This may be one of the most common beginner questions, so I've decided to answer it here so I can link this post in the future.
Japanese is a super-hard language for monolingual English speakers, even among super-hard category languages. You could literally learn French, Dutch and Spanish in the same time it takes to learn Japanese. But how long, exactly, are we talking?
The correct but unsatisfying answer, is, of course, it's not the amount of years, it's the amount of hours and the consistency. Practicing Japanese a little every day is better than practicing a lot once a month, and practicing a lot every day for a year is better than just a little for a year etc etc.
But that answer is, as I said, unsatisfying. So let me give you some rough estimates based on the average person (I've met a lot in my time in Japan and in this forum). Keep in mind these are averages and depending on the situation can be reached in much shorter or longer times.
Passing N3 (very basic conversational ability)
-
A dedicated language school student in Japan reaches this level in a year
-
Someone who lives in Japan and self studies seriously reaches this level in a year and a half on average
-
Students studying Japanese at a university outside Japan will reach this level in two years
-
Self studiers outside of Japan with a full time job tend to take about three years to reach this level
Passing N2 (comfortable with basic situations)
-
A dedicated language school student in Japan reaches this level in two years
-
Someone who lives in Japan and self studies seriously reaches this level in three years
-
Students studying Japanese at a university will reach this level by the end of most university courses
-
Self studiers outside of Japan with a full time job tend to take about four years or more to reach this level
Passing N1 (functional Japanese)
-
A dedicated language school student in Japan reaches this level in three years
-
Someone who lives in Japan and self studies seriously reaches this level between four to five years on average (really really depends on the situation and number of hours at this level, 8 years isn't uncommon and only 3 years is also fairly normal)
-
Students studying Japanese at a university will usually reach this level at the end of their course if it was their main focus and they studied abroad in Japan
-
Self studiers outside of Japan with a full time job tend to… not reach this level to be honest, unless Japanese is a very major hobby in their life. You'll see many such people in this forum, and I have nothing but respect for them, and since these high achievers are disproportionately visible online it may be discouraging, but taking ten years to reach this is not unusual at all so don't worry.
So there you have it. This is based on my observations living in Japan and helping people study on this forum and not any scientific research, but I'll stand by it. Apologies if my timeline for university students was off, I'm in the self study category so that's not what I'm most familiar with. Edit: seems I overestimated university learners. See the comments.
(Edit: to get ahead of the inevitable, yes the JLPT isn't the most bestest perfectest measure of language ability, yes you once met some guy who passed N1 but couldn't tell you his favorite color blah blah… I'm just talking about averages)
by Moon_Atomizer
31 comments
I’m looking to see what I can do to become B1 or B2 within the year as a beginner. Becoming fluent in Japanese has been a goal of mine for many years, but the end of 2024 flipped a switch for me and I’ve went at all my goals with 110%+. I’m self taught at the moment, but I’m immersing myself in the language. I’m rewatching old anime in Japanese only. I’m buying manga in Japanese to memorize the characters of hiragana and katakana and eventually kanji. I’m studying an hour or more a day. I plan to also get lessons and practice with a native speaker to build conversation skills. Just like any other goal in life, you’ll be a beginner just like everyone else was, but you’ll eventually reach that goal. I’m dedicated.
I am aiming for the ability to passively consume a wide variety of Japanese media, including novels, podcasts, TV shows, and movies, by the end of next year (2 full years of study). I’m not sure exactly what JLPT level that corresponds to, but I know that it is an ambitious timeline.
It is an exhausting study routine. I’m spending about 3-4 hours every day on this. But I am on track to meet my goal so far—I am on track to learn in excess of 20k words by the end of my allocated study time.
Seems about right – comfortable N1 pass after 6 years here (1 year ineffective self study, 1 year intensive high school class, 2 years effective self study, 2 years university electives+self study)
I am seventy years old. I started learning Japanese from scratch six months ago as a birthday gift to myself. I am aiming to get to N3 in ten years.
Has the jlpt levels also represented these levels? I remember hearing that N3 was conversational, N2 was a level that you could get higher level work(government jobs too), and N1 was like more fluent than a Japanese person. I may remember wrong, but based on my experience with the JLPT this description feels a lot more accurate.
Though If you have the time and go full no life and read all day, it’s a lot quicker. I’m 10 months in and can read pretty much any novel I want relatively comfortably, as long as I can look up a few words per page.
same goes for anime and manga.
That being said, my pure listening skills lag behind a bit. I can still understand a lot without subtitles, but much less than with them.
Not sure what jlpt level I am, though
This post makes me feel kinda sad. That after dedicating all these hours to study, I will probably never reach fluency. Makes me feel like I’ve wasted so much of my time
Living in Japan and going to a language school helps a lot. I started learning in March 2023. I don’t live in Japan, I got a full time job, I started studying Japanese from 2023 march everyday during my Morning, evening commute and lunch break. And on weekends. Nearly after 2 years my level is only N4. I don’t go to a language school as I don’t have time for it
I took a A1 course this year at my university and really reconsidering doing A2 next year. It feels like too much time investment for a language I cannot speak with anyone in my country.
I wonder how this changes for people that are not monolingual English speakers, i.e. does speaking other languages make it somehow easier?
I’m wondering how this changes if the person is not a native English speaker? Like if you speak Vietnamese and want to learn Japanese, will this change anything?
honestly I was feeling super slow, I started self studying at home while having a full-time job exactly a year ago. I’m roughly at simple conversations, I am incredibly bad at taking tests so idk about my jlpt level.
I have multiple unmedicated issues and have a hard time but I try to spend as much time as I can with jp when I can get out of bed and when I can concentrate at least a little but it never felt enough to catch up with what inherent faults my brain had to reach the average level I should have by now.
thnx
This is a super insightful breakdown! I’ve been self-studying Japanese for about three months now, two months with textbooks (Minna no Nihongo 1) and the past month using a manga-focused learning method with ChatGPT.
Basically, I read manga, try to describe the panels in Japanese, get corrections, then break down vocab, grammar, and context. I called it “active immersion”, and so far, it’s been working really well! I was actually surprised at how much I could understand when going through exercises in the early-middle parts of Minna no Nihongo.
I know it takes a lot of dedication, and your post mentions having a Japanese-heavy hobby. I think this could be mine! I’m aiming for reading fluency on Shin-chan manga in a year. I have no idea if that’s realistic, but I’m having a blast with it and I think I’ll keep pushing and see how far I get.
I think this seems quite accurate, emphasizing it’s the timeline for the average student. We all know of someone who went from 0 to N1 in 1-2 years, but that is definitely not the ordinary language learning journey.
I would like to add a category: students studying in a Japanese university (program in English), participating in Japanese language courses. The Japanese language programs of universities are usually not as fast-paced as an actual language school, however they are still quite intense and in my experienxe the pace is faster than of those studying Japanese as a major at an university outside of Japan.
Usually these students would be N3 in ~1.5 years, N2 after 2-2.5 years, and N1 after 3-4 years. The studying usually consists of one class and 1-2 hours of homework every day. This comes on top of the other courses and responsibilities (baito, job hunting, clubs, friends etc) and may be quite demanding, so many students take semester-long breaks from Japanese courses, which might make the process a bit slower for some.
This list is very accurate to my experience, should be pinned imo—good job lol
Been studying for about 5 or 6 months it takes a while and I do forget some stuff but tends to stick after being shown a few times
I think something important to note for anyone who feels discouraged by this or by any information regarding JLPT or even fluency for that matter is this:
Depending on your goal these numbers don’t hold so much value, for instance if your goal is just to understand anime, then you don’t really need to write or read at the same level as you have to be able to listen, so you can shape your studies around that goal.
On the other hand if your goal is to speak to natives, then yes it may be hard to do without living in Japan or having a teacher, but you can still focus less on reading and writing and gear your studies towards that.
What OP said honestly seems true to me only based on what I’ve heard in this sub and some other sites, but at the end of the day if you work harder than others, these numbers can easily go up….and if you don’t put much time in , they could go way down. With that said, keep studying and plan for the long haul, you can only get better than you were with time and dedication!
頑張ってください
よし！！！！
4years of self study for n2ish for me.
arrived in japan recently and seeing how far i can get in 1 year.
its a long time for sure, imo the most important skill is to learn to enjoy the process. goal driven mindset is probably not ideal.
Why do you need to “study” so much? At some point studying is just immersing yourself in the language, in which case your studying should have paid off and you can spend way less time studying and more time actually enjoying material. I spent so much time studying obsessively at the beginning (kanji+readings, vocab, grammar) just to consume content in Japanese and learn infinitely more with much greater ease than I ever did studying 90% of the time I had available. “It’s going to take you x hours of study” just sit down and actually read a novel and pick up new words. You’ll subconsciously pick up the grammar and if you don’t, just read a little bit of grammar every day. By N3 you should be able to read basic visual novels or watch SOL and start immersing, so I find people saying you need to ‘study’ X amount of hours not only intimidating but incorrect. Whenever I think of interacting with the language as studying it’s much harder for me because studying is not the reason I want to learn the language; I want to learn the language because I enjoy the things I can experience with it. Just relax and actually immerse in the language and you’ll make much quicker progression than you think. That being said you do actually need to put in hours every day if you want to improve, even if it’s a little bit every day.
I’m a dabbler in Japanese but made my career and living with Chinese which is sort of in the same category but for different reasons (easier grammar, harder demands for kanji knowledge, tones…) and I’d say forget the official levels and concentrate on your individual goals. Is it to have beer with friends and be able to chat? Is it to find your way around? Is it to date? Is it to get a job (where English/German/whatever will be your main focus but colleagues will speak in your target language)? Is it to watch a comedy tv show? Is it to watch the news on tv? Is it to skim social media? Is it to go to school? Is it to get a job where you will use your target language day in and day out? Whatever. Each of those is more or less achievable with time and effort. Some with less. Some with more. But make the goal personal and specific. And have fun.
I’m cooked.
Question: What comprises a majority of the time it takes to learn the language? It’s just learning words and kanji, right?
> Self studiers outside of Japan with a full time job tend to take about four years or more to reach this level
for some reason when i got to this part i thought it meant fluency. i’m a little past 3 years of serious study with a full time job outside of japan. i average about 3 hours a day including immersion. i’m able to have very very basic conversation with a lot of gaps and mistakes, but there is no way in hell i would be able to pass N2. I would probably struggle with N3. I thought i would be fluent by now and can only hope progress doesn’t slow down and i get there at some point but i just realized this post says that i wont.
sometimes i wonder if all this time im spending is a waste but then i feel like i have come too far to give up. sunken cost fallacy?
According to AI 2200 hrs is an often quoted number but I did not find an original source.
“According to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), learning Japanese to a proficient level for the Foreign Service takes around 88 weeks (approximately 2,200 hours) of dedicated study, as it is considered one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to master. ”
That makes it a full time job if you want to learn it in a year. I’m aiming for six months with the goal of bring able to order food. Not have to rely on an English menu. And be able to enjoy some of off the beaten path Japan.
I don’t know where you are getting university students should be able to pass n2 and n1 in the United States. I never saw anyone at my college pass either of those exams. I had to study abroad and seek language education outside of the regular curriculum to pass N2. Maybe on the west coast Japanese language education is more thorough.
Truth be told, I just want to learn it so I can read a book I could only find in japanese. I am just going all in because I want to learn at least one language I am totally unfamiliar with (I even have the keyboard implemented watch, あかさたなはまやらわ)
That and I wouldn’t need to talk under my breath when fighting my siblings. I do need to find an easily accessible resource to start though.
This is gold. I love the ‘self studies with a full time job’ designation with your timeframes. Having a full time job and adulting really takes the time out of your day to be able to do much studying, especially with other hobbies in the mix.
My experience is of course different, but I feel like the American university options are pretty optimistic. I’m in courses with people who’ve taken it all 4 years and most of them probably would not pass N3. I know that they aren’t the most dedicated, but as a third year student who studied abroad and Japanese is my major, I would not pass N2 comfortably without maybe another semester and a lot more focus. Even N3 I would want a month or two to do some dedicated study. Or maybe I’m just slow lol. It’s also possible I have the wrong impression of the difficulty of each test
Just saw my results, N3 level with a full time job after 2-3 years of studying is very accurate
I don’t think this is quite accurate, at least for comprehension level. If you learn kana + basic grammar + 100 kanji in first month + 300ish words (15 a day starting day 10) you can start dedicating a ton of time. If you optimize your time with a job and dont have a long commute, you can study 4-6 hours a day. If you increase your anki count to 20-30 words a day you can get a grasp on ~7000 words in 1 year. Using a grammar SRS (bunpro or grammar anki deck) + grinding input (anime with japanese subs and mining plugin or reading) + mass learning vocab with anki will put you near somewhere between N2-N3 in a year.
I went from below N5 to somewhere between N3-N2 in 10 months (I have the knowledge just not the fluidity) using this method and 4-6 hours of study every week day, and 8 hours on the weekend. I dont live in Japan yet. I also am extremely bad at learning languages imo due to having really bad ADHD and intrusitve thoughts in english. However, this requires tons of dedication and most people wont do it. You cant miss a single day. The only way to you can have motivation to do this is either extreme love for Japanese culture or you want to move there
My point is, most people waste time on text books when they can be learning much faster by using some smarter methods.
> Passing N1 (functional Japanese):
> A dedicated language school student in Japan reaches this level in three years
Language school courses are limited to 2 years :’)
Could add: Passing N3 * Duolingo only … probably never
😀