I would very much like to start sentence mining, but I don't have much interesting in dorama. Since I watch a lot of anime, and a lot of anime interest me, that's what I would like to use as my source material. The bad news is that there is a VERY limited selection of Japanese script/subtitles for anime. What I hear about from this forum is that mining dorama with Japanese subtitles is the most effective material for mining.

How practical and effective is it to mine anime or dorama WITHOUT any kind of Japanese transcript, especially considering low-level Japanese ability? (I only have about 3 months of serious learning in my belt.) Or should I really just stick to material with Japanese transcripts?

brandon7s Wrote:What I hear about from this forum is that mining dorama with Japanese subtitles is the most effective material for mining.

Even if it is effective as hell, if it does not interest you, where's the fun? Go with what's fun for you.

Also you don't have to mine in order to learn

You can mine stuff by ear but only stuff that you know or are close to knowing. The advantage of having subs is it gives you an accurate transcription of what was said rather than a hap-hazzard guess. The more you know the far easier it gets to be able to mine without subs because you can be sure you're guesses and assumptions are more accurate but in the beginning it's not so easy.

I watched anime a lot about a year ago, nowadays I watch it rather ocassionally but I still enjoy it from time to time. However, after having watched a lot of dorama, movies, real tv and real conversations, it's true what they say "Anime talk is a bit different to regular conversational Japanese". Believe me the voice acting is acting, it sounds hardly anything like real people which can be a shock to the system when you begin listening to real people. Just food for thought.

I think it's a great way to pick up new vocab but I would generally avoid directly mining it's speech patterns/style or you might wind up sounding just like an anime character.

I picked up all my vocab through music and anime before and during RTK and it gave me a decent leg up when it came to getting started

Good luck.

brandon7s Wrote:How practical and effective is it to mine anime or dorama WITHOUT any kind of Japanese transcript, especially considering low-level Japanese ability? (I only have about 3 months of serious learning in my belt.) Or should I really just stick to material with Japanese transcripts?

It's not very practical. Sorry. Yes, you should definitely watch and listen, but for picking sentences early on you need text.

Fortunately, a lot of anime is based on manga or light novels, so in addition to transcripts, you can read the original for similar vocabulary and usage.

I really don't recommend mining by ear, not even when you have a LOT of learning under your belt. If you KNOW what they are saying and want to remember it you can mine it, but if it's a sentence you don't understand, risk is high that you're going to make an error in your transcript and learn it incorrectly.

Like wildweathel said, watch and listen to tons of anime without subs, you will learn a lot from that. If you're interested in anime and not drama, you probably like manga as well, so that's the perfect thing for you to mine. Say you watch Naruto while mining from the Naruto manga and you will get almost the exact same effect as mining the anime.

Don't force yourself to do anything that you're really not interested in.
But at the same time, always try to keep an open mind and try new/different things
once in a while.

As for drama, there are many series that are based on manga or novels (Nodame Cantabile is one of my favorite dramas). So maybe those shows might be easier to watch.

From this season (Fall 2009) onwards, it seems that most Japanese dramas will now come with Japanese subtitles. I think it's only a matter of time before anime groups catch on. So hopefully we'll start seeing Japanese scripts for anime as well.

I also agree about not mining by ear. When I read drama scripts, I feel so glad I didn't have to mine them by ear.

To be honest, I read Japanese drama scripts to learn Japanese, not necessarily to be entertained. So I generally read the scripts and think of things like:

Why did the character say it that way?
What else could the character have said?
What didn't the character say? Why?

And then when I watch these dramas again, I try to put myself into their world and think about what I would/should have done. Somehow this way of thinking makes even the boring dramas much more interesting for me.

Anyway, good luck with your studies.

You could try transcribing on your own first and then getting your transcripts checked by a native speaker. That way, when you'd go to enter them in your SRS, you'd know they're correct.

Not only is it risky, it's also likely to be extremely time-consuming since, if you're anything like me, you'll be compelled to double-check the spelling of each word before you put into into Anki.

People use dorama to study because of the style & quantity of the language. It's more grounded, more realistic, and the vocab is more relevant.

Zettai Kareshi, Hana Yori Dango, Kurosagi, Hana Zakari, Nodame Cantabile and Gokusen are but a few dramas that are based manga (and anime). Hell, Nodame Cantabile is nothing more than live action manga (and has exact subs). For those that don't have .srt subs you can still use Dramanote as an easy copy/paste resource.

Still, if you're fixed on anime, there's still a few handy subs laying about. On top of that, there are manga scripts that you can use assuming the anime follows the manga like Death Note seems to do.

Just remember, when you start being picky, you do limit your choices. Picky is not a bad thing, especially when it comes to motivation. Just realize the trade off and be willing to accept it till someone posts more subtitles.

I second Nukemarine on his suggestion about not being picky.
You need very diverse input if you want to be able to handle
many different types of situations

Let's say you want to learn business japanese.
Even if I don't like romance drama, I might watch a romance drama
if most of it takes place in a bank or some financial company.

Sometimes the environment, and background for a drama can be
just as important as what type of drama it is.

In fact, i've been surprised many times by dramas I would have never thought I would have liked based on their summaries ("Bara no nai Hanaya" and "Fushin no Toki" are good examples).

You might want to look at the thread about the new Fall 2009 dramas (and how easy/difficult they are to understand):

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4447

I don't want to turn this into a drama recommendation thread, but another drama I saw in Japanese some years ago was "Stand Up". It's about a group of high school guys
who are still virgins. The drama is hilarious and makes them seem like the last virgins in the entire world.....lol......

When I used to mine, I only mined from audio when I was positive I heard correctly. Even then, I often googled the exact phrase to see if it popped up anywhere online (people quote shows a lot).

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

One of the main reasons I have tended to stick with anime and not really delved into the word of dorama is because I know exactly how to acquire anime. Where to download, where to look up information on different series, and generally which one's done by which production team/writers are going to be good. Basically, I know my way around anime.
With dorama, I feel rather lost just looking at them; but I think I am going to put some serious effort into getting comfortable with them. It really sounds like dorama+JP subtitle/script is the best way to learn.

Now, anyone wanna link me to a site or two where I can acquire these dorama? And the Japanese subs/scripts as well.

IceCream Wrote:finding drama is easy because its allll on one site http://www.d-addicts.com
It has both the japanese and english subs, and the links to download. It also has a wiki which can tell you the actors, makers, and general storylines. The link chamcham posted above has links to the wiki entry for the programs this season, i don't know it off-hand, but you should be able to find your way from there

Looks good. Much appreciated. - I'm going to start with Mr Brain (first season), as it looks like my kind of show. I have no idea how easy it is.. but I'll get others as I go along.
Any recommendations for dorama to watch for a beginner?

Also, when watching dorama, do you think it's detrimental to watch it with English subs first, and then watch it in Japanese? Since my level isn't nearly high enough to be able to follow it with only Japanese, I don't think it'd be quite as enjoyable if I don't have any idea what's going on.

i wish someone would give me a tutorial of http://www.d-addicts.com the new dramas are supposed to all have Japanese subs right? how do i know which ones they are? feel free to e-mail me a tutorial on how to use the dern thing

cool thanks

Nukemarine Wrote:Hell, Nodame Cantabile is nothing more than live action manga (and has exact subs).

Where? No subs at all for Nodame Cantabile on d-addicts.

Icecream,

How are you grabbing an image/audio for the sentences you want to learn? Sorry if you've already answered this, I searched around and didn't find anything.

mattimus Wrote:Icecream,

How are you grabbing an image/audio for the sentences you want to learn? Sorry if you've already answered this, I searched around and didn't find anything.

She's using subs2srs, a program made by a guy on this forum.

Cool, I'll look into that. Thanks!

Tobberoth Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Hell, Nodame Cantabile is nothing more than live action manga (and has exact subs).

Where? No subs at all for Nodame Cantabile on d-addicts.

Oh, sorry, mine are from the DVD. Not sure if they're available anywhere else. However, there are the dramanote scripts available.

IceCream Wrote:first, watch the program without english subs, and see how much you can pick up. It's more entertaining than you think it'll be, because you can follow the action, and it feels great when you start being able to pick out words you recognise.
Next, open the japanese subs, and watch the program again with english subs. Whenever you see a line that interests you, or you find funny, or you want to learn for whatever reason, cut the audio and a picture, and add it to your srs (or save the japanese subtitle line and use subs2srs).

I'm confused here. Open up the JP subs and watch the program again with English subs? Does that mean have both subtitles loaded at once?

I downloaded AoA extractor for the audio, if I need it. I'll probably give subs2srs a try first, and just save the Japanese lines I want to make cards for in a text file. Or I might use your method.. yours has a certain hands-on sound to it, which I like.

IceCream Wrote:no, not both subs at once, but you could try that, i never thought of it... i used to run the video with english subs in one media player, and have the japanese subs open in a text editor. (and have another media playing with no subs for the snapshot, but if your using subs2srs, you don't need to do that).

When you're just starting out, its hard to read the entire script in japanese, so i'd watch with english subs until i saw a line i wanted to take, then find that in the text version of the japanese subs.

As you progress, reading the script will become easier... now i read the whole script, pausing the drama where i can't keep up with reading in real-time, or the meaning isn't clear, and repeating lines where i don't catch things, and have no english subtitles running. And, of course, picking sentences i like.

Ohh, I see. You're referring to using a text file transcript, when I thought you meant timed subtitles in the video (srt, ass, etc). I see what you mean now. I think you're method of watching with English subs and for a line I like, and then locating the line with the Japanese transcript (or subs, I suppose) looks like what I'll try first.

One more thing. I've heard people that say that you should only mine what you know. I never really got that, because if you already know it, what's the point of mining it. What do y'all do as far as sentence selection?

brandon7s Wrote:One more thing. I've heard people that say that you should only mine what you know. I never really got that, because if you already know it, what's the point of mining it. What do y'all do as far as sentence selection?

Yeah, this is a bit hard to grasp, but it's something like this:

Say you find a sentence with one word you've never seen. You look that word up in a dictionary and suddenly you understand exactly what the sentence means because you understand the context etc. That's a sentence you can add, you fully understand it and you need to remember that word you looked up.

Sometimes, you will find a sentence with a word you don't know, but even when you look the word up, you're not sure what the sentence really means. You know what it BASICALLY means, but not 100%. This is a sentence you should refrain from adding.

Nukemarine Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Hell, Nodame Cantabile is nothing more than live action manga (and has exact subs).

Where? No subs at all for Nodame Cantabile on d-addicts.

Oh, sorry, mine are from the DVD. Not sure if they're available anywhere else. However, there are the dramanote scripts available.

Man, I'm so envious of people who can afford the insanely overpriced Japanese DVDs

brandon7s Wrote:Or should I really just stick to material with Japanese transcripts?

Excuse to pimp out this site:

http://www1.atwiki.com/animetranscripts/

The goal behind the site is for learners to try to make transcripts of shows in the language they're learning, then native speakers correct them. So you'd made a Japanese script, a native speaker would correct it, and hopefully you'd be able to return the favour and correct some of the English scripts. I think the site started out with just English script, so there's more of those, but there's still quite a few Japanese ones as well.


Sometimes, even if you can't catch everything, you can search online for what you do understand and find some (at least partial) transcripts already available. So just put something like:

"[series name]" "[partial dialogue]" ("デスノート" "これはノートです")

Maybe adding the episode number (第X話) and/or episode title to help narrow it down. You're probably not like to find complete transcripts for everything, but you'd at least find some.