Is it possible/realistic to learn sufficient Japanese?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve got a business trip to Japan in roughly three-and-a-half months. While nothing inherent in the trip requires me to learn Japanese, I think it would be interesting and fun if I could pick up enough of the language to have at least a chit-chat conversation with a native speaker about the weather, or where I’m from, or to get directions on the off chance that I have enough free time to explore. It would also be useful to learn vocabulary related to business conversation, though I doubt language will be much of a barrier at the hotel where my work events will take place. I am NOT intending to learn written Japanese, as I think that’s more than my brain could possibly handle.

Between my work load and personal endeavors, my best guess is that I would be able to put in somewhere between two and five hours of study each week until I leave. I’m willing to spend some money on whatever instructional guides would be best, but taking a college course isn’t realistic because my schedule needs more flexibility than that would allow. Also worth noting is that I’ve never been fluent in another language, but in a prior life, I had a number of years of study in Spanish and Latin. I did fine with those languages, but they are obviously not remotely related to Japanese.

I am open to thoughts, suggestions and anecdotes. Please let me know if any of my questions require clarification. Thanks!

2

You can probably learn some phrases in Japanese, but I suspect the chance of becoming even a teensy bit conversational is remote. If you did become anything like fluent, the Japanese have great difficulty in recognizing that they are being spoken to in Japanese by a foreigner. An acquaintance of mine who was fluent told me that the most common response of a regular Japanese person, upon being addressed in Japanese, was to respond (in Japanese) “sorry, but I don’t speak English”.

That having been said, foreigners are supposed to know things like “arigato” and some other words and phrases. Japanese think that is kind of cute. They giggle a lot - don’t take it personally. Yes, you pronounced it wrong, but still, the foreigner is trying.

Enjoy your trip.

Regards,
Shodan Who Learned to Say “Hai, Sensei” to the class instructor, which means ‘Yes, teacher’ and “Onegaishimasu” to the other black belts, which means “Please kick my ass nine ways from Sunday”

3

I’m going to say 3.5 months would be quite a challenge. A friend of mine took a Japanese class to learn the language for his job. It took him about a year and quite a lot of effort (maybe 10 hours/week school and study) to get to a point where he could hold a decent conversation. He also learned written Japanese, so I don’t know how much time was spent on that versus just speaking.

4

I’ve heard that learning written Japanese in tandem with spoken Japanese helps a lot in complete/easier understanding later, due to homophones in the language. (And what’s the name for reverse homophones? Where the pronunciation is different but the written version is obviously related) Either way I’d think that the lack of time available for Asimovian means they won’t be getting to full conversational.

5

Logograms: the symbol is the idea/word, not the pronunciation. In Chinese, the word is of course the pronunciation, but when Japanese has those, too; in fact, most written Japanese is kanji, the logogram system imported from China about 1500 years ago. In some cases, when the Japanese borrowed the symbol they also adopted the pronunciation; in other cases, they applied the symbol to an existing word pronounced completely differently than the Chinese (Han) original.

What you’re thinking of in the first example, where each symbol represents a spoken sound, is “kana”, which is used primarily for words that don’t have a kanji defined, to supplement a kanji symbol, or in elementary learning.

Written Japanese is hard, but best learned in conjunction with spoken IMHO.

My son is in his third year of Japanese in college, and he’s still not what anyone would consider fluent. Capable of stumbling through a conversation, certainly, but not with ease or at full speed. Still, my sense is that he’d be ready for immersion learning, which is really the only way you truly learn a language: live it.

6

I bought a book/CD kit for learning some basic Japanese before a trip several years ago. Listening to the CD, and practicing the phrases, on the drive to/from work a few times a week for a few months let me learn a few useful phrases, like, “How much does this cost?”, which I did get some use out of while in Japan.

So, it is possible, at least to some level.

7

If you were studying full time in a total immersion setting, three and a half months would get you fully conversational.

With much less time and no native speaker to practice with, you’ll need to shoot a little lower. The good news is that what I’m about to explain will be enormously helpful at getting you to understand what is going on around you. The bad news is that the actual process isn’t much fun (but it will be fun when you get there!).

Download your choice of spaced repetition flashcard programs or apps. There are lots of options. Now download a deck of the 1000 most common words- find a deck with audio as well. Common phrases are fine too.

You are going to want to just brute force memorize those.

What’s the point of that? With those words, you’ll be able to pick up the general drift of a conversation, and even contribute small comments. You won’t be able have a conversation, but you will be able to communicate. And that’s much more than you’ll be able to do with that amount of time using other methods.

In the future, if you want to study the language more fully, a strong vocabulary will make it much easier to concentrate on learning grammar.

DuoLingo is also an adequately useful tool for starting basic conversation and grammar. I’m not sure how often Kanji is used on signs and the like, but if it is common, learning just 100 or so characters can be surprisingly useful- you won’t be able to read texts but it can help you get on the right bus. The only way I’ve ever learned characters is with Tuttle books. They have a totally different technique than any others, and I found it super effective. The big downside is that you really do need to brute force memorize a critical mass in order to feel any gratification at all- it’s hard to feel like you are seeing progress in the early stages.

8
  • [scratching the back of my head] Hmmmmm. Taihen desu ne!!!*

Two to five hours per week is not going to do it. Maybe 2-5 hours a day. But if you want to try, hire a native speaker to work one-on-one a a tutor. A better goal would be to learn simple phrases like Good Morning, thank-you, nice to meet you, etc. Learn the numbers. That always helps!

I would recommend something even more important-- cultural education. I’ve done a fair bit of business in Japan, and my first trip was an almost complete disaster because I knew almost nothing about the culture. You need to understand how different the whole process of decision making is, and how important it is to socialize. You may have set up a bunch of meetings, but nothing of importance is going to be decided there-- that will happen after hours over dinner and drinks.

Dave Barry wrote a hilarious book about a Gaijin’s first experience in Japan. I’d recommend you read it just to some idea of what the differences are.

One quip I remember:

Ah, Asimovian-san. We find your proposal very interesting. [Translation: We will feed your proposal to a goat.]

9

I feel like learning a couple of karaoke songs, knowing just how drunk you can be and be polite, and making sure your chopstick skills are up to snuff will help more than trying to stuff language in last-minute. Oh, and make sure you have a nice case for taking and keeping their business cards, and give and take things from people with both hands.

Rote-memorize some good polite business introductions, learn the ‘question’ words, and a good few types of apologies and you’ll be good. Oh, and bring trinkety ‘Americana’ gifts - something specific to your hometown if possible - to give as host presents.

10

In that time frame, stay away from the writing system. You won’t likely be able to pick up enough business vocab to be meaningful without knowing more grammar than you could learn in this time frame.

Spoken Japanese is actually not that hard to learn other than the fact that it’s not related to European languages so there aren’t that many common words other than the ones which they imported from English.

Start off with a conversational book of phrases. The Japanese will love it if you can speak a few sentences of a self introduction.

11

IMHO, other than a few words or phrases, I say don’t bother as most Japanese that you will deal with in business will speak far better English than most of us will speak Japanese.

12

I have to say this only because one guy in my business party could not remember it to save his life:

The -san honorific is used only when talking about other people, never yourself. Do NOT introduce yourself as Asimovian-san. You are Asimovian. They are Otsuki-san, Nakamura-san, etc.

13

Thanks for everything so far, and please keep it coming!

To perhaps be a little clearer, very little (if any) of my business interactions will be with anyone Japanese. Everyone involved from all sides is coming over from the US, but for complicated business reasons, it needs to be done in Japan. So I’m not terribly likely to offend anyone (at least, not for language reasons) in a business setting.

My likely opportunities for use would be if I get some limited free time to do anything touristy (there’s a chance I may be in Japan a couple of days ahead of the rest of the travelers), or at restaurants. I’m just thinking I might feel a little more comfortable if I can speak a little bit.

even sven, any particular recommendation on flash cards?

That makes sense, and may be the most I can hope for under the circumstances.

14

I spent a month working at a US naval base in Japan. During that time I spent my train ride back and forth from work doing Rosetta stone on my tablet, offline version. By the end of it I wasn’t ready for any conversations but I could navigate the train system, order at Starbucks, and get around without too much trouble.

15

Try to lean some kanji. Things like “exit”, “entry”, “No smoking”, “big”, “small”, some key city names (Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto). It’s fun and not as hard as it might seem. I found it easier, in fact, to learn Kanji than the spoken language (you don’t have to pronounce what you read; you don’t even have to know the Japanese word for it).

And maybe learn Katakana. That is the syllabary they use to write foreign words in. And since 90% of the foreign words are from English, you’ll know what the word is without knowing any Japanese. It will also help you understand why they pronounce English words the way they do (certain English phonemes just don’t exist in Japanese).

Mostly, important signs will be in Japanese and English, and as a gaijin (foreigner) no one will expect you to speak Japanese. Everyone will be very polite.

16

I go along with the idea of learning a few politeness phrases and the numbers 1-10. That’s what I did and it got me a long way. Of course, the people I was interacting with all spoke English. I also learned a lot of the hiragana. All the stations in Tokyo had their names in hiragana (and Roman, to be sure).

17

Take a look at Fluent in three months or the Add 1 Challenge and their forums and articles. Both of those go with the idea that you want to just spend time trying to talk to people - pretty much from the get go.
With the latter, you can check youtube to see what people are able to accomplish in about the same time frame that you have.

18

People ask me this a lot (they think I know way more than I do). Everybody has their own foolproof approach. Here’s what I tell people:
[ul]
[li]You’re not going to be a rock star in 3 months, but you can cover a lot of useful material.[/li][li]Thicken up your skin, because they’re going to laugh at you even if you get it right. The Japanese never seem to tire of the novelty of a foreigner speaking their language.[/li][li]Get ‘Japanese for Busy People’ volume 1. It presents dialog in the order you’re likely to encounter and use it. You can do it in a couple of months.[/li][li]Learn katakana first. Make flashcards. You can do this in a month, and you’ll actually be able to read stuff that you understand (borrowed English words)[/li][li]If you’re really trying to connect with people, one-word sentences of small talk go an extremely long way. Put extra emphasis on food-related vocabulary (especially the adjectives). [/li][li]If you’re trying to meet women, learn to say “It’s so cold!”, and “Yes, it’s really cold”, etcetera. Entire relationships can be based just on complaining about the cold. Samui yo![/li][li]Sure, learn a few of the common kanji. It’s not gonna break your brain.[/li][li]Still reading? Learn hiragana. Really, you’ve got enough time.[/li][/ul]

19

[QUOTE=TokyoBayer]
The Japanese will love it if you can speak a few sentences of a self introduction.
[/quote]

Just to chime in, yes, absolutely. In a business context, a tiny self-introduction speech is an expected cultural ritual. You can just say your name, where you’re from, and your favorite hobby (make one up if you don’t have one). Then finish it off “dozo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu” (which is a stock idiom that’s difficult to translate, but it functions as “nice to meet you.”)

20

OK, I’ll tell you what I did, although it’s not completely transferable because I studied in a more intense course before I went over there.

If you want to learn to talk to people:

  1. Talk to people.

  2. Talk to more people.

Now, because you can’t just walk up and start chatting about how the weekend was, create opportunities to talk.

Learn directions first so that you can practice your Japanese on a captive audience: store clerks and people at train stations. Where is the rest room? Where is the milk? etc., etc.

Smile a lot. It’s funner to talk to fun people. Relax, don’t worry about mistakes.

Japanese pronunciation is essentially flat compared to a stressed-based language such as English. It’s not su-ZU-ki or SU-zu-ki, it’s su-zu-ki.

Learn to compliment things in Japanese, “This is really beautiful” is a great thing to tell people. So is “delicious.” Think of how many times you can say that one. Three times a day for your trip. You can also ask if something is delicious before you order it.

I just talked to as many people as I could, looked up words I didn’t understand and went from there to becoming fluent.

There are sites that have people looking for language exchanges. You can use Skype. Just put down what you are looking for, that you are going to Japan in a couple of months. Your partner can help you correct your pronunciation.

When I learned Japanese, there was this great book which explained the origins of the various kanji. It wasn’t rigorous, and some of the explanations were actually wrong, but I learned the English meaning of over a hundred in a few months.

It’s out of print now, but if you can find something it would be useful.

Someone mentioned above, but Japanese do comment on the weather a lot as a normal conversation starter.