How many years does it take to know Japanese fluently?

Alucard · Post by **Alucard** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:13 pm

I know it sounds like a stupid question, but I'm serious:

I just bought Dragon Ball Perfect Edition vol. 1-3, and I want to know how much time will pass (in learning

) until I can understand what they're saying (without buying the English ones).

If anyone here knows or is learning Japanese, I would be glad if you tell me how much time it takes to really know this stuff (speaking, reading, and writing).

Thanks.

BrollysKin · Post by **BrollysKin** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:30 pm

I suppose it would depend on a few things.

How you learned it.

Have you studied languages before?

How much do you practice?

Your learning enviorment.

Julian probably would have learned the language slower had he not been forced to use it in day tot day conversation while in Japan.

Alucard · Post by **Alucard** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:39 pm

BrollysKin wrote:I suppose it would depend on a few things.

1) How you learned it.

2) Have you studied languages before?

3) How much do you practice?

4) Your learning enviorment.

Julian probably would have learned the language slower had he not been forced to use it in day tot day conversation while in Japan.

1) I'm just beginning to learn.

2) I've studied English.

3) Again, I'm just beginning. What if, let's say, I'll practice every day for 1 hour?

4) A group of 15 students and a teacher.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:42 pm

For Dragonball, it'll probably take 4 years or so.

For other series..... ummmm

Alucard · Post by **Alucard** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 6:49 pm

Castor Troy wrote:For Dragonball, it'll probably take 4 years or so.

For other series..... ummmm

LOL, I know that Dragon Ball is an easy series to learn language-wise, but I would also like to learn Japanese for future anime/manga series I'll watch/read.

BrollysKin · Post by **BrollysKin** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:24 pm

I dont actually know, I am kind of talking out of my ass. But I would assume those are the determining factors.

veshira · Post by **veshira** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 9:35 pm

Probably five years of living in Japan would have you speaking Japanese pretty fluently, and I mean if you're thrown in there and forced to live and breath the language and culture.

How fluent do you mean? Fluent enough to understand the News? Find your way to the train station? Write a book in kana? Kanji?

Synthe · Post by **Synthe** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:14 pm

What about being fluent without living in japan?

veshira · Post by **veshira** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:12 pm

You'll never have experience needed to be fluent in the language without being thrown into it. You have to talk to people. You may be able to learn how to write in Japanese, but verbally communicating is a completely different level.

My Italian is utter crap. I can write and translate it fine if I see it in text, but I can't get a clue listening to someone speak Italian. Even if it's really basic, I'm just not used to it. This is after three years of studying Italian, and let's just assume I was out 60 days out of the 405 (approx.) I was in Italian. (Why am I out so much? I'm a bit of a weakling, plus you can thank chronological depression for something, I'm sure.)

Yeah, it's hard learning a new language. The thing is that Italian's easy for a native English speaker to learn, since it's a Romance language, and sentence structure is similar. (Completely random, I heart double-negatives. They're SO fun!

) For an English speaker, Japanese is going to be hard to learn since it's so different. You don't even use Roman Text, you use Kana and Kanji.

It's like starting over from kindergarten.

But it you really want to, whatever.

Throughout my lifetime as a fangirl (and the seventh top posting regular in the history of Animelyrics.com *beams*), I have encountered many a fan who says they want to know Japanese. Few make it to the level where they can actually transliterate lyrics, translate manga or subtitle anime. Some sadly don't get passed greetings, suffixes, swearing and dirty language. But most fans know enough Japanese (or at least, have a wide enough VOCABULARY SHEET) to play a decent game of Shiritori. (I also heart Shiritori.)

So what have we learned? Japanese isn't a Romance language, I need to stay in school more, and Shiritori is a striving Nihongo-learner's friend.

SkylarEC · Post by **SkylarEC** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:16 pm

This question can not be answered without knowing your aptitude for learning other languages. We can not tell you how long it will take you to learn another language.

My suggestion is just to do what you can, and before you know it, you will know enough of the language to get by on. Then you will know more.

kinoko · Post by **kinoko** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:58 am

Ah, nostalgia! ^___^ I actually learned my kana from the Daizenshuu (#2, the Story Guide one.) And since then, I've been teaching myself Japanese for about 5 1/2 to 6 years (give or take, I'm bad with time XD) The worst of it is that I've gotten no speaking practice, so I'm terrible at it.

(Japanese is an absolutely beautiful language, isn't it? I get so excited when I hear that others are learning it. ...I'm a Freshman in college right now (Rutgers!), and my degree is East Asian languages (hopefully with an emphasis on Japanese.)

If you love it, you'll stick with it! Go for it!! +thumbs up+

Blitzen · Post by **Blitzen** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:19 am

Whatever you do, do not try and think you can learn or get an edge on Japanese by listening to or watching Anime. Wanna know why?

Imagine a Japanese person who learned all of his English from watching Buffy, Angel, Star Trek, the OC and a larger variety of drama and comedy shows. You'll sound like a hackneyed mix of a 13 year old girl, an overdramatised nitwit and insert whatever stereotypes here.

Post by **SaiyaJedi** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:18 am

Blitzen wrote:Whatever you do, do not try and think you can learn or get an edge on Japanese by listening to or watching Anime. Wanna know why?

Imagine a Japanese person who learned all of his English from watching Buffy, Angel, Star Trek, the OC and a larger variety of drama and comedy shows. You'll sound like a hackneyed mix of a 13 year old girl, an overdramatised nitwit and insert whatever stereotypes here.

More specifically, if you learn from DBZ, you'll sound like an uneducated hick who doesn't show any respect (linguistically-speaking) to his elders/superiors. Keigo is not Goku's strong point.

Victator Supreme · Post by **Victator Supreme** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:25 am

Imagine a Japanese person who learned all of his English from watching Buffy, Angel, Star Trek, the OC and a larger variety of drama and comedy shows.

That person would rule in ways that are hard to fathom.

Presc503 · Post by **Presc503** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 12:36 pm

Not only is Japanese not a Romance language, it doesn't even belong in the Indo-European language family, which includes almost all the languages of Europe and the Middle East.

Also, other than writing in katakana and kanji, you will also have to learn hiragana. You will want to learn hiragana first, but if you want to be able to write DB character names, you could study katakana. Kanji should be reserved after you master greetings, numbers, and basic dialogue. Most native speakers of Japanese do not know even close to half of the kanjis in the language. This is not to discourage you. I'm just letting you know how much of a process it is.

Mr. Announcer · Post by **Mr. Announcer** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:37 pm

I honestly don't think it's that bad, unless you really want to learn formal grammar or read newspapers. The spoken language is pretty easy to catch on to. Just throw verbs around like it's nobody's business....er....haha, I shouldn't talk like I know.