I have a huge collection of anime for immersion, and aside from some Japanese music that's all the Japanese I listen to. But I'm starting to worry that the pronunciation in anime is too different. I know dramas are much closer to real life, but I don't really enjoy them...The plot in a drama is pretty much impossible to follow unless I watch with english subs first. With anime I can enjoy almost anything without ever turning on subs. Is it a huge issue for speaking if my only immersion is anime? Or is it recommended that I start watching some dramas? Is pronunciation even affected by immersion?

Keep a balance from various media. I still listen to a lot of anime, but I like to read a lot as well. Plus I do watch dramas,listen to music,read lyrics and so far. As real life vs anime, real life is better. But a lot of stuff you hear in anime is said in japanese, otherwise it wouldn't be said in the anime shows out there. People say for anime it just has a lot of slang. But even in dramas I've heard the same type of speech being used lol. So in the long-run it all comes down to being immersed in Japanese as much as possible. For understanding purposes though, try to listen to different sources.

I could easily imagine someone picking up the accent of an anime protagonist if that's all they watched. Though, I think what you'll more likely find is that without listening real Japanese voices (doesn't have to be dorama, could be radio or podcasts) you will initially find it hard to understand Japanese peoples spoken Japanese. The anime pronounciation is quite clean and easy to hear, real people's voices are much harder to hear. So it's very much worth it to either find a balance or actually try to have a lot of conversations with people to get used to the difference.

Do you have some recommendations for Japanese radio or podcasts? I used to watch the Japanese tv streams but they went down. I tried to find some Japanese radio but couldn't find much.

http://www.simulradio.jp/

Nice. Bookmarked, thanks.

I wouldn't worry about it, neither one is a very good representation of how people actually talk, but they're nevertheless good listening practice.

Besides, if you're ever in Akihabara, if you talk like an anime character at the maid cafes people will totally dig it.

Pronunciation can vary depending on the kind of anime and drama you watch. For example, Ghibli's works have a distinctive acting style because Hayao Miyazaki doesn't use professional voice actors/actresses. Some anime movies also take a similar approach like having real high schoolers voice high school characters. So in these cases articulation and such may not be as professional as in other anime.

Cartoons for kids tend to have exaggerated pronunciation and intonation, but voice actors may try to be convincing in more serious anime series for adults. Otaku pandering anime may contain particular acting styles with a different kind of exaggeration in pronunciation than anime for kids. I think common sense will tell you what you should expect.

In anime where professional voice actors voice characters, generally articulation of each consonant and vowel is quite clean. It's not as conservative as pronunciation you hear on NHK news and such. But it's obviously professional. Pitch accent is often exaggerated so you'll find it easier to catch. Cadence and intonation are also stronger so it's much easier to hear the melody of language.

Also, when voice actors fake dialects in anime, most of the time it's genuinely fake (if that makes sense). Usually they only change pitch accent and pronounce each consonant and vowel the same way as in standard Japanese. So it's quite different from fake accents in English like fake British accents; mimicking vowel/consonant qualities is important to accent acting in English. This is probably because the sense of "heavily accented" comes from pitch patterns in Japanese while often it's vowel qualities that make an accent sound different/foreign in English.

In anime, pitch accent is often slightly different from the dialect spoken in Tokyo and closer to standard Japanese you learn in normal language courses. If you don't care about the difference between the Tokyo dialect and standard Japanese, well, never mind.

One thing I notice about difference between English and Japanese entertainment is that often convincing acting is more important in English while creating an ideal fantasy world is more emphasized in Japanese. Of course, best actors achieve both. There are many exceptions too. But if you watch tons of movies, TV shows, anime, etc. including American movies dubbed in Japanese and anime dubbed in English, you'll understand what I'm talking about.

As others said, variety is key to language learning. But from my experience, I am almost certain that if you watch something because it's supposed to be good for your learning, you'll fall by the wayside before it starts benefiting you. I think it's better to consume what you like first. You can always move on to the supposedly good stuff when you get fed up with what you like. This way you can attack the good-for-my-learning stuff with improved Japanese skill. But if you lose motivation because of the "good" stuff, the anime you liked before can start looking intimidating. Everyone knows how it's difficult to regain motivation and how little you can learn before you get bored by boring stuff. Well, you're already half-bored with boring stuff from the beginning... So if you have time to immerse yourself into Japanese, I'd recommend you consume as much fun stuff as possible first and fix problems stemming from lack of variety later. Even if you fail to fix some problems, it just means your Japanese is representing who you are anyway.

Also, you don't need to worry too much about it. You don't talk like an anime hero or moe girl as long as you have a brain to use. Besides, it requires professional acting skills and articulation to do that even if you want to. By the time you can do it to an extent, you find yourself understanding non-anime stuff and can enjoy it because of that.

I m not very optimistic on this subject .
I do think that on the long term anime based learning don't do any good and actually IMPAIRS your hearing .
I had exactly the same feeling as kudokopo : listening anime was a piece of cake but I lost all confidence as soon as I heard radio , drama and real japanese . It was even worse in my case because I listened dub movies (mostly based on khatzumoto advice . I strongly disadvise this . ) .

This is dead wrong .
Anime pitch and pace is different from real life and dubbed movie are even worse .
That's why I switched to drama and it was one of the best decision I ever took about my japanese learning . It was not easy because japanese actors have a knack for overacting which I positively hate (no wonder hollywood cast chinese actors for their japanese parts . ) and I find most japanese serie not very inventive and/or pretty cheap due to a small budget and poor direction (Trick is the perfect exemple : it's a damn good idea , the japanese scientist is HYSTERICALLY funny -He strikes me as the japanese robert downey junior .He looks and acts like him - but I can't go past the first episode of the secund season : it's just too cheap ) .

But there are still things worth to be watched
- "highschool yankee" genre is pretty repetitive but as low-brow entertainment I find it ok .
- historic drama , especially NHK taiga drama which is extremely solid .
-manga based drama can be ok once in a while as long as the manga is not too much farfetched : nodame cantabile(awesome .... the movie sucks big time though ) , Kimi wa petto , etc. . But serious/conspiracy manga like liar game, bloody monday,etc. just don't translate well on the screen .


As a rule japanese drama can be quite good as long as they focus on japanese genre . As soon as they tackle a foreign genre it's an epic disaster if you're a bit genre savy . Japanese just don't have the money to have decent production and foster talents. Team baptista , one of the big medical/investigation drama , has been slashed to pieces by international critic .

I don't think watching anime is any more harmful than reading manga

ghinzdra Wrote:I m not very optimistic on this subject .
I do think that on the long term anime based learning don't do any good and actually IMPAIRS your hearing .
I had exactly the same feeling as kudokopo : listening anime was a piece of cake but I lost all confidence as soon as I heard radio , drama and real japanese . It was even worse in my case because I listened dub movies (mostly based on khatzumoto advice . I strongly disadvise this . ) .

This summarizes it.

I like dramas because they're usually a mix of both polite and informal speech, presented in (more or less) realistic situations. To me, that seems more useful. They've really helped my pronunciation, and also added to my vocabulary.

quincy Wrote:I don't think watching anime is any more harmful than reading manga

mainly manga based input isn't good either . (I think prime minister tarou did a case of how the manga do wonders for your reading ability.... )

I'll draw a parallel with diet
have a various input ( eat a bit of everything )definetely works. But only because it allows a nice change of pace that allow people to sustain it and it still includes the good input source (good nutrient) . It's not the most effective but it works .

Now if you consider intrasic value of each media (food ) :
books magazine and drama (organic vegetable, fruit , meat ) are just more rich in vocabulary/grammar (nutrients) with regular form(natural ).
true video game -no visual novel, anime and manga (highly processed cereal food) are clearly on the low end of language value (nutritive value ) and althought they do include some linguistic value (the same way fast food does have some nutritional value .) they often include massive quantity of dramatic/comic elements that belong to this specific world , very funny and interesting but not belonging to regular language (unnatural ,artificial additives extremely good tasting but unhealthy and that can't be identified as food )


Now before manga/anime advocaters stone me to death :
I do think however Anime and manga
1-are a true form of artistic expression . Art . Not language (the same way going to mac do should be about recreative time , not nutrition )
2-won't do you any harm if you take most of your input elsewhere . Like a big mac or a twinkie won't kill you .
3- have a real specific role in the language learning process . As a gateway to japanese culture .
Most scientist didn't start by reading some very complex shit . They read funny article in Popular Science (I read recently an article about batman training . Highly entertaining . ), science based comics ,watch SF movie etc.. You have to spark interest . And I definetely prefer a kid reading manga than watching the hills or keeping up with the kardashian . It can lead to better things .

Haha, you're ability to completely make up blind assertions is pretty amazing ghinzdra.

ghinzdra Wrote:It was not easy because japanese actors have a knack for overacting which I positively hate

Have you ever watched any Korean movies or dramas? It's not even funny anymore.

Tzadeck Wrote:Haha, you're ability to completely make up blind assertions is pretty amazing ghinzdra.

Too right.

I watch a TON of anime and very little drama. I also did the Pimsleur language course. My language partner says my accent is 'perfect'. Even allowing for exaggeration, that's pretty impressive considering that I had never actually spoken in Japanese before talking to her.

If you keep in mind that anime tends to warp things a bit, both pronunciation and word usage, I really wouldn't worry about it at all.

Above all, have fun.

Try talking to some real people. I feel like I've gained a lot more after a two-hour chat than from watching a film. If that's not always possible, you could try a bit of shadowing too. As long as you're doing something like this regularly, you'll probably be able to watch anime without worrying about these issues too much. Not everybody is worried about their pronunciation though

What's your goal for learning Japanese? Professional? Entertainment?

In my experience, in terms of pronunciation, people who watched anime before taking Japanese class were far ahead of those who did not have any previous Japanese experience. Some of them sounded a bit overzealous, but that's easily fixed anyway. It's easier to go overboard and then scale it back than the other way around.

Eventually when you get around to speaking, you'll probably need a lot of feedback to make it more natural regardless of your listening source. Even if you watch dramas or listen to the news or radio or whatever, speaking still needs practice and can only be improved by actually talking to someone and getting feedback on word choice and inflection.

Tzadeck Wrote:Besides, if you're ever in Akihabara, if you talk like an anime character at the maid cafes people will totally dig it.

If you're at the maid cafe, they'll be totally into whatever you say anyway. That's how they earn their money!

Javizy Wrote:Try talking to some real people. I feel like I've gained a lot more after a two-hour chat than from watching a film. If that's not always possible, you could try a bit of shadowing too. As long as you're doing something like this regularly, you'll probably be able to watch anime without worrying about these issues too much. Not everybody is worried about their pronunciation though

Out of all she said I only catched "Lucky girl".

kainzero Wrote:In my experience, in terms of pronunciation, people who watched anime before taking Japanese class were far ahead of those who did not have any previous Japanese experience. Some of them sounded a bit overzealous, but that's easily fixed anyway. It's easier to go overboard and then scale it back than the other way around.

Eventually when you get around to speaking, you'll probably need a lot of feedback to make it more natural regardless of your listening source. Even if you watch dramas or listen to the news or radio or whatever, speaking still needs practice and can only be improved by actually talking to someone and getting feedback on word choice and inflection.

This is what I was thinking, that watching too much anime couldn't possibly ruin speaking ability if I practice in other ways. Anyway I'm mixing it up a bit and just discovered the j-tv section of d-addicts.