I've been taking Japanese classes since last August and I'm amazed at how it is now all coming together for me. I feel like a 3-year-old. I apparently have not learned Japanese like an adult learner of a second language at all, the type of student for whom our textbooks are designed. Instead I've spent years accumulating names of objects, a few actions, and a lot of descriptive words. But I had no grammar to enable me to use these things. Going to school has provided a means to assemble the individual pieces of this puzzle.
All of a sudden I can hear things and think things in Japanese. Not very complicated things, yet. But what I'm saying is I'm no longer hearing the Japanese and translating it into English before understanding it. I am just hearing the Japanese and knowing what it means. No translation. It's just a different way of saying something. I'm stunned and amazed and I feel a sense of awe, as if I'd found the long lost key to a treasure box that's sat dusty on the shelf for years.
This unexpected rewiring of my brain makes me impatient with exercises shown in English to be translated into Japanese. I don't want to think in English first. I want to learn my Japanese grammar first, before I think about how to translate between the two languages. I'd rather use pictures or fill-in-the-blank sentences to learn a new grammatical structure.
I'm probably not being very clear on this. What I'm trying to say is that phrase books, or anything that translates word for word is not helpful to me for learning the big picture. I'm much more comfortable with books that present the grammar for a specific situation (comparison: A is more X than B.) Once I learn the equivalent pattern in Japanese, then I never have to think in English when I hear it.
I must be the slowest learner in the world, and I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Yeah, of course. This is obvious." Maybe the textbooks are designed just this way, but I don't think they communicate it very well. The best book I've found so far for learning patterns is Naoko Chino's A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
February 27, 2003
Comments
Congratulations! You've gotten over one of the most important and biggest challenges in learning languages. (Now the next language you learn will be a lot easier!)
Comment by: Trevor Hill. Posted February 27, 2003 11:54 AM.
Thank, Trevor, but I'm pretty sure this is the last language I'm going to attempt to learn. I did Spanish and Latin in high school and, at 46, I feel pretty old to be starting something new. (Not after the years it's taken me to clear the first hurdle on my journey into Japanese.)
On the other hand, my mother-in-law, who has just retired from being a high school French teacher, has taken up Italian. So, maybe in another 20 years, I'll be looking for a change, too.
Comment by: M. Posted February 27, 2003 02:50 PM.
Way to go, M! That's really great. Yeah, "level up." Keep it up!
Comment by: Kiyo. Posted February 27, 2003 10:20 PM.
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The difference a year makes.