掲示板 Forums - After 2.5 years I’m finally thinking about quitting.

Let me keep this short and offer a different perspective that you might not expect.

Please take a look at it this way: at the start, learning a language feels like a job. After a while, though, it becomes a tool. You finish the heavy learning phase and simply start enjoying the process - like listening, speaking, writing, and so on.

So ask yourself: What was your goal? If your answer is "to know Japanese" or "to speak fluently," that might feel like an unreached goal.

Where are you right now? If your current level is enough to cover your goals (like somehow understanding music or anime), you're doing great! Just keep using the language. I truly believe this is enough to help you overcome any plateau.

And hey.. You don't need to know every single word and rule in the jp language world. All you need is to treat it as a tool, get a good enough grasp of it, and use it wherever you want. This is your learning process now.

i’ve been learning japanese for some 6 years now, but i’ve taken plenty of breaks. if you add them all up, probably over a year of breaks.

some of those breaks were not really voluntary, mental health issues forced breaks. sometimes i just had other stuff which took priority for a while. these days i’m much better at noticing when i need a break, which also means i can get back to it sooner.

the plateau around N3 is real. you’ve learned ask the easy stuff, so you don’t feel your daily progress. but at the same time, you can see how far away your goals still are.

what i would recommend is to focus a bit on an aspect of the language that you enjoy. for me, that’s reading. and then use that as a focus for your studies (with reading, that means harvesting new words to learn, rather than relying on renshuu’s lists. and for me now, learning the kanji in those words rather than the ones from the lists). but you can also glean words from watching stuff. or you could join a chat group and practice writing/talking with people. whatever it is you enjoy and that keeps you motivated!

"Should I learn how to read fluently, understand spoken speech, or speak fluently first? Is it a mix of two or more?" < If you're not studying for a test, it really just depends on your goals. To me personally, understanding spoken Japanese is by far the easiest, then it's speaking, and then reading. Those two can swap places depending on your learning environment / goals.

If you have Japanese friends and/or frequent language exchange communities, your conversational skills will improve very quickly.

If you like reading manga, books, articles, light novels, etc., you might want to lean into kanji and getting better at reading in general.

One combination I don't really thing is possible, is having good conversational skills, but not understanding spoken Japanese as well. I'd argue that understanding spoken Japanese is a prerequisite for developing conversational skills. I can't picture a fluent speaker who doesn't understand what people are saying to them. You develop conversational skills through conversation.

Anyway, the point is there's no right answer to your question. You have to figure it out for yourself. It's difficult to give you personalised advice when we know next to nothing about your goals and learning environment.

"It’s been 2.5 years since I’ve started learning Japanese, and all I can say is that I’m not satisfied with my progress" < Around N4-N3 seems very reasonable for 2.5 years, but that's just me. Not being satisfied with your progress is quite common, and very "human".

I'm almost never happy with my own progress, but at this point Japanese is so intertwined with my hobbies and everyday life, that the thought of "giving up" feels quite alien. I might take a break from my more "formal" / "structured" studies, but I'll still be following my favourite content creators, watching a copious amount of anime, reading manga, etc.

In fact, that's what I've been doing for the better part of almost 15 years. I tend to alternate between long (1-2 years) periods of consistent "formal" study, and equally long periods of casual immersion.

So if you feel like you need a long break, I think that's perfectly fine :) Although I'd recommend maintaining some level of casual immersion, if possible of course.

"I just can’t seem to get past my current level. It might be how I’m studying, it might be how often I’m changing my studying method, I have no idea." < I don't really know *how* you've been studying, or what "often changing studying methods" looks like for you, but I do know that progress can be gradual, to the point where it feels like you're stuck, even though you are actually making progress.

Assuming you're consistent and your study method is half-decent, you WILL make progress.

I think comparison is what tends to kills motivation and breed unreasonable expectations. We have this habit of comparing ourselves to the very best, thinking that we're looking at the "average". There are also a lot of things you just don't know when looking at someone claiming they've "mastered" X language in Y time. They might not be anywhere near as good as they think/claim. They might have had a lot of prior experience that they've conveniently forgot to mention, etc.

Anyway, I don't want to spiral into a rant on how much I hate "language gurus" and fake polyglots...

As for suggestions... I think I'd need more information first. I'd just end up giving you general advice that probably won't be very helpful. I guess my usual advice is to incorporate more immersion (I think that's reasonable for low N3) into your routine, and generally just *using* the language more. You could even take a bit of a break from more structured studying while doing it.

You certainly won't learn faster (quite the opposite), but you'll (hopefully) recharge your motivation and eventually get back into studying.

I think that's all I can give you, the rest is up to you :)

PS: If you're ok with sharing a bit more about yourself and how you've been studying, we can probably give you better suggestions/advice

Good decision :3

If you have the occasion, try VRChat and go to JP-EN exchange world. Lots of people there just here to talk, not necessarily to learn. And then they just move to other world to just chill. That may raise your chance to find a "reason" =p

But even if you don't, that's fine. Btw, I did the same thing in the past. Except that I didn't last 2.5 years and for me, it was pixel art instead of animation and drawing

Based on about two years of my observation, there are four reasons why people from a non-Asian/non-Kanji background keep studying Japanese:

• love for a particular person in their life (not necessarily romantic, takes many forms)
• practical (they work or intend to work for a Japanese company or intend to travel in Japan extensively)
• regain a lost skill (they mastered it once before and now don't want to lose it)
• they have some deep interest in a particular aspect of Japanese culture (could be anything eg anime, martial arts, etc)

People from a non-Asian/non-Kanji background who don't fit any of those four categories will quit sooner or later.

OTOH people with an Asian background are a bit differently motivated.

If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be so hasty to consider quitting. I think I’m just burnt out and need a long break. Might just drop it if I don’t ever feel like getting back into it.​

I'm not really doing much, but I haven't really quit. It's easy to burn out when you have a lot to go over, and surely, there's no shortage of content. Instead of doing so much, I shifted my focus to just take the time to research some of the little things. Grasping the context of each content, sometimes involving the fact of how some things are related to each other. That might also include learning a bit of Old Japanese. Being enlightened on that might help make you see some things more clearly.

If you want to then do !

This is my first time on renshuu, but as far as the language goes, I quit and come back to it every couple years like clockwork. I make some progress, I get super excited about something because I'm way too into linguistics in general, and then I hit some arbitrary thing like a more humble way to say your name than a sentence with です at the end, and I get so frustrated that it exists that I don't even wanna think about it for six months. (We're not allowed to discuss personal issues here but I feel like me being autistic is crucial context, nobody get on my case about cultural differences, I know.)

I'm telling you this because to me, that's normal, and I don't consider it a form of failure. It just takes however long it takes. The language isn't going anywhere, if your interest in it comes back it'll still be here.

Just quit! It’s not the end of the world. You can always come back. I’ve done it a few times, even before Renshuu existed.