@@SirHippolord Ah. I suppose so. It seems more like the overall advice is: "Start with one or maybe two parts of the language. Pick them based on what will be most useful to you." For example, I mostly use Japanese in anime and books. So I only really needed grammar and then vocabulary to start with. The subtitles helped me start picking up more and more words. And the grammar let me understand what was going on in general.
Many people think that your learning experience should be free of any anxiety, embarrassment, or stress, and thats just not realistic in my opinion. I've only tended to feel this way when I wasn't making progress, so the key for me was to focus on making progress instead of worrying about things I couldn't control.
@@bladepanthera It's funny that you mention this, because a lot of times my native speaking mother can point out very subtle things about Dogen's real Japanese pronunciation that sound foreign to her, but simultaneously she says that it's no different listening to him than someone with a regional accent.
@@TheZenomeProject i noticed too that some japanese people have some strange accents that almost make them sound like how an american foreigner would sound if their accent was only ~20% as strong as usual it's weird, but I only listen to certain Japanese people with specific accents for that reason
Dogen thinks he's slick with the last section, but we all know that no Japanese learner ignorant of pitch accent would _ever_ use heiban. It's BEnkyou or nothing.
The more you drill on Greek, Latin & Anglo-Saxon accent patterns, the more conscious of them you become . .. and the more you will catch yourself unconsciously IMPORTING those patterns into your Japanese.
I've actually been in that situation before where I had a fairly large vocabulary in a language but awful pronunciation and had to go back and study the pronunciation again more carefully.
Pronunciation is often overlooked and more useful than people think. It improves not only speaking, but also listening and vocabulary retention. It pays revisiting it once in a while and improving it incrementally, as it's relatively cheap to do compared to other things.
I'm in the opposite situation. My pronunciation is decently close to native and my grammar is above average for a second language speaker, but I get stumped on the most basic vocab because I mostly learned in academic environments.
Pronunciation is the most difficult thing to learn in a new language. Because most of the sounds of one language are not used in your own language and are even difficult to hear for you. And if you cannot hear it, you also cannot pronounce it. There are thousands of tones of white and each one of them can have a name and a characteristic, but you still see "just white". Of course, pronunciation is key for listening: known the correct sound of a word make you able to distinguish one word from another. But you can build up your listening skills with time, as well as you can build your vocab knowledge with time. At the beginning, I was a total fan of grammar. I like grammar, I love to study grammar, and I thought it was really important to understand the foundation of grammar to understand a language. Now I think vocab is more important, specially with languages far from your native language. I feel a great satisfaction when I understand one new word in my target language. Just a basic knowledge of grammar (sov/svo, conjugation...) and then just jump to vocab (with some limitations, you don't need 200 words for "water" on the first week and I doubt in general speaking you need to know how to say 'kangaroo' in Japanese). At the end, in social media, people really mess up with writing all the time and no one cares, just non-natives try to apologize all the time for not having their grammar and spelling all correct.
It really is very goal and purpose dependent. Honestly Dogen’s making fun of his accent in the last little clip, but any Japanese person will easily understand him and with that level having any conversation with a native on any topic would be no problem, the only issue is you will sound foreign. For most of us studying Japanese, sounding like a foreigner isn’t a huge concern, and being able to understand and be understood is the major focus. But there are people who strive for this native level fluency and pronunciation, and if that’s your goal then you do have to focus more on that aspect, and that’s valid as well.
Well said. The majority of people aim to understand and be understood. When that is completely not an issue anymore, then you can/should focus on how native you want to sound, how difficult you want your sentences (and the words you use) to be, etc.
@@musical.theory except that’s easier said than done when the more you learn japanese, the more you understand that you should do more to be understood. People might say “in hindsight, i should’ve focused on sounding native after years of studying japanese”, but that’s really only a privilege talented people have. Normal people like me who forget words when actually talking to japanese people would rather be understood first even though we really want to sound native.
@* user like I said it depends on the individual. I don’t think it’s wrong to focus on one thing or another if you enjoy it and if it motivates you to keep learning. Some people love learning kanji, others hate it and would rather focus on speaking… others just want to read manga, others want to be conversational with a friend etc. Which is why if what you’re doing is putting you closer to your goals then that’s great and you should continue doing it, but for some people another approach might work better or they would rather focus on different things.
Great example of how although there are certain priorities for learning which will help more than others, your objectives when learning a language should shift depending on what your own personal goals with the language are as those will alter said priorities
Drift!!! I'm trying just to have basic conversational skills so I can communicate with people out in the world. I'm not trying to remember 2774356 stroke orders of 感じ
So what kind of priorities would you have if you want to speak languages if you want to speak the language on a philosophical level? As in, you want to speak about the human condition in said language and it requires a vast diction to do so.🤔
Hot take of the day: stroke order is important to learn specifically so you can look up kanji that you don't know on your smartphone. A lot of times the camera scanner doesn't pick it up, and if you're drawing it with your finger, kanji dictionary apps like jishop narrow down the options based on stroke order and how far apart/long lines are relative to each other, not what the finished kanji actually looks like
At least on your phone, rather than jisho's search function use a japanese draw keyboard. It doesn't require proper stroke order to work (at least google keyboard). I generally go down and to the right, but I don't write a single kanji correctly and get the right one almost every time.
3rd one is my Japanese Japanese teacher in Germany with the exception that she's a lot less polite about it 😂 she straight up makes you repeat a word 15 times if the pitch accent is wrong bc otherwise it sounds "disgusting"☠
Yeah...'teachers' like that can just march right off. Perfect is the enemy of good while you're working on the basics. That should be delivered as a side note to the student and then the student can decide if that's a personal priority in their ongoing studies.
@@yagisencho Disagree completely. Maybe they can deliver their message more politely/more encouragingly, but we need more Japanese teachers who treat pitch accent as an important part of the phonology. The way most teachers teach now should be considered nearly as ridiculous as teaching Chinese without tones.
tbh I'm not a beginner anymore (preparing for N2 currently) and otherwise she's a good teacher bc she's got a linguistics doctor. But she doesn't really have any pedagogy experience (I'm a foreign language teacher myself) and especially for the beginners it's hard not to get discouraged (I've taken both beginner and higher level classes with her and several people quit really early on.). But it just shows that you need language expertise as well as pedagogical knowledge.
As another German I need to know where you study! I only studied at VHS and courses were really slow and nobody cares about pronunciation in the slightest. I‘m in a B-level course and some people still can’t speak a Japanese l/r or j 😭 I personally never learned pitch accent. The Japanese people I talked to understood me and so far I‘m happy with that. Maybe I‘ll work on it later. But I‘d really like to know where teachers care about that. Maybe I‘ll sign up there too one day.
In my Japanese language school in Tokyo, they made a big deal about learning the stroke order during the lessons (mainly cause most of the class was Chinese natives and would often write them wrong). But most of the handwritten Japanese I've seen out in the wild takes a lot of shortcuts (like the middle part of 間 being written as simply a circle with a line through it or し being a straight line basically)
I think the shortcuts are part of the reason stroke order is important. The shortcuts make more sense if you understand the stroke order the shortcuts come from. Sort of like how the い character is often written sideways. It makes sense if you understand how it is written but if you just write it like you would in English it seems weird. Edit: this from someone who doesn’t bother too much with stroke order since I binge vocabulary.
It a really good time filler for Japanese language schools and also least useful for a foreigner learning the language we be more useful to just practice texting on line chat. Only writing you need to do is filling out paperwork that is what they should practice.
Interesting, in my school in Kobe the teachers in my B1.1 level class don't seem to think stroke order is particularly important. Their position being that everyone is going to doing the majority of their writing on a computor or phone. They're much more interested in teaching us to remember readings and to be able to 'spell' in hiragana
I think stroke order is extremely important. It helps with the flow. It helps with remembering. It makes it easier to learn newer kanji that uses elements of others. It makes it easier to read a native person's handwriting that take "shortcuts" when you understand what it is coming from. Etc. Etc.
It's a tricky balance. I will say, I had Japanese teachers who focused on grammar... and it's true that I could flexibly speak and understand... limited sentences. I didn't have the vocab to apply it to my daily life, so I forgot the grammar within the span of 3 months after I finished the available classes and couldn't access others, because I struggled to use it in day-to-day life. So vocab is extremely helpful... but even knowing individual words, I noticed didn't get me understanding as much when listening/reading as when I paired it with a decent chunk of grammar. Teachers who emphasize a lot on one or the other are missing out (@.@) If you can't use it, you'll lose it.
@@lainiwakura3741 you can call that whatever you want but it is still is verb modification and you have to remember it and I have read through Dolly I can't watch the videos because I hate that fake robotic voice. I am just mentioning that there a lot of stuff to learn. For English speakers to learn functional Japanese you are going to need at least 2 years.
@@lainiwakura3741 I have tried most resources at least once except Japanese school which to me is a waste of money, since there so much stuff for free on the internet. The only thing I use now is RUclips with extensions, video games with furigana, anime in animelon and meshclass free app on phone and desktop.
I think the moral is learn a more balanced way rather than focusing on either grammar or vocab for example but rather learn them together so you can use all the things you learn properly
As someone who studied Japanese in undergrad you really nailed it!!! (And best part is, four years removed, I can still understand you (mostly) without the subtitles and I’m pretty proud of that!
Oh wow you learn for 4 years to understand everything. Ok thank you. This gives me motivation because i can understand a little bit😂 and i have learnt for 1 years 😅 i guess my goal to be fluent in 1 year is too much for me who is self studied and lazy 😂😂😂😂 i thought i was just stupid for not being able to understand a lot of Japanese when my friends speak so i feel sad or down at times but now i see people have different pace and goals i can try to stop being depressed.
@@hanayuuki790It can take a lifetime to learn a language depending on how far you want to go and what you know, how much time you have, other hobbies/other languages to learn, the difficulty of the language for non-natives, etc.
strongly disagree, you can just memorize the parts of the kanji and create mnemonics from the parts as you learn to read them. I learned 1800 kanji this way and am working my way up to jouyou kanji. I know stroke order for some of the kanji but have to look it up for most of it.
For the majority of people, I'd absolutely agree. People tend to get lazy when they can just see a character on a screen, and they won't actually properly remember it. Either way though, a passing knowledge of radicals is *hugely* beneficial. But alot of times they aren't taught 🫤
I love how you mix comedy with actual commentary and with teaching actual Japanese. I have no ear for Japanese pronunciation, but this was something even I could understand.
So basically just watch anime to learn Japanes- I love Dogen and the way he gave us advices. Just take the positive things out of all of them and you'll have a good way to learn Japanese xD
Nice positivity and mindset! XD Yeah, it’s better not to overthink somethings sometimes, like I’m looking at a list of 20 anime I plan to rewatch and spending several hours deciding what order I should rewatch them in, and ending up not watching anything because I couldn’t come up with an answer that felt right lmao And also at the point of thinking if it will be a waste of time for me to do this when I should be doing something more productive…life is so hard. Maybe I should just watch anime without thinking much about it..
You could easily learn Japanese that way provided you start with easy anime first like Doramon or Takagi-san. Then make sure have subtitles in Japanese and English. Go through the vocab and grammar and work your way up to Ghost in the Shell.
Pronunciation does certainly make a difference in English. I've came across people that had very good grammar but whenever they spoke I just heard gibberish as they pronounced every word incorrectly.
I'll have the second the Indian accent though, I once listened to a presentation but couldn't understand anything because of their thick indian accent 😭 it was like listening to a different language lol
My opinion on what’s important: - Handwriting: not important unless you want to live in Japan or do calligraphy - Kanji reading: important since Kanji are everywhere in Japan and Japanese media. I guess if you just want to watch anime without subtitles, it’s not necessary, but you’ll also have fewer learning resources without it. - grammar: important unless you just want to do very basic „where is the toilet?“ style communication on a trip and you don’t care that you sound like a caveman. Also important for understanding what’s said to you. - pronunciation: you’ll probably fine without perfect pronunciation. I understand people with weird pronunciations in my native language, but it’s something to improve later.
Hilarious and well fabricated!! I wonder how many of Japanese learners precisely understand all the jokes you made. Thanks so much for your great work😃
As someone who learnt by myself lots of vocab but forgot about grammar, grammar is the most important. It's nice to be able to understand and say lots of words, but if you can't make a sentence with them it's quite useless
My japanese japanese teacher in Germany was exactly like that. Focusing mostly on Grammar and Pronounciation to be understood. She put emphasize on stroke orders in the beginning for foundation but also said we would probably not need to write much in this day and age.
The difficulty of/time required for learning stroke order is so exaggerated. If you learn the basic rules, you can write almost every individual component, and combine those components to make characters (and hence logically derive the stroke order of a new character). It's not like you have to memorize thousands of completely independent patterns lol
I think the best approach is “most common”. All the things are important, PRONUNCIATION, vocab, grammar, reading writing listening speaking, so the best thing is to focus on the most commonly used versions of each of those. Phrase learning is my particular favorite way to learn. It’s a bit embarrassing when I’m working with younger Japanese English teachers and they’re writing the definition in japanese but can’t even remember the kanji…. 😅
Besides the hard "R" he used (a bit overboard), the only difference was incorrect pitch accent. It was how someone realistically sounds after a few years of study rather than a stereotypical "gaijin" accent. People can study Japanese for years and think they have good pronunciation because they can pronounce the vowels and consonants, but because their pitch accent is off it's actually wrong.
This accurately reflects my change in perception of what Japanese standards I want to strive for over the years.. At this point as long as I can articulate and convey anything I feel very accomplished 😅
What's painful is that even though I'm fluent, when Dogen purposely speaks worse in this video towards the end...it's pretty much how I sound, even though I get told I sound close to native level with my pronunciation too lol I'm already 20 years in (stopped actively 'learning' after I got fluent 15 years ago) and can't really fix my bad habits because of the main issue being pride (as Dogen pointed out, it's a common trap to think you're good enough at some points ("even Japanese people don't write kanji, so you don't need to do it" "Even Japanese people sometimes stutter, so you don't need to speak at a native level" , or you don't need to do certain things lol) Always being surrounded for 20 years by that kind of mentality really discouraged me. If it was the opposite way and everyone was like "Us Japanese know Kanji so good, you must write it more! " "You must speak better, I'm not going to talk to you until you improve in Japanese." Or lots of the opposite stuff, then I would be a lot better off than now. Going too easy on people learning is not healthy, if they are really serious. So I have massive respect for Dogen, and anyone that is able to have enough will power to push themselves past the bare minimum level of fluency, GG!
Well, Japanese people only need people to speak Japanese well enough to understand them. They're not like super-particular about their language like the French or something. There's no real "need" to speak perfect Japanese. Perhaps it might help some people in their careers or something.
@@takanara7 True, that’s the needs of the Japanese person. Not the needs of the individual learning or fluent in the language. You can say the same for most countries though, that the native speakers are generally happy to communicate if somebody can speak their language. But as the individual, you can get “tricked” into thinking your language ability is good enough. 日本では誉め殺しという概念があってさ、日本人は(無意識に)日本語を勉強してる人をダメ人間にする可能性が極めて高いと思います。 例えば、「こんにちは」しか言えない人に対して「日本語上手！！！」 とかすぐに言っちゃう日本人もたまに見かけます。 That’s why I think Japanese people should be a little more careful about how loosely they compliment learners… It actually makes the learners or fluent speakers feel like Japanese people don’t give a f about them at all, which can be true… I’ve lived with some that would prioritize their English speaking or learning over me using Japanese. Like I made a deal once “you can live here in America with me for free if you speak Japanese at least 50% of the time” and that person spoke English 99%. A lot of people care about their own needs first.
You should try Chinese. Chinese people are actually proud of being able to write their language instead of dismissing its importance, and they always argue about which regional accent is best.
I imagine dogen sounds so Japanese because he sounds so polite. すごく丁寧に説明してくれてる感じが良い But vocab is pretty important, there is a chasm of difference in which katakana words super native Japanese speakers understand vs Japanese speakers with some experience abroad/with English. My conversations with my family members will just stop sometimes because I don’t know the word for something in Japanese and thought a katakanaification of the English word would be understood.
If you put as much time and energy into simply studying consistently every day as you did worrying about what is the best way to study, you'd actually speak Japanese by now. Yes, that means you.
Anata would be " Native English beginner just learning Japanese", not the TA 😂. In fairness, though, the anata problem is related to a very specific quirk in the English language where you have to state the pronoun in order for your sentence to be grammatically correct.
@@TheZenomeProject Oh no, don't worry, after having two native Japanese teachers in US college, I had an American one who definitely used "anata" and also had bad enough pronunciation to make me wince while in only my third class.
@@TheZenomeProjectIs anata rude? Also, I could be wrong but I thought other European languages often require the pronoun or name to be used? At least the first time of use and then the conjugation in Spanish or French can tell you 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural and 1st person and 2nd person, etc. Japanese doesn't always require a pronoun to be used. And sometimes an object can be implied too I heard. Like, the previous sentence talked about the object and you can assumed. "I ate chocolate." "ate?" "Yes. (I) did that" Something like that. Idk.
I’ve found that bad pronunciations you pick up early in your studies will stick with you as long as you study the language. Personally, I’d say pronunciation->grammar->vocab. But as the video shows, opinions differ. (And I’d say honorifics are really just a branch of vocab.) Learn wrong, it’s hard to fix. I know from personal experience.
This was a personal attack, I actually sound almost exactly like the last one, it's a decent enough accent, but oh my is it noticeable when compared to a native speaker.
I remember my Japanese Japanese teacher that I wouldn't be studying the keigo sections of our workbook as I know even Japanase that are my age struggle with it, adding to the fact that I'm a foreigner, I would be able to get by without difficulty in most situations. She replied "But you still need to answer the questions in the exam or you won't get any points." Well, those were points I was willing to sacrifice, so I just wrote in things like 「お食べになりたいでしょうか」
@Temari_Virus お + verb stem + なる is actually accurate to keigo. It's used to describe the actions of another person. So while なる primarily means "to become", it's not in this case. お食べになりますか？ without the でしょう would probably sound more natural though 😅
Vocab is the most important aspect of Japanese (As I play JP Games and read 東方物語) Grammar in Native Japanese (国語文法) are only tools to help you distinguish between words and mere particles which is also useful for you capitalise words during conversations.
I started studying Japanese a year ago, the first year, I stick to a textbook, this year, i watch things on youtube and listen to songs, and i don’t have any restrictions or rules on what is important
I learned that vocab is not the only thing you can focus on the hard way. Cause now my vocab is at an N2 level, my grammar at an N3, and reading at an N4. Having good conversations is frustrating because it's like I know all the words, it's just that I can't always string them together well.
Imo, it's more important to identify your primary use for Japanese while learning it (talking to people, writing or reading) and focus on whichever is going to be immediately the most useful. Being able to apply your knowledge straight away is always the no1 key habit for absorbing new knowledge. As you begin passively expanding into other areas of use as your main skill improve to above-average levels then you begin to bother with learning other things, grain by grain. There's no need to rush. Just focus on doing one thing well and consistently at first, and the rest will follow.
"Be resolute [ ] and rise to the challenge" is the most important thing said in this video concerning learning Japense haha (true for many other things as well ;-) )
My Japanese teacher (German University): "Yes, welcome to Japanese 1. Okay, so you're expected to do everything perfectly, otherwise you won't be able to do pass the tests. You need to be able to write and read every single kanji, know every honorific, grammar and vocab. Oh yeah, I expect you to know Hiragana and Katakana until next week."
(English protip - in that last sentence, we would say "by" or maybe "before" instead of "until". "Until next week" implies that next week is an end point, that you no longer need that knowledge after next week. "Until" generally means that the situation changes after the time mentioned.)
@@icemuckbanggg That actually is a good prerequisite because not knowing that slows down the language acquisition. Writing Kanji on the other hand is dogwater they should instead teach you how to fill out forms in Japanese that what you really need to know.
And don't forget: Japanese is more like a coloring book than a technical drawing! (I'm German. German is VERY "technical drawing".) I seriously struggle with all of that Japanese "grammar" that's about nothing but conveying some kind of social/emotional context... That's the part that feels like "coloring book". It's like there's that part of a sentence that's like the outlines and then there's parts that are like colors and it's a massive difference if you color something yellow, blue or purple... yet, it's still showing the same imagine. It just FEELS different. So, if you'd ask me what's most important: If you're visibly foreign: they'll forgive you if you're not the right kind of polite. If you're visibly foreign: they'll forgive you if your vocabulary is that of a five year old. They'll still be thrilled you're making the effort and praise you like you're a five year old. If you're visibly foreign, they'll forgive you if your overall sentence structure possesses the complexity of a crumpled but blank sheet of paper. Praise the maker for smartphones, cause: Kanji-cheatmode. But what you REALLY want to avoid is accidentally stepping onto someone's toes just because you filled out the children's drawing of a three-legged cat-dog-monster you call a "proper sentence with solid grammar and vocabulary" in the wrong fucking color!
I can comfortably watch anime in the original Japanese without subtitles. I have no idea what they're saying, but I feel comfortable about that. I also think basic honorifics are enough. If you can "masu" and "desu" with the gang, that's all you really need. So what if you don't know the proper vocabulary for speaking with the emperor? Everyone thinks you're an uncouth barbarian anyway, and the Emperor isn't going to show up at your hotel room looking for a friendly game of cards.
僕の一番弱いポイントは語彙です。 自分の話でSynonym使わなくでも他の人とか本とか音楽は使うことがあるよ。 My biggest weak point is vocabulary. Even if I don't personally use different synonyms, other people, books, music, etc, still use them.
My gosh though, no one told me about the vocab problem in second languages, and it has been what holds me back for years. I was all grammar and pronunciation, but turns out that gets you nowhere when you have the lexicon of a 5 year old
I'd actually be interested if the speaker's language/place of origin has a common set of pronunciation foibles when speaking Japanese. Is there specifically American accented Japanese vs German or French?
Definitely. Learners of a foreign language will always use at first the pitch accent or stress system of their own language because it's just natural for them. For example, the French language has no pitch accent like in Japanese and no lexical stress like in English, words are stressed on the last syllable only if the person talking wants to put emphasis on them. So basically a French speaking Japanese will have a very flat accent (i.e. the sentence will start with a heiban but the pitch will be blocked on high until the end of the sentence) and sometimes throw in odakas at seemingly random places. Likewise, an American will never use heibans, will extensively use atamadakas because they are very common in English, and pronounce every vowel like a diphthong.
Absolutely there is. Check a video titled this for example: "ツルネン・マルテイ参院議員「原発は時代遅れ」参院2/1" it's Martti Turunen (Japanified Marutei Tsurunen), a Finn who moved to Japan and managed to become a politician there. Can he speak the language? Yes. But his accent is painfully Finnish.
Today I went to a calligraphy workshop at an anime convention and I realized that after studying Japanese for 2.5 years, I can still barely physically write any words...
Oh gee. I felt it a little bit in my bones. The foreign accent. But you know what? We all start soemwhere right? As long as you make an effort to improve and dont mind making mistakes its all good. I tried learning Korean and Japanese in H.S. i ended being more familiar with russian when i went to military labguage school. I had SO MUCH FUN there
Japanese pronunciation is less simple than it looks, but obviously it is less difficult for someone who speaks a Latin language than for an English speaker.
For me who learns Japanese for the sake of speaking and reading: Kanji strokes and order never crosses my mind and i cant even write the. Lmaoooo can read them though. But true i focus on the others instead but for now mainly vocab and grammar since from total beginner perspective thats most important if you know basic pronunciations.
You need a bit of everything to be successful with a new language, but I do think vocab is the first a most important thing a student should learn. A language is meant to understand and be understood and its impossible to do so with only grammar, accent or stroke order, but not so impossible when you only have vocab
Oop other than the obvious American “r” sound, the last one is what I sound like 😅 my school, like many others, didn’t really emphasize pronunciation so I have no idea where the pitch accents should be 99% of the time 🤦♀️ especially since I’m better at reading than listening
I'm the weirdo that thinks everything is important, and, considering japanese rigid hierarchical system, I think it's extremely wise to be very good with keigo, foreigner or not.
i'd say vocab is the most important but if you don't have the grammar you can't use it you need to be able to use the most common grammar patterns and know basic grammar at least and continue acquiring less common grammar slowly with time be curious about pronounciation too in the end all are important 😆
Stroke order is actually even more important now that we use smartphones: onlinebdictionaries base their research on how you write the strokes, not how the kanji looks like
I ordered one of your 土手 hoodies from Spring on April 7th. I contacted them on May 4th because it still hadn't shipped and they told me it was being processed. It still hasn't shipped over a month and a half after ordering. If you're considering Dogen merch, DO NOT order it. Dogen, I strongly recommend finding a different supplier. Spring is absolutely abysmal.
You know, there comes a point where Dogen's content is less hilarious and more anxiety-inducing.
Well I think it's pretty accurate here. I've heard pretty much all of this advice from one person or another.
@@AzraNoxxthat’s the point, if everyone tells you to start with something different it’s really hard to start lmao
@@SirHippolord Ah. I suppose so. It seems more like the overall advice is: "Start with one or maybe two parts of the language. Pick them based on what will be most useful to you."
For example, I mostly use Japanese in anime and books. So I only really needed grammar and then vocabulary to start with. The subtitles helped me start picking up more and more words. And the grammar let me understand what was going on in general.
Many people think that your learning experience should be free of any anxiety, embarrassment, or stress, and thats just not realistic in my opinion. I've only tended to feel this way when I wasn't making progress, so the key for me was to focus on making progress instead of worrying about things I couldn't control.
That was actually hilarious.
as a Japanese, your broken accent is still too good though
His bad Japanese is definitely not fresh off the boat hahaha, more like someone that's lived in Japan for between 5-10 years.
I love that we've gotten to the point of criticising his bad Japanese as there is basically nothing left to say about his good Japanese 😂🤣
YowRow sheeKu oneygaiShiMasuu
@@bladepanthera It's funny that you mention this, because a lot of times my native speaking mother can point out very subtle things about Dogen's real Japanese pronunciation that sound foreign to her, but simultaneously she says that it's no different listening to him than someone with a regional accent.
@@TheZenomeProject i noticed too that some japanese people have some strange accents that almost make them sound like how an american foreigner would sound if their accent was only ~20% as strong as usual
it's weird, but I only listen to certain Japanese people with specific accents for that reason
Dogen thinks he's slick with the last section, but we all know that no Japanese learner ignorant of pitch accent would _ever_ use heiban. It's BEnkyou or nothing.
My sides hurt.
Technic sensei ! Thanks for the precious lessons on discord ! Take care !
The more you drill on Greek, Latin & Anglo-Saxon accent patterns, the more conscious of them you become . .. and the more you will catch yourself unconsciously IMPORTING those patterns into your Japanese.
I've actually been in that situation before where I had a fairly large vocabulary in a language but awful pronunciation and had to go back and study the pronunciation again more carefully.
Was it French?
Pronunciation is often overlooked and more useful than people think. It improves not only speaking, but also listening and vocabulary retention. It pays revisiting it once in a while and improving it incrementally, as it's relatively cheap to do compared to other things.
I'm in the opposite situation. My pronunciation is decently close to native and my grammar is above average for a second language speaker, but I get stumped on the most basic vocab because I mostly learned in academic environments.
Pronunciation is the most difficult thing to learn in a new language. Because most of the sounds of one language are not used in your own language and are even difficult to hear for you. And if you cannot hear it, you also cannot pronounce it. There are thousands of tones of white and each one of them can have a name and a characteristic, but you still see "just white".
Of course, pronunciation is key for listening: known the correct sound of a word make you able to distinguish one word from another. But you can build up your listening skills with time, as well as you can build your vocab knowledge with time.
At the beginning, I was a total fan of grammar. I like grammar, I love to study grammar, and I thought it was really important to understand the foundation of grammar to understand a language. Now I think vocab is more important, specially with languages far from your native language. I feel a great satisfaction when I understand one new word in my target language. Just a basic knowledge of grammar (sov/svo, conjugation...) and then just jump to vocab (with some limitations, you don't need 200 words for "water" on the first week and I doubt in general speaking you need to know how to say 'kangaroo' in Japanese).
At the end, in social media, people really mess up with writing all the time and no one cares, just non-natives try to apologize all the time for not having their grammar and spelling all correct.
@@crediblesalamander8056 You'll pick it up eventually through osmosis by just being casual with native speakers
Is that even a comedy skit? Dogen is just straight up spitting facts 😁😁😁
Reality is often funny.
It really is very goal and purpose dependent. Honestly Dogen’s making fun of his accent in the last little clip, but any Japanese person will easily understand him and with that level having any conversation with a native on any topic would be no problem, the only issue is you will sound foreign.
For most of us studying Japanese, sounding like a foreigner isn’t a huge concern, and being able to understand and be understood is the major focus.
But there are people who strive for this native level fluency and pronunciation, and if that’s your goal then you do have to focus more on that aspect, and that’s valid as well.
Well said. The majority of people aim to understand and be understood. When that is completely not an issue anymore, then you can/should focus on how native you want to sound, how difficult you want your sentences (and the words you use) to be, etc.
@@Kaparzoif someone strives to sound native, then it's easier to focus on pronunciation from the beginning (muscle memory).
@@musical.theory except that’s easier said than done when the more you learn japanese, the more you understand that you should do more to be understood. People might say “in hindsight, i should’ve focused on sounding native after years of studying japanese”, but that’s really only a privilege talented people have. Normal people like me who forget words when actually talking to japanese people would rather be understood first even though we really want to sound native.
@* user like I said it depends on the individual. I don’t think it’s wrong to focus on one thing or another if you enjoy it and if it motivates you to keep learning. Some people love learning kanji, others hate it and would rather focus on speaking… others just want to read manga, others want to be conversational with a friend etc.
Which is why if what you’re doing is putting you closer to your goals then that’s great and you should continue doing it, but for some people another approach might work better or they would rather focus on different things.
@* user talk again in 5 years, it's easy just state these things
Great example of how although there are certain priorities for learning which will help more than others, your objectives when learning a language should shift depending on what your own personal goals with the language are as those will alter said priorities
Drift!!! I'm trying just to have basic conversational skills so I can communicate with people out in the world. I'm not trying to remember 2774356 stroke orders of 感じ
So what kind of priorities would you have if you want to speak languages if you want to speak the language on a philosophical level? As in, you want to speak about the human condition in said language and it requires a vast diction to do so.🤔
@@s70driver2005 I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be 漢字, not 感じ.
@@Williamatics see what I mean!! 🫠
@@eddietuggles3679 saving up funds to move to japan for life
Hot take of the day: stroke order is important to learn specifically so you can look up kanji that you don't know on your smartphone. A lot of times the camera scanner doesn't pick it up, and if you're drawing it with your finger, kanji dictionary apps like jishop narrow down the options based on stroke order and how far apart/long lines are relative to each other, not what the finished kanji actually looks like
At least on your phone, rather than jisho's search function use a japanese draw keyboard. It doesn't require proper stroke order to work (at least google keyboard). I generally go down and to the right, but I don't write a single kanji correctly and get the right one almost every time.
Another tip, buy any of those drawing tablets. They are not just for drawing, writting kanji on them is great if you often study on your pc.
I like to use google translate and draw the kanji. The stroke order doesn't matter for it in Google translate.
What level of Jouzu do I need to achieve to speak broken Japanese on purpose?
Just use the wrong particles.
The one and only important question
3rd one is my Japanese Japanese teacher in Germany with the exception that she's a lot less polite about it 😂 she straight up makes you repeat a word 15 times if the pitch accent is wrong bc otherwise it sounds "disgusting"☠
Yeah...'teachers' like that can just march right off. Perfect is the enemy of good while you're working on the basics. That should be delivered as a side note to the student and then the student can decide if that's a personal priority in their ongoing studies.
@@yagisencho Disagree completely. Maybe they can deliver their message more politely/more encouragingly, but we need more Japanese teachers who treat pitch accent as an important part of the phonology. The way most teachers teach now should be considered nearly as ridiculous as teaching Chinese without tones.
tbh I'm not a beginner anymore (preparing for N2 currently) and otherwise she's a good teacher bc she's got a linguistics doctor. But she doesn't really have any pedagogy experience (I'm a foreign language teacher myself) and especially for the beginners it's hard not to get discouraged (I've taken both beginner and higher level classes with her and several people quit really early on.). But it just shows that you need language expertise as well as pedagogical knowledge.
As another German I need to know where you study! I only studied at VHS and courses were really slow and nobody cares about pronunciation in the slightest. I‘m in a B-level course and some people still can’t speak a Japanese l/r or j 😭
I personally never learned pitch accent. The Japanese people I talked to understood me and so far I‘m happy with that. Maybe I‘ll work on it later. But I‘d really like to know where teachers care about that. Maybe I‘ll sign up there too one day.
Ey that gives me Russian school flashbacks.
In my Japanese language school in Tokyo, they made a big deal about learning the stroke order during the lessons (mainly cause most of the class was Chinese natives and would often write them wrong). But most of the handwritten Japanese I've seen out in the wild takes a lot of shortcuts (like the middle part of 間 being written as simply a circle with a line through it or し being a straight line basically)
I think the shortcuts are part of the reason stroke order is important. The shortcuts make more sense if you understand the stroke order the shortcuts come from. Sort of like how the い character is often written sideways. It makes sense if you understand how it is written but if you just write it like you would in English it seems weird.
Edit: this from someone who doesn’t bother too much with stroke order since I binge vocabulary.
It a really good time filler for Japanese language schools and also least useful for a foreigner learning the language we be more useful to just practice texting on line chat. Only writing you need to do is filling out paperwork that is what they should practice.
Interesting, in my school in Kobe the teachers in my B1.1 level class don't seem to think stroke order is particularly important. Their position being that everyone is going to doing the majority of their writing on a computor or phone. They're much more interested in teaching us to remember readings and to be able to 'spell' in hiragana
@@ramel684 Pretty good school by the sound of it.
I think stroke order is extremely important. It helps with the flow. It helps with remembering. It makes it easier to learn newer kanji that uses elements of others. It makes it easier to read a native person's handwriting that take "shortcuts" when you understand what it is coming from. Etc. Etc.
As a college freshman who always tells people the secret to Japanese proficiency is vocab, I feel very called out
It's a tricky balance. I will say, I had Japanese teachers who focused on grammar... and it's true that I could flexibly speak and understand... limited sentences. I didn't have the vocab to apply it to my daily life, so I forgot the grammar within the span of 3 months after I finished the available classes and couldn't access others, because I struggled to use it in day-to-day life.
So vocab is extremely helpful... but even knowing individual words, I noticed didn't get me understanding as much when listening/reading as when I paired it with a decent chunk of grammar. Teachers who emphasize a lot on one or the other are missing out (@.@) If you can't use it, you'll lose it.
Vocab plus conjugation there around 100 ways to conjugate a verb more or less.
Are you fluent in Japanese?
@@lainiwakura3741 you can call that whatever you want but it is still is verb modification and you have to remember it and I have read through Dolly I can't watch the videos because I hate that fake robotic voice. I am just mentioning that there a lot of stuff to learn. For English speakers to learn functional Japanese you are going to need at least 2 years.
@@lainiwakura3741 I have tried most resources at least once except Japanese school which to me is a waste of money, since there so much stuff for free on the internet. The only thing I use now is RUclips with extensions, video games with furigana, anime in animelon and meshclass free app on phone and desktop.
So basically, choose what works best for you, do your best, and cross your fingers. 😂
Also it depends on what your goals are of course.
I think the moral is learn a more balanced way rather than focusing on either grammar or vocab for example but rather learn them together so you can use all the things you learn properly
the last one was so discomforting it almost made me HURL
覚悟して、勉強に挑め is my new catchphrase
As someone who studied Japanese in undergrad you really nailed it!!! (And best part is, four years removed, I can still understand you (mostly) without the subtitles and I’m pretty proud of that!
Oh wow you learn for 4 years to understand everything. Ok thank you. This gives me motivation because i can understand a little bit😂 and i have learnt for 1 years 😅 i guess my goal to be fluent in 1 year is too much for me who is self studied and lazy 😂😂😂😂 i thought i was just stupid for not being able to understand a lot of Japanese when my friends speak so i feel sad or down at times but now i see people have different pace and goals i can try to stop being depressed.
hey that's awesome!! 🎉
@@hanayuuki790It can take a lifetime to learn a language depending on how far you want to go and what you know, how much time you have, other hobbies/other languages to learn, the difficulty of the language for non-natives, etc.
2:31 had me laughing 😂😂
One of the best teachers that can make you laugh while you learn- keep it up! ^^
But actually, knowing stroke order turns kanji from a blob of lines to things that actually make sense. For memory, writing kanji is important.
strongly disagree, you can just memorize the parts of the kanji and create mnemonics from the parts as you learn to read them. I learned 1800 kanji this way and am working my way up to jouyou kanji. I know stroke order for some of the kanji but have to look it up for most of it.
For the majority of people, I'd absolutely agree. People tend to get lazy when they can just see a character on a screen, and they won't actually properly remember it.
Either way though, a passing knowledge of radicals is *hugely* beneficial. But alot of times they aren't taught 🫤
Capitalizing random characters to emphasize what a flawed pitch-accent 'feels like' in English was a great touch😄
I love how you mix comedy with actual commentary and with teaching actual Japanese. I have no ear for Japanese pronunciation, but this was something even I could understand.
So basically just watch anime to learn Japanes-
I love Dogen and the way he gave us advices. Just take the positive things out of all of them and you'll have a good way to learn Japanese xD
Nice positivity and mindset! XD
Yeah, it’s better not to overthink somethings sometimes, like I’m looking at a list of 20 anime I plan to rewatch and spending several hours deciding what order I should rewatch them in, and ending up not watching anything because I couldn’t come up with an answer that felt right lmao
And also at the point of thinking if it will be a waste of time for me to do this when I should be doing something more productive…life is so hard. Maybe I should just watch anime without thinking much about it..
You could easily learn Japanese that way provided you start with easy anime first like Doramon or Takagi-san. Then make sure have subtitles in Japanese and English. Go through the vocab and grammar and work your way up to Ghost in the Shell.
Pronunciation does certainly make a difference in English. I've came across people that had very good grammar but whenever they spoke I just heard gibberish as they pronounced every word incorrectly.
What country were they from ? Usually for me thick Indian accents can be the most difficult to understand.
@@southcoastinventors6583 China mostly.
I'll have the second the Indian accent though, I once listened to a presentation but couldn't understand anything because of their thick indian accent 😭 it was like listening to a different language lol
@@Croz89 Japan too.
@@southcoastinventors6583Trying to pick out what is being said by Indian tech support is so hard.
And having to ask them to repeat themselves.
Love how it comes full circle at the end xD
My opinion on what’s important:
- Handwriting: not important unless you want to live in Japan or do calligraphy
- Kanji reading: important since Kanji are everywhere in Japan and Japanese media. I guess if you just want to watch anime without subtitles, it’s not necessary, but you’ll also have fewer learning resources without it.
- grammar: important unless you just want to do very basic „where is the toilet?“ style communication on a trip and you don’t care that you sound like a caveman. Also important for understanding what’s said to you.
- pronunciation: you’ll probably fine without perfect pronunciation. I understand people with weird pronunciations in my native language, but it’s something to improve later.
おもしろい。日本語は自然に話せるからと思う。しかし、相手の言葉を受けいれるためにやっぱ単語。漢字が読めなくても単語をマスターした化物もいるらしいが、個人的には読み能力があればすごく助かるとおもう。みんなそれぞれだから自分なりにしか道がないとおもってしまう。
thanks dogen. amazing differences in opinions between different teachers.
Hilarious and well fabricated!! I wonder how many of Japanese learners precisely understand all the jokes you made. Thanks so much for your great work😃
As someone who learnt by myself lots of vocab but forgot about grammar, grammar is the most important.
It's nice to be able to understand and say lots of words, but if you can't make a sentence with them it's quite useless
"be resolute and rise to the challenge" actually sounds really noble and motivating.
My japanese japanese teacher in Germany was exactly like that.
Focusing mostly on Grammar and Pronounciation to be understood. She put emphasize on stroke orders in the beginning for foundation but also said we would probably not need to write much in this day and age.
The difficulty of/time required for learning stroke order is so exaggerated. If you learn the basic rules, you can write almost every individual component, and combine those components to make characters (and hence logically derive the stroke order of a new character). It's not like you have to memorize thousands of completely independent patterns lol
This is sooo good!!
This was accurate af 😅. The last part had me wheezing 😂
I think the best approach is “most common”. All the things are important, PRONUNCIATION, vocab, grammar, reading writing listening speaking, so the best thing is to focus on the most commonly used versions of each of those. Phrase learning is my particular favorite way to learn.
It’s a bit embarrassing when I’m working with younger Japanese English teachers and they’re writing the definition in japanese but can’t even remember the kanji…. 😅
That awkward moment when you can't tell the difference between normal Dogen and the end-part Dogen
Besides the hard "R" he used (a bit overboard), the only difference was incorrect pitch accent. It was how someone realistically sounds after a few years of study rather than a stereotypical "gaijin" accent. People can study Japanese for years and think they have good pronunciation because they can pronounce the vowels and consonants, but because their pitch accent is off it's actually wrong.
The Japanese Japanese teacher in Japan's speaking with the extra はい thrown in there was too good hahahaha.
Thanks for the video :)
Why I feel like every of four characters gives mixed signals
動画の内容は日本語なのに、タイトルもコメントも英語だらけなの面白い！
got it, I'll stick with just vocab for another 3 years. thanks!
This accurately reflects my change in perception of what Japanese standards I want to strive for over the years..
At this point as long as I can articulate and convey anything I feel very accomplished 😅
What's painful is that even though I'm fluent, when Dogen purposely speaks worse in this video towards the end...it's pretty much how I sound, even though I get told I sound close to native level with my pronunciation too lol
I'm already 20 years in (stopped actively 'learning' after I got fluent 15 years ago) and can't really fix my bad habits because of the main issue being pride (as Dogen pointed out, it's a common trap to think you're good enough at some points ("even Japanese people don't write kanji, so you don't need to do it" "Even Japanese people sometimes stutter, so you don't need to speak at a native level" , or you don't need to do certain things lol)
Always being surrounded for 20 years by that kind of mentality really discouraged me. If it was the opposite way and everyone was like "Us Japanese know Kanji so good, you must write it more! " "You must speak better, I'm not going to talk to you until you improve in Japanese." Or lots of the opposite stuff, then I would be a lot better off than now. Going too easy on people learning is not healthy, if they are really serious.
So I have massive respect for Dogen, and anyone that is able to have enough will power to push themselves past the bare minimum level of fluency, GG!
Well, Japanese people only need people to speak Japanese well enough to understand them. They're not like super-particular about their language like the French or something. There's no real "need" to speak perfect Japanese. Perhaps it might help some people in their careers or something.
@@takanara7 True, that’s the needs of the Japanese person. Not the needs of the individual learning or fluent in the language.
You can say the same for most countries though, that the native speakers are generally happy to communicate if somebody can speak their language.
But as the individual, you can get “tricked” into thinking your language ability is good enough.
日本では誉め殺しという概念があってさ、日本人は(無意識に)日本語を勉強してる人をダメ人間にする可能性が極めて高いと思います。
例えば、「こんにちは」しか言えない人に対して「日本語上手！！！」
とかすぐに言っちゃう日本人もたまに見かけます。
That’s why I think Japanese people should be a little more careful about how loosely they compliment learners…
It actually makes the learners or fluent speakers feel like Japanese people don’t give a f about them at all, which can be true…
I’ve lived with some that would prioritize their English speaking or learning over me using Japanese. Like I made a deal once “you can live here in America with me for free if you speak Japanese at least 50% of the time” and that person spoke English 99%. A lot of people care about their own needs first.
You should try Chinese. Chinese people are actually proud of being able to write their language instead of dismissing its importance, and they always argue about which regional accent is best.
20 years is insane
I imagine dogen sounds so Japanese because he sounds so polite. すごく丁寧に説明してくれてる感じが良い
But vocab is pretty important, there is a chasm of difference in which katakana words super native Japanese speakers understand vs Japanese speakers with some experience abroad/with English. My conversations with my family members will just stop sometimes because I don’t know the word for something in Japanese and thought a katakanaification of the English word would be understood.
Solid grasp on all four quarters of the elephant there, Dogen.
If you put as much time and energy into simply studying consistently every day as you did worrying about what is the best way to study, you'd actually speak Japanese by now. Yes, that means you.
ﾏｱｿｳﾃﾞｽﾈが日本人すぎる
The Ultimate Dilemma
I'm just waiting for the "anata" coming out of the American in America sensei.
Anata would be " Native English beginner just learning Japanese", not the TA 😂. In fairness, though, the anata problem is related to a very specific quirk in the English language where you have to state the pronoun in order for your sentence to be grammatically correct.
@@TheZenomeProject Oh no, don't worry, after having two native Japanese teachers in US college, I had an American one who definitely used "anata" and also had bad enough pronunciation to make me wince while in only my third class.
@@TheZenomeProjectIs anata rude?
Also, I could be wrong but I thought other European languages often require the pronoun or name to be used? At least the first time of use and then the conjugation in Spanish or French can tell you 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural and 1st person and 2nd person, etc.
Japanese doesn't always require a pronoun to be used.
And sometimes an object can be implied too I heard. Like, the previous sentence talked about the object and you can assumed.
"I ate chocolate."
"ate?"
"Yes. (I) did that"
Something like that. Idk.
I’ve found that bad pronunciations you pick up early in your studies will stick with you as long as you study the language. Personally, I’d say pronunciation->grammar->vocab. But as the video shows, opinions differ. (And I’d say honorifics are really just a branch of vocab.) Learn wrong, it’s hard to fix. I know from personal experience.
This was a personal attack, I actually sound almost exactly like the last one, it's a decent enough accent, but oh my is it noticeable when compared to a native speaker.
This is crazy relatable, wow.
I remember my Japanese Japanese teacher that I wouldn't be studying the keigo sections of our workbook as I know even Japanase that are my age struggle with it, adding to the fact that I'm a foreigner, I would be able to get by without difficulty in most situations. She replied "But you still need to answer the questions in the exam or you won't get any points."
Well, those were points I was willing to sacrifice, so I just wrote in things like 「お食べになりたいでしょうか」
Savage 😂
What you wrote basically translates to "Would you like to become an eat?" lmao
@Temari_Virus お + verb stem + なる is actually accurate to keigo. It's used to describe the actions of another person.
So while なる primarily means "to become", it's not in this case.
お食べになりますか？ without the でしょう would probably sound more natural though 😅
@@SadistModeOn And here I thought お was only put before nouns. No wonder even Japanese people don't know how to use keigo properly
The ideal answer may have been one that used 召し上がる
example 店内で召し上がりますか。
All is now crystal clear.
Vocab is the most important aspect of Japanese (As I play JP Games and read 東方物語)
Grammar in Native Japanese (国語文法) are only tools to help you distinguish between words and mere particles which is also useful for you capitalise words during conversations.
I started studying Japanese a year ago, the first year, I stick to a textbook, this year, i watch things on youtube and listen to songs, and i don’t have any restrictions or rules on what is important
これは英語学習で逆のことが起きてそう
それなああ
I learned that vocab is not the only thing you can focus on the hard way. Cause now my vocab is at an N2 level, my grammar at an N3, and reading at an N4. Having good conversations is frustrating because it's like I know all the words, it's just that I can't always string them together well.
Hey, Dogen's right! All about vocab!
Imo, it's more important to identify your primary use for Japanese while learning it (talking to people, writing or reading) and focus on whichever is going to be immediately the most useful. Being able to apply your knowledge straight away is always the no1 key habit for absorbing new knowledge. As you begin passively expanding into other areas of use as your main skill improve to above-average levels then you begin to bother with learning other things, grain by grain. There's no need to rush. Just focus on doing one thing well and consistently at first, and the rest will follow.
LMAO Dogen the last section of Japanese was like hearing nails scratch against a chalkboard. A+
"Be resolute [ ] and rise to the challenge" is the most important thing said in this video concerning learning Japense haha (true for many other things as well ;-) )
Grammar or Vocab? Jokes on you. The answer is YES.
My Japanese teacher (German University):
"Yes, welcome to Japanese 1. Okay, so you're expected to do everything perfectly, otherwise you won't be able to do pass the tests. You need to be able to write and read every single kanji, know every honorific, grammar and vocab.
Oh yeah, I expect you to know Hiragana and Katakana until next week."
yes my university was that way too lol except hiragana and katakana were a prerequisite. They assumed u knew it before entry.
(English protip - in that last sentence, we would say "by" or maybe "before" instead of "until". "Until next week" implies that next week is an end point, that you no longer need that knowledge after next week. "Until" generally means that the situation changes after the time mentioned.)
@@mac5565 Thanks! (German speaker myself)
@@icemuckbanggg That actually is a good prerequisite because not knowing that slows down the language acquisition. Writing Kanji on the other hand is dogwater they should instead teach you how to fill out forms in Japanese that what you really need to know.
And don't forget: Japanese is more like a coloring book than a technical drawing!
(I'm German. German is VERY "technical drawing".)
I seriously struggle with all of that Japanese "grammar" that's about nothing but conveying some kind of social/emotional context... That's the part that feels like "coloring book". It's like there's that part of a sentence that's like the outlines and then there's parts that are like colors and it's a massive difference if you color something yellow, blue or purple... yet, it's still showing the same imagine. It just FEELS different.
So, if you'd ask me what's most important:
If you're visibly foreign: they'll forgive you if you're not the right kind of polite.
If you're visibly foreign: they'll forgive you if your vocabulary is that of a five year old. They'll still be thrilled you're making the effort and praise you like you're a five year old.
If you're visibly foreign, they'll forgive you if your overall sentence structure possesses the complexity of a crumpled but blank sheet of paper.
Praise the maker for smartphones, cause: Kanji-cheatmode.
But what you REALLY want to avoid is accidentally stepping onto someone's toes just because you filled out the children's drawing of a three-legged cat-dog-monster you call a "proper sentence with solid grammar and vocabulary" in the wrong fucking color!
why did you swear?
I can comfortably watch anime in the original Japanese without subtitles.
I have no idea what they're saying, but I feel comfortable about that.
I also think basic honorifics are enough. If you can "masu" and "desu" with the gang, that's all you really need. So what if you don't know the proper vocabulary for speaking with the emperor? Everyone thinks you're an uncouth barbarian anyway, and the Emperor isn't going to show up at your hotel room looking for a friendly game of cards.
Dont think for a moment that we didnt get you changed accents, cause we did! And its accurate and funny as hell 😂
僕の一番弱いポイントは語彙です。
自分の話でSynonym使わなくでも他の人とか本とか音楽は使うことがあるよ。
My biggest weak point is vocabulary. Even if I don't personally use different synonyms, other people, books, music, etc, still use them.
2:29 example: Sora the Troll
I haven't watched him in ages, so don't remember what he sounds like. He's not Japanese?
@@Koospa He's definitely Japanese. A lot of his skits involve a foreigner speaking Japanese hence the 2:29 similarities.
@@makaijin ah okay, I got super confused :D Thanks for clearing that up
@@Koospa there's also a recent inside joke about him secretly being an American. Its dumb, but he kinda leaned into it for a few skits recently.
@@Koospa Him being American is basically a meme on his channel, because his English is "too good" to be Japanese
I agree that the first goal is able to verbally convey complex thoughts. The rest could be improved along the way
My gosh though, no one told me about the vocab problem in second languages, and it has been what holds me back for years. I was all grammar and pronunciation, but turns out that gets you nowhere when you have the lexicon of a 5 year old
I'd actually be interested if the speaker's language/place of origin has a common set of pronunciation foibles when speaking Japanese. Is there specifically American accented Japanese vs German or French?
Definitely. Learners of a foreign language will always use at first the pitch accent or stress system of their own language because it's just natural for them.
For example, the French language has no pitch accent like in Japanese and no lexical stress like in English, words are stressed on the last syllable only if the person talking wants to put emphasis on them. So basically a French speaking Japanese will have a very flat accent (i.e. the sentence will start with a heiban but the pitch will be blocked on high until the end of the sentence) and sometimes throw in odakas at seemingly random places.
Likewise, an American will never use heibans, will extensively use atamadakas because they are very common in English, and pronounce every vowel like a diphthong.
@@XPJ38 thanks for the info!
Absolutely there is. Check a video titled this for example: "ツルネン・マルテイ参院議員「原発は時代遅れ」参院2/1" it's Martti Turunen (Japanified Marutei Tsurunen), a Finn who moved to Japan and managed to become a politician there. Can he speak the language? Yes. But his accent is painfully Finnish.
Today I went to a calligraphy workshop at an anime convention and I realized that after studying Japanese for 2.5 years, I can still barely physically write any words...
After the articulation of the first examples, that college sophomore one made my ears go wuuuuht~
Dogen calling out our priorities on that last one-
Oh gee. I felt it a little bit in my bones. The foreign accent. But you know what? We all start soemwhere right? As long as you make an effort to improve and dont mind making mistakes its all good. I tried learning Korean and Japanese in H.S. i ended being more familiar with russian when i went to military labguage school. I had SO MUCH FUN there
Japanese pronunciation is less simple than it looks, but obviously it is less difficult for someone who speaks a Latin language than for an English speaker.
どんな人だろう around 2:30 killed me XD
Dude if you ever need a clip to explain why pitch is important, that whole last segment was perfect [read:Painful]
Japan TA Dogen seems to be a guy I would follow.
Nice little touch adding english aspirated consonants when making an american accent.
I don't actually speak Japanese yet, but even I could tell how weird and disfigured that final speech example felt.
For me who learns Japanese for the sake of speaking and reading: Kanji strokes and order never crosses my mind and i cant even write the. Lmaoooo can read them though. But true i focus on the others instead but for now mainly vocab and grammar since from total beginner perspective thats most important if you know basic pronunciations.
I would love to see a interviews with you on the asian boss channel :3
You need a bit of everything to be successful with a new language, but I do think vocab is the first a most important thing a student should learn. A language is meant to understand and be understood and its impossible to do so with only grammar, accent or stroke order, but not so impossible when you only have vocab
Oop other than the obvious American “r” sound, the last one is what I sound like 😅 my school, like many others, didn’t really emphasize pronunciation so I have no idea where the pitch accents should be 99% of the time 🤦♀️ especially since I’m better at reading than listening
I'm the weirdo that thinks everything is important, and, considering japanese rigid hierarchical system, I think it's extremely wise to be very good with keigo, foreigner or not.
i'd say vocab is the most important but if you don't have the grammar you can't use it
you need to be able to use the most common grammar patterns and know basic grammar at least
and continue acquiring less common grammar slowly with time
be curious about pronounciation too
in the end all are important 😆
Why is my anxiety getting triggered ? This is a work of art.
Even before the smartphone era people depended on machines to write Kanji (wapuro, PC, etc.)
...Wait that last bit was so impressive what the hell?
TA Dogen's opinion is probably what many of us (who started studying Japanese from Anime) also believe.
This summarizes my struggles as a Japanese teacher perfectly haha
I binge vocabulary and holler anime songs for pronounciation 😂😂
Stroke order is actually even more important now that we use smartphones: onlinebdictionaries base their research on how you write the strokes, not how the kanji looks like
This is really funny! I have a Japanese Japanese teacher, but in the United States. She teaches like the American example in this video 😂
she uses anime vocab?
I ordered one of your 土手 hoodies from Spring on April 7th. I contacted them on May 4th because it still hadn't shipped and they told me it was being processed. It still hasn't shipped over a month and a half after ordering. If you're considering Dogen merch, DO NOT order it. Dogen, I strongly recommend finding a different supplier. Spring is absolutely abysmal.
I'm not aware of my bad pronunciation until TA Dogen gave me reality check
I just started my Japanese major and this made me laugh way too hard
How many personas within the Dogen are we up to now??
Remember to do your anki everyday.