Learning Languages: The Super Difficult Way

 I have never been quiet about the fact that I have huge admiration for people who can learn multiple languages. I took Spanish classes in high school and Japanese in university. Since then, I have done online studying and taken books out of the library, bought language learning software, and more. All in all, I am bad at learning languages. One of the things that has really worked for me, if in an excessively slow way, is Duolingo. I've been using it for around two and a half years now. I'm not very far into it, I only know about 500 words. 

All that said, I am an eager and active study partner, if slower than I would like. So when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to study with her for her university class, I jumped on the chance. Since the class is offline, I spent some time trying to answer the test questions she sent me on paper. That was when I discovered something very interesting that I hadn't realized before. 

Part of my inability to grasp the language is due to my aphantasia. 

How did I discover this? On my phone, I can type Japanese really quickly, identify the characters, and even a good couple dozen characters I am starting to pick up on.  However, when I tried to write down the answers on paper, I couldn't remember what any of the symbols looked like. 

This isn't particularly new to me. I remembered, very vaguely, having that problem when I took Japanese in university. What I hadn't realized then was that part of the reason I was having trouble is that unlike many of my fellow studies, I couldn't just recall what the specific hiragana or kanji looked like and draw it from there. I was left suddenly wondering if I hadn't actually learned them. However, it couldn't be that since I've actually found myself able to read lyrics in Japanese on some of the videos I've been watching lately. 

I finally realized that it was because of my aphantasia. I can't see the pictures, so I can't recall them that way from memory. The only thing I've found that works so far, is forcing myself to learn from muscle memory, where you do the very dull work of writing out words and letters like a kindergartener on coffee. By giving my fingers and hands muscle memory, I can commit them to memory, forcing them to stay in the little box I have set aside for them. 

The main con of learning languages this way is that its slow. Very slow. As in I'll have to spend hours daily, simply writing out the alphabet, over and over right now. That said, I don't know if there is a faster way to do this without keeping a picture beside me at all times. I will research and continue forwarding the long slow work of putting pencil to paper, but if any of you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.