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Forum - View topicBehind the subs, the spoken dialogue.
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Little Flower
 Posts: 25 |
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I have now started listening to the Japanese a little while I'm reading the subs (while watching anime) and I've picked up some words as well. So, when I re-watched an episode of "Fruits Basket" (which I haven't watched in a while) I realized that Yuki's voice is very high-pitched, which I didn't realize before. I must of just zoned out to the Japanese completely.
Which poses this question: Do you ignore whats being said out loud or do you tune in even just a little bit to the spoken dialogue? |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15871 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I would say that I primarily read the subtitles, but listening is also important, I tend to see if I can recognise voice actors, and I occasionally understand a word, and also figuring what sort of honorifics are used instead of what is just written. You'll often find that the subtitles say that a character is just calling another person by their name, when often they will might say senpai, -chan, -kun, -san, etc, which can have some bearing in what characters think of each other. Also helps if you can recognise a voice to know who is speaking.
English words or words borrowed from english often jump out, like the word icecream, I think as time has gone on I have been able to recognise them easier, and even regognise phrases. And I know a few words now, as I am sure many people undertand the word "urasai", or "baka". |
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Little Flower
Posts: 25 |
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HattoriHaze
 Posts: 26 Location: Washington State |
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I'm trying to (unsuccessfully) learn Japanese on my own, so I try very hard to pay attention to what is spoken. I pick up words I recognize here and there, and every now and then can understand a sentence based on the words I recognize. Most of the time, I read the subtitles, but even then I kind of have a playback going on in my head: What I read gets read with the "voice" and inflections of the character, so it comes out as exactly how he would say it if he were speaking English, with the same emotional emphasis.
Err, does that make sense? |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4287 |
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I've watched unsubtitled, undubbed anime long before subbed titles become common even though I don't speak Japanese. Honestly, most of what subtitles offer is purely contextual as a well animated work should convey a good chuck of its point through visual means and listening closely to how the dialogue is performed adds a bit more.
You can rate how you're doing based on the number of accents you can eventually pick up on. I've never seen Fruits Basket but Aya Hisakawa {Yuki} has one of my favorite Osakan accents. But my approach shouldn't count for much since my interest in anime stems from my interest in animation period so I've done the whole "good/bad/it's that voice making that noise" analysis for a long time in many languages. And it is very much true that many female roles are performed at several registers higher than normal speaking voices. A great recent example would be Yukari Tamura as Fear in C^3. In a single scene, she could hit at least 5 different speaking registers as her character's mood changed. An overall example to this would be the Best Student Council anime. The show had a puppet with any character holding him doing his voice {This should seem obvious except the english dub had one actress as the puppet through the whole show}. Tamura voiced the puppet most of the time and so she picked the baseline voice. Two actresses voiced the puppet as "Tamura as the puppet" {That is, parodying Tamura's voice and speaking style rather than the character she came up with} while Chiwa Saito was able to hit the puppet's voice itself {As Bakemontagatari said, she's good}. Aya Hisakawa gave the puppet her Osakan accent while copying Tamura voicing the puppet which was pretty funny. Two actresses failed miserably which was also pretty funny. Even better, there was a second puppet that Saito started and then was copied by Tamura, a deeper voice than the first one which was already male. Given how Japanese dubs are recorded, it must have been fun to watch Tamura voice the two puppets and her character in sequence, arguing with each other. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I usually do not pay much attention to the spoken dialog, but I will sometimes be curious about the Japanese for a particular English word or phrase so I will try to identify it in the spoken dialog. This is usually very difficult because of the difference in word order between Japanese and English, but sometimes I can pick out the correct words in a short sentence by process of elimination if I know enough of the other words. Sometimes if the word is used often I can identify it as the common word in different sentences.
And I do know that using a dictionary would be a lot easier  , but I am not trying to learn Japanese and I do this mostly for fun. It can be an interesting challenge.
I also pay attention to the honorifics and the names that are used because they can sometimes be very significant. There have been a few times when I would have missed the meaning of a scene if I had not noticed that one character switched from using the family name to the given name when addressing another character. |
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GDFan
 Posts: 254 Location: North of Boston |
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I've heard it said that Japanese is one of the hardest second languages to learn. I commend you for trying, but it sounds like that would be practically impossible. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I can read/write a little (mostly thanks to self-study and playing FF MMOs) and understand a lot more spoken dialog than I can read/write, so I usually pay very close attention to the spoken Japanese and use subtitles to fill in the gaps.
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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I know many people who learnt Japanese on their own- maybe not the level required to read classical literature, but enough to watch anime and TV shows, read news or write/say simple message. So, good luck and don't give up so quickly:) Actually Japanese has a simple grammar and once you overcome first impression it's getting easier and easier.
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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It's easier to learn spoken Japanese than written Japanese.
A lot easier. At least it was for me anyway |
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HattoriHaze
Posts: 26 Location: Washington State |
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My main barrier is context. There are so many things in the Japanese language that rely on context, and I can't really pick up on that unless I have someone to talk to. Limited access to material is also a problem.
My eventual goal is to take a class and learn it in a more structured way. This kills two birds: I'll have ready source material, and I will have other speakers that I can practice sentence structure and context with. |
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Zork
 Posts: 207 |
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I generally pay more attention to the subtitles the first time a watch an anime. But I also try to listen to the voice actors so that I can hear what emotion is being conveyed behind the words.
I |
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infiltration.cru
 Posts: 321 |
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after 3 semesters of Japanese classes i manage to follow it all a little bit easier than before. still need the subs though, but i am used to reading subs(in denmark there is no such thing as a dub) so i have no problem with both reading and paying attention to the tone of the voices etc.
i generally dislike the idea of subs, since even good ones can never match up to the original(especially in anime, since they are produced for an audience with a much different cultural background). |
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ArsenicSteel
 Posts: 2370 |
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I never paid so much attention to subtitles that I ignore what is actually being said to the point of not even knowing what a character sounds like. I usually end up matching voices to the actors' previous roles and/or real name.
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