Trouble translating sounds

[wingedwolf15615]

Hey ,
I was just wondering if this problem was because i'm just starting out. the thing is i know what the words mean like ohayou hazimemashii watashi wa etc from all the lessons i can say and pronounce the words and sounds correctly as far as i can tell but when i hear the speakers say them it still sounds foreign to me as if its the first time i ve ever heard them before... is this really because i m in the learning stages and they havent fully soaked into my brain just yet , or is it something else you have to learn along with learning a new lang...
any help and encouragement would be greatly appreciated ...

[Belton]

It's just one of those things when learning a language. Everyone goes through it. Listening is probably the hardest skill of the four to master.

When listening you have to work at the speakers pace and deal with their accent and vocabulary. It just takes practice. The more you can immerse yourself the better.

There is a technique called Shadowing that is good for speaking practice but also helps in listening, in that you have to process sentences into memory in order to speak them back. It's difficult at first. To begin with you might only be able to repeat back single words or very short phrases, eventually you'll be able to process longer sentences. Part of this is because you'll know what *should* be in a sentence; what the phrases in a given situation might be. You then guess and fill in the gaps. You learn to listen for and pick out the crucial information.

What can also help is having Japanese subtitles. (although kanji starts to become an issue!) Having the extra information helps you hear what is being said. Many clips of Japanese light entertainment on You Tube have these. It seems peculiar to Japanese TV.

Stick with it, eventually meaning comes out of the noise.