As one or two people may recall, it was only a few months ago when I estimated that I was still perhaps 4,000 terms short of where I needed to be to truly be comfortable with the Japanese language, and as I've tried to write down every sufficiently important new word I've encountered during the intervening months, my records indicate that I more or less crossed that 4,000 new words barrier sometime in the course of the past few days. As such, this seems like a good time to reflect on how accurate my earlier estimate was, and what it implies for anyone looking to pick up the language from scratch.
The first thing I'll say is that for the purpose of watching TV shows or reading largely repetitive material about international affairs, accidents, crimes, sports events and the rest of the stuff which the news media give primary coverage to, my original estimate was indeed on the mark; for someone starting completely from scratch - as I did not - a vocabulary of about 6-7,000 distinct root terms should suffice to make ordinary media and day-to-day conversation almost entirely intelligible; with this many of the most frequently occurring words at your ready recall, dramas, newscasts, bulletin board conversations and the like should offer few difficulties.
The other side to this estimate of mine, though, as I've come to realize, is that the above numbers are pretty much the absolute bare minimum required to function like a non-retard in Japanese society; with a vocubulary of only 7,000 words, one is either likely to know all sorts of abstruse philosophical, sociopolitical and economic terms without being able to name simple everyday objects like "sleeve", "collar" and "alley" (my situation), or one will possess a facility with everyday language without being capable of any communication beyond the mundane and concrete - as I suspect is far more often the case with those who pick up their Japanese primarily through speaking and listening. I don't think it would be unrealistic to suggest that I'm still perhaps another 3,000 terms short of being able to comfortably handle both aspects of life.
In any case, the long and short of it is that anyone who tells you it's possible to completely pick up this language in the space of two or three years is a shameless liar: even if you have a superhuman memory for vocabulary and can pick up 20 or even 30 new terms a day without repetition or reinforcement, you're still going to find yourself limited by the fact that the range of reading and listening matter you'll be able to expose yourself to in a given time interval is going to be limited, and this is true even if you're resident in Japan. Reading the broadsheets will get you one set of terms, reading the tabloids another, and listening to the radio or conversing with associates will fetch you still other words, but a surprisingly large number of the words known by any native speaker of a language are likely to be used in contexts said speakers will at most be placed in a few times in the course of two or more decades of growing up, and yet these words will be taken for granted as part of any half-intelligent person's repertoire. Languages take even native speakers very many years of reinforcement to fully acquire, and those of us learning new languages as adults shouldn't expect to do that much better. At any rate, there really is no substitute for indiscriminate reading - and when I say "indiscrimate", I really do mean reading everything, from highbrow literary stuff to tawdry romances to soft-core "Playboy" style material to gossip sheets to the abusive scribblings of anonymous online trolls on 2ch - as a way to shortcut the process of vocabulary acquisition
One other thing I do think worth mentioning, by the way, is that I'm finding that at least one often repeated claim about adult language learning to be false: it simply isn't true that adults can't learn to get an intuitive "feel" for what constitutes right and wrong grammar, at least not in my own experience. As far as I can tell, all it takes is sufficient exposure to sufficiently many instances in sufficiently many variations, and any grammatical rule ought to become ingrained in one as if one were born knowing it. If so many adult language learners have such difficulties with grammar, I don't think it's so much because they're adults as become they haven't really engaged themselves with the language as seriously as they'd like to tell themselves.
Now, as for myself: one very important reason - though hardly the main one - why I've been studying Japanese so obsessively over the past year is that the process gives me insights into the nature of language acquisition that I simply can't get from thinking about any of the languages I began picking up as a child, and while a sample of one is hardly scientifically rigorous, in that respect I believe my efforts continue to pay dividends, at the very least in making me distrustful of certain widely made claims about language learning. Linguistic theories aside, though, the real reason why I've been putting all this effort into the language, and why my enthusiasm hasn't sagged despite knowing just how much further I have to go, is that I simply find Japanese a fun language to learn: I like the way the language works grammatically, I enjoy listening to it and reading it, and I get a great deal of pleasure from encountering interesting new words or unsuspected connotations; finally, I enjoy seeing the fog gradually lift from my understanding, and hitherto impenetrable utterances turning as clear as day. Indeed, I enjoy the process so much I can't help feeling extremely sorry for those who choose to spend years of their lives residing in Japan without bothering to acquire the skills to dive into the rich world of discourse just beyond the shallow comprehension which makes the place so "unfathomable" and "mysterious" to expat English monoglots - how can anybody be happy living in an environment in which he or she understands hardly anything of consequence going on? And yet there are expats who make ita point of pride to say they know hiragana and katakana ...
PS: To my mind, in no field is the lack of solid Japanese language skills more glaring than that of journalism. The general quality of English-language reporting written by foreign correspondents in the country is simply abysmal, either concentrating on the lewd and sensationalistic or seizing on the odd anecdote to puff up the old clichés about Inscrutable Japan™; if more foreign journalists actually spoke and read Japanese at a decent level, perhaps they'd actually begin doing some investigate journalism of their own for a change rather than filing tired "Wacky Japan" stories.
Omedeto! Can you see the cheerleaders doing V signs over by the bleachers? Stretch your neck just a little bit...yes, yes...bingo!
To put down a few comments on your experience:
1. The vocabulary limit does in fact look pretty reasonable to me: I was able to follow about 30 - 50% of Japanese conversations that I encountered with nowhere near that level of linguistic assets.
2. Japanese is indeed fun to learn - and theres a whole slew of personal behaviors that I suspect people pick up with learning Japanese that make it even more fun - the faux expressions of surprise etc.
3. How about listening while hanging out? Several years ago, I picked up a certain Afro-Asiatic language mostly by hanging with those who spoke the language and being a "spare wheel" for extended periods of time. It has been my strategy with Korean also. Makes me look kinda like a complete retard, and a clueless wannabe with absolutely no life whatsoever - but it works! Hang, Listen, Imitate, Hang. I should patent that. I think many people are afraid of this they think about learning a new language: It requires occupying a certain position in a social heirarchy that most people arent very comfortable with occupying.
Tapes and books and partners are good - but to really get the feel of it, you need to be out in the field. Particularly for languages that have nowhere as extensive a utilized literature set as many national languages do: What one can hope to pick up of these languages has to be some sort of the oral vernacular.
Posted by: Chuckles | July 11, 2006 at 01:33 AM
Abiola -
Excellent post on the trials of Japanese learning. You raise a good point on diversifying the range of written material to absorb the language. Just being able to read the Asahi, while useful, won't give someone the full range of the language's vocabulary and its meanings.
Plus reading material that originates from various areas of Japan will also introduce someone to the dialect unique to that prefecture/region. A friend of mine gave me a handbook on Miyagi Prefecture colloquialisms that is quite useful. Plus he shows me how to use them in conversation. ("Biki" = "kaeru", "to return")
No argument with you there on the dreadful state of English-language reporting on Japan. Japan I imagine is not the only nation that gets misrepresented by reporters with poor or non-existant foreign language skills. Latin America and Europe have to deal with this sort of nonsense as well. I remember learning in a Poli Sci class back in college that a certain large American newspaper (NYT I think, I wouldn't be surprised if it were true) had its base for Latin American reporting operations based in Florida!
Not only are they lazy at learning the language, they don't even bother interacting with the culture. And if they do interact with the culture, they tend to hightail it with the upper echelons of society, rather than the middle or lower classes. Then again, it is easier, more efficient, and cheaper to rely on tabloids and sensationalism rather than solid dedicated reporting.
Chuckles - I agree that field work is an important, if not integral, neccessity for getting a language down. In a way the stress you experience when you struggle to comprehend the flow of the language and the many new words you are unfamiliar with can be a good motivator.
I know what you mean by feeling like a retard though, I feel like it almost all the time. Once I manage to naturally say the words or phrases that eluded me all the time in a conversation, things get a little better. It sure beats sitting in a stuffy classroom for an hour or two.
Posted by: James | July 11, 2006 at 04:02 AM
[...It sure beats sitting in a stuffy classroom for an hour or two...]
A generally poor place to learn a language. How exactly can one hope to learn a language in any meaningful sense when one is surrounded by folks just as ignorant as oneself?
Posted by: Chuckles | July 12, 2006 at 01:01 AM