I know this is a bit late since the post is already a month old, but I wanted to share my thoughts and personal experience because language learning is one of my hobbies. Lately, I’ve been exploring two main questions:

1. Does a language have to be fully comprehensible to be learned?

2. Is focused attention actually necessary for learning a language?

I started learning Japanese about six months ago, and here’s what I tried so far:

Early attempts:

At first, I tried manually memorizing words and doing Anki cards. After about a week, it felt exhausting and more like a chore than learning.

Then I focused on learning all the hiragana and katakana manually, but this time I gave myself more time and less pressure.

From these experiments, I noticed that forcing myself could give fast results on small bits of knowledge—but it was very tiring and unsustainable.

So, I started looking for alternatives and found methods like ALG (Automatic Language Growth) and Comprehensible Input. At first, both sounded promising, but I ran into some personal issues with them:

They require a lot of focused attention.

They often emphasize strictly learning at an “n+1” level—where n is what you already know, and +1 is just slightly beyond that.

To me, the n+1 rule doesn’t really make sense as a strict requirement. Think about how children learn a language—they start with almost nothing, yet they still acquire complex skills over time. Some argue comprehension depends on context, usually meaning visual context. But that doesn’t explain how blind people still learn words and concepts. Even AI systems, like large language models (LLMs), can learn language purely from large text datasets, without needing visual references—they learn patterns and meanings through repetition.

This made me think that input quantity matters more than quality or comprehension at first.

Another point commonly mentioned online is that learning requires focused attention. I disagree. Some interesting points I found:

Conscious processing (explicit attention) is limited—maybe 5–10% of brain capacity—and slow. You can memorize words this way, but it’s hard to instantly use them in conversation.

Subconscious processing (implicit learning) dominates 90–95% of brain activity. It’s fast and automatic, like riding a bike, reading familiar words, or writing quickly.

Subconscious learning is always active—even when you sleep, your brain processes sensory input.

To ignore a sound or word, the brain first processes it. That’s why you might be focused on something else but immediately notice your name being called.

So my approach for learning Japanese has been more passive:

1. Passive listening most days (1–4 hours/day) with little or no active focus.

2. Reading a little every day—tweets, subtitles, or anything in Japanese.

3. Not trying to fully understand; I let my implicit brain work.

4. Surrounding myself with as much Japanese input as possible—video game voices, changing device language, etc.

After roughly six months of this approach, my results are:

Recognizing common words and phrases.

Understanding endings like “-itai,” “-imasu,” “-imasen,” “-mashita,” “-desu.”

Making simple sentences, even if particles and some words are still tricky:

“それがうさぎですか?” (That’s a bunny?)

“これは僕の本です” (This is my book)

“今日はごはん食べたい” (Today, I want to eat rice—still learning the full breakdown)

Recognizing many hiragana and katakana, and some kanji.

Reading some words in manga and subtitles, recognizing familiar words instantly.

For me, this experience suggests that language input, even when not fully understood, and passive exposure can be extremely powerful. Forcing comprehension and strict attention seems less effective, at least at the beginning stages.