Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Japanese Language From Anime Different Than Normal Japanese?
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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Good article, very interesting. I'd heard that before about anime being bad for learning Japanese, but other than the enunciation difference I didn't really know the details of why, or about the formal vs. informal aspect of it, so that was really educational.
When Justin made the comparison to talking like a radio announcer, I couldn't help thinking of the two Japanese brothers in the movie Better Off Dead (clip here) as a hilarious reverse example. As John Cusack's character describes it, "One speaks no English, the other learned from watching Wide World of Sports. So you tell me which is better, speaking no English at all, or speaking Howard Cosell?" |
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Afezeria
 Posts: 817 Location: Malaysia, Kuantan. |
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It's true that you shouldn't try learning a language through the entertainment released from that particular country but it can be helpful once you tried listening to the real deal. Words that were used in anime are still often used in real life, and hearing how those words were pronounced and realized that it existed will still help you in the long run, which proven to be very useful for me. Through, it's still depended on your own learning capability, and how suck am I am in studying for grammars and stuff eventhough I have been going at it for years.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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And that's leaving aside the Male-Female emphases, which aren't as pronounced in English, but are still there if you say the wrong thing.
In Japan, speaking the wrong gender-dialect--like girl-Ranma still sounding like rude boy-Ranma, yuk yuk--is practically its own gag, and the xenophobically-wished-for "Clueless Westerner" will sound even more like a clueless, effeminate and emasculated gag character if he gets the wrong Berlitz book and learns female-dialect. (Never mind the obvious "Doesn't 100% understand Japanese" joke, which they richly love.) Or, ftm, if the anime fan does all his studying from shojou comedies. Hence the problem the poster was asking about. Like every other new anime fan, I wanted to try and learn the language too (this was back when there were no subtitles), but I was always paranoid of books or tapes teaching me "one" Japanese when I already knew it was a cultural issue that there were "two", and I would have no way of knowing which one I was getting. For most Japanese boys, the idea of the rude action hero or rude/Osaka comic wiseguy is more of a wish-fulfillment release when they're reading a manga or watching an anime, after non-stop school/family days of having to follow rules and be polite. There's nothing distinctive about an action hero or comic guy who speaks normally, but we all want to "admire" someone who gets to be obnoxious and get away with it, whether he's Groucho Marx, Basil Fawlty, Adam Sandler or presidential candidates. |
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belvadeer
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I've been saying this for many years, but many ignorant types (you know which ones) don't seem to get it and still rely on anime to learn Japanese used in the real world. And then they wonder why they're ridiculed time and again for it. Last edited by belvadeer on Fri Nov 11, 2016 9:26 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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An interesting insight. I've had very minimal formal study of Japanese (lessons organised by a local anime club years ago, could only attend a handful of classes before it clashed with more important study), but have otherwise picked up a fair bit from watching anime. I have observed much of what the article talks about, but couldn't articulate, or could recognise that something was wrong but not exactly how it is.
Live action Japanese films aren't too incomprehensible, but interviews, general conversation and the like, I'm mostly lost. In short, the Japanese learned from watching anime is mostly useful for watching anime, on its own mostly useless for anything else. And I can't read worth a damn; I barely recognise any kanji. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4539 |
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I actually didn't know Castilian Spanish was a thing until I watched Garo, and the Funimation commentaries on it. But it makes sense. English in the UK and the US have plenty of differences, and plenty of differences based on the regions within those countries. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2887 |
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it's pretty funny when they make movies about old spain and mexico meeting each other and the mexicans are speaking in modern latin spanish while the spanish conquerors speak on modern spain/castilla/madrid spanish.. disregarding thae fact that mexicans did not speak spanish back then as a practical convenience, the spanish spoken by the conquerors was far, far more close to the spanish spoken in mdoern latin america than it is to the spanish currently being talked in spain. |
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JDude042
 Posts: 261 |
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I feel like I've known for a while to disconnect "anime speech" from "normal Japanese speech." I have seen Japanese videos outside of anime and video games, and yes everyday real life Japanese speech is much more normal and natural sounding, where as anime speech is very overly done if I were to put it. If the Japanese were going around talking in real life the way anime characters do, it would be like living in a real life cartoon (in before cartoons don't equal anime and a huge uproar starts for no good reason lol). I've been watching anime in Japanese since at least the early 2000s, and the most I've gotten from it is knowing maybe a few handfuls of words and phrases. I can't even imagine meeting a Japanese man in real life and having him screaming at me like Bakugou, or all overly dramatic like All Might, both from My Hero Academia. Imagine if all Japanese women actually sounded the way most anime females do, all high pitched and cutesy. It would be really weird to say the least. I remember seeing a YouTube video with Rie Kugimiya in it, and lets just say her natural speaking voice sounds like your typical Japanese woman voice, rather than any of the few voices she uses when voicing anime characters.
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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That's active listening/aizuchi and part of regular conversation. |
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Er, it happens in English (and pretty much every other language) too. Perhaps you're just not used to it in a foreign language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel_(linguistics) |
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Knoepfchen
Posts: 698 |
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To be fair, the amount of verbal feedback differs from one language/culture to another and is quite high in Japanese. |
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KingKhai
Posts: 43 |
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Sorry off topic but may I know what anime is used as the thumbnail for this article?
The one shown at the top right of ANN, with the red hair girl studying something....? Thanks in advance 
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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KingKhai
Posts: 43 |
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Much appreciated
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2515 Location: Germany |
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Do US dubs of polar anime sound like real English spoken in let´s say a super-market? No? Then there is your answer and you don´t even need to know a lick of Japanese to follow this logic. Not that Sword Arts, Naruto, or moe-blob nonsense even connect to Japanese society. Don´t learn languages from children´s or young adult media, end of story.
Pick up a Haruki Murakami novel in Japanese, after learning the language of course, or read an alternative Seinen manga about office life by let´s say Jiro Taniguchi, if anything. |
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