Language crumbling and movie books.

I never seem to find time to update my blog, but I thought I'd post an update today because some interesting things have been happening recently.

This one is about Japanese fluency or perhaps, it's about fluency in languages per-se.

First, a bit of background. I started learning Japanese around the spring of 2011. However, for the first year, I didn't really learn very much at all. In fact, the first time I spoke Japanese with native wasn't until the middle of 2012. That's when I realised how pitiful my speaking skills were!

Since then, I've learned a lot about "how to learn to learn languages" and tried to put what I've learned into effect. As many well regarded polyglots will tell you, there really isn't a "one size fits all" approach to learning a language. You have to try things out and see what works for you ... and whether you enjoy doing it.

I took part in five of the Add1Challenges and each time, I definitely made a lot more progress than if I'd have gone it alone.  In fact, on the second Add1Challenge, I spent a month immersed in Japanese and came out of it speaking Japanese pretty fluently. When I say, "fluently", I don't mean anything like speaking like a native - what I mean is, that when I talked about a familiar topic, even with my very limited vocabulary, I could maintain a pretty good conversation that to someone who spoke no Japanese would sound as if I was fluent.

Then, in September 2014, I moved to Japan and got a real buzz from being able to converse pretty well from the get go. All said and done, if the conversation was a typical "getting to know you" conversation, I'd be able to handle that pretty well. As soon as the topic changed to anything else, I'd be completely lost. Added to which, I would always find myself lost for words over seemingly basic things.

About two months ago, I started reading Star Wars in Japanese. That's been really good for keeping me consistent in language learning.  I know the story so well that if you show me a scene with the sound off, I can pretty much guarantee I'd be able to recall the dialogue word for word.  So when I started reading Star Wars in Japanese, given that there's a lot of katakana words (English words / names written in a Japanese script) I'd get a lot of reference points to fill in / guess the missing information.

 For example: ハ/Ha ン/N ソ/So ロ/Ro = Han Solo  or レーザービーム = laser beam. If those words are written in the same sentence, I at least know that it's got something to do with Han Solo and a laser beam. When I replay the movie in my mind, nine times out of ten, I'll guess what the verb means even when I've never encountered it before.  With a passive vocabulary (words I know if I encounter them, but perhaps not be able to recall when I'm talking) of about 1,700 words, I found that I can happily sit on a train and read Star Wars without a dictionary. I don't have mobile internet, so I was kind of forced into having to not stop and look up every new word I encountered. That seems to have been an absolute blessing in disguise. I circle the unknown word and write what I guess the word means on the page. Then when I next study Japanese at home, I go through the pages and look up the words and see whether I was right or not. It really helps that the kanji has furigana, because whilst I know some kanji radicals, I'm not really at the stage where I can look up kanji in a dictionary yet.

Pretty often I'm not right .... but the word I thought it was is usually synonymous with my guess. That in itself seems to help me make a mental connection between the word and it's meaning. If you think about it, I understood the gist meaning, but then the surprise of not having guessed accurately seems to make the connection that bit stronger.

Typical page of Star Wars - A New Hope. 

I've also noticed lots of grammatical structure that gets repeated again and again ... and whilst I haven't been too focused on grammar, I've noticed that when I'm speaking Japanese, I'm more likely to try saying something that instinctively sounds right ... again, I often make whopping great mistakes that I then subsequently backtrack and rephrase shortly afterwards. Now, that's another awesome gain in my opinion too ... because, before I was doing so much reading, I was definitely more restrained about what I would attempt to say. To anyone else learning a language, I'm sure you've experienced not being able to say what you want to say ... so you mentally try and figure out what is the nearest thing you CAN say that conveys the same meaning.  Still, all said and done, there's a massive difference between knowing lots of words, understanding the grammatical constructs etc etc and being able to converse!

Which brings me to my second point in this blog post. I went out for a drink last week and was sitting with a couple of guys who've lived in Japan for fourteen and eight years respectively. They were talking to some Japanese folk throughout the evening and were talking, from my perspective, pretty damn fluently. Occasionally, they'd break out of the conversation and ask me if I was following what they were talking about ... 50% of the time, I'd have understood the gist ... the rest of the time, I'd be completely lost. Interestingly, I noticed that anytime I'd engage in the discussion, the group seemed really interested in what I had to say. In hindsight, I'd define this as "the man of few words" syndrome ... we've all been there in our native language haven't we ... it's the person who chips into the conversation occasionally that we're automatically more interested in hearing than the people who are blaa blaa blaaing away all evening!

That was quite a good evening on three counts. Firstly, it was great for my listening skills. Secondly, it was pretty encouraging that I was able to express my opinions well enough to feel the evening was getting closer to having an evening in the pub back in the UK.  Rather than the conversations I'd have had when I first arrived in Japan, they'd be about where I've travelled, what music I'm into etc etc ... topics that I'd become pretty proficient at talking about. Now, I wasn't in control of the topic, but could just about manage to understand enough of what was being spoken about to chip in with my own thoughts. And even if I wasn't completely sure what was being said, my new trump card was just to say, 同意するけど、どう思いますか。 (I agree, but what do you think?). That way, I stayed in the game ... ha ha!!!

The third thing might well be the most important lesson in language learning I've had this year. I came away from the night in the pub thinking, "hmmm ... I wish I could keep talking the way those guys were able to" ... you know, instead of only being able to dish out occasional comment and then quickly retreat into listening again before the next opportunity to chip in arrived. But then, actually ... I can .... and think that's the most amazing thing ... I can ... simples!!!

When I started thinking about that more, I realised that actually, in my italki sessions over the last couple of weeks, I've spent a good ten to fifteen minutes of the session just babbling away in Japanese. I've pretty much split my half hour sessions into fifteen minutes of catching up on telling the tutor what I've been doing since our last session and then fifteen minutes working on a language function.

Last week was all about using "______必要がある" instead of trying to remember how to conjugate verbs. For example, I'm fine with conjugating verbs that I use all the time: 行かなきゃ = gotta go but let's say a verb I might not use very often .... um ... 諦める (to give up) ... how do I conjugate that verb ... errrr ... 諦めなきゃ probably ... but I'm not very sure or confident ... and that makes all the difference when you're talking. So, using ステーキを食べるのを諦める必要がある  to say, "there is a need to give up eating steak"  is a lot easier to output because I'm not doing any conjugating at all ... both verbs stay in their dictionary form ... YAY!!!  That's really important because by not conjugating verbs, you don't have so many of those long pauses in a conversation when you're scrambling away to figure out how to transform the verb. So then, because you're not slowed down by that, the conversation flows much more easily.

In the last week, I've talked with members of my favourite Japanese band, Broken Doll, people I met while walking around Yoyogi Park, the lady that I always talk to in the convenience store, the old lady that lives across the road from me ... and instead of keeping the conversation short, I've actually kept the conversation going ... sure I'm making lots of mistakes etc ... but it doesn't matter ... its like I've overcome another obstacle to my progress.  That's where I'm at right now ... I'm really excited about the next few weeks because it feels like I'm on the cusp of where I've always wanted to be ... able to just keep a conversation going and really start using verbs that I don't often use because I always struggle with how to conjugate them. That can wait ... it's more important to just keep talking than anything else.

明けましておめでとうございます。(akemashite omedetougozaimasu : happy new year!)

The neon lit streets of Shinjuku 

So it's now 2015 and I'm plotting out a language learning journey. For Japanese, that's fairly easy because I know exactly what I need to do ... talk Japanese a lot ... simples! I'm also thinking about learning Swahili, although to be realistic, Japanese is firmly in the hot seat.

A couple of things have happened recently that I want to write about. I met an Australian guy in a bar who has lived in Japan for some fourteen years. We sat talking with a Japanese guy and at one point, the Australian guy asserted that he thought it was great that, “you talk so much terrible Japanese ... it's brilliant ... and the Japanese love hearing you clomp around messing up the grammar and switching from formal to casual.” It's great because many Japanese people think their ability in English is terrible (and yes, that may often be true) ... but it's never going to improve if you sit there waiting for the day to arrive when all of a sudden you'll be able to talk fluently, so seeing someone who is perfectly happy to crash around in another language is thought of very highly, even if people take the piss at the time. I sort of know that people walk away from me and then if I bump them again will often tell me they're really impressed by what I'm doing.

Anyway, back to that story - I smiled, on the one hand knowing that his assertion was pretty accurate; but on the other, knowing that I need to raise my game ... up my level ... push onwards and upwards ... yet, also, know that it's going to take a lot of effort and if I'm absolutely honest, when I'm so often praised for my existing ability in the language, it becomes more difficult to find the motivation.

Going to gigs is always a great motivation for me to speak more Japanese!

Saying that, I met a girl who took the piss out of me speaking Japanese throughout the evening. She wasn't a native Japanese speaker, but her level of fluency seemed from what I could tell, pretty native sounding. She wasn't taking the piss in a horrible way for the most part, but occasionally I thought that if she was talking to a younger, more impressionable me, I would have probably taken her criticism to heart and been so easily crushed.

But that's not the now me. I think my best reaction was to speak in the most kawaii (cute) Japanese because that seemed to get the crowd on my side. For example, brilliantly, at one point she said, 「おなかがすいて」(I'm hungry) and then ask me if I'd understood ... and genuinely, it's a phrase I vaguely remember from an italki session a year ago, but one I seldom use myself ... so my delayed acknowledgement that I knew what she'd said was met with, “... derrrrr, that's like one of the most basic things you should know in Japanese!!!” And then just as quickly, I said, “but if I'm hungry, I never say, 「おなかがすいて」, I'd say, 「ペコぺこになる」- to which she retorted, “but you sound like a baby saying that!” Oooh, I exclaimed, “we've obviously learned a different Japanese from each other ... did your book have cute baby ducks on the cover?” Game, set and match to me.

If it's got cute ducks, I'll be interested!

Now, in reflection, here are some thoughts. Sometimes I go out and get lavished with praise for my ability to converse in Japanese; either by Japanese people who are amazed that I speak any Japanese at all, or by non-native's amazed that I've only been living in Japan for three months and can hold a reasonable conversation in Japanese. Just like anyone else, I love praise ... can't get enough of it, so please, if you have any to spare, shower me in your praises because it's always welcome here! However, I'm resilient enough to push on regardless and I know that I'm fuelled up with a lot of Japanese language that sits dormant awaiting conversation. So that's what I'm going to do now.

I also know that whenever I need to make progress, the trick is consistency. To achieve that, the thing I do which I wasn't doing before is joining the Add1Challenge.  I can't emphasise it's importance enough; honestly, I would have plodded along at a snails pace with language evaporating almost as quickly as I was acquiring it! Eventually,  unable to level up from the first of many barren plateaus you'll come across, it's all to easy to teleport yourself back to easy street with even more idolising of those who can actually become fluent in other languages. But here's some news, they're reluctant messiah's who's message is always the same one ... "I'm not special, anyone can learn a language ... it's hard, but not difficult etc etc." You've heard it all before haven't you? I'm trying to sell sand to the Arabs here ... but if you want to learn a language to fluency (which let's face it, you can set yourself whatever goal you want, but I always think, in for a penny!) then you can. It is possible but you'll have to fortify yourself against many nay-sayers. There are plenty of them out there, when people give up a language they often become naysayers and need to spread their negativity. Don't be fooled by that, tis sour grapes! That's the other really important thing about the Add1Challenge; I've done four of them and was always encouraged and supported ... in fight club,the first rule is, "you don't talk about fight club", but in the Add1Challenge, it's kind of unsaid rule ... but you're in it to be part of a community that supports each other ... not happy clappy support, but like 'hey, you're not alone" support which is much underrated in my opinion. So it's counter-intuitive to be a tosser because all you'll ever achieve is looking like a tosser that nobody want's to support and paying for privilege!

Yes, I learned how I learn a language best (everyone's different and you need to know what works best for you), but most important thing isn't how, but how often. This one is the most important aspect of language learning - you need to put the hours in and by that I don't mean surfing around the web trying to find an easy way to magically absorb language through digital osmosis. No, I mean, don't beat yourself up, but just be absolutely honest with yourself. It's very easy to set half hearted goals or make New Years resolutions ... it's much harder to stick to them.

Life will do everything it can to derail your aspirations. In some language learning communities, I've often found that my peers secretly enjoy watching me fail ... maybe you've found this too? There are those who raise themselves up by pushing you down. That was how things were when I tried to learn computer languages in the 1980's. There was always one geeky kid who would know more than me and jump on me saying, "Oh, didn't you know _______ ... derrr, that's one of the first things you should learn ... oh, you're such a beginner" ... all the time you've actually put a lot of time in to learning stuff and it's upsetting to hear someone saying you've hardly broken the surface. Truth is, these people have often spent plenty of time, learning inefficiently and resent the fact that you've come into a domain that they've inhabited longer than you ... that sometimes turns them into psudo-language bullies ... sometimes not, but you meet all sorts of people whenever you go on a journey. It's a personal journey, but you'll meet your fair share of utter tossers whilst also meeting the most delightful people you can imagine! One has to take the rough with the smooth! Anyway, back to what I'm planning to do ...

One of my work colleagues suggested I visit a language exchange in Chiba. I went there a couple of days ago, but it was closed for the New Year holidays. But I now know where it is and will go back there soon and get the ball rolling. Meanwhile, I'm also planning to learn Swahili on either the next Add1Challenge. I'm a bit torn over whether to start learning Swahili now, or begin after another three month Japanese challenge. The pros of learning Swahili now, is that I absolutely intrigued by the idea of seeing what I can achieve over three months from scratch. On the list of cons, Japanese has my primary focus and the difference between my Japanese speaking ability today and what it could be in three months could be amazing. At least if I do a three months Japanese challenge, I get the additional wow factor of having even more interesting conversations in Japan.

When I spent a month immersed in Japanese, I came away speaking Japanese with a greater level of fluency than I currently have. I had roughly half the vocabulary, and maybe a little less of a feel for how the grammar works ... but that really hasn't got a lot to do with fluency. Fluency has everything to do with being able to produce the language and make utterances with relative ease. How does one achieve such a thing? Yep, you guessed it ... speak speak speak speak! So with the language exchange in Chiba, that's what I'll be doing. So, the question is, shall I set forth an learn Swahili now or later. That's one for me to think about over the next few days.