tokyostyle Wrote:

kitakitsune Wrote:There is a good reason why most Japanese teachers recommend not studying too much Japanese through anime.

It's because it's not normal Japanese.

If you get to a high level of spoken Japanese proficiency and can't distinguish the difference between talking like the people around you do and talking like some cartoon kid in a fantasy world then you probably have either a mental or social disorder. For the rest of us learning from manzai, yakuza films, samurai films, science fiction, Japanese dubs, anime, and any stylized speech is just fine.

I agree with tokyostyle here. It's important to realize the faults in any sources you learn from, but as long as you're careful it can be quite handy.

Males can learn Japanese from female speakers without sounding ridiculous, you can learn new facts from wikipedia without filling your head with nonsense, etc.

...it's also going to depend largely on what type of anime you're watching. Actually, most of the anime i've watched so far, the speach has certainly not been any more weird than drama for example, and in some cases even less so.

Even if you try to look at people that mimic yourself, it's still not going to be completely accurate. Females in anime use the feminine わ a lot, whereas real-life females (under 40 or 50) virtually never use it. ぞ and ぜ (particularly the latter) are also far more common in anime than they are in real life.

Obviously at a "high level of spoken Japanese proficiency" you can tell the difference, but for a beginner or even intermediate person who has never been to Japan you're not going to be able to tell what is actually used from what is exaggerated fiction speech style.

I'd say being able to speak in a variety of ways is good but obviously, we must know the difference between how anime characters speak and real-life people speak. But overall, all sources are good for learning.

kitakitsune Wrote:As long as you know what's real then no problem. Unfortunately, most young foreigners interested in learning Japanese and who have never been to Japan have no idea that most anime Japaneze is -not- how people speak in Japan.

So be careful forming bad habits at the start.

imo most young foreigners interested in learning Japanese also don't care about "real Japanese" but only to further their interest in anime.

in my experience most people who join a japanese class because of their initial interest in anime...

1: have a head start in terms of pronunciation and basic vocabulary to people who just decided to pick it up
2: do not get any japanese practice outside of class and anime, and therefore confine their japanese (and hence their anime japanese) to those two areas only
3: once they pass a certain level, they either branch out and become interested in things other in anime and pick up the nuances of real life Japanese, or they become real otaku.... which is fine either way, whatever makes them happy

yudantaiteki Wrote:Even if you try to look at people that mimic yourself, it's still not going to be completely accurate. Females in anime use the feminine わ a lot, whereas real-life females (under 40 or 50) virtually never use it. ぞ and ぜ (particularly the latter) are also far more common in anime than they are in real life.

no matter what you learn from, it's never completely accurate.

-speak based on a textbook, sound like a textbook
-speak based on JLPT grammar guides and novels, sound like a book
-speak based on variety shows, sound like a rude comedian
-speak based on your girlfriend, sound like a girl
-speak based on drama/anime, sound like you're from a drama/anime
-speak based on a song, sound like a poet

no matter what it'll always have some influence from whatever source you studied from. the only way to get around it is to speak and get feedback and improve. in the meantime, your listening sources will always have flaws; as long as you're aware of them and do your best to get continual feedback to learn from, you shouldn't have any problems.

kainzero Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Even if you try to look at people that mimic yourself, it's still not going to be completely accurate. Females in anime use the feminine わ a lot, whereas real-life females (under 40 or 50) virtually never use it. ぞ and ぜ (particularly the latter) are also far more common in anime than they are in real life.

no matter what you learn from, it's never completely accurate.

-speak based on a textbook, sound like a textbook
-speak based on JLPT grammar guides and novels, sound like a book
-speak based on variety shows, sound like a rude comedian
-speak based on your girlfriend, sound like a girl
-speak based on drama/anime, sound like you're from a drama/anime
-speak based on a song, sound like a poet

While that's true, I can't count the number of times I've seen people claim that textbook Japanese "isn't real Japanese" while anime/drama/whatever is "real Japanese". Or the number of times I've seen people say or write that they don't want to learn desu/masu, they want to learn "everyday" or "real" Japanese.

yudantaiteki Wrote:While that's true, I can't count the number of times I've seen people claim that textbook Japanese "isn't real Japanese" while anime/drama/whatever is "real Japanese". Or the number of times I've seen people say or write that they don't want to learn desu/masu, they want to learn "everyday" or "real" Japanese.

Yeah, where would that lead us learners, if textbooks provided non-sensical, never daily used Japanese?! At some point I find textbooks are too 'textbook-like' as kainzero stated. I'd often find my girlfriend rolling her eyes and saying "That sounds unnatural/We don't say it like this and that, but like this and that instead/You've got that from a textbook, right?" Though, a textbook is a good start, isn't it? Ir provides the very basics, gives you an impression of what Japanese is like, like it works, like it grammar works and is used.
What I cannot get used to are these extreme abbreviations, shortcuts and the annihilation of every particle in a sentence giving me hope, orientation and, well, yes - understanding What would mean お前んとこ anyway?? Your place? Huh~

Edit: And actually this topic was more about like how grammar is 'abused' from what's shown in textbooks in real, everyday Japanese. Perhaps also what kind of words/vocabs are used. I find myself using only a certain amount of words in German and English, both. Certainly that counts for Japanese, too.

kainzero Wrote:-speak based on your girlfriend, sound like a girl

lol Thanks for the reminder that I need to find a non-female language partner to balance the 2 female ones I have already. I doubt I've picked up anything yet, but it's bound to happen eventually.

yudantaiteki Wrote:While that's true, I can't count the number of times I've seen people claim that textbook Japanese "isn't real Japanese" while anime/drama/whatever is "real Japanese". Or the number of times I've seen people say or write that they don't want to learn desu/masu, they want to learn "everyday" or "real" Japanese.

yep, and i've had a couple anime friends would laugh at my Japanese for sounding too polite or having an incorrect accent (which... actually wasn't incorrect at all) when they couldn't speak at all themselves.

i don't hang out with them anymore.

at this point of my learning (2 years in) i think i just want to be understood and without offending anybody, as well as understand what they're saying.
if i sound weird but at least make sense, at least they understand and we can continue our conversation.

i more or less use textbook japanese as a reference to decipher "wild" japanese and then i use a combination of both when i speak/write.

as for the OP: if you want to understand something, you have no choice but to study it... but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll use it, so it's fine. i read a few AKB48 blogs and they occasionally don't use small characters and sometimes uses weird expressions or write funny, and I toss some of their sentences in my SRS to make sure I understand it.

but i definitely don't write 行くＺＥ, しゆみ instead of しゅみ、 でス instead of です、 etc.

some words in osaka dialect are starting to slip into my writing/speech though. i think it sounds funny when i speak/write in a style befitting an american and speak with a totally incorrect accent anyway.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Even if you try to look at people that mimic yourself, it's still not going to be completely accurate. Females in anime use the feminine わ a lot, whereas real-life females (under 40 or 50) virtually never use it. ぞ and ぜ (particularly the latter) are also far more common in anime than they are in real life.

http://[video=youtube]http://www.youtube...ed[/video]

Read some of the comments written by Japanese people here.

Do they sound like Textbook Japanese or Anime Japanese?

あの小沢の元秘書の石川なんて胡散臭い奴に票を入れた十勝の人達­は、目が腐っているとしか思えない。何故こんな有能な人を落とし­たんだ!!

偏った報道をするマスコミも悪だが、それに操られる国民も悪だ。
失ってから大切な存在に気づくのは、もういい加減にやめようぜ。

石井議員が刺殺されたときと同じ。　死　ね　よ　ロ　ス　チ　ャ　イ　ル　ド　

くっそ～～腐れグレーのジープに乗ってる０課の
さくらメぇ～～～！！ｗ

マスコミは嘘ばかり尽いて国民を騙すな！！反日勢力と徹底的に戦­うぞ！
中川昭一の仇を絶対に討つぞ！

Realism Wrote:Read some of the comments written by Japanese people here.

Do they sound like Textbook Japanese or Anime Japanese?

lol youtube is not a good source of proper language.

look at the comments on this video:

Quote:ye if an american reads this ur goin 2 jail :p

-even though u have a point- i mean ur goin 2 jail xD i'm seryous 0.0

Quote:its a damn dinner for god sakes. loosen up, you had to laugh at least one time

Quote:DO NOT ELECT OBAMA OR DEMOCRACTS IN 2012

Electing them would lead to Socialism and feeding the welfare people or what I call the scums of the earth.

kainzero Wrote:

Realism Wrote:Read some of the comments written by Japanese people here.

Do they sound like Textbook Japanese or Anime Japanese?

lol youtube is not a good source of proper language.

look at the comments on this video:

Quote:ye if an american reads this ur goin 2 jail :p

-even though u have a point- i mean ur goin 2 jail xD i'm seryous 0.0

Quote:its a damn dinner for god sakes. loosen up, you had to laugh at least one time

Quote:DO NOT ELECT OBAMA OR DEMOCRACTS IN 2012

Electing them would lead to Socialism and feeding the welfare people or what I call the scums of the earth.

So even native Japanese people don't type proper now? Ok, I've heard it all then.

And how are any of those English comments not proper other than spelling errors??

"If an American reads this you're going to Jail." How's this not proper?

"It's a damn dinner for god sakes. Loosen up." How's this not proper English?

" Do not elect Obama or democrats" How's this not proper again??

It's a matter of speech styles/dialect/genre/register variation. You need to know what's considered appropriate in a variety of contexts, what's considered relatively standard, etc., both so you don't entrench nonstandard, erroneous language, and to help you see the ways the stylistics and variations occur or branch off from the baseline/standard. I don't think it really matters when you do this, it's a matter of what/how/etc. you want to read/listen to/watch/write/speak/understand Japanese, and making sure you're aware of the differences. I think this is pretty easily accomplished through formats such as Mangajin/Japanese the Manga Way or pretty much any resource that annotates and explains native examples.

I do think it makes it easier to start differentiating and keeping track of this stuff explicitly right off the bat. But if someone doesn't really care because they just want to watch 少年 anime or doesn't mind the slower process of figuring this stuff out purely through context and categorizing it all as simply ‘authentic Japanese’, then that's their prerogative. I think anyone can benefit from the extra effort in recognizing that there's different types of ‘real Japanese’ and adjusting their learning experience from there.

First post take 2!

Wrote previous, detailed post but the useful essence was this: If you encounter a word, what resource(s) can you use to determine appropriate usage? Appropriate in this case meaning things such as:
implied gender : おいしい／うまい
politeness : sounding like you're talking to a boss/old friend
regional dialect : Kyoto-ben v Kansai-ben v Tokyo-ben. btw, is there a "Tokyo-ben"? might be called something else... Worth noting this can be applied to vocabulary and pitch accents.
Dated : Like, gag me with a spoon omigod! (Slang does cycle through especially fast, but grammar and even vanilla words can become antiquated)

I haven't gotten many resources for figuring this all out, but am looking to get better at it. Mostly mining words／漢字 from novels, comics, and occasionally from anime (漫画：プンプン、モテキ。小説：夢で会いましょう。アニメ：Ghost hound, NHKにようこそ/Welcome to the NHK）at present, so being able to figure out if a phrase isn't really appropriate for me to learn would be very useful. With words I can (though usually don't because it takes a bit of time) run it through a few word frequency lists and google to make sure the word is in common use, though i. I haven't gotten around to brushing up on and SRSing grammar points, in part because I feel it is more difficult to mine for while avoiding the landmines of colloquialisms etc.

A couple of resources that can help are :
Forzo.com : Native speakers saying words, though usually there's only 1 recording per word, so you typically can't compare 大阪 to 東京
類語辞典 : only have used the one on the mac, but aside from being useful for telling you which words are appropriate to use when (via chart and descriptions) I have seen it mention that おいしい is more frequently used by girls than うまい is. I doubt that it comments on any but very gendered/polite/impolite words, but haven't looked into it much. There may be another thread that talks about resources for this, but doesn't look overly promising from a quick look through
eg http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=895 (essentially asks if there's an easy way to determine something is from non-standard Japanese, the answer is "no")

Dang, tried not to ramble but 失敗しましたな〜

@Mumei

Applied Linguistics as it pertains to foreign language study/teaching is very concerned with this. I linked to various resources before, but it's also something I'm interested in. I mean beyond stuff like dialect and politeness/slang, which I think there are plenty of resources on, e.g. Japanese the Manga Way, or various sites that you can consult for dialect explanations, corpora of spoken and contemporary Japanese.

The stuff I mean is for things like genre, such as: Genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: Developing writers’ genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence or relatedly, Style shifting in Japanese...

There's various tools and corpora that pertain to this. One thing I'm tinkering with is deriving collocational information using AntConc's n-grams function, sorted by genre (both literary and linguistic).

There's stuff like blog and contemporary written corpora here: http://www-lab25.kuee.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NLP_...cat-e.html

Edit: Likewise with regards to decks, I think it'd be fun/nice to have genre-sorted decks with searchable annotations pertinent to things like politeness levels, speakers, contexts, etc.

Realism Wrote:So even native Japanese people don't type proper now? Ok, I've heard it all then.

Why is that so hard to believe? Watch enough nicovideo and look at 2ch and youtube and you'll see all kinds of misspellings and 変換ミス, or cases where they forgot to switch from romaji ("sugele"/"sugexe", etc.)

I don't think English speakers talk like their youtube comments in real life either (I've never heard anyone say "fake and gay", for instance).

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Realism Wrote:So even native Japanese people don't type proper now? Ok, I've heard it all then.

Why is that so hard to believe? Watch enough nicovideo and look at 2ch and youtube and you'll see all kinds of misspellings and 変換ミス.

I don't think English speakers talk like their youtube comments in real life either (I've never heard anyone say "fake and gay", for instance).

Spelling mistakes happen....but how does that prevent you from putting out a proper sentence? Like those English youtube comments had bunch of spelling errors but how were those sentences incorrect grammatically? Even illiterate people can produce fluent sentences in their own language. We're talking speaking here not spelling.

And you never heard anyone say the words fake and gay in real life?

Well I don't know what to say then.....

Realism Wrote:And how are any of those English comments not proper other than spelling errors??

you say "other than spelling errors" as if it isn't a big deal. well obviously, that's because you know how it's spelled correctly.

"ur" as a replacement for "your/you're", and "2" is supposed to mean "to," and not "2" or "too" is pretty confusing for any non-native speaker. how do you know it's not pronounced like "err"?

it's also not a representation of how most Americans talk and write. i don't think anyone would write "ur" or "2" in a format other than casual e-mail and internet comments. and even then it's kinda annoying.

you have a better shot of finding that kind of style of speaking on Jersey Shore, and it's not even debatable over whether you'd have people learn English from Jersey Shore than textbooks because it's more natural based on youtube comments.

Quote:"If an American reads this you're going to Jail." How's this not proper?

instead of "you're" it should be "he or she" if you want to be proper.
if they wanted to sound casual or natural, they would most often leave out the she part and it would be
"if an american reads this he'd be going to jail."

Quote:"It's a damn dinner for god sakes. Loosen up." How's this not proper English?

not everyone uses "damn" as an adjective and it's certainly not an invitation to emulate it.
many religious people would be offended at the use of "god", it also should be written "god's sake" or "gods sakes." again not an invitation to study stuff on TV.

Quote:" Do not elect Obama or democrats" How's this not proper again??

the more important part is after...
"Electing them would lead to Socialism and feeding the welfare people or what I call the scums of the earth."

"welfare people" is a weird hybrid word
"scums of the earth" should be "scum of the earth" and it sounds super poetic and not at all natural.

even in my post i'm pretty sure i didn't write proper. i mean, properly.


the point is that yudantaiteki said that anime is not like real life, which has exaggerated speech styles. and for that matter, neither are youtube comments. using youtube comments to prove that real life is more like anime than a textbook just does not work.

I agree that perusing youtube comments will not be of much help in learning any language. I think one will go farther reading comments at http://icanhascheezburger.com/ .

kainzero Wrote:

Realism Wrote:And how are any of those English comments not proper other than spelling errors??

you say "other than spelling errors" as if it isn't a big deal. well obviously, that's because you know how it's spelled correctly.

"ur" as a replacement for "your/you're", and "2" is supposed to mean "to," and not "2" or "too" is pretty confusing for any non-native speaker. how do you know it's not pronounced like "err"?

it's also not a representation of how most Americans talk and write. i don't think anyone would write "ur" or "2" in a format other than casual e-mail and internet comments. and even then it's kinda annoying.

you have a better shot of finding that kind of style of speaking on Jersey Shore, and it's not even debatable over whether you'd have people learn English from Jersey Shore than textbooks because it's more natural based on youtube comments.

Quote:"If an American reads this you're going to Jail." How's this not proper?

instead of "you're" it should be "he or she" if you want to be proper.
if they wanted to sound casual or natural, they would most often leave out the she part and it would be
"if an american reads this he'd be going to jail."

Quote:"It's a damn dinner for god sakes. Loosen up." How's this not proper English?

not everyone uses "damn" as an adjective and it's certainly not an invitation to emulate it.
many religious people would be offended at the use of "god", it also should be written "god's sake" or "gods sakes." again not an invitation to study stuff on TV.

Quote:" Do not elect Obama or democrats" How's this not proper again??

the more important part is after...
"Electing them would lead to Socialism and feeding the welfare people or what I call the scums of the earth."

"welfare people" is a weird hybrid word
"scums of the earth" should be "scum of the earth" and it sounds super poetic and not at all natural.

even in my post i'm pretty sure i didn't write proper. i mean, properly.


the point is that yudantaiteki said that anime is not like real life, which has exaggerated speech styles. and for that matter, neither are youtube comments. using youtube comments to prove that real life is more like anime than a textbook just does not work.

Maybe you and I see things differently. But I seriously don't see how youtube comments and anime Japanese are so exaggerated

None of those sentences were incorrect grammatically except that they were things that YOU don't say.

How does Scum of the Earth sound poetic? I've heard guys like Letterman and Jay Leno say that phrase (and these guys are not poetic in the least bit), I hear that phrase all the time. Scum of the Earth is a natural English phrase, I don't know where you get the idea that it's not natural.

If it's not natural then what it should it be?

Scum of the........??

Scum of the planet?
Scum of the road?
Scum of the house?

Now that would unnatural....am I right? Because you never heard these expressions before. Only Scum of the Earth sounds right.

And you can't say "damn"?

This damn car this damn ball, it's just a damn book.....you've never heard people say this?

Are you kidding me?

Whatever...if that's how you want it then so be it.

I'm done here.

This really is such a non-issue.

Maybe if you somehow reached a high enough level to understand anime without ever having studied anything else (unlikely), and then proceeded to watch/listen to it 4 hours day (again without any other exposure) for a year (or however long it takes to really start picking up a good accent/intonation), then you might have somewhat exaggerated intonation and use informal speech a little too often when you first start speaking (so what?). No one's going to think you sound stupid, they'll understand you're a beginner and most likely praise you on your accent (if you really do sound like a cartoon character). Personally I'd rather have slightly a slightly exaggerated accent than sound like the average fob gaijin.

An anime fan friend of mine who came to Japan having never studied the language had by far a much better accent than other beginners and was able to understand all sorts of basic phrases/vocabulary all picked up from years of subbed anime, without ever sounding like a caricature.

Really, just watch whatever you can enjoy, and you'll naturally branch out to other types of media. Otherwise you can simply learn "proper" Japanese when you start interacting with Japanese people.

This whole "don't watch anime or you'll sound like a cartoon character" bs is just another cliche of the online Japanese learning community.

By the way, in case you didn't spot it from the above links, here's the demo page for the balanced corpus of contemporary written Japanese. It's a fraction (10 million words, without certain annotations) of what's going to be available perhaps this year: http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/demo/search_form

http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/english/products/bccwj/

I wish this spoken/spontaneous corpus was easily available: http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/products-k/katsu...leaseinfo/

http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/english/products/csj/

nadiatims Wrote:This really is such a non-issue.

I can tell you from first-hand experience with students that it's not.

I'm certainly not saying "don't watch anime or you'll sound like a cartoon character". What I'm saying is that you should not fall into the trap of thinking of anime as "real Japanese" in contrast to what's in a textbook. Nor should you assume that the way you see people talking in anime (even non sci-fi/fantasy anime) is the way people talk in real life. If you are under 50 years old and use the feminine わ frequently, it will sound strange. I don't know whether people will automatically assume you got it from anime, but they might.

nest0r Wrote:By the way, in case you didn't spot it from the above links, here's the demo page for the balanced corpus of contemporary written Japanese. It's a fraction (10 million words, without certain annotations) of what's going to be available perhaps this year: http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/demo/search_form

http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/english/products/bccwj/

I wish this spoken/spontaneous corpus was easily available: http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/products-k/katsu...leaseinfo/

http://www.ninjal.ac.jp/english/products/csj/

wish it was available, looks good

Thank you so much for the links Nestor, just beginning to look through them, but looks like there's some great stuff in there. The Kotonoha link seems like something I'll be able to get some immediate use from, excited to put it through it's paces.

Had a thought as I was going to bed about the whole textbook v media discussion here. Didn't come up with some answer to the whole debate, but did think of a framework/metaphor that seems like it could be useful in clarifying the good, bad, ugly and ばか.
Think of learning a language like eating food. If you don't eat, you starve. If you eat things that are low in nutrients & high in gnarly stuff (cholesterol, preservatives, 関西弁 etc) then you won't starve, but you'll get some, potentially serious, health issues. Even if you eat the healthiest food in world, if you don't have any diversity to your diet, it's still not healthy. Finally, even a healthy diet can use some supplements, so don't forget your daily SRS! Anyways, that seemed to clarify things a bit for me, hope it helps others.

PS: I love 関西弁・かんさいべん and want to learn more of it. I figured I'd use it as a negative example because I can't get into a debate as to whether or not it merits falling in that category. So replace 関西弁 with whatever it is that ought to be reduced in your 国語 diet. Be well