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Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

tokyodev.com

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#21

Contraversial opinion perhaps, I don't think the cards or the game itself took him to fluency. Probably the social contact. I mean N2 (JLPT levels run from N5 competent beginner to N1). Is really quite advanced. Being N2 is far further than many will ever make it into learning Japanese. To arrive at N2 is very impressive. I think typically N3 is minimum for work on Japan (outside of lower end jobs or things like TEFL…

Also N2, even N1, is generally not remotely fluent. Plenty of Chinese can pass N1 and still failed to have a conversation. Further, it's easy to pass N2 and/or N1 and still not be able to read most novels or listen to most movies when they get to things like legal proceedings, military strategy, science. All things that people can easily do when actually fluent

When it comes to the practical results it doesn't matter. Japan is a society that values rubber stamps over actual competency/performance. If you can present an N1 certificate to an employer you're more likely to be hired than someone who's fluent without it (assuming they aren't Japanese)

Source: live and work in Japan

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this new future where every post has comments about whether AI was involved or not!

That's just in the short term. After a few years people will be complaining this posts sounds like it was written by meat.

You mean the meat communicates?

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#27
This account could be an interesting case study for the comprehensible input hypothesis of language acquisition. Narrowing the language domain and pre-studying vocabulary may have helped the effectiveness of the study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

Re: Magic: The Gathering took me from N2 to Japanese fluency

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure an AI write up

Certainly AI editorialised. I wonder if this is because English isn’t their first language, and they are confidence compensating. I’ve worked with a lot of folks also from Philippines and the Tagalog/English mix leads to some confidence challenges sometimes.

Recommend everyone take this test: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/09/business/ai-w...

You might be surprised…or you might not. I’ve found it’s a good barometer for whether you actually don’t like AI writing or you just don’t like bad AI writing.

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