RANT: Learning Japanese from Anime

Welcome to RANT (my subpar stab at a pun which stands for Random Assortment of Nonsensical Thoughts). The topic today is about learning Japanese from anime. Summary: Besides learning very, very rudimentary words and phrases, a beginner should not rely on anime to learn the language. A more experienced learner who is learning somewhere else (classes, books, websites, etc.) should also be careful not to absorb any unusual speaking patterns from anime. If you can take these ideas to heart, then you can actually benefit in learning Japanese by watching anime (in Japanese, naturally). The following is a post I wrote back in July on the animepaper.net message boards. I thought that bringing the post here would be a good idea since some people in our community may be wondering about this issue.

Possible to learn Japanese just from watching anime? Anyone is welcome to prove me wrong and become fluent using this method, but as of now, I don’t think that it’s possible. I use the word “learn” here in the sense of being able to hold a natural conversation and not just being familiar in identifying random words that you encounter. Let me give you a couple parts of the language that would be difficult to acquire if you were to just rely on anime.

*Note: My thoughts from this point on are probably going to be completely thrown together and disorganized
** Another Note: I’m not a native Japanese speaker but a self-study student of the language who has his books and resources to practice with, so I’m not (completely) just speaking out of my rear

To start off, let me say that I’m saying this from a native English-speaker’s point of view. Learning Japanese just by watching anime would be one heck of a feat. There are so many different things that separate English from Japanese that makes it very unlikely for someone to be able to become fluent in the language. This being said, I don’t think it’s possible to be fluent in any language just by watching media based around it. Moreover with Japanese since you’re dealing with a language with completely different grammar and cultural background. In Japanese grammar, you have a different sentence structure, the particle (very loosely related to a preposition [of, in, at]), numerous verb conjugations, and various other intricacies that look back upon politeness and social status. Getting a strong grasp of such things by simply watching anime seems like an incredibly arduous feat.

Now that I’ve given you some background on just how different Japanese is from English, let me give you another obstacle to look at in anime: subtitles.

First, let’s get this out in the open: When somebody translates a piece of work, you don’t translate the words, you translate the meanings. A common example of this is idioms. If I were to translate the English phrase “you’re pulling my leg” into Japanese, word-for-word, you wouldn’t get the same meaning across. The Japanese speaker would think that you are talking about literally pulling his leg. The translator’s job isn’t to translate a piece of text word-for-word but to translate it so that the meaning is carried across and sounds natural to the person that views the translation. Thus, if a Japanese person were to watch a subtitled English film with “you’re pulling my leg,” what might show up in the Japanese subtitles is something like “uso!” (“No way!” “You’re kidding me!”) That being said, one shouldn’t listen to Japanese in an anime and then look at the subtitles as an infallable source of knowing exactly what the words are saying.

In my research (yes, I have that much time), it turns out that one of the biggest hazards to being fluent in another language is having to translate one word in a language into a different language. An example is this thinking process: (step 1)ringo -> (step 2)apple -> (step 3)(picture of apple in one’s mind). There is no real such thing as “thinking in a language.” If you think of the word apple, you don’t think to yourself, “an apple is a sweet, crunchy, red fruit.” Instead, you just correspond the word “apple” to a picture of an apple, or something along those lines. The point I’m trying to bring across is that you mustn’t rely on subtitles as a source of bankable words. You should be able to correspond “ringo” to a picture of an apple in your mind or something else that helps you remember what an apple is. So when you see an apple, the first thing you, in your Japanese-speaking mindset, should be able to blurt out is “ringo!” It gets more complicated than this, but you get the idea. (If you want to read more about learning foreign vocabulary, then I would suggest reading these sites and forming your own opinion about them: http://www.english-learning.co.uk/voc.html and http://www.english-learning.co.uk/vocdb.html [shameless plugs, I know. ])

Okay, all of the above that I have mentioned apply to those who have no background in learning the Japanese language. The following is my personal take on Japanese students and their using anime to learn the language:

Basically, anime shouldn’t be a primary source of learning for the Japanese student, but it can be used as a supplement for the student who has a relatively strong foundation in the language. With a good foundation in Japanese grammar and cultural background, a person should be able to use anime to pick up some things such as what particles are used in what situation, the exact structure and vocabulary used for so-and-so situation, and so on. I know I said that simply referring to subtitles is a bad idea, and I stick by that. However, the Japanese student with a good foundation in the language should be able to differentiate when to completely disregard the subtitles’ translations and using the subtitles as a ‘guide’ to further his own understanding of the language. One situation I came across recently is this: In episode 10 of “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,” one character says “korosaretakunai?” which meant in the context “you don’t want to be killed?” To the person who no background in learning the language, it’d be a pretty difficult sentence to understand, grammar-wise. However, to the person who is experienced in Japanese grammar, including the verb conjugations and what not, he would be able to decipher this sentence without going to the obstacle of referring to the English translation. He would think “Ah, ‘korosareru’ is the passive conjugation of ‘korosu,’ the ‘tai’ at the end expresses desire or want, and the conjugation of ‘tai’ to the negative, nonpast form ‘takunai’ all comes together with ‘korosareru’ to ‘korosaretakunai’ roughly meaning ‘don’t want to be killed.’ The understood subject is ‘you.’” (Please excuse this gibberish of an example. It makes sense if you study the language.)

So, to finalize, I wouldn’t recommend using anime as a primary source of learning the language. It’s much more useful to buy a textbook, get a teacher, or even look online for some sites to help you. (I highly recommend learning the language too. It’s very different from English, but that’s one of the most appealing things about it. Though it’s so different, it makes a lot of sense. [much more so than the exception-ridden English language]) It’s a very fun experience. At the same time, for the student who is learning the language, there is absolutely nothing wrong with (cautiously) using anime to help you with some aspects of the language. Just be careful not to take everything the subtitles read for gospel.