Why You're Not Getting Better at Japanese

I've had a couple of students here and there leave because they're quite obviously not making any progress. When you aren't making any progress, Japanese seems even more difficult than it ever seemed before you began.

But in 90% of the cases of people who said they were not making progress, a simple, quick test established the reason why: they just weren't doing their homework.

They did not have the vocabulary.

It does not matter if you know how to conjugate a "-ku" ending verb, it does not matter if you know how to make the "-te-iru" form of a verb or how to make it into a past tense.

None of this matters at all if you don't know what the verb means.

In fact, nothing about learning Japanese means anything unless you have the vocabulary.

I don't know why I even bother saying this; it's so obvious it's pathetic. It doesn't just apply to Japanese, it applies to all languages.

If, in Sulawesian (a dialect of Borneo) I happen to know how to say "Go," "Water," "Quick," "Where," "Food," "Hunger," "Big" . . . well, guess what? I know how to tell a Sulawesian that I would like to find some water and food quickly, because my hunger is "big."

I don't need to know how to conjugate "Go," but I most certainly need to know the word and what it means. Why is this so difficult for students to understand? Let me make it quite plain: We can't have a conversation if you don't know the vocabulary needed for one.

And how do you get to know the vocabulary? By having your teacher repeat it fifty times during your lesson?

NO.

You get to know the vocabulary by writing it down when your teacher mentions that it is a common word and should be learned, and then you go home and learn it.

I recall that with one of the last students who quit in indignant disgust, complaining that we were "going in circles," when I tried to initiate a conversation to maybe give them confidence in what they'd learned so far, they didn't understand half of what I was saying or asking them.

I was talking in very simple Japanese -- stuff they SHOULD HAVE KNOWN after three months of lessons -- but most of the time I just got blank, uncomprehending stares.

Do you know how frustrating this is? Yes, I am their teacher. Yes, it is my responsibility to try to teach them Japanese. But I can't learn it for them!

"How did you get here today? By train?" Uncomprehending stare. They did not know the word for "today." They did not know the word for "train."

This after three months of lessons.

Look: there are possibly 500 words of English vocabulary that I might use in a typical day. I do not speak to my partner in highly technical English, using obscure, difficult terms or odd sentence constructions.

A typical conversation might be: "So, anything up for today? Do you have to go out? Me, I'm going nowhere. It's too fucking cold. We have enough food for dinner, right? What do you mean I have to go to the bank? Do you know what the bank is like on the first Monday of the month? Forget that noise. You want to go to the bank, YOU go to the bank."

That's it. That is the entire conversation, lame as it might sound. But it's the kind of conversation we have every day, dozens of times a day. There are no words like "Contemporaneous with your aspirations about making the arduous journey to our fiduciary institution on a day that would make an Inuit blanch" -- I mean, I just don't TALK that way, although I could, if I wanted to make someone's life difficult.

To those who quit: I just don't know what to tell you. You just did not do the work. You came to class, a miserable two hours' worth -- expecting to be taught a language. But you DID NOT DO THE WORK.

I cannot hold your hand when you get to Japan and tell you what the word for "train" is. If you do not know what the word for "train" is after THREE MONTHS OF LESSONS, don't blame me.

No, we may not have had an entire lesson centered on the word "train." It may NEVER HAVE COME UP IN A LESSON AT ALL. But don't you think it "might" be important for you to know the word? DON'T YOU THINK IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON ONE OF YOUR VOCABULARY LISTS?

There is no need in the entire world for you to have to learn the proper way to say "The girls were swimming in the pool." But shouldn't you AT LEAST know the vocabulary for "to swim?"

What, you want a pill called "verbs" that I give you at the beginning of a lesson, and you go home magically having learned twenty new verbs and how to conjugate them and use them in a sentence?

There is so much to learn in a language that it pretty much doesn't matter where or on what you start. If I start teaching you terms used by naval architects, well, your progress might not go so quickly once you get landed in the middle of the equivalent of Times Square in Tokyo. Except you WILL know how to say "Excuse me, where is the office of the nearest naval architect?"

I rest my case.

Time to Work

These are all time-related expressions. I can't post them directly on the blog because they have tabbing and other formatting problems that this blog program can't deal with, so download the PDF here.

Learn the kanji within -- they are all very commonly-used kanji that form parts of many other words.

And the expressions themselves are classified as Red-level -- meaning absolutely essential to remember and to know how to use.

Until I come up with a better way to classify stuff we'll go with "Red-level" all the way down to "Green-level," in which Red is top priority to remember and practice, and Green being stuff that you should be familiar with but no need to remember the kanji.

Learn these, learn how to use them, and learn their kanji as well. RED-LEVEL.

Here are the romaji versions and definitions.

kyū ni                              suddenly, out of the blue

totsuzen                           unexpectedly, suddenly

toriaezu                            for now, for the time being, meanwhile

genzai                              at the moment, currently

konogoro                         lately, these days

kono mae                         the last time, last time, the time before

sore kara                           after that, from then on

kore kara                          from now on, starting now

sono ato                            after that (happens, happened)

sono mae                          before that (happens, happened)

kodomo no koro               when I was a kid

ima no tokoro                    at the moment, right now

mukashi                            back then, a long time ago

dōji ni                                at the same time

jikan dōri                           right on time, exactly on time

mō chotto ato de                in a little bit, soon, soon after

sono toki (wa)                    at that time

Totally Cool, Totally Easy: Bad Japanese

I'm typing this on my iPad Mini, so I'll keep it very short. Usually I don't encourage bad Japanese (meaning deliberately rude or offensive,) but one day it could come in handy, so I'll teach you some, occasionally.

Here's a really good and easy one: if you want someone to stop doing something, except in a nasty, pissed-off fashion, just add the particle "na" to the "infinitive" form of the verb.

So, by saying "miru" (to see) and adding "na" you have just said a close equivalent of "Stop fucking looking!"

And this goes with all verbs. "Sonna'n yuu na!" means roughly "Don't fucking talk like that!"

 "Sonna'n suru na!" means "Stop fucking doing that!"

That's your bad Japanese for today.

Every Day I Get the Greys

Let me see if I can't try to post more on this site, even if it is just vocabulary lists that I send my students. You could download them too and it might help you out.

Or I could post about my latest scrapes with kanji -- there are always gripes about them.

So shall we do that? A post every day? At least that will give someone new a million posts to read through.

Okay, here goes: a vocabulary list consisting of 20 of each verbs, nouns and adjectives. As usual, nothing ultra-difficult -- just stuff you should know as a beginning Japanese student.

Note: I tried to paste the stuff in directly, but no go. I'm putting the image in as a 300 d.p.i. jpeg, so your best bet is to: open it in a new window, then: "Save image to desktop."

That way you should be able to read all the tiny furigana above the kanji.

If you can learn this entire vocab list, write in the comments section and I'll send you a present.

Hanging In There (Wes Says . . .)

As a teacher of Japanese in a not-so-friendly-to-Japanese city -- the French barrier alone scares them away in droves and they don't seem to understand that although everything TECHNICALLY is in French here, 99.9% of the Montreal-dwelling denizens speak both languages, a huge proportion of them to the extent of being completely bilingual -- at complete ease in either language.

But it's still scary for Japanese. They'd much rather go to Banff.

What results is the non-transference of much of a Japanese influence in Montreal, which leads, to my mind, in a much smaller interest in Japan and the language. I'm not sure. I suppose I would have to run an identical ad, minus the French part, in, say, Toronto, to see what comes up.

But what tends to happen with my students is that they have a remarkably swift burnout rate. When they leave my lesson, they're right back in Montreal, not exactly a teeming bastion of Japaneseness.

There are hardly any reminders of Japan here. There is exactly one (1) grocery store in Montreal that is wholly owned and operated by and for Japanese. The types of ingredients a Japanese would look for in typical Japanese everyday meals -- viz. NOT sushi -- are extremely scarce.

They are all notoriously fussy about their rice. Even within Japan, there are multiple grades of rice. And Calrose, made in California (albeit by long-transplanted Japanese) just doesn't cut it. It's totally low-grade crap to the average Japanese, and even finding Calrose is an unlikely prospect in your neighborhood Metro.

So, they come and they go -- mostly, go. Thus, no japanese presence. Thus, no reminders to my students that it's worth the effort to learn Japanese. Thus, and extremely high turnover rate.

There is practically not a single motivation to study Japanese here. You're really on your goddamn own, and if it weren't for the Internet, you'd be SHIT OUT OF LUCK ENTIRELY.

There is, literally, only me, or your friendly neighborhood language school. Me? I care individually about every single student's reasons to study and I try to make sure that the motivation to continue is always there.

But it's a hard slog.

When they get to me, usually, the range of their knowledge is so small that anything more than "Konnichi wa" is Advanced Japanese to them. So to expect to be having conversations within a few weeks -- let alone a few YEARS -- on two hours a week in my class is a very unrealistic way of thinking.

As a musician, I constantly compare learning a language to learning a musical instrument. You can't get away from the comparison. The processes involved are almost identical. Just substitute "Chord" for "Idiom." "E Minor" for "Polite level." You get the picture.

But no one says it better than a real musician, and an interview I read yesterday by one of the world's most gifted (and sadly departed) musical geniuses parallel what I'm trying to say about the struggles of learning a new language, and, in this case, the struggles of learning how to play the guitar.

Seminal jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery

If you can forgive the extraordinary 60s African-American jazz musician's turn of phrase (everyone is a "cat" -- it how they really spoke back then!) then you'll find this gem of wisdom from jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery amazingly relevant to learning Japanese (all comments in italics mine):

Why are there so few guitar players today? I think it’s like, the average person thinks he wants to play guitar, then he goes as far as, “I think I’ll buy me a tenor 12-dollar guitar and mess around to see if I like it.” (The person who decides they want to start learning Japanese.)

Then, they find out— after maybe the first week or two—that their fingers feel like pins are sticking into them, but they can’t stop, because once they stop it’ll heal up. I think a lot of people don’t realize that it’s just crises you’ve got to go through. (Adjusting to the bizarre differences in sentence structure between English or French and Japanese.)

I think another reason is when they think about playing guitar they pick it up and feel they should automatically play what they are thinking. Then, a guy thinks he’ll go get himself a teacher, and the teacher has to do everything, and they won’t try to do anything for themselves. (My constant comment that people sometimes come to me expecting me to be holding a syringe labelled "Japanese, Level 1," which I inject them with, and they go home having learned Japanese, Level 1.)

But they are the one who has to learn guitar, because a teacher can only show you so much. You have melodic lines and chords, and you have to know the neck before you can do either one. It takes a long time, and you have to think ahead to your limits before you can do anything. (Meaning the teacher can only show/teach you so much -- the actual scut work, the nitty-gritty, which can be endless drudgery like learning vocabulary, conjugations, etc., you have to do outside the classroom environment, all by yourself, with no one holding your hand or looking over your shoulder.)

Then, you’ve got to figure if you want to slur up to a note, then you’ve got to come back so you’ve got to know where you’re going. These things play so big of a part that you get discouraged when nothing happens. (You study all the verbs, you learn the vocabulary, you do everything you're supposed to do but you still can't speak any Japanese yet.)

It’s like playing pool, isn’t it? Well, of course, I’m a pretty sharp pool player, but the guitar is just a hard instrument. A cat will listen to a guy that is playing, and think he can do that, but he won’t study on how long that cat’s been playing. (He means that a musician might hear another musician who seems to be far better than himself, but it will never enter into his mind how long that superior musician practiced to get that far. I call this the "convenient being brilliant with no effort factor." Of COURSE the other guy is going to know more kanji than you, of COURSE he's going to be able to speak much better than you, because he PUT IN THE TIME. There is no magic involved.)

Then, he gets discouraged because he can’t even get two notes out. Then, he says he’ll struggle with it himself, and maybe he’ll find out in six months that he still can’t make a line, then he feels like he’s a dumb cat. (The frustration after you've been at it for months, seemingly with no tangible results. This is an illusion designed to make you give it all up and shrug, saying:"Obviously I have no talent for this.")

But when you find guitar players that are playing, you’ll find out that at one time they never cared if they never played, they were going to keep on until they did. (Wow, this 60s slang is almost like a foreign language, isn't it? I think he means that the ones who succeed do so because they didn't care about getting immediate results -- they knew if they just hung in there and did the work, they'd get better.)

After a period of time, the beginning player will hear a little difference in his playing, and that little inspiration is enough to go further, and the first thing you know, you won’t back out. The biggest problem is getting started. (This needs no comment, but it really points out why people give up so quickly.)

Then, later everybody plays more than you. And those things are not very inspirational—they’re pretty discomforting. And then somebody says, ““Why don’t you put that thing down? You’re not doing anything with it.” (Meaning, you see everyone else getting better, but not you. And people around you start asking you, "Why are you wasting time with this Japanese thing, anyway?")

Well, that’s no help. And you’ll find more people against you than for you, until you get started. Then, you’ll find more with you than against you. (Thank you, Wes, I couldn't have said it better myself.)

So I guess my point here is that too many of my students reach a danger zone fairly early on, when they seem to be making no progress, when they can't even ask or respond to simple questions . . . so they just quit. From now on, I'm going to warn all my new students of this major pothole in the road that they're going to run into sooner or later. And then they'll decide whether they're going to try to leap across or turn back, defeated.

Graduation 卒業

Congratulations to Mathieu, who, in seven lessons altogether, has proceeded to go-dan; that is, Level Five. Level Five is marked by the first time we actually progress to have an unscripted, unaided conversation (no crib notes, nothing to look at), the content of which is my choosing.

This time, I chose a typical conversation in which I asked him about his last week and what he did during in it. He managed to inform me that he finished some tests in university which was a big weight off his shoulders, and that he had not had time to do anything of note that was fun on his couple of days away from school, because he worked.

This tested his working knowledge and usage of the past tense, knowledge of relatively simple vocabulary (but not simple to a beginning student) and demonstrated his mastery of all the topics we had covered in class to this point.

His reward was a yukata (the white robe pictured) and when he passes his yoh-dan (fourth level) in about two months (another 8 lessons or so) I should be able to track down a jacket such as the one he is wearing in photograph #2, which unfortunately is mine and not for the giving away of which. Ever. because THAT jacket was my passing of the Dai-Ichi-oku-dan (the one-millionth level) which is unattainable except for the dligentest of the diligentest of the most diligent acolytes of the Nihingo no tenshin-dan 日本語の天神団 (Heavenly God Level), which, nonetheless awaits the he/she who masters the 600 prescribed verbs and Four Ancient Command Line Interfaces, which, needless to say, is quite difficult.

But not impossible. Congratulations, Mathieu-san; from here on in you shall be addressed as マッシュウウテッキュウ巻きちゃん.

マッシュウウテッキュウ巻きちゃん

将来の天神団

Ziss Iz-u Mai Fazaa

If Japanese teachers had their way . . . .