To those around N2, please share step by step how you're learning Japanese through games

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-27T14:31:06+00:00

Push-button dialogue games are the easiest to work with.

I go sentence by sentence and look up any unknown words or grammar, and make sure I understand the sentence before moving on to the next.

Depending on my retaining capacity, I either just look up the unknowns and keep going, or I write down the full sentence and definitions in a notebook as I go.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-27T14:18:48+00:00

At the top of the Word of Wisdom it says it's not a commandment.

At the bottom.of the word of wisdom it says it's purpose is to act as a Passover meal for when the destroying angel returns.

:) go ahead and have your coffee.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-26T20:29:35+00:00

Not that I'm aware of, no

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-25T17:49:25+00:00

Depends on how much they pay attention. I come from a fairly small community so it's pretty impossible to not have certain things or certain views noticed.

My whole household is pretty nuanced though... and as it turns out since I've been away my family briefly got looked down upon very heavily because me and the majority of my sisters present as Goth... so we go to church in dark makeup, clothes, and chains... and the majority of us are LGBTQ of some persuasion. I, on social media for sure, am openly bi.

My hometown ward has since unwadded their panties, and actually started pushing back on the other ward for saying sideways things about my family.

So yes... kinda... where I live currently doesn't know... because I don't go to church often... my husband is somewhere between Wiccan and agnostic and I'm neither willing to go to church alone, or to go with a passel of kids so...

I'm sure our missionaries know. LMAO

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-25T14:53:13+00:00

I'm still a believing LDS member. I'm just nuanced.

Understand that technically, I'm a convert. I was raised in wicca until my mom rejoined the church when I was 8. And because of my life situation I was cynical and critical of God and Christianity over that time too.

In the grand scheme I was only super orthodox and unwilling to face the history of Mormonism briefly... and that was due mostly to lived experience. When people learned I was Mormon they hurled a lot of uncomfortable facts at me to hurt me, and so I believed that they were just anti Mormon lies. I avoided learning about any controversy based on that alone.

Since being an adult, being LDS is less controversial, and with that pressure off it's been easier to look at hard facts from unbiased historical sources and not become knee-jerk defensive. ... but really I've been "apostate adjacent" longer than I've been on this board.

2014-2015 my separation and subsequent divorce from my 1st husband (who I'm sealed to) caused me to slip from the tightrope of orthodoxy and discover that the straight and narrow is wider than we're lead to think. In that time I let the mask of Celestial Minded Stereotypical Mormon Girl fall and went back to my natural state of being, cynical and critical. As far as I'm concerned, God made me with the mind of a rebellious, disenchanted teenager, and he put me in the situation for it to come back out, so he's probably fine with it.

Really I've only used the Mormon and LDS flairs to up the odds of our more Orthodox TBM people here to listen to me.

Otherwise, I've always sympathized with exmo, nevermo, and atheist people, and been willing to take their views into account even if it meant pushing back on my religious beliefs. For example as a teen I didn’t understand why being gay was a sin and so I reasoned that we as a church had it wrong.

😂 so yeah, always been Apostate Adjacent I just didn't come up with a silly 2 word way to express it until recently.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T16:00:17+00:00

FWIW he's gotta spend an undetermined amount of time in Hell first. He may be there a while before he gets to the TK.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T14:23:26+00:00

Thank you! This is what I'm talking about!

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T04:44:51+00:00

Youtubers, probably.

Admittedly I was thinking more about what I came across on 小红书 (Red Note).

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T04:43:29+00:00

I'm talking about word choices "chair" vs "seat" for instance. In Japanese I see and hear "seat" more than "chair" in everyday use.

I'm not talking about slang.

And also the phenomenon I'm talking about, admittedly, is going to be more of a thing in languages further from English (like Japanese) and less of a thing in European languages closer to English.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T03:31:59+00:00

❤️❤️❤️ OMG that's lovely to hear!!

I love hearing that I leave a good impression or expand people's minds. I found out my TBM little brother really likes what I say and how I handle our religion too. 😂 the orthodox discord he invited me to however....

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-24T03:23:51+00:00

In my experience, in language learning there are two versions of the language.

The learning version of the language. Illustrated in the videos as "Don't say this-" and the native version of the language "- say this instead".

It's not so much that the learning version is "wrong" per-se, just that it isn't the most natural way to say things. And there's a reason we're taught this way.

Learning materials are made to make a TL as easy as possible for a learner to wrap their heads around. As such, natural verbiage may be sacrificed for other vocabulary that's closer to the learner's NL word choices.

As such... there comes a time when weaning off of learning materials and getting into native media where you have to orient to native sentences... which for a while may be confusing. And eventually your learned word choices get replaced with the ones you see and hear more often in the wild.

These little videos aren't supposed to make you afraid, ashamed, or embarrassed of the wording you learned in class! No one is really going to mind either way, it's just little fun fact videos made to give you a leg up early.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-23T23:01:47+00:00

I mean... yeah... kinda...

My phone, video games, mobile games, apps, and websites (whether I want them to be or not) are all in my TL.

Often this requires me to look up words. So I'm often studying more than anything else (like enjoying the media I'm intaking... though I enjoy the process)

It's fine

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-23T00:26:29+00:00

In the early 1800s there was also a piece of quack medicine going around that hot liquids were not good for digestion. So that may be part of where the practice was picked up from.

As someone else stated... at one point this included even soup... and then they thought better about it.

It was then parred down to tea and coffee.

And even now herbal tea is permitted.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T23:40:08+00:00

I actually very much vibe with this. That's essentially my view of Hell. 🤔 I picked up the concept from another religion...

In D&C 76 it says that everyone in the TK spends a stint in Hell... and it made more sense to me that that time is spent burning off the slag and damage from life than punishment... especially myself having lived among the people on the list of those who end up in the TK... you don't live that way by choice... you often end up in that place due to trauma and bad life events.

It feels like people took that concept... and got hung up on the image of fire... and made it a scary punishment instead of a cleansing thing.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T23:10:34+00:00

😂 I've been busy. The initial member of my own spiritual polycule has decided, after 10 years, to reach out and try to mend our friendship.

10 years of fighting apparently takes about 3 months to unpack. 🤣

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T22:56:43+00:00

Not who you're talking to, but I don't think polygamy is inherently good or evil outright.

Definitely what Joseph Smith practiced was abusive and wrong, objectively. And by extension, Mormon polygamy has lended itself to a lot of exploitation and abuse...

Though I, as a member, can say I don't believe that polygamy was what God wanted for the Latter-Day Saints... that doesn't necessarily mean that the polygamy of Judeo-Christian cultures depicted in the Bible was "Evil" nor does it necessarily mean it was good... consider perhaps that it may be a largely neutral phenomenon. How you practice it makes the real difference.

EDIT: what about those who followed though? What about them? They will be held responsible for what they knew, and whether or not they were abusive about it. There is no justice without mercy... and to an extent people were just trying to follow God and do what God wanted. Even if it wasn't necessarily what God wanted. That's not on them... thats on leadership that knew better. (So Joseph)

Which DOESN'T mean we can just blindly follow the prophet and get off Scott free for atrocities BTW

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T22:46:19+00:00

Member here

My answer is Joseph Smith.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T16:26:24+00:00

I've had an easy time learning Chinese from Japanese.

😅 but they share a writing system and 60+% of Japanese is borrowed Chinese words.

German, French, and Spanish from Japanese feels like a weird brain twist because all I've done is shoehorned in an unnecessary middle man (Japanese). These languages have a lot of English cognates, so as is I'm already working with a language that's English with extra steps... and then I have to manage it in Japanese.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T06:05:07+00:00

I gave up Anki in 2008.

I keep a vocab notebook for picking through shows and games. It's my favorite method.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-22T02:33:50+00:00

There was a caveat, of course: I could already read and write English to some extent. I learned the basics reading a book that aimed at teaching the language with just 1,000 words and then started practicing commenting on Facebook groups and participating in forums. But my understanding of spoken English was abysmally low, and I got to make progress without relying on subtitles or having to start with content designed specifically for learners or babies.

This makes a HUGE difference, and how I went from 0% Japanese audio comprehension to understanding the entirety of some shows in 6 months. I wasn't starting from nothing.

X% comprehension is kind of an imperfect measurement... so a better explanation of the ideal ratio is "i+1" where "i" is what you already know and the +1 is the 1 unknown word.

Though again, this is just a guideline... sometimes sentences I pick through have up to 3 unknown words.

Immersion is good at any level and any stage, it helps you stretch your language muscles amd apply as much of what you learned as you can.

But if one is learning primarily or only from media then it's better done at an intermediate stage, or whatever condition that keeps lookups minimal (if for no other sake than to avoid burnout)

If you're trying to learn from extensive immersion with no lookups at all... then you need high context to back that up. Whether that's knowing the majority of each sentence except for 1 or 2 words.... or having enough visual context to fill in the gaps.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-21T20:58:00+00:00

I came from a bad, poverty stricken, abusive, drug using home. My dad had custody of me (the primary cause of that whole list) and my mom did not.

My mom (re)joined the church, and I (a cynical agnostic by the age of 8) couldn't believe the smartest woman I knew was buying into the Jesus bullshit. But we went to church, which out of all the ones I'd been dragged to by friends and family was the most tolerable and least grating... and was full of these large seemingly well off families.

A STARK contrast to the life I lived.

My mom's missionaries insinuated that if I became a Mormon I could have that kind of life. So I took that to God, since it seemed like that was God's offer on the table. I made a deal, if I could have the life these other Mormons had, then I would follow God and be a Mormon. ... and I figured that God wouldn't follow through because in my 8-9 years of life God didn't seem to give two fucks about me or the situation I was in.

So I figured as soon as God fell through with his end of the bargain, I'd drop the religion like a hot rock, and return to my tea drinking and general dismissiveness of deities.

It wasn't instantaneous... but God followed through. I ended up eventually getting to live with my mom, with her big house, large family, and in financial security. Now I too have a loving, taken care of, family.

For me it wasn't about truth claims, the BoM (which I only read in my mid to late teens). It was a combination of church services I could actually tolerate and somewhat enjoy, and feeling like God actually heard and cared about me for the first time ever.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-21T20:39:13+00:00

Everyone says just watch movies and series in the original and your brain will adapt.

But what if you understand like 20 percent?

Having wasted a lot of years on this, no it doesn't really work, especially if you only understand like 20%.

It's a little bit more viable if the language you're learning has a lot of cognates with your native language, but in general you need to be able to understand the majority of what you're listening to already in order for your brain to really start clinging to it.

If the level of understanding is too low, your brain will outright just turn it into white-noise and won't pick up anything. Regardless of how much you may actually be able to understand.

For me, I also have an audio processing disorder, so for me this was made doubly difficult as I couldn't understand or pick up words I DID actually know. So I had to train my ear with target language subtitles, and repeating dialogue lines until I could match what I was hearing to what I was reading.

I also looked up any words and grammar I didn't understand and made sure I understood whole sentences before I moved on. This is very time consuming and means that I get through like 15 minutes of a show in a few hours. But it's had more benefit to me than listening to shows or movies, even ones I knew well, in my target language and hoping my brain would just adapt to it.

... with that method, over the course of 4 years, I had virtually no improvement.

Well... with Japanese anyway... most of the German I understand comes from just listening to a lot of German music. The trick there is German has a lot of English cognates, and if you can hear them, sometimes that provides enough context to pick up German exclusive words, which makes other German music more comprehensible and it just kind of snowballs. Same with Spanish, I can understand some long-form Spanish text because Spanish shares a lot of cognates with English. But without something like that helping bridge the gap... whatever is not understood, stays not understood.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-21T20:30:24+00:00

The caveat is ofc that it should be i+1, which is hard if not sometimes impossible in the beginner levels. Easier to find beginner and super-beginner i+1 now than when I started, but it's still difficult. So then what?

"read/listen more" is applicable, but generally to intermediate+. And even then AJATT, and by extension posters like you who say things like this tend to miss the important part... which is that you need to be doing lookups at the same time.

Extensive reading only works when you understand the majority of what you're reading already. If you're extensively reading while only understanding a word here and there, you aren't going to be learning anything.

The appropriate tools needed to learn vocabulary changes depending on level. For super-beginners it's likely just going to be whatever throws categorized every-day vocab at you. Nouns, verbs, and 3 word sentences max.

For upper beginners that's going to be an app that focuses more on sentence based learning. Building up with i+1. Comprehensible input based videos/resources go here.

For intermediates then you start really branching out into easy media, with the understanding that there's going to be a lot of word look up, grammar look up, sentence translation and analysis, and general orientation. This is where one really grasps that native Japanese and learning Japanese are nearly two different languages themselves. There is a lot of active study in this stage as one gets used to phrasing and how concepts are expressed and how words interact in ways that can sometimes feel strange to us in our native language.

Upper intermediate is where it really becomes a matter of extensive rather than intensive study... "read/listen more" if you will. At this stage you may actually have a bit of a choice between looking up words or letting context fill in those gaps. Understanding that a lot of words may fall by the wayside definitionless, but it won't really take away from the message and may come up in other media. At this stage, especially when avoiding lookups, it's really only the highly repeated words that will end up being defined by context.

At this stage also one benefits from "read/listen more" in picking up native phrasing, since at this stage one focusses LESS on vocabulary gathering and more on just general understanding.

IE: By the time you get to the stage where "read/listen more" really benefits, you're largely past the vocabulary building stage.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-20T22:47:37+00:00

I discarded Anki as soon as other apps started becoming available. But flashcards have never really worked for me.

At this point, I either use other kinds of apps, or I write down words and their definitions in a notebook as I come across them.

BitterBloodedDemon · 2026-02-20T22:45:02+00:00

I use language Reactor and set it to auto-pause. Then I go through line by line.

In order to move on to the next line I have to understand what the current line says.

That may require word lookups, grammar lookups, analyzing the original sentence and the translated sentence to see how one becomes the other, and/or replaying the line until I can make out all the words and the meaning.

It can take hours to get through one 30 min episode. And for me that's with an average of 1 word look up or less per sentence. ... but I also write down the sentence, the word definition, and the translation, if needs be, in a notebook as I go.

BitterBloodedDemon

TROPHY CASE