A reader, phauna, recently added some interesting thoughts to several posts here. I originally wanted to respond to the points he introduced but HiddenSincerity and toadhjo came along with some great food for thought.
But really, at the heart of these discussions is right and wrong. Recalling the right answer for a given kanji. Grouping words in the right pattern. Giving the right answer on a quiz or test. Using the language in the right way.
And as unintuitive as it sounds, the problem with right and wrong is relevancy.
It’s easy to harp on “I could care less” and “irregardless” as ‘wrong’ uses of English. But if you walk down that path, you need to strike down virtually every colloquial expression. And while your at it, most text messaging, instant messaging, casual emails and casual conversation are out along with local expressions in every English speaking locale.
Some say colour is correct, others say color. Boot versus trunk. Bonnet versus hood. Is ‘for’ pronounced like ‘four’ or like ‘fir’? Well, what part of Chicago are you in? How many different words for rain do you have? If you’re in a place like Seattle where it can drizzle for 30 straight days, probably quite a few. Is ‘Trump’ a luxury hotel or a slang term for…breaking wind? That depends on which side of the pond you’re on: New York or London?
And how do you deal with the changing definitions of words over time? Cool, Hot, True and Stupid now have many, many definitions. Personally, I always smile whenever ‘stupid’ is used to describe something good 
.
Right and wrong isn’t at issue here. This is about natural and unnatural. In different locales, the same language can take on a very different character. In different situations the same language can be appropriate or inappropriate. And natural and appropriate are based on feel, not rules – experience, not memorization.
And so discussions of right technique versus wrong technique and tools that emphasize right answers versus wrong answers are useful insofar as you are thinking about this new language and trying to understand its structure, but neither produces that feel. Neither produces the ability to just ‘know’ what sounds natural.
And here’s why: You can’t pick the moment of learning. You can choose when you’ll try to memorize or try to understand but never when you actually learn.
This is because learning is more than regurgitating the ‘right’ answer. Take this definition for learning: “A change in behavior”.
You’ve learned to ride a bike, not when you understand the mechanics of balancing the bike, not even when you can take a couple laps around the block. You’ve learned when you can ride without thinking about ‘how to ride’. When your focus shifts from keeping the bike up to which trail would be more fun.
A change in behavior is not when you do something different, but when you can’t help but do something different.
With language, true learning has occurred when you can read a phrase or sentence you’ve never seen before and understand it perfectly without thinking about its structure. You can’t know exactly when those vocabulary and grammar patterns clicked in your head, all you know is that understanding almost jumped out at you with no conscious effort.
If this sounds strange, consider this: Can you look at a sequence of letters in English and not read it? Can you instruct your mind to not parse the characters, to ignore the word, to avoid the meaning and the message?
If you can, then change your flashcards to put the question and answer on the front because you are a rare breed, my friend.
The same is true for spoken English. You don’t need to consciously parse what you hear because, unless you cover your ears, it happens automatically.
To put it another way, the Japanese that you’ve learned is what you can’t not understand. It’s what you see and hear and can’t help but comprehend. And what you say and write flows from what you’ve seen and read.
And so with the Japanese journey, if we can’t know when we will learn, what do right and wrong do?
They don’t do anything. But we use them to unwittingly discourage ourselves and others.
We tell people that we know the ‘right’ method without having any understanding of how others learn and send people further down the perfect method rathole and a million types of burnout.
We beat ourselves for giving wrong answers while ignoring that different words, grammar and kanji take different, and unpredictable, amounts of time to learn. And I mean learn, not memorize.
We reduce language to a set of right things to know and wrong things to avoid, encouraging people to stay inside comfortable little language learning sites, software, books, classrooms and forums.
Your head won’t be cut off if you use a casual tone when a formal one is more appropriate. Not understanding most of what you see and read is the same stage you went through as a child, you’ve done it before, it’ll be easier the second time around. How fast you acquire Japanese will be different from others no matter what approach you take (and could take an infinite amount of time if you don’t enjoy it).
But make no mistake about it, to acquire that feel, to hear and read Japanese effortlessly, to be unable to not understand Japanese requires massive exposure to the language. And that is much less likely to happen if you are discouraged, burned out or bored.
An interesting snippet from a recent post by Peter Payne of JList/JBox:
I’ll never forget how taken aback my teacher was when I first asked her for help in understanding what I was reading in the comics [manga], though: “That is not Japanese! You should not read it!” she said, refusing to even answer the question I had.
Do you see a missed opportunity to further someone’s interest in the language and the culture? Or a ‘good’ teacher ensuring that her student is using the ‘right’ method? Irrelevant indeed.
