Thread 283507265

5 years of watching Hollywood movies as a kid and I accidentally became nearly fluent in English.
20 years of watching anime and I still can't hold a basic conversation in Japanese. What gives?

>>283507265 (OP)
>20 years of watching Hollywood kinos as a kid and I had so much fun and many movies/tv shows became my all time favs.
>10 years of watching tranime and I still didn't like any of the tranime I ever watched.
What gives?

Genki 1
https://files.catbox.moe/sronwq.zip
Genki 2
https://files.catbox.moe/mt4rtu.zip
Genki teacher
https://files.catbox.moe/hrnkdx.zip
Hiragana/Katakana/Kangxi radicals Anki decks and Yotsuba Learning Pack
https://files.catbox.moe/9x3me2.zip

>>283507265 (OP)
Skill issue.

>>283507265 (OP)
The problem is the different writing system. I severely stunts your ability to learn the language.

>>283507265 (OP)
Learn all the kana and read up on basic grammar then watch a movie or anime you watched before with Japanese subtitles and see how much you can understand. If you heard it for that many years you realistically picked some words up. Do this for a year or two and you'll be golden.
Learn to read kanji at your own on pace while doing that but don't make it a priority.

>>283507265 (OP)
You are speaking English right now, and you almost speak it on the regular too, so you're constantly reinforcing what you learnt.
Rarely you'll get opportunities to speak japaneese unless you're in the country itself.

>>283507265 (OP)
1, children learn languages faster than adults
2. Your native language is probably closer to English than to Japanese
3. Writing system

>>283507265 (OP)
>5 years of watching Hollywood movies as a kid and I accidentally became nearly fluent in English.
Yeah, I am sure the english lessons in school had nothing to do with it.

>>283507357
genki sucks ass. at least post all the books available

>>283507513
genki is far better than tae kim, which is the other most recommended grammar book

>>283507425
As an addition to his, my language and writing system have nothing to do with English but I managed to learn it mostly with osmosis and a lot engagement with the language. Just put in sometime where you deal with Japanese more than English and your native language and you'll see vast improvements to your understanding.

>>283507357
What about Renshuu?

>>283507265 (OP)
You were a kid.
So many people nowadays are doubting the idea that children are better at learning languages; it's crazy.
Everyone who's ever been around children or immigrant families with children knows it's true but so many people nowadays are saying that it's just because children have more time for it or something. That's such b.s.. Brain scans literally show that the brains of young children exposed to a language they don't know light up differently and more aggressively and expend more energy in trying to process it and finding a pattern.

>>283507265 (OP)
For japanese you also need to get out (digitally) and talk with real 日本人, it's a great way to learn slang.

>>283507856
Any places you recommend?

>>283507856
how can I do that when all Japanese servers and groups in games ban foreigners

>>283507844
>So many people nowadays are doubting the idea that children are better at learning languages; it's crazy.
Children are better at picking up things around them. Adults are better actively learning and building upon things they already know.

It is not possible to pick up this language on the side.

>>283507934
You definitely pick up a lot of words and phrases just by watching subs.
When you actually start learning the language you get a faster entry than somebody completely starting from scratch. But due to how the writing system works you only truly understand things once you see them written down.

>>283507906
>>283507907
I found a lot of people to talk to on Twitter, just follow the hashtags for your favorite anime/manga/games and start to follow people, nips got enough autism to have several accounts, specially women, that are mostly about the media in question but most of their accounts are privates so you have to follow a lot of people until naturally they start to add you to their lists and inner circles, before you notice you will be speaking with their spaces.

>>283507265 (OP)
English is similar to your language structurally and likely simpler in terms of grammer, so the main difficulty is matching words. Your brain is very good at that.
Japanese is very difficult to grasp, if you don't know it's SOV-word order and it also has relatively complex verb conjugations. It's much more difficult to pick up by ear, if you don't know how the language works on a structural level.
Learning Japanese is very much also about training yourself to think in this other, new linguistic structure and if you can't do that you'll be dekinai forever.

>>283508069
When I watch subs I'm not picking up on ANY Japanese, because my mind is thinking and reading the English subtitles at that moment.

>>283507265 (OP)
I started picking up a lot more Japanese when I got into niconico. Since there's no translations for that stuff I had to look up everything myself.

>>283508215
For how long have you been watching?

>>283508301
30 years now.

>>283507459
>children learn languages faster than adults
Common misconception. Think about how long it takes a kid to speak their first words. Their first complete sentence. How many years before they're fully coherent? They're better at picking up the nuances of a language, but an adult will learn much faster purely through studying grammar and memorizing words.

>>283508215
Is english the only language you know? That's pretty common for people that only know one language.

>>283508215
It's not unusual at all, because your brain is designed to comprehend language and it will cheat and shortcut as much as possible.

>>283507459
>children learn languages faster than adults
Children spend more time learning more slowly, because they have more time and are dumber than adults.

>>283508331
How old were you when you started?

>>283507265 (OP)
I learned Hiragana by watching sumo. :)

>>283508442
Fuck I remember how young I was when I first started watching anime.

>>283507594
marugoto, minna, and irodori are far better. if you speak english natively then jp>en grammar dictionaries are fantastic like 徹底例解ロイヤル英文法 which will give you jp native like interpretations of common slang and sentences

>>283508464
I learned hiragana by reading station signs

>>283507265 (OP)
Do NOT watch with subtitles.

>>283507856
>talk with prople
Ew, I barely tolerate you fucks.

>>283508508
picrel for the grammar book. it's a very interesting read through out

>>283508556
subtitles are great though

>>283508466
Do you remember how old you are know?

>>283508685
I'm 34, get to the fuckin' point already.

>>283508685
Various substances took that knowledge away from me.

>>283507594
Genki is worse than Tae Kim because it takes longer to finish. You should be reading your first manga after 2-3 weeks of Tae Kim. Grammar books are ass compared to real reading.

>>283508728
And you've been watching anime with subs since before you were 10?

I fucking hate this language

>>283507265 (OP)
Same here except I'm 30 years into anime... still don't know a single word in japanese...

>>283508794
>Genki is worse than Tae Kim because it takes longer to finish.
It's not a race, anon.

>>283508556
If native speakers watch shit on their language with subtitles on, why shouldn't I?

>>283508794
>Grammar books are ass compared to real reading.
Indeed, the best way to learn is by reading manga with a dictionary near you, kodomo manga are great for this.

>>283508215
You may have a learning disability, anon.

>>283508807
Yep. You ask too many questions, it's annoying, so I'm not answering any more.

>>283507357
What the fuck is a kangxi? Did you mean kanji?

>>283508855
Yes it is.

>>283508873
You should read things that interest you.

>>283507844
Kids are retarded. They will constantly make basic grammar mistakes until they're almost 8 years old. It's extremely common to hear a 6-7 year old say shit like "I runned fast" or "I eated it". They make mistakes all the time, and the adults around them constantly correct them. Kids are actually pretty shit at learning languages when you think about it. The reading level for Harry Potter is like 9 years old. Can you imagine taking NINE fucking years to read a book like Harry Potter. If you started right now, and were consistent with your studies, you could be reading Harry Potter in Japanese within 2-3 years. Not that you'd want to, because it's a shitty book, but that's besides the point lol.
Maybe this is obvious but kids take 8-10 years to speak like... an 8-10 year old. That's with 24/7 constant full time immersion, daily English class at school, and all the adults in their lives constantly correcting their stupid mistakes. That is not particularly impressive progress lol. But they do eventually learn.
The main difference between immigrant kids and parents is the parents almost always surround themselves by other people that speak their own native language and only engage with tv/internet in their native language. The kid is at school interacting in English 8 hours a day while the parent is delivering DoorDash and talking on the phone in Arabic with his brother in Syria. Of course the kid makes better progress.

>>283508934
>It's extremely common to hear a 16-17 year old say shit like "I runned fast" or "I eated it".
Fixed that for you.

>>283508855
>t. loser

>>283508933
I like some kodomo manga, so yeah, I do that.

>>283508864
That's more common with Chinese and Swiss because of the number of different dialects.
I watch English language content with English subs if they speak something other than Oxford or American English.

>>283508882
Kang Xi the Valient Iron Emporer

>>283509006
I love kodomo

>>283508353
>memorizing words
Memorization is the worst way to learn something, it just doesn't work. This is exactly why studying for exams sucked because teachers don't teach you shit and just tell you go memorize words in a book or something and fuck you.

>>283509173
Memorization is just so you don't have to look into a dictionary every time you come across an unfamiliar word. Obviously it's not the end-all.

When I see you guys are also learning the language, it hurts my motivation to keep going a little

>>283509144
China numbah one

>>283507265 (OP)
>20 years of watching anime and I still can't hold a basic conversation in Japanese. What gives?
Anime Japanese is different from real life Japanese. People don't speak like in anime. Even if you learn via anime, you won't be able to use it in real life. Nips speak in an idealized fantastic way in anime, which would be completely off-limits and frown upon in real life.

>>283509254
He was Manchu though.

>>283509272
People also don't talk like Hollywood movies.

>>283509297
Manchuina numbah one

>>283509322
Yes, they do. Are you stupid or what?
Some dialogues depend on the movie but the grammar and words are used everywhere.

>>283507265 (OP)
if it is anything like my experience, it's because you actually had english classes in school, thus the basics were already covered. I merely got better at english than my classmates due to watching so much american media and writing in english forums, but I didn't learn english from it

>>283509371
How much Japanese do you know?

>try reading manga
>barely even looking at the pictures because I have to look every word up
is this normal or should I pick something easier to read

>>283509429
You should be asking him how much English he knows, if he thinks real people talk like movie characters.

>>283509436
that's what the furigana in manga for kids are for

>>283509481
Yeah I noticed Shonen Jump stuff for example has furigana, but I still don't know what most of the words mean. Just wondering if I'm skipping ahead too much

>>283509436
The beginning is likely always going to be like that.
But consider how common the words you end up looking up are. If there's too much specialist language you might want to read something else first.

>>283508532
Do you love your station?

>>283509523
You've finished some basic Anki deck with 2000 words or similar?
Those will never contain every single thing you might stumble upon. Reading and getting used to things is the only real way.

>>283508816
Samurai? Sushi? Sumo? Recognise any of those?

>>283509436
It was like that for me too. You should get an OCR dictionary to make it easier if you haven't already, and to stick to shorter stuff that you can read in short bursts. 4koma manga is great for this. It's like reading comic strips when you were a kid.

>>283507357
Is this all i need to learn japanese?

>>283509566
I do, but I especially love riding the Sanriku railway. It's really nice, especially during late summer when the weather is good.
If you're looking to go north from Sendai to Hokkaido, please do ride Alice's train. It's worth it.

>>283509836
yes after that you just watch anime and read manga to get better

Grammar filters me
It's too hard, even when I know every word in a sentence

>>283509746
Toyota, Mitsubishi, SASHIMIIIII

>>283509746
GIRUGAMESH

>充分
>十分
Explain.

>>283507265 (OP)
Did you watch all of those movies as a kid with subs in your native lang? You have probably consumed very little actual Japanese and actual spent 2 decades just reading english text while listening to Japanese audio that doesn't match what's being said at all most times and thus your brain can't learn as much without trying. If everything from the grammar to the vocab and sentence order is compeltely different and you're too busy reading text at the bottom of the screen there isn't much you're going to learn from that. Spend 20 years watching, steadily more difficult, content in Japanese without any subs and you will actually learn some (the language is still too different for you to learn that much by just doing that, but what you've been doing up until now doesn't count at all in the first place).

>>283510136
充 can be read as ジュウ, but since it's more of a a pain to write than 十, people just use that instead (10, also read as ジュウ).

>>283508934
yeah, as adults we have the disadvantage of having less free time to immerse ourselves in a language that isn't a part of our daily lives but also we have the advantage of making much more out of what little we do get.

A couple of years ago, after nearly 20 years of anime, I did a "Japanese for Tourists" course. All that it taught that I hadn't already picked up from anime was some specific vocabulary for e.g. buying train tickets and such; still well short of being able to converse, though.

>>283509173
Memorization can be fine when there aren’t any patterns you can rely on. Learning phonics is the best way to remember spelling and pronunciation

>>283509272
There's a difference in politeness and leans more towards slang, but it's still the same language. I spend most my time watching anime and I can still understand everything from official news broadcast to podcasts by real native speakers just fine.

Is it possible to learn Japanese as an adult, even after learning some other languages?

>>283507265 (OP)
I'll never learn Japanese, there's no point.
>consuming media in its original form
I don't even have time to consume translations, let alone time to look up words in a dictionary every 10 seconds.
>going to Japan
I'm too poor to ever afford it.
>talking to nips online
I'm too introverted for that.
That's not to say I don't want to, but eoth my lifestyle, it would take an insane amount of effort for barely any reward. If only I didn't have to work 1.5 times the amount of hours a normal person works...

>>283510363
Why wouldn't it be?
The only issue with learning languages is time commitment.

>>283510368
if you work 60 hours a week, why are you too poor to go to Japan?

>>283510363
Yes it is, unless you have ADD or something.

>>283510363
if anything learning other languages just makes learning another one much easier.

>>283507265 (OP)
Did you ever reach the point where you go "You know? I understand like 80% of what they're saying without looking at subtitles, I'm turning them off"?
If your answer is no, then either study until you reach that point, or turn them off NOW and keep them off until you learn

>>283510403
I'm a beaner

>>283508679
Most intelligent post in this thread.

>>283507265 (OP)
your favela monkey with 2 digits iq that's why

>>283510363
Yeah, I started to learn when I turned 30.

>>283508215
I've known other people who seem to just filter out all Japanese and I don't understand how. I'm watching movies in Cantonese right now and not really picking up on individual words but if I'd been watching things in Cantonese daily for as long as I've been watching anime (and engaging with it) you would expect to pick up at least a little.

>>283509976
Can confirm, Takagi-san is my first anime with JP subs and it is mostly understandable without needing excessive sentence mining (I have been studying for 1 year). There is also this tool which sorts anime by a bunch of metrics to determine what is easy and hard:
https://jpdb.io/anime-difficulty-list

>>283507459
>>283508419
This is purely anecdotal, but as a kid my parents sent me to a language institute to learn English, and the way it worked was that classes were separated by age, but they all naturally merged into a course aimed at older teens/young adults, since students naturally will age as time goes by.
If you started at the most basic children's level, it took 8 years to reach B2 (Optionally 9 if you wanted an international certificate, but felt you needed extra prep for the test), while starting at the most basic YA level would take 6 (+1 for the same test). It's worth noting that children's classes were two weekly hour-long classes, while YA classes were also twice a week, but lasted two hours

>>283509241
What? Why? Is it because you feel it no longer stands out?

>>283510136
>思い
>想い

>>283509204
>Memorization is just so you don't have to look into a dictionary every time you come across an unfamiliar word
You should develop the ability to guess through context for that
>"Albert arrived late because his car was stuck in gridlock"
>What the fuck is gridlock?
>Grid... lock... locked in a grid?
>He was in a car and arrived late..
>So something to do with traffic?
>I see, Albert was in a traffic jam
Lo and behold, someone who never heard the term gridlock now knows the common definition, without a dictionary or anyone explaining it

>>283507265 (OP)
I know how to understand the spoken language and even speak it myself but the writing system fucks me hard even after nearly two decades of listening to Japanese. I'm better at it than most but it still fucks with me. The Japanese should drop kanji already.

>>283507723
It's not impossible at all and yes, practically, it's not worthwhile but if you're a real deepcut otaku then you will obviously have reason to learn it as you'd be privy to a plethora of untranslated goldmines.

>>283511538
doesn't work with japanese
why do you think they all carry around fucking electronic dictionaries

>keikaku means plan
This is how you actually learn Japanese.

>>283508532
I'm so glad I was able to rabu my station on halloween this year

>>283507265 (OP)
>>283507357
>>283507378
>>283507425
>>283507513
I always lose my shit at reading Kanji, i'm just too retarded to understand on and kun readings concept. Any tips? Should In just brute force it and do not care how this language "works"?

>>283512299
>Any tips?
don't think about it
it's not really relevant most of the time

>>283511538
You can do that for compound nouns in Japanese once you know each individual kanji, but what you are suggesting is trying to develop the ability to guess what "&<> ©€—Δ" means through context. You need to memorize some foundation first.

>>283507265 (OP)
Anon, this is not /lang/
>>>216373626

>>283512299
think of the word "though" in english. you can read it as though (sturdy, strong etc) or as though (albeit, however, etc). the word is written the same, but the readings are different. on and kun is the same shit. usually the on (chinese) reading is used in compound words, while kun (japanese) reading is used by itself.

>>283512757
Sure, I'm not denying you need a foundation (My own example would fall apart for someone who doesn't know what grid, lock, car, or late mean). Just saying that after acquiring a foundation, neither memorization or a dictionary are 100% necessary

>>283512970
Agreed, I think it's just a miscommunication about stages of learning. Most adults quit before ever getting to a stage where they can learn through immersion and context, but that is definitely a needed (and arguably superior) way to properly acquire a language than rote memorization. It's definitely annoying to get 10 anki cards which are variations of the same general concept but with 1 kanji difference between them (and kanji I've seen before in other words). It's much more efficient to just encounter those type of words naturally, since you can already guess a rough meaning based on their construction.