this is one of the reasons it’s so hard to translate on the fly monoglots just don’t understand and think you’re bad at the source language
THIS! Especially between Japanese & English, I have to wait until I know what the verb is going to be in Japanese – and of course it comes at the VERY END – before I can translate the bulk of the sentence into English!
In fact when translating documents, either JA>EN or EN>JA, find the subject (or fill it in if it’s implied), then go to the end of the sentence and work your way backward. The only exception is adjectives, which come before the word they modify in both languages. Yes, prepositional phrases are backwards too!
This is SO interesting - and also incredibly motivating! See how complex Japanese is compared to English? See how Japanese sentences are completely different than their English counterparts? If you’re studying Japanese and English is your native tongue or even your second language, you’re studying a challenging language that’s probably the total opposite of everything you’ve known and learned. Despite that, you’re still studying it and learning how to produce new grammar, new vocabulary, and new sentence patterns that would have otherwise been completely unintuitive and unfamiliar had you not decided to study it.
If you’re feeling discouraged about your progress in Japanese, look at this chart and remember that it’s okay to not have things “click” right away. It’s okay to say “dang this is hard” (because it is!) but even more important to say “I don’t get it right now” rather than “I’ll never get this.” Give your brain a bit of slack and be patient with yourself. Your brain needs to form new neural pathways for Japanese that your mother tongue has had for years and years. When that “aha!” moment comes - and it will - take the time to appreciate how far you’ve come in your understanding! What you now get used to be something unknown to you.
You’re taking the time to acquire a new skill, and every new thing you learn brings you closer to your goals. Learning a new language is certainly infuriating sometimes, but all your hard work will pay off when you can understand and communicate with native speakers. After all, aren’t we learning a new language to be able to communicate?
Every little acorn of new information you learn will be something you can carry as you move forward, one step at a time.
Basically, poloyglots are doing this in their head constantly. And it is endlessly amazing. More so when they try to write fiction or prose in a second language. Shits hard and it takes ages to get native fluency and everyone that tries should be immensely proud.
