On September 7, 2023, I started taking a run at learning Japanese.
It’s not my first attempt. In high school, I read a couple of books written by Americans, describing their experience in Japan. With the thought that I might someday do a stint in the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, I checked out a Learn Japanese on CD from my local library and studied it religiously. I dabbled again my freshman year of college, and built up a handful of phrases I could use as a way to connect with a friend who was a Japanese exchange student. All in all, I fell far short of even any basic conversational level, but it left me primed with a core vocabulary and understanding of some of the grammar concepts that are different than English. I did not know any of the writing systems at all.
I mostly put it down until this autumn, when, after taking a deep dive in some translations of classical Japanese poetry and literature, I started to feel a longing in my gut to give it another try. It’s totally impractical. I don’t plan on living in Japan. I don’t read manga or watch anime much anymore. I’m still not sure how much modern Japanese will even apply to the classical literature I’ve been reading. Nevertheless, after putting it off for several months because I didn’t have a perfect study plan, I finally just downloaded Duolingo on my phone and displaced most of the margins of my time, that previously I wasted on social media, with Duo’s Japanese program.
Duolingo does a pretty good job. It gradually builds grammar concepts and vocabulary. I rarely felt like it was leaving me behind. Everything is gamified, so it hits its users with just about every dopamine-generating trick in the book, which keeps me coming back every day, even if just to complete one or two lessons. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) has five proficiency levels, graded N5 through N1, from basic to fluent respectively. The internet claims that Duolingo’s Japanese course can take users to an N4 level, which is pretty impressive for a freemium program. It is ad-supported, or ad-free with a few extra features for subscribers.
However, after a month or so, the lessons started to get tedious, the progress slow, and my ability to say anything in Japanese that I would actually say in my daily life was still basically nothing. The lessons heavily focus on travel language, which makes sense for many learners, but is mostly dead weight for me. In fact, peeking ahead into the lessons that would occupy the next couple months, it became apparent that, besides some lessons about family and weather, the vast majority of the lesson topics would not help me talk about anything in my daily life. It also spends most (or maybe all) of the time in very formal, very rigid style, which is great to keep a foreigner touring a country from offending anyone, but not great for engaging with looser, conversational or colloquial content. And since using a language is essential to learning a language, I started looking for another tool to build my vocabulary and accelerate practicability.
Enter jldb.io. It has been a godsend. It is the tool I always wanted for all of my language studies. At it’s core, it is a robust, Japanese vocabulary spaced repetition system (SRS). I was going to set up Anki, but this effectively replaces it. Most importantly, it has the ability to create custom decks from texts. Find a text, copy it, paste it into the deck, and it extracts all of the vocabulary and kanji, and populates a deck. The only downside seems to be that it tends to add cards to cover all homonyms, not just the meaning in the text, so even small texts can get cluttered with a number of low-value distractions.
So, my current study regimen includes: at least a couple minutes of Duolingo, trying to hit 20-50 new cards per day in jpdb, and trying to engage with any practical content I can.
My ideal progression would be to find content (video, audio, written) that expands my vocabulary by around 10 cards, study the cards and then engage with the content. Unfortunately, I don’t think that exists. Tadoku has a ton of free graded readers, which are great, but aren’t made with that kind of systematic progression in mind.
I looked at making decks from Japanese rock lyrics, which might be a good way to go. Two songs from The Pillows showed that I had 1/4 to 1/3 of the vocab already, with 20-50 cards to get to 100%. That would give me some content I can play on repeat to when I can only study passively. However, I discovered with other custom decks that it can be a heavy lift with (what feels like) marginal payoff to spend a couple days memorizing cards just to read a children’s book. Maybe the educational payoff is higher than I think, but the dopamine payoff is extremely low. 1/3 to 1/2 of the vocabulary in the songs are less frequent than the top 3000 words. That doesn’t mean they are bad to learn. Rare vocabulary adds color. But, learning the most common words as a base helps me access more content, and lowers the targeted study required to engage with any content.
The tricky balance is this: how do I memorize the most frequent words, which will help me access the most content, while actually using the content as much as possible? I really don’t think language curricula think about this enough in any language I’ve studied. It is a tough nut to crack. Everyone’s experience and goals are different, so it is hard to tailor the curriculum to suit an individual in such a way as to get behind the wheel and actually start driving the language as early as possible. My best experience was in a college Spanish class that required weekly attendance in a conversation group where English was banned. I practiced listening and speaking, which is always harder than book assignments or group activities, points out the holes in my understanding, and turns them into vacuums to propel my desire to learn. I don’t have such a group for Japanese. So, I’m left with grinding through the core vocabulary list and trying to read and listen to content, and speak to myself in Japanese whenever I can. Engaging with content without comprehension is tedious and discouraging, and grinding through vocabulary is tedious, less satisfying, and less effective.
So, how do I get to that optimal memorization-to-engagement ratio? This is a personal puzzle, but, honestly, I think that cracking this nut would revolutionize language learning. I would love a directory that knows your vocabulary (like jpdb) and pairs it with texts that align with it, and stretch it just enough to make you interested in the new vocabulary, without the vocabulary-learning becoming tedious. “Suggested for you:” and then a variety of content that you could understand mostly or entirely.
I digress.
I seems like right now there is no shortcut across the sophomore barrens, that great expanse between being able to say “Thank you,” and “I think there is a huge, unexplored commonality between classical Japanese poetry and the writings of Henry David Thoreau.” It just takes time and patience.
Jpdb tells me that I know 169/910 (18%) words and 128/458 (27%) kanji in their top vocab deck (21% of the total cards). At 20 cards-per-day, it will take me 54 days to complete that deck. I’m 9% complete with the Top 3000 vocab deck. It will take me 174 days (6 months) to complete that deck at that pace. If I find book/podcast/lyric decks that take me a day or two to complete, it will probably double those numbers (because of the vocab that falls outside of those decks) and delay my core vocabulary, but also provide a ton of practical value (both for vocabulary-learning and, more importantly, language-learning,) while still growing my overall vocabulary base. But, the sooner I hit that top 3000 mark, the more content I can access.
I think I’m talking myself into at least trying the former, making custom decks to prepare me for different kinds of content while/and then consuming the content. It might slow down the core progress, by not overall vocabulary-building, with the added value of opening more ways to use the language “in the wild”, outside of the carefully curated confines of a curriculum. Tadoku, NHK Easy News, any podcast or Youtube video that has a transcript or closed captioning that can be extracted… without my dream directory, I just need to try making some decks out of them and see which ore veins have pay dirt.
The last piece, that I briefly touched on, but is different than most of the content-to-memorization workflow above, is conversation practice. I looked for Japanese college courses or clubs in my town to see if they had any conversation groups I could drop in on, and found nothing. I downloaded Hilokal and Tandem, which are, I’ll say, kinds of of social media platforms whose target audiences are language learners. I’ve lurked around a bit, and have listened to people talking in English and occasionally digressing into Japanese, or people only talking in Japanese, both of which were way above my pay-grade. I haven’t found a meeting room that has the same kind of focus, discipline, or leadership as my Spanish group, which is really needed to make it effective–someone that can engage individuals in a conversation at their level, keep the audience in mind with learning opportunities, and keep exchanges short enough to provide practice opportunities for everyone in the room. Once again, most of the benefits are only available for people who are more advanced, who can hang with meandering conversations, or find particular partners with matching skills and interests. Attempts to use ChatGPT as a text buddy so far have also produced content that is way out of my league.
Alright, I think I’ve covered what I’ve done so far, and got out into the frayed ends of what I’m experimenting with. I think you get the core idea. I’ll close with a few other notes that might interest anyone who wants to follow my journey here.
I’m doing this because I’ve found other’s journals helpful. My method has been informed by tons of other people graciously sharing their experience. It’s also encouraging to see someone’s progression. Progress in language learning can be so slow, sometimes, that it feels like an impossible task, especially doing it solo. Hopefully, this helps someone else on their journey.
This isn’t my first foray into language-learning. I studied French for a couple years in high-school, Spanish in college (as I already mentioned), two years of Koine Greek, and 1 1/2 years of Biblical Hebrew. The Greek I went on and memorized a top-something vocab deck on Memrise, and, up until last year, was in my Greek New Testament on the regular, at least at a level that I can read a decent amount of John’s writings, and some parts of the Septuagint, without stopping to look stuff up much. (Sorry Luke and Paul, y’all are pretty tough.) I really should re-engage in that to keep it polished, but I don’t want to distract from this project at the moment.
And finally, germane to this forum, I am using mnemonics as much as I can in this project. I developed a vocabulary PAO system to help with sticky words that I can’t find a more natural phonetic mnemonic for, which has really helped in a number of ways. First, it makes studying more fun. The feelings associated with rote repetition are heavy on failure, light on pleasure. For me, when I get a word, I don’t feel the joy of success, but rather the momentary relief of anxiety over failing. I probably need to see a counselor about that, but there it is for now. When I use an image from my system, it turns it into a fun game. When I encounter a word that I would have totally blanked on, and am able to use an image to dredge something out of the dark pit of forgetfulness, it feels so triumphant. Second, I believe it’s more effective. I wasn’t hitting any 50-new-cards days before my system. If I hit 20, I was haggard and exhausted afterwards. Now, I’m not hitting 50 every time (because the review pile after a 50 can take a while to get through), but overall my memorization velocity has increased. I can do my review and hit 50 on a walk, and get home feeling like I could do more. When I shrug and tell myself, “I’ll just do this one rote,” it almost always gets stuck and swirls through the top of the deck until I do the work to hang it on a peg, and then matriculates into memory. It’s remarkable, actually. It’s not like some people make mnemonics sound when they write about it, as if it’s “one weird trick to photographic memory” or something. It still takes work. But, it immediately gave me some appreciable boost (15-20%?) in my ability to recall words. I see the same difference between the kanji on jpdb that have mnemonic images, versus those that don’t. The ones that do just have that much less friction. Sometimes I look at a kanji and think, “How am I reading this?” The meaning of the symbol is not immediately apparent. The mnemonic story has images from the radicals (constituent components that make up the total symbol) that are a kind of almost-nonsense. The symbol has nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word. But, somehow, putting it all together, a pictograph marries a pronunciation and I can read a word. Without the mnemonic, the same thing happens. The card just swirls around and keeps appearing and failing. If I make my own mnemonic, even a sloppy one helps get the job done.
That’s all to say that I would be totally swamped without it. And, I’m looking for any ways to improve it. At this point, a little lubrication in the wheels will save a lot of energy across the trip.
I’ll try to post updates periodically, especially as I develop my system. In the mean time, feel free to share you own lessons or tips here, or feel free to ask me any questions you have about my practice!
NakamuraEmi is more poppy, but has hip hop elements, so her vocab list is both a lot longer and more colorful.
