Forum - View topicJapanese lessons
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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As an anime fan, I'm putting my money where my mouth is, somewhat literally, as I've signed up for a Beginners Japanese course at a night school near my office.
It starts on September 17 and is a 10-week course. Has anyone else taken an introductory class like this? How'd it go for you? I do have a few friends, neighbours and acquaintances I'll be able to practise speaking with afterwards, but primarily I'm doing this to focus on comprehension, so I'll be able to understand more of what I hear in Japanese TV shows and movies; primarily anime, but also live-action fare. (A friend of mine has me watching lots of Ozu from the late '40s.) Now, I'm not going into this with any illusions; I know it's not going to make me at all fluent ... and it may be more practical in teaching me some phrases for my next trip to Japan, rather than in helping me make out words in movies' dialogue. But I'm interested to know, from those of you with similar experience, am I being totally naive? Will this not help me with anime at all? If not, that's fine; I'm also a big fan of learning for learning's sake, something I haven't done enough of lately. Looking forward to your feedback .... |
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Azathrael
 Posts: 745 |
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Totally depends. I go to my uni's Japanese conversation tables and I see third year Japanese students not able to make a decent sentence while some first year students fully utilize whatever they've learned into saying them with good speed and good pronunciation. It really depends on how much you try, especially listening and speaking, because reading and writing is pretty much all you get in a class, especially those short 10-week courses and whatnot.
If you want to be able to listen then just get a tutor to practice speaking and listening. Reading and writing is not worth the hassle when all you want to do is understand the dialogue in anime. A lot of Asian Americans learn speaking and listening from their parents but not reading or writing so you don't HAVE to be able to read and write to listen and speak. |
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Subaru19
 Posts: 118 |
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Let me preface this by saying that this is from my own personal experience. Yours might be different.
I would say you won't ever be able to listen to anime and understand it completely unless you go to Japan and live there for an extended period of time. I know that sounds harsh, but unless you're forced to live in the culture and use the language every day and soak it in, it's incredibly difficult to master the listening comprehension part. I took Japanese for over three years and only by going to Japan and also working at a Japanese preschool here in the states, was I able to start to comprehend the things I was hearing in anime. In most classes the emphasis is on reading and writing, all valid things in their own right, but there's really no way to get to the nuts and bolts of listening comprehension in a class. Also there's plenty of Japanese slang and dialect that you will never get in an official Japanese class. I didn't learn basic Kansai-ben until I started meeting friends from Osaka and Kyoto when I was in Japan. This is all stuff you might end up hearing in anime and never get from a class. That said though if you really are dedicated and have the right kind of help, friends who do not hesitate to correct you and don't talk down to you, then more likely than not you'll have a fighting chance. I agree with Azathrael in that most classes, unless they're along the lines of "business Japanese" classes or "Spoken Japanese" classes you're going to get the reading and writing but not necessarily the listening. But there are ways, and I wish you the best of luck. |
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DemonEyesLeo
 Posts: 844 Location: Japan |
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Yeah I took first year Japanese at my college, I've since moved through 2nd year and am now in my 3rd year.
In regards to anime, it'll help a little. You should be able to recognize the odd word here and there after a few weeks and very basic sentence structures later on. Just keep in mind that Japanese has several ways of speaking and you'll most likely be learning the polite and formal way while anime uses a lot of colloquial speech. Think of the course as a stepping stone. |
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Nom_Anor
 Posts: 246 |
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Part of the problem I'm sure, is that Japanese and English are very different languages. After three years of German, I am able to watch German television with few problems; the biggest issues are simply my small vocabulary and how quickly people talk. The languages are so similar I can understand many words I don't know, simply because I know the English derivation of the word.
Japanese doesn't have this advantage; the only words similar are by pure chance. Learning words is going only to be through memorization and repetition. |
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ManOfRust
 Posts: 1935 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I took night classes at a local community college. It was a lot of fun. One thing about taking a continuing education class as opposed to high school or college courses is that they are probably going to be less academic in nature and likely more business oriented. Of course, that will depend on the school. I would think that under such circumstances comprehension should also be stressed. I know in our classes it was.
Just one class probably isn't going to help much, but if you enjoy it and they offer more classes then eventually you'll start picking things up. I very much agree with what Subaru says, however. To really get fluent in both speaking and comprehension it's going to be a very difficult feat unless you spend significant time in Japan. Not impossible to be sure, but very difficult. To a large extent, as is the case with many things, you will get out of the class what you put into it. The more work and study you do in addition to the coursework, the better the experience will be. But, like I said before, it's fun so why not go for it? And, I will tell you that as a tourist in Japan (if you decide to visit) simply knowing how to read hiragana and katakana is a huge help for getting around. You will probably learn those in the first 2 classes you take. |
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mokuhazushi
 Posts: 95 Location: Atlanta |
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I took a very short (8 week) night class to start off with, then tried to study on my own, which was very hard to sustain. I have found a couple of good grammar books, and find myself very slowly progressing in my understanding of the spoken language from just listening to Japanese music and watching subbed anime. It helps that the vocabulary in pop music and most anime is fairly basic--I would be lost trying to follow a lecture on economics.
I have plans to work on the written language by doing translations and learning kanji. I would also like to try to find a tutor or a conversation group where I live (Atlanta) but haven't been successful so far. |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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Interesting ... I assumed it would be the opposite ... because it seems to me that the more intuitive process would be to start with the spoken language, as that doesn't require learning new characters with which to build words. But if this is the case, I'm still looking forward to it, as at this point I really don't know any Japanese characters. (I used to know the kanji for 'man' and 'woman' so I could find the right toilet in China, but that's it.) |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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No, that doesn't sound harsh at all. I realize that when I'm watching anime, I'm hearing a very quick, sophisticated and modern Japanese dialect that will be nigh impossible for me to ever understand from book-learnin'. Maybe I can just aim to pick out the occasional phrase .... |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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Cool ... but actually, I've visited Japan twice already ... first in 1999 as a solo traveller, then in 2006 on a business trip. The first trip forced me to learn a few spoken words, but mainly taught me to communicate with mainly my hands. A couple of years later, that skill--among others--earned me an offer of a job teaching English in Japan, but by that point I really wanted to focus my career on writing and editing, so I turned it down. I don't know when I'll get back there, so I'm not trying to tie this class (which is taking place at a high school; I suspec there will be students of all ages) in my mind with any particular travel plans. |
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p3rseus
Posts: 72 |
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I started a Japanese course myself on August 27th, in my case I needed a language course to meet university multicultural requirement and what better than Japanese. It's been 2 weeks in and we've covered hiragana with some general phrases, mostly just salutations, I definately know more about Japanese than I did before but I didn't know anything before so. Memorizing those alphabets is a major pain, the only nice thing about it is that the letters are mostly pronounced as in spanish which is my first language, so that was kind of easy to get a handle on. Good luck.
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Subaru19
Posts: 118 |
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As a suggestion, try and listen to as much Japanese as you can find. I started learning Japanese through karaoke and anime so that might be a good place for you to start. You may not be able to pick out everything, but just being aware of the patterns and parts of Japanese sentences is a start. As an experiment try watching an anime you know pretty well already and watch it without subtitles. You may find after a while that you start to get the gist of what they're saying without knowing every little thing. |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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In terms of practicality, Mandarin. 
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masaki-baby
 Posts: 15 Location: usa, minnesota |
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Wow, to be honest so far of the people on anime forums I've seen who want to learn Japanese, you seem to have the most realistic goals. Most people I see are all like "ZOMG! I wana go to japan so i can be a manga-ka and it will only like take me 3 years to be perfectly fluent and read and write in Japanese riGHT!!!?"
I haven't taken a Japanese class , though if i ever had the chance to I would have jumped at it. But i've been self studying for about 5 years at my own pace . I'm still pretty surprised just how much I've learned and can understand now. Granted i'm no where near fluent, but I have a pretty good understanding of basic conjugation and sentence structure. And with your average anime series that don't use old archaic speech or complicated legal/scientific/poetic terms I can usually understand about50-70% of the dialog. Keep in mind though most classes start off teaching you more of the formal Japanese that would come in handy when you first meet and are introduced to people in japan. Anime can be exaggerated and tends to use allot more of the casual language that people would use only among close friends and family. As for me i got where i am by reading several different books from beginners, intermediate, to books about kana and kanji and even books like the "making out in Japanese" series and Japanese street slang book that help with the more casual stuff. That and just watching alot of shows. not only anime but Japanese drama, variety shows and lots of genres of j -music.( but thats mostly because i love anime j-drama and j music ) But most important , learning from actual books and classes are critical. while you may hear words and phrases in anime, you wont learn how to use them correctly in the proper tense and the right politeness level until you actually get down and learn about them from a proper source. A basic Japaneses class is a step in the right direction. You always have the advantage of asking a teacher about any questions you have and the opportunity to practice speaking with actual people. I hope your study go well. |
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Cuprin
Posts: 63 Location: Sacramento - Life stinks |
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I took a college course on Japaneese (a looooooong time ago) for similar reasons. I'd love to be able to say I watch and understand it just fine, but.... never happened.
But I did pick up enough that when I watch subtitled anime (which I prefer), I do catch a lot more. I pick up on tones and structure a lot easier. I still need the subtitiles but I feel I get a lot more understanding from having a basic understanding of the language. |
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