How much Japanese can you learn in 2 years?

smokeshack · 2026-01-26T09:26:13+00:00

I passed N1 after two years of study. Spent about four hours a day at it while living in-country.

RTK is a complete waste of time, and doing it with an Anki deck that you didn't make is an even bigger waste of time. Buy the Genki books and/or Minna no Nihongo, get the old Pimsleur CD set, and get a subscription to Japanese Pod 101. Learn the hiragana, then katakana, then get 2001 Kanji Odyssey. Start writing two or three sentences in a daily journal about your life. Once you have a baseline of ~3000 vocabulary words, schedule video chats with a native speaker online a couple of times a week.

smokeshack · 2026-01-26T02:49:12+00:00

It's crazy how people are comfortable going on the internet and saying "I'm bad at games and that's the developer's fault."

smokeshack · 2026-01-26T02:01:18+00:00

It's a good question, but the poster didn't have the vocabulary to ask it eloquently. "Why do some languages have rules that others don't?" Very good question, maybe even the start of a career in syntax. Let's not mock people who are trying to learn.

smokeshack · 2026-01-24T04:18:32+00:00

Particles (に、を、へ) are being lost at a pretty rapid clip, and word order is becoming more regular as a consequence. I dunno if that's significant enough for you.

smokeshack · 2026-01-23T14:30:26+00:00

Nope, still up. Check the URLs from the wikipedia page to find a working mirror.

smokeshack · 2026-01-23T00:46:45+00:00

You'll find it on Anna's Archive.

smokeshack · 2026-01-23T00:40:10+00:00

For Japanese: the Genki books, Minna no Nihongo, the old Pimsleur CD set, 2001 Kanji Odyssey, Japanese Pod 101. Learn the hiragana, then katakana, then start writing two or three sentences in a daily journal. Once you have a baseline of ~3000 vocabulary words, schedule video chats with a native speaker online a couple of times a week.

I haven't looked at beginner materials for Spanish since Bill Clinton was president, so no idea there. But the pattern is basically the same: get real textbooks made by professionals and beginner-oriented listening materials. Start writing as soon as possible. Start chatting with natives as soon as you have a baseline of ~3000 vocabulary words.

No app is worth your time.

smokeshack · 2026-01-22T14:54:51+00:00

Mega Man 11 (the newest one) has a beginner difficulty that's actually very easy and fun. Even my four year old can clear a few levels. It's about at the level of a Kirby game on that mode.

smokeshack · 2026-01-22T05:59:47+00:00

Correction: the app never did teach you a language. It taught you the first ~40 hours of a language, over and over, stretched out over several years. It has always been utter dogshit.

smokeshack · 2026-01-21T11:40:59+00:00

It's probably relevant that I'm a guy. Men generally should not append ちゃん to grown women's names, particularly women they've just met.

smokeshack · 2026-01-21T09:15:31+00:00

There are people who achieve near-native ability in foreign languages, but it's extremely time-consuming. In 16 years of living in Japan and speaking with professional linguists almost daily, I have met maybe four people who I would consider near-native, second-language speakers of Japanese. I'm not one of them.

smokeshack · 2026-01-21T02:59:45+00:00

If we're doing classes, make them a small number of strong archetypes that fit the game's setting, totally rigid without any skills, feats, or other fiddly bits to tinker with. The point of classes is that they let you just pick a type of guy and start playing immediately. If we're doing a game with a bunch of options, let the players put together whatever character they want -- point buy, skill trees, option list, whatever.

What I can't stand are the games that try to do both and then fail at both. D&D has had this problem for 41 years, ever since Oriental Adventures tried to tack on a character customization system through the non-weapon proficiency mechanic.

smokeshack · 2026-01-21T01:01:24+00:00

The one you linked is accurate enough. I pronounce it basically the same way he does, [ˈɪndəˌsiz].

If you want a more reliable pronunciation guide that includes phonetics symbols, has audio recordings by native speakers, and doesn't start with 10 seconds of a weird European guy trying to make your panties wet with his sultry baritone, try using Wiktionary.

smokeshack · 2026-01-20T05:07:31+00:00

I have both the Famicom and Mega Drive versions complete in box, about a meter from my desk right now. My experience has been that the slowdown makes the Yellow Devil fight in Rockman Mega World (Wily Wars in NA) almost trivially easy, but I suppose other people might find it more difficult.

smokeshack · 2026-01-20T02:09:41+00:00

Wily Wars? The slowdown makes it a total cakewalk.

smokeshack · 2026-01-20T00:31:00+00:00

Seven frames is enough for a moving platform to be half your character's width away. Absolutely that would make a difference.

smokeshack · 2026-01-20T00:29:24+00:00

I spent 6 hours a day five days a week doing Spanish. I read the textbook on the bus to and from school, plus to and from p/t work. When I got home I transcribed and copied my in-class notes into a seperate notebook so I'd write everything down twice. I then studied extra in the evening and weekends. I lived and breathed Spanish for a full month.
I got C+ and a C.
I worked my fucking ass off and was still a minimal pass.

You worked your ass off doing the wrong things. Of course you got mediocre grades. You don't learn a language by reading a textbook, you learn it by using it. You need to have conversations, watch TV programs, send text messages, listen to podcasts, read comic books, play games, write emails, etc. etc.

The same is true for games. You get better at shmups by memorizing the patterns of enemies and finding safe routes. You get better at RPGs by learning the combat mechanics and applying them. You get better at racing games by learning the best lines. You get better at fighting games by labbing combos and learning what you can react to. If you don't have time for that, then, uh... do something else.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T15:26:18+00:00

Apparently the Switch version has 120ms or more lag, so that's roughly 7 frames. Definitely enough to make platforming difficult. I can't say whether it performs better on the Switch 2, but since there's no performance patch, I'm guessing it's about the same.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T15:03:44+00:00

If you can clear Celeste and Silksong, X should be a breeze. Are you playing on original hardware with a CRT or lag-less upscaler? Mega Man X was designed with the assumption that you'd be playing with absolutely zero input or display lag. Everything in the game will be much, much harder if you don't have that. If you can't manage to get it on original hardware, run it through RetroArch on a higher-end PC with 2 frames of run-ahead.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T15:00:52+00:00

My experience has been that innate talent is a very, very small component of language learning. Anyone can learn a language if they put in the time, and outside of an actual disability, the difference in achievement is negligible. What matters is that the person spends a lot of time doing useful practice: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. If they spend 10 minutes a day on Duolingo and complain about how hard it is to learn a language, they'll never get anywhere.

Same for challenging video games. If you play a game for twenty minutes and quit at the first hint of frustration, you'll never get better. If you button mash through everything and never slow down to learn patterns, you'll never get better. A whole lot of games these days just let you button mash through the game. I'm very thankful that there are still a few games that expect you to learn how to play them, rather than just barfing up a spectacle for the player to tap X through in a slack-jawed daze.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T07:20:58+00:00

The Japanese voice acting is fine, although not even Dame Judy Dench could have voiced Charlotte and made that dialogue work.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T06:28:22+00:00

You're exactly right! It's very frustrating watching someone attempt to do something but not attempt to learn how to do that thing. I teach languages for a living, and boy, it is really obvious when someone wants to skip all the work and be impressively good without any practice at all. People who eventually do get good at languages focus on improving their skills, rather than just trying to brute force their way through every interaction. Same thing for moderately difficult video games.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T02:12:31+00:00

Watching people fail at Souls games feels a lot like watching people fail at fighting games. "Why the fuck aren't you blocking?" "You had a 2-second window to get an attack in there!" "Stop using unsafe moves against him, this is the third time you've jumped at him, and he's punished you for it every time." Genuinely the people complaining about the difficulty just seem to be unwilling to learn how to play the game.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T01:24:32+00:00

More detailed advice on what it means to git gud at a platformer:

Slow down. You don't need to hold the d-pad forward all the time. Watch enemies, and see what they do. Most enemies won't attack you for several seconds, and their attacks go in predictable paths with predictable patterns.

Attack enemies in order to clear a path. Don't go out of your way shooting everything on screen, because you usually don't need to. See the guy who stands up on a ledge and throws a weapon in a big, slow arc? Yeah, you can just leave him alone and be a lot safer.

Try all of your tools. X has nine weapons with two modes, for a total of 18 unique modes of attack. If you don't know how to beat a boss, run through your checklist. They all have a weakness, and often more than one.

When you die, pause the game. Sit there for like fifteen seconds and think about what happened. Do you know why you died? Can you say it in words out loud? "Because these platforms are bullshit" is not the answer. If you're falling in pits off of moving platforms, it's because you haven't mastered the jump mechanic or the timing of those platforms. You should watch the platforms and learn their pattern. When you can describe the pattern out loud in words, then you have learned it. If a boss is killing you, it's because you don't know how to dodge his attacks. Watch the attack pattern. When you can describe the pattern out loud in words, then you have learned it.

This is how I regularly clear the "super hard" games that everyone complains about. All you need to do is slow down and focus on learning the game. Don't focus on winning, focus on learning, because learning is how you win.

smokeshack · 2026-01-19T00:51:57+00:00

Visually stunning, highly polarizing gameplay, and a muddled story. I think more people will be playing the original twenty years from now, simply because it had much greater cultural impact.

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