Second option for me~
I've been studying Japanese for almost 4 years now. While I don't believe I'm at "native fluency" I can understand about 90% of the things I come across (I currently translate manga/celeb blog posts/magazines.). However, my speaking skills are still lacking as I don't have much time to practice with native speakers like before.

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Translating those lovely Boys Love stories

Different people might interpret the answer very differently.
What counts as "the basics"?
What counts as "a lot"? (what I went with)
What counts as "most things"?
(not to mention the Dunning-Kruger effect, but that's unavoidable)

Due to circumstances outside of my control, I have not been able to take any proper course in Japanese (though I would love to) ...but from a bit of learning online, and over a decade of anime and manga ...and, after learning kana and a kanji or two, making occasional rare attempts at reading manga with plenty of furigana, or playing some old video game (JRPGs mainly ...and often ones I've played in English) in Japanese...
I've been able to pick up a thing or two.
I've watched a few kids anime, and been able to mostly understand the gist of what was being said (or so I believe).
Lately I've been reading a bit more raw manga, even when they don't have furigana on every kanji (though, as before, never fully understanding them ...well except the extremely easy to read Chii's Sweet Home, where I only occasionally don't fully get it).

...but I have noticed a bit of a problem.
This is hardly surprising, as watching anime is just about the worst way to learn Japanese, and seeing kanji in manga or games (even with furigana), is hardly the best way to learn them.

I don't have a solid foundation, on the basics. The most basic of basics, I know well, sure.
Beyond that, I know bits and pieces.
A lot of the basics, most perhaps, but not all ...and bits and pieces beyond the basics.
I've learned to recognize many kanji, by their general shape ...but I get them mixed up with other kanji, even when they are very different in both meaning and shape. 寄 and 客 are very different ...but I guess because the top bit is the same, I thought they were the same, for a while.

Now if I learned to write the kanji, I'd learn them properly. (there are some who think that learning to write them is unnecessary. They are idiots. Learning to write, helps you to learn to read ...and anyone who thinks that handwriting is no longer necessary in this digital age, is an ignorant fool. Try to not write by hand, for the rest of your life, and see how well that goes)

That said, I seem to be a step above some scanlators/fansubbers... (and that's when I don't even count those who's translations aren't understandable English. I can't really judge if there's a flaw in their understanding of Japanese ...as they fail at the far more important issue of knowing their target language)

Last edited by zarlan at 3:39 pm, Mar 21 2015

Well, I learned basically all of the kanji I know just by reading and I rarely mix them up. But yeah, learning to write them is better. I used to practice writing with a phone app, but I'm lazy so I haven't done it in ages~~

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Studied Japanese, casually, for about 2 years in highschool (1 class a week). Teacher got to me, so I dropped it, but by then I had a basic understanding of the fundamentals of the language (enough to order food, ask for directions or partake in a simply conversation). As I've been watching anime ever since, my Japanese hasn't dulled much. I'm a bit rusty at speaking, but, if anything, my vocabulary has increased.

Languages have always come naturally to me (I picked up English in roughly 4 months), and I am at a point where, if I moved to Japan, I would become fluent in no time. The biggest blocker for me is obviously Kanji.

"I know a lot but am not fluent"

I guess this sums it up. Back in the day I passed JLPT (old) L3, (then proceeded to fail nikyuu spectacularly and N3 by a fair margin). If I try I can translate stuff with the help of google and rikai-chan, but it's rather troublesome. I've forgotten far more kanji than I remember

Well, maybe you do it more properly than me, or something...
I do have a program for writing well, on my Nintendo DS, but it's for Japanese people who need to practice handwriting. It shows no info on what the kanji means or anything. It just shows the kanji, and tells you to write it properly, and grades your handwriting.
I really should find a good way/source/method for learning to write kanji...
(I'd do well to practice writing, in general, what with my poor handwriting, but that's a separate issue)

Oh, and I'd like to add that I have no trouble with pronounciation.
I've heard a lot of people who've learned Japanese, even very good Japanese, speaking with a quite noticable accent ...which I find a bit puzzling.
Japanese has very few sounds, and they're fairly common ones, IMO.
I can understand not getting the R/L or F completely right (I'm still a bit confused, as to which range of sounds, that the R/L is), but the rest are fairly straightforward.
Granted, I might be a bit "spoiled", having grown up learning three languages (and, due to loanwords, a few extra sounds from a fourth)...

Last edited by zarlan at 8:08 pm, Mar 21 2015

5 years of living in Japan and I still feel like a complete beginner! Though since I came here with nothing and now I can survive daily life I guess I know more than I think I do. It's hard to judge when everyone around you is a native speaker, and don't even get me started on kanji! It's the bane of my life!!!

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The pen is mightier than the sword...and considerably easier to write with.

I'm a native English speaker who's only second language is Japanese, and I live in Japan, so maybe I can shed some light on this. I think the whole accent thing isn't about not being able to pronounce Japanese words. As you pointed out, the limited range of sounds makes it fairly easy to pick up the pronunciation. The biggest problem I and many others have here is that while our pronunciation is flawless, our intonation is very English, in that we stress too many syllables since English has a rising and falling intonation. Japanese has a very monotonous intinayion, and once you rise you don't fall until the sentence is finished. This is really hard for most native English speakers at least, probably for a few others. I know my Congolese friend has similar difficulty. My Hong Kong and Taiwanese friends, however, have no trouble with the intonation at all so I guess it depends on what your base language is.

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The pen is mightier than the sword...and considerably easier to write with.

Part of that will be due to the fact that, the more you know about a topic, the more you realise about what you don't know about it.

Oh, but it is.
The sounds are often wrong.

...but not always quite right.
They get a pronounciation that is "close enough" ...but quite noticeably non-native.
The most easily demonstrable example of this, though not that significant (as it doesn't cause that noticeable a difference, I think), is the previously noted example of how people use the F-sound they are used to [f], rather than the Japanese F-sound [ɸ].

Intonation is a part of pronunciation, not apart from it.

I wonder if Swedes have an advantage, in that area. Swedish is apparently know for its "melodic" nature, with it's tone/pitch/whatever. As a native speaker, I don't notice it myself, as I simply see it as normal (I no doubt would notice it, if I looked into it ...and I certainly notice if someone messes it up)

...and yeah, of course people who speak Chinese wouldn't have any trouble with it, whatsoever. Tone is an integral and such an obvious and explicit part of their language, so they'd never fail to notice it.

Last edited by zarlan at 3:29 am, Mar 23 2015

Yes, that is definitely true! Every time I learn something new about Japanese I realise how far I am from achieving fluency. Being surrounded by native speakers is both a blessing and a curse, as I get to practice my Japanese, but I'm also being reminded of the massive gap between my current level and native level.

I disagree, I feel that, for the most part, Japanese sounds are easy to pick up and learn. True that Fu,(ふ) does not have the English F sound, but it does sound like Hu, like the Hoo sound an owl makes. Of all the Jaoanese syllables I think tsu (つ) is the hardest to both say and hear.

I'm afraid I have to disagree again as pronunciation and intonation are distinctly different aspects of a language, but that both are considered as accent.

I've not met any Swedes here, but Chinese speakers have no trouble with the accent at least. Out of all the Japanese learners I've met, Koreans definitely have the easiest time of it.

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The pen is mightier than the sword...and considerably easier to write with.

I utterly disagree.
There is nothing "hu"-like to ふ.
Plenty of sources that teach you the basics of Japanese, tend to claim that ふ is a sound somewhere betweem "fu" and "hu" ...which I simply do not understand, as I see now way in which that is even remotely true.
The Japanese F sounds about as much as H, as does a regular F.
I.e., not much at all.

(BTW, for those who'd like to know: With a regular F you touch the lower lip with ones teeth ...but for a Japanese F, you keep your teeth out of it, and simply open your mouth slightly, like for a "u" sound ...like when you say "you". Keep your mouth like that, and say F, and it'll be a [ɸ] sound)

Why?
It's not like it doesn't exist in English (though it seems a bit uncommon, now that I tried to google it ...though I'd like to point out that I merely googled for words with "tsu" in them, whereas that combination of sounds might appear, using different spelling).
Wetsuit, for example. Sure you might say that the "wet" and "suit" are separate, but... there's no pause between the "t" and the "s", now is there? You pronounce it as "ts", not "t s"

Either way, it's not like English doesn't have [t] and [s]. Why saying [ts] should create any difficulties, I do not understand.
(stricktly speaking, its [t͡s], but that's essentially just what you get, if you pronounce a [t] and a [s] one after another, as far as I've understood it)

Oh really?
*looks for definitons/descpritons of pronounciation *
"Pronunciation is the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect."
- Wikipedia
It then has a section on its meaning in lingustic terms, where it basically talks about it having to do with phones, which...
"A phone is a speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties, and serves as the basic unit of phonetic speech analysis."
- Wikipedia
Phones are generally represented by the IPA phonetic alphabet ...which includes tone, stress, pitch...

"1. (countable) The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken.
2. (uncountable) The way in which the words of a language are made to sound when speaking."
- Wiktionary

"Definition of pronounce in English:
verb
[with object]
1Make the sound of (a word or part of a word) in the correct or a particular way:"
- oxforddictionaries

...
How does any of that, exclude intonation?
Or can you show me some linguistic source, that explains how intonation is seperate from (rather than being a part of) pronounciation?