[OtakuDao]

Originally Posted by liamash3

@Conduit
I want to do that, go visit Japan for a few months/year. I'm still in secondary, though (Year 11), so my best bet is to go a few years later. Shame it'd be so darn expensive, and of course the language issue would be a problem for most things (I think shopping for basic supplies is the only thing it wouldn't really matter on...).

@OtakuDao
Do all colleges have Japanese as a language course? I think I'll need to check if my local ones do...thanks for the idea.

Hmm, I'm sure MOST colleges do. I'm not that knowledgeable about colleges yet since I am only in High School myself. But as far as language courses go I'm PRETTY sure most colleges have a Japanese class. At least in the states they do.

Originally Posted by Lyss

On the risk of sounding redundant, I'll add my two cents here.

It's not completely possible to learn Japanese merely by watching anime. Of course, it is, but not completely unless you take at least a beginner's class in the language, to know the basics. I will say that you can learn vocabularies and even grammar through watching anime -- I have. I've learned several method of verb conjugation simply from watching anime, by using subs -- reading subtitles while listening to the spoken words is Super Effective. After a while you'll notice that if someone "wants" to do something, the verbs end in a certain way. The same goes with simple words -- after a while, you'll realize that if the subs say something about "fate" (for example) you'll hear a certain word being said. So, it is possible to learn some things and have a general, basic understanding, but there are also accents, slang, and shortened versions of words and verbs to be taken into account.

Even if you don't particularly care about reading or writing the language, it's best to take a few community college courses or purchase some books that deal exclusively with romaji. 501 Japanese Verbs published by Barron's Foreign Language Guides and Japanese Verbs & Essentials of Grammar by Rita L. Lampkin are some books that I could recommend. Unfortunately the other ones I have all deal with kanji or kana.

Um, I have been thinking of writing a Japanese language guide for AT, if anyone would be interested in it that is.

Well, A lot of us here would rather just learn the language as understandment itself. Katakana, Kanji, and Hiragana are really just the written portion and takes more time to learn. Personally, I think getting familiar with the language by Anime is quite possible. Of course as far as verbally speaking it yourself you might have some difficulties.

& I think a Japanese language guide could be interesting. Feel free to give it a shot.

[liamash3]

@venomqo
Bit too far for me. I happen to be in Victoria, but I do have cousins about there... (they're in Perth - that's near Queensland, no?).

@Lyss
I'd love to have a free Japan language guide on AT! Better yet, it'd be made by an anime lover (or anime lovers, if it's going to be a shared task), so it could have things related to it in there

@OtakuDao
Thanks for that. I'll need to remember to check when I go to uni in two years. You mentioned you are in high school/secondary. What year? I've only been in year 11 for 3 days and the homework amount/workload is much bigger than year 10

[chococya96]

Originally Posted by NLwino

If you actually have read what was said in this topic you would know it´s not about reading at all. Only about the possibility to learn to follow anime without subs. Please read before you troll

Not trolling, its a fact.

You think just by watching anime, without any proper learning by professional Japanese teachers, will make your Japanese fluent? nah, anime is just an icing on top of the cake. For the cake itself, you can't build that up without any proper education. That's for any other languages.

Sure you can pick up one or two "words" or "phrases" and you go, "oh I know this!". But can you even write a proper sentence with correct grammar and punctuation in Japanese (with kanji of course)? I think not...

Your logic of learning Japanese by watching anime disturbs me. Watching anime/movies/dramas may help your learning process in listening but nothing else after that. That's why I said its an "icing on top of the cake".

Oh, and I know my shit. I've been learning Japanese since high school and majoring it in 2nd year uni right now. And I can tell you learning a language is one hell of a work for any people.

Your no different from weaboos saying: "I learn Japanese while watching anime!! so KAWAIII!!!!"...

GTFO please.

お前は日本語を習う資格がない。　

[NLwino]

Originally Posted by chococya96

Not trolling, its a fact.

You think just by watching anime, without any proper learning by professional Japanese teachers, will make your Japanese fluent? nah, anime is just an icing on top of the cake. For the cake itself, you can't build that up without any proper education. That's for any other languages.

Sure you can pick up one or two "words" or "phrases" and you go, "oh I know this!". But can you even write a proper sentence with correct grammar and punctuation in Japanese (with kanji of course)? I think not...

Your logic of learning Japanese by watching anime disturbs me. Watching anime/movies/dramas may help your learning process in listening but nothing else after that. That's why I said its an "icing on top of the cake".

Oh, and I know my shit. I've been learning Japanese since high school and majoring it in 2nd year uni right now. And I can tell you learning a language is one hell of a work for any people.

Your no different from weaboos saying: "I learn Japanese while watching anime!! so KAWAIII!!!!"...

GTFO please.

お前は日本語を習う資格がない。　

Again your not even reading the text. I know you can't learn Japanese fluent from anime. Or that you can't learn to read or write it. Please go back and read this thread and then respond again. And you will know I never said such a thing.
And for your information I was already a decent English speaker before I ever got a single English lesson. All learned from watching television. And no it's not my native language. That's why I was wondering HOW MUCH one can learn from watching anime. And got many useful responses from the people in this thread. You are not one of them.

[OtakuDao]

Originally Posted by liamash3

@venomqo
Bit too far for me. I happen to be in Victoria, but I do have cousins about there... (they're in Perth - that's near Queensland, no?).

@Lyss
I'd love to have a free Japan language guide on AT! Better yet, it'd be made by an anime lover (or anime lovers, if it's going to be a shared task), so it could have things related to it in there

@OtakuDao
Thanks for that. I'll need to remember to check when I go to uni in two years. You mentioned you are in high school/secondary. What year? I've only been in year 11 for 3 days and the homework amount/workload is much bigger than year 10

Sophomore Year, so I guess you can call it "Year 10".
I live in New York the education here is very strict, Many useless exams I need to pass and many of those exam credits don't even work out of NY >_>.

& If your wondering as far as language goes in my high school, It's mostly ONLY Spanish and Chinese.

[gonzozoid]

I've been watching anime for 8yrs. I had to buy a visual Japanese/English dictionary to realize how insignificant the stuff I picked up was. But, hey...I'm no genius.

[chococya96]

Originally Posted by NLwino

Again your not even reading the text. I know you can't learn Japanese fluent from anime. Or that you can't learn to read or write it. Please go back and read this thread and then respond again. And you will know I never said such a thing.
And for your information I was already a decent English speaker before I ever got a single English lesson. All learned from watching television. And no it's not my native language. That's why I was wondering HOW MUCH one can learn from watching anime. And got many useful responses from the people in this thread. You are not one of them.

I know that you didn't say such thing. I've read your post couple of times before I wrote my 2nd reply. But to me, you sound one of those weaboos who boast about learning Japanese by watching anime.

It just pisses me off that some people think they can learn another language just by watching some "entertainment" or going to that country because they love it so much... I know that your not one of them but you just sound like them.

Sorry if I offended or "troll" you but yeah... I've dealt with plenty of retards who think they can learn another language with blink of an eye. To a person like me who studied his ass off to learn Japanese and still not even perfect, seeing these kind of people just make me so irritating.

I'll stop now since its my misunderstanding of you.

Peace.

[ketaro]

Originally Posted by chococya96

I know that you didn't say such thing. I've read your post couple of times before I wrote my 2nd reply. But to me, you sound one of those weaboos who boast about learning Japanese by watching anime.

It just pisses me off that some people think they can learn another language just by watching some "entertainment" or going to that country because they love it so much... I know that your not one of them but you just sound like them.

Sorry if I offended or "troll" you but yeah... I've dealt with plenty of retards who think they can learn another language with blink of an eye. To a person like me who studied his ass off to learn Japanese and still not even perfect, seeing these kind of people just make me so irritating.

I'll stop now since its my misunderstanding of you.

Peace.

You're rereading his first post you say, but he's telling to you read what he's been saying in all of his posts lol. He asked you to reread the thread, and actually meant the entire thread xD

From my understanding, he's basically been saying that he understands that he can't actually learn the language from just watching anime, but that he occasionally can 'understand' what is being said or what is happening without physically knowing what the characters are saying outside of picking up maybe a familiar and easy word here or there in each sentence. Made easier if you're only just watching the same or a few kinds of genres so most of the series he's watching all have similar situations so what is being said is usually all similar. Kinda like figuring out what is going on if you were to hit the mute button while watching anime without subtitles, I would assume.

[NLwino]

Originally Posted by ketaro

From my understanding, he's basically been saying that he understands that he can't actually learn the language from just watching anime, but that he occasionally can 'understand' what is being said or what is happening without physically knowing what the characters are saying outside of picking up maybe a familiar and easy word here or there in each sentence. Made easier if you're only just watching the same or a few kinds of genres so most of the series he's watching all have similar situations so what is being said is usually all similar. Kinda like figuring out what is going on if you were to hit the mute button while watching anime without subtitles, I would assume.

Yea kinda like that. But there are many easy sentences that I can completely understand. Basically have been watching anime without subs allot more recently. I choose anime's that seem "easy to follow" and turn the subs off. Mostly slice-of-live type of anime's. One third of the conversations I can follow without any problems, another third I can follow by picking up the words I do know or by using the images. And the other third I have to rewatch with subs. Might seem like allot of trouble to go back every time and rewatch allot. But I just seem to enjoy anime a little more this way. Simply because I hate reading. That's why I was wondering if there are ways to improve this, without having to start a entire new study. I do believe if I keep this up it will turn into 40%/40%/20% and perhaps even into 50%/45%/5% eventually (talking about years here). At least for the easier anime's

[dokidokifr]

Originally Posted by NLwino

So slow in fact that there are times I cannot keep up with the subs.

I'm a fast reader and yet there are times when so much is subbed that I can't take it all in in one go.

A good media player (I use SMPlayer) will have a skip back function to hop back 5-10 secs so you can take another shot at it. That and pause are very useful for stuff like in Mirai Nikki where the diary text is translated.

And I feel I can't fully appreciate the artwork of some anime's while focusing on the subs.

If I think an animé has been especially well drawn or nice to look at, I would skip back to the beginning and watch it again, this time doing the dialogue (roughly) from memory. I did this a lot with Kamichu! which was an odd series, but nice to look at.

I've heard people say you can't, but I feel like I already learned quite allot

Japanese is a fairly complicated language - the variety of honourifics, the way sentences are constructed, the choice of words to convey an idea. It's quite a job to get started with a language and expect to reach any level of competency just by listening. It is also worth remembering that if you watch broadly similar things (slice-of-life-at-school for example), you may come across a number of phrases and expressions that are common for the genre, but might leave you stuck if you branch out to something such as Ergo Proxy that'll have a whole different set of words and phrases. :-)

Sure, you can pick up stuff. I remembered "moichido" from an AKB48 song and I happened to hear it in a Chihiro Onitsuka song, so I looked around for a translation. It means "again". Everybody knows the word "baka!". There's a bunch of other phrases I've picked up. None of them would really equate to a complete sentence, and absolutely none of it would give me the knowledge to rearrange words to form my own sentence, except in narrow cases where one-word answers would suffice (hai! ie! moichido! waku-waku!!).

Put it like this: if I was to introduce myself to the cute Japanese girl of my dreams, that's not going to come from animé. That's going to be a lot of concentration with a course specifically designed to teach a language.

I learned more and more words.

As you have a reading difficulty, might I suggest you try an audio-based course? Pimsleur do one, it's a series of half-hour lessons in MP3 format. This will teach you more practical stuff than understanding animé, but as it would hopefully give you pointers as to how sentences are constructed and such, it might be useful when it comes to animé.

The Pimsleur course is commercial and not free.
You might prefer to try NHK's (free) course? [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

-Characters with accents are hard to follow.

Isn't the "accent" pretty much kansai?
That said, as a British person, try following heavy Scouse![*] I had a neighbour with that accent and I swear I needed real-life subtitles!

* - for American friends - that's the Liverpool accent, like John Lennon with a headcold.

-More characters speaking at once, I seem to be able to follow only 1 person at a time.

Don't sweat it. I've been living in France ten years and I still get thrown astray when people start talking at the same time.


d.