The Prospect of Advancement

[aephion]

Hello everone~ I'm relatively new here, so perhaps I'm asking a redundant question; as I don't know, here it is.

I was wondering if there's any indication as for the speed in which a student like myself might advance in Japanese?
Will I be able to listen to conversations properly in half a year? A year? Two years? I think it goes without saying that I'd like to speak Japanese fluently yesterday, but of course I realize that that's impossible - even if you don't take the space-time continuum into account

Also, is it wise to listen to more than one lesson per day or do you think I should stick to just the one?

Thanks for your time in advance!

[Thepuritans]

I think it's ok listening to more than one a day, just be sure you've understood all the contets on it.
Everyone who studies japanese knows it takes quite more time to become fluent than it would be with english, spanish, and that kind of languages, so don't worry as much about it and enjoy having fun with japanese way of expressing ideas, grammar, kanji and maybe in a year and a half (depending on how hard u study) you'd be able to express a lot of ideas in japanese language.
I strongly recommend you to study arond 2 hours a day, one at morning and one at night.
ok that's it, that's all i can say, gotta turn off my computer and keep on studying japanese.

Ganbatte!

[rodostajin1691]

I studied on my own in the States for 2.5 years. I thought I was pretty good. ha ha

Then I moved to Japan and figured I'd be fine. Wrong. I knew a bunch of words and phrases, but pronunciation was the kicker for me. This was in the late 80's, and I didn't use cassette tapes to get an idea of how words should be pronounced.

So I get off the plane and proceed to try and get directions to a limousine bus at the airport. Let's just say, I quickly learned that what I thought was adequate language knowledge, turned out to be pathetic.

I'm in awe of people that learn English and attend American colleges. It's amazing. I have many Japanese friends that have done that. They're skills are amazing.

So study a lot. And more importantly listen and imitate pronunciations.

[aephion]

Actually, not being a native English speaker myself, I don't have -too- much trouble with the pronunciation of Japanese words; I do have a bit of trouble with the speed
Dutch (my native tongue) shares a couple of useful similarities with Japanese in terms of pronunciation, so I guess that really helps. Our "u" actually sounds rather similar, much less of an "oo" sound, if that makes any sense at all.

No, I was really referring much more to comprehension and reading; although I'd like to go right now, I still simply can't afford to go to Japan for a good while, so for me it'd be most useful to focus on understanding verbal and written communication much more than speaking myself. (of course that's really very important too, but for now, I'd just like to see some useful progress )

[Javizy]

A good starting point for pronunciation is vowels and mouth position. Look for a good explanation of consonants as well. Ones to look out for are 'wa' and 'fu' (nothing like the English equivalents). One that can seriously affect your intelligibility is ん(n) so give that special attention.

Mora and pitch are also very important. Mora helps you speak with the correct rhythm. For example, the word sensei should be spaced out equally into 4 mora, and not condensed into two syllables. Pitch accent often gets overlooked (including by myself), and you will seriously regret it if you don't give this attention from the start. These are the seven patterns, and you'll find one of the seven numbers in all goo definitions after ◆アクセント ：(sanseido is an alternative).

0 low-high (no pitch)
1 high-low (initial high pitch)
2 low-high-low
3 low-high-high-low
4 low-high-high-high-low
5 low-high-high-high-high-low
6 low-high-high-high-high-high-low

Shadowing is also a good way to develop general pronunciation and intonation, while remembering chunks of language too.

Other than that, getting a native speaker to correct you will help a lot. They may or may not be elusive where you live, but you can find plenty of them here http://www.sharedtalk.com/