Speaking Japanese Fluently in 6 Months | 6 Steps to Success

I love what-if situations because they force you to be creative and see things from a fresh perspective so when someone recently approached me saying excuse me but I need to become fluent at speaking Japanese in six months what should I do my initial response was and after this exchange I couldn't help but think what if that person had actually served excuse me I need to become fluent in speaking Japanese in six months as you've got 10 minutes to tell me what I need to do and the more I thought about the whole speaking Japanese fluently the six months think they're more I realize that is actually technically possible with a good strategy with a good plan now granted it took me longer than six months but this is because like most learners I had no idea where to begin or what to do now I've been fortunate to come a long way since then culminating last year taking part in a regional Japanese speech contest somehow winning and ending up in the local newspaper looking like some kind of slightly overweight disappointing villain so if you have half a year to spare or you're learning Japanese from a beginner to an intermediate level here are six important points for making fluency in six months a reality or if you do lack at the time the very least in under in here so the aim of not being shot in this bizarre poorly conceived hypothetical situation here is a six step strategy for success and speaking Japanese fluently in six months oh I love alliteration so the first thing you need to become fluent at speaking Japanese is the core vocabulary and grammar but how much is this well probably not as much as you think I discovered this when I came to Japan and befriended someone who is very much fluent in conversation but knew surprisingly little Japanese I won't reveal his name or face suffice to say his greatest quality is that he's from Canada and so for the rest of this audio-visual experience we'll be referring to him as Canadian going but Canadian guy came to Japan having learned his Japanese from the popular textbooks Genki won and Genki too and then he just couldn't be bothered to learn anything more because admittedly he found speed Italy too he already had enough Japanese to be able to have good conversations with people and after I'd finished using both books I also found I knew enough to be able to have good everyday conversation but how much Japanese is that exactly and can it be learned in six months the books take you up to jlpt 4n4 level which is around a thousand words and once the books do contain big scary kanji characters they also contain hiragana and katakana meaning you can progress through them without being held back by kanji and as there are 22 chapters and 24 weeks in which to learn them the rate of one chapter a week is more than manageable with two weeks left over to learn hiragana and katakana if you need to now at this point I expect everyone and their cat is shouting a thousand words suitable it simply can't be done to which I say let's be ruthless and say we have 1500 words to learn in five months because you want to use the sixth month to review the things we've learned and enjoy muffins basic math tells us that comes to a staggering ten words a day but if like me you have trouble remembering vocabulary use of memorization website like memorize where you can learn new vocabulary daily and you'll find that it makes this six-month target disgustingly achievable fluency with just a thousand words Robson's by it's important to remember that the thousand most commonly used Japanese words represent 70% of the everyday spoken language because the words are used that frequently of course simply just by knowing them won't make you fluent that's what the other five tips are for but you can't go anywhere without the essential so make sure you learn them and learn them well now [Music] what was put to conversation fillers are the words we use when we hesitate mid-sentence oh no I ultimately they have no meaning but they still play a vital role during conversation and then there's back-channeling which are words that we use to show that we're listening in during conversation uh-huh all right yeah and you'll benefit massively from using them when you speak Japanese because not only will you sound more like a native speaker but early on will you find it difficult to recall a a word mid-sentence or you'll be able to use the filler to buy yourself time until you can remember the word example Oh [Music] yeah yeah right I saw her oh yeah I see I see yeah not a woman no no hmm what is it yeah nothing and if you listened to a Japanese speaker you'll especially hear the first tip we get into the habit of using them early on not only when you sound more like a native speaker but you'll feel more comfortable and natural when speaking Japanese it's a small thing but it does make a huge difference mmm fairly obvious once you've started learning Japanese naturally you want to start practicing and using it with native speakers of Japanese in conversation and if you plan to be fluent in six months you would need to speak to someone for about one hour every week do that and six months is completely achievable so find a conversation partner or a Japanese teacher and you'll be fluent in no time at all yeah oh wait there's literally no native speakers of Japanese outside of Japan okay I exaggerate but it's true if you live outside Japan there is a noticeable absence of Japanese people to actually speak with in fact in the past two years I've had more messages from people about this problem than anything else and I can empathize in the 22 years that I lived in rural London I met [Music] two Japanese people and that was in London one of the biggest cities in the entire [ __ ] solar system but you and I are very lucky because we have something that I like to call B and tener we don't need to let silly things like time and space get in our way because there already tells of awesome Japanese people in life who will have conversation with you or teach you Japanese and for me the best place to be them is I talk your website where you can not only find Japanese conversation partners freely but also find native speakers who can become your personal tutor over the internet and in fact despite living in Japan even I use online tutors as it's more convenient than driving for half an hour to the local community center sitting in a group waiting for my term while people practice the phrase qualia LARP ended I can have my class anywhere I want sitting there eating the chocolate talking one on one to a personal tutor over Skype and I'd like having a regular tutor which costs literally billions of dollars having an online teacher is actually affordable enough to use weekly now because I live in Japan I can practice conversation with friends but honestly it's still no substitute for having an experienced teacher who can check your pronunciation correct your mistakes and explain sentence structures that literally make no sense so not only is the future already here but it turns out it's more convenient more flexible and actually affordable unlike the chocolate which feels like the posh kids standing in the corner of the room boastfully claiming that comes from being two bar beat upon up look at that faint above what unlike normal chocolate which merely goes from being to disillusionment you've busted so definitely check out I torque it the link below and if you do having message the guys there they were kind enough to donate vouchers to anyone watching this video which is pretty good as it's something useful you can actually use visit the link below sign up for free and if you decide to book a tutor before April 30th you'll get another lesson for free finally that you're born Japan channel has been nice I went to those people that often ask me can I just practice conversation by speaking Japanese into Google Translate yeah just just go this next tip genuinely changed my Japanese speaking life when you start learning Japanese and indeed long after you've started learning Japanese you'll often find yourself not knowing a word or how to say something a ridiculous amount the time and nothing kills the conversation at demos of a team or that when this happens but the solution is simple you need to learn 10,000 words and 2200 kanji characters and you should finish just in time to be dead all you can learn how to overcome mental blocks and explain things you don't know using the basic grammar you've already learned good because the keys of fluency is to think in Japanese and to work around these problems like you would in your native language but you can do the exact same thing in Japanese at a fairly early stage having learned something called nominalization and using concept words like monocot or jaw thigh and top rope I first learned this from Canadian gun because he always appeared flirting conversation despite his limited knowledge and it turned out he was just confident in using explanatory phrases to get around difficult situations but let's have some examples say I'm having a really bad day you're nice too though chill on the waffles are nuts you know how lucky I can i hey so let the earth on this room oh what a sunny I need some artists are convening it at RC mundo Keeravani okay haha me see that also has Emile cotton : a she's a kind of a soda thank you Stefan tasarov who no cuz she taught you to grow on selected to serve on the show also to economy dicta don't wonder not even yourself hello kill energy or coca-cola will be hosting a show dog Carrigan oh sure oh yeah calligraphy I'm from the red cord don't worry our conversations aren't usually that [ __ ] change your thinking in this way and become fluent the problem-solving and you'll find a way to explain anything even with a limited vocabulary you'll find it makes a big difference to your overall confidence and speaking Japanese particularly after you've been able to describe concepts like communism having only used words like everyone and salad down I've got about a minute before I get shot and I need a watch another tip for getting around those frequent mental blocks is synonyms early on one of my biggest problems was if I couldn't recall word I would spend ages trying to recall it rather than move around it and find a different way of saying it and this just led to frustration and breaking things but the trick is to get into the habit of quickly switching and thinking up a different way of saying it for example if you want to say he's tall but can't remember the phrase say got that I switched to an alternative and say he's big or he's not sure it takes a few weeks of practice to become good at this but when you get into the habit of doing it you'll save yourself a lot of time and stress I'm finally number six the most important tip but probably the most difficult early on it becomes so easy to switch back to your native language if you can't think of the word or what to say and I would do this even if I knew full well that the other person couldn't even speak English but this problem has continuously plagued me that I switched back to English rather than stick it out and use the Japanese I know I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that it feels like you have to let part of your personality go because you don't know how to say colloquial phrases that you would say in your own native language and it can be really difficult especially if you're an egotistical terrible person like I am but if you don't get rid of this problem early on it will always hold you back and stand in your way rather than thinking in Japanese you'll just give up and revert back to your old language if you get your native language if you can't say in Japanese don't say it at all just move on and conversely the more you speak and use the Japanese you'll know the more you'll realize that you know a lot more than you think and that's it six tips six months if you do all of these things then you can be fluent in six months whilst being able to read write or listen to Japanese is awesome being able to speak it with native speakers is where the real rewards light and if you do plan to do this to send a message over the Facebook pages I'm keen to hear how you get on but thanks for watching and good luck laughter I please finish I did a good job Oh lay off the fried chicken [Music] [Music]

Channel: Abroad in Japan

Views: 3,502,059

Rating: 4.9635396 out of 5

Keywords: Japanese (Ethnicity), Japanese Language (Interest), Japan (Country), fluency, Success, language, Training, Personal, Coaching, Attraction, ญี่ปุ่น, เรียนภาษาญี่ปุ่น, พูดญี่ปุ่น, พูดภาษาญี่ปุ่น, เรียนต่อญี่ปุ่น

Id: _IOZbJ7PCPk

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/dentinacar]

While this has a lot of good tips, I really dislike how people throw around the term 'fluency'. What he is describing I think is totally possible in 6 months, but its not anywhere near what I would consider 'fluent'.

I mean imagine if you were talking to someone who was learning English. This person could only talk in short simple disjointed sentences, and needing you to fill in basic everyday words like 'scissor' for them. Would you consider them 'fluent' in English? I doubt it, it would probably get tiresome to talk to them after awhile.

Maybe 'able to hold very basic conversations' would be better, but phrasing it like that doesn't bring in many hits on Youtube I guess.

[u/SaiyaJedi]

competence != fluency

Zero to "fluent" in six months is pretty much impossible for anyone, even children (though children will make more headway than most adults in that time through simple immersion).

That said, you can become quite competent in a language, with a sound grammatical base, in that amount of time if you really apply yourself and make an effort to speak. Just don't expect to approach "fluency" without several more years of dedicated study.

[u/Bloodwork78]

These are some great tips, especially the one about problem-solving in Japanese.

[u/Fictitious1267]

This sort of thing bugs me. It really belittles those that spent 15 years learning the language, and it gives unnatural expectations to college kids that think they can power through this and be done in under a year.

This is the sort title that you see on books at Barnes & Noble, that are usually totally useless for learning the language.

Also, if 70% of the words spoken are common use, that leaves 30% of radio broadcasts, books (all in furigana of course), tv, lectures, etc. 30% of those words used are unknown. That is not enough at all to understand from context. That's no where near fluent, even if it were true.

Don't blame me for being too hard. If he named the video "Become conversational in 6 months," I wouldn't have anything but praise. The title is just far, far too misleading.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't like his definition of "fluent". If he had said, "Get from beginner to N4 in 6 months", or, "go from nothing to able to converse with Japanese people in 6 months", it would have been far more accurate.

I was thinking, "I agree, it's practically impossible, but maybe if you study 18 hours a day..."

Then he starts talking about learning 1000-1500 words and calling it fluency, and I'm just thinking "...that's just N4, not fluent."

I do however, like all of his tips.

[u/eifer]

Is there a list of the most commonly used words?

[u/[deleted]]

I've been wondering what I'm doing wrong! Six years of studying hardcore and I'm still not fluent. I will try this and post the results in six months thanks Reddit!