Fluent Japanese from Anime and Manga Read online

  If you have never tried removing the English subtitles and watching before, you are in for a big surprise. It's a little confusing but very exciting at the same time! With one simple change, you are no longer watching anime just for entertainment but now to also learn Japanese via your ears. Your Japanese listening comprehension has no choice but to massively improve very quickly.

  If you listen carefully and attentively, you will soon start to hear the same vocabulary and grammar structures repeat over and over. You'll begin to recognize and single out these words from an otherwise stream of incomprehensible gibberish. With the end of each episode, however, you will come just a little bit closer to understanding more and more of that foreign audio stream by learning the high frequency words. With every word you learn, you'll be able to single out more new words to learn. And when you pair this practice with grammar lessons, the process speeds up exponentially.

  Of course, you are going to understand very little as a beginner, but let this serve as your carrot on a stick to drive you to start and keep learning. Personally, there were many occasions I felt the need to point my finger at the screen and say, “Today I can't understand this, but one day I will.”

  You might be thinking to yourself, "If I can't understand anything as a beginner, what's the point? It seems like an inefficient way to learn vocabulary, and my time could be better spent studying." By all means, study for as long as you would like each day. Consider this activity as an opportunity to help you learn more Japanese even faster when you cannot study a single minute longer for the day.

  No Subtitles, But How?

  Begin today to reverse your deeply engraved habit of reading your anime in English. It's no easy task if you regularly watch anime. You will be tested. Our watching and reading habits have relied on English from the very start, so you will need determination and faith to fight against yourself.

  Make it easier on yourself by starting with a few series that you have seen before so that you can get used to everything being in Japanese while still being able to follow the plot. Re-watch old classics like Death Note, One Piece, and Dragon Ball Z so that you can stay entertained while you focus heavily on the language used.

  If you want to watch something new, pick a series that sounds exciting to you and try to understand just the gist. You must train yourself to be comfortable and secure not understanding everything, but this may be difficult if the plot becomes highly complex (i.e. Re: Zero, Code Geass). Trying new material and getting lost quickly is frustrating, but when you do possess something that you personally find exciting and can understand the gist, it’s enough.

  What counts as the gist? If you watch Dragon Ball Z, it's about a world where people respect the art of fighting, and Goku and his friends fight to defend Earth from invaders. If you like Attack on Titan, humans train to fight the terrible monsters that invade cities and eat their population. If you enjoy One Punch Man, it's a story of a superhero who has become too strong and dreams of a real opponent.

  You may need to read a few episode summaries to catch what you missed. Some folks like to go full immersion when learning a language and read episode summaries in their target language, but I can empathize with first time language learners who already face the difficult challenge of removing English subtitles. You can read the summaries in English if you would like. Reading them in Japanese can wait until the intermediate stages.

  Of course, you will miss a few plot details and many of the jokes. But if you are truly interested in the material that you are watching and desire to learn from it, you don't need to understand even a quarter of the lines or jokes to stay immersed and entertained. When you finally realize that you do not need to understand everything said and can still enjoy your favorite material, you will know victory!

  Work towards building and maintaining a habit of freely listening and watching without stopping. Do not continually stop to look up words and phrases. Do not look up anything at all until this brief immersion period ends.

  If English is allowed even for a few critical moments, you start to feed yourself the idea that you must understand everything to get the most out of the material. This idea, however, is not necessarily true when you consider the enjoyment you gain as you gradually notice yourself being able to understand more and more each and every day. Seeing true progress in yourself is a strong emotion. It is self-empowering.

  Japanese People Do Not Talk Too Fast

  You might be tempted to turn on English subtitles to help you focus on the story or relax after an intense study session, but if you choose to use them, native speakers will always talk too fast for you. This will not change until you start taking the time each and every day to practice comprehending what they mean.

  There is no magical point in time where you become ready to take on native-level material without the aid of subtitles and translations. It is certainly not when you complete a full series of foreign language textbooks.

  But how can you comprehend them in the beginner and intermediate stages when they use thousands of words that you do not know yet? Listening comprehension is a skill that is built through practicing with whatever vocabulary that you do know at the time and relying on context for the words that you don't know. It's similar to how you learned your first language.

  You will understand the foreign language only by consistently trying to understand the foreign language. Audio from your grammar book or course is helpful, but you need every chance that you can get to build towards your listening ability. Some people like to cite that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve a high level of skill in anything, and this number may or may not be completely accurate. The value of consistent practice, however, is something most of us can agree on.

  Despite how good it may seem for listening practice, it can be maddening watching the same episode or movie four or more times. Watch how you normally would in your native language. Once or twice is sufficient.

  Double Check Your Work

  After each episode ends, you will be left with a long list of scribbled words. It may not look like much at first glance, but these are the high frequency words or the key to understanding what everyone is saying. Look up as many of these words as you can in an online dictionary like Jisho (http://jisho.org) to learn their meaning.

  Getting the correct spelling for new words can be difficult at first, but after just a few hours of learning hiragana (the most basic of the three Japanese writing systems), you'll have a much clearer understanding of how to spell new words. Online dictionaries do recognize Romaji (Japanese written in the Latin-Roman alphabet), so you can spell Japanese words using English letters for the time being.

  If you are in the beginning stages of learning Japanese, don't worry about the Japanese subtitle files for now. You don't need them to start learning simple vocabulary. Some words you will be able to instantly pick up by what is on the screen and through context alone.

  Understanding the exact meaning behind new words can be tricky from time to time. It can be very easy to miss the underlying tone and set expressions the Japanese use. This becomes more apparent whenever any language is translated. Perhaps you have seen the results of this in photos of funny T-shirts in Asia or in inappropriately translated signs. You wouldn't want the same thing to happen to you when you spoke or wrote Japanese, yes?

  In that case, it would be a good idea to double check the English subtitles for the meaning of the new words after the episode has ended. Yet at the same time, this doesn't mean that you should use English subtitles when first watching Japanese material. This is why I recommend writing down video times for each new word for later reference. It is highly important to make sure that you completely understand what you are trying to learn before you put it into practice. Language textbooks usually provide English translations for this reason.

  All this subtitle and translation talk might sound somewhat contradictory, so here's an easier way to think about it. Native-level materials are for long and extensive practice. Subtitles and translations are for short and intensive learning.

  Tracking Your Progress

  To help store these new words into your long-term memory, this early word-mining routine should include Anki exercises or Goldlist method entries. It's highly recommended to create exercises or entries for each new word that you successfully learn. They will help you to not forget them and even help to track the progress you make.

  Setting clear and measurable goals is the foundation behind maintaining the motivation and drive to complete any long-term goal like learning Japanese to fluency. If you're learning vocabulary, grammar, or kanji but have little to no way to track how much progress you have made, it's very easy to find yourself losing the motivation to keep going. When you have no way of judging whether or not you are improving at a skill, quitting is inevitable.

  Creating Anki exercises is just one way to clearly measure the progress you have made. Watching the number of cards you accumulate over time makes your progress visible. It makes you feel that you are going in the right direction which makes it all that much easier to keep going in that direction and learning every single day.

  In this book, we will look at a total of four types of Anki exercises, but in this early word-mining routine, you will only need the Production and Listening exercises. You'll be able to do the other two when you are ready to take on full sentences. You'll find these exercises located in Chapter Four.

  Doing Anki exercises for just single words out of context can be somewhat monotonous, so you could even hold off on doing the reviews until you start adding sentences to Anki either from your grammar resource or elsewhere. Until then, just focus on tracking the progress you have made by accumulating more and more cards.

  When you become comfortable
with the routine discussed in this chapter, a typical list of 10-15 words can be learned and converted into Anki exercises within 15-20 minutes easily. When you start to go over the 20 minute mark or start getting bored, it's time to move on. There's always more anime to watch and learn from!

  Best Source to Learn From?

  Many folks seem very curious about what the best types of shows or genres to learn Japanese are, but the answer is simple when you realize that enjoyment and learning can go hand in hand. It's the one you actually want to watch, read, or listen to! Whatever material you want the most to immerse yourself in on a daily basis is the winner. When you learn directly from material you enjoy for the subject matter alone, you will have the daily motivation to learn for years. This sustained motivation will help you eagerly tackle any new language that you encounter elsewhere.

  Constantly mixing up and switching between materials throughout the day keeps you engaged in Japanese for longer amounts of time which ultimately speeds up the rate you learn at. Considering the thousands upon thousands of words native Japanese speakers use in real life, you are going to need all the help you can get if you hope to one day understand everything they say.

  If you get bored after an episode or two, try switching to a non-anime source of native Japanese like YouTube to continue your learning for the day. Of course, there are popular YouTube channels that teach Japanese like Japanesepod101, Japanese From Zero, and Nihongonomori, but these videos should be considered as study rather than native materials. After your study is finished for the day, try watching and learning from channels like Fischer's, 兄者弟者 (2Bro), and はじめしゃちょー (President Hajime).

  You literally have an entire Japanese speaking world to explore. Be sure to check out Niconico (http://www.nicovideo.jp) when you are in need of new Japanese media to sink your teeth into. And if you are into live streaming services like Twitch, you may enjoy crawling through OPENREC.tv (https://www.openrec.tv). And if you want to try to learn from Japanese TV shows and dramas, Netflix offers a fair selection to choose from.

  Japanese Subtitles

  While Japanese subtitles are extremely helpful to learning key moments from video materials, it's poison to your listening comprehension ability. Sadly, Japanese subtitles don't come equipped with people you encounter in Japan. So it's highly recommended to turn these subtitles off, too, while watching.

  Listening comprehension is arguably the weakest skill of the average adult language learner, for most instruction of the target language is provided through text or explanations in the learner's native tongue. Classrooms and even audio language courses simply do not provide the thousands of hours of practice necessary to understand native speakers out in the everyday world.

  Most of us don't have a Japanese mommy or daddy to speak to us every day for 8-12 hours for 10+ years. You can pay tutors to do just that, but that becomes expensive to do every day for even one hour a day. Without these adult native speakers constantly around, your Japanese ears will remain incredibly weak. You have a lot of catching up to do.

  Learning Japanese from music via song lyrics, however, could be one reasonable exception to this rule. Singing the correct lyrics is already a difficult endeavor in our native language, and mishearing lyrics is just as common as it is funny. Start with the lyrics and make it a game to work your way towards relying less and less on them. If you don't want to sing and would rather just listen, this won't do at all. You are missing a huge opportunity to improve your pronunciation, learn language through mimicry, and have quite a lot of fun.

  KANJI AND GRAMMAR ARE EASY

  Early attempts to learn from native Japanese materials like anime are absolutely encouraged for beginners, yet without learning the basics of Japanese as you progress, your language ability will be very limited. You're highly likely to have some trouble getting around Japan if you can't read or write Japanese. Without knowing the differences between polite and casual speech, you could come off as a little arrogant to Japanese people. They will most likely find it very difficult to understand what you want to say if you have no knowledge of Japanese pitch accent or intonation.

  The good news is that all of the above is easily learn-able. With smart language learning techniques, it's also fun. And it's only a matter of time until it all becomes second nature.

  This chapter will be a collection of language learning strategies that you may find useful if you are struggling with learning the basic building blocks of Japanese. These strategies aim to save you time and from frustration in learning Japanese kana, kanji, honorifics, grammar, phrases, and pitch accent.

  Start with whatever excites you the most. A few people will study only phonetics at first for months and perhaps even a full year or two with the goal of sounding as native-like as possible. In the case of author James Heisig, he decided to first tackle the problem of remembering the meaning and writing of the Japanese kanji characters before learning anything else. Others may be looking for a more guided approach, so they use websites and apps like Duolingo.

  In the age of technology, quick internet searches, and YouTube, it has become even easier to learn anything including a foreign language without classroom instruction or even a single textbook. For the sake of streamlined learning, however, I would recommend a coursebook or textbook but a maximum of just one. A high-quality coursebook does provide well-rounded introductions to foreign languages, solid grammar explanations, and a wealth of words, phrases, and sentences to create Anki exercises with.

  Coursebooks and other Japanese learning resources provide a safe and sheltered source for learning, yet it is important to escape this language learning bubble as early as possible. Outside of that is where the true language and culture lie. There may be a set of six textbooks to learn Japanese, but you may only need the first one before you are able to learn primarily from material made for native speakers. Following your coursebook and Anki study time with a strong habit of reading and listening to native materials daily can make that happen.

  Put in the Hours Every Day

  Doing Japanese three times a week for 30 minutes will deliver mediocre results. By limiting yourself to just three times a week, you will struggle to understand and communicate in Japanese for 20 years before you are able to reach any level of fluency.

  Creating and maintaining a daily habit of language learning will be one of your first challenges. Focus on not breaking the daily habit at all costs. Consistency builds habits. Once that consistency and priority in learning Japanese has been established, you can build upon your daily routine by incorporating more reading and listening to native Japanese.

  Languages are not just knowledge but also a set of skills our eyes, ears, mouths, hands, and brains must practice daily in order to achieve fluency. If you only end up with 30 minutes of Japanese learning time after a day full of chaos, so be it. You may not learn much for that day, but these small yet consistent actions do build towards new habits that will enable you to make this major lifestyle change.

  Managing only 30 minutes of Japanese learning time on a single day is not going to slow you down too much, but consistently doing only 30 minutes each day will. This habit should not be taken lightly if you truly want to reach a high level of Japanese. You're trying to learn an entirely new foreign language and culture and not just how to fold your laundry. Show up every single day and put in the hours of work through study and reading and listening to native Japanese.

  Japanese Kana

  Let's start with the basics. Japanese has three writing systems: ひらがな (hiragana), カタカナ (katakana), and 漢字 (kanji). Romaji is not Japanese and relying on it for too long will place a severe handicap upon your reading ability that is extremely difficult to undo. If you haven't already learned kana (hiragana and katakana), you may want to make that one of your first priorities. Fortunately, reading and writing these characters is an easy task for most folks.

  I highly encourage you to use a resource that teaches the characters with the help of mnemonics and in the context of vocabulary words. You can find one such resource here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9Il_j0zjc.