An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation

I think that one problem that eventually happens with this approach, which is a problem I had with Duolingo as well, is that very soon after learning a few words you need to start learning basic grammar. In these approaches that don't explain the grammar at all, you need to spend effort pattern matching to pick up the right grammatical rules to construct your own sentences, and you are never sure that you're doing the right thing.

For example, in 猿はバナナを食べる, how should I understand what は and を mean? When should I use them? I can more or less easily understand that 猿 means monkey, バナナ means banana, and 食べる is related to eating. But to understand that は indicates the topic and を indicates that the word before is having an action done to them, I would have to see a LOT of examples.

I think a little grammatical explanation goes a very long way in terms of the number of examples you have to show.

This is basically the Uplan method, no? The Israelis pioneered this long ago, or so I have been told, by relatives who were taught Hebrew in the 70s when studying there. Hebrew as spoken today (aka Modern Hebrew) was a new language that won by vote (to IIRC Russian, Yiddish, German and others) when the country had to decide on a national language, and they needed a way to teach people uniformly.

https://www.ulpanor.com/

That being said, as they learned via Ulpan as adults in their 20's and spent only 1-2 years there, none of them speak beyond a few words of Hebrew once I was in their lives decades later up until now. Twas quickly forgotten. I went through conventional language education in Arabic from early teens (it was my desired hobby because of my obviously vibrant social life, hehe) to college and speak it so-so until this day, but I have many friends and family of my own who speak Arabic.

So more than anything: increased exposure is key and few people will correct humor you with your method if it takes longer as an adult, and it definitely will! haha

I think you're hitting on something real here, that translation doesn't "scale up". You can't rely entirely on learning translations to learn a language, and in some ways it can really hold you back if you think of things as having a 1-1 mapping with English. Especially when dealing with languages without a common ancestor with English, like Japanese, where a lot of concepts just don't line up.

For example, in Japanese there's not a direct equivalent to the word "to give". There are different words depending on the relationship between the people, and at a basic level, you always have to "give upwards" or "give downwards", with different words for each.

I could see this kind of method of teaching being really useful for learning those kinds of concepts. I think learning the Japanese words directly, without getting hung up on what their English translations are, could avoid some pitfalls.

I'm less sure about how useful it is for the real basic basics. But it's a cool concept none the less.

You're still translating the mouse image into "mouse" in your mother tongue, then staring at the Japanese word.

But I do agree translation does about as much harm as good. It's a shortcut that helps you shorten the learning curve by importing what you already know about language and the things you often say generically from another language. Learning a language is really really hard, so for many, without this shortcut, you'd barely get anywhere. That's the only good it does though, because it will set you back from becoming fluent and will continue to prevent you from thinking in that new langauge.

The best way to learn a language is through mimicry, immersion, and repetition as you're surrouned by people who only speak that language, who are also friendly, forgiving, and willing to talk to you. Like, children surrounded by their parents, then friends, then friends and teachers.

I learned Japanese without translation, but I learned it in a classroom in Japan.

From that experience, I don't know how you expect to start with reading and not listening first. You really need to hear something over and over and watch people pronounce the words to learn it properly yourself.

You forgot "Monkeys eat bananas"

Or worse—僕はうなぎだ!

It's an interesting question. I'm a native English speaker (American). I began learning French in school at age 11, and did so for 7 years, before taking a few years off, then minoring in it in college. Even now, another 15 years on, with little practice, I consider myself fluent; I haven't forgotten much and it's fairly easy to hold a conversation. That said, television and radio have always felt slightly out of my grasp; movies less so. It's the speed, and the context, and the slang.

Learning a language is so much easier when you're younger.

I also took a year of German in college, and know just enough to ask questions, the answers to which I will not understand.

I've used Duolingo to learn bits of languages before I travel. I would put this more in the "personal enrichment" category. A couple months of brief daily Norwegian lessons before a trip to Norway. It's interesting to be able to piece together bits of information from signs, advertisements, menus, etc. Certainly not something I could call useful, particularly in such an English-speaking country.

I've always heard Japanese is much harder for an American to learn than, say, French or Spanish. Given how little time American schools spend on languages, and how many years it takes to be truly "good" at even an "easy" foreign language, why bother at all? Especially as an adult, where the learning curve is so much steeper than it is for a child.

At the end of the day, I think it has to be about enjoying the process, enjoying learning, enjoying what you get out of even synthesizing small bits of information when you travel or encounter foreign media. Otherwise, with today's technology, there's simply no way that the average English- or Mandarin- speaking adult learning a foreign language (other than Mandarin or English!) makes a whole lot of sense, unless that person is planning to live in another country.

Personally, I want to be able to read Japanese media (mostly games) that have no English release or at best have a slightly questionable fan translation. The games I'd already playing provide _a degree_ of passive immersion, as they often only have Japanese audio and leave background elements untranslated, which is useful and motivating. It'd also be nice to some that do have an English release in their native language. Were I not a native English speaker, I suspect I'd feel the same way about English. Mandarin may be more useful/practical in some sense, but I don't come across non-English or Japanese texts often, so it's not as immediately useful to me.

I'm not sure why the language is so seemingly popular, but I suspect the popularity of Japanese games and anime in the West is one of the factors.

> Is that to watch Japanese anime without subtitles?

20-30 years ago, Japan was an ascendant technological nation in which Americans were very interested. Japan had several dominant consumer brands and was considered an AI pioneer.

But Japan lost its way when transitioning from pre-Internet hardware products to "software with hardware."

So today the interest is probably about reading anime subtitles, or having a Japanese gf.

I studied Japanese in SV at the Jetro-related classes, and worked in Japan briefly.

https://www.jetro.go.jp/usa/topics/jetro-connects-japanese-s...

What's interesting is that although Japanese non-work culture is roughly opposite that of the West in many ways, it seems we share a "Protestant-like" or at least secular work ethic that is results-driven.

You can see that in WW2 - the Japanese Navy was able to build itself into a world power that was briefly equal to the US Navy, and the Battle of the Coral Sea was roughly a draw.

Where the cultural values differed was at the very top of leadership, and ultimately the US had aggressive, independent naval commanders, and Japan had Yamamoto (a rebel who couldn't communicate his plans effectively to traditionalists) and Admiral Nagumo (a traditional, hesitant commander who was both inflexible and unlucky - he refused to do a third wave at Pearl Harbor, and he thought the Battle of Midway was primarily intended to capture Midway!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABichi_Nagumo

I couldn’t even tell if the first example was showing how to create a conjunction “banana and monkey” or something else like “monkey eats banana”. Yeah, this would need a lot slower of an approach to work for day 0 beginners. Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are great examples of how it can be done.

Well the good news is that the kana are really low hanging fruit. You can learn them in a day and as long as you continue learning Japanese you will be constantly exposed to them. There are only just over a hundred of them and, unlike English, they are only ever pronounced one way[0].

Kanji are significantly more effort, with 2k characters to learn and multiple pronunciations for each. Interestingly, while you will probably hate Knaji at first and wonder why they are still used, you will come to appreciate them later as they aid reading by breaking things up[1] and disambiguating between homonyms.

[0] Ok, sorry, that was the lies-to-children version. Katakana are only ever pronounced one way. Hiragana has different pronunciation for は and へ when they are used as particles. Also there's pitch accent.

[1] Japanese generally doesn't use spaces.

It's not like immersive language classes aren't a thing. Even the normal foreign language classes at my university, past the third or fourth semester at least, only had 1 day of English while handling administravia, and then the entire class from then on was in the target language. During summer semester, all of the classes were taught this way, even the introductory ones.

Part of the difference between children learning something and adults learning something is that we have trouble achieving Beginner's Mind.

Finding techniques that work fine to be remedial or even insulting makes you get into your own way. In the extreme case, how do you fill a cup which is already full?

Less philosophically, each language you master gets its own language center in your brain, just as each finger you can control individually maps to an identifiable region of your motor cortex (and if you can't control your pinky, it's because they've blended together). Translating back and forth is a crutch for most, and a separate skill for others (eg, professionals). That's why when you ask your friend, "what did those guys say in the background?" you get something vague back. Nothing translates directly, idioms doubly or triply so.

What did that guy say? He said he's really mad at that other guy, (using a lot of colorful language), and I can say "he's mad" or we can go into why calling someone a dog/goat/cow/fish in this language is one step down from saying bad things about their mother.

> But... why?

I started it for two reasons. First there is close to no easy to read content when you begin learning Japanese and there is demand for such thing.

The second reason is to see how far I can go like this. It is a sort of thought experiment like you say in your comment.

I discovered after I started that Hans Ørberg something similar for Latin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg ). His Lingua Latina has been quite influential.

> Translation is not something to be avoided for the adult language learner. We should use every advantage at our disposal.

Because you're relying on the translator to accurately convey the meaning of words to you, which translators rarely do. Most professional translators and language instructors don't exactly have the best grasp of language themselves. They do some 1 to 1 translation of "monkey" and 猿 as if the connotation, denotation, and etymology are all the same when if you look it up, they're only kinda similar but not exactly.

English Wikipedia:

"Monkey is a common name that may refer to groups or species of mammals, in part, the simians of infraorder Simiiformes."

Japanese Wikipedia:

"日本語におけるサル（猿）とは、通俗的な意味ではサル目（霊長目）のうち、ヒト（古人類を含む）を除いたもののことである。"

Former talks about Simians whereas the latter apparently says (correct me if I'm wrong I don't know much japanese) colloquially all non-human primates. Is the translator going to know whether an orangutan or gorilla qualifies as 猿? Probably not, they're not even going to mention it.

Personally I believe people should learn a language well enough to read Wikipedia( or equivalent), and then continue only with media in the language in question from that point onwards.

> Spoiler: it takes children years and years of near-constant, directed input to acquire their native language to a high degree

You seem to be contrasting this with the implication that it doesn't take adults years of near consta

> Unless of course, I'm missing something obvious and there is supposed to be audio...

Learning Hiragana and Katakana as well as their pronunciation is a pre-requisite. That was mentioned before but for some reason I removed it.

More or less that’s right. They’re a good step toward seeing pictographs as phonetic characters.

When I first starting learning Japanese I took an intensive 7 week course. We learned Hiragana and Katakana in one week, though it took longer to really make that knowledge long term available. I forgot a lot of it after completing the course, but my first year living in Japan helped restore it all!

Now my kids are learning kana and my oldest kanji. The state of the art here is still drilling and repetition. FWIW this website is cute, but without learning the characters you have to rely on verbal instruction, so as an experiment it only works after learning the Kana.

Not being able to pronounce or hear the words is a problem. Associating the words just with the symbols seems very taxing to the visual parts of the brain. Also using the voice/vocal/speaking parts of the brain seems advantageous.

My sister learned early reading through the Peabody Rebus Reader method. She was given short books with titles like "Red and Blue Are On Me". A small symbol stood for each word in the early chapters, which were slowly replaced with written words until the end of the book (an example of "whole word" reading).

I got strong "Red and Blue Are On Me" vibes from this page.