This does not apply to l33ts, but those with actual skill and watch raws, could very well help.
I conjured up this basic idea of using raws to get better aquainted with Japanese as a language. First, let me explain my take, as I do watch raws under certain circumstance, but am not silly enough to sit there watch aimlessly and expect to understand the dialogs.
The first series I remember watching raw was Kamisama Kazoku, which was far from complex, and I could basically “get” was happening; conflict, characters, major points, etc. At the time I didn’t even attempt to learn or understand the language and hadn’t even memorized the basic writing system, such a pity, so naive.
The past Spring season, I managed to start about 4 series in the raw, though around week 7 or 8 I found myself tied up with projects and still haven’t pursued much of that season in general. It was not easy at all, though I relied heavily on hearing (train the ears well!), I was constantly looking up “main” words.
The next thing I did was pull up good episode summaries and run through them and sort out the details. Naturally, this was a logical action, and it did round out the context of a given series, but it totally does not help in learning the language, ABSOLUTELY NAI! I did not, however, watch the subbed version (fuck the subs, because reading will override listening priority and then what does that accomplish, w.o.t.).
Fail points
- I wasn’t writing down words I referenced.
- I wasn’t re-watching the raw version.
- I wasn’t researching questionable sentence structure.
Terrible. Concurrently, I was studying vocabulary sets and kanji sets in flash-card mode, listening to audio, etc (still do, because it touches the general things), but honestly, it seemed like 96% of everything encountered in a raw was not something I had encountered in studying. That just feels sooo useless. Rant OFF.
A New Way
Hopefully, some may take this idea and run with it, creating something useful.
This past weekend, I sat down with a lump of Autumn series in the raw, but I took a modified approach. The biggest change was that I wrote words down in kana, and simultaneously referenced their general meaning (exact meaning is not always right). Not that I have awesome inference skills, but core words simply help in grasping the notion of a sentence.
God knows how many words are in a given 20 minutes, but I swear 50% of the “noise” comes from particles, structure, and conjugation; I worked around these and managed to jot down 15-20 words per series (yes I didn’t get every word I didn’t know, but I grabbed the most familiar and apparent first). This doesn’t allow for “fluid” viewing, and there were quite a few hiccups and sputters. At times I would just rewatch the scene and not be so keen on trying to translate in my head, but just listening for the words I just looked up.
It was in the moments between watching and checking out a summary, that I felt I should rewatch episodes now that I had a little “cheat sheet” of vocab.
Thinking, and glancing at my cutely sized notebook, I realized that is precisely what I’ve done.
A Step Further
Now imagine a raw watcher composed one of these for each episode; 15-20 apex word/phrases with kanji, kana, meaning. I highly doubt I’d be able to get anyone to do this, but having such thing is only half the benefit, because the viewer still needs to “hear” the points. So while these apex words are composed from the episode, the voiced sentence can be recorded from the episode.
Implement
Having such nice items doesn’t help unless they are analyzed and studied, but that is precisely the objective. Tweaking the algorithm, we should add a rewatch of the episode, but I believe a good in point would be just before viewing a recently aired “next” episode in the raw. That roughly means a one-week delay on the rewatch, plenty of time to take the special list and audio, flashcard it, flashplay it, listen to it, and learn it, pull it out, embed it!
Upon rewatching, I believe there will be slight learning advancement from this reinforcement, because it is totally in-context, relevant, and mixed-media. This might not be the case, and those who know their shit could argue against it, which I’d say “okay” because I don’t know my stuff, this is a simple idea I like.
Breakdown
- View the raw, grope 15-20 words/phrases from it
- Excerpt the audio of those moments
- Read a trusted summary
- In the next week, learn the list
- In the next week, learn the audio fragments
- Rewatch the raw just before the next episode airs
- With the next episode, rinse and repeat
In terms of sheer, coverage, at 4 raw series per season, 15 words per series per week, and over the course of 1 year, that’s over 3000 words/phrases. Likely, there will be overlap, so as time goes on, comprehension will grow, it’s inevitable.
Watching raws without reinforcing may bring meaning to the series, but drilling and bombardment will likely produce a comfortable raw watcher.
Woah you know you’ve just made my mind implode again don’t you Ryan. Tis a brilliant idea! Although I kind of wonder if it would not be a good idea to pool the words you pull after step 1 with others so you don’t end up overlapping when it comes to audio stripping.
Mmm, good point, I haven’t really thought it thru….. (typical) lol. I wonder if someone would start a service for it, where people can just get the list and audio and go at it.
Shit would work for movies as well I’m sure, though a movie is like 5 times longer and would be teh suck.
I applaud. Go for it.
Although, I wasn’t able to implement this scheme on the account of being lazy. I pull some two or three words from an episode, e.g. Marimite 4 had “henshin” — response, “soutai [suru]” — leave early. Needs more effort put into it than that.
That’s a great idea! Jdramas would be awesome too - I’ve been thinking about trying some of those.
@Author, thank you
I value your opinion.
@Caitlin, very nice point, it would work pretty awesome, but I’d need a few breaks to catch my breath with a 45 minute episode. haha
So I don’t want to commit to it, but I think I’ll post my [series,vocab,audio] lists as I step through the season… *bites tongue* … if I make it through the season. A true raw viewer would be better suited.
I also started my RAW watching habit since Kamisamakazoku, for the sake of listening training. What a coincidence :). I would say this practice is extremely effective as long as you do it consistently. I jumped through JLPT 2 and 1 in a roll thanks to that.
What I did was basically pretty much the same as you. Except that my listening ability sucked so much that I had to read the summaries on blogs like Random Curiosity before and after watching an episode. Yea it killed part of the fun with the spoiler, but to me it was still better than grasping nothing at all ^^;;.
Anyway I either wrote down the new words/phrases on a paper, or check them by an electronic dictionary on real-time. I have never rewatched any episode though. I also tried to avoid pausing the video during my scribing/checking so as to practise my ability to simultaneously processing stuff in my head, one of the essential qualities to ace in a listening exam.
What I did was to create a personal log to record all the new words as well as their meaning and used it for revision from time to time. If you can already get 15-20 new words per episode, it would certainly be more constructive to move on to another episode after watching once, than to get like another 5 from watching the same episode again.
The revision part is highly important, more so than the raw-watching part I have to say. Or else the words will just go through your head without really staying there. It is also a good idea to mark the intonations as well in your notes. A correct idea of intonation is material to your listening capability, but sadly not many dictionaries have the intonation included.
Once you feel confident with anime episodes, move on to online anime radio talk shows and gradually the NHK radio news. The same practice for anime episodes work for radio programmes too.
@Doraneko, great info! Glad to see this actually has been used with results. I see what you mean by moving on to another episode rather than scraping up more words, and I forgot to include that note. The 15-20 would be fixed, and upon a second viewing I didn’t plan on listening for more words, but would listen for the ones I learned that week.
When I put it that way, recording the section of dialog, or even just the pronunciation, would be fine as well, and I suppose rewatching the entire episode would hardly be reasonable. I think I mentioned it for the sake of experiencing a series fully is all. ^^ So, I agree that it isn’t quite necessary.
Intonations sound like a really big plus, though I wasn’t keen on what they were wikipedia explained the types a bit (rising, falling, dipping, peaking). Finding them in a diction may be tough indeed, but I’ll give it a shot. In the coming weeks.
Thank you for the comment and info. One of the inspirations that led me to this method was that of AdaBoost in the Jones-Viola object dection algorithm. Quite strange, but I believe language can be learned in a similar way, though it is much more complex than simple face recognition.
Regarding the intonation markings, if you can get the hang of it, you won’t even need to record the sound and can save your precious time for another episode or your revision. Of course, for the sake of reinforcement you will need to read them out repeatedly and loudly.
There are a number of ways to do the marking. One of them is the number method, used in the 大辞林 dictionary, conveniently accessible for free at Yahoo JP. It certainly takes time to get use of it. But in the long run you will appreciate the tremendous amount of time you have saved.
Basically, for the Tokyo dialect, there are only 3 types of accents in general.
The first type is 平板式, with the first syllable at a lower tone and the remaining ones at a higher tone. This is marked as [0]. Examples include 飴（あめ）,端（はし）,美味しい（おいしい）
_あめ^
The second type is 頭高型, with the first syllable at a higher tone and the remaining ones at a lower tone. This is marked as [1]. Examples include 雨（あめ）､箸（はし）､馬鹿（ばか）
^あめ_
The third type is 中高型/尾高型, with the first syllable at a lower tone, followed by a number of syllables at a higher tone, and the remaining ones at a lower tone again. The marking no. is the syllable which the tone starts to fall. For example, for 馬鹿話（ばかばなし）, it is pronounced as:
かば
ば なし
０１２３４
Since the tone starts to fall at 3, the marking is [3].
For 馬鹿馬鹿しい（ばかばかしい）, it is pronounced as:
かばかし
ば い
０１２３４５
Since the tone starts to fall at 5, the marking is [3].
Btw for non-Tokyo dialects, the 3-type rule does not apply. Unlike Tokyo dialect’s mountain/plateau style of syllabus pronunciation, tones can drop right in the middle and bounce back again. So the system above is useless for such dialects.
A more detailed explanation of the system can be found on this page.
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/guide/jj02/jj10.html
Of course there are many other ways for intonation marking. But frankly, quite a number of the major 国語 dictionaries use the system above so it is at least a good idea to have some idea on what those numbers mean.
There are also other ways beside the above. You may check this page. My favourite is 線式. Simple, easier to understand and does the job.
http://www.akenotsuki.com/kyookotoba/accent/iroiro.html
Not exactly related, but as a beginner 2 years ago, my teacher’s advice to me was that I should expose myself to whatever kind of colloquial Japanese audio for at least 1 hour per day to train my ears. The picking of new words is a bonus, but the point is to get used to the speed and the intonation so that you can split the syllables from the mess of phonemes, group them into meaningful units, compare them to the whole list of words of same pronunciation and pick the right one based on context - all in the split of a millisecond. New words can instead be conveniently learnt from textbooks, dictionaries and word lists.
I would therefore think that it is a better idea to try to go through more episodes if possible. Try also to diversify your selection instead of having everything in school romance or shounen fights. This can expose yourself to a greater variety of new words. Diversification beyond anime is also recommended. J-drama, talk shows and news reports are good listening practices.
You may point out that without adequate reinforcement by rewatching, the words will not stay. Certainly it is true to an extent. But that is offset by the extra amount of words you have already learnt.
Say if you learn 20 words per episode and you watch two per day, it will be 14600 words per annum. Remove 20% for repeated words, and it will be 11680 wpa. If you can end up holding 60% of those in your brain, then you will get 7008 wpa. Sounds too fabulous beyond imagination, but I would say the human brain is absolutely fantastic as a learning tool. JLPT2 only requires around 5000 words btw.
Oh I meant to say [5] for 馬鹿馬鹿しい. Well, at least the example word seems to fit me quite well.
Hurr hurr. Been there, done that. I dunno….As much as watching raws CAN be used to learn the language, formal study is always best if you’re serious.
I studied Japanese through audio books and text for 6 months before I started my little anime blog project. Even after starting, I would rewatch raws 2-3 times, and constantly had to flip through my dictionary to figure out sentences. After doing this to this day, I’ve maybe pulled out my dictionary 5 times in the past month.
I’ll also have to note that my reading/writing skills beyond hiragana and katakana are pretty fail, but I blame not having time in uni to study kanji like I was able to do in high school. Either way, hard work and dedication are always what will get you the confidence and skill you want…nothing will change that.
Wow, I see exactly what you mean. The 線式 markings do seem the most digestible and lightweight, I like it.
I try to keep myself from translating to English in mind when I’m listening, because even the most apparent phonemes can fly right by. So I suppose in a way, it is a matter of self-control to not think in English.
Training the ears is the same priority for me as knowing the meaning, so it is more of a repetition game when I’m listening for sounds (can I repeat what was said though I may not know it), like I’ve seen many a 3-year-old do when they hear an adult say a world and they are trying to repeat it.
Over the Summers I usually manage to keep NHK World TV (http://www.lyngsat.com/intel9.html) on 24/7, but sadly I didn’t do it this Summer. I find the variety is really good because there are specials, interviews, and a number of interesting stories from around Japan. While, I listen to a lot of music, it is sort of a trap because the phrase arrangements often seem jumbled, but then again, better than nothing for the sake of just listening.
I’m at the point that where pick a number of words/phrases, I just don’t know what they mean because I’ve never ran into them, so it’s a numbers game.
Also very strong point on the retention percentages. It is basically impossible to remember everything 100% of the time, even things we know, like parents’ phone numbers ^^,
Doraneko, you are awesome! Do instructors teach this method? I just can’t see the average Japanese 101 college course pushing for this intensity.
@totali, yes. While I sort of targeted this at RAWs, it’s not about them specifically, I just don’t like relying on subtitles, but the studying I am doing doesn’t compliment things encountered in RAWs.
It’s more about encountering free-dialogs, the news would probably be best, but radio is tough because there isn’t a visual aid. The ultimate compliment would be actually being in the day-2-day situation of conversations (even if not participating). So, NHK TV <3
Drill the kanji, which I actually prefer learning vocab in kanji rather than seeing the kana (better information density). Since you know the meanings it’d probably be only a little work. I use speedanki.com (it also has additional sentences), which I’m somewhere in 3-kyu, but simultaneously drill other non-kanji sets.
I’m needing more intensity in studying. You’re lucky to be young totali <3 though I’m not much older, life just gets more filled with riff-raft as time goes by.
@Totali
Second your point that without formal study one can get nowhere. But I’d say formal study means seriously studying every single aspect of the language, instead of focusing on one particular area: be it kanji, writing, listening, reading and speaking. You can’t miss any of them if you want a good return from your investment in Japanese.
Generally textbooks listenings are far too easy since all the speakers are trained to speak 100% accurately in terms of both grammar and accent. You can seldom expect such an ideal scenario in real life. The same applies for textbook reading materials. I’d say getting in touch with real-life stuff is as important as going through all your textbooks.
If you can watch RAW without using a dictionary, you probably already have a fairly good understanding of the language. As long as you are willing to spend some time on vocabulary and writing, it would not be too much of a problem to get to the higher levels. While good listening capability can only bring you some anime RAW enjoyment, A good mastery of all aspects of the language can be a huge plus to you future study/career. I’d say it certainly worths the extra time
@Ryan A
Yea it is essential to prevent the mental translation of Japanese into your mother tongue and vice versa. A good starting point is to force yourself to use J2J dictionaries instead of J2E ones (I personally recommend 大辞林 for the intonation information). Write only Japanese in your Japanese notes/study log. Writing Japanese dairies also helps. In short, for anything to do with Japanese, use only Japanese.
I also agree that reinforcement by repeating vocally is essential. But beyond anime, there are also many new words you can get from your study materials or the real world. Of course not every of them come with CD or tapes. But it would be a waste to not utilize them just because they don’t come with audio tracks. That is why getting familiar with the intonation system is so important. If you just repeat the new words by random intonations, the sound of the words you remember can never match the real sound, resulting in difficulties to comprehend them during listening exercises.
Well but then everything here is just personal experience and of course everyone has its own best way of acquiring a second language. (No, instructors never teach anything beyond textbooks unless you poke them :P). One of my game-addict friends dropped out of school a few years ago, locked himself at his basement and have been playing all sorts of Japanese games every day. Last year I took JLPT1 with him, and he passed with flying colours. Of course he has never taken any Japanese course or done any self study in his life. orz
@Ryan A
On online listening mateirals, I give 10 thumbs to the NHK online radio news:
http://www.nhk.or.jp/r-news/
This is targeted to Japanese so the phrases are not watered down to fit the beginners. But the amazing part is that you can control the replay speed, which can be very helpful if you are not yet used to their machine-gun speed of speaking. The new words you can get from one 10-min segment is probably as much as a few 25-min anime episodes.
Thank you
Now I need to find the right player for linux, I never could get those ASX streams to play >_> Also, J2J whoaaa ^^ *puts part of the mind back together* I should compose sentences and phrases on my own more often, but I’m not very confident and have little way to ensure I’m making sense; especially stuff with multiple actions/objects…probably stick to simple sentence patterns for now.
So now the debate goes to “Language Fluency vs Cultural Fluency” … j/k
It is incredibly hard to pick up Japanese vocabulary and comprehension skills watching raws (or even subbed anime for that matter) without having studied the language beforehand. I’m now fairly well competant at watching raws (provided they are not packed with political intruige and sci-fi terms like Gits SAC), and have a pretty large vocabulary. I attribute this to the year I spent doing Japanese in Year 12, because there I learnt a lot of the grammar structures in the language. Once you learn the grammar structures it is a hell of a lot easier to both understand a raw and to actually pick up words from it.
So I would suggest doing some study, even if it’s just finding a good textbook or website. And focus on grammar and the spoken language not Kanji else you’ll be there for years and never get far!
Actually it’s quite funny because now I basically listen to the audio as much as read the subs, so a few times I’ve opened an episode to show a friend and the subs haven’t displayed but I haven’t noticed until they told me!
@washi, I agree, that’s why I mentioned that there tends to be a fair amount of noise from particles, tense, and conjugations; it helps to know the general grammar, structure, and conjugations which are readily available (and a initially smaller set to learn and adjust to than large vocabulary lists).
Watching raws is not a good starting place, but for listening practice it’s fair game. I should have mentioned it was for boosting current skills.
When I thought of grabbing vocabulary from raws, it was a compliment idea from the Jones-Viola algorithm; which basically builds teams not by the best percentages buy by the best compliments. The whole notion of using realistic dialogs (anime, movies, news, radio) is to build a complimented working vocabulary, that is encountered often. Kind of like how the set of typical anime phrases is well-known by even those not studying the language (these would likely not be encountered in a course).
Anyway, I find knowing kanji of known vocab good for reading. Also, the problem I think happens with subtitles is that the brain is still thinking in English. I still watch subs on most non-seasonal things, and only a few seasonal.
>> (and a initially smaller set to learn and adjust to than large vocabulary lists).
Oh yeah this is important as well. Learn a set of common verbs and all of the verb forms.
Some time ago, when I first watched raws I found one of the more annoying things was to be able to clearly distinguish some english words that they slip in to dialogue (and usually in a sense that English-speakers wouldn’t use it, like ‘high-tension’ srsly wtf). This is especially true in songs! The only way around it is to have a good vocabulary as well as a command over the particles and grammar structures in order to isolate words and understand the context of each word.
>>Also, the problem I think happens with subtitles is that the brain is still thinking in English
Yeah, at some stage, without realising it I began to habitually read the subtitles and proccess what they were saying. Which is a bit annoying at times because the odd way that fansubbers word things sometimes becomes apparent!
Learning Japanese comprehension looks hard at the outset but wants you get the ball rolling it’s amazingly easy to pick up. With the exception of Kanji - that’s just a hard battle all the way. Actually, I’ve decided to start learning Kanji myself - but I expect it will be a while before I can read things easily. If only everything had furigana!
>>Learning Japanese comprehension looks hard at the outset but wants you get …
wants = once
(Maybe I’d better focus on my English instead)
>>Oh yeah this is important as well. Learn a set of common verbs and all of the verb forms.
Agreed, and though there are like 20 forms (esp -te + verb), knowing when there is a verb and it’s conjugation, helps listening, even if the stem isn’t known.
>>the odd way that fansubbers word things sometimes becomes apparent!
Soooo true. It’s like they sometimes split the sentence into 2 parts, and show one then the other, but its the second part was already said. Eeerh, lol.
>>If only everything had furigana!
I know, but sometimes the furigana is less legible, and I’m like …. nuuuuuu. ^^
Kanji are kanji, I hear though that learning the strokes (and general orders) helps in remembering… too bad I need to start practicing strokes orz, so I can write similar sentences to the ones I read.
You should push hard in Japanese instead
Awesome, this is exactly what I did during my first raw watching/blogging experience. Though like Totali, I also took up a few months formal Japanese training and it helped a lot… it’s difficult to watch raws if you’re a total noob @_@;
But as I’ve observed, if you really want to understand proper Japanese, jdramas is the better choice than animes XD
and now you got me all pumped up to study for JLPT1, since I’m slacking off, boo. I might just post about vocabulary lists of the episodes I watch as well, as part of my JLPT1 training… XD I’m doing that for the novels I’m reading, wouldn’t hurt to do it (again) for animes.
Hmm, since I never really had the means or the opportunity to get proper lessons, the Japanese I know (at least enough to allow me to translate anime at the very least) was acquired through anime, (web)radio and J-dramas. Gradually looking up and picking up words and idioms, grammar and syntax, and nowadays I’m able to follow the news for instance - well, I still need to look up the more complicated words, of course.
But I do believe subs are better to understand the meaning of words without having to look up each of them. At least that’s what helped me get a grasp of the most basic sentences.
I can FINALLY get proper lessons next spring, and FINALLY count Japanese as my sixth language (next to French, German, Luxembourgish, Portuguese and… what was it again… English, of course :P)
@usagijen Do IT! That would be really cool, because it isn’t something you see bloggers doing atm. Plus, I think readers would really enjoy it, awesomely. I was planning on posting the generic sets I’m making up from episodes, but I realized some are quite easy on paper, just needing to learn how to “hear” it. I do agree that dramas are probably a fuller spectrum and we actually get to see the lips moving…. mmmm lips ^^
So I’m really glad you are fired up!
@natsuneko
Languages! I guess having learned more than one definitely makes yourself more pliable when learning others, at least that’s what I’ve heard. At that point (6 languages) your mind has probably become fit for learning nearly any communication given the environment.
And yes, lessons. I’ve been searching for a private instructor locally, but it’s slim pickings, and the university courses are always full.
My poor Spanish grandmother is sad that I’ve lost all my Spanish skills. D:
This is a good start, but I’d always think this has to be followed up with proper and serious study of the subject. It’s a unique and brilliant idea, though.
@Michael, private instruction is likely req, as least with JLPT 2, and especially with 1. I’m looking for a conversationalist atm, or a full sensei locally, but it is very very slim here. This isn’t the West Coast USA, nor NYC.
I’m not as meticulous as you, but a majority of my Japanese understadning now comes from watching raws.
I think it’s natural progression as a serious fan of anime when you start getting bored of being spoiled so thoroughly beforehand and the show keeps on giving you cliffhangers that you can’t wait till the next episode airs.
I still remember the first ever show that made me watch raw, Mai Hime. It was a pretty hard undertaking back then, but I started to get used to it and with the expansion of my interest + the advent of internet, I’ve boldly gone down the route of raw watching and never looked back again.
Kuro, niiiice. I dabble in them, but when the season hits I tend to venture that way because it’s easier to note the series when I’m not worried about subs (who,when,etc).
I prefer to do it that was, as a compliment to studying, but even if I’m not watching raws I’ll still be studying, it just adds effect.
If the viewer follows up on issues they run into it definitely leads to understanding, that’s just how the brain works, it’s inevitable. PATTERN MATCHING! On another note, we learned about Eigenfaces and how our brains possibly use such scheme to recognize things (audible or visual).
[...] in the Autumn 2008 season, I wrote about a method for aquiring a random, but natural, spread of vocabulary from watching raws. My vocabulary list [...]
[...] Do note however, that simply listening (passively) is not enough. Let Ryan show you the way. [...]