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日本語の経歴

(My Personal History with Japanese)

Like a lot of weebs, my first encounters with the Japanese language were with anime. I was really into Naruto as a kid, and whether this was normal kid stuff or if it was my yet-to-be-discovered autism showing itself, that spun out into total obsession with Japanese culture, including the language. I think back to these memories with something like fond embarrassment -- I was extremely enthusiastic in the ways that you might expect a weird middle schooler to be.

When I first started learning the language, there was a popular method for learning the language, popularized by blogger Khatzumoto: AJATT (All Japanese, All The Time). It emphasized the importance of having *constant* input, so that's what I did. For a time there, I remember having nothing but anime and Vocaloid/UTAU songs that I knew zero words to available on my MP3 player under the hopes of somehow absorbing the language passively.

So from the ages of about 11-20, I would obsessively study the language for maybe three month sprints at a time, completely burn out, and then start again a year later not much farther ahead from where I started. This entire time I was pretty smug about it. I have a memory from when I was ~12 or so, shopping in a market with my family, seeing a jar with the word ダイコン on it, and asking my mom what "daikon" meant. 12 year old me was riding the high off of the shock and awe from that moment for forever. Totally. Fluent.

Anyways, as time passed, reality caught up with me, and I saw how some friends of mine could have basic conversations in the languages they learned in school, while I had nothing to show for the years of obsession, and to be honest it felt kind of embarrassing. All this time and I was still probably somewhere around low N4, if that. So when I finally decided to go back to school, I decided to take actual courses and ultimately minored in the language.

Four years of schooling later, and I still felt like I was barely scratching the surface of N3, and I still didn't feel like I was capable of having basic conversations, or reading most content online, even with a dictionary. Last year, I finally decided to start having conversations in Japanese using services like italki, and I've been getting a lot better.

日本語についての好きなところ

(What I Like About Learning Japanese)

One of my favorite parts about learning Japanese so far has been learning the writing system. When I was younger, I loathed learning kanji, because it seemed like such an undertaking. What do you mean I have to learn 2000+ characters, and they have more than one reading??? But as my knowledge of kanji has grown, I find myself being able to infer which characters make up new words that I learn, or infer the meaning of words based on the reading alone. It's this constant feeling of finally putting puzzle pieces together that have been in front of me for a long time.

日本語についての嫌いなところ

(What I Hate About Learning Japanese)

While I wouldn't say I hate learning grammar, because when a grammar point finally clicks there's nothing else like it, it is still the part of language learning that I spin my wheels on the most. Grammar, especially particles, seems so beyond me sometimes that it can be really disheartening. I tend to spend a lot of time trying to brute force translate English into Japanese and it pretty much never works well for me. For this reason I have found it extremely important to consume native material until the grammar points start making sense to me in Japanese rather than in English.

一番好きな日本語学習者向けのリソース

(My Favorite Resources for Japanese Learners)

日本語だけで読んだり見たりしたメディア

(Media That I Have Read/Watched in Japanese)