Raschaverak Wrote:I'm definitely not fluent in Japanese. But please don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say to start putting words together, without any knowledge of grammar or so. But we are talking about learning 10K sentences, which is just unnecessary, and ineffective.

I'm sensing that what you are trying to say is to be PERFECT Japanese, but note, that is not = fluency, that's beyond that (by far). Why would I want to be perfect in any language? Not even it's almost impossible to achieve (specially with Japanese) but ineffective, because the learning curve will go up exponentially with every added percentile to your knowledge, beyond 85%-90% and so.

If you learn the words with some grammar (emphasis is always on the words), and start putting them together, you will eventually catch up. I don't see how this can hinder learning certain fixed expressions along the way.
But if you ONLY learn whole sentences + grammar you might find it difficult to express yourself the way you want - thus limiting your own "freedom" in the language, hence less fluency.
You have to understand that the brain works by association, the more connections you have the more you know (and can know). I believe that having 10K words memorized will still give you much more connections than learning 10K fixed sentences.

Also Japanese is just a language just like any other, no need to mystify it too much imo.

Raschaverak Wrote:Doesn't "nusring" come form the scene where Light tests the death note for the first time on live TV?

TheVinster Wrote:Contributing to all of this is that it sucks finding partners to voice chat with because I'm 14 hours behind Japan. When I get off work they are waking up and going to work. When I wake up for work they are about to go to bed. It's obnoxious.

Aikynaro Wrote:@cophnia61
Seeing you're so inspired by CureDolly, maybe you should try precure? :p
(Actually a serious suggestion though - Heartcatch in particular is both good study material and a good show. A fairly large percentage of my old subs2srs deck is made up of Heartcatch and DokiDoki. Mujin Wakusei Survive is another good but easy show. Those together basically gave me my whole vocabulary foundation)

cophnia61 Wrote:I tried with things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball but while they are way easier I find them too childish :/ Also being them old anime the audio quality is poor. I tried with more recent anime like K-ON and while audio is good they are really boring. I gave a try to Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki and the fact they are 10 times more difficult than everyday-life anime made me aware of how much important is motivation and especially to use compelling content. So I decided to give a try to my favorite anime and it doesn't seem much difficult than Tokyo Ghoul so I decided to stay at it. Maybe I will go at a super slow speed but is't still better than not moving at all xD

CureDolly Wrote:

cophnia61 Wrote:I tried with things like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball but while they are way easier I find them too childish :/ Also being them old anime the audio quality is poor. I tried with more recent anime like K-ON and while audio is good they are really boring. I gave a try to Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho-Pass and Mirai Nikki and the fact they are 10 times more difficult than everyday-life anime made me aware of how much important is motivation and especially to use compelling content. So I decided to give a try to my favorite anime and it doesn't seem much difficult than Tokyo Ghoul so I decided to stay at it. Maybe I will go at a super slow speed but is't still better than not moving at all xD

I didn't really think that the Kawaii Japanese Anime Method was crafted around kawaisa itself. But this comment and a few others on our Japanese forums show me that in a certain way perhaps it partly was.

That is, if you really don't enjoy anything aimed at children it makes things a bit more difficult as it is best to begin (and spend some considerable time) working with material at a simple-ish level.

Of course you could force yourself to do it in a spirit of study, but I don't recommend that myself as it is rather alien to the whole approach, which is using Japanese, not practising it. In other words doing things you would be doing anyway in your native language (even if very slowly and stumblingly at first).

I would certainly be watching Precure. It is worth looking for the right series if you do want to try it. Recently I was watching the current series (Go! Princess) and enjoying it, but not with that old doki doki (ahem) feeling. I wondered if I was outgrowing Precure. Then I re-watched a couple of episodes of Doki Doki and remembered just why I loved the series so much.

I don't think you need to be one of the "kawaii crowd" to enjoy some simple anime. Totoro is a classic that many adults enjoy, for example, and Aikynaro-san is certainly not the only grown-up minded person who can enjoy Precure.

But if you really do find anything accessible to children boring, that does seem to necessitate some kind of adaptation.

I am not sure how it would work starting with things like Tokyo Ghoul. Of course you are at a higher level than we were when we started with Precure. I will be interested to hear how this works for you.

EratiK Wrote:@cophnia61
Not sure why you would limit yourself to only two ends of the anime spectrum, it's not like in-between anime don't exist. There are simple SOL like K-On/Free, or stuff like Kurenai/Usagi Drop/Barakamon, or Aikatsu/Pretty Rhythm if you want little girl cartoons with less supernatural, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.

TurtleBear Wrote:2. Stop relying on motivation. Motivation is fleeting. If you want to learn Japanese, dedicate yourself to it. Say to yourself, "No matter what, I will dedicate myself to Japanese at least one hour a day, regardless of how tedious it sounds." This is what people who accomplish goals do. When asked about the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo responded, "If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius." Do you think he ever took a day off painting because he simply didn't feel like it? Why should language learning be any different?

cophnia61 Wrote:

EratiK Wrote:@cophnia61
Not sure why you would limit yourself to only two ends of the anime spectrum, it's not like in-between anime don't exist. There are simple SOL like K-On/Free, or stuff like Kurenai/Usagi Drop/Barakamon, or Aikatsu/Pretty Rhythm if you want little girl cartoons with less supernatural, and probably a lot of others I don't know about.

I know but unfortunately many of them don't have japanese subtitles :/ For example two of my favorite anime are Toradora and GTO but unfortunately I cannot find japanese subtitles for them... But something like that would be perfect! Now I'm going to check the anime you mentioned, thank you EratiK!!

EDIT: Usagi Drop has jsubs and it seems something I will enjoy watching!

vgambit Wrote:With the AJATT method, that feedback loop starts with the motivation boost you get from reading one of Khatz' articles. Then you study. Then, if you set up an immersion environment, you experience native material. Then you comprehend nothing, feel bad, and read another article for motivation, whenever you get around to it. In fact, until you get far enough into that sentence phase, the immersion environment is gonna serve as a constant reminder of how much progress you aren't really making at all, despite the hours you're putting in. Eventually, you get sick of not understanding OS error messages, and not comprehending any dialogue in movies/shows/anime. You switch it back to English. You turn subs back on. The music might stick around, but the immersion fades.

In my opinion, you need one of three things to effectively study Japanese:

1. Fun learning material

2. Lasting motivation

3. A strong work ethic

The problem with 1 is that the fun material is usually sorely lacking in content, or has other problems that diminish its effectiveness. This is one of the things a good teacher who follows the i+1 theory can provide; an enjoyable learning environment that actually keeps you learning at a decent rate by building on what you already know so that you don't get frustrated or bored. You can't really get that with free/cheap learning materials, though, so it's pretty expensive for something that you're really only doing for xyz not-very-strong reason.

The problem with 2 is that most of us simply lack it. If you have to learn the language, say, for work, then you're gonna do it because you don't really have much of a choice if you want to get/keep your job. My motivation was that I had gotten tired of fan translations and bad localizations, and wanted to experience the native material the way it was intended. That eventually changed to becoming a requisite of my dream job of working at a Japanese game development studio. I planned out a timeline of learning both the language and certain in-demand technologies. Of course, it was always a nice-to-have and not an imperative, so it wasn't a good enough reason to stick to the grind through the really bad times.

3, again, is something a lot of people just don't have. Simply accepting that the process is long, arduous, and often simply hard work (with no pay), and continuing to grind, day in, day out, until you get to a good point where you don't have to grind anymore.