In the last journal, I explained why it is important not to use a dictionary when you read.
If I rephrase what I tried to say, it goes like this:
"Instead of trying to understand all the words in front of you in your own language, we should let 'your' Japanese words explain what others mean."
It's tricky in a way that knowing exactly what it is in your language seems very convincing and means a lot more to you, but for real, your words actually work separately in your mind and they in fact explain very little to you.
But when you start reading without a dictionary, the words you have already known would actually try to tell you what others mean. Although they seem to mean so little to you at first, and although it may make you anxious by so reading, they start to bind themselves together and get stronger each time they succeed to explain what the other words are, and the newly learnt words join in to your vocabulary to tell you more eloquently by collaborating with others which you'd already known.
Anyways, that's pretty much how reading without a dictionary works.
So, reading is a way for you to be exposed to hundreds of thousands of different ways to describe things, but when it comes to actually speaking it, what should we do? This is when writing comes into place.
2. Writing
When I say "writing", you would probably imagine you would try to write down the right words and feel what a terrible writer you are, compared to the expression you would be using in your own language. No, I don't mean that.
Instead of trying to write the correct sentences, you just go on and on with writing down what you are thinking at that very moment in Japanese.
Do not worry for making mistakes, it really doesn't matter what it is about, all you need is to write down what pops out in your head in Japanese.
Probably you would be thinking; "it's impossible because I can't think in Japanese". Okay, then when do you think you would ever start thinking in Japanese? Does it happen in your mind all of a sudden? NO WAY!
When you start writing like this, your Japanese would exactly be how your speech sounds like. Yeah, it's what your current level really is, you kinda have to face it.
If we think about it, have you ever seen kids in age of 4 or so who never makes grammatical mistakes, not a single wording? If you ever do, try capture that kid because he is an alien (Again, just messing around. Please do not take it seriously. I'm just trying to make a sense here).
Rather, probably the kids would go off and keep telling us ridiculous fake stories with lots of grammatical mistakes. In a way, how they create ways to use words they just learned is astonishing, although it still may sound stupid.
I believe they are (and we once were) just trying to have fun by making all sorts of mistakes, and by listening to themselves how stupid they sound, compared to adults' speech. And I also believe this is why they like dirty words. They are just playing around by saying those bad words to hear how inappropriate and funny they sound.
And we all have to admit that we had fun that way when we were kids.
But wait here. If you say out loud things like "O-Chinko" in Yamanote line just like a 4 year-old-kid does, there's a slight chance that you may end up in jail. I know there's some strange people in Tokyo, but you don't have to be so just to learn Japanese, absolutely not.
Instead of violating common wellness of good Japanese societies (or others around you), you just need a notebook and a pencil to write down whatever you are thinking at the moment. You may sound stupid or inappropriate, but it's all alright. It's just a notebook after all. It takes whatever you say.
The teacher at the English institute I went called this "journals". And, I was told to write down for at least ten minutes a day. On the first day, you would probably feel a drop of sweat going down in your butt crack after writing "journals", but you need to keep trying. The more you write, the better you would come to feel ease.
So, give it a try? It goes like this. It's me writing what I was thinking in English for about 3 minutes.
*****************<me writing a journal>*******************
I am watching a news and it's about "Yuru-chara", and they are saying about how city employees manipulated the vote for choosing the best in Japan. hmmmm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking... What's the point making their characters the best in Japan is all about the money. It's sad that the characters so cute are used to sell more of their things.
Anyways, I am writing a journal since so long ago, and kind neat that I can even think so clearly in English like this. Things were not so easy back when I was studying English when I went to the U.S....
*****************<the end of the journal>*******************
I intentionally left all the mistakes I made. I was drunk when I was writing this, and thank God I didn't curse in this example, but it's so embarrassing that I was bragging about my English.
Also, I found how my English sucks by this example, and exposing this is so embarrassing, although I bet this series of journals still have tons of mistakes. But, you don't have to show off like I did. You just need to write down on a notebook, not on the web site.
Please note that this method only works with reading books on day-to-day basis. And let me explain a little bit more of how this works.
Unfortunately, your writing skill would not make any progress just by writing the same thing over and over. You just remember the words you write. In order to become good at writing (and speaking in turn), you need input from somewhere else. Yeah, that's to read books.
When writing what you are thinking in Japanese, you are unintentionally referring to what you have read by then and strengthen what you have learnt by far by writing that down in your own way.
Still it doesn't make any sense to you to write down this way at your level? Let me put how ridiculous writing the correct sentences and memorizing them would sound to me this way.
Let's say I was learning English to try to have a girlfriend in the U.S. or Canada. I would have google'd "what are some examples of flirting conversations" and have started to memorize:
****************************<quote>**************************
Me: Hey, Jake
Jake: Uh…h-hi. (His stutter is adorable)
Me: What’s new with you?
Jake: Same. Mom still hate-messages me, school is boring, Tyson is awful.
Me: I’m sorry.
Jake: Nothing I’m not used to. Sorry, am I being annoying?
Me: No, relax. (I put my hand on top of his and he turns red). I like talking to you.
*****************************<quote>*************************I hope you would be kind enough to stop me right there.
Instead, what I would actually have to do is to go for a dinner with a girl and try to describe how beautiful she is in many different ways even though I may sound stupid. I would rather give it a try, and hopefully she may think of me as adorable.
Or, there's this one guy studying Japanese by answering English questions on a tape like "I have three children and a dog" and what you are supposed to say, and the only given answer would be "私には三人の子どもがいて、犬も一匹飼っています" and the tape goes on like this. Hey, I can come up with at least three different ways to say the same thing in Japanese, and it's the fluency you want to achieve, isn't it? Memorizing only one answer would not allow you to reach that goal, sorry to say this, but it NEVER happens.
Quite honestly, it really sounds stupid for me to memorize one sentence in just one right way by saying it over and over again. Dude, for me, it almost sounds like you memorize one "haiku" to remember one "kigo" so that you can explain what Spring is like in Japan. Let us face the reality, "kigo" itself has more than 2,000 different words to describe the seasons about which you make a poem (or namely, "haiku").
Then, why not express yourselves in many ways instead of trying to find the right sentence you memorized that matches the situation?
The other anxiety you might still have before you start writing this way is the grammar, I guess. Yeah, we may have so many tenses and appropriate manners of connecting words.
If I were your Japanese teacher, I would of said "Fxxk it, fxxk the grammar!" But since I am not teaching you, I might have to be more explicit why grammar doesn't matter at this point.
Would you think all Japanese people know all the grammars about how and when we use suffix? If you have Japanese friends, go ahead and ask them when to use "は" and "が" and what the difference would be, and the answer you would end up with is something like "it just doesn't sound right" in most cases.
Or, let me ask you something similar about your language. What are the grammatical explanations when to use "on" and "in", and "at", and what would be the difference among them? Do the explanations you would give fit all situations? Probably they don't but yet you still know the right answers. How did you get that skill in English?
We probably learned what sounds right and wrong way before we studied grammars when we learned our mother tongues. But, when it comes to learning other languages, we suddenly start trying to memorize all the grammars before enjoying playing around with the language. There's no such easy way out when you learn other languages, I would say.
When you read books, say suffix like "が" and "は" would be something you would read at least ten thousand times in a book, even without realizing it. That is to say, we quite naturally get used to what it should be like in real Japanese in ten thousand different ways.
Instead of learning perfect grammars, what we did to learn our own languages was reading or listening to so many articles and phrases and kept trying to express ourselves by trials and errors using what we'd read or listened to. So, what's wrong with doing the same thing over in learning the language we are about to learn right now?
I have written so long so far, but all the above explanations and analogies tapered to this one point: Do not think in your language when you learn another. And the method I presented above is merely just one of examples of how you do that.
Learning Japanese in Japan, especially for English speakers would be really difficult, because there are so many Japanese people who are eager to answer your questions in English, probably because of ethnicity, or of your accent, etc. etc... But if you ever face this problem, please just ask them to talk with in Japanese and tell them why it is important to you. I bet most Japanese people would be kind enough to do as they are told.
Thank you for reading these lengthy posts, even though my English sucks like hell. I suppose you would have more questions than you get out of this series. Please feel free to leave a comment or two if you feel like so. I would put as much effort as I could afford to answer your questions.
And, I hope you enjoy learning Japanese, I really do. Peace :)
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