anIME ! an extra key to perfecting your Japanese

[rankaku]

Hey, im new here,my name rankaku^^ im from holland(so dont mind my english grammar and spelling),
i started with beginner lessons
at the moment im at 34 after 2 days just reading everyting a few times and
listening the line by line audio once i remembered everything
now thats quite quick right? or is it just me:D..

reading 1-34 twice , some 3 times
listened to the audio once...
and i all ready remembered everything and able to speak quit nicely with it

howcome you wonder?
wellllllll!! anime is the key
i have been watching LOTSSSS of anime since 3 years , since i love martial arts i watched em all and even more lately since i felt i was able to understand alot without subtitles
(i just needed to learn it so came here!)

now it doesnt need to be an anime
could also be a serie with subtitles in your language if you can find that...
however we in Holland are ALL able to speak english just because we grew up seeing it on TV, its the same with this so for all you out there who like to speed up there training i reccommand watching some anime or alot of anime:D
i still have alot of sentences and words in my mind i know in japanese witch i didnt come across yet in de beginner lessons sooo!
the 3 year watching helps alot! and i keep watching haha

well if somebody allready said something like thiss
im sorry, but for who that didnt read that well try it !

[Abrassart]

Well, the thing with anime is they don't teach you about the japanese culture. Well, they teach you one very specific aspect of the japanese culture: the geek/otaku culture.

But the japanese culture is really so much more than just manga and anime...

[rankaku]

so des nee
but i have to say i like what i have seen,
and it made me like japan .
but i actually always liked it since alot of martial arts are from japan
and such:)
by the way there are alot of different anime manga's
and i def. picked up alot of things about the culture
altho there is lots more:) i guess

[Comazon]

so des nee

It's actually sou desu ne if I'm not mistaken, and that's a good example of where anime can backfire on you. I personally love anime and indeed have learned a great deal from it, but I also taught myself some basic Japanese (like sentence structure and writing hiragana/katakana). Now I learn from anime probably 3x faster than before, as all the talking just seems to click more easily (though I'm still learning outside of anime as well).

And be careful with anime, as a lot of the characters will talk extremely informally or rudely. If you ever go to Japan and start calling people "kisama" or even "kimi," you're going to be amazingly rude. Even the verbs used in anime are usually informal ("desu" vs. "da," for example).

I'm actually all for anime watching to help you learn (though not the fastest, it is really fun ), but I can't emphasize enough how important it is to get a basic understanding of Japanese outside from anime.

Well, says me....a person who just asked for translation help on the forum... ^_^;;

[rankaku]

so desu ne
yeah but dont like to type the u
makes me remind my own language ^^
however
thanks for telling me , i allready thought so but didnt expect it to be to rude tho
also i noticed they dont use "desu" in the polite way that much
also when talking with friends , but i understand why..

thats a pity:( i always liked the "kimi dare"

thats why i came here:D but it did help right...

[Comazon]

also i noticed they dont use "desu" in the polite way that much

Wait, I'm confused. "Desu" is the polite and more formal form of "da." I'm not sure if you have it the other way around or I'm just misreading it.

[rankaku]

haha thanks for that it is something wich wasn't reeeaaaallyy clear to me
arigato!

[Girumon]

Your typing style burns my eyes.

Anyway, Ive been watching anime for at LEAST 7 years...and...its pretty much useless when it comes to Japanese. Sorry, its just way too informal and you wont impress anyone by speaking the way they do in anime.

[rankaku]

aha...so it is about impressing people...and not about knowing everything there is?
WELLLL it must be the way you watch em!
being able to speak in al kind of manners.
im one of the people who like to know about that:)
and in anime people use all kind of vocal accents .
wich after hearing a few time youll also be able to understand that

all im saying me and over 10 people i know experience the same thing
with watching anime:)

but its also possible with japanese zenders,websites with media etc
all im saying it really helped me and more people so it will help more

[Abrassart]

all im saying me and over 10 people i know experience the same thing
with watching anime:)

Well, I'm kinda of skeptical here.

For instance, when we learn english in Belgium, of course we can watch a lot of american movies. But it's not because we watch a lot of them in original version than it help learning english.

Of course, when you are in the process of learning, you can use it as a listening exercise. But not when you're not at all learning the linguage. If you don't have any knowledge, you won't catch anything, and you won't learn anything.

A second very important point is if you listen with or without subtitle. I really started learning english when I choose to watch movie without the subbtitle. Because when you have the subbtitle, you don't really learn a lot. But that demand a certain amount of knowledge already, or you don't understand a thing.

And has it was pointed out above, in Japanese, on top of all that, anime is way too informal. So it's really difficult to transfer what you learn in your japanese course (formal and soft informal if I can call it that way) to anime (hard informal).

Well, it's not that I'm not convince by what you say, it's just that I'm not convince.

If it's true, well good for you... Doesn't really matter anyway...

[quizzieness]

To me, it seems like people automatically dismiss the notion of learning Japanese through anime, critcising anime as too informal and rude, and impractical for use in Japan. I feel this is a generalisation or a set response that has pervaded our Japanese learner communities.

Although there are anime that have extremely rude Japanese that would cause you nothing but trouble (these animes are usually the fighting/action types), there are also anime about school life or daily life that have characters speaking normal everyday Japanese. At the other end of the spectrum, you have some textbook robotic conversations that no one in their right mind in Japan would have.

Learning japanese through anime would cover your listening skills quite nicely but your vocabulary and grammar would become very limited. You just have to choose wisely as to how you learn and I'm sure there are many paths you can take to reach the standard where you are comfortable with the language.

[Jason]

I agree. It all depends on the anime you learn from. Anime genres run the gamut, and accordingly so do the styles of speech used in them. I've picked up some very polite/formal and more obscure/historical type stuff from it in addition to the rude and really informal. It also introduced me to Kansai-ben (and Osaka-ben in particular) which I promptly fell in love with. <3

I think anime and other TV shows can be good supplements to learning Japanese as long as you know what you're getting into and have some idea about the context of the speech being used. It's vital to have a solid understanding of "proper" Japanese to understand that context. TV shows can give you can insight into aspects of the language that textbooks and such don't cover.

[Alan]

I started watching anime after starting to learn japanese & for quite a while the informal japanese I learned (from a grammar book) to help understand the anime, was totally separate from the more formal language taught in class. However, once you get onto the more complex sentences, you need to know all the informal stuff as well, so none of the extra effort was wasted.

However to learn anything, you have to listen hard and keep a grammar book & dictionary handy. My technique is to watch through once with subtitles & just enjoy the film or anime & then run it through again, usually with the subtitles up, but without reading them unless I get stuck. Reading the subtitles actually makes japanese comprehension more difficult as you are trying to listen to two things at once and due to non-literal translation they often differ a bit. I'm not sure that this is a particular efficient way of learning, but it's more fun than endless word lists (although I do both).

The main downside I see, is that you have to learn to use appropriate politeness levels earlier on that would otherwise be taught. Often I know how to say something informally (or downright rudely), but don't know the right way to say it formally.

The main upside is the boost it's given to my listening comprehension speed. It's also good for helping me get the right vowel lengths in the words, although it's necessary to keep checking the dictionary for spelling. (I get this wrong a lot) There are a few words I've learnt from listening, which I haven't found in the dictionary yet, which means I've not heard them quite correctly. BTW you will need a big dictionary for this game. Seriously, a modest sized learners dictionary won't cut it.

Jason mentioned accents. If you watch Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, they keep swapping between Kansai-ben (more specifically Osaka-ben) and Standard Japanese. The same character will use either depending on how posh (or chatty) they are feeling. I'm finding this quite difficult, but a fun challenge.

So, overall, I'm all for it,as it's so much fun, but as a complement to formal learning; Don't expect to learn japanese just by reading subtitles