sairinnosekai-blog

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Is anime a good source for learning japanese?

oh god i cannot count how many times i have been asked this question in the very little time i have been learning japanese. i have been asked this question twice today by people i very much dislike and that inspired me to write this post, it’s also due to the fact that the season is ending and so are many animes so i just wanted to talk about anime. i have no friends in real life so bear with me.

well, aside from that, the answer to this question would be yes and no depending on what you actually want to learn. watching anime can help your educational journey, you will get used to hearing japanese language and practice your listening skills so it wouldn’t sound so fast and scary anymore, you will also expand your vocabulary greatly by learning various phrases. what could possibly go wrong right? well let me burst your bubble then. cuz mine has been blown a long time ago.

first it would be good to keep in mind that actual japanese people don’t really talk like in anime. they call that “anime speach”. people who copy anime speach are generally viewed as otakus or weebs among japanese people.so don’t do that.

anime speach: words or phrases used in anime that are not used in reality. like the word “KISAMA!” which basically means “you” in an offensive way.

my second point would be to check what kind of animes do you watch, people who try to learn japanese through anime mainly focus on shoujo and slice of life animes because they are realistic and have a lot of phrases that you will actually use on daily basis. think about it, who is more likely to learn useful japanese phrases, the girl who watches slice of life animes or the boy who watches nothing but hentai?...wow that was rude. i apologize.

last but not least, if you try learning japanese solely by watching anime your japanese will always be lacking, ok you will learn how to speak but anime will not teach you how to write or read. it also won’t teach you grammar or anything else for that matter. the choice is yours. 

i personally lean more toward music than anime when it comes to learning japanese even though i am a hardcore otaku. with music you can practice listening and reading and writing by writing and reading lyrics. reading music lyrics can even show you grammatical patterns and introduce you to new kanji characters. also japanese music is the best whether it’s an anime opening or a ballad.

long story short, watching anime is good for practice your listening skills and expanding your vocabulary but not that good for anything else. 

分かるか?

[sairinnosekai-blog]

Kanji 漢字。

Where did kanji come from? to answer this question we must go back in time to 4000 years ago when a lot of countries did not have a written system.

Once upon a time or as the japanese say, 昔々あるところに. asia did not have a written system and in that time china was the leading country and so china started creating a writing system. But they didn't use characters, instead they wrote pictograms that resemble things around them which is something we still do to this day. For example instead of saying "i love you" a lot just write ( I♡U) right? It was as simple as that.

But then the chinese discovered a serious flaw in their written system which is that such a system can only be used to express simple sentences. You can say "i love you" but how can you say things like "why don't we go to the mall later" or "i don't like people who lie"? You can't really express yourself freely.

But the chinese refused to give up and so they dropped the pictograms and started creating characters that represent concepts instead of words, even though they ended up creating thousands of characters but nevertheless they still made a written system that can be used.

All asian countries saw that and were truly fascinated!! Japan was no different and so japan took chinese letters and gave them the name "kanji" and started using them. But they missed one important detail, JAPANESE AND CHINESE ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. One would think that would stop the japanese but haha if you thought so you were wrong my friend!

Japanese people took chinese characters and started recycling them, merging some and modifying some, they also started giving them japanese names instead of the chinese ones which means every kanji now has two ways to be read. that led to the birth of what we know today as the on-yomi and kun-yomi:

On-yomi: is the reading based on the chinese pronunciation.

Kun-yomi: is the native japanese reading.

Don't be naive and think that you will only learn the kun-yomi since that's the japanese reading. You will learn both and you will find that both are used in japanese. Quiet frustrating i know. It's also important to know that some characters took it to the next level and got more than two readings, there are characters with several readings out there but thankfully they are not many.

People were happy to have a written system but no one could deny it was difficult and thus need to be taught which was a problem since in ancient japanese culture. Only the rich and powerful could learn. And women didn't have access to education even if they were rich for various reasons. But women were smart so they ignored the whole kanji system and started inventing their own simple written system which to make story short led to the birth of hiragana! Girl power!

With the evolution and foreign languages reaching japan katakana was born too which as i said before is only used to represent foreign words but in japanese.

This is basically how kanji came to be and how it reached japan, and that is why you can't just rely on hiragana and katakana, they wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for kanji.

[sairinnosekai-blog]

A quick revision.

i am just going to pretend someone is actually reading this and try to review what i have learned so far in order to summarize my humble knowledge ad learn better in the future.

i have already  been studying Japanese for a few months now so i am already finished with beginner level Japanese ( i am a beginner master L(*^*L( ) since a while ago and i have recently started to take intermediate level lessons.

in the beginning, just like any other language i started by memorizing letters and numbers which is not as easy as it sounds, there are three Japanese alphabets which are as the following:

hiragana: simplified Japanese letters. there are 46 hiragna characters.

katakana: mainly used to write foreign english words, or as otakus call it “engrisu” which means it might be written in japanese but it’s pronounced like english with slight changes (for example america = アメリカ). or the word computer which in japanese is pronounced computa~ there are 46 katakana characters.

      3. kanji: the devil of japanese whom everyone fear. there are thousands                   of kanji out there and some kanji have more than one pronunciation                     depending on the word. there are a bunch of kanji that are “commonly                 used” probably around a thousand or two and those are the kanjis you                 need to start with and what any japanese teacher will teach you first. i                 will take my time to explain kanji better in a later post. just keep in mind               that it may not be easy but it’s definitely not impossible to memorize kanji.

the numeric system on the other hand is really easy in japanese and it follows a set pattern that never changes.

after learning these things you start to get into grammar and you will also start building your vocabulary. beginner grammar is relatively easy because they mostly follow a formula. but that is not always the case once you get into more complex grammar, you will also start to learn how to conjugate verbs and adjectives and you will learn that one simple word can come in many forms. but just like grammar, there are rules and patterns for conjugation so you will be fine. just do your best and don’t give up so easily.

the beginner vocabulary might not be easy because japanese words are very unique in pronunciation and they are also very different from english. for example who would imagine that “milk” would become “gyunyu” or that a normal word like “ambulance” would turn into “kyukyusha”? i personally think japanese pronunciation is very cute.

beginner level vocabulary is very important because it’s heavily focused on words and sentences that you will use daily, unlike intermediate and advanced which just teach you random words that you will probably never use in normal circumstances, like the word “nebula” which is “seiun” in japanese. like seriously, how often do you use the word nebula?

this is generally what you will go through once you get into the black hole of japanese, i will surely discuss certain things more deeply in later posts but that’s it for now. thank you ghosts for listening. 

じゃあまたね!!

[sairinnosekai-blog]

Hello? Hello!

I don't even know who is this even for so hello humans, animals, ghosts, aliens, unicorns and all beings in this big endless universe. Does tumblr even exist in space?

I am currently studying japanese (my third language woohoo!) And after finishing beginner level and entering the intermediate level, i just started feeling demotivated and that led to me being too lazy to actually continue taking lessons which means i am not gonna be watching anime without subtitles any time soon! Fluff my life.

Anyways! I was looking for ways to stay motivated, yo know, reignite the passion in me and i have stumbled upon an interesting advice which is "making your journey public" what that mean is, if i share my progress with the world then i will be motivated again and it will make it harder for me to stop which is exactly what i want! (too many exclamation marks i know!)

I don't know how exactly am i going to accomplish this but i will share what i learned everyday. I won't give up!

So yeah, that is basically it. A lesson everyday. yay?