when you first pick up a language, right?
And with that, the studies continue!