This may sound weird but the most exciting people to talk to in Japanese in VR chat are non native Japanese speakers that know Japanese but not English. Because, when I speak to a Japanese person I think that maybe they are just humoring me and I sound like an idiot. But when I talk to a Korean person in Japanese, we are using the language as a tool to communicate when we otherwise could not at all, and I think that's really exciting.
When I first got into foreign languages I was really jealous of people studying English as a foreign language because they could talk to English learners around the world in English. It's so rare I get to use my foreign languages as a lingua franca so to speak. It's neat when it happens though.
As a Japanese who's teaching myself English, French and so on, your contents have been really informative and motivational :) Thanks for sharing us your journey!
It's so interesting to see it going both ways! Your English is very good by the way- at least from this comment, I can understand you perfectly as a native English speaker. Keep going! And even native speakers encounter words we don't know. There are some incredibly niche words that you'll almost never see outside of school vocabulary tests.
Im going to correct your sentence as a native English speaker. "As a Japanese person who is teaching myself English, French, and so on, your content has been really informative and motivational :). Thanks for sharing your journey with us!"
Congrats my buddy, time flies by 4 years of Japanese with 0 days skipped here also, but I studied 2-3 hours a day on average so I'm probably around 3-4k hours. I can understand pretty much everything (99% of animes, manga, internet articles,games, youtubers,comments etc) unless it's something that I wouldn't understand in my native language also. I passed the full JLPT N1 practice test with 80% correct answers (those reading parts are made to screw your brain into making a mistake man). Ready to take the real test in 2 weeks now! wish me luck
@@Badbooo123 highly depended on what I felt like doing. But yeah I usually did Anki while walking for 30 minutes. I only used the Tae Kim book and mined new words from reading/watching. Later on I improved my grammar knowledge with 日本語の森 and googling. Other than that all of my vocabulary came from watching anime with jp subs, playing games fully in jp, reading random blogs and articles and later chatting with Japanese people on Tandem. (Not a big fan of novels, I did read 2 shorter ones but that’s about it)
@@steven-xb7rf It’s still going well! I think I’m at around 110 days now? And I can get the gist of a conversation without subtitles - although I seriously need to work on my grammar. But I definitely still have a long way to go!!
@@qiwi532qiwi well honestly… I’m pretty bad at this so I just do my daily vocabulary which typically takes 40mins to an hour. I sometimes do grammar for maybe another hour idk. I’d recommend to not be like me and study as much as you can!! Just make sure you take breaks :))
To all language learners, a very important point was made in this video. Proficiency in speaking basically comes in one way, by listening to and understanding your target language. If you get to the point where you're understanding all the movies, podcasts, music, youtube videos, people's conversations in your target language, natural sounding output is inevitable and you won't have to work too hard at it. Just focus on a ton of native input and keep at understanding every word, nuance, etc. You can study grammar later. Think about how a child acquires their native language. Same thing.
But is that from experience, or are you just parroting what you've heard? I'm not saying you are, I'm just being thorough in my research before I attempt something like this. This is the claim that I'm struggling the most to believe. It seems like as many people say it doesn't happen, as the number who claim it does. 🤔
You can see in the video this isn’t really true. I see this claim a lot but Livakivi was able to understand a wide amount of content and clearly gets a significant amount of input, but having not practiced output he struggled with sentence structure. All things he said himself in this video. I don’t know where this line of thinking came from but just like listening is different from reading, speaking is a separate skill as well. They can build off of each other but you absolutely need practice in all of them if you want to improve in them.
@@yaboiyuri9096 In my opinion it shows how well the method works. What I see in this video is how well he's able to speak Japanese. Not to mention those are his first tries, he'll make a myriad of mistakes. The point about the comment is that he could get his message across; even though he's not as comfortable as a person who has spoken the language for long time. Because of immersion. If he had dedicated a year to brush his spoken Japanese up, he would've been comfortable now, and that wouldn't be such a problem anymore. His goals, with Japanese, is not to speak it and not even living in Japan, is to enjoy Japanese content, that's it. Even so he did a great job, speaking it. You can't write without reading. You can't speak without listening. The former one has to be done by a long time, to start with the latter. Therein lies the idea. Writers gotta be readers. Speakers gotta be listeners.
@@Lukarrem if your goal isn’t output and just to understand then it’s fine to just focus on input. If your goal is to be able to communicate then output is important to practice from the start. It’s not “spending a whole year” just practicing speaking, it’s just incorporating speaking and writing into your learning routine. That’d be like saying you can only learn listening in isolation of reading. Doing all the things you want to do in a language requires practice and though input can help build a fundamental vocabulary to use when speaking, actual speaking practice is important if that’s your goal at the end of the day. This isn’t a dig at Livakivi or people who don’t care about output ability but it is a dig at this standing myth that you shouldn’t even bother practicing output until you can read 夏目漱石’s こころ without looking up a word because you might make a few mistakes before then.
@@yaboiyuri9096 Amen. So many people think they can just learn to speak a language through immersion only. Mass amounts of input is extemely beneficial but to speak a language well, you have to actually practice speaking.
You definitely sound like a foreigner but your speaking level is so good for someone who hasn't practiced that much so who cares? People are so self-conscious about sounding native that they forget that the most important thing is that people can understand what you are saying. Not whether you have the correct, Tokyo accent or not. Pitch accent doesn't matter if you can't form actual sentences. I think that is a concept that should be learned right as you start studying for a day or two so you have been exposed to the idea and then immediately forgotten about for like 5 years. All you need to know for that time period is the basic phonetics of the language. Things like how to pronounce "fu," "ra, ri, ru, re, ro," and "wa" properly. "Fu" is somewhere between an F and an H sound, "wa" sounds more like "uwa," and the r sounds are somewhere between an R, D, and an L sound. You have so many people focusing on pitch accent who can't even pronounce their Rs correctly. Once you get the basics of the language, everything else should be a speed run to high level fluency before focusing on having the proper accent. Otherwise you are wasting your time on something that is far less important than becoming fluent in the language.
for anyone demotivated, when living in Germany, it took me 3-4 years of achieving fluency. This while I WAS in Germany and spoke to natives on a daily fucking basis, had German lessons in school, it took me an absolute crazy time just to be able to take part in discussions, conversations and to interact with Germans. I'm at a pretty good level now but I'm still learning after 5 years. Same with EVERYONE, even all of us are still constantly learning english, we still come across words we've never heard for example. Japanese is the same thing, you never stop learning and that is actually a beautiful thing in my opinion. Keep going, you don't need 5 hours per day, and don't set too high expectations
@@qiwi532qiwi depends how much time you have in a day to spend on a language, I would say that 1 hour on basically anything in the language is a hard minimum, but if you have time to do more and want to, by all means go for it.
I've spent years wishing I knew and wanting to learn Japanese and trying to learn the best method instead of just doing it. I'm still not as consistent as I want to be, but these videos are a huge inspiration. Good job and keep it up!
I was also like that for several years but now I'm at my 4th month even though my progress is slow because of school. You can also find the method that works best for you
15:35 this is so true, so many Japanese learner did this very basic mistake. Whenever they hear that they must learn 2000~ kanji, complex grammar, particles, or even knowing that japanese use more than 1 writing system, they are always like "man this shit is impossible!" Like really, just don't pay attention to the amount of kanji there are or anything else and just learn as many as you can and you'll be fine.
Crazy how its been 3 years already, can't believe it. I also can't wait for the day I'll return to this video to see the progress! Also, HUGE thanks for everyone watching these videos, you've made this journey way more exiting! :^) - Link to a video which explains everything I use for learning Japanese right now: th-cam.com/video/SaVHrzF3-2E/w-d-xo.html - Link to my personal Anki deck on my Patreon, meant for those who are curious about it/want to support the channel: www.patreon.com/posts/sharing-my-anki-58946093
My progress after just over a year has been rather underwhelming but the one thing I'm happy with is how consistently I've been doing Anki with only 6 days missed. This video gives me hope that if I just stick with it and start immersing more that I might eventually get to a level I'm happy with.
@soundofmaggots If I could make some recomendations. If you already know the grammar and some words I recommend reading yotsubato, it really helps with output as it uses (mostly) real japanese and it's meant for young kids so it's an easy read. In 2 weeks I went from taking a whole week to finish volume 1 of the manga to being able to finish volume 2 in around 2 hours. Anyway good luck on your journey!
The VRchat was very wholesome and congratulations on reaching this new milestone. Thank you so much for the inspiration and advice. This channel introduced me to anki and my Korean studying has improved immensely since using it. Good luck for the future.
Super awesome to see you speak in VR chat I've been practicing since about the pandemic started, still awful though. I also took a Japanese course in 2019 tbh not a big fan of that learning environment all the output basically killed my grade and motivation. You deliver information so well in these videos and hell you got me on anki what a huge boost to my vocab that was. Also I just like your meme usage in these videos.
Even though you are quite a small TH-camr I always wait your videos with patience and I instantly watch them once you upload them. This doesn't happen with almost any other youtubers :)
A Livakivi video? Pog! For someone who hasn't actively done output practice, your spoken Japanese sounds great! I'm at a high beginner level of Korean and do 45-minute italki lessons just to keep myself accountable and consistent. I don't think it has wildly improved my grammar or vocab, but at least now I'm not scared to speak Korean, even if it is a bit clumsy. What I'm really finding difficult is keeping a decent Anki streak. But you and many other learners prove that it can be doable and yield significant progress in the end. Cheers!
Very interesting video. I was shocked that you had spent 1,000 hours in Anki. That's the most I've ever seen.. I have 6k cards myself, I think I'm going to stop adding new ones for a while.
@@Livakivi after the 15 days what did you do with new words/expressioms you came across? Also during the 15 days did you still note down new expressions you came across or you stopped all together?
@@k.5425 I just didn't mine anything during that time, still did my reviews. But it was only a total of around 15 days after I finished the core 2k/6k deck.
You are one of my bigger inspirations when it comes to language learning, and I don't ever remember feeling demotivated by watching your video, seeing how your progress isn't incredibly fast helps me put into perspective how much time it can realistically take to learn Japanese. Thinking of increasing my immersion in the language after this video. 動画くれてありがとうございました
Super motivating for me as I'm daily learning Russian fairly consistently and just hearing anyone track themselves in terms of language learning is super cool and helps me improve. Love what you do!
Man I wish I found your Japanese learning videos like 4 years ago when covid started. I’ve been now learning for a month it’s been so much fun, the feeling of always making progress is great
i'm around n5 after 6 months of learning and i really love seeing your updates! it really motivates me and it's nice to see where i'll (hopefully) be in 2 and a half years!
I started Japanese journey very same way as you did. Currently I've studied for around half a year every single day. Usually best I can manage is 20 minutes of Anki per day. Guide to Japanese is another 50 minutes but I can't really do this every day. With only 6 new words per day I don't think it's much but I already started to notice huge difference. I can finally understand some of more complex sentences. For now I'll stick with this schedule since I'm not in rush to be fluent. I know I still have long road ahead but with your videos I know more or less how much more I need to study to reach certain milestones. Also if not for one of your previous videos I'd probably give up. I didn't know how exactly Anki works and 20 words per day made me burn out very quickly. I was also more focused on looking for easier methods to learn words instead of just grinding new words. Seeing how much you have improved makes me really motivated. Thanks for the videos!
Congrats on 3 years! I recently got past 1 year back in September, so seeing where you're at now is a great encouragement for where I can be given 2 more years of consistent study. I gotta thank you for making these videos. I especially appreciate the time and effort you put into documenting how you study Japanese, as they've been a great help finding new resources to use and getting ideas for new material and study methods that I can try out. They're the whole reason I gave up on Duolingo, picked up Anki, and delved more into Tae Kim's grammar guide and immersion. I feel like I've been able to make some noticeable strides in comprehending Japanese ever since then, so thanks for the inspiration!
@@bobasking I'm not sure if you're looking for recs for learning Japanese or just recs in general, so I'll just give you both. For learning Japanese, I watched Komi Can't Communicate, Aggretsuko, and Non Non Biyori, which are good for day-to-day vocab. I also watched all of JoJo if you want something that's longer. I'm not that good at comprehensive listening, so I used Japanese subtitles when watching these. Doing that, I was able to follow along with the dialogue pretty well. If you want just recs in general, then I usually recommend stuff like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Steins;Gate, and Attack on Titan.
Your comprehension has sparked a mass of motivation as im at 700+ words right now in my 4th month study! Glad to see the long journey can be very rewarding through consistency.I myself want to get to 1000+ words and to begin grinding kanji so I can begin reading more during next year! Thank you! 👋😙
Fantastic video. I've been learning for 6 months straight now and while I was glad to see I could keep up with the N2 test and content comprehension, you blew me away with how well you could speak natively. I hope to get to that level eventually. Aside from the usual SRS stuff, I consume so much Japanese Vtuber content on the daily while reading the comments that tracking 'immersion time' feels pointless. All the best mate!
I binged watched your videos when I found them around last month. Ive been learning Japanese more seriously for about 7 months now, and although I’m bilingual already, I learnt both languages when I was a small child, and trying to learn a 3rd at the beginning of my adulthood, I was starting to get a bit demotivated cause I was starting to feel that there was no way in hell I’d be able to learn to the point that I could just watch anime without big concerns. But watching your videos really give me a boost cause I find it very interesting that you were documenting your journey and not just started making videos after you were already at such a high level. I appreciate that you make content on how language learning actually works and not just some bs “you can learn JP in under a year!!!” Although it’s something that can take so long and isn’t really fun (at least in the beginning), the reality of the process and believing in the idea that we shouldn’t try and put a finish line down is really inspiring and relieving Thank you for your videos and sorry for the rambling!
I love how supportive everyone is in the comments here. It gives me hope for the future. At the moment I'm currently trying to learn how to sentence mine for Korean. I'm lucky that there was a premade Anki deck out there with 1,000 words for me to learn so I only had to worry about maintaining a daily vocab learning routine. I wish everyone good luck on their language learning journey! 🥳
I found your channel about 2 weeks ago and it completely changed the way I view learning languages. In high school, we were required to learn Spanish the same way you learned Russian. I absolutely hated it and retained almost none of it. Because of those experiences, I assumed that I just wasn't capable of speaking another language. Since I started watching your videos, I decided to take another stab at learning a different language. I've been studying Japanese over the past 2 weeks. I haven't done anything crazy but I've been learning a few words everyday. Normally, I would've burnt out by this point but I haven't yet. Your techniques work so much better than what they teach in schools. I plan to keep learning more and more, even if it's at an extremely slow pace. Thank you for the inspiration!
Thank you for sharing your personal experience, I am trying to learn Japanese myself and I think your videos are always really motivating and have helped me to have a baseline on where and how to start this learning experience. This video was really pleasant to watch so I just wanted to say thank you again !
The reference you made comparing time spent in video games to language learning is super accurate I think anybody can learn anything if they just put the time into it
This video inspired me so much?? I’m on my 71st day of my Korean learning streak and I can’t wait to be this far in Korean 🤩 I wish I took it seriously earlier
I don't know how I missed this upload! All of your videos are very motivating, and you especially did a great job with this one. I haven't hit a year yet but it helps seeing other people's progress. I found your output impressive in the sense of constructing sentences pretty quickly. Keep it up!
Personally I'm very impressed, great work and keep up.This was very motivating and makes want to learn more even if I have a lot further away from my japanese goals than you are currently. I was also very impressed with your output even if it wasn't perfect. The fact that you were able to carry on a conversation without getting, "日本語上手" as instant response out the gate impressed me.
Your speaking ability is fine, I'd say. You definitely sound like a gaijin, but you're also very easy to understand (at least to my novice ears). Also just wanted to say this video was very motivational and got me to go back to learning Japanese after a 6-month break
This is awesome man! I remember watching your first video about your first 600 days of learning Japanese. It really inspired me and taught me that learning languages is going to take a long time but you should enjoy the journey of learning it. I dont think many people in the language community say that enough, so thank you. I've been learning Japanese for almost 8 months. There are many days where I'm not motivated and/or have skipped but I dont want to give up because I remember videos like these and tell myself to keep at it because I'll thank myself later. Im going to start a new Japanese streak today and hopefully by the time you upload a new video, it will still be going. Thanks for the inspiration my friend! ありがとうございます！一緒に頑張ろう！
11:09 today i learned what "tonsure" means, (and English is my first language). i appreciated you contrasting what learning English was like for you, vs your journey of learning Japanese.
I'm in an odd space of being motivated and demotivated simultaneously after watching this. I gotta keep reminding myself that everyone learns differently and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. So one learner might be good at reading kanji, while the other is good at speaking casual Japanese. I took a break and only recently got back into Japanese, it's been a year now. I'm doing it by myself and gosh sometimes it can be so hard, having to motivate yourself.......One step at a time. I just gotta go one step at a time. Good luck to other learners and keep going, you got this.
I have an "old" video on motivational tips: th-cam.com/video/jaKo6038WYM/w-d-xo.html But yeah, there are no shortcuts for sure, its a matter of not breaking the flow and not slipping away. I still sometimes get waves of demotivation myself, but they always come and go, so its better just to ignore them and push through them with whatever methods you're able to keep on doing consistently.
Immersion ABSOLUTELY works! I learned english to the level I know it right now in three years (second language with fluency) because the internet is mostly in english (+conversations with native speakers!) and I would consider myself to be a C1 or C2 english speaker!
Nice Samurai Champloo music at 9:00 . These videos realllllyyyyyyy inspire me a lot , not just to learn new things , but to put in hours into drawing and other things and seeing improvement . Maybe I should learn french .
Hey Livaki, big fan here, juts wanna say that I love your content. I just saw your video and man, what a pleasure honestly . I've already watched most of your videos and some of them twice and I wanted to give you a little advice that has helped me so much (my native language is Spanish, currently learning French to B2-C1 level and starting to get back to Japanese) Try this;Think in Japanese, just like that. Try to have all your thoughts and inner conversations in Japanese that is going to help so freaking much, even more if you take in account that you have already a good basis on the language itself. It'll make your brain more flexible and you will literally be in a full immersion environment all day. Also, if you're doing something in another language try to translate into the most natural Japanese you can. It'll force you to do active recall and be more comfortable on expressing yourself, which you will be truly grateful in the long run.These were advices from a polyglot on Reddit, and from my own experience it has made a huge difference on my language learning experience. Hope to see more stuff from you, and take care of yourself Consistency is the key!
That's amazing dude, you're one of the guys that inspired me starting to learn Japanese. I've been playing a lot of VRChat to get some input and live streaming almost daily to show my progress. I really want to be able to read and speak Japanese properly, thanks for your videos.
Hey man, your original video was both one of the most motivating and demotivating things I've ever seen. For me the demotivation came from the fact that I had put in roughly 9 months as of that time and felt like I had barely reached a suitable rate compared to you. What was motivating was the fact that someone had reached that level in that time at all without going the full AJATT. You introduced me into immersion based learning and actually got me to use anki. You have single handedly allowed me to improve even by a little bit and for that I'm thankful as hell. Hope to reach close to your level within 3 years and can't wait to see where you get in that time. Thank you.
Congrats!! I loved your first video and I went 9 months straight studying japanese while working full time at a Japanese restaurant but I got really burnt out so I had to stop for 4-5 months while still reading newspapers or twitter in Japanese. After watching this video I'm now trying to go back to all the anki cards I studied in the past and get back on the train again. Super proud of you and can't wait to see where else you go :)
You should definitely be proud of how far you've come. I think your journey definitely shows that consistency really beats everything else. It's also interesting that your just starting to look at pitch accent recently. I found it funny that I literally can't tell why your output is bad/unnatrual even after a year of immersion. Goes to show why people advocate for native input so much. On the whole anki streak thing I'm personally comfortable with skipping days. In my almost a year of using anki I've missed like 10-15 days randomly and at least for me I'm ok with the learning tradeoffs of not having a streak when life gets too busy. Thankfully I haven't ever had to miss more than 1 day in a row, so I've never had a big trouble with getting back on. It's kinda like how in college I got a B my first semester and then never had to worry about getting a 4.0 GPA even though I made like almost all As the rest of the time. For me, I don't wanna be tied to the streak
I'm 5 months into Japanese at this point, but I've been watching stuff in Japanese with subs since probably up to 10 years ago. Makes my listening comprehension much easier, even at only 5 months in, but DAMN I can't even imagine being able to read sentences like those on the test you did.
It's very admirable that you've been learning consistently for 3 years! good job dude And don't be too hard on yourself with speaking. For comparison, I've moved to the Netherlands 2 years ago and I'm still far from 100% fluent in Dutch, despite going to school here and using the language everyday. Reading & writing comes kinda naturally, but talking is really just something that, in my experience, requires a lot of pratice. You can do it 頑張れ～！
I remember watching your first video and it made me motivated to start studying japanese, and honestly I feel so happy for you. You've come so far! :) This motivates me even more and I look forward to following your journey as you keep improving. Love you :)
I liked this video a lot. I'm about 100 days nonstop into WaniKani (after 5~ years of on-and-off Duolingo stuff), and seeing the results that are possible with constant effort is really inspiring. Thanks for making these videos, not just for the inspiration, but also for.making clear that input is the important thing, and with enough input -> immersion, everything else will be attainable eventually.
Hey my dude, discovered Anki because of you. I'm now 180 hours into Chinese and things are going really well. Congratulations on the progress and thanks for the help.
So cool to see how much you've progressed, it's a huge inspiration for me. Those interactions in VRchat are awesome, the avatars help a lot with being shy trying to speak a language I guess. Will definitely try that when I reach this level of proficiency.
That's really cool man, 3 years and about 1500hrs is really impressive to be able to read Japanese and understand anime relatively enough to enjoy it!! You are truly an inspiration to me :). Much love and support from Australia.
Don't worry about your speaking issues - this will come with some practice - and probably much easier than you expect. I have reached basically fluency in English over 10 years ago - but solely with reading, writing and listening. So when I started to speak regularly around 2 or 3 years ago, I made mistakes that felt utterly foolish to me, and stumbled over awkward silence and moments where I simply couldn't drag the correct word from depths of my brain. But I got past that surprisingly quickly, and honestly - not caring too much about how awkward it sounds was probably the main ingredient. Since I was mostly talking in English with good friends and then later with my girlfriend, I didn't really focus much on how I said things because I was absorbed in the conversations. You just need to find a way to practice speaking that is *really* fun for you. Be that internet friends, or making a dedicated language exchange friend through HelloTalk or such. If you are stuck with speaking practice that actually feels like practice, it will be much less enjoyable. And don't me wrong, my speaking skill in English is still not quite 100% up to what I want it to be, and I will stumble over words from time to time, but it's so rare and easily to circumvent through synonyms that even the players of the tabletop rpg games I run over the internet don't really notice it much!
Your progress has been amazing, like a year ago I felt I was around the same level of japanese as you but I haven't been studying consistently and now I feel completely left behind lol This was a great video! Love your editing as always
I think this video is kind of inspirational. Like, all I'd probably use japanese for would be for understanding anime and maybe communicating with people, I think that being able to do that in 3 years is really cool. Also, VRChat is the most intimidating thing I've ever encountered, like I would set up my microphone, my levels and my computer to stare at a random group in a virtual bar for an hour, too afraid to speak.
hey hey, thank you for putting this video out! Im studying Japanese and am very keen on sticking to practising.This was quite inspirational to me :) hope you have a good day!
when boris johnson was pronouncing 市長 it stuck out so much to my ear. Wanikani has taught me so well that i can tell a word sounds off even though i hadnt seen the word before. both of the kanji can only be read as 1 onyomi reading. 市 「し」 長 「ちょう」. also ive learned 長 is sometimes used as suffix to mean "leader".(immersion taught me the leader meaning, because i just kept seeing it used like that in Yakuza 7 for example with the japanese subtitles and voices of course.) and 市 means "city". So "mayor"
You are a really strange combination of low-key learner and also the most hardcore committed thing I've seen since Matt haha. You're like "Oh I was just doing this while I went to the bathroom... 3 years later I know 8000 words." Edit: It'll never happen but I'd be SUPER interested to see Matt's thoughts on the VR chat bit.
Huge thanks!! It would be pretty cool to see indeed! Although I don't think he would have much to say other than the things I already said myself (can communicate but occasionally making some mistakes and having unnaturalities). Maybe it would be more interesting in the future when I get better though!
@@Livakivi Oh yeah but I don't mean from the point of view of the Japanese being right or wrong or whatever, but from the point of view of it being your first time outputting. It was actually pretty amazing I think, to hear someone speak for the first time and actually be able to do it even at all. It's almost as if input works.
i was waiting for around 2 months to watch this because i knew it would motivate me again. Now that i have more time i watched it and i am starting again with learning right now :D Thank you for uploading your progress, i really enjoy your videos :)
I really like your videos - they're realistic and relatable. I've been learning for coming up to 3 years too with a similar journey, though more heavy on the Anime cards. Currently approaching 14000 sentence cards, and I plan to keep going for some more.
amazing video as usual. I am approaching on 200 hours of active immersion in Japanese and man your channel has helped me so much. Keep up the great content and good luck in your future Japanese!
It's funny that you say you aren't fluent (which can mean a bunch of things to different people), but you are definitely fluent in my eyes! Not perfect, but definitely fluent. I wish I could carry a conversation and read most things with minimal difficulty. Good job man!
I'll reach 2 years in a few months, I started a few months before your video about your 2 year mark. But unfortunately I didn't managed to study every single day... But I'm learning, and now I'm starting to watch RAWs. It's good that I started doing this, because it was a good surprise to realize that I'm actually able understand a bit, which in turn motivate to watch more complete raw doramas to better train my ears. Though... I had started this with the goal to be able to read mangas.
I don't really understand Japanese, but I've been told that my Japanese pronunciation is pretty good - and you sound way more natural to me than you give yourself credit for. Good job!
This may sound weird but the most exciting people to talk to in Japanese in VR chat are non native Japanese speakers that know Japanese but not English. Because, when I speak to a Japanese person I think that maybe they are just humoring me and I sound like an idiot. But when I talk to a Korean person in Japanese, we are using the language as a tool to communicate when we otherwise could not at all, and I think that's really exciting.
i like talking to non native in japanese and english
it's cool
I totally agree!
I completely agree
When I first got into foreign languages I was really jealous of people studying English as a foreign language because they could talk to English learners around the world in English. It's so rare I get to use my foreign languages as a lingua franca so to speak. It's neat when it happens though.
lol i remember watching this vlog of an indian guy who communicates with his korean wife in japanese
As a Japanese who's teaching myself English, French and so on, your contents have been really informative and motivational :) Thanks for sharing us your journey!
It's so interesting to see it going both ways! Your English is very good by the way- at least from this comment, I can understand you perfectly as a native English speaker. Keep going!
And even native speakers encounter words we don't know. There are some incredibly niche words that you'll almost never see outside of school vocabulary tests.
Im going to correct your sentence as a native English speaker. "As a Japanese person who is teaching myself English, French, and so on, your content has been really informative and motivational :). Thanks for sharing your journey with us!"
@@potato-xq9ot literally nothing to be changed…
@Aoty How is his response a problem. All he did was correct his grammar?
Bon courage, Le français c'est difficile, mais tu peux le faire. (de la part d'un Français)
Congrats my buddy, time flies by
4 years of Japanese with 0 days skipped here also, but I studied 2-3 hours a day on average so I'm probably around 3-4k hours. I can understand pretty much everything (99% of animes, manga, internet articles,games, youtubers,comments etc) unless it's something that I wouldn't understand in my native language also. I passed the full JLPT N1 practice test with 80% correct answers (those reading parts are made to screw your brain into making a mistake man). Ready to take the real test in 2 weeks now! wish me luck
That's awesome to hear! Can't wait to see where I get by the 4th year as well.
Also thanks for sticking around!
this comment gives me a lot of motivation, thanks man.
@@almi3391 I am glad! The key to success is finding what you enjoy and just continue reading/listening. Speaking will come later naturally
Would you mind sharing your journey as well with us like how many hours of anki and of immersion or did you study books or what? And congrats
@@Badbooo123 highly depended on what I felt like doing. But yeah I usually did Anki while walking for 30 minutes. I only used the Tae Kim book and mined new words from reading/watching. Later on I improved my grammar knowledge with 日本語の森 and googling. Other than that all of my vocabulary came from watching anime with jp subs, playing games fully in jp, reading random blogs and articles and later chatting with Japanese people on Tandem. (Not a big fan of novels, I did read 2 shorter ones but that’s about it)
I've been learning Japanese for 60 coming 70 days now in a row. You've really inspired me and I hope to reach your numbers soon!!!!
you got this!
How is your progress? Can you understand some basic words for example in anime? Good luck with your study!
@@steven-xb7rf It’s still going well! I think I’m at around 110 days now? And I can get the gist of a conversation without subtitles - although I seriously need to work on my grammar. But I definitely still have a long way to go!!
@@hanixsubliminals6950How many hours a day do you recommend studying a language?
@@qiwi532qiwi well honestly… I’m pretty bad at this so I just do my daily vocabulary which typically takes 40mins to an hour. I sometimes do grammar for maybe another hour idk. I’d recommend to not be like me and study as much as you can!! Just make sure you take breaks :))
To all language learners, a very important point was made in this video. Proficiency in speaking basically comes in one way, by listening to and understanding your target language. If you get to the point where you're understanding all the movies, podcasts, music, youtube videos, people's conversations in your target language, natural sounding output is inevitable and you won't have to work too hard at it. Just focus on a ton of native input and keep at understanding every word, nuance, etc. You can study grammar later. Think about how a child acquires their native language. Same thing.
But is that from experience, or are you just parroting what you've heard? I'm not saying you are, I'm just being thorough in my research before I attempt something like this. This is the claim that I'm struggling the most to believe. It seems like as many people say it doesn't happen, as the number who claim it does. 🤔
You can see in the video this isn’t really true. I see this claim a lot but Livakivi was able to understand a wide amount of content and clearly gets a significant amount of input, but having not practiced output he struggled with sentence structure. All things he said himself in this video. I don’t know where this line of thinking came from but just like listening is different from reading, speaking is a separate skill as well. They can build off of each other but you absolutely need practice in all of them if you want to improve in them.
@@yaboiyuri9096 In my opinion it shows how well the method works. What I see in this video is how well he's able to speak Japanese. Not to mention those are his first tries, he'll make a myriad of mistakes. The point about the comment is that he could get his message across; even though he's not as comfortable as a person who has spoken the language for long time. Because of immersion. If he had dedicated a year to brush his spoken Japanese up, he would've been comfortable now, and that wouldn't be such a problem anymore. His goals, with Japanese, is not to speak it and not even living in Japan, is to enjoy Japanese content, that's it. Even so he did a great job, speaking it. You can't write without reading. You can't speak without listening. The former one has to be done by a long time, to start with the latter. Therein lies the idea. Writers gotta be readers. Speakers gotta be listeners.
@@Lukarrem if your goal isn’t output and just to understand then it’s fine to just focus on input. If your goal is to be able to communicate then output is important to practice from the start. It’s not “spending a whole year” just practicing speaking, it’s just incorporating speaking and writing into your learning routine. That’d be like saying you can only learn listening in isolation of reading. Doing all the things you want to do in a language requires practice and though input can help build a fundamental vocabulary to use when speaking, actual speaking practice is important if that’s your goal at the end of the day. This isn’t a dig at Livakivi or people who don’t care about output ability but it is a dig at this standing myth that you shouldn’t even bother practicing output until you can read 夏目漱石’s こころ without looking up a word because you might make a few mistakes before then.
@@yaboiyuri9096 Amen. So many people think they can just learn to speak a language through immersion only. Mass amounts of input is extemely beneficial but to speak a language well, you have to actually practice speaking.
You definitely sound like a foreigner but your speaking level is so good for someone who hasn't practiced that much so who cares? People are so self-conscious about sounding native that they forget that the most important thing is that people can understand what you are saying. Not whether you have the correct, Tokyo accent or not. Pitch accent doesn't matter if you can't form actual sentences. I think that is a concept that should be learned right as you start studying for a day or two so you have been exposed to the idea and then immediately forgotten about for like 5 years. All you need to know for that time period is the basic phonetics of the language. Things like how to pronounce "fu," "ra, ri, ru, re, ro," and "wa" properly. "Fu" is somewhere between an F and an H sound, "wa" sounds more like "uwa," and the r sounds are somewhere between an R, D, and an L sound. You have so many people focusing on pitch accent who can't even pronounce their Rs correctly. Once you get the basics of the language, everything else should be a speed run to high level fluency before focusing on having the proper accent. Otherwise you are wasting your time on something that is far less important than becoming fluent in the language.
Did not expect to see you here!
for anyone demotivated, when living in Germany, it took me 3-4 years of achieving fluency. This while I WAS in Germany and spoke to natives on a daily fucking basis, had German lessons in school, it took me an absolute crazy time just to be able to take part in discussions, conversations and to interact with Germans. I'm at a pretty good level now but I'm still learning after 5 years. Same with EVERYONE, even all of us are still constantly learning english, we still come across words we've never heard for example. Japanese is the same thing, you never stop learning and that is actually a beautiful thing in my opinion. Keep going, you don't need 5 hours per day, and don't set too high expectations
How many hours a day do you recommend studying a language?
@@qiwi532qiwi 24
@@qiwi532qiwi depends how much time you have in a day to spend on a language, I would say that 1 hour on basically anything in the language is a hard minimum, but if you have time to do more and want to, by all means go for it.
I've spent years wishing I knew and wanting to learn Japanese and trying to learn the best method instead of just doing it.
I'm still not as consistent as I want to be, but these videos are a huge inspiration. Good job and keep it up!
Exactly! Me too... That's what he is talking about
I was also like that for several years but now I'm at my 4th month even though my progress is slow because of school. You can also find the method that works best for you
You've probably heard this before but the method is far less important than just doing it. Time spent with the language is the biggest thing.
@@paulwalther5237 yeah but there are actually methods that would prop waste ur time and energy like doulingo instead of doing something actually imp
15:35 this is so true, so many Japanese learner did this very basic mistake. Whenever they hear that they must learn 2000~ kanji, complex grammar, particles, or even knowing that japanese use more than 1 writing system, they are always like "man this shit is impossible!" Like really, just don't pay attention to the amount of kanji there are or anything else and just learn as many as you can and you'll be fine.
Crazy how its been 3 years already, can't believe it. I also can't wait for the day I'll return to this video to see the progress!
Also, HUGE thanks for everyone watching these videos, you've made this journey way more exiting! :^)
- Link to a video which explains everything I use for learning Japanese right now: th-cam.com/video/SaVHrzF3-2E/w-d-xo.html
- Link to my personal Anki deck on my Patreon, meant for those who are curious about it/want to support the channel: www.patreon.com/posts/sharing-my-anki-58946093
Been following your channel for a year now, I’m glad you progressed so much and you inspired others
Thank you for the links!
What extension to use to track your time like you have in your video?
@@cappuccino894 toggltrack
My progress after just over a year has been rather underwhelming but the one thing I'm happy with is how consistently I've been doing Anki with only 6 days missed. This video gives me hope that if I just stick with it and start immersing more that I might eventually get to a level I'm happy with.
@soundofmaggots If I could make some recomendations. If you already know the grammar and some words I recommend reading yotsubato, it really helps with output as it uses (mostly) real japanese and it's meant for young kids so it's an easy read. In 2 weeks I went from taking a whole week to finish volume 1 of the manga to being able to finish volume 2 in around 2 hours. Anyway good luck on your journey!
@soundofmaggots Glad to hear you found some great manga! Work hard and you'll see the difference within a week without a doubt! Good luck!
That Boris Johnson clip is gold, I don't know how it has evaded me until now.
The VRchat was very wholesome and congratulations on reaching this new milestone.
Thank you so much for the inspiration and advice. This channel introduced me to anki and my Korean studying has improved immensely since using it.
Good luck for the future.
Ik right"no smoking on the premises!" 😂
Usually these types of videos would demotivate me, but this one got me really fired up to start learning again! Congratulations on 3 years!
Super awesome to see you speak in VR chat I've been practicing since about the pandemic started, still awful though. I also took a Japanese course in 2019 tbh not a big fan of that learning environment all the output basically killed my grade and motivation. You deliver information so well in these videos and hell you got me on anki what a huge boost to my vocab that was. Also I just like your meme usage in these videos.
Thanks
Even though you are quite a small TH-camr I always wait your videos with patience and I instantly watch them once you upload them. This doesn't happen with almost any other youtubers :)
A Livakivi video? Pog! For someone who hasn't actively done output practice, your spoken Japanese sounds great! I'm at a high beginner level of Korean and do 45-minute italki lessons just to keep myself accountable and consistent. I don't think it has wildly improved my grammar or vocab, but at least now I'm not scared to speak Korean, even if it is a bit clumsy. What I'm really finding difficult is keeping a decent Anki streak. But you and many other learners prove that it can be doable and yield significant progress in the end. Cheers!
Very interesting video.
I was shocked that you had spent 1,000 hours in Anki. That's the most I've ever seen..
I have 6k cards myself, I think I'm going to stop adding new ones for a while.
Personally when I hit 6k cards, I didn't add any new cards for like 15 days or so as well to "breathe" a bit, can be nice.
When you stop adding new cards where do you put the new words/phrases you see from context?
Or you just don't put it down anymore.?
@@Livakivi after the 15 days what did you do with new words/expressioms you came across?
Also during the 15 days did you still note down new expressions you came across or you stopped all together?
@@k.5425 I just didn't mine anything during that time, still did my reviews. But it was only a total of around 15 days after I finished the core 2k/6k deck.
@@Livakivi oh ok. But you still immersed?
You are one of my bigger inspirations when it comes to language learning, and I don't ever remember feeling demotivated by watching your video, seeing how your progress isn't incredibly fast helps me put into perspective how much time it can realistically take to learn Japanese. Thinking of increasing my immersion in the language after this video.
動画くれてありがとうございました
Axelotls need HUGS
Super motivating for me as I'm daily learning Russian fairly consistently and just hearing anyone track themselves in terms of language learning is super cool and helps me improve. Love what you do!
Man I wish I found your Japanese learning videos like 4 years ago when covid started. I’ve been now learning for a month it’s been so much fun, the feeling of always making progress is great
i'm around n5 after 6 months of learning and i really love seeing your updates! it really motivates me and it's nice to see where i'll (hopefully) be in 2 and a half years!
I started Japanese journey very same way as you did. Currently I've studied for around half a year every single day. Usually best I can manage is 20 minutes of Anki per day. Guide to Japanese is another 50 minutes but I can't really do this every day.
With only 6 new words per day I don't think it's much but I already started to notice huge difference. I can finally understand some of more complex sentences. For now I'll stick with this schedule since I'm not in rush to be fluent. I know I still have long road ahead but with your videos I know more or less how much more I need to study to reach certain milestones. Also if not for one of your previous videos I'd probably give up. I didn't know how exactly Anki works and 20 words per day made me burn out very quickly. I was also more focused on looking for easier methods to learn words instead of just grinding new words.
Seeing how much you have improved makes me really motivated.
Thanks for the videos!
Congrats on 3 years! I recently got past 1 year back in September, so seeing where you're at now is a great encouragement for where I can be given 2 more years of consistent study. I gotta thank you for making these videos. I especially appreciate the time and effort you put into documenting how you study Japanese, as they've been a great help finding new resources to use and getting ideas for new material and study methods that I can try out. They're the whole reason I gave up on Duolingo, picked up Anki, and delved more into Tae Kim's grammar guide and immersion. I feel like I've been able to make some noticeable strides in comprehending Japanese ever since then, so thanks for the inspiration!
Any anime recs?
@@bobasking I'm not sure if you're looking for recs for learning Japanese or just recs in general, so I'll just give you both.
For learning Japanese, I watched Komi Can't Communicate, Aggretsuko, and Non Non Biyori, which are good for day-to-day vocab. I also watched all of JoJo if you want something that's longer. I'm not that good at comprehensive listening, so I used Japanese subtitles when watching these. Doing that, I was able to follow along with the dialogue pretty well.
If you want just recs in general, then I usually recommend stuff like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Steins;Gate, and Attack on Titan.
Your comprehension has sparked a mass of motivation as im at 700+ words right now in my 4th month study! Glad to see the long journey can be very rewarding through consistency.I myself want to get to 1000+ words and to begin grinding kanji so I can begin reading more during next year! Thank you! 👋😙
Fantastic video. I've been learning for 6 months straight now and while I was glad to see I could keep up with the N2 test and content comprehension, you blew me away with how well you could speak natively. I hope to get to that level eventually. Aside from the usual SRS stuff, I consume so much Japanese Vtuber content on the daily while reading the comments that tracking 'immersion time' feels pointless. All the best mate!
I binged watched your videos when I found them around last month.
Ive been learning Japanese more seriously for about 7 months now, and although I’m bilingual already, I learnt both languages when I was a small child, and trying to learn a 3rd at the beginning of my adulthood, I was starting to get a bit demotivated cause I was starting to feel that there was no way in hell I’d be able to learn to the point that I could just watch anime without big concerns.
But watching your videos really give me a boost cause I find it very interesting that you were documenting your journey and not just started making videos after you were already at such a high level.
I appreciate that you make content on how language learning actually works and not just some bs “you can learn JP in under a year!!!”
Although it’s something that can take so long and isn’t really fun (at least in the beginning), the reality of the process and believing in the idea that we shouldn’t try and put a finish line down is really inspiring and relieving
Thank you for your videos and sorry for the rambling!
I love how supportive everyone is in the comments here. It gives me hope for the future.
At the moment I'm currently trying to learn how to sentence mine for Korean. I'm lucky that there was a premade Anki deck out there with 1,000 words for me to learn so I only had to worry about maintaining a daily vocab learning routine.
I wish everyone good luck on their language learning journey!
🥳
I found your channel about 2 weeks ago and it completely changed the way I view learning languages. In high school, we were required to learn Spanish the same way you learned Russian. I absolutely hated it and retained almost none of it. Because of those experiences, I assumed that I just wasn't capable of speaking another language.
Since I started watching your videos, I decided to take another stab at learning a different language. I've been studying Japanese over the past 2 weeks. I haven't done anything crazy but I've been learning a few words everyday. Normally, I would've burnt out by this point but I haven't yet. Your techniques work so much better than what they teach in schools. I plan to keep learning more and more, even if it's at an extremely slow pace. Thank you for the inspiration!
Love your album @City of Evil
I absolutely loved the vr chat output haha. So sweet
it's nice seeing someone from baltic states too:) I'm starting to learn japanese, i hope i can achieve as much as u!
Thank you for sharing your personal experience, I am trying to learn Japanese myself and I think your videos are always really motivating and have helped me to have a baseline on where and how to start this learning experience. This video was really pleasant to watch so I just wanted to say thank you again !
The reference you made comparing time spent in video games to language learning is super accurate I think anybody can learn anything if they just put the time into it
This video inspired me so much?? I’m on my 71st day of my Korean learning streak and I can’t wait to be this far in Korean 🤩 I wish I took it seriously earlier
25:30 that is SO REAL dude that explanation is so relatable realest part of the video by far
I don't know how I missed this upload! All of your videos are very motivating, and you especially did a great job with this one. I haven't hit a year yet but it helps seeing other people's progress. I found your output impressive in the sense of constructing sentences pretty quickly. Keep it up!
Personally I'm very impressed, great work and keep up.This was very motivating and makes want to learn more even if I have a lot further away from my japanese goals than you are currently. I was also very impressed with your output even if it wasn't perfect. The fact that you were able to carry on a conversation without getting, "日本語上手" as instant response out the gate impressed me.
Your speaking ability is fine, I'd say. You definitely sound like a gaijin, but you're also very easy to understand (at least to my novice ears).
Also just wanted to say this video was very motivational and got me to go back to learning Japanese after a 6-month break
This is awesome man! I remember watching your first video about your first 600 days of learning Japanese. It really inspired me and taught me that learning languages is going to take a long time but you should enjoy the journey of learning it. I dont think many people in the language community say that enough, so thank you. I've been learning Japanese for almost 8 months. There are many days where I'm not motivated and/or have skipped but I dont want to give up because I remember videos like these and tell myself to keep at it because I'll thank myself later. Im going to start a new Japanese streak today and hopefully by the time you upload a new video, it will still be going. Thanks for the inspiration my friend! ありがとうございます！一緒に頑張ろう！
11:09 today i learned what "tonsure" means, (and English is my first language). i appreciated you contrasting what learning English was like for you, vs your journey of learning Japanese.
Nice video as always. I literally burst into laughter as I saw Koji Seto because I didn't expect to see him here. He's such a funny man.
Leafeon needs HUGS
I can read hiragana, katakana, and learned about 300 words but I don’t know where to start next. Can’t wait to see your progress again!
At that point, you're best off to keep on learning new words, and immersing if you feel like it and want to at the same time.
I'm in an odd space of being motivated and demotivated simultaneously after watching this. I gotta keep reminding myself that everyone learns differently and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. So one learner might be good at reading kanji, while the other is good at speaking casual Japanese.
I took a break and only recently got back into Japanese, it's been a year now. I'm doing it by myself and gosh sometimes it can be so hard, having to motivate yourself.......One step at a time. I just gotta go one step at a time.
Good luck to other learners and keep going, you got this.
I have an "old" video on motivational tips: th-cam.com/video/jaKo6038WYM/w-d-xo.html
But yeah, there are no shortcuts for sure, its a matter of not breaking the flow and not slipping away. I still sometimes get waves of demotivation myself, but they always come and go, so its better just to ignore them and push through them with whatever methods you're able to keep on doing consistently.
@@Livakivi oh wow. I wasn't expecting you to see my comment at all. I'll check out the video you recommended. Thank you! ☺️
Immersion ABSOLUTELY works! I learned english to the level I know it right now in three years (second language with fluency) because the internet is mostly in english (+conversations with native speakers!) and I would consider myself to be a C1 or C2 english speaker!
Hahha I think same but when I read books I can't understand them
Nice Samurai Champloo music at 9:00 . These videos realllllyyyyyyy inspire me a lot , not just to learn new things , but to put in hours into drawing and other things and seeing improvement . Maybe I should learn french .
うわ、すご！ ここまで理解できて話せるようになるとは。。。今スペイン語を勉強しているんですが、なかなか進歩が感じられないので、この動画を見てやる気出てきました。辛抱強くやっていきます！
毎日少しずつ勉強すれば、必ずいつか進歩が感じるようになる！お互い頑張りましょう！！
I cant be the only one that really looks forward to your progress
Hey Livaki, big fan here, juts wanna say that I love your content. I just saw your video and man, what a pleasure honestly . I've already watched most of your videos and some of them twice and I wanted to give you a little advice that has helped me so much (my native language is Spanish, currently learning French to B2-C1 level and starting to get back to Japanese) Try this;Think in Japanese, just like that. Try to have all your thoughts and inner conversations in Japanese that is going to help so freaking much, even more if you take in account that you have already a good basis on the language itself. It'll make your brain more flexible and you will literally be in a full immersion environment all day. Also, if you're doing something in another language try to translate into the most natural Japanese you can. It'll force you to do active recall and be more comfortable on expressing yourself, which you will be truly grateful in the long run.These were advices from a polyglot on Reddit, and from my own experience it has made a huge difference on my language learning experience. Hope to see more stuff from you, and take care of yourself
Consistency is the key!
That's amazing dude, you're one of the guys that inspired me starting to learn Japanese. I've been playing a lot of VRChat to get some input and live streaming almost daily to show my progress. I really want to be able to read and speak Japanese properly, thanks for your videos.
Hey man, your original video was both one of the most motivating and demotivating things I've ever seen.
For me the demotivation came from the fact that I had put in roughly 9 months as of that time and felt like I had barely reached a suitable rate compared to you.
What was motivating was the fact that someone had reached that level in that time at all without going the full AJATT. You introduced me into immersion based learning and actually got me to use anki.
You have single handedly allowed me to improve even by a little bit and for that I'm thankful as hell. Hope to reach close to your level within 3 years and can't wait to see where you get in that time. Thank you.
Nice! And good luck!
@@Livakivi you too!
I absolutely love hearing you speak Japanese it's so good dude
Congrats!! I loved your first video and I went 9 months straight studying japanese while working full time at a Japanese restaurant but I got really burnt out so I had to stop for 4-5 months while still reading newspapers or twitter in Japanese. After watching this video I'm now trying to go back to all the anki cards I studied in the past and get back on the train again. Super proud of you and can't wait to see where else you go :)
You should definitely be proud of how far you've come. I think your journey definitely shows that consistency really beats everything else. It's also interesting that your just starting to look at pitch accent recently. I found it funny that I literally can't tell why your output is bad/unnatrual even after a year of immersion. Goes to show why people advocate for native input so much.
On the whole anki streak thing I'm personally comfortable with skipping days. In my almost a year of using anki I've missed like 10-15 days randomly and at least for me I'm ok with the learning tradeoffs of not having a streak when life gets too busy. Thankfully I haven't ever had to miss more than 1 day in a row, so I've never had a big trouble with getting back on. It's kinda like how in college I got a B my first semester and then never had to worry about getting a 4.0 GPA even though I made like almost all As the rest of the time. For me, I don't wanna be tied to the streak
I'm 5 months into Japanese at this point, but I've been watching stuff in Japanese with subs since probably up to 10 years ago. Makes my listening comprehension much easier, even at only 5 months in, but DAMN I can't even imagine being able to read sentences like those on the test you did.
It's very admirable that you've been learning consistently for 3 years! good job dude
And don't be too hard on yourself with speaking. For comparison, I've moved to the Netherlands 2 years ago and I'm still far from 100% fluent in Dutch, despite going to school here and using the language everyday. Reading & writing comes kinda naturally, but talking is really just something that, in my experience, requires a lot of pratice. You can do it 頑張れ～！
Playing video games in the target language is so underrated. Awesome video - congrats on your progress! Loved your earlier JoJos video.
Woah, I was literally bingeing your videos yesterday wondering when this would drop! Great vid, motivating as always!
I remember watching your first video and it made me motivated to start studying japanese, and honestly I feel so happy for you. You've come so far! :) This motivates me even more and I look forward to following your journey as you keep improving. Love you :)
Yooooooo the new Livakivi vid just dropped
unironically one of if not my favourite channel on yt currently man, its great to see your progress and has motivated me moreso than anything else :D
I liked this video a lot. I'm about 100 days nonstop into WaniKani (after 5~ years of on-and-off Duolingo stuff), and seeing the results that are possible with constant effort is really inspiring. Thanks for making these videos, not just for the inspiration, but also for.making clear that input is the important thing, and with enough input -> immersion, everything else will be attainable eventually.
Hey my dude, discovered Anki because of you. I'm now 180 hours into Chinese and things are going really well.
Congratulations on the progress and thanks for the help.
your channel will blow up soon, such good editing, narration and content
for 3 years that's amazing! Im learning japanese and this video helps out a lot.
Thanks for being so transparent about your progress!
I've been learng Japanese for almost ten months now, and your videos are really inspiring every time
頑張って
So cool to see how much you've progressed, it's a huge inspiration for me. Those interactions in VRchat are awesome, the avatars help a lot with being shy trying to speak a language I guess. Will definitely try that when I reach this level of proficiency.
New video! And I'm among the early birds yay! You really inspired me and I'm currently on day 65 of learning Japanese. Thank you Livakivi!
Congratulations 🎉🎉🥳🤗👏
its so crazy to see that just a couple months ago you were at such a lower level and it feels like you just teleported to this level so quickly
That's really cool man, 3 years and about 1500hrs is really impressive to be able to read Japanese and understand anime relatively enough to enjoy it!! You are truly an inspiration to me :). Much love and support from Australia.
Don't worry about your speaking issues - this will come with some practice - and probably much easier than you expect.
I have reached basically fluency in English over 10 years ago - but solely with reading, writing and listening. So when I started to speak regularly around 2 or 3 years ago, I made mistakes that felt utterly foolish to me, and stumbled over awkward silence and moments where I simply couldn't drag the correct word from depths of my brain.
But I got past that surprisingly quickly, and honestly - not caring too much about how awkward it sounds was probably the main ingredient. Since I was mostly talking in English with good friends and then later with my girlfriend, I didn't really focus much on how I said things because I was absorbed in the conversations.
You just need to find a way to practice speaking that is *really* fun for you. Be that internet friends, or making a dedicated language exchange friend through HelloTalk or such. If you are stuck with speaking practice that actually feels like practice, it will be much less enjoyable.
And don't me wrong, my speaking skill in English is still not quite 100% up to what I want it to be, and I will stumble over words from time to time, but it's so rare and easily to circumvent through synonyms that even the players of the tabletop rpg games I run over the internet don't really notice it much!
Your progress has been amazing, like a year ago I felt I was around the same level of japanese as you but I haven't been studying consistently and now I feel completely left behind lol
This was a great video! Love your editing as always
Penguins need HUGS
I think this video is kind of inspirational. Like, all I'd probably use japanese for would be for understanding anime and maybe communicating with people, I think that being able to do that in 3 years is really cool.
Also, VRChat is the most intimidating thing I've ever encountered, like I would set up my microphone, my levels and my computer to stare at a random group in a virtual bar for an hour, too afraid to speak.
hey hey, thank you for putting this video out! Im studying Japanese and am very keen on sticking to practising.This was quite inspirational to me :) hope you have a good day!
I feel like this video is gonna have 1 million views by 1 year. Very nice content!
when boris johnson was pronouncing 市長 it stuck out so much to my ear. Wanikani has taught me so well that i can tell a word sounds off even though i hadnt seen the word before. both of the kanji can only be read as 1 onyomi reading. 市 「し」 長 「ちょう」. also ive learned 長 is sometimes used as suffix to mean "leader".(immersion taught me the leader meaning, because i just kept seeing it used like that in Yakuza 7 for example with the japanese subtitles and voices of course.) and 市 means "city".
So "mayor"
Livakivi coming out with another great video! Congrats on getting to 3 years!
You deserve so much more views! Great video, very inspiring.
Thanks to you, now I know that I have to do more output than before, superb video and continue like that 👌🏻
The legend is back
You are a really strange combination of low-key learner and also the most hardcore committed thing I've seen since Matt haha. You're like "Oh I was just doing this while I went to the bathroom... 3 years later I know 8000 words."
Edit:
It'll never happen but I'd be SUPER interested to see Matt's thoughts on the VR chat bit.
Huge thanks!!
It would be pretty cool to see indeed! Although I don't think he would have much to say other than the things I already said myself (can communicate but occasionally making some mistakes and having unnaturalities).
Maybe it would be more interesting in the future when I get better though!
@@Livakivi Oh yeah but I don't mean from the point of view of the Japanese being right or wrong or whatever, but from the point of view of it being your first time outputting. It was actually pretty amazing I think, to hear someone speak for the first time and actually be able to do it even at all. It's almost as if input works.
Glad to see you again :)
i was waiting for around 2 months to watch this because i knew it would motivate me again. Now that i have more time i watched it and i am starting again with learning right now :D Thank you for uploading your progress, i really enjoy your videos :)
I recently Discovered your channel. Absolutely love the quality and your tips are usefull for learning polish. Keep it up!
CONGRATS WITH STICKING TO YOUR GOAL!! very commendable 💪 ❤️ 🇯🇵
Subbed your channel when you had 1k subs, your channel has grown a lot.
Also congrats for 3 years on learning Japanese.
Awesome to hear! And thanks!
I really like your videos - they're realistic and relatable. I've been learning for coming up to 3 years too with a similar journey, though more heavy on the Anime cards. Currently approaching 14000 sentence cards, and I plan to keep going for some more.
amazing video as usual. I am approaching on 200 hours of active immersion in Japanese and man your channel has helped me so much. Keep up the great content and good luck in your future Japanese!
Following your Japanese journey has been an awesome experience; here's to another amazing year of learning!
I LIVE for your update videos! You are huge inspiration to me. Keep up the good work :)
youre a big inspiration bro!! youre doing great C: learning japanese is a long journey but it is worth the effort
It's funny that you say you aren't fluent (which can mean a bunch of things to different people), but you are definitely fluent in my eyes! Not perfect, but definitely fluent. I wish I could carry a conversation and read most things with minimal difficulty. Good job man!
Ahh, DaemonTools, such nostalgia.. Well done mate, and thanks for the motivation.
Thank you for these videos, they motivate me so much! :)
11:12 Damn that transition with Flute Salad was smooooth
Love your JP videos man, wish you all the best in your learning journey, and I'm looking forward to more vids
I'll reach 2 years in a few months, I started a few months before your video about your 2 year mark. But unfortunately I didn't managed to study every single day...
But I'm learning, and now I'm starting to watch RAWs. It's good that I started doing this, because it was a good surprise to realize that I'm actually able understand a bit, which in turn motivate to watch more complete raw doramas to better train my ears.
Though... I had started this with the goal to be able to read mangas.
These videos motivate me to always keep getting better at something, it even gets me in the mood to go to the gym in my most lazy of days.
You can also do listening immersion through podcasts whilst at the gym, passively. If you're learning a language of course!
I don't really understand Japanese, but I've been told that my Japanese pronunciation is pretty good - and you sound way more natural to me than you give yourself credit for. Good job!