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Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

No-one-of-interest. — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:25:34 -0000

It's back-to-front! You learn Japanese to enjoy Anime (As english dubs usually suck!)... you don't watch Anime to learn Japanese. Besides the english sub's are usually so poorly done that any words you could make out are used incorrectly. Half an hour with flash cards would teach you more japanese than a month of watching anime. So please please people, do it the right way round! Anime is one of the reward to learning Japanese!

Piece!

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Meronpan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:48:31 -0000

At first I thought 'yay, I'll learn Japanese by watching anime!' But not too long after, I realised that anime couldn't get me much further than 'konnichiwa', 'ohaiyou', 'baka' and 'moshi moshi'. So I started to take real lessons (well, real, at least they teach you something :P MyJapaneseCoach for NDS taught me kana in 2 days :D And I'm also learning to make simple sentences)

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!

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

masterman300 — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:11:23 -0000

no you cant you idot you suck [no offence]

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

masterman300 — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:07:32 -0000

anime rules but koishi is right you cannot learn japenese from it

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Nikolai — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:39:56 -0000

i think it's entirely possible to learn a lot of Japanese from watching anime, but it takes time. i developed my own system for it. try it out if you want: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/181288... i agree though that simply watching won't accomplish much other than teaching the occasional random vocabulary.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Joben123 — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:21:19 -0000

Yeah, In my japanese class there were a lot of this idiots that thought that watching anime was going to help them to understand the language. For good luck they didn't stay that much just for 3 months, later most of them quited. Now in level 4 of japanese (8 months) we're just 4 students at the begining we were 45 so 41 were there just like "I want to learn now in five minutes so I can understand my favorite anime" But our teacher always said the same as koichi so they got disapointed hahahahaha.

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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Tue, 05 May 2009 15:12:54 -0000

There is nothing wrong with learning Japanese from anime even if you're just a beginner, and especially if your reason for learning Japanese is to understand new anime that you haven't watched yet. Let's face it, English used in American cartoons is the same English used in the store when buying food and the same English used while talking to friends. American kids learn English while watching cartoons over and over again. They are exposed to their parents and the rest of the society, but they do spend a large portion of their time just watching cartoons. If you learned English just by watching cartoons, you would surely sound funny, but at least you would be understood, and able to understand, which is the main purpose of the language anyway. Same goes for any other language. Once Japanese found in anime is mastered, it is a lot easier to move to listening to news or talking to people. Grammar is the same. 90% of vocabulary is the same too.

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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

MP — Tue, 05 May 2009 10:25:02 -0000

I do like anime... but there's nothing like going to an Anime Convention to realize I don't like them THAT much (likes Miyazaki, the Final Fantasy games, vintage gaming, several anime series including Deathnote but NOT naruto/bleach/copious amounts of hentai.) When I talk to Japanese folks (Live-8 really is one of the best things ever) I get nervous saying I like anime because I don't want to be immediately marked as an otaku ('cause I ain't!) but at the same time, it CAN be a decent conversation starting point. On the other hand, several Kurosawa films are public domain now and can be found at archive.org and/or youtube/netflicks etc, so there's no excuse not to watch REAL japanese cinema. Mmm...Kurosawa is so good.... and make sure to check out "Tokyo Story" too, if you're into classic japanese cinema!
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..

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Meeeeelly — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:14:20 -0000

it always bugged me a bit when I heard random KUHWAII DESOO from some person in anime club. :T It makes me feel a bit embarrassed to sit around with my friends in anime club at school. Honestly, I'm not interested in anime at all but I think it makes a pretty good supplement for just listening to patterns and such.

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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

sourkidd — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:56:04 -0000

Or you could take Japanese lessons...

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Japanese_from_anime — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:48:03 -0000

Okay, so watching anime by itself with subtitles all day will get you no where. No one's debating that. And *certainly* no one is debating the "5 minutes a day" part. But watching ridiculously huge amounts of anime without subtitles for months on end?

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."

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

sourkidd — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:50:09 -0000

Ha, I love anime, and I'm definitely that greasyantisocialanimefreak kid, but I wouldn't ever use it to learn Japanese. lmao. people do that? o_o
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

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Travis — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:48:15 -0000

bloody anime geeks. dattebayo this and that. who the fuck says dattebayo in normal japanese conversation? nobody i've never heard it. maybe some otaku but nobody else. its mada jyozu jya arimasen by the way. besides the subs are never literal so you will end up saying things wrong because they are translated wrong. 死ね、オタク！

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Travis — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:43:44 -0000

damn i hate those anime loving nerds in japanese classes in my university. they're usually shit and they try to communicate everything with kawaii or sugoi and that's about all they managed to pick up.
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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

のぞみ — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:29:17 -0000

you say you learned (l-e-a-r-n-e-d, not LEARNT) how to say those in Japanese through watching Anime....and yet, you can't even spell it /: How do we know if you're even able to pronounce it.

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! :)

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

AnonymousCoward — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:34:35 -0000

Thats like saying a baby can't learn English just by talking in front of it for a few years. The brain is capable of this. It just takes a lot more time to learn this way. 5 minutes a day wont work. 30 minutes a day for 10 years will get you somewhere though, given you haven't realized that you have no good reason to learn Japanese by then. Of course you will never learn to read and write by Anime. At least if you watch Anime for 10 years and realize you didn't need to know Japanese, you still had fun. If you spent years memorizing 20,000 characters and then realize you don't need it, it is a bit of a bummer.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Smart Anime Addict — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:13:47 -0000

Actually, one cannot learn much Japanese just by watching anime. I'm now self-studying Japanese, and i rely more on Kanji learning from online sites, textbooks, writing(in Japanese of course,and not using Romaji). Anime is the last in my list of study means. If you want to learn more, you'll have to learn the Kanji and writing down sentences in Japanese. I've done that, and now it's easier for me to catch the words said by the characters in Anime.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

facebook-547736622 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:37:20 -0000

You forgot to say: "I will never forgive you" and "Gomu Gomu"

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

gwillgi — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:53:33 -0000

Ok i guess my intention is more the other way around - the English subtitles for animes done for our country is terrible. It's like they put the speech through Babel Fish into Mandarin at first then take that and translate into direct English. What comes out is so incomprehensible that it actually spoilt my perception of that anime. So I hope that by learning proper Japanese, I'll be less dependant of the subtitles and enjoy anime as it should be.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

vinteb — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:12:42 -0000

I used to watch a decent amount of anime back in the day, and for some reason, I had a good memory to memorize lines in Japanese... so learning some phrases weren't hard. But you don't learn the foundation/basics, which is the problem.
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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Jimbo Boy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:31:34 -0000

Watashi Wa Nihongoga Wakarimasu. Demo made josu jarimasen. Anata wa eigoga wakarimasu ka?

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 :)

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

missy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:22:07 -0000

I wish this could be required viewing before any beginning Japanese class. If I have to hear one more girl refer to herself as "ore" because she just loves Bleach THAT MUCH well... I-I... I just don't know. ;_;

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.

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

Pikmintaro — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:29:39 -0000

After reading this article I have only one thing to say...

NANI????!!!!!

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

shinki — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:21:44 -0000

where you learn japanese? are there some kind of school?

Re: Learn Japanese from anime in only 5 minutes a day! 1337! | Tofugu.com

karab1n3r_k90 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:12:57 -0000

Remember that english is our universal language
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