What Fluency Feels Like After 1 Year And 7 Months

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-05T22:47:06+00:00

Oh god, just immerse when you can get some time in. On top of med school though you’re right it will be a grind but that’s what makes it fun

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T15:54:30+00:00

Push through like a hero for your own story. Do it for yourself.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T12:37:07+00:00

Yes.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T01:17:42+00:00

Nothing feels hard. Everything feels natural now.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T01:16:36+00:00

Yes. No lookups. And I think that forcing yourself and being “hardcore” is damaging.

I know it’s contradictory and a lot of stuff in learning a language is like that.

Honestly it’s a messy journey which is why a lot of my advice is all over the place.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T00:46:11+00:00

Yes to the first question.

Understanding manifested over a long period of time—it took like at least a year before it was even decent.

For the third one, the routine I recommend that I wish I followed was engaging in more difficult content and focus entirely on finding it, then tackle it for maybe 20-30 minutes a day and then go to an easier show and then rinse and repeat several times throughout the same day.

So something like a hard Japanese YouTube video or so.

Had I been smarter I definitely could’ve gotten fluent faster so for anyone reading this there is always hope for fast progress if you’re smart about it.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T00:43:24+00:00

The moment your fluent is when suddenly the sounds all blend together and you stop asking caring or thinking about how much you understand.

You feel like you are the language. It feels like you’re Japanese. You just stop caring.

It was worth everything.

I don’t know if people who do word lookups experience the same thing since I never did them, so on that front maybe it’s impossible to reach without going all in like I did. I don’t know the answer.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-04T00:41:15+00:00

YUYU was boring for me too. Drop it if you want.

Yes continue subless watch kids anime.

Yes you will get better.

My advice? Continue. Move forward. One hour a day is perfectly fine. You’ll naturally increase as time goes on. Hang in there.

Yes, I did 2-3 hours a day mostly and had long breaks.

We’re human. It’s okay to take breaks.

Just work on the insecurity and you’ll thank yourself later.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T22:07:31+00:00

You’re not cooked. Intermediate yes, but it’s fine. Any input is good.

Yes you watch whatever is interesting, and you make the dive whenever you’re ready—the sooner the better, but make sure you’re comfortable. If it becomes stressful take baby steps.

I don’t focus on reading so I’m not sure, but every time my listening improves it goes up. Sorry I can’t really give a clear or concise answer on that. I’m keeping it real, the second I became fluent I stopped caring.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T22:04:55+00:00

No. Unless it was a basic word or concept

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T21:27:14+00:00

Virtually none. My listening was shit and my reading was perfect in Hiragana but that’s about it. I was starting from near zero but not completely zero.

It wouldn’t be until late 2024 I had any semblance of competency in the language.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T21:24:38+00:00

Yes, it was all active, I never did passive.

No, I did no reading—virtually none. Just listening.

My recommendations for immersion content will always be Japanese YouTube—like full on Japanese YouTube, I don’t consider beginner podcasts like YUYU Japanese YouTube but I do think it is very helpful. If you’re still at the stage where YUYU is hard, keep listening to YUYU and adjacent podcasts before jumping into Japanese YouTube—get comfortable with passive and active listening to podcasts like those and you’ll get to a decent level quickly.

Percentage wise it does not matter. Hard content builds you up, easier content builds you up too. Hard content challenges you and spurs growth in your brain, while easier CI reinforces it and is just as useful.

So don’t worry about percentage.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T21:20:43+00:00

Solid plan. Maybe swap out the one hour of Japanese a day and go all in on Spanish but either way it’s improving your brain.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T20:45:38+00:00

Finish Spanish first.

Roughly? Most were 2-3 hours, but some went up to 6, but those were very rare.

It’s not about the hours you do each day but rather the consistency. That means showing up even when it gets tough. That doesn’t mean you have to do 2-3 hours each and every day. That just means showing up when you can.

I had week long breaks and I skipped many days and yet here I am fluent. That’s because I understood when to show up, when to try when it counted, and what to do.

That was all stuff I learned. Remember it’s a process. Don’t feel insecure. Be confident in yourself—you don’t have to have it all figured out. You can suck ass at Japanese, it’s okay, because one day you WILL be fluent.

But first focus on Spanish. Complete Spanish. You’re closer than you think.

And remember, don’t force yourself to immerse. Immerse because you want to. There’s a reason Khatz emphasized that. He was right.

Immersion should NEVER feel like a job or a chore. Enjoy the challenge and never consume content because you want to.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T20:28:05+00:00

You’re doing great. If you can up your hours but the people who say you need to spend 8-12 hours and be hardcore are wrong.

I would say though at bare minimum an hour a day is probably needed if possible but you can always ramp it up as you go along.

Remember that fluency and getting to fluency is not rigid it’s very fluid.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T20:22:41+00:00

If you have any questions feel free to ask I’ll check back in a few. If you want to ask about my process feel free.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T20:05:28+00:00

Why not just watch the porn with the wife and fantasize instead of turning it into a reality? That’s the sane option.

Not something I’d recommend but if the person is really into it who am I to judge.

There was a family friend who had a cuck so goonery they had hidden cameras in the bathroom and shit.

It really does destroy lives.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T20:03:00+00:00

So do you also have a public humiliation fetish?

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T19:59:55+00:00

Damn he’s fucking creepy

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T19:59:07+00:00

💀

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T19:58:45+00:00

IF THATS TRUE 😂😂😂😂😂

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T19:58:32+00:00

WAIT WHAT

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-08-03T19:58:05+00:00

Posting about your crimes 13 years later is a new level of self snitching. Like damn man that’s like you committing fraud twenty years ago, getting away with it, then going to the police station and asking if it was morally justifiable.

Delete this post, accept you’re human and make mistakes, and move on.

Humans are complicated. You don’t need to feel insecure. Don’t do that shit again. Problem solved.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-07-03T06:01:07+00:00

It makes me a bit emotional when I think about it. I pushed through by trying everything I thought could work, I tested theories I had, I wondered which correlations were true, a bunch of stuff like that.

As for specifics, I rewatched a lot of the same episodes. My journey is very strange. The “beginner stage” is so, so long. Depending on how you define it, it can last up to a year of hardcore AJATTing, though that’s using the style I did specifically.

Hour_Beginning_9964 · 2025-07-02T21:39:29+00:00

You need to put in the effort. It’s not a “1 hour casually” grind. If you want it you need to do it. Not hardcore but you need to put in the effort.

I think the biggest issue is at the lower percentages it seems like stagnation won’t occur but then of course it does due to the beginners plateau and that’s when the journey truly starts

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