It's happening! This week something clicked, and I can hear sentences clearly in Japanese. I was getting pretty discouraged after 10 months of listening, reading, and watching, and still only picking out words here and there. I was on a plateau and it was making me question my method of learning. Should I have studied more formally? Should I have made flashcards? Was I wrong to just keep listening when I couldn't understand most of it? Was I making a mistake reading books without looking up every word? I was starting to think I should have narrowed my consumption to one or two topics so I would hear the same words more frequently. Instead, I consumed pretty much every piece of content I came across.
I'm not sure how it happened, but the past few days it's like listening to a radio channel that was mostly static all of a sudden start coming in clearly. I can listen to interviews and podcasts and catch most of the words. I had given up expecting it to happen quickly, I figured it would continue to be a slow, gradual process. But it's like all the vocabulary and sentence structure I've been inundating myself with sunk in all at once.
With my limited vocabulary I'm still a long way from understanding everything, but the words are fewer and farther between to the point where I can pause and look them up if I can't pick it up from context.
I also haven't spoken to anyone yet. Well, I've spoken to the green owl on my phone, but I've been focusing pretty exclusively on input. Babies do it for years, and if babies can do it then so can I (not to brag). Plus it's a lot easier to find content than to find people to speak with. That'll be my next step at some point, but so far I'm excited with how far I've come!
I'm especially excited because I've done it with basically zero active studying. I'm more convinced than ever that learning a language is not hard, even when there are hard parts to learn.
My learning has been almost completely passive: listening (and re-listening) to a few podcasts while I walk my dog, reading Harry Potter and One Piece, watching lots of Japanese YouTube videos while I work out and watching Terrace House with Missy. I set my phone language to Japanese, which is great for seeing the same words over and over (although not great when you need to do something quickly).
The biggest hurdle is being okay with not understanding a lot of what you're taking in. As I mentioned, it's a bit like listening to a radio where bits of sentences here and there come through the static.
What I haven't done is sit there poring over flash cards or textbooks. It's so easy to find content being produced in other languages, and if you're trying to learn conversational language you're better off with YouTube than textbooks. Of course you'll probably get to a point where you're interested in the rules, but at that point a textbook will probably just confirm what you've already heard in speech patterns.
The most important thing is no matter how you're learning, do a little bit every day. Sometimes the progress you make from being consistent feels like magic. ι εΌ΅γγΎγ!
