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ANN and the industry's stance on fansubs (ANN official on P5

So...why not watch the Japanese audio track with subtitles on the DVDs? Or get the recent Media-Blasters releases without English audio>

Zalis116 wrote:

So...why not watch the Japanese audio track with subtitles on the DVDs? Or get the recent Media-Blasters releases without English audio>

Zalis you should know the answer as well as anyone who watches fansubs; the good fansubs are much higher in (translation, as well as other things) quality than the DVD subtitles.

As for conversational Japanese, anime will help a lot. You're not going to be talking politely when you're with a friend, and as long as you have enough background knowledge to know something like ~dattebayo isn't a real Japanese casual form, then listening to the different ways casual speech is said in anime is going to be useful, for at least your ears will get used to hearing the difference between polite and casual speech. And there are plenty of anime titles that use polite and even polite+formal speech that are used all the time in daily conversation. You just need the background knowledge to be able to tell. In such way, "teaching self thru anime" is as possible as "teaching self thru manga".

Zalis116 wrote:

So...why not watch the Japanese audio track with subtitles on the DVDs? Or get the recent Media-Blasters releases without English audio?

Zalis you should know the answer as well as anyone who watches fansubs; the good fansubs are much higher in (translation, as well as other things) quality than the DVD subtitles.

So, you are saying that if someone from say... Germany, could learn English from watching subtitled episodes of say... friends and CSI among other shows? He would know exactly how to talk to Americans, and the British and have little trouble?

Honestly the only way to get any semblance of true fluency would be to either be born in a bilingual household or to completely immerse yourself in the culture and not speak any of your native language until it becomes natural. If you just take everything from Manga and Anime there will still be plenty of words left unused no matter how many you use. After all, there just are some words that are used so sparingly, and when used, are not used in every way possible, for someone to gain fluency in our language from it.

I think you could potentially learn a great bit from Anime and Manga, but you will have a lot of trouble communicating with someone from Japan who has poor English skills, esp if you go in thinking you know the language so well.

Also, maybe I am a bit more traditional, but I think that learning something like you describe is just too impractical. I think you should find a way to educate and culture yourself when ever possible, but attempting to say anime and manga are valid learning devices for learning how to speak another language just seems silly to me. The logic just seems a bit flawed, products made strictly for entertainment may help but they should just never be how you pick it all up, or it will be like looking at Mexico and America and saying that you already know everything about North America.