1230 or so is a good put strike for April I think on the conservative side. 1250 to push it a little more.
BTW, for an English speaker with any linguistical ability. Korean & Japanese take 7-8 months tops before you can fully function in society, watch TV, read the paper, etc. I'm learning Mandarin right now though, and I have to say that it is a bit harder because it isn't phonetic. I do think that if you want to shake most of the foreigner accent you really do have to live in that country for at least a year.
You must be really language talented to get such results. I read the study showing that for most people, once they come to the US later than 9-12 years old, some foreign accent stays with them forever.
I agree. Spoken Japanese is actually easier than SPanish in many ways and I was able to pick it up easily. But then again languages are my thing lol. Reading and writing are life long tasks since the Japanese themselves spend their whole school life learning that. But to speak it, quite doable. After a summer living there after 2 years of Japanese in college I was scatting and be-bopping in Japanese. And talk about fitting in. I was in a small city in the countryside (Okayama) where there were barely any Round Eye. And being 6' did not help lol. Little kids would point and want my autograph to see me write in English. Store keepers would kind of shrink away (they are embarassed to use their English) until I dropped some J-nese on them and then their faces lit up with smiles. I did play basketball with another American on a local basketball team and it took a long time before I oculd get used to the fact that I was always asked to play CENTER! Not that there wasn't 2 or 3 guys who were also 6' but they were thin lol. But they run like rabbits non-stop the whole game. Unfortunately without daily use of it here I lost most of the language
That is why I said "MOST" of the accent. Over the phone, once in a while I would talk to someone that knew I was a forienger. One time, I was having a hard day speaking and a lady on the phone thought I was a drunk Korean. That was humbling. I think the trick is to watch the news. Anchormen/women generally speak the language very well. You might not pick up on the colloquillisms but you'll sound native after a while.
Cache: Your observations on the difficulty of learning another language (esp. Asian) suggests that you have a gift for learning languages. To expect to lose a foreigner accent in 1 year is amazing to me. I speak fluent German and even learned it as a kid. After two years in Switzerland (I could already speak fluent German when I first got there), I could fool the Austrians into thinking I was German and the Germans thought I was Dutch. But I still had an accent. Of course now after 15 years of non-practice, the old American "r" gives me away every time. Korean and Japanese in 7 to 8 months, wow! Read the Asian characters in that time as well?? How many languages do you speak?
I'm also 6'1" and I had blonde hair. I was there in 98' (the year of "Titanic"). If I heard Dicaprio whispered as I walked by, one more time I thought I would scream. LOL
I disagree that learning in 7-8 months involves reading and writing kanji as well in Japanese. If you have intensive language study for a year and live there, you will speak in a year or so. Writing and reading........not in Japanese for the average person. Kanji have 2 or 3 menaings and pronounciations and whem merged with other kanji have numerous meanings. I got a Kanji dictionary and it has 500 entries or so and is about 1000 pages!!!