I understand almost everyone is against English subtitles, but when you're still a noob, how are you supposed to know if what little you understand is correct?

What I tried yesterday was quickly glancing at the subtitles as they showed up, but focusing mainly on the video itself, while comparing what I understood from the audio to the English meaning. It made words easier to pick out and I feel it helped me get some practice on how/when to use certain words.

Two main problems people have with English subtitles are (1) that you invariably end up just reading the subtitles and lose focus, and (2) you're not veering away from English and thinking in English. For the first point, I've tried it already and it wasn't hard to stay focused; when I did zone out it was only for a little while. And for the second point, it's just like including English in your initial Anki cards - the idea is that you eventually move on to Japanese-Japanese cards.

Is this wrong to do and what are your thoughts?

[s0apgun]

Learn new vocab with anki or whatever you choose. Use media to hear known vocab words in the wild and get a better feel for how they're used or deeper understanding through context. There is so much vocab you need to learn so doing it through your method described doesn't seem very effective. Maybe watch whatever it is in English first and then watch it in Japanese so you get the plot but don't use subtitles.

I will speak up as being not against English subtitles. Certainly, when I was at an intermediate level, I watched a lot of English-subbed anime (because I was watching with friends/family who didn't understand Japanese, and because I didn't understand anywhere close to 100% of the Japanese dialogue, and because no one had ever told me I shouldn't watch subtitled anime.) And I think it actually did a lot to make the Japanese dialogue comprehensible to me. When I saw the English subtitles, it felt like I was able to hear the Japanese dialogue in a way that I couldn't without the subtitles; I think that seeing the English words was priming my brain to hear their Japanese equivalents.

(That sounds like pseudo-science, but there have been experiments done where people recognize words faster if they're primed with a word with a similar meaning, so I don't see why it couldn't work cross-linguistically.)

Now, that's a double-edged sword, because sometimes you can fool yourself into thinking you understand more than you do.

One problem is that translations can be pretty far from being literal, and it can be really distracting/misleading. I know one person who spoke Japanese, and prefered to watch dubbed-into-English anime than subbed anime because the subtitles were too distracting. I don't have that problem, but it does throw me off when the dialogue has character A calling character B by B's last name, but the subtitles show B's first name instead, for example.

Overall, though, if subtitles help you pick out the words I think that's to the good.

To really get the most out of it, I think you need to try studying it more than just watching. Actually take a listen to a full sentence, maybe more than once, and analyze it in your mind.

Back in the day I was in an anime fansubbing group, and I often did the timing of the scripts to the audio. This was before I really got serious into studying Japanese, but looking back on it, that probably would have been a decent way of studying, at least moreso than just watching an episode straight through.
Actually, now you can take mkvs of the anime, rip the script out of it, then just run it through aegissub and go through the episode 1 sentence at a time. You know, I might just try that sometime soon.

@s0apgun: Heh this is certainly not the only way I learn vocab. And it's not really a "method," just something I tried out.

@Fillanzea: That's exactly how I feel about English subtitles. And thanks for the tips.

@Zarxrax: Yea, I suppose what I do is more of a passive thing.

Zarxrax Wrote:Actually, now you can take mkvs of the anime, rip the script out of it, then just run it through aegissub and go through the episode 1 sentence at a time. You know, I might just try that sometime soon.

Also, subs2srs it w/ Japanese subtitles, so that you can look up the Japanese terms more easily.

This is also good material for a vocab deck, since you get words in context and w/ pronunciation. Since installing Anki 2, I just import everything into Anki, and selectively mine the imported cards for new vocab items. At this point in my studies, this yields anywhere between 20 and 30 cards per episode. (It used to be a lot more; the first anime I did this with was 鋼の錬金術師. Boy, was that a miscalculation. On the flip side, I can now drop 等価交換 into casual conversation...)

If you're totally new, though, your time might be better spent going through Genki, Tae Kim, or other resources until you have a foundation of vocab and grammar on which to build, and in the meantime just enjoy the hell out of your English subtitled anime. (Insert boilerplate "Dubs Suck" rant here.) There's so much to learn, and it's easy to bite off too much in the beginning.

Recommending that beginners watch all their Japanese media raw never made that much sense to me. It doesn't like a useful way to learn, as any unknown vocabulary would sound like jibberish and be incomprehensible. Maybe I'm crazy, but watching a show where I can only understand a handful of what's being said doesn't sound very fun. If watching a TV show isn't fun, then why bother watching it?
Somstuff, if you can watch the show with English subs and focus on the Japanese dialogue, then by all means, continue to use the English subs. Before I ever started studying Japanese, I already picked up quite a few words, phrases, and yes, even some grammar (ie ～たい form　～ません/ない、の as a possessive) simply by watching English subtitled anime. The beginning stages of my study were really easy, because a lot of the information I already knew from watching anime with subtitles.
If you really want to test yourself, you could watch an episode raw first, and then watch it English subbed a second time to see how much you understood. As long as you're studying in others ways, like with a textbook or an Anki deck, then there's no reason why you shouldn't kick back and enjoy your subtitled anime.

I think it's because you'll end up reading the subs. Trust me, I read the Norwegian subs on movies in English even though I can understand it perfectly. I do often end up hating the translation though, because there is so much stuff lost in translation...

I don't have many difficulties with this really; because I have really poor vision (20/100+), I can just sit back and enjoy the show, thus rendering me unable to read the subs. :p

If you want to spot vocab words in the wild, try listening to Japanese radio when you browse the web or do everything else that you use to do. That's what I do, and I hear lots of interesting music as well; Japanese pop music is much better (see: less bad) than American pop music.

Quote:Recommending that beginners watch all their Japanese media raw never made that much sense to me. It doesn't like a useful way to learn, as any unknown vocabulary would sound like jibberish and be incomprehensible. Maybe I'm crazy, but watching a show where I can only understand a handful of what's being said doesn't sound very fun. If watching a TV show isn't fun, then why bother watching it?

Depends on the show, but I've been trying to watch everything raw and it's quite enjoyable for 90% of things. You can follow the gist of things that aren't just talking pretty easily, and some shows are even fairly comprehensible even given a rubbish level of Japanese (like mine). I've tried watching just glancing at the English subs and trying to focus on what they're saying, but if I'm actually enjoying the show I always end up slipping and just reading. It makes you really focus if there aren't any subs, and picking out the words that you do know and trying to fit the meaning together is definitely good practice.

Of the current anime season there are only two shows that I gave up on without English subs (Jinrui wa Suitai and Kokoro Connect). Everything else is roughly understandable or enjoyable even without much understanding (and you can always rewatch the incomprehensible bits with subtitles later if you need to - most of the shit that's airing isn't worth it though).