bubble's Blog

That's mostly what I've been doing, although I started with a few classes and I do watch other things as well. There's a lot you can pick up that way, even if it does tend to be a bit ridiculous. This gave me an idea.

It was tough starting out, when I couldn't understand anything, so I thought maybe I could help others out. And then I thought I could do so through a blog, which would avoid the classic problem of class - that you're trapped, and you have to do the parts you detest as well as the ones you find useful and interesting. The format would be the following: I pick a show or two and go through them one episode at a time, highlighting useful and important words and phrases. Anyone who wanted could watch the series in Japanese with the help I provided and ask me questions. And because it would be a blog, the archives would stay up.

So, would any of you want to learn Japanese like that? If so, what show(s) would you be interested in? I was thinking Cowboy Bebop, because I have the DVDs and I rather like it, but maybe a show that doesn't have a good dub... or any dub... would be better? And perhaps a show with a more realistic setting would be preferable, although if you want to learn Japanese mostly to watch anime, that's irrelevant. And if you want it for more general use, you shouldn't exclusively use anime.

I've found sites that use anime somewhat to teach Japanese, but not whole episodes. If you've seen a blog/website that does what I describe, please point it out to me.

Also, if you know of sites that have anime scripts/transcripts in Japanese, that would be super helpful.

Anime Relations: Digimon Adventure

When I loaded up Youtube a little while ago (I was actually going to watch one of the zillions of Hare Hare Yukai videos - you know, the song from Haruhi that people dance to) there was a link to the German dub of the first episode of Digimon. Now, I don't speak German, nor do I even understand it, but I love foreign languages (including German) and I was feeling nostalgic, so I watched it anyway.

It was interesting to hear the German voices - I've already seen the U.S. English and original Japanese versions all the way through, plus the opening to the French version. The U.S. and French versions have this (french version). The German version uses a translation of the original song, which I like a lot better. The Latin American Spanish one does as well (incidentally my Spanish is about twice as good as my German, which is to say that it's absolutely terrible).

Now the translations appear to take their cue from the English version and abbreviate the characters' names: Taichi -> Tai, Yamato -> Matt, Takeru -> T.K., Izumi -> Izzy. But the Spanish version uses the original Japanese introduction screens, with kanji and all. The French version (the only one I understand besides English and Japanese) even uses the Alaska reference from the English version. One wonders if they had the original at all! :/ you lose a lot in repeated translation.

It reminds me of someone I heard about who collects Harry Potter in multiple languages. I'm not sure why they do it, but I think I'll keep watching the French one because I'm curious and I wanted an excuse to rewatch Digimon (it's been about a year since I watched the Japanese version).

Anyone else rediscover an old favorite recently? Comments on translations?

So. Some anime and manga-related goals. :D
Some of them are stupid, some aren't. Most of them don't have a timeline... at least not yet.

First, one I made a while before:
Before school starts (late September) get the anime watching 'days' count up to 45. I made this goal when it was about 39, now it's 44.2. Very close.

Before the end of the year: finish reading at least one manga raw. Probably Penguin Revolution, but who knows (how I wish I could tag manga...)

Eventually:
Finish or drop for good everything on my 'on hold' anime list.
Watch more old anime (older than 90s). Especially MS Gundam and Rose of Versailles.
Catch up with everything on my Watching list (Detective Conan, I'm looking at you).
Finish the Fruits Basket manga in the original (so loooong... reading Japanese still takes me a long time).
Start reading manga that don't have furigana... Parasyte (寄生獣) I'm looking at you.

And of course, get so I can understand the darn things better! The road of language learning is long (but at least in the case of Japanese, well-paved!).

It occurs to me that I've watched a lot of anime, but not read that much manga. There are several reasons for this:
-before I was internet-savvy, it was much easier and cheaper to watch anime on TV than to read manga. My local library has very little, so I had to buy it.
-even now I find scans inconvenient, so I haven't used them much, and would tend simply not to read stuff until it hit store shelves here.
-if I'm in the mood to read, usually I'm in the mood for novels, which I consider typically better value for the money.
-certain things work much better animated than in comic form for me
-lately, I've been learning Japanese, and I find it takes much less concentration to watch raw anime or dramas than to read raw manga

Lately, this has been changing a bit, for the following reasons:
-I've developed more of an appreciation for clever page layouts and panel design - in general, for the cool things one can do with comics
-I'm trying to patch up the biggest hole in my knowledge of Japanese - reading - and find manga much easier than novels and more interesting than little kids' books
-some things are just better in manga form - including Fruits Basket, which I've been reading lately

Funnily enough, although I think Ouran and Fruits Basket are better overall, I've been reading Penguin Revolution the most obsessively, perhaps because the author is quite good at cliffhangers. Also, with the other two I'm still reading the parts that were adapted into the anime, so there aren't many surprises.

I started taking Japanese classes in September last year, and that December I started doing more about it outside of class. By now I've figured out how I work learning languages:
I am lazy, but I am easily entertained and have a long attention span when I am entertained. I detest repetitive things, which is a bit of a disadvantage because spaced repetition is what preserves information in the long run. Fortunately, watching and reading things that entertain me - anime, dramas, manga, novels - is good enough. You get a lot of repetition that way, even without doing specific drills. Frankly, doing lots of drills mostly makes you good at drills, and not at recognizing and using a language outside of a class setting. I tend to do well in language classes when I put my mind to it, but that's not enough for good language learning - one ends up with a small vocabulary, an inability to recognize words when used in an unusual accent or mumbled, and difficulty forming sentences. And this after several years of classes!

I speak of course of my own experiences. Your mileage may vary. But I believe that while classes may get you started, you need more, ideally from the beginning or close to the beginning.

I did not come to these ideas completely on my own. I read this language site before I did it the first time, with French, and found AJATT before I started, rather more early on, more enjoyably, and more profitably, with Japanese. Note that I do not follow all of Katzumoto's suggestions (he runs AJATT) but he has many inspirational and useful posts.

Anyway, I've been listening a lot, watching a lot of anime, some dramas, some news, and it's done wonders for my listening comprehension, vocabulary, instinctive grasp of grammar, etc. It's probably been helping my accent, too.

Unfortunately, written Japanese uses lots of kanji. They often have multiple readings, and though there are patterns to these readings, it takes a while to grasp that, and I'm barely starting to do so - I have only recently really started reading, and it's a pretty weak skill for me still. Fortunately, this is a problem even for Japanese children, so many books aimed at kids have readings given above most of the kanji (furigana or rubies). This includes many manga, as well as late elementary/junior high type novels. Others, of course, have few or no kanji, and some for the really young set give readings even over the katakana.

I've been reading several manga to help with my reading - Fruits Basket, Ouran High Host Club, Yotsuba&!, Penguin Revolution. The last two are the easiest - Yotsuba&! has few kanji and often little text, while Penguin Revolution just seems to be more simplistic than Ouran or Fruits Basket. It's slow going, but I think I'm getting better, and in the next few days sometime I should be able to get ahold of a Japanese version of C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy (in Japanese, 馬と少年). I've already read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in Japanese (ライオンと魔女). The series in general is called ナルニア国物語.

Anyone else a language buff? Learning Japanese? Have or need advice?