Why?

There are countless testinomials about how someone got fluent in a language, so what’s the point in me writing about mine? Here’s why my experience might be unique:

  • Most of my gains happened while I was already a working adult in my late 20s to 30s.
  • I failed really hard before I started getting results.
  • I’m a software engineer, so the way I experienced language-learning might be more palettable to other software engineers.

The start point

I didn’t seriously try to learn Japanese until I was almost 30. But by that point I had already studied a lot of Japanese: 6 years of Japanese language classes, and 1 year in Japan as an exchange student and intern. But even after all that, I was still in “intermediate hell,” unable to use Japanese to a level that daily life would expect of most people living here.

The end point

I am certainly not native level, but good enough to get around. Japanese still does not feel effortless the same way English does - I need to actively concentrate when communicating, especially in unfamiliar contexts. I regularly use ChatGPT to fix the polite language of my emails. I have limited writing ability with pen and paper, but I am functional with a keyboard - the Japanese version of this blog is almost entirely my own writing. I can read and enjoy novels set in familiar contexts.

The journey

In the beginning stages of my second attempt at Japanese as an adult, it didn’t take long for me to arrive onto the YouTube channel of MattVsJapan, where I was indoctrinated into the idea that a comprehensible-input-based learning method like AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) could actually work. The theory behind this and similar methods are explained over, over, and over again on the Internet, so I will spare those details. Here is a quick rundown of my own experience:

  • WaniKani to learn kanji: 1-1.5 years daily spaced-repetition review.
  • Following WaniKani, daily sentence mining and spaced-repetition review.
  • Almost all non-work hours spent reading or listening to Japanese: anime, YouTube, novels, audio books, games, etc. If there was a Japanese option for something, I always did that. This was not passive consumption - I made some effort to understand every sentence, but also did not mind giving up.

A topic of some debate is whether input is not only necessary, but also sufficient for developing output. Perhaps because of my age and/or work schedule, I did not find this to be the case: input was certainly necessary, but not sufficient. I started practicing output regularly after a few years of mostly-input. I was not very rigorous with this: hanging out on language-exchange Discord servers and writing a journal. It’s possible I would have benefitted from taking a more rigorous approach, but I ended up doing what was most enjoyable.

Beyond

I hope my experience provides a useful datapoint. Methods and results will vary for everyone, but one thing is clear: learning a language takes a massive amount of time and effort, even with all the technology that exists today. My experience learning, and continuing to learn Japanese has taught me that even if there is no magic bullet, you can get somewhere with a good attitude, efficient practice, and lots of time.

That said, I am quite certain that AJATT and similar methods require a kind of obsession to see through to the end. This obsession is not necessarily healthy. Indeed, looking back, there was no rhyme or reason to my drive other than an addiction to progress. However, I am very lucky to have ended up in a place I want to be as a result of my madness. Perhaps that’s another lesson learned: often, things turn out okay in the end.