Language Journal: January 6th 2020
I don't know what has changed. Maybe just the repeated exposure and all of the experience just converging together. But, since the last time I wrote, I feel much more proficient in Japanese.
Mostly, what I think is happening is that I'm mastering what I already learned. My vocabulary hasn't grown much in month. I haven't studied grammar more than usual. But, I'm able to better dissect sentences both written and spoken. And I'm getting better at discerning the elements I don't know in spoken Japanese.
As I said though, I think most of it is just having what I've already learned settle in.
I took an online test to guess at my Japanese vocabulary and it suggested 13.5k words. I think this is a generous guess. But, I myself would have estimated my own vocabulary at between 8-12k. So, not so far off the upper bounds.
I also read someone claiming that 2k words was enough of a start to get by with understanding stuff. And while I totally disagree with that, I'm coming to an realization that my own expectations of needing a vocabulary of 20k words was also too much.
One thing I realized when turning on sub-titles is that while I have a vocabulary of, let's say 10k words. Much of that vocabulary is still shaky. I can pick up the words in the right context. I'll watch an anime and I'll often fail to identify words I should have gotten.
The 2k number is bogus because the 2k vocab deck which contains the 2000 most common Japanese words is among the portion of my vocabulary which is pretty solidly ingrained. In fact, I would say I have a pretty solid grasp of probably the 4k most common words and maybe another 1-2k randomly distributed among the remainder of the top 10k words.
And it is only now that I feel like I'm really getting to a place where I can drop into any reasonable medium (speech, movie, anime, manga, song, etc...) and feel like I can follow along. At 2k, I was able to follow random discussions around food (as long as it was talking about western food or well known Japanese dishes like ramen), listen to people talk about weather, and maybe some light topics related school.
But, outside of that, 2k worth of vocab was nothing unless the content was in well formed sentences, slowly executed and on very broad, common topics. Like bikes or trains.
But, I knew that even before reaching this point.
Basically, if you're hitting the point with your vocab where you should be able to follow most conversations, then each new word you learn should, on average, offer diminishing returns in terms of the time from when you learn it to first experience it in the wild. But, even though I'm in the ballpark of 10k words, I still learn a handful of new words from my flashcards each day, and then hear some of them again within 24 hours.
Similarly, as you approach that level of vocab acquisition it should become increasingly rare that you hear a word not in your vocabulary. But, again, it isn't a rare occurrence even at 10k words for me to encounter words I don't know. It isn't uncommon to hit whole sentences which, aside from particles are meaningless to me. At 1/5th of my current vocabulary (the aforementioned 2k) I'd spend almost all of my time lost.
The good news is perhaps that the proportion of words and sentences I encounter and don't know isn't in direct proportion to how much more vocab I need to attain. A person with a vocab of 2k words won't struggle 5 times as much as me. Maybe 3-4 times. And this is because those 2k words they started with are more common than the 8k additional words I know. So, a typical sentence is more likely to contain more of those first 2k words than the 8k following it.
And I would say that I feel like I get things 2/3 of the time. Which means I may only need to add another 1-2k words to my vocabulary to really strengthen things. Especially since I still need to work on easily picking up many from the first 10k I already have.
So, my plan for the year is this; I should complete my Anki decks in a few months. At which point I won't be adding any more from external sources. My daily reviews should slow down over time and I should be able to spend more time on individual cards and really nail down the ones contained therein. As they go down I'll probably start adding my own for new words. And I'll also try and put more emphasis on watching shows without English sub titles.
In less than 2 years, if all goes to plan, I'll already be back from Japan. So, the crunch time has started. I don't know what season I want to go in, since we're aiming for Southern 本州 (Honshu) I don't want to be there in summer. Spring would be awesome, but Cherry Blossom season isn't something I want to contend with, especially since the young one probably won't care. Which means autumn is our likely candidate. Though looking at current temps in Osaka and Tokyo, maybe winter is fine.
Ultimately, that is what this year is about though. Getting a sense for the level of Japanese I'll have ready by the time we get there. While I won't really need to know vast amounts given the areas we're hitting I'd still love not to be stuck in tourist traps.
Mostly, what I think is happening is that I'm mastering what I already learned. My vocabulary hasn't grown much in month. I haven't studied grammar more than usual. But, I'm able to better dissect sentences both written and spoken. And I'm getting better at discerning the elements I don't know in spoken Japanese.
As I said though, I think most of it is just having what I've already learned settle in.
I took an online test to guess at my Japanese vocabulary and it suggested 13.5k words. I think this is a generous guess. But, I myself would have estimated my own vocabulary at between 8-12k. So, not so far off the upper bounds.
I also read someone claiming that 2k words was enough of a start to get by with understanding stuff. And while I totally disagree with that, I'm coming to an realization that my own expectations of needing a vocabulary of 20k words was also too much.
One thing I realized when turning on sub-titles is that while I have a vocabulary of, let's say 10k words. Much of that vocabulary is still shaky. I can pick up the words in the right context. I'll watch an anime and I'll often fail to identify words I should have gotten.
The 2k number is bogus because the 2k vocab deck which contains the 2000 most common Japanese words is among the portion of my vocabulary which is pretty solidly ingrained. In fact, I would say I have a pretty solid grasp of probably the 4k most common words and maybe another 1-2k randomly distributed among the remainder of the top 10k words.
And it is only now that I feel like I'm really getting to a place where I can drop into any reasonable medium (speech, movie, anime, manga, song, etc...) and feel like I can follow along. At 2k, I was able to follow random discussions around food (as long as it was talking about western food or well known Japanese dishes like ramen), listen to people talk about weather, and maybe some light topics related school.
But, outside of that, 2k worth of vocab was nothing unless the content was in well formed sentences, slowly executed and on very broad, common topics. Like bikes or trains.
But, I knew that even before reaching this point.
Basically, if you're hitting the point with your vocab where you should be able to follow most conversations, then each new word you learn should, on average, offer diminishing returns in terms of the time from when you learn it to first experience it in the wild. But, even though I'm in the ballpark of 10k words, I still learn a handful of new words from my flashcards each day, and then hear some of them again within 24 hours.
Similarly, as you approach that level of vocab acquisition it should become increasingly rare that you hear a word not in your vocabulary. But, again, it isn't a rare occurrence even at 10k words for me to encounter words I don't know. It isn't uncommon to hit whole sentences which, aside from particles are meaningless to me. At 1/5th of my current vocabulary (the aforementioned 2k) I'd spend almost all of my time lost.
The good news is perhaps that the proportion of words and sentences I encounter and don't know isn't in direct proportion to how much more vocab I need to attain. A person with a vocab of 2k words won't struggle 5 times as much as me. Maybe 3-4 times. And this is because those 2k words they started with are more common than the 8k additional words I know. So, a typical sentence is more likely to contain more of those first 2k words than the 8k following it.
And I would say that I feel like I get things 2/3 of the time. Which means I may only need to add another 1-2k words to my vocabulary to really strengthen things. Especially since I still need to work on easily picking up many from the first 10k I already have.
So, my plan for the year is this; I should complete my Anki decks in a few months. At which point I won't be adding any more from external sources. My daily reviews should slow down over time and I should be able to spend more time on individual cards and really nail down the ones contained therein. As they go down I'll probably start adding my own for new words. And I'll also try and put more emphasis on watching shows without English sub titles.
In less than 2 years, if all goes to plan, I'll already be back from Japan. So, the crunch time has started. I don't know what season I want to go in, since we're aiming for Southern 本州 (Honshu) I don't want to be there in summer. Spring would be awesome, but Cherry Blossom season isn't something I want to contend with, especially since the young one probably won't care. Which means autumn is our likely candidate. Though looking at current temps in Osaka and Tokyo, maybe winter is fine.
Ultimately, that is what this year is about though. Getting a sense for the level of Japanese I'll have ready by the time we get there. While I won't really need to know vast amounts given the areas we're hitting I'd still love not to be stuck in tourist traps.
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