About how long can one learn Japanese if practiced regularly?

Question

I want to converse on an intermediate to advanced level and write hiragana and katakana. I will be going to Japan for a couple of years and really want to master the language...

Answer 1

Japanese is difficult to learn. Basic Katakana and Hirigana are simple and straight forward. However it is the reading of kanji that prevents really fast progress. Each kanji character has several meanings when paired with another kanji resulting in thousands of different formations.
Another problem is the sentence structure of the japanese sentence is different from english. In japanese the verb and tense of sentence usually come last.
So to answer your question after 9-12 months you should have basic conversational skills if you study regularly. However understanding two Japanese people speaking will be very difficult. Of course everyone is different.
If you are living in tokyo, socially you wont need much japanese.

Answer 2

You can learn to pronounce and write hiragana and katakana in about 2 days! Kanji takes much longer. Japanese kids learn 75 kanji in 1st grade and then it goes up from there, learning to write and read more characters every year.
But most kindergarten kids already know hiragana and katakana. So that part is easy for an adult to learn.
See if you can find a private teacher to give you some lessons. That, combined w CD's and books will have you up and running in a few months.

Answer 3

How many languages have you learned before? Learning a second or third is much easier. Have you learned any other non Indo-European language before? Pick up a kana teaching book and agive it a try. See how much you can learn in a month and then calculate.Find a teacher or buy a cassette course or and try out. After 10 hours of work you can get some idea -although learning is not linear so all of it is not straight forward. But practice, practice -hard work: If you are adult, English is your mother tongue, you have never learned any other language -2 years in highs school don't count I think you have to estimate for hundreds of hours. You could also find a good and experienced teacher and ask after some lessons.
BUT Japanese is learnable!
success for your efforts!!

wishes

mary a

Answer 4

hiragana and katakana can be learned in 3-6 months. kanji will take 5+ years to master. There's over 5,000 kanji characters used in japanese newspapers.

Answer 5

It took me 2 hundred hours to grasp sufficient Japanese to invite for the best way in Japan and perform a little little bit of looking, introduce myself to peers, say wherein I come from and what I do and so on. six hundred hours to do fundamental dialog. 5000 hours of train (adding simply without problems speaking to Japanese, looking TV and so on. now not best research) earlier than I further english subtitles to a jap exhibit. The dificult side with the subtitles is the listening. If you get a jap script, it is convenient to translate, however listening can also be tough. Ganbatte kudasai! Have amusing.

Answer 6

took 4 years of high school Japanese. I'm in my second year of college courses (and I tested out of a year). I am DEFINITELY not fluent.

And I consider myself good with languages. But yes, it's different for different people. Good luck!

Answer 7

It depends on how fast and how bad you want to learn it.