Don’t mind me, I’m just piggybacking on the topic of the moment if only to go off on an entirely unrelated tangent in order to get this weight off my chest, hence its relevance-yet-not-quite. The title references something you may or may not be familiar with; of special note in that article is the quote by Robert Pirsig that goes “when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”
Now, substitute “religion” in that sentence with “raw watching” and you’ll see where I’m going with this.
Don’t walk away yet! I’ll make it worth your while, I promise, and not just because I’m using something called ‘logic’, a rare and underutilised substance in these parts.
First of all, though, here’s the Raw Hypothesis in easy to digest point (and numbered!) form, a hypothesis which, I presume in turn gave birth to the practice of raw watching:
- You can learn Japanese from watching anime.
- Following which, if you watch enough subtitled anime, you reach a point where your understanding of it raw (i.e. in its original format, sans subtitles or translation of any sort) is good enough to never need translation of any sort.
Perfectly reasonable, right? Well, I’m sure this might be shocking to some of you, but here’s what happens when we substitute this supposedly sound theory with other things. Other more regular and orthodox examples that you see on media, for example:
- You can learn cooking from watching episodes of The Naked Chef.
- Following which, if you watch enough videos of renowned chefs cooking, you reach a point where your understanding of cooking is perfect, enabling you to cook anything whatsoever.
Or how about another?
- You can learn golf from watching replays of Tiger Woods.
- Following which, if you watch enough matches of skilled golfers playing, you reach a point where your understanding of golf is so complete that a hole-in-one becomes child’s play.
Quite convincing, isn’t it? Not. This reasoning, which would seem asinine anywhere else, is uncomfortably tolerated in this corner of the internet to the point where disastrous things like the return of the hilariously inaccurate subtitles are considered non-noteworthy, something to be ignored, or even worse, defended! Such fallacious thinking in this post-modern age of stupidity The Land of Do-As-You-Please the internet disgusts me. Since when did faking it become cool?
There seems to be nothing but confusion with regards to the intricacies of a language, or what the stuffy English major in me knows as lexical content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and function words (pronouns, conjunctions, determiners, prepositions etc.)–something that seems to fly over the heads of most self-professed raw watchers, especially those who claim they don’t need subtitles anymore. A tip: Knowing the latter doesn’t mean you do the former. Since when did familiarity with stock phrases and sentences mean proficiency in a language?
Here’s a clue–all because you know the fundamentals of syntax and grammar, and are barely able to wrap your pitiful mind around those concepts doesn’t mean that everything else is going to fall into place. So you know where what the wa determiner does, or that the copula desu doesn’t go after every sentence, or something like that. Great! All you need to do now is to get that gargantuan bulk of yours off that chair in front of your PC and your hands on Japanese For Beginners, and we might be going somewhere.
If you ask me, the very idea of raw watching and Japanese osmosis through anime is an affront to all those out there who learn Japanese the hard way (not anime, you idiot, real classes)–hell, I’d say that it’s an affront to all those who have learnt or are learning a second language, and worked their butts off for it. What you’re trying to say is that watching 20 minute episodes of animation somehow acquaint you with the language through prolonged exposure, right?
So here’s the deal: If you lay off telling me how you are magically able to comprehend raw anime through mere language osmosis and nothing else, I’ll get off your case. For all purposes, I think Zyl’s recent public self-flagellation is a positive step in the right direction, for what better way to admit you have a problem than to start by shamefacedly admitting that you actually know a whole lot of nothing?
Oh, I can already guess how the arguments are going to go. “Owen, you poor sod,” you say, “not everybody thinks that way! You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, precisely because the people you mix with are a warped, vocal minority, a pretentious, facetious bunch that desire to tower over those filthy plebeian sub watchers!” Believe me, I know. But the fact remains that there are people who claim to understand Japanese in order to demonstrate their so-called superiority over you, and when they fail to back that claim up, well, it’s nothing short of pitiful.
For every ten people who do out of sheer desperation, there’s going to be one or two who do it out of indulgent delusion. For every sane person who isn’t convinced that they are now Nihongo par excellence as a result of their weekly ‘education’, there’s going to be another who thinks otherwise, and won’t stop telling you in a casual yet oh-so-infuriatingly-vapid manner that they’ve seen and heard it all, much quicker than you ever will. This isn’t a case of the emperor’s new clothes anymore, it’s an entire village parading in the nude!
I don’t get it. You, the average raw watcher, can no more comprehend 80-90% of what is being said in your average anime than I can conjure up swords from thin air, yet you claim to do so through repetition alone! Maybe if I mutter “Trace, on.” and “Composition, analyse.” to myself long and hard enough, I might be able to forge some blades out of nothing.
And I’m not talking about the internet swords that I use to cut people down to size, either. It’s amusing to note how those actually proficient in the language rarely talk about their ability to do so, but I guess that’s what they mean when they say that the emptiest cans rattle the loudest.
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inb4suiton
I mean, inb4raeg
Nice false dichotomy.
One thing you forgot is anime is mostly just cartoons. It’s not literature or anything that require a deep understanding of, well, anything really. Including the language. A lot of anime out there are simple enough to understand (BICS) even if you watch it muted and raw. And you don’t need to even have watched a lot of anime to do that.
You’re definitely right about one thing–it’s the emptiest cans rattle the loudest.
I’m not sure about people watching anime to learn Japanese (beyond picking up a few, commonly used terms) but I think that what we have here is a case of people who HAVE taken some Japanese, enough to make them dangerous. So yeah, they know 80% of what’s being said and try to make do. It used to be worse back in the day though (Anime Junkies anyone?).
However, there’s another side to this, which I learned from trying to get canon Tenchi Muyo stuff translated. I figured the best way is to hit up native Japanese speakers even if their English wasn’t 100%. Sadly, that proved to be as bad as someone who doesn’t know Japanese 100%. :-(
Still, an interesting piece you’ve written here. ^_^
Oh, then that’s where you’re wrong, little one. You don’t anything about how animu goes yet, I tell you. Cartoons? You’re living in the fifties, kid.
So, you think it’s just a bunch of frame-operated flicks for meager enjoyment. Then let us do a simple breakdown on “how you see it fit”. You get your anime raw, and then watch it, and then brag to people about how it goes simply because you “understood” how it went. Or should I say that? More like it would be perceived on one’s own understanding instead of what the episode really perceived. And that’s straying from facts, and a major offense.
So yeah, I may be for Owen here.
Omo: As opposed to your strawman and hasty generalisation? Of course!
I also like your argument from personal incredulity in your comment, but hey! All because all you see is moe rubbish doesn’t mean that the rest of us all watch the same crap. Also, nice bit of equivocation there, but all because you’re reducing ‘anime’ to:
1. Anime is mostly just cartoons.
2. Cartoons are not deep.
3. Therefore anime is not deep.
Doesn’t make my point any less valid. Brush up on your logic, then try again.
First, I think it’s more like you misunderstood what I was generalizing–namely, the translation of Nasu’s works and not all translations. You seems to think I actually understand all your short assumptions and phrases as if I was a tapeworm living inside you, so I urge you to calm down a bit and actually explain yourself. Going off like this based on a couple twitter posts is pretty silly.
Second, yes, anime is not deep in general, this is one of my points. There are a few exceptions to the rule but I think the statement is valid.
Third, it doesn’t make it any more or less valid to what I’m saying. First off, no one is saying you can learn Japanese from watching anime. Author and I are saying you can understand anime by watching anime, raw AND/OR sub. It’s not exclusive. In fact you have to be mentally retarded or not trying to not be able to understand raw anime even a little bit. No one is claiming 100% comprehension but most people can understand 10-50% of some typical TV anime without any grasp of the language.
I don’t see how anything in your post have anything to say to that. Maybe you should learn how to comprehend English first…
I’m left wondering about your argument, least of which the position of near-absolute superiority you place yourself over the reader here, if only because I’m not sure of your own experience level with Japanese and raw-watching. I would guess you don’t, given the title.
Equally so I think your chef / Tiger Woods arguments are a bit straw man, since you seem to compare physical activities with a more mental / logical one, like translation and language fluency. For golf and the like, there’s definitely a physical sensation lost that makes it impossible to learn from simply watching, but I’d contest that learning anime Japanese from being immersed in subtitles is at least possible to an extent.
Do note I say anime Japanese and not actual Japanese, as the two tend to differ.
Additionally, you seem to imply that people are attempting to achieve perfection in what they do from mere watching, or becoming a professional through just observing. I think the situation with people watching raws, is more of one gaining a set of survival skills – obviously you’re not going to land a job TL-checking for ADV (assuming they still exist) from just watching fansubs, but it seems a certainly reasonable goal to be able to have a basic understanding of at least simple anime. Especially for the more action-oriented, less wordy ones.
I understand your argument against the subtitlers who try to establish themselves as authorities, but I think raw-watching without full education is fully acceptable on an individual basis, when one is looking for just a grasp of the story instead of line-for-line perfection.
You may be arguing this as well, but most of your argument seems to be directed in a different direction. You admittedly ignore the more rational raw-watchers in favor of the vocal minority of “empty cans”, which seems to make this less of an argument on raw-watching in general and more of an attempt to win a flame war on the internet by escalating the confrontation further. It’s not the path I would take, but I’m behind on this topic which appears to have suddenly caught anime blogs by storm.
Basically, it’s a fiery argument, but a little flawed, and one that doesn’t seem to apply to most of the people who will read this article. Including myself. But it’s got me talking, so, keikaku doori, eh?
Shouldn’t it be yukkuri shittene?
So you’ve finally gotten pissed off about being spoiled enough to talk about this eh, I’ve always wondered when this will happen.
Unlike your “golf” and “cooking” analogy, “language” is a low-level skill that all humans inherently have (except maybe for those that are mentally handicapped) so learning a “language” from osmosis is much more easier than specific skills like “cooking”, “golf” or even “blogging”.
Learning Japanese from anime through osmosis isn’t too hard, in fact, I would consider people to be dumb if they don’t pick up a few words after their first year in it. Most raw watchers don’t claim to understand 100%, only summarizing the important points they picked up. Maybe because when we start discussing about your favourite anime a full 24 hours before you get to watch it that makes you mad about it, eh.
Well, have fun with your supposed high position, you bigot. Don’t get pissed off at other people who are giving more effort at their interests when you would rather sit back and be “safe” at the supposed accuracy of “fansubs” (har har).
Omo: Considering you only added in that caveat waaaay after that leaves me wondering if you’re just trying to cover a particularly severe gaffe. What makes you think I understood your vague generalisations to begin with? Are you going to hide behind your vague comments and claim Misunderstanding, or is this just well poisoning?
Regarding your point about anime not being “deep in general”, well, I’m not even going to dignify that absurd rubbish with a proper response, but the hilarious way in which you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face is almost pitiful. Hey look guys, [audio-visual medium] is not deep in general, therefore you don’t have to understand the language it’s in in order to understand it!!!
I think I just invalidated your crappy excuses for arguments, so whoops! Please don’t question my grasp of language when it’s clear that you’re side-stepping the issue and throwing red herrings all over the place in an attempt to prove the truthiness of your comments. Btw, I’d like to know how you played all of Tsukihime without a translation, and why bringing that up was somehow relevant. Try again. Better luck next time.
9X: How are they strawmen? Oh, maybe if you simplified them and argued from a semantic standpoint, fair enough, but my point is that you can never learn anything merely by watching a bunch of related media.
They’re fundamentally the same, and I don’t see how my examples don’t hold water. Technically, if you want to nitpick, they’re not the same. But in practice, yes, that certainly is the case. Merely watching anime doesn’t allow you to speak the language like a semester or two would, to say nothing about vocabulary. Considering that the vocabulary of any given show varies wildly, it’s highly improbable that anyone can say with a straight face that by virtue of having watched a lot of anime, they can understand all of it.
Understanding anime in general from having watched a few hundred shows? Hey, doesn’t that sound like they’re implying high proficiency to you? I don’t know, sure does to me. If I knew what each and every show was about without the help of subs, I’d be at translator-level status, which definitely counts as being well-versed in the language.
Note that it’s easy to go with the guise of subjectivity and assume that everyone’s a “rational raw watcher” (a term you also need to define) till proven otherwise, but I’d like to go with the better assumption that those who watch raw and make no attempt to admit, like Zyl, that they had no bloody clue about what was going on, are those I’m targeting in this post.
Anonymous Raw Watcher: Sup Kurogane.
Again, nice equivocation, too bad “language” and “low-level skill” in that context you mentioned only applies to those immersed in the language, not “Japanese language” and “comprehension of anime”, unless you happen to be surrounded by Japanese people, which you aren’t.
Go pretend you understand it more, then come back when you’ve learned something of actual value.
Learning takes analysis and studying, obviously anime teaches jack about a language; we haven’t gotten the polygot animu yet have we? The only thing it’s capable of is 1) stimulating interest in the language 2) providing about 5% of rather clear listening practice of what someone who wants to learn should be listening to.
I don’t get the arguments, shit’s so obvious… like the red on a S.T.O.P. sign. We should all just break-dance fight instead.
My problem with the idea of raw-watching for language education is that it doesn’t really convey the culture of the source language. Raws and any other similar medium (in my family, the Filipino Channel) control the displayed culture for entertainment. Being able to memorize words and phrases off of raws doesn’t allow one to absorb the context behind the words. Accent, gestures and social structures are some of the missing elements with televised mediums.
Of the various language teachers I’ve had (my HS Spanish teachers and every Filipino who tried to teach me Tagalog), language is best learned in two ways. One is by immersing yourself in the culture of the language which is something raws can only do so much (until TV’s become personal teleporters). Second is by being reprimanded for being wrong. Raws will never punish you for improper use of a sentence or bad accents. Whereas, you can learn alot from accidently offending someone and being corrected (which happens to me plenty of times).
Raw or sub watchers: Your ability to learn a language will be incomplete without the culture. I would know. Watching Filipino dramas with mom have only taught me one thing: The guys’ pimp lines to the ladies are absolutely useless in real life (once again, partially speaking from experience).
By the way, Reductio ad absurdum is a pretty good fallacy too! I mean, let’s just generalise and say that all anime (with a few caveats obviously, since we wouldn’t want to appear unreasonable now would we??) is shallow, simplifying it to mere “cartoon” status in order to attack it as a strawman. Illogic combo get?! Yes we can!
I like what you did there?
FWIW, you still haven’t explained the whole causation or ANN thing you repeated. I at least explained myself.
As for Tsukihime, I played it for about half an hour, gave up trying to appreciate it because it was too hard to understand. About 3 years later the translation showed up and I finished the game with it. Let’s just say that the translation was ass.
And yes, anime is not deep. I don’t see why you even fight this idea. Should I ring up tj for you?
The way you were going on and on about fan translations being teh sux by judging from a mere two examples of pro-translated Kara no Kyoukai (a novel) and fan-translated Tsukihime (a visual novel) seemed pretty unreasonable to me; then came the “Fan translation has 100% to do with technically awful writing.”[1] and “Fan translation has 0% to do with bad plot.”[2] twits out of the blue that pretty much seemed like the reasoning an average ANN forum-goer would display, not to mention qualify for the whole casusation does not imply causation thing by virtue of:
1. Tsukihime fan-translation is bad.
2. Kara no Kyoukai pro-translation is good.
3. Therefore all fan-translations are bad.
Trying to troll me with a ret/a/rd’s stance that “[medium] is [value]“? Are you kidding me? You’re not really trying, are you? Seriously. It’s pretty clear who built their house on sand now, you should give up while you’re still not that far behind.
The Tsukihime translation is a bit fragmented due to being done by several different translators and having a somewhat-poorly organized editing pass. I’d highly recommend checking out the Fate/stay night translation if you’re looking for an accurate comparison to professional localizations; TakaJun’s work on it is top notch, and the well-organized team of editors was able to produce a very cohesive product in the end.
Just as an aside, the fan translation of Rakkyo is much better than the professional one. TakaJun clearly understands the work and how to translate it; whoever Del Rey hired does not.
You can stick to your diet of only watching subbed anime, while I’ll stick to mine which varies between subs and raws.
Have you ever considered the scenario where there’s a certain media you want to watch, but there are no subs for it? Watching it raw would make more sense rather than waiting, which doesn’t even guarantee that subs will ever appear for it.
Anyway, I don’t see the big fuss about this issue. Just do as you deem fit.
>> then came the “Fan translation has 100% to do with technically awful writing.”[1] and “Fan translation has 0% to do with bad plot.”
So…I think those two statements are actually accurate? I mean the rest of it is in your head and putting words in my mouth.
Moogy: Thanks for the background info. But sadly game translation is really not something easy to compare to, say, pro prose translation versus fan prose translation.
For what it’s worth, I never wanted to imply that fan translation is bad, but in Tsukihime’s case, it may very well be the reason why it was bad. On the other hand you could read a pro-translated novel and odds are it will be better read than a fan-translated novel simply because of the different amount of editing involved. I really can’t say the same thing about games because localizing games is … something I don’t want to touch even with a 10′ pole.
Nasu, without a doubt, can write. Not sure how Fate Stay Night holds up to his prose work, but when I see things like this it makes me wonder what the hell owen is smoking.
http://twitter.com/owen_s/status/993457076
As far as I can throw my wildest guesses, which is about two feet, I’d say that the primary reason why VNs would be a less enjoyable read without the visual and audio accompaniments to the text is that their form does not merely follow their function. The presentation is a part of the experience and the writing is crafted in order to to fit the form—in other words, the writing is designed for the VN’s presentation style rather than for that of a novel.
That doesn’t make the writing shitty in comparison to a novel, though.
Saying that a VN’s writing is shittier than a novel’s writing is like saying that a play’s writing is shittier than a novel’s writing. Ever try reformatting the dialogue of a play into a list of quotations? Undoubtedly, a play in novel form would read like shit for a novel. Likewise I would expect that the text of a VN—separated from its presentation and dumped onto a page—would seem inferior in that new presentation.
Hell, Owen. Narcissu was awesome, right? And it was well-written, I would contend. That good writing is one of the main reasons it was so powerful. But if you took those words, that text, and formatted it like a novel, it would definitely seem incomparable to good literature.
I don’t think this discussion really has much to do with fan vs. pro translation, or good vs. bad writing.
Of course, I haven’t played FSN, or Tsukihime; and I haven’t read any of Nasu’s other writing. So whatever, right?
And ultimately, this is tangential to the main point of Owen’s post. The main point which, just as a “bee tee dubz,” I agree with Author on. It’s the first time I’ve agreed with Author in a long time—indeed it might be the first time since I’ve known him—but it really seems to me that Owen’s taking a reactionary stance toward the dumb behavior of a few random n00bs and then applying his negative feelings to an entirely different group of people who have done nothing objectionable.
Cheers,
-dr. lolikit
Might I just ask one question without taking any sides here. What exactly brought this on?
I couldn’t agree more. As an avid language learner, I’ve found such attitudes only too often.
It’s like my cousin, who told me the other day that she had been borrowing some readers in English from the library because she’s gonna need English for work. I told her, OK, should I recommend some grammar books to you? She said she didn’t want to study grammar. I said OK, then we’re done. She’s never gonna get anywhere.
The problem about languages is that they seem accessible, as opposed to, say, quantum physics. You just download the latest anime and you are listening to real Japanese -or any other language you are aiming to acquire-. Or you just borrow a book from the library and there it is. You can always understand some word, so it seems like it’s easier.
In this world where we want to have everything but not work for it, it follows that such attitudes should exist.
But in fact, language acquisition requires a lot of time and hard work. In fact, I like the way you describe them: poseurs.
Wouldn’t it be ideal if we were able to master a language just by watching our favourite animes, movies, sitcoms or whatever? Just by sitting there! How jolly good!
Although I will admit that watching RAW anime while learning Japanese, and I mean actual learning, studying grammar, vocabulary and all that, it can help.
Basically, the theory here should be that you come to encounter in actual text -by text I mean any fragment of the language, either spoken or written- those structures, words, collocations, etc., that you’ve been learning.
In 2LA (Second Language Acquisition) theory, it’s often said that we all work, unconsciously, like little walking hypothesis machines. In other words, rather than having a defective language system based on the target language -in this case, for example, Japanese-, we have a dialect (or idiolect, that is, a language system used by only one person) that has real rules based on abstractions (hypotheses) we formulate from what we’ve learnt or been exposed to. Which, of course, may differ from the system a native speaker has.
Therefore, if you come across structures, words, etc., that you’ve previously learnt when watching RAW anime, your little inbuilt hypothesis machine will have data to corroborate -or refute- some of your hypotheses. That means that it’ll be helping consolidate your language knowledge.
In a more prosaic way, it’d be like saying “oh, that’s what I learnt the other day. So it’s used this way after all!”
Of course, if you haven’t learnt anything before, there are no hypotheses whatsoever to test and it won’t make any difference at all.
In my case, by the way, being at a level over JLPT 3, what I do is sometimes watch some RAW anime with the purpose of getting as many words as possible, trying to identify vocabulary, grammar, structures, etc., I’m familiar with and afterwards I watch it subbed so I can not only understand what I didn’t unerstand, but also because then you can understand what was being said at a particular point you had trouble with.
Which is why I’m taking classes so I can say I have actual credentials to watch stuff raw, thank you very much.
Both sides are wrong.
Raw watchers are wrong because: First, you do can learn proper Japanese solemnely by listening, but that would take years, so that’s not a wise path to learn a language. Second, if you say you can understand raws but you’re unable to read a raw manga (with furigana), I say you’re lying. Even the most basic Japanese Anime is full of intermediate to advanced grammar constructions and, what’s worse, full of grammar contractions and slangs. The vocabulary is usually not light either. And third, if you miss 30% of the dialogues of every episode, you’re missing whole lot more than what you would be missing from the animation if you were watching subs.
Japanese course takers are wrong because: First, listening to real Japanese, be it Anime, news, or dorama, is an invaluable resource, so don’t be so quick to ditch them. Second, Japanese language courses suck. You can do better by studying alone. And third, the whole “how dare they’re having fun with the language while I’m studying so hard” thinking. Well, you should be having fun. If your studies are not fun, there’s something wrong with them. Don’t blame others.
Thank you for your time. I’m done ranting.
In the whole perspective of the thing, I agree with lk and author in that this seems like much ado about nothing.
And I agree with RyanA that there needs to be more break-dance fighting. :3
Owen, I would say I agree with you on a practical common level, but disagree with you on a theoretical level. Your analogy speaks of watching golf and then knowing golf. However, in this analogy, the subject does not practice golf but merely observes it. In the arguments that you oppose, I saw a phrase about a two-pass method during which the viewer tries to watch once completely raw, then once with subs. This indicates the viewer is indeed practicing after observing.
So the correct analogy would be I have watched so much golf and practiced so much golf that I can now play golf like a master. If the subject has the prerequisite base talents for playing golf at a high level (dedication, athletic ability, etc.), this could be a true analogy as time approaches infinity. So theoretically, I think you are wrong, especially as the base talents needed to understand a story told in a medium designed to appeal to the masses are more common than the base talents needed to play golf like a master.
However, where you do have a point is in the practical application of this argument. Let’s say you can learn golf by watching golf on tv and then practicing on your own. How long would that take? With no outside feedback, it could take decades. The problem is, that with no outside feedback, the golf enthusiast has no frame of reference. So after 2 years, perhaps, the enthusiast would claim mastery despite being only a novice. I think this is a similar situation with raw viewers. The watch-practice-do on your own method may work eventually, but I would consider it a less efficient method of learning. Without correctly taught fundamentals, it can be difficult for a novice to correctly identify language that is even just a slight variation of what has been previously observed.
Again, because of the medium (which is not designed to be difficult to understand), even a novice raw watcher may be able to understand over 80% of what is going on in an anime episode if the novice has seen enough anime. The point of divergence really lies in if this can be considered as an adequate understanding of the series. I believe this has to be decided on a case-by-case basis, as 80% of Bleach might be considered an adequate understanding whereas 80% of Last Exile might miss some very important details.
I do understand the rage, however, of hearing someone claim that 1 year of watching anime imparts as much practical knowledge as 3 years of accredited college coursework (this is my own completely reckless paraphrasing).
What I want to know is who is talking about learning Japanese through watching raws? This is not related to the topic at all.
But yet we always go there.
I guess this was brought on by people who exaggerated claims about their ability to comprehend the language, right? The rest seems to be splitting hairs in regards to how effective watching anime is in reaching a level of comprehension where you can brag about it, though. Can it be done? I don’t know. Personally all I’ve picked up are a few phrases, which are helpful on occasion but what I actually want to do is to be able to engage in a simple conversation, which requires a structured knowledge of the grammar; watching TV shows in the language in question undoubtedly helps, but gives an incomplete picture of what you need to learn. When I learned French at school it was a combination of hearing the spoken dialogue and being taught the grammar – the nuts and bolts that make up the dialogue.
I can’t call the people who say “I learned it through watching anime!” as liars, because I haven’t tried it for myself. But then, I’m learning the language in order to make my upcoming holiday experience a bit less hassle, which needs a different approach. So my short answer is “no, you can’t” but I’m willing to accept the possibility of being proved wrong.
Owen’s rant here actually leads me onto a separate issue that’s nagged me for ages: what sort of popularity are blogs for raw-watched episodes intended to achieve? The reason why I’m asking is that a relative minority of potential visitors understand the language, and I for one see them in my feedreader and don’t bother reading them because I haven’t watched the series that far yet. Why go to all the trouble of blogging an episode that relatively few people have seen yet? Since anime blogs seem to thrive on a back-and-forth dialogue between poster and readers who want to discuss what the poster is writing about, do these bloggers enjoy a healthy level of traffic and comments? I’m not getting at episodic raw bloggers here – I’m just curious.
@LK: like you, this is also a first for me in that I actually agree with Author’s post. For the first time didn’t think he was talking inflammatory rubbish; I wish that happened more often.
Heh, good job with the post Owen. I was going to stick my spoon into this mess but I believe this post here wrapped everything up so further input hardly is necessary.
Maybe you mean that we can’t ever fully extend knowledge from one medium and apply it into another? What looks practical in film isn’t so easy in an actual, physiological sense. Remember in Kimikiss when Futami wanted to do the butterfly only after reading about it? Essentially, you can’t remove praxis from its physical context.
To that extent there is the exception that you can learn some things only through media, like basic math, or anything that doesn’t require anything but analytical thought (since, basically, you aren’t extending the practice to any medium at all).
loooool, you are just angry that you are not BADASS enough to watch raw, dun dun dun. Also, lol @ people getting defensive.
But what about the poor Japanese ex-pats in Australia who have to download their dose of moe in raw because they enjoy watching Anime in their first language? Think about them, with no Akiba to turn to for their otaku fix!
“Also, lol @ people getting defensive.”
I look at it more as lol @ people missing the point to advance their own opinions. :/
I really didn’t want to get in on this crazy CLASH OF THE TITANS, but I do want to point out that, while I’ll never say I “learned Japanese from watching anime,” the five years of watching it (frequently, in the latter bit, playing grammar games while watching and brute-force-dictionary-translating when I had the time) set me up rather well for the three semesters of Japanese language courses I’ve had. Rather than having to struggle with learning a language from scratch (as I did in high school Spanish class), I had contexts, and the grammar points made have mostly been “oh, that’s why it works that way!” I’m not the most proficient at Japanese, I can tell you that, but for my purposes it suffices.
It’s still a challenge, but it’s not as much of one as I’d feared it’d have been, given my inability to perform well in Spanish when taught on a purely grammatical basis without any impetus and experiential context in which to place the language.
Agreed, OGT. Although immersion is best, it certainly doesn’t hurt to get whatever exposure to a language that you can, to aid in learning it.
People in Japan don’t go around talking like an anime any more than people in the U.S. go around talking like Seinfeld or CSI.
One thing I notice is pronunciation is easier, because hearing the language, even in the unrealistic setting of a TV show helps you learn where accents fall, and what a question sounds like.
I still enjoy my subs, though.
OwenS, nice topic!
I agree with you totally!!
I take about 6 hours of classes a Japanese a week. All day Saturday and night classes Thursday. I know how it feels to work and work at a language. It takes alot of effort. I even admit on my anime/manga/japanese culture review blog that I will not review a episode until it’s been sub because even if I watch a raw their so much I understand and don’t. I usually watch raws for listening purposes. I do this because I do not live in Japan so I do hear Japanese on a daily bases so my listening and speaking isn’t as high as my reading/writing. So I find it like a survival thing to watch it without subs.
In my honest opinion I don’t think I could even learn Japanese from scratch from raw’s because it way too difficult.
1st of all, let me just say that any way a person likes to get their anime fix is fine by me. In my case, I studied Japanese intensively for 3 years, then I lived in Japan for 4 years, during which time I had many Japanese friends, etc, etc. But I still wait for the subs. Because there are always technical things that I won’t get, or slang I don’t know, whatever. BTW, my experience with fansubs is that they tend to be spot-on. If I were Japanese I’d watch the raws, but I’m not so I don’t. But again, that’s just me.
a fundamental biological fact is missing. It IS possible to learn japanese through anime if you’re below 7 years of age. Any later, the language centres in the brain would be developed till it becomes very difficult to learn a new language.
Encouraging kids(5-7 yrs of age) to watch anime would be a method to help your child understand Japanese. This is of course reliant on many factors, such as exposure to the syllables at the right age. If i’m not wrong, its 16 weeks after birth. Proper language development is a natural thing. Therefore, it is not possible to blame anybody for having bad language but rather, bad parenting. These are facts that the normal average joe might miss out.
This may not apply to adults but don’t keep anime off your list when applying to children. =)
I disagree that by watching only anime even children can learn Japanese.
Research has shown that the most important thing for children to naturally acquire a language is interaction. They won’t learnt just from hearing it. Just think about it, why would an adult not get something they hear in Japanese and a children would? It’s just sound, after all.
Children learn because they are able to interact, because they are able to hypothezise about all the utterances they hear and talk due to natural mechanisms. For exanmple, a toddler may try to use any sound they can make even if they haven’t heard that word before to refer to water. But unless the parent realizes what the child means and does what the child wants them to do, the child will stop using that utterance since it’s not useful for communication.
Since anime is not interaction, that is, the child can’t speak to Konata and get some kind of answer, or feedback, whether it’s the desired outcome or not, and viceversa, then they won’t be learning anything at all.
For example, research has shown that young children in bilingual Canada that learn a second language at the right age but who have no bilingual peers (all the class is learning the language, no native speaker) and no bilingual family do not develop the langauge the same way children in actual bilingual environments do, but rather they get similar results to those adults get when learning a second language, so that’s evidence that interaction is probably the most fundamental factor in first language development, something missing from watching anime or any other media.
ok… i think i’m guilty of this watching episodes of anime i really, really like raw. but that’s only because i’m an episode whore. but all i know are randoms words and of course, that is never enough to make me understand the whole episode unless i have the manga (and the anime should be faithful enough to the manga to help me). i’m not stupid to believe that watching anime with the aid of subs will ever qualify me for JLPT. or even carry a decent conversation with a japanese person.
but there are schools of thought that if you expose yourself in a foreign culture, you’ll pick up their habits, mannerisms, language, etc. this can be a good argument. but, people who expose themselves to 20+ minutes of anime and yet living IRL somewhere that’s not japan cannot make this totally possible. in training theory, an adult have a different rate of learning than children. which is why traditional education cannot always apply for adults and specialized training like ALTD (adult learning, training and development) applies- kinda like company orientation.
so do i believe that anime will make me learn speak japanese fluently? hell no way. i can pick up random words but that’s about it. if i took up japanese language classes and use anime as a guide, i don’t know… i’ve never had classes.
i love your postttttttttt. i hate those people, they’re so stupid. trying to brag and shit. like stop lying. 70%+ my ass
um when I was like 4-8 yrs old I watched disney movies like peter pan, beauty and beast, etc and at that time all i knew was korean and these were dubbed in english and there were no subtitles or they were in english (don’t ask why) and I din’t leran english, i never became able to understand them. and trust me i saw those movies a 100+ times each.
I only understood it after I learned english after moving to america (1 or 2 years after)
so it’bs to to think if you
there fore, The P-Meister, hwat you wrote is bs.
anime alone isn’t shit.
i read book i learn japanese people ask how i watch foreign cartoon i say i read book they no believe they say i very badass i feel very good i go home watch cartoon and write about on website get many many page hits
I’d think that watching anime is a valid way to learn Japanese, but ONLY in combination with a good Japanese textbook and dictionary. Being able to recognize a few phrases here and there, but not getting the whole picture doesn’t mean jackshit, but if you push yourself to look up every phrase, every new word they say, you’re going to learn a bit. If you study and remember every new phrase and word they use, you’re going to learn more than a bit. If you take a class, use a dictionary, and watch anime, just watching can help you learn a lot.