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When I started learning Japanese, one of the many things that I struggled with
was registering the one-syllable particles that I heard when practicing
listening. This was especially difficult for long sentences, as sometimes the
meaning of a particle was not known until the end of the whole sentence. (For
example, on hearing Aさんに, one does not know immediately what is going on
regarding A–did the speaker give A a gift, learn something from A, get
criticized by A, request a favor from A, make A cry, or was the speaker made
to cry by A?) I had to try to temporarily memorize the particles as
sound/symbols and only at the end of a sentence could I convert those into
information. Japanese being a particularly
[fast](https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/language-speed) spoken language made
it even harder.

Recently I noticed that I was struggling less than before with particles
during listening practice. I am not sure whether I got better at catching them
or whether I was just "reconstructing" the particles. (For example, if one
hears 銀行...金...預ける, one knows it has to be 銀行に金を預ける.)

If the latter possibility is the case, am I developing a bad habit? I mean,
depending on whether native/fluent speakers do the same, I could be heading
closer to or away from becoming fluent. Native/fluent speakers, if
hypothetically you are given a dictation test with plenty of verbs, nouns and
adjective that you do not know, will you still be able to accurately note all
the particles with ease?

Edit: This post is of course for the benefit of me as a learner. But beyond
that, I hope that a discussion on how native/fluent speakers process languages
can be of general interest.
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question
particles listening
Do native/fluent speakers filter out (and "reconstruct") some particles they hear?
If you are starting to ignore particles and rely on guesslation, that's a bad
habit. For example, if you ignore the difference between は and が, you will
easily run into a trouble like
[this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/57911/5010). But if you are
becoming less conscious of particles (or grammar in general) while listening,
that's a good thing. Native children speak fluently without even knowing what
particles are. Of course particles are often omitted in casual speech, but it
happens under certain rules. If a particle is replaced or removed
inappropriately, native speakers definitely notice it and get confused even in
hasty conversations.

When listening to a long sentence, native speakers do (unconsciously) remember
each particle they hear until they get the matching predicate. See this for
example: <https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/44447/5010>

Note that there are also deeply nested sentences in English, and fluent
English speakers parse them without thinking. When a sentence starts like the
following, you unconsciously keep track of how deep you are at, and "wait" for
the matching expression.

> (Although (the moment (I heard (there was a mountain (that has a huge cave
> at the...
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answer