>>45334237So from my experience I’ve seen both
I’ve seen people learn some basics (kana, some pronunciation, maybe some basic words and phrases) in Japanese before taking classes
Some have done way more
I’ve also seen people start with only what they know from anime but they were motivated people and got on really quick and if they wanted to they learned incredibly fast like this one guy in my class
I have an online friend who’s teaching himself jp to talk to doujin artists
And when we had Japanese students over people got to really improve their conversational skills
Being able to do a skit without a script in front of your face in Japanese is something you’re expected to do within a semester of Japanese
Some people don’t have the passion for it though, it does take a lot of maintenance to keep up the skill
