Forum - View topicLearning Japanese because of anime?
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thewrll
 Posts: 59 |
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I am wondering how many people because of their love for anime decided to learn Japanese. If what procress did you go through to learn it. Such as a class, or rosetta stone, or another way. Also how effective was the process. Are you now able to understand most of what they say in anime. I would love to learn Japanese I just would like to know different ways to learn. Also this question is not for people who either are fluent or people that grew up in a japanese speaking household.
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I expect you'll probably get dozens of responses to this from people who are learning Japanese but very few who has actually become reasonably fluent in it. Learning another language takes a tremendous amount of time and effort and I doubt most people who decide to learn it ever really follow through. I suspect this is especially true of people who's entire thought process behing this major undertaking is "Hey! I like anime! I should learn Japanese".
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Bento-Box
 Posts: 1049 Location: Florida |
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I've been studying the language for a few months now using Rosetta Stone and a supplemental book. I'm not doing this for anime. I'm doing this so that when I go to Japan, I won't just be another stupid foreigner who doesn't bother to learn enough language to get around.
I took French in high school and when I went to Paris it was much easier for me to get around and converse with people. I think it's important if you want to devote yourself to a culture to learn the language and customs as well - not just watch boatloads of their TV Programs. |
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thewrll
Posts: 59 |
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Yeah besides anime I would love to visit japan and yes I would mostly like to visit akihabara.
Last edited by thewrll on Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Bento-Box
Posts: 1049 Location: Florida |
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When I visit it will be quite the predicament. I love fashion, so I'd want to spend lots of time in Shibuya . . . but all the anime is in Akihabara. And there's only so much money . . .
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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My passion to learn was spawned long before "anime" entered my vocabulary. Ah, youth. For me, though, the problem was time. Japanese takes a minimum of two hours per day for both comprehension and vocabulary. This, from my Japanese teacher I had years ago. She was right. This language, to me, is simple to learn, but complex to master. I've nailed down Hiragana and Katakana, but Kanji is still a mystery to me. It will remain so until I dedicate those 2 hours daily, I'm sure. I never, ever want to speak it. Just understanding it is enough for me. I'm one of those who'd feel embarrassed at trying to say "good evening" (konbanwa) but having it come out as "rice cake". This doesn't even include trying to understand "wa" and "ga", which will change the conversation meaning instantly. Eek. |
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braves
 Posts: 2309 Location: Puerto Rico (but living in Texas) |
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There have been similar threads in the past and you might find the responses there to be interesting.
Learning Japanese for anime perks? Do you want to learn Japanese? As for me, no, I've never had a real interest in learning Japanese just for anime. I'm already bilingual and having to learn another language just because of anime doesn't really seem like a good idea. I don't have much of an interest in Japan, so it would be waste of time. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4788 |
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This is something I've been curious about ever since first hearing how difficult learning Japanese fluently truly is. Why is it that, when Japanese is taught, there's so much initial focus placed on learning kanji, which at least to my ignorant outsider's eyes is an incredibly antiquated and cumbersome system of writing? I understand that, to be literate in Japanese, one's going to need to learn them sooner or later, but couldn't it possibly be more effective as a whole to worry about learning Japanese as a spoken language first, and then start in on the massive headache that is kanji after some basic fluency has been achieved? I mean, we started off the half-semester's worth of ancient Greek we covered in my high school Latin class by going over the Greek alphabet, but we were treating it as an entirely-written course, not the modern-day spoken language that Japanese is. At least from the perspective of someone who wants to visit Japan someday, you'd think that gaining verbal fluency would be the most practical initial goal. |
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Bento-Box
Posts: 1049 Location: Florida |
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I could be mistaken, but I believe it is because the syllables are essentially derived from symbols which represent things such as people, rivers, trees, etc. which are used in conjunction with each other to form larger symbols which become words. Each part of the symbol can change what word it is, even subtly and will end up meaning something completely different, causing a lot of confusion and usually lead to embarrassment. I'm just now learning Hiranaga and Katakana and I'm terrible at it thus far. When I manage to get to the import store closest to me, I look forward to talking to the nice lady there in Japanese and she politely encourages me to learn and will spend a little time conversing with me and teaching me. Even THEN, I'm super embarrassed about it when I completely mix things up or say something wrong that becomes something FAR from what I intended it to be just by messing up one syllable. She urged me to start learning the Hiranaga and Katakana before progressing any further in order to fix the problems I'm having. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I dabbled in it as a hobby, for fun. Learning even a little bit of a new language is great excersize for your brain. I never intended to become fluent, or even to learn how to read it.
So I took out a bunch of language books from the library-including a children's picture dictionary (which I eventually bought), phrasebooks, and books on kana and kanji. It was fun to try my hand at a language that is totally unfamiliar to me (as apposed to a Latin-based one), and it feels great to be able to recognize words, phrases, parts of speach and some kana and simple kanji. I haven't looked at the language books in a while, but I love the fact that I know as much as I do (which is not much). I have friends who were always trying to learn words and phrases from foreign students in college: "say that in Spanish," or "how do you say 'goodbye' in Russian?" were common refrains. I see what I did as no different (well, it bugged my friends less) and it makes me want to learn more. Which is always a good thing! |
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bahamut623
 Posts: 1463 |
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I've been learning Japanese very casually, using Rosetta Stone and other things online. But I stress the "casually" part. I'm not as diligent as you should be for learning a language. I do it more as a hobby than as setting a goal to be fluent in a certain time or something. It's fun to learn a new language. I wouldn't say I learned it because of anime, but more because of an interest in Japanese culture in general. It's also just a beautiful sounding language, even more than the ones that are usually considered to be so (like French, say). It's a really complex language to learn, especially because the grammar structure is so different from what I'm used to (English and Spanish). But the best tip is to just have fun with it.
By the way, it's impossible to learn the language by watching anime, but I will say that I learned a lot of hiragana and katakana from the karaoke subtitles on the opening and ending songs of anime. While you definitely can't learn the language from watching anime, it certainly does help while you are learning the language, because it's just more exposure to the language, which doesn't hurt. So even if you aren't as diligent with studying as you should be, constant exposure to the language through anime will keep you from getting too rusty. Like Petrified Jello, I have hiragana and katakana down perfectly, but kanji eludes me, except for a handful of characters. @Top Gun: Kanji isn't antiquated at all. It's used everywhere and on everything. I'd say for any language, it would be a huge mistake to learn it only verbally. Last edited by bahamut623 on Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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I'm guessing here, but like our kids here, fluency is already achieved. Many kids know how to speak before they enter school. Like our alphabet learning, grade school teaches the required 1000ish Kanji needed for everyday life. Kanji, in essence, is their vocabulary learning. Remember those days of writing out definitions to words? The first grade Kanji chart is actually pretty simple, consisting of 80 characters. But I do agree, it's rather odd to see such a complex style to write the simple definition of its Hiragana counterpart. It boggles my mind why 曜日 (day of the week) is used instead of the simpler ようび. Heck, by the time one writes the Kanji, the day of the week would be over. 
Interesting side note, though: I've noticed I can quickly define Kanji much faster than Hiragana, which lends itself to why Kanji is used. Trying to remember ようび takes longer to "translate", especially in how Hiragana is written. I can't count the number of times I mixed up Hirgana wording only to read the sentence wrong. Damn no space using language. I kid, of course, but the more I delve into Kanji, the more thankful I am for it translating correctly. Your Kanji lesson for today: 日(day, Sunday, sun, sunlight, sunshine) I feel for Japanese students. 
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Top Gun
Posts: 4788 |
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I didn't really mean "antiquated" in the sense that "no one uses it anymore," but more in the sense that it represents a more ancient form of writing system via the use of logograms, which comprised the earliest known human written texts. In contrast, the Latin alphabet (derived from the Greek, which was derived in turn from the Phoenician), represents a more abstracted system of phonograms, a comparatively more modern development that greatly simplified the ability to write a language. (Hiragana and katakana represent syllabaries and seem to be far closer to phonogram alphabets than logogram-based systems.) No matter what you call it, at least from my perspective, kanji is an incredibly unwieldy and complicated entity, especially when you consider that many native speakers don't even have a full grasp on it. And yes, I do agree that learning a language only verbally is a huge mistake, even if it means you'll have to tackle a nightmare like kanji. (Thank goodness for the Latin alphabet, right? ) But even taking into account what Bento-Box said about subtle changes in symbols, I still feel like it might be easier trying to take the language just at that spoken level before worrying about communicating it visually. As PetrifiedJello stated, Japanese children know how to speak fluently before entering school, and they presumably don't know many (if any) kanji at that point, just as our own vocabulary is rather limited before we start taking reading and spelling classes. (That's a very interesting comparison between kanji and vocabulary, too.) I have to wonder if that approach wouldn't work for those of us who have absolutely no experience with a character-based writing system as well.
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Enjeru
 Posts: 221 |
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In my 4 years of Japanese study and 10 months of living in Tokyo, I have come to the realization that the majority of people who attempt to learn Japanese simply for anime reasons are doomed to fail. In my very first semester of taking the language, there were more than 40 students in the class on the first day. Much like in any class on the first day, the teacher went around the room and asked everyone their reasons for taking the class. Most people answered "Because I watch anime / because I read manga". Well....before the mid-term, over half the class dropped due to poor performance. Then after each semester, the number of students continued to drop.
During my study abroad time in Tokyo, there were quite a few americans and other western people living in the same dorm. Many of which only had a semester or two under their belt. Of course many of them said (That their 5+ years of anime viewing had taught them "so much" {btw....you can only learn a few words and set phrases by watching anime]). Well, many of them couldnt deal with being surrounded by the Japanese language at all times and thus became shut ins. I am not saying that everyone who tries to learn japanese because of anime will fail, but just in my experience.....the vast majority do. Learning one of the most difficult languages in the world takes more passion than just anime. Learning Japanese will consume most of your free time (and no, watching anime is NOT studying). To become conversational, you will need to have other Japanese speaking friends because if you don't use it, you lose it. Also, becoming good enough to be able to understand anime completely without subtitles means you would have to be at least almost fluent. And I can admit that in my 4 years, I am not even close to that. but hey, some people do pick it up quicker than I. |
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Enjeru
Posts: 221 |
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I forgot to mention:
You wanted to know the best way to learn it. Well that really depends on what kind of learner you are. Some people are visual, some are audio, some are verbal, ect.... and some are a combination of them. Rosetta Stone > from what I heard from others who have used it. It is pretty good for the most basic of basics. However, beyond that it doesn't do too much. Watching anime / reading manga > Doesnt work. sorry. Maybe you can recognize a few kanji, learn some words and get some "kimarimonku" (set phrases). but beyond that, not gonna happen. Taking actual courses > One of the best ways to learn it. In this method, you can actually have use of a textbook, a teacher that speaks the language and can answer your questions. You are evaluated on your performance so you know what needs improvment. Self-study > (i.e. buying study guides and books) Can be ok, you set your own pace, but can be very expensive Actually living in Japan for enough time > The best way to learn. You are surrounded by the language and for the most part have no choice to pick it up (unless you are living in Tokyo). I guess the best out of all of these is the combination of classes and going to Japan. Take Japanese in college and while there try and study abroad in Japan for a year. But be serious about it and put in the necessary time and effort into it. Honestly I am getting so tired of otakus in my school filling up the early level classes and then coming to me with a mountain of questions about things they dont understand. You wont understand it unless you actually put in the time and effort. I studied for about 6 hours a day when I started, you might expect to do the same. |
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