A rant about the conduct of some learners

[Jembru]

This IS Japanese related, but as it's just a rant, I want to keep it off the more constructive sub-forums.

So, on the advice of a friend, I recently started partaking in a few language exchange groups on FB. I've made some friends already and overall I like it. Yet there are a few behaviours I'm seeing that rub me up the wrong way..

1) People posting, often in poor Englsh. 'I want learn Japanese please teach me.' No offer of what someone may get in exchange, no mention of what they're doing to help themselves. It's... Well, it's tiresome.

2) Non-Japanese people replying to the aforementioned posts (and other people who are clearly beginners) in Japanese. Well done, you learnt how to enable Japanese input. Now say something useful or F off.

3) People immediately replying to 'please HELP me with my Japanese' posts with, 'why not get a textbook'. I know what happens when you become too reliant on textbooks.. it does not a proficient speaker make. The best learners use the textbook as a framework but go out and exchange with others.. presumably what this person was hoping for.

4) people who over rate their language ability. Don't call yourself 'conversational' if you're unable to continue past basic greetings in Japanese. Fine, if you can't follow all topics, cool if we need to keep switching to English (I prefer to have these little mental breaks) but a 'conversation' needs to be more than 5 sentences long..

5) pretending you can speak Japanese wth google translate. Someone asked us recently to translate something a japanese guy sent her. It was horrific Japanese. He's obviously written 'I'm not over my ex' and it changed it to　前の彼女の上にいない I pointed out he was lying to her, a few native Japanese backed me up and she challenged this guy who changed his story, saying he isn't Japanese, but he recently moved there, and so his Japanese wasn't perfect yet..


6) not realising google translate is a pile of poop. Someone asked for a translation of the title of a presentation he's apparently translating into Japanese. Someone replied with the biggest pile of grammar soup I'd ever seen.. so I copied and pasted the title into google translate and guess what came up? Yup.. the exact same nonesense, word for word.

7) People asking me direct questions via PM and then never replying. Sorry if you didn't like it when I told you it took me 3 years to be able to hold anything even resembling a conversation.. should I have lied? Okay then, yeah.. I read a textbook and was fluent in 3 months..

8) And finally.. people who THINK they understand Japanese and try to dazzle others with their amazing skilz. Someone posted a t shirt with 日本語勉強中。話しかけてください。(admin: sound familar at all? ^^) asking what it said. Not a single person replying gave the correct translation, but none of them said 'I think it might say...' Or 'looks like..' and one only changed it to romaji, obviously trying to imply 'haha, you should understand this so I'm not giving you the English' but made themselves look a twit by writing 'nihongo benkyou NAKA' FAIL!

I'm probably being unreasonable but some days these people just rub me up the wrong way. Makes me even more grateful that Gaiwa's members aren't like this.

[Jade]

1 and 3: I've replied to some of those people who do post those 'please teach my Japanese/help me with my Japanese' a few times, and ninety percent of the time they haven't even bothered figuring out where to start learning. Usually I get 'idk i know konnichiwa and words from anime' in response, so I understand people suggesting they get textbooks/people offering textbook suggestions in those cases.

2: that would come under 8, it's just another way of showing off. It works especially well in threads like 1 and 3 because usually the OP is a beginner and they think the OP will be in awe of their skills. I understand putting a small 自己紹介 or something in those posts and then adding suggestions or an offer to help out or something in English underneath just so the OP knows you actually know what you're talking about, but it usually doesn't happen.

5 and 6: Oh gosh, the amount of Google translate crap that's online. I remember that this one pale/hipster blog on tumblr Google translated "im a delicate fucking flower" once and I barely remember what Google came out with, but I do remember it ended in イム because of "im". I don't understand the appeal of using Google translated Japanese tbh, like everyone knows how it looks when you translate things into English using it, why wouldn't it be the same when you translate from English to something else?

For 8's "Not a single person replying gave the correct translation": I think people are just wary to correct other learners. I admit that I am, sometimes. There's always the niggling feeling I'm going to get it wrong, but that's just a confidence issue I have to work on resolving myself.

[魔]

Here's an old memrise thread you reminded me of

These 2 sentences set me off.

"But learning readings without context is a huge waste of time."

of course.. no point in learning readings without meaning.

Maybe it's true. But the people saying it haven't done it themselves. It's like the people who say Kanji is useless and should be done away with. Most of the people who say it probably can't even read hiragana.

From my anime list forum:

The problem with learning Japanese is the Kanji (obviously). I don't necessarily mind the grammar, because tbh English grammar is much more vexing. However, having to memorize 2000 Chinese characters along with all of their Kunyomi/Onyomi, usages in compounds, and English meanings is simply a daunting task, plain and simple.



The system of Kanji (and Chinese characters in general) is far too outdated. But oh well, gotta make do with what you got. It's going to be a difficult journey, just gotta persevere.

Read more at myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1203983&show=100#GCsauedkcOzhOYeV.99

I saw how one sided it was against the readings and decided to reply to defend them a little bit.

Then I got these replies.

Knowing readings won't help you speak/understand what you are reading, and if you don't know the words you might be using the wrong reading anyways. So it's kind of pointless since you have to learn the word's reading anyways.

Of course learning something is better than learning nothing. But it´s a waste of time in terms of efficiency. Like said before, you don´t know how and when to use which reading, so you have to come back to learning that either way. within the time someone took to learn all readings, i´ve learned them too AND a huge amount of vocabs. 

I see that underlined part as "I am better than 'someone'. I can learn more than 'someone' who learn all readings AND huge vocabs too!"

This one was the icing on the cake

No one is saying it's outright wrong to learn the readings

Pigs can fly too.


This is still my stance on things.

If you learn all the readings and then come back and say it was a waste of time, I might listen. otherwise it's just another persons opinion based on something they haven't done themselves.

Hopefully that cleared away any stagnating feelings I had towards that forum. I try and remain neutral and not force my arrogance on others.

[Jembru]

Oct 13, 2014 0:36:45 GMT Jade said:

For 8's "

[/b]Not a single person replying gave the correct translation": I think people are just wary to correct other learners. I admit that I am, sometimes. There's always the niggling feeling I'm going to get it wrong, but that's just a confidence issue I have to work on resolving myself.[/quote]


Oh but they DID translate... It meant 'I'm in Japanese please speak and buy' and it also meant 'while studying Japanese, please speak. So erm...

Demonhead.. you reminded me of how annoyed I used to get when people insist you can't learn Japanese unless you also learn to read. I always felt the same.. that people who never tried learning Japanese without kanji can't possibly know that. Yes, kanji helped THEM to memorise words, but it doesn't mean its the only way.

I totally see your side of this.. their argument only holds up if they believe they'll be able to learn every single Japanese word.. good luck with THAT. Speaking to people like Rin, who can read novels without difficulty, I know there will always be words you haven't met before, but knowing their kanji you can guess at. In that case, however you learnt you have no sure way of knowing how to sound the word. Just educated guesses. If you're wrong.. so what, it won't ruin your enjoyment any more than it did for people who used to read Hermione as 'Her-mi-own' in Harry Potter..

I feel uncomfortable correcting other learners too, because there are too many exceptions to ever be confident that my way is the only way.. what I HAVE learnt though, is to be more assertive about my abilty. I learnt people respect my opinions much less when I keep saying.. 'I'm only learning.. I'm not fluent.. japanese isn't easy for me... I'm not a very good learner... I'm always making stupid mistakes...' People read this as 'I'm a useless noob'. I'm NOT a useless noob.. I'm just a bit foggy between the ears!

[Jade]

Jembru I thought they hadn't? You said no one did, except for one person who only gave the romaji. Or did I skip something when I was reading? And I misread a bit, I realise now lol, for some reason I thought you were talking about learner's not correcting each others' mistakes in 8 as well as the showing off thing. Oops.

[chocopie]

Oct 12, 2014 22:50:57 GMT Jembru said:

3) People immediately replying to 'please HELP me with my Japanese' posts with, 'why not get a textbook'. I know what happens when you become too reliant on textbooks.. it does not a proficient speaker make. The best learners use the textbook as a framework but go out and exchange with others.. presumably what this person was hoping for.

This one I kind of understand though. It's almost impossible to help someone who isn't asking for help with something specific. There's a world of difference between "Help me with my Japanese" and "Help with me this grammar point/strategies to practising speaking/improving listening etc."

My own pet hate is people who bang about fluency as though they took a test, got the official "Fluent in Japanese" badge and it's vital that everyone is aware of this fact. 

I have to agree that this forum is a lot better than other forums I've been on. There's no posturing about language skills, just relaxed chatting about Japanese I hope you're feeling better after your rant!

[Jembru]

Jade: My phone wouldn't let me reply at work. But it's a FB group. People do post asking for translations and other members like to 'have a go'. I'd written no one posted a 'correct' translation as in.. they posted a lot of guesses. That's fine of course. Thinking I understand something only to find out I got the wrong end of the stick is the story of my life, so it's not a crime. It's just the way some of these people act like superstars that deserve everyone's respect, just for knowing a little grammar. I'm possibly just projecting. They may well be thinking the same thing of me!

chocopie. Until I met the team here at Gaiwa, I actually avoided other learners (long back-story to follow ^^), but I have heard horror stories of the kinds of people you can run into on larger forums. In my personal experience, people who are genuinely fluent don't boast about it (with the glaring exception of certain Youtubers). They may mention personal achievements, like passing the JLPT and so on, but those I've personally met tend to be very humble. I can see how fluent they are by how rapidly and naturally they're speaking about topics that I can barely keep up with never mind have the vocabulary to express my own opinions on, then there is the way my Japanese friend wait until they go to the toilet and then start gasping about how amazing they are. Then I collar them on the stairs and tell them 'I hope I can be as fluent as you one day' and they brush me off 'no, no... I'm not fluent yet'. One of my fluent friends keeps saying 'you help ME with MY Japanese, you often use words and grammar I'd forgotten about'.. which I try to take as a compliment but it always makes me wonder if I use obscure grammar because I just didn't learn the more obvious structure.

Online is a different matter. No one can challenge you and anyone can post lang-8 corrected Japanese on a forum to look fluent. I think the people who are kidding themselves that they're fluent are the most dangerous and the quickest to slash down other learners who may dare steal their thunder.

So back-story then (almost everyone who knows me outside of Gaiwa will already know this ^^). You see, when I met JP and decided to start learning Japanese again, I was a member of a popular forum for people following various pagan religions (although actually, there are plenty non-pagan members too). I had friends on that community and felt pretty secure there. In the 'hobbies' section was a thread for learning Japanese. So I decided to join in. Someone had posted a question about basic pronunciation and the OP had been inactive so I answered. All Hell broke loose. In my explanation, I'd included double consonants and made an off the cuff remark about how I struggled at the time to pronounce って, especially when it stands alone (and I stupidly called it a 'word' rather than a particle). What happened next was horrific. I was told by the OP that there is no such thing as tte and you can't even type it in Japanese. I told her 'no it is an alternative form of the 'to' particle. To which she replied 'I've been studying Japanese for 10 years and lived in Kobe and never came across this. I've looked in my dictionary and there is no such word'. I wish I'd been as Internet savvy then as I am now, as I'd have just posted a link. Instead all I could do is insist I wasn't making this up.

Then from nowhere the husband of one of our Mormon members appears. He had been a member long ago but started a new profile just to attack me. He told me he was fluent in Japanese having done a mission over there (I know now that these people are far from 'fluent' and just learn their script by heart, but I was very naive). He called me a 'little girl' and when I (admittedly rudely by this point), challenged him on the Japanese in his signature that read 'If you can read this, well done for using google translate. Now go read a book' (in textbook Japanese of course), he said he liked to 'knock little posers off their pedistals' FOR MENTIONING A FUCKING PARTICLE???

I was really bruised from the experience and swore I'd master Japanese one day and never be made to feel so small again. He never, by the way, USED Japanese on that forum. He only every talked about grammar. I've since met other Japanese speaking pagans and there are whole walls of text I've written in Japanese there now. Neither he, nor the OP (who is actually a really nice girl besides the over valuing of her Japanese knowledge), ever replied to these conversations IN Japanese. 

MY signature over there btw is 夕方に急なにわか雨は｢夕立」と呼ばれるなら、なぜ朝ににわか雨は｢朝立ち」と呼ばれないの？(I wrote that 2 years ago and now I don't like なぜ there? Why does that feel awkward?) Just a naughty little joke I'm sure that tw*t wouldn't get! Incidentally, 夕立 came up when playing that online drawing game with Jade once. 朝立ち hasn't come up yet though, pun very much intended..

Now sharing THAT story makes me feel better. It's a huge weight off whenever I share it.

[Jembru]

Can I TLDR my own post? ^^

[魔]

Oct 13, 2014 16:43:48 GMT Jembru said:

MY signature over there btw is 夕方に急なにわか雨は｢夕立」と呼ばれるなら、なぜ朝ににわか雨は｢朝立ち」と呼ばれないの？(I wrote that 2 years ago and now I don't like なぜ there? Why does that feel awkward?) Just a naughty little joke I'm sure that tw*t wouldn't get! Incidentally, 夕立 came up when playing that online drawing game with Jade once. 朝立ち hasn't come up yet though, pun very much intended..

Does anyone still play that game?

I don't know where the thread for it is.

[Jade]

魔 It's still here, very far down in the Study Assistance board: here's the thread.

Jembru Ah, I see. I think some learners just come across as arrogant people, while others don't. Maybe I've come across as arrogant to a few people, who knows? Of course there are some people who actually are arrogant jerks instead of just coming across as one, and ugh they're some of the worst to deal with I swear. Your "he said he liked to 'knock little posers off their pedistals'" guy, ugh. I'm sorry you've had to deal with jerks on that forum. Hopefully Gaiwa remains jerk-free❤