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Sometimes you can learn/practice it from watching real japanese TV shows. It's way more practical than learning from some hyped-up cartoon :]
You can hear how everyday people pronounce words, and see their gestures and reactions to certain situations...so I guess you can learn a little about the culture too ^^
"Oh! I like anime, now I love the language and want to be able to speak it too, since it's a cool language."
"Could you teach Japanese to me(without textbooks and hard learning)?"
Downright NO...
不言実行 (fugenjikkou)=== No words, but deeds
When I first walked into my Japanese 1 class in 8th grade, it was like normal kid, normal kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, normal kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, etc...I was REALLY shocked by how many greasyantisocialanimefreak kid were enrolled in the class....but that might be because I have never had a solid interest in anime (I do indulge, though, in J-dorama and music shows all the time...and maybe the occasional movie, but never anime.)
Half of them dropped out by the time Japanese 2 started, or they continued to be like "I don't use our textbook to study, I just watch Naruto all day...don't you just love my horrid accent?" It might be mean to say it, but I'm really glad that they finally quit. Only people who are actually serious about studying Japanese should take it.
The only person that I can respect that sort of learned Japanese from anime is this guy who was a senior in the Japanese 5 class when I was still a freshman in Japanese 2....he didn't have an 'amercan' accent, but spoke with kind of a deep, rough, ipwnnoobs, anime accent....I would laugh a little when he would speak, but he was actually REALLY REALLY REALLY good at Japanese. I guess that there are some that can move past anime and actually hit the books....
my friend is takin a insane amount of anime for the past 2 weeks
she says she wants to learn japanese but she thinks anime will help her
i have bought books and will be soon tutor by my japanese teacher
but she has been in her room watching anime for ever! she said her butt is froming with the computer chair,anyway the sad thing is,is that we live in hawaii wheres a lot off japanese ppl I have japanese friends !but she is in her in little world of datte bayo ....
what should i dooo...
But on the bright side, sometimes I'm a step ahead of my class when it comes to vocab words hahaha.
I mean, that just makes a person come off as a lonely, desparate otaku...
I also watched Korean dramas before learning Korean and hearing the language before learning about the details helped me out a lot.
anyway... i watch J-dramas... and when i listen to anime... it totally different...
BTW... Now i'm in my 2nd year in learnign and the most i can do is read hahah.. and intoduce myself.. i hope this site will help me...
PS. i might go to japan at the end of this year.. i hope i can pick up REAL japanese then!!
Another thing that I found really useful for leaning japanese is song lyrics! You can become pretty familar with vocab through it and it's an excellent resource for examining sentence structure. Good luck in your nihongo endeavors!!
I agree that It is imposible learning japanese only watching anime. I've been watching it a looooooooot of years and I only learn the simple phrase "watashi wa blabla desu" and some vocabuary but that all you can learn from it... or maybe I could learn japanese with anime but I would had to waiste all my life (or more) u.u So I started studing japanese in a school, and in 6 months I've learnt mooooooore than all the years I've been watching anime. And also, I learn that a lot of things I though I know, were wrong.
Well, that's it XD Sorry for all the mistakes I've done. English is not my language -.-U
All that hard work gone to waste.
I watch anime so I can learn how to say the character's names properly.
As opposed to saying,"HokiJe", "Karkarshii" And Ameedamaaaaaaru"
It's common sense that you can't learn Japanese from anime without sounding like a psychotic magician.
I agree you can't use anime as your main source of learning. But definetely you can learn some words or some expression, of course you must take a look whether this anime-learning word and expressions are properly acceptable or not. I started taking Japanese lessons two weeks ago, before then I got some words from Bleach and Naruto, but I wouldn't use them in a real conversation, I used them mostly as 'fun fact' with a friend of mine who also watches anime, never on a serious basis.
Tofugu should make an article about Namasensai from youtube!
From Brazil, Igor.
ps: psychotic magician... =P
i am only 12 years old but i speak perfect japanese (now). all the kids at my school were all "i am going to learn japanese!" and what i said "how are you going to do this"
they said "i am going to watch Japanese anime". and then i gave them a look like what the FReak is wrong with you? and i said "go to the store and buy some books and take lessons.
I think my two main points would be:
1. I believe you can learn a great deal of Japanese from anime, however any amount of real, cerebral effort X you spend learning Japanese through anime will teach you less Japanese than any effort X spent in traditional study, and thusly is it a waste of time.
2. Personally, I don't even care to know Japanese *except* in the context of anime. In this case, spending any time learning things that *don't* refer to pirate kings seems like a wasted effort (LOL).
So yeah, the idea that there is institutional education for a topic, and you can just learn it by watching television, is pretty silly in any context, but one can also argue that any experience in the universe has some minute learning value somewhere.
i have a buch of friends who think that they can learn perfect Japanese just by watching anime..and that's just sooo SILLY!!..personally,i am learning Japanese using books, CDs and a bit of lessons on net..so that( it's not the only reason) i can understand what are the characters speaking about..lol..but never used anime as some kind of Jap dictionnary which i refer to or something..XD
there are a lot of japanese-learning books out there
if you want to learn japanese then GO AHEAD!
"time to choose; you got to make right one..."
-Melvin
NANI????!!!!!
But, yeah, anime tends to emphasize certain speech patterns to an absurd extent. Not something I'd want to be caught doing in front of someone that actually spoke Japanese.
I learnt all that from Anime, i even learnt to count through anime, i even learnt doke, dare, itsu, doushite, nani, baka, tsuyoi, kuyoi, the basic fundamentals of speech. Ohayoh gozaimas, konbanwa (learnt that from fate stay night), arigatou gozaimas, neku (from darker than black) plus many more.
For People who watch anime, dont let these guys destroy your hope. Listening is the key to learning.
Dattebayo!
Sayonara :)
Yes, you are able to learn some phrases, but the whole point of the video is not to allow anime to be the sole source for your Japanese instruction if you're someone who actually wants to learn it...
And you pretty much just proved that....
(And no, i'm not trying to start an argument here, this just really bugged me)
No hard feelings! :)
I never took a Japanese class (a skipped to level 2 in Korean though), but I can understand Koichi's Japanese youtube videos. [not pure 100%, but like 90%, usually]
What I did to learn was having a best friend who was Japanese, good online grammar guides (Tae Kim), have a good Japanese dictionary, and of course, listening to Koichi. ;)
And all of my Nintendo DS games are Japanese. [I recommend the Pokemon ones for beginner Japanese learners, because there's no Kanji, and it's at childrens reading level]. Also, a lot of the Japanese games come voiced, and w/ tons of Kanji in the reading. So that's one of my ways of getting some Kanji down (listening to the voice-actors & reading along).
So J-video games, and a good dictionary are my thing, though.
they flood japanese music videos with anime versions instead of the film clip and they're just annoying and i think they should have a holocaust against them. that's right you fat japanese candy eating virgins. oh and the ability for people to learn naturally through emersion like a child diminishes. anime is a poor representation of japanese language as a whole also and a anti-social way to learn japanese. get some real friends nerds.
I mean, yeah, I'll pick a word now and then and learn this means that, but I wouldn't try and grasp the entire language from a series. x_o
Yes, I can say it does work. I even ripped the sound off of my favorite anime and carried it with me on my ipod and listened to it in my free time. IT DOES WORK. I am able to parse out words in almost any Japanese that I hear. Before I started studying on the side, I had already gained an intuitive understanding of many different structures, phrases, and words.
I'm not saying watching Anime should be your only method of learning. But it's a powerful, powerful tool, no matter what the fool in this video says. Because of all that listening and watching, It's easier for me to learn and remember different phrases and structures because I've heard them loads of times before.
Though I would recommend being smart about which anime you pick; Naruto (eww) and Bleach (yay) will both probably get you no where. Look for useful dialogue. I must admit, I find J-Dramas very useful. As Khatzumoto of AllJapaneseAllTheTime fame says, "10 % of it is special, perhaps unuseful, specialized vocabulary. But the 90% is plain vanilla, every day Japanese."
However I'm a sucker for otome games ( shoot me if you want :P ) and I find that reading along with the voice actor really helps me distinguish words better, no matter howwwww weird they may talk, haha. C: I think that watching japanese cartoons, playing japanese games, and watching j-dramas is a nice break and supplement from studying hard from the textbooks.
I am a little iffy about anime though because I always sortakinda associate it with some of the strange anime club kids at my school that run around screaming random japanese phrases.
On the other hand, judging by much of the japanese tv/news I've seen, is the bizarre-ness of japanese tv REALLY so different than anime...? Sometimes anime seems even LESS bizarre..
Advice: if anime is what you are into and it makes you get exposed to more Japanese, watch it! Nothing wrong with it. Once you are ready and interested, you will move on to watching movies/reading books/articles about politics, ethical issues, or medicine. If you are happy with Japanese you learned from anime and think that's enough for you, stop there and enjoy your knowledge.
In my 8 months of studies I've used about 10 different books (kanji, grammar, vocabulary, exercises) and I use a lot of internet sites (iKnow (smart), shared talk, lang-8) and I haven't mastered japanese yet and I think that it's still a long way but I love so much learning japanese.
You can also find countless of online communities for japanese-learning people. If you want to learn japanese, get involved with others, you won't be able to learn it on your own.
That is the way to go!
Piece!
what koichi meant is japanese language is distinguished from anime's version. as we know, those is anime's contain lots of bad words & lack respect to elders. so, they don't want outsiders learn from anime. (Japanese are well mannered than haku-jin).
So, they didn't want us to learn Japanese LANGUAGE but also MANNERS. that is what we called CULTURE. so that we wouldn't use mean / impolite words when we talk in Japanese.
p/s: I'm sorry if I get you wrong~!