Tae Kim's

i think it was after i graduated from high school, having studied japanese in the classroom for 4 years, that i realized i still couldnt speak the language, read the manga i always wanted to, understand the anime i watched every so often, or play the games id always wanted to play

it wasnt like i was stupid. i remembered the grammar, the vocab, the sample conversations, the kanji, but the japanese i saw out there seemed to be a completely different structure than what i was used to seeing. (turns out that not knowing what subordinate clauses looked like in japanese was a big part of it)

i sort of resigned myself to not being able to understand the things i had always wanted to understand, the words and sounds that made me study the language in the first place.

i think it was when i read tae kims grammar guide on a whim, when i first decided to study grammar outside the confines of my textbook and classroom, that i found that i could understand half the things they were saying without looking at the subtitles.

it was really strange

it wasnt like tae kims guide was really that good, but it had a few critical things i missed on the way there. the constant implied subjects, the super informal grammar, how a verb can come in the middle of a sentence in dictionary form for no apparent reason (subordinate clauses) for a start. it definitely felt surreal when the jumbled, incoherent sentences I grew up listening to, starting falling neatly into the words and structures i studied all those years before, and into the ones i studied just the other day. like a magic eye puzzle, the big picture was just there, i had all i needed, i only had to look at it in a different way. and there was something tantalizing about the parts i still didnt know. like if i just study, just a bit more, i would understand it all.

i did study more, and i did understand more, but more than just reading the manga and anime i grew up with, i found much more...enjoyment? in the journal entries i submitted on lang 8, the pages of rtk and genki, the reviewing in anki, my joining a language learning group, finding friends there that supported my learning of japanese just like i would support them learning english, helping found a japanese culture club at my university, studying abroad in japan just before my last semester despite being a math major, and sitting here in an airbnb apartment, typing out a long mess on my phone, where my friends have long since left to get some breakfast.

for those who still dont understand the japanese they want to, despite trying so hard for so long... hang in there. it was years before i could understand the things i wanted to, and if i didnt take that extra step, i wouldnt have met so many people, done so many things, realized that theres so much more to my future than a college degree, and that there were people out there beyond the walls i had propped up before.

you can try tae kims to see where that takes you. for a start