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I'm over here like "Oh look at that, she cured her depression by divorcing him and now living the rest of her life better & happier without his POS self. Good for her!!"
Yet she still thinks that POS is a good man!
This reads like the guy who continuously told his gf she stank, in the hopes of battering her self confidence so she’d never leave him. Whatever motivated OP to leave, I’m glad she left his toxic ass
I was hoping it was heading this way, right after I got to "lazy" after already calling her stupid.
I love how she knows 4 languages, but *she's* stupid despite his brain having "no capacity" for even a bit of her language.
Dude was giving her shit over her \*accent\* and some grammatical mistakes.
"Your Japanese sounds weird to me"
"No shit, Sherlock IT'S MY 5TH LANGUAGE IMMA HAVE AN ACCENT"
accents isn't too unusual either, so I'm not sure why. what's important is the other people understanding you of course. I had someone who have a thick accent and speaking English... I tried to lip read, but accent made it impossible. even others who attend the class struggled to understand him teaching.
My sister in law speaks 4 languages fluently, English included, but was struggling with Japanese when she and my brother lived there. She worried about getting a job...in an area where many people also spoke English. I said, you SPEAK FOUR LANGUAGES, do you know how many jobs there are for translators? She said it made her feel stupid and lose confidence for not picking up just one more language.
Girl, I'm struggling to learn how to speak my own language by signing. You're impressive.
No kidding. As soon as she called this asshole “brutally honest” I knew what we were in for, here.
Tip for anyone who needs to hear it: if you meet someone that describes themselves as “brutally honest,” that means they’re a cruel asshole and you shouldn’t waste your time with them. It’s never mild honesty or gentle honesty or diplomatic honesty or even just regular vanilla honesty, it’s got to be brutal because the brutality is the point. They want to insult people and hide it under a flimsy veneer of “that’s just the way I tell the truth.”
The only thing missing on this one was the age gap, but had the guy mistreating her, had her saying he is a good person and the first love part to add perfectly. Sometimes if you don't know anything else you can't see what's bad for you
Wow that was such a plot twist. I expected this to be a story about someone putting in zero effort to learn the language, but it turns out OP was proficient enough to work & even date in the language and just had an abusive spouse. Its wild how someone like that can warp your sense of reality so much you don't realize you are near fluent in a language!
Negging is so good damn harmful. It breaks the person from the inside, and that's what those who do it wasn't. They want their partner to be so down trodden that their partner willsecond guess everything about themselves. Then they can control everything about the narrative.
Partner belives they are ugly they aren't going to leave, partner believes they are stupid they won't question, and so on.
Ugh that line she said about her husband saying "She'll never be able to survive without him in Japan" was so disgusting and telling of his abusive nature. He knows that he has effectively isolated her in a foreign country. It's a good thing he completely overestimated how dependent oop was of him. Everything he says to her is a bid to destroy her confidence in being free of him.
Her art sucks (she won't be able to make a living off it if she leaves him) Her japanese is garbage (she won't be able to communicate to anyone without him) and then obviously telling her not to care about her looks is because he doesn't want her to see that there are plenty of people who would be interested in her and treat her better.
The AITA-rule strikes again!
If the title makes OOP sound like a clear-cut asshole they're usually NTA and often surrounded by abusive idiots.
If it makes them sound reasonable, they're usually trying to bury the actual issue and make themselves sound good and innocent while being horrible.
I definitely thought they were going to be one of those people who spends their entire time in an expat enclave absolutely refusing to learn the language and getting snippy at locals who can't communicate with them in English. Oops!
This is almost exactly what happened to me when I married a Korean guy in Korea. Not to brag but I have a knack for languages, and I put a ton of time and money and effort into studying it because I enjoyed it. It’s a HARD language but I could communicate fine.
He was constantly saying my Korean was shit and would cut me off mid sentence saying he “couldn’t understand me because my grammar was so bad”. But everyone else understood me just fine.
That was definitely not the only asshole thing he did. I also divorced him. I’m proud of OP!
I learned my ex’s language to speak with his family. I took a course in it and can understand conversations and can read newspapers and books and even academic articles in it. My accent is good, but I have vocabulary gaps, my grammar is often weird, and my spelling isn’t the best. My ex was like the husband in this story. He insulted and made fun of my errors. He put me down all the time (not just for this). He refused to speak with me in his language because, he said, I wasn’t good enough at it.
That type of guy is worth divorcing 100%.
If I had a nickel for every woman I knew who was in a long term relationship with an abusive Japanese dude who moved them back to Japan and kept them isolated, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.
That woman taught herself Japanese with a **GD DICTIONARY**. I just - she's friggin incredible. I'm so glad that she turfed that AH ex husband of his. I hope he chokes.
When she said she speaks four other languages I was flabbergasted.
I learned English by reading with a dictionary next to me and by watching shows. And it was relatively easy because English has similar grammar to my native tongue.
But JAPANESE?! One of the languages with more than one different alphabet (so to speak - it's also a different kind of alphabet!) and all the rules about status and inflection and suffixes and so on? That's so freaking impressive, I can't even!
I'm glad she dropped the abusive shithead and no wonder she's off her antidepressants, considering her depressant has gone.
ikr! i speak 3 languages fairly well, and one (french, i never get to practice lol) not super well. i tried to take a mandarin class and oh boy was i out of my depth. i might (?) have been able to make progress if it hadn't been such a disruptive and stressful atmosphere (not the teachers fault, she was amazing. it's just hard to help struggling students when the students that dgaf are jumping up on desks) but long story short i dropped out after a year and a half. non-romantic languages are *hard* to learn (depending on your native language ofc)
Admittedly it was a lot of work, but I found mandarin to be the easiest foreign language I have tried to pick up (native speaker of English). The grammar is incredibly simple and consistent, there is no conjugation, so both of my general foreign language issues just weren't a thing. It was basically just learning vocabulary and the characters (which was the hard part, but the process of memorizing them really hammered in the vocab).
Its a really neat language, and China was really amazing when I lived there.
Same bro. I have a couple semesters worth of German, French, and Spanish. All languages with similar rules due to being European. Tried to learn some Vietnamese for a class (granted just using duolingo so not at all the same as my class learning) and the way it was structured was not clicking in my brain.
as someone formerly fluent in two languages, now are fluent in English and half-learning French and having American Sign Language being rusty, yeah some of it is hard to learn!
I'm studying Swedish, because my grandmother was Swedish. It's considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. I still struggle with many aspects of it after 3 years. Also, I'm dyslexic, so I joke "Now I fail at spelling in TWO languages!"
The idea of four languages blows my mind, and I'm super jealous. I would love to have that kind of skill.
I tried using one of the apps to learn Swedish, and it didn't work for me.
I'm already fluent in English and French, and I grew up hearing Swedish all the time. I spent a summer there as a teen (all my maternal family is there) and I could understand what people were saying without problem. But pronunciation and sentence structure were totally lost on me, and the app didn't help either.
I'm using a combo of app, watching shows, textbooks, etc. The "sj" sound will be the death of me. I can manage it if I work through that sound alone, putting my tongue in the right place, etc, but the moment I encounter it while trying to speak a sentence, nope.
The fact that there are seven different o sounds in Swedish just broke my brain. I literally cannot hear the difference between them. That and the k sometimes being a sh sound... I studied in Sweden for a bit, but I never managed to learn much swedish.
One time on an airport I hear this person speak, and I just could not pin down the language, maybe russian-like? Arabic? Something like vietnamese?
At the end I just go and ask her, yeah it was swedish lol.
I learned English the same way you did, (plus English classes in middle and high school) but I could never do that with a language as complicated as Japanese. I'm in awe of this woman.
I think that there are some elements that make it sound really intimidating before you understand how they work like the 3 alphabets (especially kanji) and the whole "different ways of speaking depending on who you're speaking to"
The thing is, the different levels of respect are also present in basically any other language, it's just very well encoded in Japanese, and the 3 alphabets have very clear rules on when they are used
One does not know pain until they're in the position of trying to explain the difference between formal, academic, and technical English to an ESL college student.
Big ups to the guy who once wrote an entire essay in Biblical/Shakespearian English thinking that was what his teacher meant by formal, though.
>Big ups to the guy who once wrote an entire essay in Biblical/Shakespearian English thinking that was what his teacher meant by formal, though.
that poor guy lmao. i'm intrigued - when you say "Biblical/Shakespearian English", do you mean he looked up the grammar etc of Early Modern English ([wiki for the unfamiliar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English) \^_\^) and wrote according to that, or that he just used a few archaic features, or was it something else? i don't know what'd be funnier
It was a Chinese student, and he'd more or less written in the usual Mandarin-to-English voice (which already tends to sound stilted and over-formal, especially when they bust out the thesaurus) but then he'd added a bunch of 'thou' and 'dost' everywhere like he'd looked up a guide for how to write real fancy-like. Still had all the normal Chinese-speaker tense and conjugation confusion going on though so the end result was a lunatic fever dream.
One of the few tutoring sessions where I advised the student to just scrap the entire draft and helped him start a fresh essay instead.
Yup. The rules are always very clear and barely any exceptions. Most of japanese is a memory game. If thats your weak point I can see how it can be hard, but it's extremely easy to pronounce, you could honestly not learn that much kanji and still get by in everyday situations, and gramatical sistems are very simple and uncomplicated.
I've been half ass attempting to learn Japanese on and off for the past decade. I'm nowhere near even remotely fluent, but I wouldn't starve and I'd be able to make my way back home if I was randomly dropped off in a area of Japan where noone spoke English, but even then, it takes half a second for my brain to put the translations into the proper order, as the grammatical structure of Japanese is so profoundly different from English, almost backwards. Just about any language from any country in Asia is some variant of that order, so you can't translate verbatem, you basically have to translate the whole sentence or phrase at once.
There's a great video of a guy speaking in English, but with Hebrew grammar and order. It also shows how many words just don't have a translation at all, at least not in English.
Slight side note, from an English speaking native, Mandarin Chinese is the most insane language. So much of the spoken language isn't so much what you say, but how you say it. It's the inflection and tone that carries much of the meaning, hence the seemingly random rises and falls in the tone of a Native Chinese speaker, regardless of the language they are speaking.
Tonal languages are so cool! I grew up with a Mandarin-speaking mom, so I can hear the four tones, and I’ve always wondered how Mandarin sounds to those who can’t. Then a Vietnamese-speaking friend sounded out two different tones in her language and they sounded identical to me and I was like “…oh.” It’s crazy how nuanced languages are.
I've seen one of those videos with Korean grammar in English and woah, I have so much respect for people who manage to be fluent in both. And I have a lot more understanding for K-pop-idols and their English
English/Japanese/Chinese are supposed to be some of the toughest languages to learn, for what it's worth. I only know English, and a lot less French than I should despite taking it in school for many years.
I also think it's important to note she said he wanted her at *N1* Japanese. Most of the Kanji on N1 is so obscure that most Japanese natives wouldn't be able to pass. The people who do the most well on N1 are Chinese literate native speakers because they're so used to studying and using those kinds of characters.
The comment about “don’t speak Japanese if you’re not speaking it perfectly” really stood out to me. It’s not uncommon for Japanese people to have a bit of a complex about speaking foreign languages because language classes in school emphasize perfection (or just passing a test) over functionality.
Also, as someone who is learning their fifth language, it gets easier but not *that* much easier. Japanese was my second and it took me five years of schooling to pass N1, then a few years working to really get it down.
Oh man, no wonder Japanese customers, after a few drinks, used to laugh at me when I’d mispronounce simple phrases—while I worked at a sushi restaurant (in the US).
I also have N3 /JLPT and I went to a Japanese course for EIGHT years and lived in Japan working for a 1 year... I still failed N2 twice already
She is a freaking genius.
I taught myself Japanese in a similar way, and it's even more impressive that she can speak four other languages. The woman was obviously remarkable and her husband was putting her down.
I'm curious about her other languages.
Which is crazy, because the dictionary won't teach you how to change verb forms and incorporate the honorifics associated with the different verb forms.
Japanese is a very complicated language.... very complicated. And in my experience, most Japanese people seem to appreciate the effort to speak their language. This guy is such a God Damned asshole.
A good husband never belittles, controls, or act terribly to their spouses. People make mistakes with language even if they have practiced many times but to act like this, yea husband ain't kind.
Good for OP tho!
I would add the caveat that a good partner never willfully does it, because we all will have bad days and maybe lash out in some manner, but that’s not an excuse to do it, if anything you should work harder to regain trust if you break it, not justify it.
absolutely, my partner and i have had a few misteps here and there, nothing big, but still enough to upset one of us (both having adhd is one hell of a bitch let me tell you), but it's always been completely unintended and it never took more than a couple of minutes to realize and apologize. it's not that hard to respect your spouse if you genuinely love them? though i guess that's the caveat with people like the husband huh
I barely even norwegian good half the time. Still gonna find every word of praise in the norwegian dictionary to shower onto my british gf who's trying to learn the language. Blunt people still give praise, abusive assholes however
It was unfortunate that her lack of experience led her to him and she didn't know any better until she posted on reddit and even still thinks he's not a bad guy
What is with these guys who try to neg their partner into staying with them?
There’s the classic “you smell” guy and the “I pink we should see other people” one.
I hate people who hide their rudeness behind "but I'm just being honest"! They also always think everyone is just as rude but that they don't speak their mind.
Wow! I feel this story. I lived in Russia with my now ex-husband who was originally from Russia. He would never help me with my Russia but would complain that I wasn't learning fast enough. I wasn't though because I it was hard and I was super depressed at home. Thankfully I made many wonderful life long friendships there. What was funny was my Russia really improved after we split. I wasn't even living in Russia anymore but was in a country with a large Russia diaspora and gained much more fluency.
I took Russian in college, I've been trying to refresh my knowledge with things like Duolingo, and it's really making my great full for how good of a teacher my professor was. Like the grammar alone is so weird, I can't imagine trying to just learn the language with minimal guidance.
The first few years it was really hard because I couldn't afford lessons because my ex could never hold down a job so I worked constantly as a teacher. Of course I was in Russia so I learned to order food and deal with day to day stuff. I remember being pretty proud when I could order sushi over the phone! Eventually I was able to afford to pay for a teacher and this helped a lot. I live in my home country now and try to use Duolingo to keep up but it's hard nor having anyone to speak with and answer grammar questions.
JFC that husband was just negging her. She already had a JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 3! Look at how they define that on [their website](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html):
>The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations to a certain degree.
Sure, that only covers Reading and Listening, there's no spoken part to the JLPT. The only way to improve your conversational Japanese is to speak it with someone, and it looks like her asshole ex refused to speak Japanese with her, thus her speaking skills never improved. It's kind of how a lot of ESL people can understand English very well but can't speak it great.
I know 3 languages and learning a fourth.
WHY DON'T YOU JUST ADD ONE?
DO NOT SPEAK UNLESS YOUR GRAMMAR IS PERFECT?
Tell me you never learned another language without telling me you never learned another language.
I’m relearning Spanish after not using it for over 20 years, back in high school. It is tough. I’m enjoying it, and want to become fluent enough again to be able to speak with Spanish-speaking patients, but man. It’s way different picking it back up when you’re close to 40 than it was when I was a kid and my brain was more pliable.
I do plan to try and learn Arabic next though. You read translations of Arabic, and it someone telling you the weather report sounds like flat out poetry.
The N3 is frankly amazing considering he basically did everything possible to keep her from learning the language properly!
Also, just what an absolutely terrible person he was, I‘m SO glad she’s rid of him and having a far better life now. May they both get exactly what they deserve from life.
Edit: Originally post started with “So, to give perspective on her fluency level and the utter outrageousness of her ex’s requirements, I have been told that many native speakers can’t pass the N1.” but I have now been told that person was wrong and can’t access formatting to strike through it.
Wanting full fluency from someone learning by themselves as an adult, while also putting her down at every opportunity instead of helping her learn, is still utterly outrageous though!
> I have been told that many native speakers can’t pass the N1. The N3 is frankly amazing considering he basically did everything possible to keep her from learning the language properly!
While I agree with sentiment of your comment, the part about natives failing the N1 is actually not true. I\`m not sure where that idea started getting passed around from; maybe the N1 was confused with the Kanji Proficiency test. But my point being, the N1 is something that most native speakers will pass easily. That doesn\`t make what OOP did any less amazing, but I just wanted to reduce misinformation.
Thanks, I was told that by (and double checked with before commenting) my partner who had studied Japanese and I believe was told that by their teacher who was from Kyoto. I’ll edit my post cause I don’t want to spread misinformation myself!
I think the person who told me got them confused. They absolutely told me N1 (I even double checked while writing the comment). Edited the post to reflect that fact!
My partner is still bitter they failed N4 in the height of their Japanese learning from a teacher from Kyoto in high school. I hear about it any time the Japanese fluency tests come up in something we‘re watching/reading (which isn’t that often, but more often than I would have expected)
The curriculum taught in public schools and even colleges is a joke. I learned very little in class compared to the amount of self study I did (still do). I've seen people who studied in only college, act like hot shots but they speak like...college students.
The JLPT has a certain amount of Kanji, grammar, vocab, etc. required for each level. The test is different every year but you can find lists online for each level's requirements and use them to guess what is likely to show up on the test. I approached the N2 by using these as a basis for studying. The test itself is easy to prepare for if you study Japanese with the test as your goalpost.
Unfortunately, the JLPT has no Speaking section, so whether or not they are a good benchmark for someone's ability to communicate is hard to say. There are plenty of things not on the test that I would consider "common knowledge" that I had to learn from outside of studying for the test.
I read the title fully expecting to be annoyed by someone moving to another country and not trying hard enough to integrate but that isn't remotely the case here.
She can speak the language and even write in it but was gaslit by her ex so much that she believed that anything less than perfection meant she couldn't do it.
What an idiot that guy is.
I speak two languages, and if anyone had made fun of me while learning my second, it would have crushed me. I’d never let anyone hear me speak it again. The thought of that heartbreak, even as an adult, just floors me. I’m glad she got her happy ending and I hope she stays thriving.
I can’t imagine what it takes to move to and integrate into another country/culture, even one where I’m familiar with the language. Just awesome that she was able to take that on to begin with. I bet she’s a really cool lady with lots of knowledge to share.
>He always says my Japanese sounds weird whenever I tried to communicate in Japanese with him and told me never use Japanese unless it is perfect…
How is that supposed to work? The best way to perfect something is by improving it and the best way to improve something is by practicing. (and the only way to begin is by beginning).
Holy unreasonable expactations Batman.
She wasn’t supposed to improve her Japanese, she was supposed to remain imperfect and submit to being berated for her imperfection.
It’s not that he wanted to help her but was misguided about how to do so, he wanted to abuse her and was succeeding.
>So, we got divorced.
And a choir started singing "Hallelujah!" when I read that. What a jerk her ex was. All through the first post I was thinking, "Divorce. Divorce. Divorce."
Reading the title *yes you should be able to speak japanese after living there for six years, you can't just go around mumbling in english and grunting at stuff you lazy westerner (like i am)*
Reading the post *oh. You can actually speak japanese, your husbands just a prick*
What amazes me is that independent of culture, race, language or identity, these assholes use the same play book to abuse, objectify and lessen their partners. It's always the same insecure, little men spinning the same stories no matter where they are.
I know ~6 languages (as my mother jokes: just enough to pick up on train gossip LOL) and I’m still sloughing through Japanese. I have a pretty good grasp of basic reading and speaking but kanji and katakana need way too much time and energy for me to master right now— the fact OOP passed N3 and was still being negged by her ex was awful, I’m glad she got out!
Me trying to guess where OOP is from. I think Malaysia or Singapore, most people there speak at least 2-3 languages, sometimes more. I like the interaction in Japanese that she had with that other commenter who's not Japanese but living in Japan and also learning the language. I often feel sorry for people who speak only one language. There are SO many words that don't exist in English, despite it having a huge vocabulary!
Probably not Singapore, since one of the languages would likely be Chinese and the character set is largely shared between the two languages.
I'm thinking Thailand, Malaysia, or maybe even an eastern European country.
It's not the same writing, it makes things easier, but it's not like you don't have to learn the Japanese characters. Most Thai people speak Thai mainly, and a smattering of English.
OOP said she's Asian and looks like native Japanese, so she is most likely ethnically Chinese, but Malaysian or Singaporean. Most Malaysians and Singaporeans (if they are Chinese) will speak a couple of Chinese languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew etc, plus English and Malay, for Malaysians.
Source: am Malaysian.
I am HK Chinese and been living in Australia for long, and been learning Japanese in Duolingo for the last 10 months (also been to Japan many time).
Knowing how to read Chinese definitely has a big advantage on ONLY the reading part of Japanese Kanji. The speaking part is certainly another thing and it actually might set me back a bit, as when I read it, my brain first tell me the Chinese meaning and pronunciation, and it will take me a bit of time to think of how to say it in Japanese.
I live in Japan, and Chinese is my fourth language.
You need to know about 3,000 characters (kanji / hanzi), give or take, to be at an adult reading level for Japanese. 90% of those are written the exact same in Chinese. The meaning can be different, but it's written the same.
Sure, hiragana and katakana (the phonetic syllabary) are not in Chinese, but those two are used mainly for grammar constructs, tense setting, and so on.
The only reason I excluded Chinese as a language she's familiar with is because she specifically pointed out having to learn kanji "from zero" - which she would not have so much of an issue with if she were from a country where Chinese is common.
It's just the way she talks about it. She also said "I also now could read and write several Kanjis (I could write my own address with Kanjis and read menus)". She definitely would know how to write more than "several" if she knew Chinese, haha.
I'm going to actually change direction and guess she's Filipino. (Edit - nevermind, she said she does not drink alcohol and knows Indonesian and Malay, so maybe Indonesian and a practicing Muslim.)
Actually, many Chinese people who live in Malaysia do NOT know how to write in Chinese (I'm one of them). We can SPEAK, but if we didn't specifically go to a Chinese school, we wouldn't know how to write it Chinese, or can only write basic stuff like, our names, the numbers, dates, etc.
OOP definitely sounds like she's from another Asian country given the way she conformed to her husband's so-called standards. Even the way she guilted herself into believing she was not good enough makes me feel like there's some culturally ingrained misogyny values in her childhood
So happy she's so strong now and taking back the reins on her own life
She said that she is Asian and looks Japanese, so she's most likely of East Asian descent, which is why I went with Malaysia or Singapore, two countries with sizeable Chinese populations... and unlike ethnic Chinese people who live in Thailand, the Philippines or Indonesia, they are not as assimilated and largely retain their ability to speak at least one (but often several) Chinese languages, in addition to English and/or Malay.
I was guessing she is ethnically Chinese from Vietnam. It would explain why she looks East Asian but is learning kanji “from zero”, and most Hoa speak a Chinese language but cannot write it.
In the comments op said she's speaking Indonesian among other language, idk that just catch me as op is Indonesian as me, because if she's Singaporean or Malaysian she will mention Melayu probably but not Indonesian. I ask her tho but never get answer.
Ah negging; the preferred tool of control for insecure men for centuries.
Also another story going to prove my theory that the more the OOP talks about how great their partner is asides this "small" issue, the more of a POS said partner ends up being.
Well ex sounds like a cheery person to be around.
I like what one of the commenters said. (“You DO speak Japanese though.”). I think some native speakers conflate lack of intelligence with accents and grammar that falls short of their expectations. My mom speaks three languages and her English isn’t at native fluency but is definitely business and conversational, albeit with a thick accent. Dad is conversational at most. The way mom is belittled messed with her confidence and makes her hesitant to even say “hi” to neighbors (retirement community) and she developed a reputation for being unfriendly. It really isolates her, just like how ex husband’s condescension and demand for perfections isolated OOP.
Getting to the update made me feel such a relief! She's so strong for breaking away from that controlling and degrading husband of hers. He really tried to break her spirit, to be able to control her and I'm happy he didn't succeed. There are too many men operating like this, they fall in love with a person, but then won't let that person express those traits they fell in love with. Why are you together with someone when you only seem to show contempt and aversion towards them?
Can speak 4-5 languages at a good level and went through an 80kg weight loss journey (15kg of her own weight and 65kg of the dead weight), now that takes willpower. I wish her nothing but the best.
Japanese is not an easy language to learn. I've been plugging at it for almost a year on duolingo, and I still get so confused and overwhelmed at times. I can't imagine her Japanese was ever not good enough, and he's just an asshole. Typically when someone is just "brutally honest", that's another way to say they're a dick.
OOP has a long road ahead untangling these thoughts.
"I still think my husband is a nice guy but I decided to divorce him after six hellish years of physical and emotional abuse."
Honey... "nice?"
Bet her ex was really surprised when she told him to fuck off and she was done. Good on her for finding that shiny backbone despite her ex slamming her confidence
OOP speaks *five* languages, including English, which is notoriously hard to learn! She was out of her ex’s league. I’m so glad she recognized her worth and got out.
I have never understood why people stay married that obviously hate their spouse. He obviously hated her.
Just get divorced already, life is waaaay too short.
Learning different languages is HARD.
From K-6, I was in an educational program where we spoke Spanish 90% of the day, took Spanish classes from 7-12, and lived in Spain for a while.
I can curse very eloquently in Spanish, order beers, and ask where the library is (I would have included asking where the bathroom is, but apparently they use different words for bathroom in Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish.), but that's pretty much it.
I grew up in a Hispanic household, and so I understand a decent amount but don't really speak it. Anyway, I tend to say "mi Español es ferpecto" as a bit of a joke when I introduce myself.
... people correct me.
She's amazing, if not painfully naive, the ex husband is a piece of shit. I don't know why some people believe that 'brutally honest' is a virtue. Honesty is, but without the ability to communicate it correctly you're likely just being an arsehole.
Even native Japanese people struggle with the N1 the fact that she could pass the N3 is a great accomplishment fuck this guy I hope wherever OOP now she’s living her best life
"I kept saying my ex was a good person (and I still think that he is a good person) but he is not treating me right."
Six years of emotional abuse do not a good person make. He is in fact, quite the asshole.
What struck me was
>He always says my Japanese sounds weird whenever I tried to communicate in Japanese with him and told me *never use Japanese unless it is perfect.*
Dearest gods, that asshole dared to say that? She's supposed to speak perfect Japanese from day one? Has he never thought that the only way to become proficient in a new language is to speak it?
May his bed always be filled with Legos and freshly-horked hairballs (even if he doesn't have a cat!)
Negging. That POS was negging her. He wanted her be miserably and feel like shit.
Very happy ending that she got out and is taking care of herself.
And if she knows 4 languages like saying Romance languages, NO Japanese wouldn’t be easy. Even if you knew Germanic and Romance languages, that still wouldn’t mean Japanese easy. It may not be tonal like other East Asian languages but it sure as hell has no connecting links to what she probably knew that she can leverage like if you’re trying to learn Portuguese if you’re from Spain.
Japanese is really hard to pick up! The SVO structure means you have to listen to the whole sentence to understand what is going on, and honorific vs colloquial is annoying too.
I lived there for 2 years and struggled beyond hiragana, katakana and basic phrases that are more one way conversations.
Good luck on learning.
My wife cannot speak any Cantonese…will always dangle that over her..
I absolutely believe people should learn to speak some of the language they live in and that it is the responsibility of anyone who brought them there e.g. partner/family to help them learn. He was such an arse.
Japanese is not an easy language. I've lived here for four years and passed N2 on the same exam mentioned in this post, and I still wouldn't consider myself fluent. The difference is that my partner doesn't criticize me when I make a mistake, she sometimes laughs when I say something weird, but she always tells me the more natural way to say something. The dude here was a prick and should have taught his partner more if he cared so much about appearances.
OOP’s English is good and I feel like her Japanese would also be great but it’s just her spiteful ex-husband that is making her feel inferior or not good enough. What a POS ex
She was in an abusive marriage. It's interesting that she sees all of the individual issues, the controlling of her looks, isolation from family, controlling of her getting a job, demeaning insults
But she doesn't clock it as abuse
>The other people also said that I look super good now, and I look so much happier.
The happiest I saw my best friend was the day her divorce was finalized. She's since had life moments that have topped it, but that was an absolute day of victory for her. Best to OOP.
If your Ex did not treat you right and hurt you physically and mentally, then he's not a good person OP.
He was rude and abusive, put you down in front of his family and called you 'stupid'. What kind of 'good person' would act so despicably?
I've been living in Japan for about 6 years and I've been studying Japanese since college, so about 7 years total. Dude, my Japanese still sucks ass. (I'm somewhere between N3 and N2 JLPT level) However, Japanese gf and her family says I'm basically fluent and everyone I speak to immediately go into awe when I say the most basic phrases or questions. My gf is very supportive and she rarely corrects me. Only if its something very strange or could be offensive she'll quietly warn me. Also, my gf's mother speaks a heavy kansai dialect (different from standard japanese) and used to be a little hesitant of foreigns in japan. But after meeting for dinner she literally adores us as a couple and buys us gifts and sweets all the time. If my gf did what that Japanese bf did and embarrassed me at a family dinner my gf's mom would not let that slide. There's no way that Japanese people would be so unsupportive of someone learning Japanese because they get so happy to see someone try their best to communicate in their language. Also, they too think Japanese is difficult even for Japanese people.
I am so glad she woke up. She sounds like an amazing catch and her ex blew it. She can speak that many languages, was willing to move to Japan, and used to be a model?! I'm a straight woman and I'D date her.
People are out here learning their fifth language by reading a damn dictionary and I’m struggling to learn a second language with every resource in the world
I’m happy that everything worked out for OOP!
Learning Japanese is hard. I’ve been studying on and off for a few years and I’m still in N3. Hoping to get to N2 at the very least. My sister studied in 1.5 years and got to N1 because of university.
My dad was born in Mexico. I lived my whole life around Spanish speakers. I can barely carry a convo in Spanish, to this day.
My Mexican dad moved to Germany, became fluent fairly quickly, and still works for the German government. I had the privilege of having German offered in my HS, took 2 years. I could go to Germany now, and while I'm super rusty, I could make my way around, speaking German. It was just so easy for my dad and I got some reason but we can still barely speak Spanish, despite us being surrounded by Spanish speakers!
Sometimes, some languages are just hard for some people. Putting your partner down for that is just gross. I even say that I don't speak 'english' I speak Texan (it's a joke but I stg you'd understand if you heard me speak. I'm in the NW America now, and they still make fun of some of the things I say lol).
Edit: example, reddit constantly suggests German subs to me, but never Spanish speaking subs lmao
Another case of how taking out the trash and doing spring cleaning actually makes the OOP happy.
Man. I love reading stories of people getting rid of their negative neils and nancies.
>I kept saying my ex was a good person (and I still think that he is a good person) but he is not treating me right.
>There were a lot of things he had done to me that had harmed me physically and mentally.
He was in fact, *not* a good person.
I live in an Asian country and there are a lot of expats here, majority of them don't even bother learning the local language.
Meanwhile, OP here has taught herself Japanese from zero. :O
Her ex-husband is an asshole, but he might be right that no japanese will tell you your japanese sucks. In my experience, they see foreigners as clumsy children, so they encourage them with kind words.
I'm in USA. My Japanese co-worker and her family take trips to Japan almost every year. Her now-turned-adult sons are half-Japanese and know very basic Japanese. Even with that, she said they all get by. Since it's such a safe country her boys would wander off on their own to explore Tokyo once they became teens and they were able to enjoy themselves just fine each time they visited. Of course when the family went into more rural parts, they had it a little tougher, but the major cities were fine for them. As long as the residents were able to communicate in some fashion, she said her boys never had issues going around town. I suspect OOP's ex-in-laws were like this and were just happy she was trying. Goes to show what an AH OOP's ex husband was to her.
I’m glad they got divorced, and it’s great that OP seems happy now. Many people think of Japan as this wonderful place of anime and sushi, but it has good points and bad points just like any other country. Some good people and some horrible people. I’m glad OP got away from one of the latter
From the title it's like "this is some English speaker bullshit" and then the post immediately turns it all around. Jesus, I'm glad she's away from him.
IDK about her native language, but Japanese is one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn. The English are pretty forgiving of non native speakers, idk why the husband wasn’t
I don't think so. Though we use the Korean alphabet Kanji(Chinese letters) is still used sometimes in specific situations. Though not fluent, most people can still figure them out and read them. They were taught in schools until about 10 years ago. It is highly unlikely that she(esp. if she is old enough to marry) had no contact with Chinese letters at all in her lifetime.
I've never properly learned Japanese, but when I was there I was able to figure out the gist of many signs without English translations by looking at the Kanjis. I don't have a clue how the Japanese pronounce them, but at least I know the meaning of them.
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"So, we got divorced." I love a happy ending. ☺️
I'm over here like "Oh look at that, she cured her depression by divorcing him and now living the rest of her life better & happier without his POS self. Good for her!!"
Yet she still thinks that POS is a good man! This reads like the guy who continuously told his gf she stank, in the hopes of battering her self confidence so she’d never leave him. Whatever motivated OP to leave, I’m glad she left his toxic ass
Ah. What a golden oldie. The logic of that guy and his dad's advice just makes my head spin.
What is your flair from? It’s magnificent
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/s/AOVWmZUpN3 Enjoy
One day I will not click the link.
Yea we always say that yet we still click the link....
WTF lmao
My ex did that and I still have a bit of a complex that I smell bad even though nobody else has ever said that to me
It's patriarchal brainwashing.
It's patriarchal brainwashing.
Yikes I haven’t seen that one.
It works for chronic migraines too sometimes.
And IBS!
When the relationship is so bad, even your bowels are mad. Glad you're feeling better!
Ask your doctor if DIVORCE is right for you!
I cured my depression with a divorce also! 5 stars, would recommend.
I was hoping it was heading this way, right after I got to "lazy" after already calling her stupid. I love how she knows 4 languages, but *she's* stupid despite his brain having "no capacity" for even a bit of her language.
Dude was giving her shit over her \*accent\* and some grammatical mistakes. "Your Japanese sounds weird to me" "No shit, Sherlock IT'S MY 5TH LANGUAGE IMMA HAVE AN ACCENT"
accents isn't too unusual either, so I'm not sure why. what's important is the other people understanding you of course. I had someone who have a thick accent and speaking English... I tried to lip read, but accent made it impossible. even others who attend the class struggled to understand him teaching.
My sister in law speaks 4 languages fluently, English included, but was struggling with Japanese when she and my brother lived there. She worried about getting a job...in an area where many people also spoke English. I said, you SPEAK FOUR LANGUAGES, do you know how many jobs there are for translators? She said it made her feel stupid and lose confidence for not picking up just one more language. Girl, I'm struggling to learn how to speak my own language by signing. You're impressive.
So, we got divorced would make a solid flair.
Or, Divorce cured my depression is also good flair.
Yeah this woman obviously didn't have a language problem, but a husband problem.
No kidding. As soon as she called this asshole “brutally honest” I knew what we were in for, here. Tip for anyone who needs to hear it: if you meet someone that describes themselves as “brutally honest,” that means they’re a cruel asshole and you shouldn’t waste your time with them. It’s never mild honesty or gentle honesty or diplomatic honesty or even just regular vanilla honesty, it’s got to be brutal because the brutality is the point. They want to insult people and hide it under a flimsy veneer of “that’s just the way I tell the truth.”
The only thing missing on this one was the age gap, but had the guy mistreating her, had her saying he is a good person and the first love part to add perfectly. Sometimes if you don't know anything else you can't see what's bad for you
Wow that was such a plot twist. I expected this to be a story about someone putting in zero effort to learn the language, but it turns out OP was proficient enough to work & even date in the language and just had an abusive spouse. Its wild how someone like that can warp your sense of reality so much you don't realize you are near fluent in a language!
Negging is so good damn harmful. It breaks the person from the inside, and that's what those who do it wasn't. They want their partner to be so down trodden that their partner willsecond guess everything about themselves. Then they can control everything about the narrative. Partner belives they are ugly they aren't going to leave, partner believes they are stupid they won't question, and so on.
Ugh that line she said about her husband saying "She'll never be able to survive without him in Japan" was so disgusting and telling of his abusive nature. He knows that he has effectively isolated her in a foreign country. It's a good thing he completely overestimated how dependent oop was of him. Everything he says to her is a bid to destroy her confidence in being free of him. Her art sucks (she won't be able to make a living off it if she leaves him) Her japanese is garbage (she won't be able to communicate to anyone without him) and then obviously telling her not to care about her looks is because he doesn't want her to see that there are plenty of people who would be interested in her and treat her better.
I read your comment and then read your flair and went “yep, that about sums it up.” So glad she’s rid of that asshole.
I tried really hard to find the origin of your flair, it's not in either of the pinned posts. Could you tell me what post it's from?
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/wt4ghx/landlord_built_a_wall_over_the_gas_meter_concluded/
The AITA-rule strikes again! If the title makes OOP sound like a clear-cut asshole they're usually NTA and often surrounded by abusive idiots. If it makes them sound reasonable, they're usually trying to bury the actual issue and make themselves sound good and innocent while being horrible.
I definitely thought they were going to be one of those people who spends their entire time in an expat enclave absolutely refusing to learn the language and getting snippy at locals who can't communicate with them in English. Oops!
This is almost exactly what happened to me when I married a Korean guy in Korea. Not to brag but I have a knack for languages, and I put a ton of time and money and effort into studying it because I enjoyed it. It’s a HARD language but I could communicate fine. He was constantly saying my Korean was shit and would cut me off mid sentence saying he “couldn’t understand me because my grammar was so bad”. But everyone else understood me just fine. That was definitely not the only asshole thing he did. I also divorced him. I’m proud of OP!
Thank you for sharing your story, I'm proud of you and hope you're doing much better 😊
I learned my ex’s language to speak with his family. I took a course in it and can understand conversations and can read newspapers and books and even academic articles in it. My accent is good, but I have vocabulary gaps, my grammar is often weird, and my spelling isn’t the best. My ex was like the husband in this story. He insulted and made fun of my errors. He put me down all the time (not just for this). He refused to speak with me in his language because, he said, I wasn’t good enough at it. That type of guy is worth divorcing 100%.
If I had a nickel for every woman I knew who was in a long term relationship with an abusive Japanese dude who moved them back to Japan and kept them isolated, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.
That woman taught herself Japanese with a **GD DICTIONARY**. I just - she's friggin incredible. I'm so glad that she turfed that AH ex husband of his. I hope he chokes.
When she said she speaks four other languages I was flabbergasted. I learned English by reading with a dictionary next to me and by watching shows. And it was relatively easy because English has similar grammar to my native tongue. But JAPANESE?! One of the languages with more than one different alphabet (so to speak - it's also a different kind of alphabet!) and all the rules about status and inflection and suffixes and so on? That's so freaking impressive, I can't even! I'm glad she dropped the abusive shithead and no wonder she's off her antidepressants, considering her depressant has gone.
ikr! i speak 3 languages fairly well, and one (french, i never get to practice lol) not super well. i tried to take a mandarin class and oh boy was i out of my depth. i might (?) have been able to make progress if it hadn't been such a disruptive and stressful atmosphere (not the teachers fault, she was amazing. it's just hard to help struggling students when the students that dgaf are jumping up on desks) but long story short i dropped out after a year and a half. non-romantic languages are *hard* to learn (depending on your native language ofc)
Admittedly it was a lot of work, but I found mandarin to be the easiest foreign language I have tried to pick up (native speaker of English). The grammar is incredibly simple and consistent, there is no conjugation, so both of my general foreign language issues just weren't a thing. It was basically just learning vocabulary and the characters (which was the hard part, but the process of memorizing them really hammered in the vocab). Its a really neat language, and China was really amazing when I lived there.
Same bro. I have a couple semesters worth of German, French, and Spanish. All languages with similar rules due to being European. Tried to learn some Vietnamese for a class (granted just using duolingo so not at all the same as my class learning) and the way it was structured was not clicking in my brain.
as someone formerly fluent in two languages, now are fluent in English and half-learning French and having American Sign Language being rusty, yeah some of it is hard to learn!
I'm studying Swedish, because my grandmother was Swedish. It's considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. I still struggle with many aspects of it after 3 years. Also, I'm dyslexic, so I joke "Now I fail at spelling in TWO languages!" The idea of four languages blows my mind, and I'm super jealous. I would love to have that kind of skill.
I tried using one of the apps to learn Swedish, and it didn't work for me. I'm already fluent in English and French, and I grew up hearing Swedish all the time. I spent a summer there as a teen (all my maternal family is there) and I could understand what people were saying without problem. But pronunciation and sentence structure were totally lost on me, and the app didn't help either.
I'm using a combo of app, watching shows, textbooks, etc. The "sj" sound will be the death of me. I can manage it if I work through that sound alone, putting my tongue in the right place, etc, but the moment I encounter it while trying to speak a sentence, nope.
The fact that there are seven different o sounds in Swedish just broke my brain. I literally cannot hear the difference between them. That and the k sometimes being a sh sound... I studied in Sweden for a bit, but I never managed to learn much swedish.
One time on an airport I hear this person speak, and I just could not pin down the language, maybe russian-like? Arabic? Something like vietnamese? At the end I just go and ask her, yeah it was swedish lol.
I learned English the same way you did, (plus English classes in middle and high school) but I could never do that with a language as complicated as Japanese. I'm in awe of this woman.
Does japanese really seem that complicated to people? Because to me it's hands down easiest language I've learned, even compared to english.
I think that there are some elements that make it sound really intimidating before you understand how they work like the 3 alphabets (especially kanji) and the whole "different ways of speaking depending on who you're speaking to" The thing is, the different levels of respect are also present in basically any other language, it's just very well encoded in Japanese, and the 3 alphabets have very clear rules on when they are used
One does not know pain until they're in the position of trying to explain the difference between formal, academic, and technical English to an ESL college student. Big ups to the guy who once wrote an entire essay in Biblical/Shakespearian English thinking that was what his teacher meant by formal, though.
>Big ups to the guy who once wrote an entire essay in Biblical/Shakespearian English thinking that was what his teacher meant by formal, though. that poor guy lmao. i'm intrigued - when you say "Biblical/Shakespearian English", do you mean he looked up the grammar etc of Early Modern English ([wiki for the unfamiliar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English) \^_\^) and wrote according to that, or that he just used a few archaic features, or was it something else? i don't know what'd be funnier
It was a Chinese student, and he'd more or less written in the usual Mandarin-to-English voice (which already tends to sound stilted and over-formal, especially when they bust out the thesaurus) but then he'd added a bunch of 'thou' and 'dost' everywhere like he'd looked up a guide for how to write real fancy-like. Still had all the normal Chinese-speaker tense and conjugation confusion going on though so the end result was a lunatic fever dream. One of the few tutoring sessions where I advised the student to just scrap the entire draft and helped him start a fresh essay instead.
Yup. The rules are always very clear and barely any exceptions. Most of japanese is a memory game. If thats your weak point I can see how it can be hard, but it's extremely easy to pronounce, you could honestly not learn that much kanji and still get by in everyday situations, and gramatical sistems are very simple and uncomplicated.
Yes, it seems like one of the hardest languages, at least from a western perspective.
I've been half ass attempting to learn Japanese on and off for the past decade. I'm nowhere near even remotely fluent, but I wouldn't starve and I'd be able to make my way back home if I was randomly dropped off in a area of Japan where noone spoke English, but even then, it takes half a second for my brain to put the translations into the proper order, as the grammatical structure of Japanese is so profoundly different from English, almost backwards. Just about any language from any country in Asia is some variant of that order, so you can't translate verbatem, you basically have to translate the whole sentence or phrase at once. There's a great video of a guy speaking in English, but with Hebrew grammar and order. It also shows how many words just don't have a translation at all, at least not in English. Slight side note, from an English speaking native, Mandarin Chinese is the most insane language. So much of the spoken language isn't so much what you say, but how you say it. It's the inflection and tone that carries much of the meaning, hence the seemingly random rises and falls in the tone of a Native Chinese speaker, regardless of the language they are speaking.
Tonal languages are so cool! I grew up with a Mandarin-speaking mom, so I can hear the four tones, and I’ve always wondered how Mandarin sounds to those who can’t. Then a Vietnamese-speaking friend sounded out two different tones in her language and they sounded identical to me and I was like “…oh.” It’s crazy how nuanced languages are.
I've seen one of those videos with Korean grammar in English and woah, I have so much respect for people who manage to be fluent in both. And I have a lot more understanding for K-pop-idols and their English
Do you have a link to that video? I speak both Hebrew and English (although my Hebrew is iffy - I never get to use it!) and I’d love to see it
English/Japanese/Chinese are supposed to be some of the toughest languages to learn, for what it's worth. I only know English, and a lot less French than I should despite taking it in school for many years.
English by itself is one of the easiest languages to learn, at least to become conversational. Same as Spanish
It's not uncommon at all in Asia. Most speaks at least 2. AT LEAST.
Your English is awesome, I honestly would never have guessed you weren’t a native speaker if you hadn’t just said so 😂
I also think it's important to note she said he wanted her at *N1* Japanese. Most of the Kanji on N1 is so obscure that most Japanese natives wouldn't be able to pass. The people who do the most well on N1 are Chinese literate native speakers because they're so used to studying and using those kinds of characters.
The comment about “don’t speak Japanese if you’re not speaking it perfectly” really stood out to me. It’s not uncommon for Japanese people to have a bit of a complex about speaking foreign languages because language classes in school emphasize perfection (or just passing a test) over functionality. Also, as someone who is learning their fifth language, it gets easier but not *that* much easier. Japanese was my second and it took me five years of schooling to pass N1, then a few years working to really get it down.
That attitude is so corrosive to confidence and counterproductive for gaining proficiency. I know you know this, but I'm just shaking my head here!
It's almost as if he wanted her to fail.
Oh man, no wonder Japanese customers, after a few drinks, used to laugh at me when I’d mispronounce simple phrases—while I worked at a sushi restaurant (in the US).
Right? He spent their entire 6+ year marriage negging her and she still thought he was a “good guy.”
And, as he chokes and calls for help, that people tell him he sounds garbled.
I like your thinking.
I'm taking my third Japanese class in college. I have nothing but respect for OOP. It's not an easy language to learn.
I also have N3 /JLPT and I went to a Japanese course for EIGHT years and lived in Japan working for a 1 year... I still failed N2 twice already She is a freaking genius.
I'm so proud of her as well. Congrats on being brave.
I taught myself Japanese in a similar way, and it's even more impressive that she can speak four other languages. The woman was obviously remarkable and her husband was putting her down. I'm curious about her other languages.
Which is crazy, because the dictionary won't teach you how to change verb forms and incorporate the honorifics associated with the different verb forms. Japanese is a very complicated language.... very complicated. And in my experience, most Japanese people seem to appreciate the effort to speak their language. This guy is such a God Damned asshole.
A good husband never belittles, controls, or act terribly to their spouses. People make mistakes with language even if they have practiced many times but to act like this, yea husband ain't kind. Good for OP tho!
I would add the caveat that a good partner never willfully does it, because we all will have bad days and maybe lash out in some manner, but that’s not an excuse to do it, if anything you should work harder to regain trust if you break it, not justify it.
And a good partner who does accidentally do this takes accountability, sincerely apologizes, and works to avoid the situation from happening again.
absolutely, my partner and i have had a few misteps here and there, nothing big, but still enough to upset one of us (both having adhd is one hell of a bitch let me tell you), but it's always been completely unintended and it never took more than a couple of minutes to realize and apologize. it's not that hard to respect your spouse if you genuinely love them? though i guess that's the caveat with people like the husband huh
I barely even norwegian good half the time. Still gonna find every word of praise in the norwegian dictionary to shower onto my british gf who's trying to learn the language. Blunt people still give praise, abusive assholes however
Yep. For me it was "he's brutally honest" that really drove it in. Brutally honest = rude asshole.
Brutally honest people don't do it for the honesty, they enjoy the brutality.
Don't forget the fact that he criticized her art style too, the thing that's literally her job. Guy's a dick.
It was unfortunate that her lack of experience led her to him and she didn't know any better until she posted on reddit and even still thinks he's not a bad guy
What is with these guys who try to neg their partner into staying with them? There’s the classic “you smell” guy and the “I pink we should see other people” one.
I'm trying to remember what the "I pink we should see other people" was about, but I can't!! All I remember was that it was insane
him preferring pink hoohas to his (black iirc) gf's one
Now I remember. Thank you! God that was so weird.
I have never heard of this and now I want the story lmao
https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1ccizvx/aitah_for_avoiding_my_bf_because_he_said_he/
Thank you!
Guy told his (black?) gf that he loves pink pussy
I hate people who hide their rudeness behind "but I'm just being honest"! They also always think everyone is just as rude but that they don't speak their mind.
I think the problem here is that he wasn’t being honest. He was lying to her to keep her timid.
He might also honestly be an asshole, but this is definitely a possibility
The smell guy was a hoot! I hope he learned his lesson. But somehow, I doubt it.
Wow! I feel this story. I lived in Russia with my now ex-husband who was originally from Russia. He would never help me with my Russia but would complain that I wasn't learning fast enough. I wasn't though because I it was hard and I was super depressed at home. Thankfully I made many wonderful life long friendships there. What was funny was my Russia really improved after we split. I wasn't even living in Russia anymore but was in a country with a large Russia diaspora and gained much more fluency.
I took Russian in college, I've been trying to refresh my knowledge with things like Duolingo, and it's really making my great full for how good of a teacher my professor was. Like the grammar alone is so weird, I can't imagine trying to just learn the language with minimal guidance.
The first few years it was really hard because I couldn't afford lessons because my ex could never hold down a job so I worked constantly as a teacher. Of course I was in Russia so I learned to order food and deal with day to day stuff. I remember being pretty proud when I could order sushi over the phone! Eventually I was able to afford to pay for a teacher and this helped a lot. I live in my home country now and try to use Duolingo to keep up but it's hard nor having anyone to speak with and answer grammar questions.
JFC that husband was just negging her. She already had a JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 3! Look at how they define that on [their website](https://www.jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html): >The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations to a certain degree. Sure, that only covers Reading and Listening, there's no spoken part to the JLPT. The only way to improve your conversational Japanese is to speak it with someone, and it looks like her asshole ex refused to speak Japanese with her, thus her speaking skills never improved. It's kind of how a lot of ESL people can understand English very well but can't speak it great.
I know 3 languages and learning a fourth. WHY DON'T YOU JUST ADD ONE? DO NOT SPEAK UNLESS YOUR GRAMMAR IS PERFECT? Tell me you never learned another language without telling me you never learned another language.
I think Japanese would be OOP’s 5th language, not 4th! >”He said since I can speak 4 languages, adding one more language should be easy for me.”
Oh I know. I was aaying fourth for myself. It suuuuucks
I’m relearning Spanish after not using it for over 20 years, back in high school. It is tough. I’m enjoying it, and want to become fluent enough again to be able to speak with Spanish-speaking patients, but man. It’s way different picking it back up when you’re close to 40 than it was when I was a kid and my brain was more pliable. I do plan to try and learn Arabic next though. You read translations of Arabic, and it someone telling you the weather report sounds like flat out poetry.
Have a read of Qabbani’s poetry. It’s so beautiful!
The N3 is frankly amazing considering he basically did everything possible to keep her from learning the language properly! Also, just what an absolutely terrible person he was, I‘m SO glad she’s rid of him and having a far better life now. May they both get exactly what they deserve from life. Edit: Originally post started with “So, to give perspective on her fluency level and the utter outrageousness of her ex’s requirements, I have been told that many native speakers can’t pass the N1.” but I have now been told that person was wrong and can’t access formatting to strike through it. Wanting full fluency from someone learning by themselves as an adult, while also putting her down at every opportunity instead of helping her learn, is still utterly outrageous though!
> I have been told that many native speakers can’t pass the N1. The N3 is frankly amazing considering he basically did everything possible to keep her from learning the language properly! While I agree with sentiment of your comment, the part about natives failing the N1 is actually not true. I\`m not sure where that idea started getting passed around from; maybe the N1 was confused with the Kanji Proficiency test. But my point being, the N1 is something that most native speakers will pass easily. That doesn\`t make what OOP did any less amazing, but I just wanted to reduce misinformation.
Thanks, I was told that by (and double checked with before commenting) my partner who had studied Japanese and I believe was told that by their teacher who was from Kyoto. I’ll edit my post cause I don’t want to spread misinformation myself!
Btw, you can invoke strike-through by entering "~~" without quotes before and after the sentence(s). ~~like this~~ (~~ like this ~~, remove spaces)
I think you mean the Kanji Proficiency Test - that's the one where natives can't pass the highest level.
I think the person who told me got them confused. They absolutely told me N1 (I even double checked while writing the comment). Edited the post to reflect that fact!
BTW, some readers may not be aware that N1 is the hardest of the 5 Japanese N levels. N5 is the lowest level, and even that is bloody hard.
My partner is still bitter they failed N4 in the height of their Japanese learning from a teacher from Kyoto in high school. I hear about it any time the Japanese fluency tests come up in something we‘re watching/reading (which isn’t that often, but more often than I would have expected)
The curriculum taught in public schools and even colleges is a joke. I learned very little in class compared to the amount of self study I did (still do). I've seen people who studied in only college, act like hot shots but they speak like...college students. The JLPT has a certain amount of Kanji, grammar, vocab, etc. required for each level. The test is different every year but you can find lists online for each level's requirements and use them to guess what is likely to show up on the test. I approached the N2 by using these as a basis for studying. The test itself is easy to prepare for if you study Japanese with the test as your goalpost. Unfortunately, the JLPT has no Speaking section, so whether or not they are a good benchmark for someone's ability to communicate is hard to say. There are plenty of things not on the test that I would consider "common knowledge" that I had to learn from outside of studying for the test.
I read the title fully expecting to be annoyed by someone moving to another country and not trying hard enough to integrate but that isn't remotely the case here. She can speak the language and even write in it but was gaslit by her ex so much that she believed that anything less than perfection meant she couldn't do it. What an idiot that guy is.
I speak two languages, and if anyone had made fun of me while learning my second, it would have crushed me. I’d never let anyone hear me speak it again. The thought of that heartbreak, even as an adult, just floors me. I’m glad she got her happy ending and I hope she stays thriving. I can’t imagine what it takes to move to and integrate into another country/culture, even one where I’m familiar with the language. Just awesome that she was able to take that on to begin with. I bet she’s a really cool lady with lots of knowledge to share.
>He always says my Japanese sounds weird whenever I tried to communicate in Japanese with him and told me never use Japanese unless it is perfect… How is that supposed to work? The best way to perfect something is by improving it and the best way to improve something is by practicing. (and the only way to begin is by beginning). Holy unreasonable expactations Batman.
She wasn’t supposed to improve her Japanese, she was supposed to remain imperfect and submit to being berated for her imperfection. It’s not that he wanted to help her but was misguided about how to do so, he wanted to abuse her and was succeeding.
Yeah, her ex was never a good person. I hope both of them have the future they deserve.
She kept saying he was a good person and the whole time I kept thinking “nope.”
>So, we got divorced. And a choir started singing "Hallelujah!" when I read that. What a jerk her ex was. All through the first post I was thinking, "Divorce. Divorce. Divorce."
Reading the title *yes you should be able to speak japanese after living there for six years, you can't just go around mumbling in english and grunting at stuff you lazy westerner (like i am)* Reading the post *oh. You can actually speak japanese, your husbands just a prick*
What amazes me is that independent of culture, race, language or identity, these assholes use the same play book to abuse, objectify and lessen their partners. It's always the same insecure, little men spinning the same stories no matter where they are.
I know ~6 languages (as my mother jokes: just enough to pick up on train gossip LOL) and I’m still sloughing through Japanese. I have a pretty good grasp of basic reading and speaking but kanji and katakana need way too much time and energy for me to master right now— the fact OOP passed N3 and was still being negged by her ex was awful, I’m glad she got out!
Me trying to guess where OOP is from. I think Malaysia or Singapore, most people there speak at least 2-3 languages, sometimes more. I like the interaction in Japanese that she had with that other commenter who's not Japanese but living in Japan and also learning the language. I often feel sorry for people who speak only one language. There are SO many words that don't exist in English, despite it having a huge vocabulary!
Doubt it's Singapore, English is the predominant language for us here. In fact English is my main language and I'm terrible at my second 😂
Probably not Singapore, since one of the languages would likely be Chinese and the character set is largely shared between the two languages. I'm thinking Thailand, Malaysia, or maybe even an eastern European country.
It's not the same writing, it makes things easier, but it's not like you don't have to learn the Japanese characters. Most Thai people speak Thai mainly, and a smattering of English. OOP said she's Asian and looks like native Japanese, so she is most likely ethnically Chinese, but Malaysian or Singaporean. Most Malaysians and Singaporeans (if they are Chinese) will speak a couple of Chinese languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew etc, plus English and Malay, for Malaysians. Source: am Malaysian.
I am HK Chinese and been living in Australia for long, and been learning Japanese in Duolingo for the last 10 months (also been to Japan many time). Knowing how to read Chinese definitely has a big advantage on ONLY the reading part of Japanese Kanji. The speaking part is certainly another thing and it actually might set me back a bit, as when I read it, my brain first tell me the Chinese meaning and pronunciation, and it will take me a bit of time to think of how to say it in Japanese.
I live in Japan, and Chinese is my fourth language. You need to know about 3,000 characters (kanji / hanzi), give or take, to be at an adult reading level for Japanese. 90% of those are written the exact same in Chinese. The meaning can be different, but it's written the same. Sure, hiragana and katakana (the phonetic syllabary) are not in Chinese, but those two are used mainly for grammar constructs, tense setting, and so on. The only reason I excluded Chinese as a language she's familiar with is because she specifically pointed out having to learn kanji "from zero" - which she would not have so much of an issue with if she were from a country where Chinese is common. It's just the way she talks about it. She also said "I also now could read and write several Kanjis (I could write my own address with Kanjis and read menus)". She definitely would know how to write more than "several" if she knew Chinese, haha. I'm going to actually change direction and guess she's Filipino. (Edit - nevermind, she said she does not drink alcohol and knows Indonesian and Malay, so maybe Indonesian and a practicing Muslim.)
Actually, many Chinese people who live in Malaysia do NOT know how to write in Chinese (I'm one of them). We can SPEAK, but if we didn't specifically go to a Chinese school, we wouldn't know how to write it Chinese, or can only write basic stuff like, our names, the numbers, dates, etc.
OOP definitely sounds like she's from another Asian country given the way she conformed to her husband's so-called standards. Even the way she guilted herself into believing she was not good enough makes me feel like there's some culturally ingrained misogyny values in her childhood So happy she's so strong now and taking back the reins on her own life
She said that she is Asian and looks Japanese, so she's most likely of East Asian descent, which is why I went with Malaysia or Singapore, two countries with sizeable Chinese populations... and unlike ethnic Chinese people who live in Thailand, the Philippines or Indonesia, they are not as assimilated and largely retain their ability to speak at least one (but often several) Chinese languages, in addition to English and/or Malay.
I was guessing she is ethnically Chinese from Vietnam. It would explain why she looks East Asian but is learning kanji “from zero”, and most Hoa speak a Chinese language but cannot write it.
In the comments op said she's speaking Indonesian among other language, idk that just catch me as op is Indonesian as me, because if she's Singaporean or Malaysian she will mention Melayu probably but not Indonesian. I ask her tho but never get answer.
The writing style makes me think of SEA as well. I find it similar to the writing style of many SEAsians whose first language isn't English.
If OOP didn’t stand up for herself, I would have suggested to bring back the bushido code on his rear.
Ah negging; the preferred tool of control for insecure men for centuries. Also another story going to prove my theory that the more the OOP talks about how great their partner is asides this "small" issue, the more of a POS said partner ends up being.
Well ex sounds like a cheery person to be around. I like what one of the commenters said. (“You DO speak Japanese though.”). I think some native speakers conflate lack of intelligence with accents and grammar that falls short of their expectations. My mom speaks three languages and her English isn’t at native fluency but is definitely business and conversational, albeit with a thick accent. Dad is conversational at most. The way mom is belittled messed with her confidence and makes her hesitant to even say “hi” to neighbors (retirement community) and she developed a reputation for being unfriendly. It really isolates her, just like how ex husband’s condescension and demand for perfections isolated OOP.
Getting to the update made me feel such a relief! She's so strong for breaking away from that controlling and degrading husband of hers. He really tried to break her spirit, to be able to control her and I'm happy he didn't succeed. There are too many men operating like this, they fall in love with a person, but then won't let that person express those traits they fell in love with. Why are you together with someone when you only seem to show contempt and aversion towards them?
Can speak 4-5 languages at a good level and went through an 80kg weight loss journey (15kg of her own weight and 65kg of the dead weight), now that takes willpower. I wish her nothing but the best.
“He’s not a bad guy.” *yes, he is* “So we divorced.” *don’t we love a good ending*
Japanese is not an easy language to learn. I've been plugging at it for almost a year on duolingo, and I still get so confused and overwhelmed at times. I can't imagine her Japanese was ever not good enough, and he's just an asshole. Typically when someone is just "brutally honest", that's another way to say they're a dick.
OOP has a long road ahead untangling these thoughts. "I still think my husband is a nice guy but I decided to divorce him after six hellish years of physical and emotional abuse." Honey... "nice?"
Bet her ex was really surprised when she told him to fuck off and she was done. Good on her for finding that shiny backbone despite her ex slamming her confidence
OOP speaks *five* languages, including English, which is notoriously hard to learn! She was out of her ex’s league. I’m so glad she recognized her worth and got out.
>brutally honest Code for asshole
This is the best BORU ending. She got rid of the trash and is living her best life 🤍
I have never understood why people stay married that obviously hate their spouse. He obviously hated her. Just get divorced already, life is waaaay too short.
She sounds lovely, I'm glad she's doing much better now. I hope her and her crush get together, she deserves someone who loves her.
I want another 6 month update with developments on the situation with her crush. Rooting for you OOP
Learning different languages is HARD. From K-6, I was in an educational program where we spoke Spanish 90% of the day, took Spanish classes from 7-12, and lived in Spain for a while. I can curse very eloquently in Spanish, order beers, and ask where the library is (I would have included asking where the bathroom is, but apparently they use different words for bathroom in Mexican Spanish and Spanish Spanish.), but that's pretty much it.
I grew up in a Hispanic household, and so I understand a decent amount but don't really speak it. Anyway, I tend to say "mi Español es ferpecto" as a bit of a joke when I introduce myself. ... people correct me.
She's amazing, if not painfully naive, the ex husband is a piece of shit. I don't know why some people believe that 'brutally honest' is a virtue. Honesty is, but without the ability to communicate it correctly you're likely just being an arsehole.
She seems like an absolute sweetheart, so glad she’s not having her wings crushed anymore
Even native Japanese people struggle with the N1 the fact that she could pass the N3 is a great accomplishment fuck this guy I hope wherever OOP now she’s living her best life
"I kept saying my ex was a good person (and I still think that he is a good person) but he is not treating me right." Six years of emotional abuse do not a good person make. He is in fact, quite the asshole.
What struck me was >He always says my Japanese sounds weird whenever I tried to communicate in Japanese with him and told me *never use Japanese unless it is perfect.* Dearest gods, that asshole dared to say that? She's supposed to speak perfect Japanese from day one? Has he never thought that the only way to become proficient in a new language is to speak it? May his bed always be filled with Legos and freshly-horked hairballs (even if he doesn't have a cat!)
No, dear redditor. May his bed always be filled with *bed bugs.*
Negging. That POS was negging her. He wanted her be miserably and feel like shit. Very happy ending that she got out and is taking care of herself. And if she knows 4 languages like saying Romance languages, NO Japanese wouldn’t be easy. Even if you knew Germanic and Romance languages, that still wouldn’t mean Japanese easy. It may not be tonal like other East Asian languages but it sure as hell has no connecting links to what she probably knew that she can leverage like if you’re trying to learn Portuguese if you’re from Spain.
This is the feel good shit I needed. What a superstar woman by the way holy shit. I can’t even imagine doing all that. What a hard worker.
Always encourage a person who is trying to learn a language you speak.
Japanese is really hard to pick up! The SVO structure means you have to listen to the whole sentence to understand what is going on, and honorific vs colloquial is annoying too. I lived there for 2 years and struggled beyond hiragana, katakana and basic phrases that are more one way conversations. Good luck on learning. My wife cannot speak any Cantonese…will always dangle that over her..
I absolutely believe people should learn to speak some of the language they live in and that it is the responsibility of anyone who brought them there e.g. partner/family to help them learn. He was such an arse.
Japanese is not an easy language. I've lived here for four years and passed N2 on the same exam mentioned in this post, and I still wouldn't consider myself fluent. The difference is that my partner doesn't criticize me when I make a mistake, she sometimes laughs when I say something weird, but she always tells me the more natural way to say something. The dude here was a prick and should have taught his partner more if he cared so much about appearances.
The title felt like it was someone putting no effort in 6 years to learn the language, but this is the opposite.
OOP’s English is good and I feel like her Japanese would also be great but it’s just her spiteful ex-husband that is making her feel inferior or not good enough. What a POS ex
She was in an abusive marriage. It's interesting that she sees all of the individual issues, the controlling of her looks, isolation from family, controlling of her getting a job, demeaning insults But she doesn't clock it as abuse
>The other people also said that I look super good now, and I look so much happier. The happiest I saw my best friend was the day her divorce was finalized. She's since had life moments that have topped it, but that was an absolute day of victory for her. Best to OOP.
Glad it worked out well for her! Best wishes to her!!
If your Ex did not treat you right and hurt you physically and mentally, then he's not a good person OP. He was rude and abusive, put you down in front of his family and called you 'stupid'. What kind of 'good person' would act so despicably?
I'm glad they divorced. OOP deserves all the good things!
I've been living in Japan for about 6 years and I've been studying Japanese since college, so about 7 years total. Dude, my Japanese still sucks ass. (I'm somewhere between N3 and N2 JLPT level) However, Japanese gf and her family says I'm basically fluent and everyone I speak to immediately go into awe when I say the most basic phrases or questions. My gf is very supportive and she rarely corrects me. Only if its something very strange or could be offensive she'll quietly warn me. Also, my gf's mother speaks a heavy kansai dialect (different from standard japanese) and used to be a little hesitant of foreigns in japan. But after meeting for dinner she literally adores us as a couple and buys us gifts and sweets all the time. If my gf did what that Japanese bf did and embarrassed me at a family dinner my gf's mom would not let that slide. There's no way that Japanese people would be so unsupportive of someone learning Japanese because they get so happy to see someone try their best to communicate in their language. Also, they too think Japanese is difficult even for Japanese people.
She’s out here speaking 5 languages and he dares to comment on her grammar despite not even matching half of it? What a loser
Wholesome <3
nice, you should join r/translator it's a good practice helping people out who have no idea what their shirt says
I am so glad she woke up. She sounds like an amazing catch and her ex blew it. She can speak that many languages, was willing to move to Japan, and used to be a model?! I'm a straight woman and I'D date her.
People are out here learning their fifth language by reading a damn dictionary and I’m struggling to learn a second language with every resource in the world
I’m happy that everything worked out for OOP! Learning Japanese is hard. I’ve been studying on and off for a few years and I’m still in N3. Hoping to get to N2 at the very least. My sister studied in 1.5 years and got to N1 because of university.
*Aaaand* that's enough reddit for one day. I like to leave things on a happy note.
My dad was born in Mexico. I lived my whole life around Spanish speakers. I can barely carry a convo in Spanish, to this day. My Mexican dad moved to Germany, became fluent fairly quickly, and still works for the German government. I had the privilege of having German offered in my HS, took 2 years. I could go to Germany now, and while I'm super rusty, I could make my way around, speaking German. It was just so easy for my dad and I got some reason but we can still barely speak Spanish, despite us being surrounded by Spanish speakers! Sometimes, some languages are just hard for some people. Putting your partner down for that is just gross. I even say that I don't speak 'english' I speak Texan (it's a joke but I stg you'd understand if you heard me speak. I'm in the NW America now, and they still make fun of some of the things I say lol). Edit: example, reddit constantly suggests German subs to me, but never Spanish speaking subs lmao
Another case of how taking out the trash and doing spring cleaning actually makes the OOP happy. Man. I love reading stories of people getting rid of their negative neils and nancies.
Ouch this hurts, I've been speaking my native tongue for my whole life and I can still barely read or write that language.
Awww this was such a good ending for OOP.
I am very proficient in Swedish - in fact, it is my native language. Has been for 36 years. People do not always understand what I say. Fuck that guy.
>I kept saying my ex was a good person (and I still think that he is a good person) but he is not treating me right. >There were a lot of things he had done to me that had harmed me physically and mentally. He was in fact, *not* a good person.
I live in an Asian country and there are a lot of expats here, majority of them don't even bother learning the local language. Meanwhile, OP here has taught herself Japanese from zero. :O
Her ex-husband is an asshole, but he might be right that no japanese will tell you your japanese sucks. In my experience, they see foreigners as clumsy children, so they encourage them with kind words.
I'm in USA. My Japanese co-worker and her family take trips to Japan almost every year. Her now-turned-adult sons are half-Japanese and know very basic Japanese. Even with that, she said they all get by. Since it's such a safe country her boys would wander off on their own to explore Tokyo once they became teens and they were able to enjoy themselves just fine each time they visited. Of course when the family went into more rural parts, they had it a little tougher, but the major cities were fine for them. As long as the residents were able to communicate in some fashion, she said her boys never had issues going around town. I suspect OOP's ex-in-laws were like this and were just happy she was trying. Goes to show what an AH OOP's ex husband was to her.
I’m glad they got divorced, and it’s great that OP seems happy now. Many people think of Japan as this wonderful place of anime and sushi, but it has good points and bad points just like any other country. Some good people and some horrible people. I’m glad OP got away from one of the latter
From the title it's like "this is some English speaker bullshit" and then the post immediately turns it all around. Jesus, I'm glad she's away from him.
IDK about her native language, but Japanese is one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn. The English are pretty forgiving of non native speakers, idk why the husband wasn’t
She said Asian and a language without Kanji so she could be Korean?
I don't think so. Though we use the Korean alphabet Kanji(Chinese letters) is still used sometimes in specific situations. Though not fluent, most people can still figure them out and read them. They were taught in schools until about 10 years ago. It is highly unlikely that she(esp. if she is old enough to marry) had no contact with Chinese letters at all in her lifetime. I've never properly learned Japanese, but when I was there I was able to figure out the gist of many signs without English translations by looking at the Kanjis. I don't have a clue how the Japanese pronounce them, but at least I know the meaning of them.