The Truths of Language Learning

If you’ve learned another language, or are bilingual, you know the difficulties with attempting to equate your native language to the language you are trying to learn. If you are monolingual, I’m letting you know now that the practice of trying to learn another language by comparing, translating, and equating it to your native language will end up creating a load of troubles, and will cause more headache. This stunts your ability to natively learn the language you are targeting, and this is considered the first pitfall that ends up filtering out a lot of language learners from being able to acquire their target language.

Truth 1: Do Not Translate

It’s very tempting to use the plethora of tools available, such as google translate, ChatGPT, or translation services to translate the thoughts you are thinking about in English and conveying them in Japanese. This is a very dangerous habit to pick up.

Most of the experiences, objects, feelings, and thoughts we have are shared across all languages across the world. For example, all humans get hungry, all humans have a word or phrase for sleeping or forming connections with people or dealing with this thing called “money”. But the way which these ideas are conveyed differs drastically between languages, and attempting to translate word for word in your head the thoughts you are having in English is ultimately futile, as you will be speaking in a very odd and unnatural way, that can cause confusion or trouble.

For example, a very common phrase for language learners is “How do you say ____ in Japanese?” If you were to directly translate this in Japanese with common English structure, you would end up saying “どのように_____と日本語で言いますか?”, which may be “grammatically correct” Japanese but sounds highly unnatural. Instead, it would do you a lot better to learn that phrase naturally. If I were to ask “How do you say ‘the red flower’ in Japanese?” with my current understanding of the language, I would instead ask “日本語で「the red flower」と言うは何ですか?” which I believe sounds far more natural, since I hear and read similar phrases in YouTube videos, books, anime, and with my Japanese friends.

Truth 2: Input Input Input Input Input

You may have heard this already but it’s more true than you can imagine. Input is everything. Many language experts believe that, depending on the target language’s similarity to your native language, it takes anywhere from 90 – 500 hours of listening to be able to understand a comfortable amount of the language and be able to process what it being said in casual conversation. Thankfully, with the very internet you’re using to read this page, there are plenty of resources you can use to listen for hours and hours.

Along with listening, it’s also a huge help to read content in your level. Reading is a great focused way to learn many new words and keep yourself engaged in acquiring the language. With Japanese, this is a little more difficult, since Kanji exists, but once you get a hang of how Kanji function and have a good understanding of most common Kanji, picking up new words is a breeze.

In short, constant and deliberate input using media, reading, and listening is the most efficient and engaging way of acquiring any language, including Japanese.

Truth 3: Textbooks…

Textbooks are one of the most popular ways to bridge the gap between initial exposure to the language and an intermediate understanding. However, most textbooks fail in one fundamental way to provide a natural understanding of the language, and attempt to bridge the gap between the languages with intentional warping of sentences, phrases, and conversational pieces to encourage the reader to understand, using the native language as a crutch. This causes many fundamental problems in understanding. This is especially true in Japanese, where the most common textbooks (みんなの日本語、げんき、カルテット）heavily employ this language bridging strategy.

One of the most blaring examples is in the phrase “my name is _____,” commonly taught as “私の名前は____.” This example, while not technically incorrect, employs the English use of explicit subject stating to bridge the gap between the languages. (In English, we always state the subject in a sentence “I”, “you”, “we”, “the apple” etc. This is not always the case in Japanese). In reality, most introductions rarely include the explicit “I” or “My name”. Phrases like “ニコラスです” and “ニコラスと申します” (formally) are far more common.

However, textbooks can be helpful in learning grammar points. I believe that getting a fundamental understanding of grammar from textbooks goes a long way in being able to use that grammar later on. The warning that I give is not to study from or rely too heavily on textbooks, since natural language is not too common in those textbooks.

Truth 4: Motivation

One of the least talked about factors that prevents people from learning a language past the basics is motivation. Learning a language is a lot of work. It takes time, studying, money, and a lot of motivation to keep going with the language learning process. How do you keep your motivation to keep learning going once you get tired of studying so much?

Hardly anyone talks about this, but it’s one of the most important parts of learning another language in a reasonable time (like a few years or something), You have to obsess over the language. I believe that a form of obsession is almost required in order to effectively learn without burning yourself out and losing motivation. The beginning is really challenging to get past, and you will end up feeling like you aren’t progressing, but if you take the time to obsess over learning Japanese, at every level from learning Hiragana for the first time to reading specialized books in Japanese, obsession will carry you through the rough patches and you will attach yourself to the process.

So talk to yourself in Japanese, find silly videos to watch in Japanese, start writing in Japanese, find things to read and enjoy, turn on the Japanese subtitles before you think you can “handle it”, stop worrying about “learning too slow” or “being cringe” or “being bad at it”. All of those things are bound to be true at some point and the only thing you can do is keep your obsession going strong!

Truth 5: When is the difficult part?

This question is highly debated, some believe that the early parts of learning a language from the beginning when you don’t know anything is the hard part. Others are convinced that having an advanced understanding of the language and seeing all the information you don’t know or haven’t seen yet to be the challenging part.

My take on this personally is that the beginning is by far the hardest. You have little to no language skill to support yourself, every piece of written material, media, anime, etc. is too difficult to enjoy, you will be frustratingly slow to talk with, and you have very few moments that boost your ego.

Imagine it like this, for most people, their motivation toward learning a language is supported by their personal successes and failures, and the process of making mistakes usually makes people feel bad about their ability. Moments where you understand information in the target language can be considered Wins, and moments where you don’t understand or can’t respond will be Losses.

At the beginning, you will collect so many Losses that it will feel like the overwhelming amount of language that you have to learn and can’t begin to comprehend will create a metaphorical mountain, and your Wins pile will be so small you can’t see it from the peak of the Losses pile.
But as you continue on and keep learning, slowly your Losses pile will shrink and your Wins will grow and grow. You’ll encounter landmark victories, like understanding an episode of an anime without English subtitles, or reading a passage without looking up a new word, or holding a conversation without a super long pause to think and rethink a sentence. Those will push you forward, and you will reach that point.