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.