Last night I crossed 100 hours of Scribelating with the Japanese language! What do I have to show for it? Familiarity, I think, is the biggest improvement. The script(s) and language felt so foreign at first — and don't get me wrong, they still do — but I added the word "orange" to my vocabulary last night. When I came across it this morning and saw オレンジ, I normally would have skipped right past it, but like a first grader, I sounded it out: o-re-n-ji — orange! Strategies are forming, and reading skills are slowly developing.
Finding content you can understand is critical to keeping your motivation up, which is exactly what Scribelate was made for: taking complex audio, slowing it down, looping it over and over, and writing down what you hear. It works — but it is work, and it takes time. I remember talking about how long it takes an English speaker to learn Japanese to achieve a B2–C1 level. It's somewhere around 2,200 hours according to the Foreign Service Institute. According to Google, here is the level breakdown for Japanese:
So, even with my whopping 100 hours of Scribelating, I still have another 50 hours to go before I'm even dabbling at the A1 or JLPT N5 level.
This feels like a good moment to remind you that learning a language is a process that takes time. You have to enjoy the journey because it's a long one — and you may never feel like you've reached your destination. That's okay. The wins along the way, like sounding out your first word on a random Tuesday morning, are worth celebrating.
Stay motivated and have fun!
-Aaron