Enjoying a Language at an Advanced Level Matters
Don't sulk in the lack of progress, enjoy the progress already done
I've been learning Japanese for more than 15 years.
I passed the JLPT N1 (highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in 2016. I worked in Japan for more than 5 years. I’ve used Japanese for leisure, work, and in my personal life.
Even though I left Japan 4 years ago, it's still a part of my daily life. I reckon it'll stay so for the rest of my life, or at least, I hope it will.
Enjoying it so much these days made me realize how easy it is to forget about the past so I figured some of you may need the same reminder.
Finding little pleasures matters
I got a VPN about a month ago. This got me access to Japan's Netflix catalog so I've been digging into some animes I had dropped and rewatched a few of my favorite movies, most notably Your Name and Weathering With You.
I’ve been watching it all in Japanese, sometimes with and sometimes without subtitles. A few days ago, while watching Kenshin, I found a term that grabbed my attention more than the rest: 不可抗力.
I knew all of the characters but my guess as to what it could mean felt wrong in the context so I looked it up. It meant “Act of God, inevitability” or even “force majeure”.1
Now that I know it, I realize it’s not surprising. It even makes sense. But it’s still a new expression. And a new four-character expression (四字熟語).
I love four-character expressions in Japanese. There are thousands but most are unknown to Japanese learners and natives alike. This is why these expressions are the most difficult part of the one test Japanese natives struggle to pass: The Kanji Kentei (漢字検定).
I once decided to pass it one day so I’ve already bought a dictionary of the tens of thousands of expressions to master. I don’t plan on passing it soon though, so I don’t often open it.
Still, this discovery reminded me of the beauty of this language.
After all, this expression is the combination of “impossible” and “resistance.” Or, if you dig deeper, you can see it’s actually the combination of: “negative,” “possible,” “confront/resist,” and “power.”
How beautiful is the depth of Japanese!
This is the kind of beauty and pleasure I find in Japanese, but what I mean to say is simple: find and treasure the beauty of the language you’ve spent years learning.
It truly deserves it.
Challenge yourself…
It’s easy to stop trying to get better but nothing prevents you from pushing further!
No matter how long you’ve studied a language, you can always get better. Hell, I’m sure I could still get better at French. There are often expressions I barely guess and tons of sector-specific terms I don’t get.
You can always challenge yourself to reach a new high. After all, everything you do now to improve is just more icing on the cake. Who doesn’t like icing?!
I recently discovered a game I played in Korean last year has an anime version in Japanese: Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. The whole series is about growing rice so the vocabulary is quite specific. I often need to pause the episodes and look up terms I know nothing about.
These often drag me into rabbit holes about how to grow rice and agriculture in general, a topic I know only little about even in my native French.2 It’s a fun challenge that I don’t need to do but enjoy nonetheless.
I also remember almost going to a Toastmasters meeting in Japan to push myself further but the timing didn’t work with my agenda. This could be a great challenge if you live in the country of your target language.
… Or don't challenge yourself
The thing is… you don’t need to do all this. You’ve already done the hard work of learning this language.
After learning a language for years and reaching a high level, it can be hard to let go of the thrive to improvement. I’ve felt awful for not improving countless times. I wondered what was wrong with me, even though the real problem was my incapacity to find pleasure in other things.
Luckily, I had other languages to learn to keep the frustration at bay most of the time, but I think it’s important to remember we don’t need to get better.
Being an advanced speaker is already miles ahead of what most people will ever reach. Few reach the intermediate level. Even fewer the advanced level.
We tend to forget this because the internet highlights all the best learners and makes us forget all the people who have given up or are stuck being beginners.
So don’t pressure yourself. Enjoy the language.
Live the language as you want. It’s yours now. Nothing and nobody will ever be able to take that away.
Cheers for reading!
Mathias
I didn’t even know this French expression existed in English so that’s a funny discovery.
Which is a bit of a shame considering half my family came from the countryside. I often need to ask my cousin to explain what he means when he talks about his field and the techniques he uses.