To be honest, I think the criticism MNN receives is not justified. If you compare the pros and cons, it is evident how valuable it is as a tool. Even more so if you approach it from a realistic standpoint, and also take into account that most of its negatives happen to be ones that are especially easy to correct for a teacher depending on their education policy. It is not ideal for self-learning, though.
there was an american TV drama / horror series called ""The Terror" (2018). In season 2, ep. 1 there was A LOT of spoken japanese by the actors, so I'm wondering how good their pronunciation is and if they have any accent when they speak (hopefully youtube doesn't copyright strike such content because it's only for review purposes)
Hello, thanks for the video. I'm stuck a little bit cause I can't grab some good way to learn Japanese. I already learned hiragana and katakana, I knew some basic grammar, understand easiest cases of particles, even got some verbs forms. So, Duolingo is not good because it uses weird frases sometimes (I tried to use it with my native language, it's weird on it too) and some unnatural forms. I trying to also use Anki with Core 2000 flashcards set but I also heard that flashcards is also not good. In this set there are kanji + case with context + audio. So, what can I use to learn when I have like 40 minutes in busses when going to and from my work? I can't try to read some manga in Japanese as can I do at home, with my notebooks and few windows. I have just phone.
There are many different advice on how to learn kanji. I think a mistake people make is to try and learn kanji individually with the onyomi, kunyomi, zenyomi or whatever instead of learning the vocabulary first in context and then learning the kanji representation of said word. Another mistake is to learn Japanese as if it's quantum physics. Language learning is supposed to be fun.
This! If someone's idea of "learning kanji" involves memorizing the different ways a kanji can be read when it's hypothetically in a word, rather than just... learning how to read words, then they're really shooting themselves in the foot. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of learning material that seems to encourage this.
I'm learning kanji individually using wanikani and it's really helpful. It makes it much easier to learn new vocab because most of the time you can already guess the reading and meaning based on the kanji. Everyone has their preferences but I definitely don't agree that it's a mistake.
@@CamembertDave Look up Wanikani. It's a learning resource that first teaches you individual kanji meanings and readings, then immediately after teaches you vocabulary that use those kanji. It makes learning much less painful.
Yeah, I now understand Japanese very well but I also started with this. I dropped it about a month after starting(15months ago). It's just a common thing I heard that's entirely useless. Learning just straight up words in their kanji form is weirdly enough pretty much the same difficulty for me as learning them in non kanji form so there is no reason not to just straight up do that. Another thing would be starting immersion at 1k, words. I started at 2k and to be honest, it was still very boring at first. I would definitely wait until the 2k mark
Yuta I studied Japanese throughout high school and a year at the university… long before the advent of internet. I’m now 52 and fluent in Spanish but your videos have been tempting me throughout the years to return to tackle Japanese! In the meantime, as an English teacher , I really appreciate your clear response to language acquisition. You continue to be an inspiration as a language teacher. Thank you for your contribution to this space! If you’re ever in Chile get in touch!!!!!
If you have the time you should do it, i failed to continue learning Japanese because university and life stuff, but things are better now, maybe i'll start over again. Greetings from Chile.
I love that you addressed the idea of immersion, it's a struggle to get the balance between trying to learn something currently beyond me, without it being so much that I lack the context to even find the right definition from a dictionary or searching online.
I think the first bit of 'bad' advice is actually true. I majored in Japanese at university, and then lived and worked in Japan for 4 years. Although I was working as an English teacher, I spent all my free time trying to study and practise Japanese language. For the first two years, I was in a small town in the mountains in Hyogo prefecture, so I was able to immerse in the culture, and even though the town had a strong dialect with some similarities to Kansai-ben, overall I improved rapidly. Also, the people in the town all knew me and knew I was able to communicate in Japanese, so I had lots of opportunities. However, in the second two years I was working at a 'language school', first in Kanagawa and then in Shizuoka. It was a very different experience. Just like in the bad advice, the only Japanese who would want to be friends with me were people wanting to practise English. Whenever I spoke to someone or asked a question, they'd reply in a a kind of pidgen Japanese, inserting any English words they knew into a sentence with Japanese structure, e.g 'Today wa, no'. I sincerely wanted to improve my level of Japanese and was working hard to do so, but in the cities I found it was a very closed society, so when I finally got to the stage of only socialising with other foreign teachers, I decided to come home, as staying in Japan any longer was pointless. It's a shame, because I was very genuine in my desire to learn. When I returned home, I felt like a failure for a long time because I hadn't mastered Japanese to the level I wanted to.
My friend had a similar experience. He wasn't a teacher but people who worked with him knew he spoke english so they tried to befriend him so they could practice.
you could have just moved back to a small town somewhere. you had the whole rubric. sounds very defeatist tbh next time grow legs and crawl out of the ocean
I agree with everything you said. As someone who lived for two years in Japan over 30 years ago, as an English language teacher, and as someone who restarted Japanese as a pandemic amusement, I think your comments are sensible. I so wish the input available now through the internet had been available 30 years ago!
I don't understand why so many people decide to learn Japanese without first learning the hiragana or katakana. It takes less than 2 weeks, and you can start to learn kanji immediately. There are so many resources that will teach you entire sentences at a time, which gives you intuition in how the grammar works. Sure, you'll mess up prepositions sometimes, but you can also go slowly through grammar all while building vocabulary. There's youtubers, podcasts, dramas, anime, and tons of other resources to listen to for listening to Japanese. I love Japanese and have been studying it since 2019. There are some things that are so similar in languages that learning one helps you learn and teach others (even languages you don't know). Some of those things are the international phonetic alphabet, topic vs subject prominence, stress and pitch accent, declensions, morphology, alphabet memorization, resource exploring and so on. There are also tons of speaking resources like iTalki and HelloTalk.
Summary: it's intimidating and unfamiliar. I'm trying to learn Chinese, so we dont even get a hiragana/katakana to assist. I think a lot of people see a script that's weird to them, and everytime there's a layer of difference or complexity it scares them. Hiragana/katakana doesnt exactly match an alphabet There are thousands of Kanji Most (if not all) kanji could sound different ways, and have different meanings This on top of the different grammar structure and pitch accent and variations, while the words/sentences can get REALLY long. I think the best thing a learner can do is realize you dont have to master anything off the bat. And that despite how tough the road ahead seems, and how futile it seems. It becomes second nature
yeah you really shouldn't spend more than a week on initially memorizing all the kana, and if you're making an effort to read a lot of Japanese (not necessarily understanding it at the beginning but at least phonetically sounding it out) then you'll solidify it. hiragana in particular gets baked in pretty fast after that initial cramming because it's everywhere. using romaji for anything beyond learning the kana is setting you up for bad habits imo
The only reason to use romaji is to learn Hiragana and Katakana. After learning those Kanji is easier with Furigana or just looking up at Jisho. After writing it, it is exactly what you said :D The JLPT exams can be a great motivator, not sure how much it actually teaches you to communicate. Learning is fun
Exactly. Hell, just reading romaji unless it's like a proper noun of some sort makes my head hurt lol. If I want to know the lyrics of my fave jpop song, I don't want romaji, I want the actual text in Japanese
My worst japanese advice I've got, was about kanji. "Oooh there's too much kanji, too much meaning and pronunciation of one kanji, you should know every kanji to understand everything do not use dictionaries to look up a rare used kanji". Like bro, calm down. Not every Japanese person knows every kanji, they know basic ones and can communicate with each other.
i was put off kanji by gaijin weebs and otakus who like to act like they've been given some kind of power or authority by learning kanji, when all it demonstrates is that they have mastered obsessiveness and found their way to a japanese bookstore. the whole culture of learning kanji amongst these incel types is a real drag. i had to finally dissociate kanji from such gaijin tendencies before i was willing to just go ahead and learn it like everyone else in japan has to. PSA - kanji are not a proxy for personality - developing one of those is a separate task.
I started with textbook Japanese (Minna no Nihongo, Genki) and I don't regret it at all. That's because when learning Japanese, you shouldn't restrict yourself to just textbooks. You have to have other external materials. Nevertheless, textbook Japanese set the foundation and structure for me and I found it easy to convert polite textbook Japanese to plain conversational Japanese later on because I already knew the grammar and structuring of the words. Starting with textbook Japanese isn't really the "worst advice". The worst advice is it you just learn one type of Japanese and ignore the others.
4:58 “stick to only Genki” look I used Genki I in high school, I love it, getting a full kit is great cuz you have audio downloads, work sheets, kanji references, but it can’t be the **only** thing. The guy who wrote the Japanese From Zero series said in one of his videos that author bias/experience will influence what’s in the books they write about learning languages and he’s one of **MANY** people I’ve heard say to use as many resources as possible. Genki and other classroom textbooks are good within their intended environment-a **classroom** with a teacher fluent in Japanese, sometimes even a native speaker, who also teaches etiquette, history, geography, sometimes talks about dialects and pitch accent… like you’ll get the full benefit of a class text while **in a class**.
"JLPT N1 is so hard even natives will fail it!" - person I know living in Japan for 5 years and seemingly takes pride in not knowing how to read kanji.
I've heard this a few times too! From what i can tell, theres some odd or somehwat rare/uncommon grammar and themes in the N1, its nothing at all any native cant deal with. Three people i know who got extremely high/perfect 180 scores says simmilar. Some uncommon grammar, but nothing crazy.
From what i read, native children learn around 1,000 kanji by the time they finish elementary, and another 1,000 by the time they finish middle school. More precisely, they learn 2136 kanji by the end of middle school. That means, if we only consider the kanji aspect of JLPT, an average 15-year old child should be able to pass N1, and an average 12-year old should be able to ace N2. Meanwhile, an average educated Japanese adult is expected to know around 4,000 to 5,000 kanji.
@mapl3mage i doubt they know 4-5 since the 漢検 levels pre-1 and 1 are in that realm. Though i guess if they're university educated in some particular field, and all the place and people name kanji's not in included in the 常用漢字 list, maybe you're right 🤔. Who knows, and in the grand scheme of things, who really cares 😄.
its like asking a native English speaker to break down the sentence of "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" its a very obscure question that is grammatically correct; but very few people could explain it as "Buffalo (the city) buffalo (the animal) buffalo (are aggressive towards) buffalo (the city) buffalo (the animal)"
Being a fan of Yuta and Dogen, I definitely think pitch accent is one of the least important aspects of the language until you can actually speak a fair bit and communicate with people effectively. 99% of the time it's not REALLY going to matter and the other person is going to understand what you say. It's like the final boss of the language imo, the last step to sounding like a native speaker. An optional, but necessary step for those wanting to go the extra mile. Otherwise I just think it adds a lot of unneeded stress on new learners while they grapple with the alphabets, grammar, and vocab when it really doesn't make much of a difference in real life. The guy at the restaurant isn't going to be confused when you asked for a "bridge" instead of "chopsticks". He's going to understand you.
Totally agree. The only thing you need to know is that Japanese has a pitch accent and that you should tune your ear to it when you interact with native input. Learning actual rules behind pitch accent only inhibits people to speak - look at Dogen himself, who, when not scripted, keeps going back to correct himself when it's unnecessary. Japanese native speakers also don't learn rules in order to speak Japanese with the 'correct' pitch accent. And then we haven't even talked about regional and contextual variations yet.
This is bad advice since learning Japanese with pitch accent isn't much harder then learning it without, HOWEVER trying to go back and ADD pitch accent AFTER you've already learned to speak without it actually IS really difficult. All you have to do is learn to hear the pitch accent, which isn't that hard once you get used to it, and then pay attention to it when you're listening and repeating back what you hear.
@@mayawitters The problem with the "there are regional variations" argument is, like, there are huge differences between like, British English, UK English, Jamacan English - but that doesn't mean you could just randomly mix and match from those different accents and still sound "normal," it would be pretty distracting.
Learning kanji separately actually can help you if you spend a limited amount of time (not more than about 1-2 month). Than you can easily forget them and start learning WORDS written in kanji. The thing is that writing those bastards down helped me to develop an eye for them, so now memorizing a new one is not a problem. My brain is kinda adapted to those strokes that didn't have any meaning before.
Honestly ... This video actually gave me some confidence that I might be able to learn Japanese. I think I really give it a shot ... It'd make things much easier.
Hey Yuta, what do think about Cure Dolly and her Japanese grammar explanations? I think particularly her explanation of は and が is amazing, and has helped me understand each sentence way better
Learn roughly 1000 Japanese words in ONLY romaji for like 6 months, then spend another 6 months learning them all again in hiragana, and another 6 months doing the same in katakana, but DONT move onto kanji! That's too hard! Its "advanced". Also, speak from day 1, but only with other learners in your course. You aren't ready to speak with Japanese people yet. But when the course is done! Ohhhh then you'll be fluent 😂 (My "friend's" old university's Japanese teacher)
@suzaki_bastard_new maybe! Its a shame because some of these people spend a *LOT* of money on this stuff too! And you'll never guess what textbook they used too.... 😭
If you try reading Japanese without Kanji - it's going to be much more difficult because the positions of the Kanji give you a HUGE clue as to where the words start and end (since there are no spaces). In any case, you should use a browser plugin like Yomichan that gives you a popup dictionary, once you do that you can basically read anything as long as you know the grammar and can at least tell Kanji apart. The other thing is that if you know the Kanji and you're looking at a sentence that you know the English translation for (for example, in a grammar example) then it's super-easy to figure out which words are which, and that makes it extremely easy to figure out what the example sentence is trying to say. It also makes it much easier to memorize new words.
A lot of Japanese material that eschews kanji uses spaces because they don't have kanji to denote word borders. Old videogames didn't use kanji often because of screen resolution limits, for example, but you'll find text in eg. ドラゴンクエストIV for the Famicom uses spaced kana for the text. Same with old Pokemon games and so on. Similar thing happened in Korean: They used to use a mixed script that was very close to the style Japanese uses except that towards the end they only used kanji for Sinitic loanwords and wrote all native Korean words in hangeul. When they started writing mostly in pure hangeul, they adopted word spacing to keep the text clear. If you see people intentionally write a lot of stuff in unspaced kana, you're likely dealing with a psychopath or a kana obsessive who hasn't thought things through.
As a beginner, i try to learn what i could. Im far from perfect, but if you dont mess up, you never learn. You can polish the details as your learning.
Starting out with period dramas is crazy though. Those are generally harder than modern shows or movies due to archaic words and phrases, and their way of speaking lol
Personally, I watch a lot of Japanese vlogs, and hear Japanese people speaking with eachother, so I think that would make my Japanese sound normal? And my teacher said my Japanese accent is great
I think the worst advice I hear is "Don't." People saying things like "Dont even try to learn Japanese, its one of the hardest languages and your anime waifu won't love you more! Anime still sounds cringe in Japanese!" 1. Not everyone learns solely for media (and its fine imo if all you want is to be able to watch anime or read manga or listen to songs in your target language!) 2. Media is helpful for learning as input (every other language learning group Ive seen encourages you to take in media to help learn, Ive seen/met many people who say they learned most of their English from tv!) 3. "Dont bother learning at all it's hard" not any harder than any other language...maybe your natjve language is different enough itll be harder than for someone else with a similar language, but that doesnt mean other languages are just inherently easy. And it's awful to just immediately put down people for wanting to learn something, English Japanese learners are one of the only groups Ive ever seen tell people to give up their goal before they even start. 4. You mentioned grammar already so I cant add too much. That just bothers me because I enjoy learning grammar then vocab I can fit into that structure. 5. "Anime still sounds cringe" Ok? Cartoons, especially action cartoons aimed at younger kids or romances aimed at adults/teens, sound cringey to an extent.... What a brave revelation and a great reason to not rver interact with said media or another language again.
I highly implore everyone who has the ability to practice hiragana and katakana to try and learn both scripts for each letter together when you first learn them. Basic words you can recognize in katakana if you sound them out appear very frequently in early examples to get you started with the language. Putting the letters one on each side of a flash card and trying to remember them by one side and flipping the card before you have to check your answer will help build up the connection which will make reading all of the characters much faster. Treating the alphabet like a 100-character-pair is much better in the long run and makes much of the reading exercises much easier. Continually practice too. Actively try to get better at reading the text quickly, at least for sounds, as soon as possible so your brain can offload that task and focus on the meaning. Obviously you should also be studying grammar, but this is just to get out of that terrible slow-progress phase and get to a point where you can acquire the language faster through more efficient work. It's like 10-15 hours of investment and you can focus on the language itself much better afterwards.
Immersion can teach you natural ways of saying things plus a lot of simple words of daily use. But it is something to do a little bit after understanding the grammatical concepts and such.
The key is what he said in the video.. "comprehension". The input (the immersion, in this case) needs to be comprehensive, or it won't work. See e.g. Dr. Krashen, and Steve Kaufmann. Note that the comprehension does not *have* to mean that you already understand 90% of the words spoken (so that you can infer the meaning of the remaining part), it can also mean that you're observing a situation you understand (and that's how children learn through immersion), or by some other means. Some adult immigration schools where I live teach in the target language from day one, but they use very visual approaches. "This is a table", with a hand on the table. Same sentence for other things, just changing one word (glass, hand, face..). Mimicry etc etc. It works.
@@tohaason it only needs to be partially comprehensive to promote growth. the concept of gist is as important to the concept of comprehension as the concept of precision. one expands comprehension through exercising and promoting both.
I have been learning Japanese for the last couple of months and ive found that just using every resource at your disposal has helped me learn it. I use these videos and other RUclips videos to help with concepts I don't understand, Duolingo and similar apps to help me learn new words/Kanji, online textbooks, and tutoring with a friend of mine who has been learning Japanese for 6 years. It's been very helpful and I'm fairly confident that, while I am no where near conversational, I know enough basic words and phrases to get around in Japan.
one Issue I've encountered is that when meeting Japanese people online to make friends, especially when they don't often or hardly ever encounter a foreigner speaking Japanese, they often have many questions. I feel like I often times have derailed their entire conversation simply by being there, which prevents me from getting too much input, which is a shame because I think conversations are the most fun way to learn. I'd just prefer not to be the main subject of the conversation lol.
all very true! i've found i've made the best progress using JapanesePod101, reading books alongside a dictionary, and watching RUclipsrs who are Japanese speaking only. my pitch accent has gotten better and i've picked up new kanji from the subtitles that many Japanese RUclipsrs put on their videos. echoing what you've just heard said is a great way too, repeat the phrase in your brain, then say it out loud, trying to get as close to the native speaker's pronunciation as possible
そうですね。I’m learning from the book Japanese from Zero’, a dictionary, a Kana chart, and RUclips videos - Japanese Peppa Pig, Yuka Chan, and some others. Enjoy the journey. I’m giving myself one year to be ‘decent’ at Japanese before I even THINK about visiting Japan.
@kromezee i watch やまもも who is a lifestyle and beauty vlogger, she also has a gaming channel. かずのすけ is a dermatologist who makes videos about skincare. 日本語の森 is a Japanese channel that's designed for helping Japanese learners. those are the channels i personally watch the most, especially a lot of やまもも videos!
The "don't bother" is truly bizzarre. I speak 5 languages fluently and out of all these languages, Japanese has proven BY FAR the LEAST "don't bother" in the sense of how this "advice" was framed. With no other language have I ever had so many people be happy and relieved that they didn't need to try to speak English. Even in my home country of Switzerland I have helped numerous lost tourists and chatted with the staff of various import stores. Everytime the same reaction "we almost don't speak any English, so we are so happy to be able to talk to someone Swiss". Also when traveling in Japan, especially on the countryside, I mean you can literally SEE the relief and fear leave their face when then realize they dont have to try to speak English. Sure there are a few who are fluent in English and eager to show it, but thats a very small minority. I even made a friend here who lives here since 2 years but doesn't speak much English or German and she is always happy to be able to just have a rant in Japanese over lunch. It's really up to you if you go out and connect with people or if you'd rather stay grouped with your country folk and complain that the Japanese don't want to be your friend. The "don't speak" seems to originate from MattVsJapan, who is indeed extremely proficient at Japanese and has a bit of a following. Sure, he started studying Japanese at young age and basically tanked his whole life into the study for years and years, every day. Most people don't want to become native sounding poets but just be able to have fun conversations and connect with people. This "advice" is 100% trash and a huge waste of time and opportunity.
I kinda get it though, because if you're learning japanese to live in japan, as a foreigner you will always get treated like shit when you are trying to assimilate into society, unless you are figuratively sweating and bleeding japan. The "don't bother" approach, results from the lacking encouragement and openness of japanese society. If you're just someone looking to visit japan, they love you, especially if you learn japanese. If you want to live in japan, it is an entirely different story, not even comparable at all. Unless you are perfect, they will not relate to you if you are trying to be like them, but if you're just a visitor and know a few phrases they become ecstatic and treat you like some exotic toy "wow, you can speak so well" (when you literally only know a few phrases and sound terrible). They're just acting nice.
@@gintuner4371 I can't speak from my own experience, but since I am involved with the "Japanese speaking society" here (this is an initiative of the Japanese embassy here that involves about 50% Japanese who immigrated here and 50% Swiss who lived there) I spend a lot of time talking with people who have lived in Japan for years up to decades, and the reports are all over the place. I have heard things like what you say, but also absolutely the opposite story, people who can't wait to just move back again (mostly they had to come by for job reasons). I think sentences like "they treat you like shit" are not really helpful generalizations since it depends on so many factors. The fact that so many people have positive experiences living there, means it also depends on the person. Some people are just much better at connecting to others, even from other cultures. And conversely, in any country like Japan, it's just humans at the end of the day. And cultures may be different, but the same spectrum from "nice people" to "assholes" exists there, as it does anywhere else. But the biggest influence to the general outcome will still be the way you conduct yourself, and, this is controversial since you can't influence it as much, your "vibe". Some people just make others go "ick" faster than others.
I visited Japan a few years ago and learned some very basic Japanese before I went plus hiragana/katakana and a handful of useful kanji. I was really glad that I did because even in Tokyo I found people either didn't speak English or weren't keen to. I got directions from a lady in a shop in Tokyo (who came out onto the street with me to show me the right direction). Also in Tokyo I managed to find out where my train was leaving from speaking to an employee. I got a man to help me find my hotel in Osaka - and countless other little niceties in shops, restaurants etc. I really was glad I'd learned some Japanese.
I'm living in Japan and learning Japanese and while immersion is certainly easier being in the country, it's not the golden ticket. I still have to make the effort to learn Japanese. It doesn't help that I use English at work AND my husband is an English speaker. I barely use Japanese aside from the occasions I'm outside interacting with people.
I want to be respectful of culture that I am not a part of as much as possible. However, Japanese engineers who would sneer at a foreigner for speaking too “feminine” are that bad people in that story. They need to grow up, learn about the world outside their bubble, and just gain some enlightenment in general. 🙄
The point about different interpretations of Japanese grammar is an important one to know. The explanation that you personally find the most helpful *will* be one that some people strongly disagree with. That may include your first teacher or the author of the first textbook you read, so if you aren't aware that there are multiple perspectives out there, you might get stuck for a long time with explanations that just don't click with you.
It's also important to understand that most of the (several) schools of thought among Japanese grammar scholars do not actually match the way Japanese is usually taught to non-Japanese speakers, too. However, that also doesn't make the Japanese ways of viewing things inherently "more right", either, just different. In many cases, they are actually less useful to non-native learners, because they approach the language in much more "foreign" ways that they cannot easily equate to concepts they are already familiar with, so the "non-native" explanations are often actually much better for learning. (There have been several times I've been trying to help other learners understand Japanese grammar by describing it a particular way, and then some know-it-all who decided to buy a random native-Japanese grammar textbook tries to come in and tell me that that's all wrong because the "real" way Japanese grammar works is blah blah blah. Almost always, they aren't even aware that even the native Japanese linguistic scholars don't actually agree about how to view a lot of this stuff, and that just because the way I'm describing it isn't the same as somebody else doesn't make my description wrong, and in fact it's them coming in and trying to show off that is just making everything more confusing for everybody, which is not helpful.) Many people also don't realize that the aspects of the grammar that the different Japanese schools disagree about aren't just some little esoteric details, or really advanced constructions, they actually even start with _really basic_ things like "what is and isn't a word?" and "what actually _is_ です, anyway?" (answer: です is ...complicated.)
The problem with explaining Japanese grammar is that nearly all approaches try to shoehorn European-developed grammar theories into explaining Japanese. And that doesn't actually work well. If you want to learn about Japanese grammar I would go to the late Cure Dolly, or / and Jay Rubin. The way the grammar is explained is vastly simpler than all the "conjugation" tables and half-assed explanations found elsewhere. I've yet to find "real Japanese" which doesn't fit what Cure Dolly described. But studying grammar isn't what you should put too much effort into - and that's what Cure Dolly said as well. Steve Kaufmann even says "Don't study the basics!" (about grammar).
@@tohaasonWhat are some of the wrong/unsuitable approaches to explaining grammar have you come across? Could you give some specific examples of what are, in your opinion, better or worse approaches?
I can say that after a couple of years of 'studying' japanese on and off, I thought I was kind of okay at it. Until I actually tried to speak to someone in japanese and quickly realised all the prominent gaps in my knowledge. It is a lot easier to remember something if you know you're going to need it. As in, I'm actually going to put the effort in because I know I need to work hard enough for it to stick in my head (which I knew theoretically, but still). It's easier to see what you need to work on, like pouring water into a container to check for holes as opposed to just looking at it and going 'eh, I'm sure it's fine.' I'm saying this from a 'definitely still a beginner' perspective by the way,
maybe don’t look at the problem as something you can overcome by “working hard”, that probably won’t work out for you. I don’t think you need that much active effort at all, just time and lots of input
The problem with "ignore grammar" advice is that we're adults and we don't have our whole childhood to acquire all the practical knowledge of grammar by trial and error. Having an explicit explanation how to use some form or some grammatical construction is actually very helpful.
it really shows how big of an understanding yuta has when it comes to hit linguistic knowledge when he just says all this stuff off the top of his head。 さすがです、ゆうた先生
Listen to the average Japanese person speaking English. It's normal and okay to not sound "right" speaking a foreign language you're learning. Accent free speech is a noble goal but I think it's more useful to focus on speaking in such a way that people can understand you and then polish it as you grow more comfortable with the language.
Take advantage of the strong accent many Japanese people have in speaking English - I find it is often easier to see the differences between the sounds you make speaking English and the sounds of your target language by listening to the English accent of native speakers of that language and trying to imitate it than trying to understand how you are mispronouncing the sounds of the target language. We are all experts in our own languages, so use that fact!
I'm currently a high school student living in Australia and there is a large Japanese community here, and I was friends with a large number of Japanese people. This motivated me to begin trying to learn Japanese, and I can confirm Japanese people are extremely happy to have a conversation (or try to, if you're still a beginner like me) in Japanese, however your Japanese needs to be quite good to regularly have conversations. I completely disagree with the first commenter Yuta reviewed, I find that speaking Japanese to Japanese people can even make your friendship stronger, as they express themselves differently in Japanese.
I think that Yuta has some good points regarding a natural way to pick up a language, however he is trying to elevate his own product and bearing that in mind of course he is going to disparage other learning methods such as Minna no Nihongo or Genki. These methods certainly arent perfect, but what he doesnt understand is that while Minna no Nihongo and Genki are certainly flawed in certain ways, they still represent a linear progression through learning a language that he is unable to replicate through his method of "find japanese stuff and watch/read/listen to it". People can do both of those things, textbooks and real life/colloquial input arent mutually exclusive. Textbooks provide a foundation of learning, and Minna no nihongo serves as a good foundation of basic verbs, conjugations and grammar that are vital to understand how the japanese language actually works. So yeah you can say, its not "natural japanese that everyday people speak". But that is the transient nature of language in itself, as soon as you publish a book it is likely that things have already shifted, popular verbs may have change, even the way people use sentences. What remains constant (for the most part) are grammatical structures, particles and verb conjugation that these textbooks use to lay down a foundation so that when you encounter the "actual japanese that everyday people speak" you're not just parroting what people are saying, you actually have an understanding of the fundamental structure of the language and can form your own sentences accordingly, based on what you yourself already know and what you learn from everyday speech patterns.
Very true, these resources are still useful and should be used to supplement many other methods like listening to podcasts, watching TV and speaking to native Japanese people.
In spoken Japanese, I will never use textbooks like minna no nihongo, I started with duolingo, I didn’t actually start learning how to speak until I started his course because the books and apps again do not teach natural spoken language. It’s written for non native speakers. Why you analyze his video in this way is baffling to me. I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t understand the need to criticize a native Japanese speaker who is trying to help you learn. It’s like you haven’t listened to a word he’s said. I think he explains very clearly why there is no need to learn from that type of input. I will never use textbook phrases because they aren’t practical at all. He even mentions how Japanese is not a well established discipline and part of the reason of that is improper teachings of actual aspects of the language. I have never once heard actual native speakers use the things from textbooks because they don’t say them. I know more Japanese studying with him than I would ever learn with books and apps. They teach you how they want you to speak, and it didn’t contribute anything to actually speaking for me. I would much rather learn how to speak like a native person than to learn Japanese from something that wants me to speak certain way. “Don’t judge native Japanese speakers on advice you learned from textbooks”
He does this a lot. This channel is veeeeeery focused on trying to sell you a product, and he does not do a very good job of hiding his intentions, while seemingly trying to disguise it as the only logical way to learn. Very narrow-minded in a lot of ways. Would recommend to always take his content with a grain of salt.
"To learn Japanese, try immersing yourself." "Immersing yourself means, understanding the input." "Understand the input by learning Japanese." This is where I have trouble with learning.
I learned some new words in Duolingo, I definitely not worth using for learning how to have a conversation in Japanese. Thanks to prior lessons I had with real Japanese, I was able to see how inaccurate, and outdated Duolingo can be at times.
Here I am learning about English AND Japanese, "transitivity". Perhaps something in favour of speaking, is the aspect of eustress that's brought on by speaking. It forces memory recall and flow, and especially if you are speaking WITH someone, it helps find where your knowledge is strong or weak.
_Eustress?_ Well, there's a new word on me - thought it was a typo till I read your comment! But, yes, quite agree, that positive stress helps - once we can overcome the negative stress (Is that _kakostress?_ But distress works perfectly) that many people feel when speaking a language for the first time.
"Just immerse yourself" - I've learned both English and Japanese through immersion in video games, but even I know that's not all there is to learning a Language. For English, since it's using the same latin alphabet as French and a lot of words are very similar, it is indeed possible to learn fully through immersion, with no preparation whatsoever. But for Japanese, everything's dramatically different and your brain won't even have a way to attempt comprehending the input. So while I also made immersion my primary method of learning Japanese, I had to learn the bare minimum for immersion to be effective: learning the Kanas and enough Kanji so that it doesn't feel like I'm looking at moon runes anymore and can search words up in dictionnaries, and basic grammar so I can at least separate words from particles and avoid searching gibberish. And even after I started immersion, I was making full use of dictionnaries. That's, in my opinion, the starting line to be able to do immersion.
My best (actual) advice for learning the language is MAKE IT IN YOUR DAILY LIFE!!! My native language is French, I speak Spanish because of my dad and English because of school. Now I'm learning Japanese and ofc started with the Kana, but as soon as I can read those properly then I'll try to change my phone's language setting, etc
I’ve already began downloading some of my favorite games in Japanese for when I can understand the majority of words (like tomodachi life or Mario and Luigi SS)
that's what I did as well. Day one of learning japanese I swapped languages on my games, devices, and internet sites to japanese. In the beginning I had no idea what was going on. Worst case scenario I had to swap back for a second to do something important, but I was quickly back on japanese again. Ive had so much exposure to kana now that I can read it at a comfortable speed.
@@oh-noe yup, me too. I typed this comment a month ago, and I know all of my kana including the handakuten as well as dakuten. I'm still learning and I can confidently say that I have made some progress. I don't understand everything obviously, but I can recognize some basic kanjis and sentence structure, and of course I'm still learning new vocabulary words. However I still try to keep it fun, because intense studying will lead me to boredom, and so it won't be so fun. But watching animé and switching game languages to Japanese helps a lot. Inconscienly it helps to read more fluently. I can't understand everything but reading aloud stuff I don't even know helps me practice
@@Link-Link good to know you’re still going at it! I feel like too many people give up language learning quickly at the sight of an overwhelming amount of information that needs to be learnt haha. I think I am on my third year of self study currently, I can’t say I have been very efficient, but thanks to making it fun I’ve kept going at it. Hopefully we’ll both reach the future!
@@oh-noe yes! Hopefully! I can't really wish you luck since it's not about that lol but continue your efforts and you'll reach your goals. You plan on taking the JLPT?
I believe 'learn real life Japanese that Japanese people use today' is a marketing to sell your course which I think it's a very nice thing however saying other methods are teaching 'wrong' Japanese I don't agree... that was the way I learned english as well, after you get the basics and go to an advanced level you know you have to change some methods of speaking because it doesn't sound natural. I'm using Duo for a while and it's good for the basics and for vocabulary at least for me and I know I will need to get a teacher eventually if I want to improve to an advanced level which I will do eventually. I studied Japanese with non natives for a while and at the time I think I got to the intermediate level but as I don't emerge to the Japanese culture like musics, animes, and doramas it takes longer for me to learn... and to finish I don't see the problem of learning a more formal way of speaking and then learn how to speak with friends as in Japan the respect and age hierarchy is very important and you wouldn't speak the same way when talking to a friend or a older person you don't know
The section about how even native Japanese scholars don't universally agree on exactly how even basic Japanese grammar functions was actually a huge relief and really helped me. It helps contextualize a lot of the questions and confusion I have with certain aspects of the language (eg the exact nature of the particles は and が) and how my personal understanding of it doesn't exactly line up with any individual explanation. Basically "It's okay not to sweat the details; if you feel like you get it you probably get it" lol Regarding output: I think it does contribute to acquisition. Because acquisition isn't just about repeating a thing ad nauseum. Repetition is good for remembering, but as you implied "acquisition" is about the combination of remembering AND understanding. Using language actively both helps you understand (like solving a puzzle yourself rather than watching someone else solve it over and over) as well as counting for repetitions towards remembering. I would even go so far as to say that active use repetitions count more towards acquisition than passive consumption; to go back to the analogy, which would take fewer repetitions for you to memorize the solution to a puzzle? Solving it yourself a few times or watching someone else solve it a few times? I'd argue the former. Is active use strictly REQUIRED for learning a language? Not necessarily. But I do think it helps immensely, to say nothing of other benefits (such as building confidence, providing an opportunity for native speakers to point out mistakes in understanding, etc). To summarize, input is more important than output because it's the only way you can acquire NEW Japanese; ie it's the only way to actually progress your knowledge. However, I think that output is a very important and efficient component of understanding and retaining that knowledge (ie the process of acquisition).
As of right now, I have N2 but unless you're actually going to work in a Japanese work environment with Japanese people, it's really not necessary. There's no speaking portion of the exam anyway, so yeah, it might mean you're knowledgeable in the language and can read and comprehend difficult documents under pressure, but it's not gonna help you much if you're just looking to talk to people.
Ayeeee! Loved the Love Village clip! Will you consider doing a video discussing it, and its use for learning? I understand its all older people, is their Japanese dramatically different? Also, that very big, deep voiced man is a SERIOUS perv! Whats the Japanese concensus on all this stuff? 🤔
I’m subbed to you but haven’t seen your content in like 6 months. Finally watched Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and immediately when I heard the MCs name my brain went “Yuta teaches Japanese.” I log in to YT today to find this video 😭😭
I used many apps and didnt used any text book till now, cuz all r english and ここでドイツ語 r not available... I learn on my own wirh some helps from youtuber. Its been now 5 years and can understand About 50% of all speaking it also depends on the speaking 早い and Sometimes on the dialect
Biggest problem for me was keeping the learning engaging enough to where I would efficiently remember it all. Flashcards and textbooks worked for a little bit, but around the N2 level, it became harder for me to genuinely see an interest in memorizing names and flowers. So I started to focus more on native material, and that's been more helpful. Viki and Crunchyroll with a plugin provide native material with Japanese subtitles. Japanese TV drives me nuts, so I mix it up with manga and books sometimes. Biggest hurdle is speaking it currently, it's very hard to put myself in a situation in which I depend on Japanese without putting myself back in Japan. It's not impossible, but it is harder to learn the language if you don't have an actual need for it. If you can trick your brain into knowing it's necessary, it makes it easier to learn
Me, a person who 言語学を専攻しました: Oh wow, you said "acquired" a language. I can tell you understand the difference between language learning and language acquisition, very nice.
"Don't bother with Kanji, in japanese they mostly use hiragana and katakana anyway" - Some random guy on discord who claimed he lived in Japan for years and spoke it as well as his first language (but weirdly spoke like an AI when I talked with him).
I've seen people say that on discord. Then they get mad if you say you actually learned Kanji - they don't understand that once you get to the point where you can instantly recognize kanji, it makes memorizing words extremely easy, no more difficult then learning words in English. In a huge number of cases you can pretty much tell what a word is even if you've never seen it before
@@takanara7 I can't WAIT to start learning Kanji, it just seems like such a milestone and it looks fun to me. I'm just starting Katakana after a few months of Duolingo learning Hiragana and a bunch of lessons. Its finally clicking in my old brain and I'm loving the learning. 👍🏻
for some people speaking the words will help with memorization and for others not so much you really have to know yourself and what tactics have worked in the past and try to apply thos tactics to what you're learning now. so for Japanese some might work better with something more structured/theory focused like a class and others through more immersive/practical techniques reading and/or watching and listening or something else you should know what works for you better than anyone else could tell you.
I watched many Anime but always with eng subs. now I watched "Uncle from another world" 異世界おじさん on Netflix in English once then I started watching in Japanese with English subs(way cooler) a couple of times.. right now I'm trying Japanese with Japanese subs and trying to figured out the difference in translation, I have two small blackboards with Hiragana and Katakana as a reference tho.. and I'm waiting for Heisig's book "remember the Kanji" to be delivered.. and I keep practicing writing 2 times a week with hiragana and katakana.. I'm all in hahah
I am actually flip flopping a lot between whether attemptning to speak the language from the beginning is a good idea or not. Lately, I think I actually lean towards what the person said in the comment and I think it might actually be better to give up on trying to speak until you feel you can say what you want to. It is really hard to know if that is the better approach or not, but I have several reasons for thinking it might be. First, that is how children learn, they listen and train comprehension long before they try to speak. Second it is something that my brain is automatically leaning towards, so there is probably some reason for that. Mom told me that when I was little, I did not speak almost at all for a long time and suddenly I started saying the whole sentenced. When I learned English from games and films, I did not speak for years and later only began speaking after I was sure what I was saying. Third, I have read some interesting articles that suggested, that trying to speak too early before you know how the words should actually sound like can be very detrimental to your pronounciation, you can get many bad habbits that you may never get rid off. This is not as big a issue in Japanese, because Japanese pronounciation is on the easier side, but it will probably destroy your pitch accents forever. Once you start to say things in wrong accents, it will be very hard to relearn the correct way. So yeah, I can't really say for sure, but I am beginning to lean towards not speaking being the better option. Also your point about speaking giving you motivation is heavily dependent on your personality. For me personally, it is by far the most demotivating aspect of learning Japanese when I cannot express nuances of what I want to say. Like recently when I was talking about some article about space and it took me 15 minutes trying to explain (unsuccessfully) that there is gravity when you are in Earth's orbit, you just can't feel it because you are in free fall. Incredibly demotivating experiance trying to say something relatively simple and not being able to. You realize that you are so far from having any sort of meaningful conversation with anyone beyong talking about weather and what you had for lunch.
some speaking is probably not harmful, small children do it all the time despite not being completely fluent yet, though for them it’s less about what they say and more about just getting better at speaking as a motor skill. you’re probably still right about it potentially being detrimental. either way it’s not really useful for language acquisition.
I really hate the duolingo hate. Its a fun way to pass the time and learn something. Every app/video you watch is gonna have errors/mistakes and bad accents, but using duolingo along with other resources and immersion won't hurt. If its flappy bird or duolingo I know my choice. I learned hirigana and katana in like a week with that app and enjoyed it and didn't spend hours a day. I already know Chinese so the kana is not so hard for me but regardless I love that app and cant stand smug people who say it sucks or whatever. You wont get fluent obviously but it helps
yeah duolingo is really useful for beginners, to get them consistent and get them started on hiragana and katakana, i recommend dropping it after a month or two though
And what about the Marugoto's textbook series?. Those books are from The Japan Foundation, specially designed for non-native Japanese speakers. It seems there are books from the A1 to B2 level, according to the CEFR for European countries.
Please write a long essay explaining why Minna no Nihongo is flawed. The language school I went to for 6 months that kickstarted my Japanese to N4 level uses them as textbooks.
I'm going to school in Japan and they're using Genki to teach us... I'm starting to learn the pitfalls of the book. I try to look up 3rd party help through RUclips and other sources, and I feel that it will just confuse me more. Learning Genki in school is more about learning enough to pass your tests, even if it's not the correct Japanese that you need to actually communicate with others. We're also moving really fast... we're on Lesson 5 after only 15 days. I hope in the future it gets easier because right now it's a bit overwhelming.
Lesson 5 in 15 days? That's pretty quick. I can't do big classes. I have a private teacher from Tokyo and I'm going on lesson 7 on my 9 month using the Genki book too. We met twice a week online and have homework in between. That's enough for me with my crazy work schedule. I've been to Japan 4 times already and my last visit was my first time using the little Japanese I know.
Yeah so I took a look at the class schedule and our mid term is going to be Lesson 1-7 after 2 months of class. I'm not enjoying the pace it's really rough to the point where I can't focus on my non-Japanese classes. Hopefully I can pass these courses because I think next semester I'm going to opt out of Japanese classes in the college and just get a private teacher to help me outside of school. @@elbyno7904
One thing that I never heard someone talking about is: When you learn Japanese by romaji (ローマ字) you will pronounce 弦一郎 wrong. because it will be romanized as Genichiro. But it's not げにちろ it's げんいちろ
what i can say so far ist that everybody agrees that you need to get a lot of input to acquire a language but the hardest part for me is to even start to understand the sentence structure
The first comment is spot on. However, if you do invest 10+ years of solid study you might find a few Japanese people will speak to you a bit 😂 or you'll get a job working at a old fashioned Japanese dinosaur 🦕 company bowing to your senpai and staying late at the office not working. Been living and working here for a while now, not teaching Engrish.
Honestly, I recommend listening first. A lot of Japanese learners probably want to learn it because of anime and anime makes it relatively easy to understand words and sentences. I’ve watched anime in the original dub on a regular basis for ca. 7 years and it massively expanded my vocabulary. This also helps with reading Hiragana/Katakana. The more recognisable the symbol, the easier it is to remember. I only started trying to read Japanese a few weeks ago, but it’s already relatively easy to read. I keep recognising words that I’ve heard before or even know another meaning or another way to say it.
Regardless how someone learns a language or whatever approach they use, If it helps them it helps, But I for one would let people choose a way that's right for them.
i dont think duolingo is bad, atleast not anymore as they've made adjustments the sentences have been improved and there is a report option for the sentences being unnatural. the guides are helpful in the units too though they should only specify that you dont always have to use は and を
Regarding immersion. I had an experience spending about a month with some Ukrainian guys. I don't speak any of their language, but by the end I started to understand them a little bit. But that was language fairly similar to mine own. With Japanese it's completely different... The structure, words, even "cadence" of language is completely different. To be honest, I had big problems to remember words as they tended to "slip" my mind somehow and I was actively learning them... Imagine "picking up" language like that on its own.... no way.
That's where you write it down and repeat it from time to time. I love Anki for that! I use it to keep the new grammar or vocabulary fresh enough that I can still retrieve it when I encounter it naturally. Once I've found enough examples in my input, it'll become a living thing that I remember more intuitively, and I can retire the note/flashcard.
I don't know, I've ended up picking a good bit through sheer osmosis from anime. It's part of what makes kanji so frustrating, there's a bunch of stuff I'd know in my sleep, but have to study separately to be able to read. It just feels so stupid.
One thing on learning Kanji is important. This is something that my Chinese teacher said about Hànzì, but it applies to Kanji of course as well. Use a book that does not have the pronounciation of a character written next to it and do NOT write it yourself there, too. If you do that, you will just find yourself always reading the transcription and never trying to read the character itself. This happens automatically, even if you try not to look at the transcription, so don't bother to write it anywhere near. If you don't know how a character is read/pronounced, you can go to the back of the book or wherever the dictionary of the signs is and look it up, but don't ever write the pronounciation next to the characters.
Yuta have a course. And it is the best out there to learn native japanese. Subscribed to his email and wait for his courses to open. There is also a subscription where you'll get to listen and learn about speaking native japanese. It also have a video so you'll learn without translating.
We're using できる日本語 book, out teacher doesn't like Minna. I've been studying Japanese for 9 months now and I feel I'm having problems with speaking, fluency, and remembering the vocabulary. I'm a little discouraged, but I'll try your advices.
I don't understand this need to short way everything with languages. It's a complex thing like math or physics, it need an effort, it needs time. Besides the language has much more aspects, like listening, reading, writing, and comprehension, it's much more than math would need. But everyone looks for quickest way to be perfect, but don't stress too much. Have you ever seen "Physics like pro in 10 days"? Everyone understands that you need years to swim through all the universe dark material, but languages are just OK with few tips and some Romanji. 👀
That professional edited example sentence, I wonder which book it's from? Probably from a science book I suppose and surely not from a erotic book about lesbian brothels😂😂
I tried a lot of ways to learn kanji, i've found 2 to be helpful, the first one is take a single page of manga (random) per day and see the kanji in context, the second one is learn vocabulary with kanji, i can distinct the image and know the meaning, but sometimes i don't know how is the reading たくく の漢字の学び方を試してみて、2つの ほうほう が役立ちます。さいしょ の ほうほう は、毎日1ページの漫画を取って文やくで見ることです。2番目のほうほうは、漢字を使って語いいを学ぶことで、イメージを くべつし、意味を分かります、でも読むことができません。
Learn Japanese with Yuta: bit.ly/3rlFQY8
"immersion" is the lazy man's "making the effort" ....putting yourself near Japanese does not magically make you absorb Japanese.
@@gattaca5911
I lived in the Philippines for half of my 28 years of life. 2002-2016. I don't really speak much tagalog or cebuano. You're right
To be honest, I think the criticism MNN receives is not justified. If you compare the pros and cons, it is evident how valuable it is as a tool. Even more so if you approach it from a realistic standpoint, and also take into account that most of its negatives happen to be ones that are especially easy to correct for a teacher depending on their education policy.
It is not ideal for self-learning, though.
there was an american TV drama / horror series called ""The Terror" (2018). In season 2, ep. 1 there was A LOT of spoken japanese by the actors, so I'm wondering how good their pronunciation is and if they have any accent when they speak
(hopefully youtube doesn't copyright strike such content because it's only for review purposes)
Hello, thanks for the video. I'm stuck a little bit cause I can't grab some good way to learn Japanese. I already learned hiragana and katakana, I knew some basic grammar, understand easiest cases of particles, even got some verbs forms.
So, Duolingo is not good because it uses weird frases sometimes (I tried to use it with my native language, it's weird on it too) and some unnatural forms. I trying to also use Anki with Core 2000 flashcards set but I also heard that flashcards is also not good. In this set there are kanji + case with context + audio.
So, what can I use to learn when I have like 40 minutes in busses when going to and from my work? I can't try to read some manga in Japanese as can I do at home, with my notebooks and few windows. I have just phone.
"Some people's opinions are not rules." Words to live by
Ironic
@@amaiaa8815why?
Hes made his words into a rule to live by@@hmmm-ls5ih
There are many different advice on how to learn kanji. I think a mistake people make is to try and learn kanji individually with the onyomi, kunyomi, zenyomi or whatever instead of learning the vocabulary first in context and then learning the kanji representation of said word. Another mistake is to learn Japanese as if it's quantum physics. Language learning is supposed to be fun.
This! If someone's idea of "learning kanji" involves memorizing the different ways a kanji can be read when it's hypothetically in a word, rather than just... learning how to read words, then they're really shooting themselves in the foot. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of learning material that seems to encourage this.
I'm learning kanji individually using wanikani and it's really helpful. It makes it much easier to learn new vocab because most of the time you can already guess the reading and meaning based on the kanji. Everyone has their preferences but I definitely don't agree that it's a mistake.
@@CamembertDave Look up Wanikani. It's a learning resource that first teaches you individual kanji meanings and readings, then immediately after teaches you vocabulary that use those kanji. It makes learning much less painful.
Yeah, I now understand Japanese very well but I also started with this. I dropped it about a month after starting(15months ago). It's just a common thing I heard that's entirely useless. Learning just straight up words in their kanji form is weirdly enough pretty much the same difficulty for me as learning them in non kanji form so there is no reason not to just straight up do that. Another thing would be starting immersion at 1k, words. I started at 2k and to be honest, it was still very boring at first. I would definitely wait until the 2k mark
What resources would you recommend for learning kanji in a fun way?
Yuta I studied Japanese throughout high school and a year at the university… long before the advent of internet. I’m now 52 and fluent in Spanish but your videos have been tempting me throughout the years to return to tackle Japanese! In the meantime, as an English teacher , I really appreciate your clear response to language acquisition. You continue to be an inspiration as a language teacher. Thank you for your contribution to this space! If you’re ever in Chile get in touch!!!!!
please do continue it!!
If you have the time you should do it, i failed to continue learning Japanese because university and life stuff, but things are better now, maybe i'll start over again. Greetings from Chile.
did you just brag about being fluent in your native language? bro.
I love that you addressed the idea of immersion, it's a struggle to get the balance between trying to learn something currently beyond me, without it being so much that I lack the context to even find the right definition from a dictionary or searching online.
I think the first bit of 'bad' advice is actually true. I majored in Japanese at university, and then lived and worked in Japan for 4 years. Although I was working as an English teacher, I spent all my free time trying to study and practise Japanese language. For the first two years, I was in a small town in the mountains in Hyogo prefecture, so I was able to immerse in the culture, and even though the town had a strong dialect with some similarities to Kansai-ben, overall I improved rapidly. Also, the people in the town all knew me and knew I was able to communicate in Japanese, so I had lots of opportunities. However, in the second two years I was working at a 'language school', first in Kanagawa and then in Shizuoka. It was a very different experience. Just like in the bad advice, the only Japanese who would want to be friends with me were people wanting to practise English. Whenever I spoke to someone or asked a question, they'd reply in a a kind of pidgen Japanese, inserting any English words they knew into a sentence with Japanese structure, e.g 'Today wa, no'. I sincerely wanted to improve my level of Japanese and was working hard to do so, but in the cities I found it was a very closed society, so when I finally got to the stage of only socialising with other foreign teachers, I decided to come home, as staying in Japan any longer was pointless. It's a shame, because I was very genuine in my desire to learn. When I returned home, I felt like a failure for a long time because I hadn't mastered Japanese to the level I wanted to.
I've heard this type of experience countless times from people who come to Japan to speak/learn Japanese. It definitely does happen.
「すみません、todayはno。」 lmao that's hilarious
My friend had a similar experience. He wasn't a teacher but people who worked with him knew he spoke english so they tried to befriend him so they could practice.
I agree i live in south America and they all want to be my friends so they can practice english. Not to be my friend.
you could have just moved back to a small town somewhere. you had the whole rubric. sounds very defeatist tbh next time grow legs and crawl out of the ocean
I agree with everything you said. As someone who lived for two years in Japan over 30 years ago, as an English language teacher, and as someone who restarted Japanese as a pandemic amusement, I think your comments are sensible. I so wish the input available now through the internet had been available 30 years ago!
It sounds like we”re on parallel journeys.
I don't understand why so many people decide to learn Japanese without first learning the hiragana or katakana. It takes less than 2 weeks, and you can start to learn kanji immediately. There are so many resources that will teach you entire sentences at a time, which gives you intuition in how the grammar works. Sure, you'll mess up prepositions sometimes, but you can also go slowly through grammar all while building vocabulary. There's youtubers, podcasts, dramas, anime, and tons of other resources to listen to for listening to Japanese. I love Japanese and have been studying it since 2019. There are some things that are so similar in languages that learning one helps you learn and teach others (even languages you don't know). Some of those things are the international phonetic alphabet, topic vs subject prominence, stress and pitch accent, declensions, morphology, alphabet memorization, resource exploring and so on. There are also tons of speaking resources like iTalki and HelloTalk.
Summary: it's intimidating and unfamiliar.
I'm trying to learn Chinese, so we dont even get a hiragana/katakana to assist. I think a lot of people see a script that's weird to them, and everytime there's a layer of difference or complexity it scares them.
Hiragana/katakana doesnt exactly match an alphabet
There are thousands of Kanji
Most (if not all) kanji could sound different ways, and have different meanings
This on top of the different grammar structure and pitch accent and variations, while the words/sentences can get REALLY long.
I think the best thing a learner can do is realize you dont have to master anything off the bat. And that despite how tough the road ahead seems, and how futile it seems. It becomes second nature
You can learn it in a day
@@demise.8748you can, but you will have forgotten everything a week later.
@@andreascarl9636 I have yet to forget them
yeah you really shouldn't spend more than a week on initially memorizing all the kana, and if you're making an effort to read a lot of Japanese (not necessarily understanding it at the beginning but at least phonetically sounding it out) then you'll solidify it. hiragana in particular gets baked in pretty fast after that initial cramming because it's everywhere. using romaji for anything beyond learning the kana is setting you up for bad habits imo
The only reason to use romaji is to learn Hiragana and Katakana.
After learning those Kanji is easier with Furigana or just looking up at Jisho.
After writing it, it is exactly what you said :D
The JLPT exams can be a great motivator, not sure how much it actually teaches you to communicate.
Learning is fun
Exactly. Hell, just reading romaji unless it's like a proper noun of some sort makes my head hurt lol. If I want to know the lyrics of my fave jpop song, I don't want romaji, I want the actual text in Japanese
My worst japanese advice I've got, was about kanji. "Oooh there's too much kanji, too much meaning and pronunciation of one kanji, you should know every kanji to understand everything do not use dictionaries to look up a rare used kanji". Like bro, calm down. Not every Japanese person knows every kanji, they know basic ones and can communicate with each other.
i was put off kanji by gaijin weebs and otakus who like to act like they've been given some kind of power or authority by learning kanji, when all it demonstrates is that they have mastered obsessiveness and found their way to a japanese bookstore. the whole culture of learning kanji amongst these incel types is a real drag. i had to finally dissociate kanji from such gaijin tendencies before i was willing to just go ahead and learn it like everyone else in japan has to. PSA - kanji are not a proxy for personality - developing one of those is a separate task.
I started with textbook Japanese (Minna no Nihongo, Genki) and I don't regret it at all. That's because when learning Japanese, you shouldn't restrict yourself to just textbooks. You have to have other external materials. Nevertheless, textbook Japanese set the foundation and structure for me and I found it easy to convert polite textbook Japanese to plain conversational Japanese later on because I already knew the grammar and structuring of the words. Starting with textbook Japanese isn't really the "worst advice". The worst advice is it you just learn one type of Japanese and ignore the others.
4:58 “stick to only Genki” look I used Genki I in high school, I love it, getting a full kit is great cuz you have audio downloads, work sheets, kanji references, but it can’t be the **only** thing. The guy who wrote the Japanese From Zero series said in one of his videos that author bias/experience will influence what’s in the books they write about learning languages and he’s one of **MANY** people I’ve heard say to use as many resources as possible. Genki and other classroom textbooks are good within their intended environment-a **classroom** with a teacher fluent in Japanese, sometimes even a native speaker, who also teaches etiquette, history, geography, sometimes talks about dialects and pitch accent… like you’ll get the full benefit of a class text while **in a class**.
"JLPT N1 is so hard even natives will fail it!" - person I know living in Japan for 5 years and seemingly takes pride in not knowing how to read kanji.
I've heard this a few times too! From what i can tell, theres some odd or somehwat rare/uncommon grammar and themes in the N1, its nothing at all any native cant deal with.
Three people i know who got extremely high/perfect 180 scores says simmilar. Some uncommon grammar, but nothing crazy.
From what i read, native children learn around 1,000 kanji by the time they finish elementary, and another 1,000 by the time they finish middle school. More precisely, they learn 2136 kanji by the end of middle school. That means, if we only consider the kanji aspect of JLPT, an average 15-year old child should be able to pass N1, and an average 12-year old should be able to ace N2. Meanwhile, an average educated Japanese adult is expected to know around 4,000 to 5,000 kanji.
@mapl3mage i doubt they know 4-5 since the 漢検 levels pre-1 and 1 are in that realm.
Though i guess if they're university educated in some particular field, and all the place and people name kanji's not in included in the 常用漢字 list, maybe you're right 🤔.
Who knows, and in the grand scheme of things, who really cares 😄.
its like asking a native English speaker to break down the sentence of "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo"
its a very obscure question that is grammatically correct; but very few people could explain it as "Buffalo (the city) buffalo (the animal) buffalo (are aggressive towards) buffalo (the city) buffalo (the animal)"
isn't JLPT-n1 or whatever heavily outdated?
Being a fan of Yuta and Dogen, I definitely think pitch accent is one of the least important aspects of the language until you can actually speak a fair bit and communicate with people effectively. 99% of the time it's not REALLY going to matter and the other person is going to understand what you say. It's like the final boss of the language imo, the last step to sounding like a native speaker. An optional, but necessary step for those wanting to go the extra mile. Otherwise I just think it adds a lot of unneeded stress on new learners while they grapple with the alphabets, grammar, and vocab when it really doesn't make much of a difference in real life. The guy at the restaurant isn't going to be confused when you asked for a "bridge" instead of "chopsticks". He's going to understand you.
Totally agree. The only thing you need to know is that Japanese has a pitch accent and that you should tune your ear to it when you interact with native input. Learning actual rules behind pitch accent only inhibits people to speak - look at Dogen himself, who, when not scripted, keeps going back to correct himself when it's unnecessary. Japanese native speakers also don't learn rules in order to speak Japanese with the 'correct' pitch accent. And then we haven't even talked about regional and contextual variations yet.
"I want a Bridge!" XD jk
This is bad advice since learning Japanese with pitch accent isn't much harder then learning it without, HOWEVER trying to go back and ADD pitch accent AFTER you've already learned to speak without it actually IS really difficult. All you have to do is learn to hear the pitch accent, which isn't that hard once you get used to it, and then pay attention to it when you're listening and repeating back what you hear.
@@mayawitters The problem with the "there are regional variations" argument is, like, there are huge differences between like, British English, UK English, Jamacan English - but that doesn't mean you could just randomly mix and match from those different accents and still sound "normal," it would be pretty distracting.
@@RairosuEither the chopsticks will be in a container right in front of your face, or the person serving you will ask you.
Learning kanji separately actually can help you if you spend a limited amount of time (not more than about 1-2 month). Than you can easily forget them and start learning WORDS written in kanji. The thing is that writing those bastards down helped me to develop an eye for them, so now memorizing a new one is not a problem. My brain is kinda adapted to those strokes that didn't have any meaning before.
Honestly ... This video actually gave me some confidence that I might be able to learn Japanese. I think I really give it a shot ... It'd make things much easier.
Good luck!
Dont worry about 漢字 you will learn them faster then U Like thinking, only all the readings will U give headache Same as me 😂
Motivation is important, and the first step is always the hardest one. I'm starting to study Japanese too, so good luck to both of us
Haha, I am married to a Japanese man, and I speak Japanese like a man 😅 We mirror the people around us it's so true
Hey Yuta, what do think about Cure Dolly and her Japanese grammar explanations?
I think particularly her explanation of は and が is amazing, and has helped me understand each sentence way better
Learn roughly 1000 Japanese words in ONLY romaji for like 6 months, then spend another 6 months learning them all again in hiragana, and another 6 months doing the same in katakana, but DONT move onto kanji! That's too hard! Its "advanced".
Also, speak from day 1, but only with other learners in your course. You aren't ready to speak with Japanese people yet.
But when the course is done! Ohhhh then you'll be fluent 😂
(My "friend's" old university's Japanese teacher)
@suzaki_bastard_new maybe! Its a shame because some of these people spend a *LOT* of money on this stuff too! And you'll never guess what textbook they used too.... 😭
Oh god, 6 months on Roumaji. Free the kana, please. They need to breathe.
We only used Romaji for the first week and we were still learning Hiragana side by side when I first joined a Japanese language course.
Lol. I could list a dozen reasons why this advice is seriously flawed.
@@Josh-gv4lc couldn't we all lol
If you try reading Japanese without Kanji - it's going to be much more difficult because the positions of the Kanji give you a HUGE clue as to where the words start and end (since there are no spaces). In any case, you should use a browser plugin like Yomichan that gives you a popup dictionary, once you do that you can basically read anything as long as you know the grammar and can at least tell Kanji apart. The other thing is that if you know the Kanji and you're looking at a sentence that you know the English translation for (for example, in a grammar example) then it's super-easy to figure out which words are which, and that makes it extremely easy to figure out what the example sentence is trying to say. It also makes it much easier to memorize new words.
A lot of Japanese material that eschews kanji uses spaces because they don't have kanji to denote word borders. Old videogames didn't use kanji often because of screen resolution limits, for example, but you'll find text in eg. ドラゴンクエストIV for the Famicom uses spaced kana for the text. Same with old Pokemon games and so on. Similar thing happened in Korean: They used to use a mixed script that was very close to the style Japanese uses except that towards the end they only used kanji for Sinitic loanwords and wrote all native Korean words in hangeul. When they started writing mostly in pure hangeul, they adopted word spacing to keep the text clear.
If you see people intentionally write a lot of stuff in unspaced kana, you're likely dealing with a psychopath or a kana obsessive who hasn't thought things through.
As a beginner, i try to learn what i could. Im far from perfect, but if you dont mess up, you never learn. You can polish the details as your learning.
yup, japanese people will judge you either way.
@figgettit Japanese people have been nice to me, it would be a sin to ask for more.
Starting out a lot of my immersion materials were period dramas, so people would say I either sounded like a samurai or an old man when speaking.
Starting out with period dramas is crazy though. Those are generally harder than modern shows or movies due to archaic words and phrases, and their way of speaking lol
Personally, I watch a lot of Japanese vlogs, and hear Japanese people speaking with eachother, so I think that would make my Japanese sound normal?
And my teacher said my Japanese accent is great
@@pemanilnoob You’re doing great, watching RUclips is one of the best resources available.
Why did that remind me of the old language course binder for US diplomats that was just in Romaji? 😁
I think the worst advice I hear is "Don't."
People saying things like "Dont even try to learn Japanese, its one of the hardest languages and your anime waifu won't love you more! Anime still sounds cringe in Japanese!"
1. Not everyone learns solely for media (and its fine imo if all you want is to be able to watch anime or read manga or listen to songs in your target language!)
2. Media is helpful for learning as input (every other language learning group Ive seen encourages you to take in media to help learn, Ive seen/met many people who say they learned most of their English from tv!)
3. "Dont bother learning at all it's hard" not any harder than any other language...maybe your natjve language is different enough itll be harder than for someone else with a similar language, but that doesnt mean other languages are just inherently easy. And it's awful to just immediately put down people for wanting to learn something, English Japanese learners are one of the only groups Ive ever seen tell people to give up their goal before they even start.
4. You mentioned grammar already so I cant add too much. That just bothers me because I enjoy learning grammar then vocab I can fit into that structure.
5. "Anime still sounds cringe" Ok? Cartoons, especially action cartoons aimed at younger kids or romances aimed at adults/teens, sound cringey to an extent.... What a brave revelation and a great reason to not rver interact with said media or another language again.
I highly implore everyone who has the ability to practice hiragana and katakana to try and learn both scripts for each letter together when you first learn them. Basic words you can recognize in katakana if you sound them out appear very frequently in early examples to get you started with the language. Putting the letters one on each side of a flash card and trying to remember them by one side and flipping the card before you have to check your answer will help build up the connection which will make reading all of the characters much faster. Treating the alphabet like a 100-character-pair is much better in the long run and makes much of the reading exercises much easier. Continually practice too. Actively try to get better at reading the text quickly, at least for sounds, as soon as possible so your brain can offload that task and focus on the meaning. Obviously you should also be studying grammar, but this is just to get out of that terrible slow-progress phase and get to a point where you can acquire the language faster through more efficient work. It's like 10-15 hours of investment and you can focus on the language itself much better afterwards.
Immersion can teach you natural ways of saying things plus a lot of simple words of daily use. But it is something to do a little bit after understanding the grammatical concepts and such.
The key is what he said in the video.. "comprehension". The input (the immersion, in this case) needs to be comprehensive, or it won't work. See e.g. Dr. Krashen, and Steve Kaufmann. Note that the comprehension does not *have* to mean that you already understand 90% of the words spoken (so that you can infer the meaning of the remaining part), it can also mean that you're observing a situation you understand (and that's how children learn through immersion), or by some other means. Some adult immigration schools where I live teach in the target language from day one, but they use very visual approaches. "This is a table", with a hand on the table. Same sentence for other things, just changing one word (glass, hand, face..). Mimicry etc etc. It works.
@@tohaason it only needs to be partially comprehensive to promote growth. the concept of gist is as important to the concept of comprehension as the concept of precision. one expands comprehension through exercising and promoting both.
I have been learning Japanese for the last couple of months and ive found that just using every resource at your disposal has helped me learn it. I use these videos and other RUclips videos to help with concepts I don't understand, Duolingo and similar apps to help me learn new words/Kanji, online textbooks, and tutoring with a friend of mine who has been learning Japanese for 6 years. It's been very helpful and I'm fairly confident that, while I am no where near conversational, I know enough basic words and phrases to get around in Japan.
You should stop using Duolingo immediately. Also, if you're not using it already you should get Yomichan for reading Japanese text online.
Me as well!
one Issue I've encountered is that when meeting Japanese people online to make friends, especially when they don't often or hardly ever encounter a foreigner speaking Japanese, they often have many questions. I feel like I often times have derailed their entire conversation simply by being there, which prevents me from getting too much input, which is a shame because I think conversations are the most fun way to learn. I'd just prefer not to be the main subject of the conversation lol.
all very true! i've found i've made the best progress using JapanesePod101, reading books alongside a dictionary, and watching RUclipsrs who are Japanese speaking only. my pitch accent has gotten better and i've picked up new kanji from the subtitles that many Japanese RUclipsrs put on their videos. echoing what you've just heard said is a great way too, repeat the phrase in your brain, then say it out loud, trying to get as close to the native speaker's pronunciation as possible
そうですね。I’m learning from the book Japanese from Zero’, a dictionary, a Kana chart, and RUclips videos - Japanese Peppa Pig, Yuka Chan, and some others. Enjoy the journey. I’m giving myself one year to be ‘decent’ at Japanese before I even THINK about visiting Japan.
Do you have any recommendations on Japanese youtube channels with subtitles?
@@kromezee onomappu maybe... Hes great and Japanese only and He speaks slow so U can understand it faster
@@kromezee Hi. I watch channels with the subtitles on: Yuka Chan (a rickshaw driver), Ask Japanese, and a couple of ‘listen along’ channels too.
@kromezee i watch やまもも who is a lifestyle and beauty vlogger, she also has a gaming channel. かずのすけ is a dermatologist who makes videos about skincare. 日本語の森 is a Japanese channel that's designed for helping Japanese learners. those are the channels i personally watch the most, especially a lot of やまもも videos!
The "don't bother" is truly bizzarre. I speak 5 languages fluently and out of all these languages, Japanese has proven BY FAR the LEAST "don't bother" in the sense of how this "advice" was framed. With no other language have I ever had so many people be happy and relieved that they didn't need to try to speak English. Even in my home country of Switzerland I have helped numerous lost tourists and chatted with the staff of various import stores. Everytime the same reaction "we almost don't speak any English, so we are so happy to be able to talk to someone Swiss". Also when traveling in Japan, especially on the countryside, I mean you can literally SEE the relief and fear leave their face when then realize they dont have to try to speak English. Sure there are a few who are fluent in English and eager to show it, but thats a very small minority. I even made a friend here who lives here since 2 years but doesn't speak much English or German and she is always happy to be able to just have a rant in Japanese over lunch. It's really up to you if you go out and connect with people or if you'd rather stay grouped with your country folk and complain that the Japanese don't want to be your friend.
The "don't speak" seems to originate from MattVsJapan, who is indeed extremely proficient at Japanese and has a bit of a following. Sure, he started studying Japanese at young age and basically tanked his whole life into the study for years and years, every day. Most people don't want to become native sounding poets but just be able to have fun conversations and connect with people. This "advice" is 100% trash and a huge waste of time and opportunity.
I kinda get it though, because if you're learning japanese to live in japan, as a foreigner you will always get treated like shit when you are trying to assimilate into society, unless you are figuratively sweating and bleeding japan. The "don't bother" approach, results from the lacking encouragement and openness of japanese society. If you're just someone looking to visit japan, they love you, especially if you learn japanese. If you want to live in japan, it is an entirely different story, not even comparable at all. Unless you are perfect, they will not relate to you if you are trying to be like them, but if you're just a visitor and know a few phrases they become ecstatic and treat you like some exotic toy "wow, you can speak so well" (when you literally only know a few phrases and sound terrible). They're just acting nice.
@@gintuner4371 I can't speak from my own experience, but since I am involved with the "Japanese speaking society" here (this is an initiative of the Japanese embassy here that involves about 50% Japanese who immigrated here and 50% Swiss who lived there) I spend a lot of time talking with people who have lived in Japan for years up to decades, and the reports are all over the place. I have heard things like what you say, but also absolutely the opposite story, people who can't wait to just move back again (mostly they had to come by for job reasons). I think sentences like "they treat you like shit" are not really helpful generalizations since it depends on so many factors. The fact that so many people have positive experiences living there, means it also depends on the person. Some people are just much better at connecting to others, even from other cultures. And conversely, in any country like Japan, it's just humans at the end of the day. And cultures may be different, but the same spectrum from "nice people" to "assholes" exists there, as it does anywhere else. But the biggest influence to the general outcome will still be the way you conduct yourself, and, this is controversial since you can't influence it as much, your "vibe". Some people just make others go "ick" faster than others.
I visited Japan a few years ago and learned some very basic Japanese before I went plus hiragana/katakana and a handful of useful kanji. I was really glad that I did because even in Tokyo I found people either didn't speak English or weren't keen to. I got directions from a lady in a shop in Tokyo (who came out onto the street with me to show me the right direction). Also in Tokyo I managed to find out where my train was leaving from speaking to an employee. I got a man to help me find my hotel in Osaka - and countless other little niceties in shops, restaurants etc. I really was glad I'd learned some Japanese.
I'm living in Japan and learning Japanese and while immersion is certainly easier being in the country, it's not the golden ticket. I still have to make the effort to learn Japanese. It doesn't help that I use English at work AND my husband is an English speaker. I barely use Japanese aside from the occasions I'm outside interacting with people.
Yes. It is easy for English speakers to live in a parallel society in Japan.
When I was in Japan, they were very flattered that I tried to speak the language.
no, that is just tatemae.
I want to be respectful of culture that I am not a part of as much as possible. However, Japanese engineers who would sneer at a foreigner for speaking too “feminine” are that bad people in that story. They need to grow up, learn about the world outside their bubble, and just gain some enlightenment in general. 🙄
The point about different interpretations of Japanese grammar is an important one to know. The explanation that you personally find the most helpful *will* be one that some people strongly disagree with. That may include your first teacher or the author of the first textbook you read, so if you aren't aware that there are multiple perspectives out there, you might get stuck for a long time with explanations that just don't click with you.
It's also important to understand that most of the (several) schools of thought among Japanese grammar scholars do not actually match the way Japanese is usually taught to non-Japanese speakers, too. However, that also doesn't make the Japanese ways of viewing things inherently "more right", either, just different. In many cases, they are actually less useful to non-native learners, because they approach the language in much more "foreign" ways that they cannot easily equate to concepts they are already familiar with, so the "non-native" explanations are often actually much better for learning.
(There have been several times I've been trying to help other learners understand Japanese grammar by describing it a particular way, and then some know-it-all who decided to buy a random native-Japanese grammar textbook tries to come in and tell me that that's all wrong because the "real" way Japanese grammar works is blah blah blah. Almost always, they aren't even aware that even the native Japanese linguistic scholars don't actually agree about how to view a lot of this stuff, and that just because the way I'm describing it isn't the same as somebody else doesn't make my description wrong, and in fact it's them coming in and trying to show off that is just making everything more confusing for everybody, which is not helpful.)
Many people also don't realize that the aspects of the grammar that the different Japanese schools disagree about aren't just some little esoteric details, or really advanced constructions, they actually even start with _really basic_ things like "what is and isn't a word?" and "what actually _is_ です, anyway?" (answer: です is ...complicated.)
This is true, for me, what really helped me with the te form was actually ancient Greek grammar 😂
The problem with explaining Japanese grammar is that nearly all approaches try to shoehorn European-developed grammar theories into explaining Japanese. And that doesn't actually work well.
If you want to learn about Japanese grammar I would go to the late Cure Dolly, or / and Jay Rubin. The way the grammar is explained is vastly simpler than all the "conjugation" tables and half-assed explanations found elsewhere. I've yet to find "real Japanese" which doesn't fit what Cure Dolly described.
But studying grammar isn't what you should put too much effort into - and that's what Cure Dolly said as well. Steve Kaufmann even says "Don't study the basics!" (about grammar).
@@tohaasonWhat are some of the wrong/unsuitable approaches to explaining grammar have you come across? Could you give some specific examples of what are, in your opinion, better or worse approaches?
I can say that after a couple of years of 'studying' japanese on and off, I thought I was kind of okay at it. Until I actually tried to speak to someone in japanese and quickly realised all the prominent gaps in my knowledge. It is a lot easier to remember something if you know you're going to need it. As in, I'm actually going to put the effort in because I know I need to work hard enough for it to stick in my head (which I knew theoretically, but still). It's easier to see what you need to work on, like pouring water into a container to check for holes as opposed to just looking at it and going 'eh, I'm sure it's fine.'
I'm saying this from a 'definitely still a beginner' perspective by the way,
maybe don’t look at the problem as something you can overcome by “working hard”, that probably won’t work out for you. I don’t think you need that much active effort at all, just time and lots of input
The problem with "ignore grammar" advice is that we're adults and we don't have our whole childhood to acquire all the practical knowledge of grammar by trial and error. Having an explicit explanation how to use some form or some grammatical construction is actually very helpful.
it helps to challenge yourself a little bit every once in a while to keep yourself motivated
it really shows how big of an understanding yuta has when it comes to hit linguistic knowledge when he just says all this stuff off the top of his head。 さすがです、ゆうた先生
last upload was cut on 17:27 and when ended in 'this person is talking...' and my mind autocompleted ...shit'
Good job fixing the video, Yuta
I’ve started trying to actually SPEAK Japanese out loud, but I sound like a kilt wearing Samurai 😢. Peppa Pig in Japanese is interesting.
Listen to the average Japanese person speaking English. It's normal and okay to not sound "right" speaking a foreign language you're learning. Accent free speech is a noble goal but I think it's more useful to focus on speaking in such a way that people can understand you and then polish it as you grow more comfortable with the language.
HANBAAGA SHICHUU MAKKUDONARUDOOOO
Remember, they suck just as hard at English and unlike westerners...don't usually care as much either.
Take advantage of the strong accent many Japanese people have in speaking English - I find it is often easier to see the differences between the sounds you make speaking English and the sounds of your target language by listening to the English accent of native speakers of that language and trying to imitate it than trying to understand how you are mispronouncing the sounds of the target language. We are all experts in our own languages, so use that fact!
I'm currently a high school student living in Australia and there is a large Japanese community here, and I was friends with a large number of Japanese people. This motivated me to begin trying to learn Japanese, and I can confirm Japanese people are extremely happy to have a conversation (or try to, if you're still a beginner like me) in Japanese, however your Japanese needs to be quite good to regularly have conversations. I completely disagree with the first commenter Yuta reviewed, I find that speaking Japanese to Japanese people can even make your friendship stronger, as they express themselves differently in Japanese.
I think that Yuta has some good points regarding a natural way to pick up a language, however he is trying to elevate his own product and bearing that in mind of course he is going to disparage other learning methods such as Minna no Nihongo or Genki. These methods certainly arent perfect, but what he doesnt understand is that while Minna no Nihongo and Genki are certainly flawed in certain ways, they still represent a linear progression through learning a language that he is unable to replicate through his method of "find japanese stuff and watch/read/listen to it". People can do both of those things, textbooks and real life/colloquial input arent mutually exclusive. Textbooks provide a foundation of learning, and Minna no nihongo serves as a good foundation of basic verbs, conjugations and grammar that are vital to understand how the japanese language actually works. So yeah you can say, its not "natural japanese that everyday people speak". But that is the transient nature of language in itself, as soon as you publish a book it is likely that things have already shifted, popular verbs may have change, even the way people use sentences. What remains constant (for the most part) are grammatical structures, particles and verb conjugation that these textbooks use to lay down a foundation so that when you encounter the "actual japanese that everyday people speak" you're not just parroting what people are saying, you actually have an understanding of the fundamental structure of the language and can form your own sentences accordingly, based on what you yourself already know and what you learn from everyday speech patterns.
You have a point
Literally how I learnt English, my 2nd language.
Very true, these resources are still useful and should be used to supplement many other methods like listening to podcasts, watching TV and speaking to native Japanese people.
In spoken Japanese, I will never use textbooks like minna no nihongo, I started with duolingo, I didn’t actually start learning how to speak until I started his course because the books and apps again do not teach natural spoken language. It’s written for non native speakers. Why you analyze his video in this way is baffling to me. I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t understand the need to criticize a native Japanese speaker who is trying to help you learn. It’s like you haven’t listened to a word he’s said. I think he explains very clearly why there is no need to learn from that type of input. I will never use textbook phrases because they aren’t practical at all. He even mentions how Japanese is not a well established discipline and part of the reason of that is improper teachings of actual aspects of the language. I have never once heard actual native speakers use the things from textbooks because they don’t say them. I know more Japanese studying with him than I would ever learn with books and apps. They teach you how they want you to speak, and it didn’t contribute anything to actually speaking for me. I would much rather learn how to speak like a native person than to learn Japanese from something that wants me to speak certain way. “Don’t judge native Japanese speakers on advice you learned from textbooks”
He does this a lot. This channel is veeeeeery focused on trying to sell you a product, and he does not do a very good job of hiding his intentions, while seemingly trying to disguise it as the only logical way to learn. Very narrow-minded in a lot of ways. Would recommend to always take his content with a grain of salt.
The first one gave me hope 🙏 ありがとうございます
"To learn Japanese, try immersing yourself."
"Immersing yourself means, understanding the input."
"Understand the input by learning Japanese."
This is where I have trouble with learning.
I just got to a one year streak on Duolingo today. I do not think I have learnt anything except how to read Hiragana and Katakana
I learned some new words in Duolingo, I definitely not worth using for learning how to have a conversation in Japanese. Thanks to prior lessons I had with real Japanese, I was able to see how inaccurate, and outdated Duolingo can be at times.
Here I am learning about English AND Japanese, "transitivity". Perhaps something in favour of speaking, is the aspect of eustress that's brought on by speaking. It forces memory recall and flow, and especially if you are speaking WITH someone, it helps find where your knowledge is strong or weak.
Nobody says "eustress"
@@takanara7 well sorry to disappoint, but it's the meaning that I wanted to use, so I used it.
@@takanara7 Educated people use words outside of the common vernacular.
_Eustress?_ Well, there's a new word on me - thought it was a typo till I read your comment! But, yes, quite agree, that positive stress helps - once we can overcome the negative stress (Is that _kakostress?_ But distress works perfectly) that many people feel when speaking a language for the first time.
"Just immerse yourself" - I've learned both English and Japanese through immersion in video games, but even I know that's not all there is to learning a Language. For English, since it's using the same latin alphabet as French and a lot of words are very similar, it is indeed possible to learn fully through immersion, with no preparation whatsoever. But for Japanese, everything's dramatically different and your brain won't even have a way to attempt comprehending the input.
So while I also made immersion my primary method of learning Japanese, I had to learn the bare minimum for immersion to be effective: learning the Kanas and enough Kanji so that it doesn't feel like I'm looking at moon runes anymore and can search words up in dictionnaries, and basic grammar so I can at least separate words from particles and avoid searching gibberish. And even after I started immersion, I was making full use of dictionnaries. That's, in my opinion, the starting line to be able to do immersion.
My best (actual) advice for learning the language is MAKE IT IN YOUR DAILY LIFE!!!
My native language is French, I speak Spanish because of my dad and English because of school. Now I'm learning Japanese and ofc started with the Kana, but as soon as I can read those properly then I'll try to change my phone's language setting, etc
I’ve already began downloading some of my favorite games in Japanese for when I can understand the majority of words (like tomodachi life or Mario and Luigi SS)
that's what I did as well. Day one of learning japanese I swapped languages on my games, devices, and internet sites to japanese. In the beginning I had no idea what was going on. Worst case scenario I had to swap back for a second to do something important, but I was quickly back on japanese again. Ive had so much exposure to kana now that I can read it at a comfortable speed.
@@oh-noe yup, me too. I typed this comment a month ago, and I know all of my kana including the handakuten as well as dakuten. I'm still learning and I can confidently say that I have made some progress. I don't understand everything obviously, but I can recognize some basic kanjis and sentence structure, and of course I'm still learning new vocabulary words. However I still try to keep it fun, because intense studying will lead me to boredom, and so it won't be so fun. But watching animé and switching game languages to Japanese helps a lot. Inconscienly it helps to read more fluently. I can't understand everything but reading aloud stuff I don't even know helps me practice
@@Link-Link good to know you’re still going at it! I feel like too many people give up language learning quickly at the sight of an overwhelming amount of information that needs to be learnt haha. I think I am on my third year of self study currently, I can’t say I have been very efficient, but thanks to making it fun I’ve kept going at it. Hopefully we’ll both reach the future!
@@oh-noe yes! Hopefully! I can't really wish you luck since it's not about that lol but continue your efforts and you'll reach your goals. You plan on taking the JLPT?
I believe 'learn real life Japanese that Japanese people use today' is a marketing to sell your course which I think it's a very nice thing however saying other methods are teaching 'wrong' Japanese I don't agree... that was the way I learned english as well, after you get the basics and go to an advanced level you know you have to change some methods of speaking because it doesn't sound natural. I'm using Duo for a while and it's good for the basics and for vocabulary at least for me and I know I will need to get a teacher eventually if I want to improve to an advanced level which I will do eventually. I studied Japanese with non natives for a while and at the time I think I got to the intermediate level but as I don't emerge to the Japanese culture like musics, animes, and doramas it takes longer for me to learn... and to finish I don't see the problem of learning a more formal way of speaking and then learn how to speak with friends as in Japan the respect and age hierarchy is very important and you wouldn't speak the same way when talking to a friend or a older person you don't know
Thank you.
This really gives me a new view on "learning" Japanese.
I watched some of your old videos and in your latest videos you look much more stylish. It’s go really cool.
Great video! (Plus i loved the glimpse of Amami Yuuki...)
I loved the unintentional irony of "passing N1 means your fluent."
passing N1 means you have certifiably suffered. This is important in Japan.
The section about how even native Japanese scholars don't universally agree on exactly how even basic Japanese grammar functions was actually a huge relief and really helped me. It helps contextualize a lot of the questions and confusion I have with certain aspects of the language (eg the exact nature of the particles は and が) and how my personal understanding of it doesn't exactly line up with any individual explanation. Basically "It's okay not to sweat the details; if you feel like you get it you probably get it" lol
Regarding output: I think it does contribute to acquisition. Because acquisition isn't just about repeating a thing ad nauseum. Repetition is good for remembering, but as you implied "acquisition" is about the combination of remembering AND understanding. Using language actively both helps you understand (like solving a puzzle yourself rather than watching someone else solve it over and over) as well as counting for repetitions towards remembering. I would even go so far as to say that active use repetitions count more towards acquisition than passive consumption; to go back to the analogy, which would take fewer repetitions for you to memorize the solution to a puzzle? Solving it yourself a few times or watching someone else solve it a few times? I'd argue the former. Is active use strictly REQUIRED for learning a language? Not necessarily. But I do think it helps immensely, to say nothing of other benefits (such as building confidence, providing an opportunity for native speakers to point out mistakes in understanding, etc). To summarize, input is more important than output because it's the only way you can acquire NEW Japanese; ie it's the only way to actually progress your knowledge. However, I think that output is a very important and efficient component of understanding and retaining that knowledge (ie the process of acquisition).
As of right now, I have N2 but unless you're actually going to work in a Japanese work environment with Japanese people, it's really not necessary. There's no speaking portion of the exam anyway, so yeah, it might mean you're knowledgeable in the language and can read and comprehend difficult documents under pressure, but it's not gonna help you much if you're just looking to talk to people.
Ayeeee! Loved the Love Village clip! Will you consider doing a video discussing it, and its use for learning? I understand its all older people, is their Japanese dramatically different? Also, that very big, deep voiced man is a SERIOUS perv! Whats the Japanese concensus on all this stuff? 🤔
“Why are you learning Japanese? Why not learn something easier like [French/German/etc]?”
So annoying!
I knew the feminine/masculine language usages applies to Korean, good to know it also applies to Japanese
I’m subbed to you but haven’t seen your content in like 6 months. Finally watched Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and immediately when I heard the MCs name my brain went “Yuta teaches Japanese.”
I log in to YT today to find this video 😭😭
I used many apps and didnt used any text book till now, cuz all r english and ここでドイツ語
r not available... I learn on my own wirh some helps from youtuber.
Its been now 5 years and can understand About 50% of all speaking it also depends on the speaking 早い and Sometimes on the dialect
"[Tests] tests your test taking skills" - ! That should be printed on huge signs everywhere. It's so true.
Biggest problem for me was keeping the learning engaging enough to where I would efficiently remember it all. Flashcards and textbooks worked for a little bit, but around the N2 level, it became harder for me to genuinely see an interest in memorizing names and flowers. So I started to focus more on native material, and that's been more helpful. Viki and Crunchyroll with a plugin provide native material with Japanese subtitles. Japanese TV drives me nuts, so I mix it up with manga and books sometimes. Biggest hurdle is speaking it currently, it's very hard to put myself in a situation in which I depend on Japanese without putting myself back in Japan. It's not impossible, but it is harder to learn the language if you don't have an actual need for it. If you can trick your brain into knowing it's necessary, it makes it easier to learn
Me, a person who 言語学を専攻しました: Oh wow, you said "acquired" a language. I can tell you understand the difference between language learning and language acquisition, very nice.
> "Me, a person who 言語学を専攻しました:"
まだ敬語喋る専攻する者様だ。可笑しくて面白いね、 lmao.
@@takanara7Your Japanese doesn't make sense at all.
Not learning kana and limiting yourself to romaji is a huge stumbling block!!
"Don't bother with Kanji, in japanese they mostly use hiragana and katakana anyway" - Some random guy on discord who claimed he lived in Japan for years and spoke it as well as his first language (but weirdly spoke like an AI when I talked with him).
I've seen people say that on discord. Then they get mad if you say you actually learned Kanji - they don't understand that once you get to the point where you can instantly recognize kanji, it makes memorizing words extremely easy, no more difficult then learning words in English. In a huge number of cases you can pretty much tell what a word is even if you've never seen it before
@@takanara7 I can't WAIT to start learning Kanji, it just seems like such a milestone and it looks fun to me. I'm just starting Katakana after a few months of Duolingo learning Hiragana and a bunch of lessons. Its finally clicking in my old brain and I'm loving the learning. 👍🏻
worst advice: start with a goal of passing Kanji Kentei level 1?
for some people speaking the words will help with memorization and for others not so much you really have to know yourself and what tactics have worked in the past and try to apply thos tactics to what you're learning now.
so for Japanese some might work better with something more structured/theory focused like a class and others through more immersive/practical techniques reading and/or watching and listening or something else you should know what works for you better than anyone else could tell you.
I watched many Anime but always with eng subs. now I watched "Uncle from another world" 異世界おじさん on Netflix in English once then I started watching in Japanese with English subs(way cooler) a couple of times.. right now I'm trying Japanese with Japanese subs and trying to figured out the difference in translation, I have two small blackboards with Hiragana and Katakana as a reference tho.. and I'm waiting for Heisig's book "remember the Kanji" to be delivered.. and I keep practicing writing 2 times a week with hiragana and katakana.. I'm all in hahah
In my case the prospect of producing more output is motivating me to seek out more input and learn more Japanese faster for sure.
I am actually flip flopping a lot between whether attemptning to speak the language from the beginning is a good idea or not. Lately, I think I actually lean towards what the person said in the comment and I think it might actually be better to give up on trying to speak until you feel you can say what you want to.
It is really hard to know if that is the better approach or not, but I have several reasons for thinking it might be. First, that is how children learn, they listen and train comprehension long before they try to speak. Second it is something that my brain is automatically leaning towards, so there is probably some reason for that. Mom told me that when I was little, I did not speak almost at all for a long time and suddenly I started saying the whole sentenced. When I learned English from games and films, I did not speak for years and later only began speaking after I was sure what I was saying. Third, I have read some interesting articles that suggested, that trying to speak too early before you know how the words should actually sound like can be very detrimental to your pronounciation, you can get many bad habbits that you may never get rid off. This is not as big a issue in Japanese, because Japanese pronounciation is on the easier side, but it will probably destroy your pitch accents forever. Once you start to say things in wrong accents, it will be very hard to relearn the correct way.
So yeah, I can't really say for sure, but I am beginning to lean towards not speaking being the better option.
Also your point about speaking giving you motivation is heavily dependent on your personality. For me personally, it is by far the most demotivating aspect of learning Japanese when I cannot express nuances of what I want to say. Like recently when I was talking about some article about space and it took me 15 minutes trying to explain (unsuccessfully) that there is gravity when you are in Earth's orbit, you just can't feel it because you are in free fall. Incredibly demotivating experiance trying to say something relatively simple and not being able to. You realize that you are so far from having any sort of meaningful conversation with anyone beyong talking about weather and what you had for lunch.
some speaking is probably not harmful, small children do it all the time despite not being completely fluent yet, though for them it’s less about what they say and more about just getting better at speaking as a motor skill. you’re probably still right about it potentially being detrimental. either way it’s not really useful for language acquisition.
Dude, your English improved a lot!
I really hate the duolingo hate. Its a fun way to pass the time and learn something. Every app/video you watch is gonna have errors/mistakes and bad accents, but using duolingo along with other resources and immersion won't hurt. If its flappy bird or duolingo I know my choice. I learned hirigana and katana in like a week with that app and enjoyed it and didn't spend hours a day. I already know Chinese so the kana is not so hard for me but regardless I love that app and cant stand smug people who say it sucks or whatever.
You wont get fluent obviously but it helps
yeah duolingo is really useful for beginners, to get them consistent and get them started on hiragana and katakana, i recommend dropping it after a month or two though
The worst advice is to not talk for years and just listen lmafo.
Very insightful. Thank you.
Worst advice is paying Matt vs Japan for his services. Just go out there and learn, enjoy the learning process.
And what about the Marugoto's textbook series?.
Those books are from The Japan Foundation, specially designed for non-native Japanese speakers.
It seems there are books from the A1 to B2 level, according to the CEFR for European countries.
Please write a long essay explaining why Minna no Nihongo is flawed. The language school I went to for 6 months that kickstarted my Japanese to N4 level uses them as textbooks.
I'm going to school in Japan and they're using Genki to teach us... I'm starting to learn the pitfalls of the book. I try to look up 3rd party help through RUclips and other sources, and I feel that it will just confuse me more. Learning Genki in school is more about learning enough to pass your tests, even if it's not the correct Japanese that you need to actually communicate with others. We're also moving really fast... we're on Lesson 5 after only 15 days. I hope in the future it gets easier because right now it's a bit overwhelming.
Lesson 5 in 15 days? That's pretty quick. I can't do big classes. I have a private teacher from Tokyo and I'm going on lesson 7 on my 9 month using the Genki book too. We met twice a week online and have homework in between. That's enough for me with my crazy work schedule. I've been to Japan 4 times already and my last visit was my first time using the little Japanese I know.
Yeah so I took a look at the class schedule and our mid term is going to be Lesson 1-7 after 2 months of class.
I'm not enjoying the pace it's really rough to the point where I can't focus on my non-Japanese classes. Hopefully I can pass these courses because I think next semester I'm going to opt out of Japanese classes in the college and just get a private teacher to help me outside of school.
@@elbyno7904
@@elbyno7904if you don’t mind me asking, where did you find your Japanese tutor?
One thing that I never heard someone talking about is:
When you learn Japanese by romaji (ローマ字) you will pronounce 弦一郎 wrong. because it will be romanized as Genichiro. But it's not げにちろ it's げんいちろ
what i can say so far ist that everybody agrees that you need to get a lot of input to acquire a language but the hardest part for me is to even start to understand the sentence structure
Grammar is best learn via context.
Why don't you do those street interviews anymore? those were thse best!!!
The first comment is spot on. However, if you do invest 10+ years of solid study you might find a few Japanese people will speak to you a bit 😂 or you'll get a job working at a old fashioned Japanese dinosaur 🦕 company bowing to your senpai and staying late at the office not working. Been living and working here for a while now, not teaching Engrish.
Honestly, I recommend listening first. A lot of Japanese learners probably want to learn it because of anime and anime makes it relatively easy to understand words and sentences. I’ve watched anime in the original dub on a regular basis for ca. 7 years and it massively expanded my vocabulary. This also helps with reading Hiragana/Katakana. The more recognisable the symbol, the easier it is to remember. I only started trying to read Japanese a few weeks ago, but it’s already relatively easy to read. I keep recognising words that I’ve heard before or even know another meaning or another way to say it.
I starter to learn thé alphabet before the vocabulary
日本語勉強していますけど、難しいです
Dont worry when U get started with Something new its always hard
Learning daily is Importent when U wanna understand all
Regardless how someone learns a language or whatever approach they use, If it helps them it helps, But I for one would let people choose a way that's right for them.
i dont think duolingo is bad, atleast not anymore as they've made adjustments
the sentences have been improved and there is a report option for the sentences being unnatural. the guides are helpful in the units too though they should only specify that you dont always have to use は and を
Regarding immersion. I had an experience spending about a month with some Ukrainian guys. I don't speak any of their language, but by the end I started to understand them a little bit. But that was language fairly similar to mine own. With Japanese it's completely different... The structure, words, even "cadence" of language is completely different. To be honest, I had big problems to remember words as they tended to "slip" my mind somehow and I was actively learning them... Imagine "picking up" language like that on its own.... no way.
That's where you write it down and repeat it from time to time. I love Anki for that! I use it to keep the new grammar or vocabulary fresh enough that I can still retrieve it when I encounter it naturally. Once I've found enough examples in my input, it'll become a living thing that I remember more intuitively, and I can retire the note/flashcard.
I don't know, I've ended up picking a good bit through sheer osmosis from anime. It's part of what makes kanji so frustrating, there's a bunch of stuff I'd know in my sleep, but have to study separately to be able to read. It just feels so stupid.
One thing on learning Kanji is important. This is something that my Chinese teacher said about Hànzì, but it applies to Kanji of course as well.
Use a book that does not have the pronounciation of a character written next to it and do NOT write it yourself there, too. If you do that, you will just find yourself always reading the transcription and never trying to read the character itself. This happens automatically, even if you try not to look at the transcription, so don't bother to write it anywhere near. If you don't know how a character is read/pronounced, you can go to the back of the book or wherever the dictionary of the signs is and look it up, but don't ever write the pronounciation next to the characters.
Language is a moving target.
日本語使えば普段友達にならない人と友達になれる。友達と話すと自然に新しい語彙が身につく。趣味か興味から学ぶと勉強って感じしない、例えば〈僕の場合）ゲームから学ぶとたまたま自分がレベルアップした感じがする
Yuta have a course. And it is the best out there to learn native japanese. Subscribed to his email and wait for his courses to open. There is also a subscription where you'll get to listen and learn about speaking native japanese. It also have a video so you'll learn without translating.
The only "bird app" that I know is now the letter app.
duo lingo I think is the other bird app
We're using できる日本語 book, out teacher doesn't like Minna. I've been studying Japanese for 9 months now and I feel I'm having problems with speaking, fluency, and remembering the vocabulary. I'm a little discouraged, but I'll try your advices.
I don't understand this need to short way everything with languages. It's a complex thing like math or physics, it need an effort, it needs time. Besides the language has much more aspects, like listening, reading, writing, and comprehension, it's much more than math would need. But everyone looks for quickest way to be perfect, but don't stress too much. Have you ever seen "Physics like pro in 10 days"? Everyone understands that you need years to swim through all the universe dark material, but languages are just OK with few tips and some Romanji. 👀
Yuta is becoming sexier and sexier with every video he uploads.
That professional edited example sentence, I wonder which book it's from? Probably from a science book I suppose and surely not from a erotic book about lesbian brothels😂😂
I tried a lot of ways to learn kanji, i've found 2 to be helpful, the first one is take a single page of manga (random) per day and see the kanji in context, the second one is learn vocabulary with kanji, i can distinct the image and know the meaning, but sometimes i don't know how is the reading
たくく の漢字の学び方を試してみて、2つの ほうほう が役立ちます。さいしょ の ほうほう は、毎日1ページの漫画を取って文やくで見ることです。2番目のほうほうは、漢字を使って語いいを学ぶことで、イメージを くべつし、意味を分かります、でも読むことができません。