Getting back to the original post, and some of the follow-up comments..

This girl has not learn Japanese by just watching anime - she has obviously done a butt-load of work by constantly looking up words/grammar/speech patterns etc. As people have pointed out, there is no shortcut.

Thing is though, she's obviously had a lot of fun doing it; probably didn't even feel like work for her. She looks up a new word and instantly she is rewarded, as she hears that word next time she watches a show. This whole thread just reinforces the AJATT principle to me; IMMERSION + HAVING FUN IS KEY! If you're not immersing yourself in japanese media, there is no point using the sentence method; may as well just go back to textbooks.

I thought people who learned Japanese from anime were supposed to end up saying 「でちゅ」 at the end of every sentence. I guess watching anime didn't rot her brain after all

It does seem that pronunciation is massively underestimated. I can't count the amount of 'pronunciation is easy' posts I've seen on forums. As far as actually learning the sounds goes, I'd mostly agree, but getting used to speaking fluidly with them shouldn't be taken for granted. That's before you even start to consider pitch, intonation, etc.

I think, though, we can all agree that getting past the 'sensay yoroshekoo' stage takes next to no effort. These people are basically speaking in romaji. I often wonder if it's not some form of tone deafness, like they're just not able to hear how cringeworthy they sound. I don't understand how you can listen to so much Japanese for years on end, and not realise you sound little better than the average tourist.

Personally, more than any individual sounds, I have trouble with strings of お flowing from one word to the next, especially since any following う generally change to お 「要望をお満たしする」「獲物を負う」「覆おうとする」「～をお伺いする」「ものを奪う」.

I learnt that a mora is an even unit of time, but recently I heard the theory that long vowels like おお or ぼう are closer to 1.5-1.7 moras, rather than a complete 2. So how does this affect おおおう? Getting the timing wrong could lead to misunderstanding, like coming up short with 取り繕おう would sound like the base form instead of the volitional, and overshooting just sounds strange.

Tooooooe-key-yoooooo knee sunday E-mass

I am going to take a moment out of my busy morning of eating girlscout cookies (my single greatest discovery of American cuisine so far) and be a party pooper (I'll give one of aforementioned cookies to anyone who can explain to me where the term 'party pooper' came from)

First off, I'd like to say that the video in the first post is extremely unimpressive to me. That's very average in skill for a foreigner who has been studying fairly seriously for a while. It's the same level as students who have studied four semesters of Japanese at a college, aka: upper beginner. She has many years to go before hoping to reach fluency in the language, and if she truly only studies from anime then I doubt that will ever happen period

Media is an excellent source of reinforcing vocabulary and grammar, and encountering something you've studied in the Real World (linguistically speaking) most assuredly cements it in your mind. And it's through repeatedly hearing, seeing, and using those words verbally and in thoughts that you further strengthen those things. I wholeheartedly support listening to music, watching videos, and all other forms of media; after all, language study doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the reason something is studied is for it's practical application.

But that being said, spreading the notion that you can "learn from anime" I think is very deceitful and just a holy grail for many foreigners learning Japanese. Many get into the language because of anime in the first place, and surely watching Dragonball is more fun to a lot of people than studying grammar, drilling kanji, etc. And they think, "Oh, wow, wouldn't it be AMAZING if I could simply learn by doing what I already love?"

And yes! Learning by doing what you love is wonderful. If you don't enjoy learning a language then you're not going to spend much time on it.

But learning entirely by watching anime is akin to a pianist thinking that he can suddenly play Chopin's impromptus when he sits down at a keyboard simply by listening to the recordings a lot. It's not going to happen. Ever.

I see some people citing that learning from media is how they developed their first language in childhood. Acquisition of a first language as a child, and a second language as an adult are completely different neurological processes and aren't really applicable to each other.

Is it possible to learn from anime? Yes. Most people who take their first university class in Japanese already know tons of random words if they've watched a lot of anime. They pick up on things after hearing them in repetition so much with the translated subtitles underneath. If I ask them what やめて means, they can tell me instantly, but they have no underlying understanding of the grammar. They don't know what the verb itself is, what conjugation it's in, how to create that conjugation, etc. All they've developed is this basic correlation of what they hear, and what they see as the English translation. And they might pick up on a few dozen random nouns after watching hour after hour of anime, but how incredibly inefficient is that? They could learn a hundredfold of the material in sincere studying as opposed to random osmosis whilst watching anime.

I suppose efficiency is the main point I'm trying to get across here.

Not to mention that the adult brain is not capable of simply being thrust into a language and picking up on grammar as a child would. We make correlations between nouns and other expressions, yes: if people say 宇宙人 constantly in scenarios where there's an alien, your mind eventually will make that link of, "Hmm....宇宙人＝alien!" but surely no one thinks this is efficient? Not to mention the fact that it only works for things easily associated, requires a large amount of repetition for the correlation to become certain, and will never work for more abstract things. Grammar cannot be learned this way.

Which brings me to the point that actual study and practice of a language is required before you can use media to 'cement' the things you learn. You could pick up a book on your first day of Japanese, have to use a dictionary for every word, but that's decoding. Your brain isn't going to make the strong "AHA!" connection it makes as it does when knowledge is already there, and then it encounters it. The more your brain deems something to be useful (how often you encounter it) the more likely it is to enter long term storage. I think you guys know what I am talking about: when you've studied something, then finally encounter it in a novel or in conversation or whatever, and it really CLICKS.

Perhaps I am ranting on tangents. The gist of what I am trying to say is that watching anime is in no way, shape, or form a substitute for actual studying. An episode of anime is, what, about 25 minutes? When you watch a lot of it, that really adds up. Think about how much more you could learn in that amount of hours when you're doing dilligent studying of the language. Like I said: it's hundredfold.

Edit: Argh! One day I will be able to make a post without finding silly grammatical mistakes and such when I read through it

I dont' mean to spoil the fun here but her Japanese is not good at all. But I guess it depends on how you look at it. For someone that studies Japanese here and there it's good. But, if all you do is read Japanese it's nothing special.

What does "learned Japanese" means anways? At what point can you use you learned Japanese? For all the beginners, you should strive to speak like that in less than 6 months. It can be done for sure.

@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

@Aijin: it probably started as a reference to people who drink too much at a party and end up crapping in their pants or missing the bowl, thus ruining the party. I have been at parties where someone took a crap on the bathroom floor, and it indeed ruined the mood for many.

That actually made me kind of nostalgic for my university nomikai days...

Can I have a cookie now?

ta12121 Wrote:@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

Because you don't speak enough. A lot of AJATT people have somehow made up the notion that if you simply read and understand enough Japanese, you will magically be able to speak it fluently eventually. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at all. Speaking is a skill which requires training.

Get some Japanese friends. IRL if you can, online if you can't. Speak Japanese as often as you can, for as long as possible, about diverse subjects. If your understanding is as good as you claim, you won't have any problem speaking after some hours training it. Anything you can understand, you can theoretically say. You just need a lot of training to make it pop up in your head in a conversation.

Aijin Wrote:But learning entirely by watching anime is akin to a pianist thinking that he can suddenly play Chopin's impromptus when he sits down at a keyboard simply by listening to the recordings a lot. It's not going to happen. Ever.

That's exactly how I learnt to play the guitar! Never studied theory, just tried playing along with records; first chords, then lead parts. Most guitarists learn this way; drummers too!

Obviously I needed to look up chord shapes, but that's what this girl did; in her 2nd video she explains she didn't just watch anime and "absorb it" somehow, she used it as the basis for her studying whilst learning vocab and grammar from dictionaries and textbooks. Which is pretty cool I think.

Tobberoth Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

Because you don't speak enough. A lot of AJATT people have somehow made up the notion that if you simply read and understand enough Japanese, you will magically be able to speak it fluently eventually. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at all. Speaking is a skill which requires training.

Get some Japanese friends. IRL if you can, online if you can't. Speak Japanese as often as you can, for as long as possible, about diverse subjects. If your understanding is as good as you claim, you won't have any problem speaking after some hours training it. Anything you can understand, you can theoretically say. You just need a lot of training to make it pop up in your head in a conversation.

Thanks for the advice. I don't think one would be able to speak fluently out of nowhere from doing AJATT for a long time. So for speaking, i should try practicing what i know to a native speaker? And try to respond back? Or let them speak alot and try to respond back to what they are saying? I guess i should definitely byy a mic/headset on talk on skype, and try to speak as much as possible.

I can't speak for either of the videos posted but they both sounded alright to me. I don't really care if they're fluent or not or how they learned Japanese. Hell, it's just nice seeing people with that passion to have actually learned Japanese to a usable level and still strive to get better. Beats the shit out of Youtube users posting videos where the only thing always mentioned is that: "Japan's great, you don't even need to know Japanese to live in Tokyo!!". gaijin4life man!

I don't get why so many people nit pick at their ability either. No one claimed they were fluent or even advanced. Personally, I think it's decent progress for 2 years (with the first girl). Not everyone is rushing to be fluent. I know there are many posters on this forum that are insanely awesome(not being sarcastic here ) because of how fast they can learn, but not everyone is the same.

I've technically been studying Japanese for over a year now. I can't read anything for the most part, and I can't speak much more than an introductory sentence. But it took me 10 months to complete RtK and between working fulltime and school fulltime, plus other activities, it's tough getting my study time in. I get my music and media enjoyment in all day, but actual studying is another monster for me I guess my point is that people could call me one of the worst Japanese learners because I'm so slow.

Not trying to start an argument here just pointing something out. We have no idea what this girl's study habits/time was like aside from she enjoyed watching a lot of anime. At least she can speak Japanese and be understood by a native for the most part, which is much more than a lot of Japanese learners can say.

Hmm… well, personally I am always impressed when I see someone able to express themselves in a foreign language, so I give kudos to the girls in both clips. Regarding the girl in the “Learning Japanese from anime” clip, I think to dismiss the fact that she has any ability in Japanese or to say she’s totally unimpressive is pretty harsh. I guess I base it on my own personal experience with foreign languages… every word, every expression had to be learned and has a story. Anything I know how to say in a foreign language came from a certain amount of effort on my part. To put it all together and be able to speak in an intelligible way… I don’t take that for granted.

Maybe this is because seeing it otherwise wouldn’t be very motivating for myself. If I thought about my own foreign language attempts, “So what? Yeah, I can say and do this or that but so can a bunch of other people who’ve studied the language for a while,” I don’t know if I’d get very far. And if I thought native speakers were judging me that harshly – that unless I spoke at a very high level I may as well be a beginner – I wouldn’t feel too encouraged either. I think there’s something to be said for appreciating the effort it takes to learn a language. Maybe someone has a long way to go, but we don’t have to dismiss what they’ve done so far to get where they are now.

Language learning is a lifelong process that takes patience and perseverance more than anything, so I try to be kind with myself along the way and appreciate what progress I’ve made and how far I’ve come. That’s the only way to keep motivated enough to keep going. I see things the same way when hearing other people speaking a foreign language.

Making mistakes, not having native-level pronunciation – it’s all part and parcel of going outside of yourself and speaking a language other than your own. It’s great to have high expectations of oneself but at the same time it is okay to acknowledge that I, for example, am not Japanese, and will never be Japanese. Years from now I would love to reach something akin to fluency, but no matter how long I study and how good I get I will inevitably flub, make mistakes, mispronounce words, be off with my pitch accent, use awkward phrasing, misunderstand, etc. I’ll keep listening and imitating and trying to get better, but at the same time I won’t discount all the time I’ve put into learning the language because I’m less than perfect. I don’t do this to myself, and I don’t do it to other people who are putting themselves out there and speaking a foreign language.

So… when I see someone speaking another language with apparent ease (which is a task in and of itself… you can have a firm grasp of vocab, grammar, etc., and still have difficulty speaking. It seems to be a skill that requires its own attention and practice), I say kudos. I find it inspiring… it encourages me to keep going.

It’s not all or nothing. The fact that someone’s Japanese or English or French or whatever is not perfect doesn’t make me dismiss them as unimpressive. Accent in particular is one of the more difficult things to perfect. Here in the US there are countless non-native English speakers who speak what I would call flawless English, but I haven’t come across anyone who was able to completely “get rid” of their accent (and I don’t see why they would need to). Even when everything else is perfect, the accent, however slight, “gives them away”. And yes, some people have accents that are quite thick and that even sometimes make comprehension challenging. No one sees them as lazy or thinks they can’t speak the language well… it just means that where we come from and what we’ve grown up with cannot be completely erased. It’s okay.

That said, I don’t believe that many people can really learn to speak, use, and understand a language by passive listening alone, and I don’t even think that’s what the girl in the OP claimed in her YouTube video… I took it to mean that she used anime extensively as a tool for learning, not that all she did was literally watch it. I’m quite sure she looked up and memorized vocab, went over grammar, etc. Anyway, she’s 17 and has a firm grasp on English and is also able to express herself in Japanese… I say good on her.

EDIT: Actually Offshore's post summarized much more succinctly what I was trying to say. I think some people here have an intensity about them when it comes to language learning, which can be great, but not everyone has that to the same degree. For a lot of people, even getting to the point where you can talk at length about anything beyond the basics in a foreign language is quite the process.

aphasiac Wrote:

Aijin Wrote:But learning entirely by watching anime is akin to a pianist thinking that he can suddenly play Chopin's impromptus when he sits down at a keyboard simply by listening to the recordings a lot. It's not going to happen. Ever.

That's exactly how I learnt to play the guitar! Never studied theory, just tried playing along with records; first chords, then lead parts. Most guitarists learn this way; drummers too!

Obviously I needed to look up chord shapes, but that's what this girl did; in her 2nd video she explains she didn't just watch anime and "absorb it" somehow, she used it as the basis for her studying whilst learning vocab and grammar from dictionaries and textbooks. Which is pretty cool I think.

If you think of this sort of playing as "native level", then I still find it hard to believe that just listening is going to be enough to master anything, even with the occasional look up. You need to practice, drill, review, and whatever else in addition to getting exposure.

Every skill needs to be trained i guess. Understanding and reading is the most important skills out of the others. So for me personally i have to transfer to what i understand to speaking. Which is hard, as i can' really output back out everything flawless. But as others stated, it's all about practice. Every skill needs to be master.

ta12121 Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

Because you don't speak enough. A lot of AJATT people have somehow made up the notion that if you simply read and understand enough Japanese, you will magically be able to speak it fluently eventually. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at all. Speaking is a skill which requires training.

Get some Japanese friends. IRL if you can, online if you can't. Speak Japanese as often as you can, for as long as possible, about diverse subjects. If your understanding is as good as you claim, you won't have any problem speaking after some hours training it. Anything you can understand, you can theoretically say. You just need a lot of training to make it pop up in your head in a conversation.

Thanks for the advice. I don't think one would be able to speak fluently out of nowhere from doing AJATT for a long time. So for speaking, i should try practicing what i know to a native speaker? And try to respond back? Or let them speak alot and try to respond back to what they are saying? I guess i should definitely byy a mic/headset on talk on skype, and try to speak as much as possible.

Just converse normally. If you think "Oh, I need to train this grammar thing so lets talk about that" and such, you will get nowhere. Simply talk about anything. Get friends in that language, not language partners. It's all about speaking for longer periods of time, regularly. What you talk about and how you do it matters quite little.

Also, it's important to not be afraid of making mistakes. It's better to talk with some mistakes than not talk at all because you're afraid of your output. Try to speak at normal pace, try to keep a conversation. If you can do that, who cares if you make a few mistakes, those can be fixed later.

Tobberoth Wrote:Get some Japanese friends. IRL if you can, online if you can't. Speak Japanese as often as you can, for as long as possible, about diverse subjects.

For this kind of training I recommend MMORPGs, not everyone can get a Japanese friend just like that you know But I agree that a person you share common interests with is much more helpful than a language exchange partner.

Get on some game that appeals to you and has lots of Japanese users and start playing. In no time you'll be in some guild and on their Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Etc. This is a great environment since you can decide if and when you'll speak (its perfect for shy people and beginners) and game related speak is really easy. Later you'll join their regular chats etc. and once again you can choose a time to get involved and topic you're comfortable with.

This is how one of my friends got his English from abysmal to conversational with zero additional study time.

Great post mgbp7! Those are my feelings exactly

I also agree with what Tobberoth and thurd said.

I've played an MMO before with a healthy number of Japanese people, although I did not get to do Vent or anything. I actually wasn't even truly studying Japanese at the time, but it's surprising the kinds of things you can pick up just watching Japanese have conversations with each other.

Tobberoth Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:Because you don't speak enough. A lot of AJATT people have somehow made up the notion that if you simply read and understand enough Japanese, you will magically be able to speak it fluently eventually. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at all. Speaking is a skill which requires training.

Get some Japanese friends. IRL if you can, online if you can't. Speak Japanese as often as you can, for as long as possible, about diverse subjects. If your understanding is as good as you claim, you won't have any problem speaking after some hours training it. Anything you can understand, you can theoretically say. You just need a lot of training to make it pop up in your head in a conversation.

Thanks for the advice. I don't think one would be able to speak fluently out of nowhere from doing AJATT for a long time. So for speaking, i should try practicing what i know to a native speaker? And try to respond back? Or let them speak alot and try to respond back to what they are saying? I guess i should definitely byy a mic/headset on talk on skype, and try to speak as much as possible.

Just converse normally. If you think "Oh, I need to train this grammar thing so lets talk about that" and such, you will get nowhere. Simply talk about anything. Get friends in that language, not language partners. It's all about speaking for longer periods of time, regularly. What you talk about and how you do it matters quite little.

Also, it's important to not be afraid of making mistakes. It's better to talk with some mistakes than not talk at all because you're afraid of your output. Try to speak at normal pace, try to keep a conversation. If you can do that, who cares if you make a few mistakes, those can be fixed later.

Thanks for the post.That makes sense. So basically all i need to do is try to keep a conversation up, and make lots of mistakes. Actually now that i think about it, mistakes are good. Because let's say you make a mistake, and someone corrects you with the correct way or the natural way of saying things. It will most likely stick. Same thing with the srs. If i hear or see a kanji that i've been srsing, i'll remeber it instantly in my memory even if i forget the readings for that particular kanji compound.

In regards to learning from media this is what I've found...

Vocab that I study take a long while to sink in, but vocab that I've learned from watching dramas, etc. seems to get strongly cemented in my mind.

For example, I've been watching 24 (the JP version), and learned 2 new words very well 爆弾 and 大統領 after just a couple of episodes. They are like cement in my mind now without ever actively studying them. I wish I could learn all my vocab from media When it happens (which isn't often), it's much more efficient than trying to study it.

socrat Wrote:In regards to learning from media this is what I've found...

Vocab that I study take a long while to sink in, but vocab that I've learned from watching dramas, etc. seems to get strongly cemented in my mind.

For example, I've been watching 24 (the JP version), and learned 2 new words very well 爆弾 and 大統領 after just a couple of episodes. They are like cement in my mind now without ever actively studying them. I wish I could learn all my vocab from media When it happens (which isn't often), it's much more efficient than trying to study it.

He he I've got the same experience from watching Fullmetal Alchemist, words like: 兄弟, 石, 効果 are engraved into my brain. Also when I'm adding new words I sometimes have this "ah so thats what it meant" moment, if I recall it was used a couple of times in a song/anime/game.

FFXIII uses these 守る, 未来, 使命, 果たす in about every full sentence. Sometimes even without other words

thurd Wrote:FFXIII uses these 守る, 未来, 使命, 果たす in about every full sentence. Sometimes even without other words

Heh, I realized this as well. Being that I know pretty much no vocab, it's really something to behold when you pick stuff up without even trying at all. In the first few hours of FF13, 守る was one of those words that just kept getting stuck in my brain. I couldn't even understand the reading completely the first few times I saw it, but it eventually just "stuck". After seeing the darn word so many times, I finally bothered to go check a dictionary to see what it meant, it made lots of sense. Now, if someone says まもる I understand it pretty well and I don't even have to think about which kanji it is either. It just pops up. Wish my vocab reviews on KO2001 would pop up so easily >.>

ta12121 Wrote:@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

A lot of people have said it before, "If you don't speak, you won't learn how to speak". First figure out what you want to say. Then read about things that related to the things you want to talk about. For example, if you want to talk about "how to learn languages" then first you have to find things written by native Japanese speakers that talk about "how to learn languages".

If you want to learn how to introduce yourself, go to read a bunch of profiles on mixi.

You really have to ask yourself, what do I want to say?

The thing that impresses me the most is that she was able to watch large quantities of anime for 2 years. That stuff drives me crazy, up the wall, and off my rocker after a while... where are my marbles?

aijin Wrote:Argh! One day I will be able to make a post without finding silly grammatical mistakes and such when I read through it

No worries. It just took me 15 minutes to write two sentances in my native language. Also, I just spelled "sentence" incorrectly.

I only noticed one thing that was wrong when I read your post, so you're doing better than I am

By the way, I have to somewhat dissagree with you. I always find it an entire order of magnitude easier to learn a word if I have heard it before, even if I didn't pick up on the meaning at the time.

Aijin Wrote:First off, I'd like to say that the video in the first post is extremely unimpressive to me.

Harsh, but preferable to 上手ですね!

Quote:I see some people citing that learning from media is how they developed their first language in childhood. Acquisition of a first language as a child, and a second language as an adult are completely different neurological processes and aren't really applicable to each other.

Proof... please.

Quote:If I ask them what やめて means, they can tell me instantly, but they have no underlying understanding of the grammar. They don't know what the verb itself is, what conjugation it's in, how to create that conjugation, etc. All they've developed is this basic correlation of what they hear, and what they see as the English translation.

Sounds like a few of the kids I've been working with.

Quote:They could learn a hundredfold of the material in sincere studying as opposed to random osmosis whilst watching anime.

But who wants to put forth effort and learn 100 fold when they can laze their way to fluency.

Quote:I suppose efficiency is the main point I'm trying to get across here.

なるほど

Quote:Grammar cannot be learned this way.

Proof... please

Quote:Perhaps I am ranting on tangents. The gist of what I am trying to say is that watching anime is in no way, shape, or form a substitute for actual studying.

If you ask me..... I don't think she did it by "only watching" anime. I think there's something else going on there, but the focus has been placed on the anime for some reason.

Quote:Edit: Argh! One day I will be able to make a post without finding silly grammatical mistakes and such when I read through it

I'd suggest you watch American cartoons, but many of them are made by Japanese animation studios.

mr_hans_moleman Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:@mr_hans_moleman
Less then 6 months? I'm around 6months time and a few weeks added to that.And my speaking skills don't match my understanding and reading. How would one go about gaining a level of good speech in japanese? I feel like i can understand and read alot of japanese which is nice. But my speaking level goes far behind, as well as my writing.
Alot of people that follow AJATT method (I do) and they say input=output of the same quality. Which at the moment don't really believe. Sure it has made my reading and my japanese sound more natural. But i still feel like I'm, a beginner in terms of speaking, even below that.......

A lot of people have said it before, "If you don't speak, you won't learn how to speak". First figure out what you want to say. Then read about things that related to the things you want to talk about. For example, if you want to talk about "how to learn languages" then first you have to find things written by native Japanese speakers that talk about "how to learn languages".

If you want to learn how to introduce yourself, go to read a bunch of profiles on mixi.

You really have to ask yourself, what do I want to say?

Thanks for the comment. That make sense. For me personally i can understand loads of japanese. But to start speaking on subjects, that's another story. It makes sense to research stuff you want to talk about, so it can start you off. Because i know speaking isn't linear straightforward as srsing sentences. But it makes sense i can understand alot, so i need places to start off in, even some random conversations to listen to and see what i can understand and what can i speak towards the conversation

So i'll research some basic stuff towards speaking. Such as introductions,polite stuff, certain subjects. Just to start me off. But i think the rest does require good listening skills, in order to reply back in certain ways. I think my mind cannot process how to reply back in a certain way, whether it being incorrect or correct. I was talking to a Japanese person recently. Even though i understood what she was saying, i had trouble replying back.