Vianime

This guide is especially intended for Japanese learners who watch anime, but practically anyone can learn from this advice, as well.

Start with Names

The most basic thing you can do to improve your comprehension is to listen to characters’ names being spoken in Japanese. It may seem odd to you, but names will actually sound very different from how they’re spoken in English (or other languages).

For example, Edward Elric becomes EDOWA-DO ERURIKU. Think that’ll sound the same in Japanese as in English? You’re probably in for a surprise!

Also, watch out for Japanese words that were originally English. For example, AISU KUREAMU. What do you think that is? Yes, it’s an English word. It’s “ice cream”! When you listen for words like this in anime, you’ll start getting a feel for how things sound in Japanese. This is really the most difficult barrier to penetrate at the beginning.

Try to work out how your own name might sound in Japanese. The names of your friends and family. This is an interesting exercise, and useful too.

Once you know how words are pronounced in another language, you can basically figure out anything you hear as long as you have a dictionary!

So work on honing your ear. It is very important.

Focus on Words you Know

When you’ve learned a few words and started watching subtitled anime, it’s easy to stress out and think:

“I’ll never be able to understand the entire thing! They’re speaking so fast! How on earth is that long dialogue supposed to translate to that puny English sentence?!”

Instead, slow down. What you should be doing is…

1. learning one commonly spoken word at a time
   
2. seeking out specific instances of the word you know, while ignoring what you don’t know
   

Example: Say you know that boku (“I”) is a common word. You think it might be easy to hear it being spoken. So put on an anime that you won’t mind listening to a few times and just go through the whole thing listening carefully for the word you’re looking for, boku. Try to find a scene in the anime that you have a feeling they’ll probably say the word.

The purpose of this is twofold.

1. One, by listening carefully just to hear one specific word or phrase, you’re actually listening carefully to everything being spoken. You’ll develop an ear for the language much faster by paying attention all the time.
   
2. Secondly, it’s much more confidence-boosting to think, “There! I’ve heard them say it! Now I know at least one more word!” rather than: “Geez, I can’t even figure out a single word in this entire dialogue! It’s impossible!”

Transcripts

If you can, try to get your hands on entire transcriptions of the dialogue for the anime you’re watching. A transcription is a line by line script of what each character says, along with some brief descriptions of action and place.

Transcripts can be found, with some effort. (Probably only for the more popular ones, though. So don’t spend too long trying to find one if the series you’re watching isn’t that well-known)

If you do find one, they can be unimaginably helpful, especially for those just starting out. If you happen to find one actually transcribed in Japanese characters (not romaji), save it for later because this makes excellent reading practice, too!

Intermediate Stages

Once you start getting good enough at Japanese to distinguish the various sounds with precision and accuracy – harder than you might expect! – then you’ve graduated to the next level. Congratulations!

How to continue building on your knowledge:

• listen to entire sentences
• pick out each individual word you hear
• look up all the ones you don’t know in a dictionary, or type them into Google and see what you get
• try to understand the sentence as a whole

Watch Anime WITHOUT Subtitles

As a test, you should now challenge yourself by watching anime without subtitles (“raw” files).

They can be hard to find, but try to locate a few (even if they’re not your favourite anime) and watch them when you feel you’re up to it.

If possible, try to watch it the first time all the way through without pausing or going into your dictionary at all. Just enjoy the story and try to follow along as best as you can.

Next, go through again and make note of all the words, phrases or sentences that you can clearly grasp. This is your moment of triumph.

Lastly, if possible, find a version that has subtitles or is dubbed, and go through to check your accuracy.

Not only is watching a completely raw anime good practice for your Japanese comprehension skills, it’s also an incredible confidence booster. (If you wait until you’re ready for it, anyway)

Transcribing & Translating

The final step, the final mark of proficiency, is to be able to make your own transcriptions from the Japanese dialogue (or even translations, if you’re really up to it).

First, find something easy that you know you can handle. Don’t go overboard. Pick an anime where they talk slow and there aren’t too many complicated concepts. Maybe even an anime geared towards children.

Then carefully transcribe every word you hear. Sometimes you have to listen to the same phrase or sentence about a dozen times to get it just right! Be patient! Have faith that you’re doing some great learning here!

If you really can’t figure out what they’re saying, you should probably Google your approximation. Google will tell you if you’re on the right track or not. Or, if there are subtitles or you sort of know what’s going on, Google the Japanese translation for the English words that you think are likely being spoken.

Next, with the help of a dictionary, write down the meaning of every word you’ve transcribed. If you’ve made a mistake, it usually becomes obvious at this stage.

Finally, connect the words using what knowledge you have of grammar. Make your own English sentences. Always try your best – don’t just put in a big blank if you don’t understand. It’s better to make a blind guess than write nothing.

If you have the subtitled version of the anime, go over it now and see whether your translation matches up.

Repetition is Key

Most important to your studies is to find anime you really like watching. If you know some of the words, watch it over and over again until you’ve memorized the dialogue. If you don’t know any words, watch the anime until you get it.

Repetition is very important. Once you’ve found an instance of a word you know, listen to it as many times as possible, one after another. It might sound crazy, but it really helps. The more times you hear a word or sentence being spoken, the more your knowledge of its sound and meaning is reinforced.

Wrapping Up

These are just about all the general tips I have at the moment for learning Japanese from anime. I’ve gleaned these through about 7 years now of watching anime with the intention of learning from it. I hope this helps you in some way.

Good luck with your studies! ^o^

Passion is above all the most important factor in learning any language – or achieving any goal in life, for that matter.

If you want to learn a language, it isn’t always a smooth ride. You have to have some serious, personally compelling reasons for wanting to do it – reasons that will sustain you through months or even years of study, research and practice.

What do I mean by compelling reasons? Here are some actual reasons I’ve heard from real people (they’re just examples, though!):

• you love some specific person who speaks the language and want to impress them or get closer to them
• you love people from that culture in general
• you want to travel freely in the country(ies) where the language is spoken
• you love the aesthetics of the language: the way it sounds spoken, or the look of the characters that make up the writing
  
• you find the culture and history associated with the language fascinating
• for many Japanese learners, it could be your love for things native to Japan and a wish to understand them in their original context: Japanese anime, Japanese manga, Japanese games, Japanese music, Japanese TV shows and movies…
  

What were my reasons? Pretty much all of the above combined, plus a few others.

My Personal Obsession

I was really quite obsessed with learning Japanese. I’ve always loved language, but with Japanese it was a whole new level of love. It basically began with the realization that there was so much out there that I wanted to understand so badly but couldn’t. Just because it was encoded in a language I didn’t know.

This included games that had no English translation, the songs I heard in anime, and especially Japanese fan sites where I found absolutely gorgeous fan art the likes of which I’d never even imagined. Sometimes the artists would write lengthy commentaries full of little emoticons that seemed like they would be so interesting, if only I could understand what they were saying. There were forums where I longed to join in the conversation. There were also fanfiction and other various fan creations written in Japanese that I felt like I was just dying to be able to read.

Some five or six years ago, good dubbed versions of the anime I wanted to watch were a rarity. At the same time, it was also much harder to obtain quality subtitled versions. Sometimes it was so bad that even with the subtitles you couldn’t understand what was really going on in the anime. All of this was just another burning motivation for me to learn this language that now seemed so essential to my everyday life.

The last reason, the one that gave me real pressure to succeed, was one of pure practicality and circumstance. For high school, I needed a second language at a sufficiently advanced level in order to graduate. I’d had about 5 years of continuous French classes (mandatory for Canadians) before I decided I just wasn’t getting into it, dropped the course, and immediately started learning Japanese – all in one fell swoop.

I wasn’t horrible at French either, far from it. I enjoyed studying the language, and because I had the advantage of living around it (everything in Canada is printed bilingually), I had a surprisingly vast vocabulary.

But the simple fact was, 5 years of French classes had given me just about nothing to work with. Little knowledge, and even less passion. Sadly, the level of my French ability was about the equivalent of what my Japanese would become just two months later.

Passion: The Real Ingredient of Success

My point is, without passion to learn you go nowhere. It’s the same for every subject of study. You won’t go far on a weak ambition. It just won’t happen.

You need passion to learn a language. Actually, it’s really all you need. If you can’t find any really personal reason for wanting to learn the language, it’s almost a certainty that you won’t achieve the level of fluency you hope for.

On the other hand, if you’re so in love with Japanese that simply hearing it spoken sends shivers down your spine, then you’ll probably find it to be smooth sailing all the way through.

So… go out there and find something to be obsessed with! Find something Japanese that makes you burn with passion and shiver with excitement! Dream of visiting the country, dream of connecting with the people, dream of finally being able to read that manga or understand that song without anyone’s help!

Once you’ve found your compelling reason, you just won’t be able to help but learn the language.

First, we should probably dispel a few myths.

What you can’t learn from watching anime

I know that using anime to learn Japanese is a very controversial topic.

Obviously, you cannot learn everything about a language by doing one thing alone. Of course, if you watch anime, you won’t learn to read or write Japanese characters, and your speaking ability won’t improve at all.

Watching anime will boost your listening comprehension, but imperfectly, too. There are several reasons for this:

• Anime characters tend to have certain ways of talking… not necessarily the most realistic
• Their speech is slower and clearer than in real life (try watching the Japanese news for a bit of a scare)
• “Ums” and “ahs” are generally cleansed from anime dialogue

There are other limitations you may never have even thought of. For example, in real life, people speaking Japanese tend to use certain body language, gestures, and facial expressions to accentuate their points, which may not be represented in anime.

Clearly, the Japanese anime/TV/movie/music fan misses out on a lot.

What you can learn from watching anime

• vocabulary, common phrases and expressions
• how the language sounds naturally; the natural rhythms and cadences of the language
• correct pronunciation/intonation
• general sentence construction
• distinctions between pronouns, suffixes (-chan, -kun), “levels of formality” in speech, and other things difficult to grasp out of context
• with supplementary reading on grammar and armed with a good dictionary – nearly anything!

Honestly, I think naysayers of learning Japanese through X (X typically being anime) are being a bit overly pessimistic. Perhaps they tried it and failed, I don’t know. Perhaps they learned it “the hard way” and shudder at the thought of anyone actually having fun while learning the language.

All I can say is, with the right attitude anything is possible. This applies to learning a language as well.

As long as you’re willing to put in the hard work required – i.e., actually looking up words in the dictionary, reading up on grammar, Googling anything and everything you don’t understand, reading and listening to indecipherable Japanese news, etc – I think watching anime is an excellent and superbly fun way to improve your Japanese.

Happy learning!