Name: 在日本生活了5年，為什麼我的日語還是很爛？ (Why I Still Suck at Japanese After Living in Japan for 5 Years)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T09:46:31.000Z
Duration: 16 min 32 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

轉承詞

Hello world, I'm still terrible at Japanese even though I've lived in Japan for five years

So if you're looking for advice on how to succeed at learning, don't look at me.

過去完成式

At five years old, my niece had me beat when it came to speaking Japanese, even though I had been in the country for that number of years

Although not to brag or anything, but I can totally blow her out of the water when it comes to reading. Kanji. Yep

I'm like a third or fourth grader in that department. Just don't ask me to write it

what I have learned to master is failing so I can provide some good help on what not to do and

I have found a couple things that have worked for me, which I'll share at the end

Let's talk about why I still suck at Japanese after five years of living in Japan

Let's travel back to a couple years ago sucking at Japanese sucked

It was such a downer. Can't read the newspaper to find out that it's hot in the summer

Can't read the ingredients to find out what's in my Onigiri

Can't read these magazines. Everything's so blurry. I'd try to study an hour a day, but I still sucked

But it stopped sucking so much once I did a little internet research

And discovered that the British had found out the reason for my woes

The estimated kept for a foreigner to learn basic English that would take them 360 hours

I had studied Japanese hours that much, but for Japanese it was

Oh, I hadn't studied that much. So that was a kick in the butt the brain I felt winded for a moment

But once I recovered I realized I wasn't running a 10k but instead a marathon and you know

I only made the running analogy so that I could reuse this running footage. I labored so hard to capture

So I was sitting here at my computer trying to find this 1000 hours study to provide evidence for all of you

But I couldn't find it instead what I found is that you need

there are 4 categories of difficulty: Category 1 languages that are more similar to English and it's 600 to

750 class hours to gain professional working proficiency, then there's Category 2, Category 3 and then Category 4

2200 class hours, which they label super hard languages

Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. On the one hand, this is great for my ego

I mean, it's not my fault. I suck. It takes 2200 hours. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Yet, that doesn't change the fact that my Japanese language

Marathon just got upgraded to ultra and yes ultra marathons do exist

They're 100 kilometer affair that appealed to the running masochists at heart now now I know what you're saying.

Hey Mr. White sounding Mexican guy. You have to read the fine print. Okay, that's true. De acuerdo, eso es verdad.

The 1000 hours was to be basic. The 2200 hours was to reach a professional working proficiency.

It is assumed that the student has above-average aptitude for classroom learning of foreign languages

Lower aptitude language learners who will typically take longer.

2200 hours of study coming from? It turns out it's from the US Department of State's foreign service institute school of language studies

The instructional program reflects 70 years of experience in teaching language to US diplomats

I know there's a lot of fake news in the US. As your president so kind of reminds me

And fortunately we tend to record stories now so we have it for your enjoyment if you'd like it, but we record when we deal with reporters

It's called fake news Thank You. Mr. President. So knowing this I searched harder on the Internet

And found this guy and he says I could have been fluent in three months

So I must be doing something wrong because I could have been speaking just like this

Nihon no Shuumatsu e Youkoso (Welcome to the weekend in Japan)

Hanasedeshita Ga, Kyou wa Hajimete (to practice speaking Japanese. Today for the first time)

He said he didn't get to study the entire three months because he got real sick and then he was busy on his book deal

On learning languages in three months. So this is only his two months progress

He was initially aiming for N2+ on the Japanese language proficiency test

But then he found out it had no spoken component and reasoned

It doesn't measure language scales to a good enough level to work for him

But he was still aiming for a B2+ on the CEFRL scale

This would mean that he would have been able to

Interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible. I think he got pretty close. So

Sumimasen me nihongo (Sorry is there anyone..)

Hanase Hito ga Imasuka (who can speak Japanese here?)

Okay, so I got a little sidetracked, where were we. Oh yes, why is Japanese hard?

Let's start with the Japanese writing systems. There are three writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

Hiragana is not so bad. It has 46 base characters and the same can be said for Katakana

So that's 92 characters to learn versus the 26 in English. So it's only like three times as much. No biggie

And then there's Kanji. It's from China and they've gotten many thousands of these characters which are a bit more complicated

But you know what despite there being over 50,000 of them. There's a set called Jouyou Kanji, or regular Chinese characters

There are only number of 2136. It only takes the Japanese child until graduating high school to learn them all

But of course there's a hack for it. It only takes a smart person 97 days

Okay, so it's gotten a little bit shady here. So let me try being straight up for a bit

Japanese grammar is both difficult and not I'm told it makes much more sense than English grammar

But if you're already a fluent English speaker, Japanese grammar is all backwards

So if in English I wanted to say would you like to eat pizza in Japanese?

I would say "Anata wa Piza wo Tabetai Desuka"

Which is like "You Pizza eat". Except Japanese people wouldn't say that. My family would be more like "Piza Taberu?"

Which is "Pizza eat?" I admire the simplicity

But if it was a waiter asking me they would say

"Piza wa Ikaga Desuka?", which translates to "Pizza like to have?"

There's no "you" in the sentence because both you and the waiter know who he's talking to

So why say it but the "desuka" is that it

Because that's the polite way to do it and the waiter is below you. You see Japanese is very contextual

Meaning there's a lot of things you should just know and be aware of and you need to know how to say things

Honorific speech (Keigo) falls under three main categories: Sonkeigo (Respectful Language),

Kenjougo (Humble Language) and Teineigo (Polite Language). I know what you're thinking

What's the difference between respectful humble and polite language?

You got me, but if you want a crash course and feeling like you're set up to fail the subtleties of the Japanese language

Scroll through the Wikipedia page. Be my guest... be my guest... because you also learn about Teichougo (Courteous Language)

and Bikago (Word Beautification) and that's not to mention Tamego, which means same age language

Which is how kids would speak and how you talk to those close to you in life like friends and family

This is the type of language. I generally pick up because that's who I talk to most.

Shouko, Keiki wa Doudesuka? (How's the cake, Shouko?)

Oishii. (Delicious). Oishii honto? (oh really?)

So when talking with people outside the group I sound like an impolite

Disrespectful and egotistical child. Speaking of children by the time a kid is in elementary school

They know about 5000 words. No wonder why at 5, my niece trounced me at speaking Japanese

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在日本生活了5年，為什麼我的日語還是很爛？ (Why I Still Suck at Japanese After Living in Japan for 5 Years)

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