“Usseewa” singer and One Piece voice actress seems unclear on how long it takes to learn a foreign language.

With Japanese pop culture becoming increasingly popular around the world, it’s getting more common for members of the Japanese entertainment industry to spend extended periods of time overseas, either to study the local language, forge relationships with international distributors, or just to get a new perspective that helps them connect with fans in other countries. Still, it came as a surprise to many that one of Japan’s biggest recording stars has been living in the U.S. since November.

Of course, it was a little easier for this celebrity’s overseas lifestyle to stay under the radar, since the singer in question is Ado, who burst onto the J-pop scene with her smash-hit debut “Usseewa” in 2020, but who has never publicly revealed her face, even when doing meet-and-greet handshake events.

Two years ago Ado and Southern California-based Geffen Records, part of Universal Music Group, announced that they were entering into a partnership to expand her musical reach to a global scale. However, no announcement had been made that Ado was in the U.S. until the singer herself mentioned it in a post on her official Twitter account, which also revealed that not everything has been smooth sailing during her time in the States.

“Totally late to be mentioning this, but I’ve been living in America since November,” begins Ado’s tweet in Japanese, before switching to English to add “I have been in the US since November, after all this time. But I still can’t speak. What on earth am I doing here?”

The 21-year-old Ado provided more information on her language-barrier struggles in a follow-up tweet, saying “But my listening is better than before and I can shop alone. Maybe.”

The response from English-typing fans was swift and sympathetic, praising Ado for the progress she’s made so far and encouraging her to not give up, with many offering up their own stories of struggles trying to learn foreign languages, including those who’re learning English as a second language themselves.

Those are all excellent, kindhearted sentiments. However, speaking as someone who also at the age of 21 said “You know what? I’m gonna move to another country on the other side of the Pacific, and I want to be able to speak the local language while I’m there!” I can’t help feeling that there are a few other things to keep in mind, and the first one is this: Learning a foreign language takes a long time.

It takes an especially long time if your goal is to actually use a foreign language in open-ended, outside-the-classroom conversations with native speakers, where the topics of conversation aren’t bound by a curated set of vocabulary words and grammar patterns being focused on to interconnect with specific teaching points. Just how long it takes to get to that level of proficiency varies from person to person, and while living in-country while trying to acquire those language skills generally speeds up the process, it’s generally not something that’s going to happen in a month unless your conversation partners are making some significant concessions to your skill level such as speaking much more slowly and using far simpler vocabulary than natives usually do.

So honestly, being able to go shopping on your own after just one month (or even just thinking you can maybe handle that challenge) is pretty impressive. It’s definitely not a sign that you don’t have a knack for languages, or proof that your progress is slower or more painful than other language students’, especially when you take into account another follow-up tweet from Ado, from which it seems like she might not actually be actively taking English classes while living in the U.S.

▼ “Sorry, but I totally used machine translation for this. I’m just staying here [in America] and will be returning to Japan (What did I come here for?)”

My earlier comment about “Learning a foreign language takes a long time?” That’s really only half the equation. The other necessary input is a lot of effort.

That’s not to say no one picks up any communication skills naturally just by being exposed to a to-them foreign language in their daily life, or that becoming conversant requires years of grinding and wringing out every last drop of energy from your brain and soul. It is to say, though, that if after a month of hanging out in a foreign country your level of language proficiency is still at “I can usually go shopping without any major problems,” that’s not cause for concern, or even surprise. Not satisfied with that, and want to be able to do more with the language? Totally understandable, but until you’ve put in some more time and effort, it’s probably too soon to get discouraged, and keeping your expectations realistic will also let you keep your energy in reserve for improving your language skills.

Source: Twitter/@ado1024imokenp (1, 2, 3) via Otakomu
Top image: Pakutaso
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