*DOGEN IS SUCH A CELEBRITY TO ME THAT I COMPLETELY FORGET TO GIVE HIM A PROPER INTRODUCTION! SO SORRY!!!* Dogen is an American living in Japan who speaks incredibly impressive Japanese. On his UA-cam channel he creates hilarious comedy skits on topics related to living and working in Japan, often providing the unique perspective of a Japanese-speaking foreigner. On his Patreon he creates a Japanese Phonetics lesson series which teaches all aspects of Japanese pronunciation, including pitch accent. If you haven’t already, definitely check him out (links in the description)!! Dogen Interviews Me: ua-cam.com/video/TTPt2DwLsD0/v-deo.html Patreon Q&A with Dogen: www.patreon.com/posts/34961875/
same here. I knid of gave up on sounding correct or natural and just try to speak so that I'm understood, doesn't matter if it sounds a bit awkward. The goal is to get the point across. Language is just a tool.
Since English is not my first language and I know I have accent and make grammar mistakes and so on, my goal in leaning Japanese now really is just to be as good as I’m in English now, because I can mostly communicate my ideas, thoughts and hold a conversation easily, with people understanding me. Of course maybe when I become better my goal will change, but to be honest right now I really think my main goal is just being able to communicate with people easily. I don’t really understand the obsessive thought of getting to sound completely like Japanese person, because it’s obvious I’ll never be Japanese.
Thanks to you both for these crossover videos. It's very insightful to hear your thoughts and stories about your experiences learning and using Japanese, among other things. One thing that I learned from this video via example rather than by explication is the fact that although Dogen technically gets both the stress pattern and pronunciation of the word "prevalent" wrong at 20:01 , no native English speaker would deny that Dogen is a fellow native English speaker. In other words, undeniable fluency can exist even in the presence of mistakes.
Being brought up bilingual has made me able to see the world in "3D". It's like having 2 eyes to triangulate stuff. Perceiving the world from multiple angles.
i just watched both of your videos back to back, and wow, i could listen to you guys discuss your experiences with japanese for hours. i’m a podcast lover and these long-form conversations really captured my attention. it’s also really interesting to hear the perspective of fellow bilinguals; granted, i studied abroad and now speak spanish, but i still find myself relating to and learning from everything you guys said. hope to see more collabs from you two in the future!
I think Dogen's comedy hits at all levels of Japanese. He's just a good comedic writer, and he has subtitles. If the comedy was in English it would be just as good. I always remember his "having a baby in Japan" sketch, because it hits the culture shock funny bone as well as the reversal of expectations. It's so well crafted, and yet it feels so real.
I enjoy hearing you guys talk about your experiences, your advices, etc separately. It's very down to earth and reflects the learning path not just of language but many other things in life. So hearing you have a conversation is so satisfying. Not only do I learn from it, but also feel more positive about studying on my own. So, thank you both!
That 中途半端 strikes close to home for me. I started studying Japanese some 13 years ago. I’ve been living in Japan for almost 5 years. My mother tongue isn’t English. I talk in my mother tongue (as in really uttering words from mouth) pretty much just with my parents over phone on a regular basis. In daily life I use Japanese and I don’t use English frequently. Maybe like once in a few weeks. Now I’m stuck in a position when I can’t remember words in my mother tongue, my English got a little rusty and is, I’m sure, worse than 5 years ago, and my Japanese isn’t perfect either.
the video is two years old but i just wanted to say these questions are brilliant the one about finding your voice just in normal speaking in a recently-acquired language really hit me
It seems that both of you lived through similar experiences on your journeys, while still picking up refreshingly individual opinions about the same topics. That made for a very interesting conversation and showed great chemistry between both of you. Thank you for that!
Amazing collab! Thank you both guys for contributing so much effort on japanese language learning and jp culture also. You inspire me and help me so much on learning japanese! Greetings from Moscow :)
I'm just starting out on learning Japanese. However, in my case, English is a second language (I've been studying it for more than a decade now). I pretty much have similar thoughts and feeling on the topics you guys discussed. And I definitely encounter the same problems and doubts about how good my level of language actually is and how improving in one language can make me lack in some area in the other language. It was comforting to see that I'm not alone regarding these experiences (I don't really know other ~bilingual people around me, so I really didn't hear others mentioning these things before). This being said, the future looks grim for me, as I'm now tring to tackle a third language...
Super cool interview, loved hearing you experts bouncing ideas off each other. I relate to a lot of what you're saying, regarding how your brain approaches the languages, how you have to think in almost a different "frame" or whatever, and the insight into detail w/r/t comedy and a person having a "voice". While it's scary to watch loan words "infecting" a language at immense speed, I'm not sure it will necessarily *replace* Japanese words -- at least, not in the majority. More likely the synonyms will end up being used in different contexts, for different moods, or different rhetorical effects. English is actually a very very interesting example of this; historically it has some MAJOR vocab and grammar injections from various European languages (French, old Norse I think, etc). The classic example is the difference between "pork" and "pig", "beef" and "cow", etc. Another example would be like, "aid" vs "help" vs "assist". There are articles that go into a lot of depth into how a lot of these changes occurred so I won't go crazy on it here, but I encourage anyone to check it out, fascinating stuff. So, while some words might disappear, I doubt that 考え方 will be replaced by "mind". More likely, once this evolution has calmed down a bit, most of these words will fall into convenient "niches" of meaning, and will have subtleties or implications that necessitate two words. Consider 気にしないで vs ドンマイ. It may be hard to articulate but subconsciously I already associate subtleties and appropriate contexts for both of these even though their dictionary definitions are quite similar. Language evolution happens like this all the time, and for good reasons; it's usually not worth trying to be a Language Prescriptivist, at least in my opinion.
Been working full time and studying at University full time these last 2 years. I finally graduated and cant wait to start actually immersing myself in the language now that I’ll have some actual free time. You guys both are really inspirational to the language learning community and I truly appreciate your hard work!
When you emerse yourself in different language you start to replace words or use a concept that doesnt really exist in native language at least not in a way that's easily transferable. that might just happen inside your brain if nobody else speaks the language that you are into, but when literally everybody else is taught it for 6 years in school and some of them actually uses it day to day basis... to me rise of loan words seems only natural. it looks ridiculous just because we somehow still maintain japanese accent when we spam those loan words.
But we retain an English accent when we say "karaoke", "karate", "feng shui", etc. Loanwords _become_ native to the language they're loaned to, and saying them in a native way just makes sense. There are loan words in Japanese that wouldn't be understood if they were pronounced the way they were in their native language, and there are loan words in Japanese that have become contracted to the point of not making any sense in their original language (thinking 「コンビニ」 and 「コピペ」 in particular). Now when it comes to things like talking about foreign things, I _do_ try to retain the accent. It's 上原ひろみ, not "hih-ROW-mee, YOO-ay-hah-rah".
I instinctively use loan words in the native language of the person I'm speaking to. But, after the conversation I sometimes think back to myself why did I say it like that. Like, saying Ramune in a Japanese accent, and saying Target in a Chinese accent.
@@sam-xw2vf im not one of those 意識高い sort of people that we all make fun of for them allegedly trying to use English words just to look cool. so I guess i cant really say if either is true, and I can definitely see the perspective of 'oh they are doing it to look cool' or that it is just a trendy thing, but so many occasions do I feel like I just wanna use English words or concept because otherwise speaking it in japanese it is so stiff and clunky - obviously because you are basically speaking japanese with translation at that point. Also we can see the same phenomenon in india or some SEA countries and they dont sound ridiculous at all. my prediction is we japanese people gonna sound more like them.
I guess for me it is more unnatural to stick with pure japanese with accepted loan words than just integrating English into it. The Japanese that I'm supposed to speak, it just isn't there in my brain.
@@sam-xw2vf You know, I used to fight the evolution of language too. I used to hate people using the term "sick" to mean "good". Now I'm no longer 15, though, I just let it go on. Words take on new meanings, new words are invented or adopted, and old words are forgotten, all the time.
Have loved Dogen since the beginning and just discovering Matts channel now. WOW i love you both. Thanks for being an inspiration! Much appreciate you guys
Going on 13 years since I started learning Japanese, been working in Japan for 5 years (self employed now) and I agree with so much of this. I don't hear many conversations like these. Good to see that people have similar experiences and insight. 👍
@@mattice9083 It's always been a consideration for me, for one. I realized that I've always done things on my own and it's more comfortable to me than working for someone else. Also the japanese workstyle wasn't the life I wanted to live. Too many hoops to jump through, having to act a certain way to be liked, long hours etc, it wasn't healthy for me, mentally and physically. My advice for anyone wanting to work here is to work hard to find a company culture that you want to be a part of. I made the mistake of only looking at the job description. Either way, for me I would have gone this route, I'm sure. I have too many things I want to do to be stuck giving all of my hours to one place.
@@mattice9083 Oh, lol my bad. I'm a graphic designer doing branding and identity design for smaller companies. The experience I had in japanese companies before was key in it being possible. It's essentially running a business.
Ive been learning game programming and ideally would like to just program my games and live in japan. Probably just gonna stereotypically teach English before that seeing as its hard to make money of games
I think one thing a lot of people don't understand is there is never such a thing as perfect language learning, just how some people are good at writing and some people are good at talking you'll always really find something that you're better at. If you started learning Japanese by reading you'll probably be very good a reading, if you started by talking with native Japanese people, you'll probably sound really natural and fluent. Whenever I feel down about learning Japanese I always remember that my English isn't perfect, and I've been learning that my whole life! Even then, I can still speak well and I can still convey what I want without any thinking at all, as long as you get there, you'll be fine, even if it's not perfect, next to perfect is just fine.
Something that is similar to Dogen's talk at around 41:00 mins is when I did athletics. in training we are focusing on the angle our arm comes through when we throw, or where our weight is at the moment we land. transferring the force effectively etc. Then in competitions, we are always told to just go out there and throw and don't think about it. Trying to think about those will actually detract from how effective we are in that moment. So train really really hard, then just try to be as natural as possible when you need it.
I had a massive epiphany recently when I realised that a certain mind state I'd sometimes slip into was actually that "Japanese mode of thinking" that I'd picked up from a combination of Japanese friends I'd had along with a relatively early introduction to the culture as a child. I used to get so annoyed and anxious about it because it was sometimes just easier to figure certain things out while in that state, but I had no idea how to bring it about and once I did, speaking became a whole lot more difficult. Needless to say I eventually pieced together the clues and started studying the language, a somewhat bold move considering this was just a theory still, but it's one that ultimately turned out to be true and it should go without saying that my mental health has gotten a lot better since. Human neurology is a wonderfully whacky thing isn't it?
Just came here immediately after see Dogen video, in regard of the technical aspect I notice that the volume of the audio is lower than the Dogen video, just in case you didn't notice. Keep the good work.
For some reason i found this video quite demotivating. Specially the part where you guys were talking how exhausting it is to even talk for one hour in japanese. I started learning english in my school from grade 1. But now after graduating from high school, i can speak and write english in near native level (though my writing isnt the best). Even if i spend 24 hours speaking/writing in english i wont be any more exhausted than using my native language. This is the case with all of my friends as well. Hope i can achieve that on japanese as well.
I think it likely depends on what your surrounding environment is. My mum grew up chinese but moved to an english speaking country and spoke english almost exclusively there, so its no longer exhausting. I think its just how often you use the language that determines how comfortable your brain is using it. For example, even though chris from the abroad in japan channel lives in japan, most of his friends there speak english so he doesn't really use his japanese, and finds using it exhausting as well. Despite living in japan. So again its probably the environment you're in
1. Awesome! 🙌 I love you both. ❤ Been a subscriber for both for so long and so to see this was a dream come true. I don't know how you managed to keep yourself composed. The English speaking (1st language) factory in my head probably would've stopped dead from shock lol. 2. I've binged your interviews because the golden nuggets dropped by your guests and you in in-the-moment discoveries are priceless. And what I've noticed is that your interviewing abilities keep getting better and better. Wow! 3. On that note, this interview was fascinating to listen to and packed with content. I've learned so much on writing, focus, studying, mindset, speaking, etc. My mind is excited for all you've discussed. I'll definitely be rewatching this multiple times. 4. Matt, you've developed this air about you, and it touches upon what I said in no. 2. It seems to really put your guests at ease. You're so present that you are a able to sense when a subject, when pressed upon and you dig further, will strike gold. You listen to your guest and are a wonderful conversational partner. Your motive is so clear, "I want to learn about you." Because of this, I can see and hear Dogen in his element. It was wonderful to see him comfortable and thoughtful, his answers just flowed. You and Dogen made a great team and thus the conversation was wonderful to listen to. Seriously dudes, bravo. 🙌
As a non-native English speaker, it was very interesting to hear your insights into being bilingual as native English speakers - your "struggles" with Japanese are what I've been experiencing basically my whole life with English, haha
My level of Japanese also varies depending on who I’m talking to lol. If I’m around other foreigners who can’t speak Japanese, then I’m usually okay, but around other foreigners who can speak it close to my level or who are way above my level, I have a bit more trouble. Trying to speak with Japanese people is usually okay unless they’re my coworkers. For some reason I always have a harder time talking with them regardless of the topic.
LOAN WORDS!! Okay so this hit hard for me because I speak English and Spanish and loan words, or préstamos, are so very prevalent in the Spanish language. It just shows how influential and universal the English language is. It’s everywhere. And then I moved to Japan (a year ago almost) and I was SHOCKED on how much English is prevalent here. I had more of a culture shock on how much English is present here in the language, food, etc. I was taken back but it’s the same way in Spanish-speaking countries. Some would argue that English has, and is, tainting languages. But I think it’s a beautiful presentation of assimilation globally. ❤️
Throwing a 3rd language into the mix makes it even more confusing. The first language I learnt was German to around A2 in the european framework. Some years later I learnt Chinese for a few months then went to China and I got introduced to this Chinese guy who spoke fluent German. My brain was so confused when he spoke German to me because he was Chinese and I was in full Chinese mode, so I literally could not think of a word of German.
You tell me! I started to learn Portuguese some years ago but then I stopped because I found that I mixed English and Portuguese conceptions in my mind fom time to time. So I decided to learn a language which would be far from English and my native Russian in terms of similarity. And that's how I ended up learning Japanese )
Same happened to me, mother tongue is Swiss German but learned English, French and Latin in school. Went to Japan, Japanese guy spoke French to me about a Japanese play based on Shakespeare, i was so confused XD then a few years ago, I went to Japanese language thing in Scotland and another learner kept switching between Japanese, German, French, Italian (which I hardly remembered), Gaelic, and Spanish (which I don't speak). My brain was completely fried afterwards XD
Japanese is literally the funniest shit of all time for me broooo you have no idea how much i laugh everytime i watch a tv show or japanese prank shows like its genuinely the funniest shit and my cheeks always get so painful like broooooooooooooooo just fkin stop making me laugh like pls i swear
Hi, I just came from Dogen-San's channel, and I am now subscribe to you. I heard that you were from Portland Oregon, and that over the summer you took a Japanese class at a Community College, and I'm curious to know college that was. I'm interested in seeing if I can expand my knowledge of the language there. You probably won't read this, but if you do have a great day, and it's a pleasure to meet another person who is going to be doing the Japanese language for the long-haul. I hope to someday find my purpose with foreign languages and how I can better not only myself, but impact the lives of others. Thanks for making these videos! Let's continue to do our best with the learning of this language, よろしくお願いします. ~ マーシー・スノーデン/Mercy Snowden
Yeah when I speak Japanese I feel like my mental field of vision shrinks, so it makes it harder to pay attention to my surroundings, including words I haven't fully acquired but that I'm pretty ready to acquire. It's worse if I'm not comfortable with my conversation partner. So in that sense I think speaking makes it harder to acquire some things. Although at the same time the experiences are more memorable so I can acquire new words much faster IRL in the best case scenario. BUT I also think this can be mostly overcome by integrating speech habits that you can fall back on, through shadowing and stuff. That's the hope at least :(
I am a Japanese native speaker who had to learn English and I learned a few more languages after having learned English. I agree with so many things that they talked about in this video. This was such a great video, I enjoyed it very much.
Regarding the katakana loan words vs kanji, I saw"ドラレコ搭載" on the back of a taxi the other day. Which was incredibly amusing for all the reasons mentioned in this video. Literally destroying the benefit that made all of those hours everyone has spent learning kanji worthwhile
On the matter of bilingualism, I grew up in Canada leaning two languages at once at school. My native language is French, so since English had a stronger influence in the country, we were also require to take english classes in school. So we had to accord 100% effort in both language since they both were important, but thankfully that made us good bilinguals by the end of 12th grade. I've recently picked up japanese and I can already foresee how dificult it will be to juggle three languages at once, especially when I want to be fluent in those three.
I just thought of another analogy of "the factory" that you use, based on your discussion, maybe it's Tetris in you mind and you need to align the blocks. But in Japanese, they are moving faster.
I wanna watch Dogen backflipping and YT gave this video when I tried a UA-cam search "Dogen language バク宙". Dogen says "Sometimes I backflip" in his title logo.
I became fluent in Thai, and after going periods of time like, 2 months or so without speaking English... Upon speaking English again, my English was kind of weird. I'd say things that sound really weird. Also - I can't imagine he's popular here but, George Trombley of Japanese from Zero... His English is weird a lot of the time. Like "you never can say these grammars in a formal situation"
interesting bit about the 外来語。。。I think that with the world getting smaller through social media and the internet, it's inevidible that it isn't going away; and only gonna grow; but that gives us native English speakers a nice opportunity to explain common misunderstandings to our native japan friends, prompting more relevant deep conversation about cultural differences, not just the "what's your story" type convo's ; win/win; lemons>>lemonade...
Yo some thoughts that came to recently and maybe Matt or some other people have some opinion to this: So as far as it goes sounding like a native is pretty pretty hard and seems (almost) impossible,so i thought if your motherlanguage is closer related to the language you are learning,do you have a besides learning faster also a higher capability to sound like a native? So for example a people from a european country like germany or dutch who learns english and when you compare those with japanese who learn english, do the european people have a higher capability to sound like a native compared to the japanese learner,because english and german/dutch are so similiar in word choice,pronunciation,thining/ how to express things ,that as a japanese english learner there is a point/barrier where they can not improve anymore,but for the dutch/german english learner that point/barrier is almost non existenst because there languages are so similiar, so they have a higher capacity attaining native like fluency.
As a Brazilian student of Japanese the trend of bringing English loan words into Portuguese has grown exponentially in the last few years. It would not surprise if this trend was also not just exclusive to Japanese and Portuguese. Fascinating
Oh yeah, I can relate with a lot of this, both as a "completely bilingual" kid who grew up with chinese and english, and seeing how my parents and our family friends have struggled learning english as immigrants. And even the part about having different levels of difficulty with a language with different people. I had all my schooling in Canada, and I am completely fluent in English. No questions about this. However, I cannot speak English to my parents. At all. I literally cannot do it. Maybe use some English words here and there, but the vast majority of the speech is always Chinese.
I've been brought up bilingual in Spanish and Catalan and I feel that given a situation where both languages have the same weight in early life it is fairly easy to have a native level in both languages. It is harder though, when one language is seen like less than the other. Even after 5 years living in America I feel like I still prefer Spanish humor. Sometimes it's just hard getting all the cultural nuance when you are a estranger to a culture even if you can speak the language.
There seems to be a lot of prejudice against loan words in general. It's a normal process that every language goes through. Loan words tend to condensate in specific subjects of a language, like a job, or social group, or formal context, usually connected to the way that the loan words got inside the language. That's why many French and Latin loan words to English sound fancy, because these were the languages of English nobility; that's why English loan words in my native Portuguese are used for areas like computer science, engineering or management; and that's also why in spoken Japanese 30% of the words are Chinese loan words, but in written Japanese, it's more like 50%. There's nothing wrong about loan words, and it doesn't degrade the language, whatever it means.
I grew up in a bilingual family (Portuguese and Spanish), but because I live in Angola and have more contact with Portuguese speakers, my Portuguese has always been slightly better. Then I started learning English and now I'm pretty good at it BUT my Portuguese is getting terrible. Now I'm planning to move to Japan and my language skills will probably get really funny
38:42 Dude... wtf?! So 勉強 and 練習 are 平板型?！ That rule is suuuuper intuititive. I feel like I instantaneously became smarter just from having heard that lol
german also gets more and more words from english. Sometimes i have the problem Dogen had in the video, speaking english to find the word in my german mother language. Languages change all the time, like they changed in the past, but because the whole world is connected today, almost all languages gets pulled in the direction of the most spoken languages like english, spanish, chinese...
What kind of impact will English loan words have on Japanese Sign language? It share many similarities with Taiwanese and Korean SL. With the adaption of more loan words, if the trend continues will people be forced to change JSL to conform and fit a new standard, or will there be a greater rift between the Japanese that someone who relies and uses JSL and spoken Japanese?
A game some of the ALTs play with their students at lunch is to not use any English or loan words, otherwise, they get a batsu. Sometimes the students aren't aware of how many words they use are loan words.
24:18 I used to experience the same thing switching from English to Spanish and vice-versa (Spanish is my native language btw), but now it doesn't really happen to me anymore. I barely use Spanish when I'm on the internet these days (which is a loooooong time :p), but I don't really have difficulty switching from one language to the other, and I still retain my level on each one. I've spoken English for years now, and I've reached a point where some people don't even know that I'm Mexican (a Japanese friend of mine used to think I was Korean lol). It's still far from perfect, but I don't have much trouble understanding it, nor communicating in the language so I think that after you reach a certain point on a language, you stop having that happening to you. I'm only speaking from my own personal experience though, so maybe that's different for other languages. Either way, it's an interesting thingですね hehe
I'm on exactly the same situation as you and I can most definitely feel myself struggling for words every day, although it's not *that* noticeable because the loss of vocabulary, or at least the struggle to find the word is mostly when using higher level vocabulary, trying to explain concepts and so on. The ability to make everyday conversation doesn't seem to suffer much.
This thing with implementing English words in another language is also happening in casual German conversation. I myself as native German speaker think that English is just better and simpler
Fellow Filipino here dude. Ako ay sang ayon saiyo. Habang sinusulat ko nga itong tugon ko sa iyong pahayag nahirapan akong buhuin ang pangungusap na ito na walang halong Ingles.
*DOGEN IS SUCH A CELEBRITY TO ME THAT I COMPLETELY FORGET TO GIVE HIM A PROPER INTRODUCTION! SO SORRY!!!*
Dogen is an American living in Japan who speaks incredibly impressive Japanese. On his UA-cam channel he creates hilarious comedy skits on topics related to living and working in Japan, often providing the unique perspective of a Japanese-speaking foreigner. On his Patreon he creates a Japanese Phonetics lesson series which teaches all aspects of Japanese pronunciation, including pitch accent. If you haven’t already, definitely check him out (links in the description)!!
Dogen Interviews Me: ua-cam.com/video/TTPt2DwLsD0/v-deo.html
Patreon Q&A with Dogen: www.patreon.com/posts/34961875/
@@jamesneutron2690 Perhaps he realized after releasing the video?
No worries at all dude, had a great time! Talk to you again soon!
you did the right thing lmao. Doogen doesn't need an intro.
*i like you too* ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
サンキュー、マット！ベリー ファンでした！
Matt + Skype = Mike...
I TOTALLY get that happen to me.
Saying one word while thinking about another... And boom. Something in the middle.
Were you standing the whole interview?
外来語すぎる！
Actual 2020 Japanese
😂😂
One of the best anime crossovers.
as a bilingual I am both conversationally fluent yet shit at both of them at the same time.
same here. I knid of gave up on sounding correct or natural and just try to speak so that I'm understood, doesn't matter if it sounds a bit awkward. The goal is to get the point across. Language is just a tool.
Since English is not my first language and I know I have accent and make grammar mistakes and so on, my goal in leaning Japanese now really is just to be as good as I’m in English now, because I can mostly communicate my ideas, thoughts and hold a conversation easily, with people understanding me. Of course maybe when I become better my goal will change, but to be honest right now I really think my main goal is just being able to communicate with people easily. I don’t really understand the obsessive thought of getting to sound completely like Japanese person, because it’s obvious I’ll never be Japanese.
Same two
Marija Kūbreaj
Marija Kūla and why
You're going to blow up now. Dogen channel is exploding. Was subbed to both of you on a different UA-cam account for a long time.
Dogen: "I'm going to be looking at this screen over here."
*Dogen looks at all the screens on the ceiling
Or the floor, or the other wall :D
So cool to see you guys finally collab!
*i want another round of this*
*for 2 hours*
*on **_both_** of your channels*
This video really points out everything we bilingual people pass through, really nice liked and subbed
Yeah, it's definitely not a Japanese only thing. My native language skill has suffered greatly because of my English.
I've been waiting for this collab :D
Thanks to you both for these crossover videos. It's very insightful to hear your thoughts and stories about your experiences learning and using Japanese, among other things.
One thing that I learned from this video via example rather than by explication is the fact that although Dogen technically gets both the stress pattern and pronunciation of the word "prevalent" wrong at 20:01 , no native English speaker would deny that Dogen is a fellow native English speaker. In other words, undeniable fluency can exist even in the presence of mistakes.
Being brought up bilingual has made me able to see the world in "3D". It's like having 2 eyes to triangulate stuff. Perceiving the world from multiple angles.
i just watched both of your videos back to back, and wow, i could listen to you guys discuss your experiences with japanese for hours. i’m a podcast lover and these long-form conversations really captured my attention. it’s also really interesting to hear the perspective of fellow bilinguals; granted, i studied abroad and now speak spanish, but i still find myself relating to and learning from everything you guys said. hope to see more collabs from you two in the future!
I think Dogen's comedy hits at all levels of Japanese. He's just a good comedic writer, and he has subtitles. If the comedy was in English it would be just as good.
I always remember his "having a baby in Japan" sketch, because it hits the culture shock funny bone as well as the reversal of expectations. It's so well crafted, and yet it feels so real.
I enjoy hearing you guys talk about your experiences, your advices, etc separately. It's very down to earth and reflects the learning path not just of language but many other things in life. So hearing you have a conversation is so satisfying. Not only do I learn from it, but also feel more positive about studying on my own. So, thank you both!
That 中途半端 strikes close to home for me. I started studying Japanese some 13 years ago. I’ve been living in Japan for almost 5 years. My mother tongue isn’t English. I talk in my mother tongue (as in really uttering words from mouth) pretty much just with my parents over phone on a regular basis. In daily life I use Japanese and I don’t use English frequently. Maybe like once in a few weeks. Now I’m stuck in a position when I can’t remember words in my mother tongue, my English got a little rusty and is, I’m sure, worse than 5 years ago, and my Japanese isn’t perfect either.
Reading this and knowing that your native tongue isn't English really impresses me and I just wanted to let you know that
Edit: Nice rascal pfp btw
DogenさんのYes!!が好きすぎるww
ヨーコさん！コメントをありがとう！！僕、ヨーコさんのファンなんですよ！もしよかったら、今度コラボしませんか？？
@@mattvsjapan えええええそうなんですか！？嬉しいです！コラボぜひしましょう^^
Finally my 大先輩s together!
大先輩
Your big forebearers?
やばいコラボきたー
the video is two years old but i just wanted to say these questions are brilliant
the one about finding your voice just in normal speaking in a recently-acquired language really hit me
15:17 Sharpest knife analogy, "what's the _point_ ?". Surely, there was no pun intended
It seems that both of you lived through similar experiences on your journeys, while still picking up refreshingly individual opinions about the same topics. That made for a very interesting conversation and showed great chemistry between both of you. Thank you for that!
This was the collab I most wanted to see.
Two guys who both highly value native-level language ability but take different approaches.
I have been waiting for this！！！
Amazing collab! Thank you both guys for contributing so much effort on japanese language learning and jp culture also. You inspire me and help me so much on learning japanese! Greetings from Moscow :)
I'm just starting out on learning Japanese. However, in my case, English is a second language (I've been studying it for more than a decade now). I pretty much have similar thoughts and feeling on the topics you guys discussed. And I definitely encounter the same problems and doubts about how good my level of language actually is and how improving in one language can make me lack in some area in the other language. It was comforting to see that I'm not alone regarding these experiences (I don't really know other ~bilingual people around me, so I really didn't hear others mentioning these things before). This being said, the future looks grim for me, as I'm now tring to tackle a third language...
Super cool interview, loved hearing you experts bouncing ideas off each other. I relate to a lot of what you're saying, regarding how your brain approaches the languages, how you have to think in almost a different "frame" or whatever, and the insight into detail w/r/t comedy and a person having a "voice".
While it's scary to watch loan words "infecting" a language at immense speed, I'm not sure it will necessarily *replace* Japanese words -- at least, not in the majority. More likely the synonyms will end up being used in different contexts, for different moods, or different rhetorical effects. English is actually a very very interesting example of this; historically it has some MAJOR vocab and grammar injections from various European languages (French, old Norse I think, etc). The classic example is the difference between "pork" and "pig", "beef" and "cow", etc. Another example would be like, "aid" vs "help" vs "assist". There are articles that go into a lot of depth into how a lot of these changes occurred so I won't go crazy on it here, but I encourage anyone to check it out, fascinating stuff.
So, while some words might disappear, I doubt that 考え方 will be replaced by "mind". More likely, once this evolution has calmed down a bit, most of these words will fall into convenient "niches" of meaning, and will have subtleties or implications that necessitate two words. Consider 気にしないで vs ドンマイ. It may be hard to articulate but subconsciously I already associate subtleties and appropriate contexts for both of these even though their dictionary definitions are quite similar.
Language evolution happens like this all the time, and for good reasons; it's usually not worth trying to be a Language Prescriptivist, at least in my opinion.
Been working full time and studying at University full time these last 2 years. I finally graduated and cant wait to start actually immersing myself in the language now that I’ll have some actual free time. You guys both are really inspirational to the language learning community and I truly appreciate your hard work!
woah! 2 matt vs japan videos in one day? what is it parallel universe?!
IT HAPPENED LET'S GO
When you emerse yourself in different language you start to replace words or use a concept that doesnt really exist in native language at least not in a way that's easily transferable.
that might just happen inside your brain if nobody else speaks the language that you are into, but when literally everybody else is taught it for 6 years in school and some of them actually uses it day to day basis... to me rise of loan words seems only natural.
it looks ridiculous just because we somehow still maintain japanese accent when we spam those loan words.
But we retain an English accent when we say "karaoke", "karate", "feng shui", etc. Loanwords _become_ native to the language they're loaned to, and saying them in a native way just makes sense.
There are loan words in Japanese that wouldn't be understood if they were pronounced the way they were in their native language, and there are loan words in Japanese that have become contracted to the point of not making any sense in their original language (thinking 「コンビニ」 and 「コピペ」 in particular).
Now when it comes to things like talking about foreign things, I _do_ try to retain the accent. It's 上原ひろみ, not "hih-ROW-mee, YOO-ay-hah-rah".
I instinctively use loan words in the native language of the person I'm speaking to. But, after the conversation I sometimes think back to myself why did I say it like that. Like, saying Ramune in a Japanese accent, and saying Target in a Chinese accent.
@@sam-xw2vf im not one of those 意識高い sort of people that we all make fun of for them allegedly trying to use English words just to look cool. so I guess i cant really say if either is true, and I can definitely see the perspective of 'oh they are doing it to look cool' or that it is just a trendy thing, but so many occasions do I feel like I just wanna use English words or concept because otherwise speaking it in japanese it is so stiff and clunky - obviously because you are basically speaking japanese with translation at that point.
Also we can see the same phenomenon in india or some SEA countries and they dont sound ridiculous at all. my prediction is we japanese people gonna sound more like them.
I guess for me it is more unnatural to stick with pure japanese with accepted loan words than just integrating English into it. The Japanese that I'm supposed to speak, it just isn't there in my brain.
@@sam-xw2vf You know, I used to fight the evolution of language too. I used to hate people using the term "sick" to mean "good".
Now I'm no longer 15, though, I just let it go on. Words take on new meanings, new words are invented or adopted, and old words are forgotten, all the time.
Have loved Dogen since the beginning and just discovering Matts channel now. WOW i love you both. Thanks for being an inspiration! Much appreciate you guys
Going on 13 years since I started learning Japanese, been working in Japan for 5 years (self employed now) and I agree with so much of this. I don't hear many conversations like these. Good to see that people have similar experiences and insight. 👍
Curious as to what you self employed yourself? Just wondering as an american who wants to live and work there someday
@@mattice9083 It's always been a consideration for me, for one. I realized that I've always done things on my own and it's more comfortable to me than working for someone else. Also the japanese workstyle wasn't the life I wanted to live. Too many hoops to jump through, having to act a certain way to be liked, long hours etc, it wasn't healthy for me, mentally and physically.
My advice for anyone wanting to work here is to work hard to find a company culture that you want to be a part of. I made the mistake of only looking at the job description. Either way, for me I would have gone this route, I'm sure. I have too many things I want to do to be stuck giving all of my hours to one place.
I meant like what type of job do you do? As in like what are you able to self employ as being a foreigner?
@@mattice9083 Oh, lol my bad. I'm a graphic designer doing branding and identity design for smaller companies. The experience I had in japanese companies before was key in it being possible. It's essentially running a business.
Ive been learning game programming and ideally would like to just program my games and live in japan. Probably just gonna stereotypically teach English before that seeing as its hard to make money of games
I think one thing a lot of people don't understand is there is never such a thing as perfect language learning, just how some people are good at writing and some people are good at talking you'll always really find something that you're better at. If you started learning Japanese by reading you'll probably be very good a reading, if you started by talking with native Japanese people, you'll probably sound really natural and fluent. Whenever I feel down about learning Japanese I always remember that my English isn't perfect, and I've been learning that my whole life! Even then, I can still speak well and I can still convey what I want without any thinking at all, as long as you get there, you'll be fine, even if it's not perfect, next to perfect is just fine.
came from dogen's channel.
you seem so genuine
Subbed
being so good at Japanese that he forgets the word in English but remembers it in Japanese
Something that is similar to Dogen's talk at around 41:00 mins is when I did athletics. in training we are focusing on the angle our arm comes through when we throw, or where our weight is at the moment we land. transferring the force effectively etc. Then in competitions, we are always told to just go out there and throw and don't think about it. Trying to think about those will actually detract from how effective we are in that moment. So train really really hard, then just try to be as natural as possible when you need it.
(in most of their videos) Matt always sit and Dogen always stand.
英語勉強してる身としてはこのチャンネルはまじで役立つ
I had a massive epiphany recently when I realised that a certain mind state I'd sometimes slip into was actually that "Japanese mode of thinking" that I'd picked up from a combination of Japanese friends I'd had along with a relatively early introduction to the culture as a child. I used to get so annoyed and anxious about it because it was sometimes just easier to figure certain things out while in that state, but I had no idea how to bring it about and once I did, speaking became a whole lot more difficult. Needless to say I eventually pieced together the clues and started studying the language, a somewhat bold move considering this was just a theory still, but it's one that ultimately turned out to be true and it should go without saying that my mental health has gotten a lot better since. Human neurology is a wonderfully whacky thing isn't it?
30:25 these guys are severely underrating themselves, they're both definitely eloquent in English and in Japanese.
Just came here immediately after see Dogen video, in regard of the technical aspect I notice that the volume of the audio is lower than the Dogen video, just in case you didn't notice.
Keep the good work.
For some reason i found this video quite demotivating. Specially the part where you guys were talking how exhausting it is to even talk for one hour in japanese.
I started learning english in my school from grade 1. But now after graduating from high school, i can speak and write english in near native level (though my writing isnt the best). Even if i spend 24 hours speaking/writing in english i wont be any more exhausted than using my native language. This is the case with all of my friends as well.
Hope i can achieve that on japanese as well.
I think it likely depends on what your surrounding environment is. My mum grew up chinese but moved to an english speaking country and spoke english almost exclusively there, so its no longer exhausting. I think its just how often you use the language that determines how comfortable your brain is using it. For example, even though chris from the abroad in japan channel lives in japan, most of his friends there speak english so he doesn't really use his japanese, and finds using it exhausting as well. Despite living in japan. So again its probably the environment you're in
1. Awesome! 🙌 I love you both. ❤ Been a subscriber for both for so long and so to see this was a dream come true. I don't know how you managed to keep yourself composed. The English speaking (1st language) factory in my head probably would've stopped dead from shock lol.
2. I've binged your interviews because the golden nuggets dropped by your guests and you in in-the-moment discoveries are priceless. And what I've noticed is that your interviewing abilities keep getting better and better. Wow!
3. On that note, this interview was fascinating to listen to and packed with content. I've learned so much on writing, focus, studying, mindset, speaking, etc. My mind is excited for all you've discussed. I'll definitely be rewatching this multiple times.
4. Matt, you've developed this air about you, and it touches upon what I said in no. 2. It seems to really put your guests at ease. You're so present that you are a able to sense when a subject, when pressed upon and you dig further, will strike gold. You listen to your guest and are a wonderful conversational partner. Your motive is so clear, "I want to learn about you." Because of this, I can see and hear Dogen in his element. It was wonderful to see him comfortable and thoughtful, his answers just flowed. You and Dogen made a great team and thus the conversation was wonderful to listen to.
Seriously dudes, bravo. 🙌
16:03 this aged like an onigiri left behind the sofa for 2 months
Great video! I would love to see you guys do this longer form podcast style and include alot of conversation in Japanese.
As a non-native English speaker, it was very interesting to hear your insights into being bilingual as native English speakers - your "struggles" with Japanese are what I've been experiencing basically my whole life with English, haha
Wow didn't expect this collab! Thanks to both of you for making such great content!
I love the chemistry. It makes me love this video!
My level of Japanese also varies depending on who I’m talking to lol. If I’m around other foreigners who can’t speak Japanese, then I’m usually okay, but around other foreigners who can speak it close to my level or who are way above my level, I have a bit more trouble. Trying to speak with Japanese people is usually okay unless they’re my coworkers. For some reason I always have a harder time talking with them regardless of the topic.
LOAN WORDS!! Okay so this hit hard for me because I speak English and Spanish and loan words, or préstamos, are so very prevalent in the Spanish language. It just shows how influential and universal the English language is. It’s everywhere. And then I moved to Japan (a year ago almost) and I was SHOCKED on how much English is prevalent here. I had more of a culture shock on how much English is present here in the language, food, etc. I was taken back but it’s the same way in Spanish-speaking countries. Some would argue that English has, and is, tainting languages. But I think it’s a beautiful presentation of assimilation globally. ❤️
Throwing a 3rd language into the mix makes it even more confusing. The first language I learnt was German to around A2 in the european framework. Some years later I learnt Chinese for a few months then went to China and I got introduced to this Chinese guy who spoke fluent German. My brain was so confused when he spoke German to me because he was Chinese and I was in full Chinese mode, so I literally could not think of a word of German.
You tell me! I started to learn Portuguese some years ago but then I stopped because I found that I mixed English and Portuguese conceptions in my mind fom time to time. So I decided to learn a language which would be far from English and my native Russian in terms of similarity. And that's how I ended up learning Japanese )
Same happened to me, mother tongue is Swiss German but learned English, French and Latin in school. Went to Japan, Japanese guy spoke French to me about a Japanese play based on Shakespeare, i was so confused XD then a few years ago, I went to Japanese language thing in Scotland and another learner kept switching between Japanese, German, French, Italian (which I hardly remembered), Gaelic, and Spanish (which I don't speak). My brain was completely fried afterwards XD
I was actually thinking yesterday that this video should be made! Amazing, you guys are! Thank you :D
Japanese is literally the funniest shit of all time for me broooo you have no idea how much i laugh everytime i watch a tv show or japanese prank shows like its genuinely the funniest shit and my cheeks always get so painful like broooooooooooooooo just fkin stop making me laugh like pls i swear
We need more videos with the both of you
Hi, I just came from Dogen-San's channel, and I am now subscribe to you. I heard that you were from Portland Oregon, and that over the summer you took a Japanese class at a Community College, and I'm curious to know college that was. I'm interested in seeing if I can expand my knowledge of the language there. You probably won't read this, but if you do have a great day, and it's a pleasure to meet another person who is going to be doing the Japanese language for the long-haul. I hope to someday find my purpose with foreign languages and how I can better not only myself, but impact the lives of others. Thanks for making these videos! Let's continue to do our best with the learning of this language, よろしくお願いします.
~ マーシー・スノーデン/Mercy Snowden
Yeah when I speak Japanese I feel like my mental field of vision shrinks, so it makes it harder to pay attention to my surroundings, including words I haven't fully acquired but that I'm pretty ready to acquire. It's worse if I'm not comfortable with my conversation partner. So in that sense I think speaking makes it harder to acquire some things. Although at the same time the experiences are more memorable so I can acquire new words much faster IRL in the best case scenario. BUT I also think this can be mostly overcome by integrating speech habits that you can fall back on, through shadowing and stuff. That's the hope at least :(
I am a Japanese native speaker who had to learn English and I learned a few more languages after having learned English. I agree with so many things that they talked about in this video. This was such a great video, I enjoyed it very much.
Regarding the katakana loan words vs kanji, I saw"ドラレコ搭載" on the back of a taxi the other day. Which was incredibly amusing for all the reasons mentioned in this video. Literally destroying the benefit that made all of those hours everyone has spent learning kanji worthwhile
it's not like there aren't still tens of thousands of kanji words and 熟語 still in use
On the matter of bilingualism, I grew up in Canada leaning two languages at once at school. My native language is French, so since English had a stronger influence in the country, we were also require to take english classes in school. So we had to accord 100% effort in both language since they both were important, but thankfully that made us good bilinguals by the end of 12th grade. I've recently picked up japanese and I can already foresee how dificult it will be to juggle three languages at once, especially when I want to be fluent in those three.
I just thought of another analogy of "the factory" that you use, based on your discussion, maybe it's Tetris in you mind and you need to align the blocks. But in Japanese, they are moving faster.
I wanna watch Dogen backflipping and YT gave this video when I tried a UA-cam search "Dogen language バク宙". Dogen says "Sometimes I backflip" in his title logo.
The crossover episode
Damn, i like this channel, subbed!
I'm so happy to see this collab! Two of my faves :')
I became fluent in Thai, and after going periods of time like, 2 months or so without speaking English... Upon speaking English again, my English was kind of weird. I'd say things that sound really weird.
Also - I can't imagine he's popular here but, George Trombley of Japanese from Zero... His English is weird a lot of the time.
Like "you never can say these grammars in a formal situation"
George is popular everywhere
Oooooh I can’t wait to watch both of these when I get home
interesting bit about the 外来語。。。I think that with the world getting smaller through social media and the internet, it's inevidible that it isn't going away; and only gonna grow; but that gives us native English speakers a nice opportunity to explain common misunderstandings to our native japan friends, prompting more relevant deep conversation about cultural differences, not just the "what's your story" type convo's ; win/win; lemons>>lemonade...
Dogen after every question: "This is such an interesting question/topic"
Yo some thoughts that came to recently and maybe Matt or some other people have some opinion to this: So as far as it goes sounding like a native is pretty pretty hard and seems (almost) impossible,so i thought if your motherlanguage is closer related to the language you are learning,do you have a besides learning faster also a higher capability to sound like a native? So for example a people from a european country like germany or dutch who learns english and when you compare those with japanese who learn english, do the european people have a higher capability to sound like a native compared to the japanese learner,because english and german/dutch are so similiar in word choice,pronunciation,thining/ how to express things ,that as a japanese english learner there is a point/barrier where they can not improve anymore,but for the dutch/german english learner that point/barrier is almost non existenst because there languages are so similiar, so they have a higher capacity attaining native like fluency.
As a Brazilian student of Japanese the trend of bringing English loan words into Portuguese has grown exponentially in the last few years. It would not surprise if this trend was also not just exclusive to Japanese and Portuguese. Fascinating
They are not steelmanning each other, they are steelbroing. Amazing interview.
かぐや様は告らせたい ～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦 is legitimately one of the funniest things I've seen in any language. Whatever the heck style of comedy that is, sign me up.
Oh yeah, I can relate with a lot of this, both as a "completely bilingual" kid who grew up with chinese and english, and seeing how my parents and our family friends have struggled learning english as immigrants.
And even the part about having different levels of difficulty with a language with different people. I had all my schooling in Canada, and I am completely fluent in English. No questions about this. However, I cannot speak English to my parents. At all. I literally cannot do it. Maybe use some English words here and there, but the vast majority of the speech is always Chinese.
I've been brought up bilingual in Spanish and Catalan and I feel that given a situation where both languages have the same weight in early life it is fairly easy to have a native level in both languages. It is harder though, when one language is seen like less than the other.
Even after 5 years living in America I feel like I still prefer Spanish humor. Sometimes it's just hard getting all the cultural nuance when you are a estranger to a culture even if you can speak the language.
15:12 nice (probably unintended) pun lmao matt should be a comedian too
There seems to be a lot of prejudice against loan words in general. It's a normal process that every language goes through. Loan words tend to condensate in specific subjects of a language, like a job, or social group, or formal context, usually connected to the way that the loan words got inside the language. That's why many French and Latin loan words to English sound fancy, because these were the languages of English nobility; that's why English loan words in my native Portuguese are used for areas like computer science, engineering or management; and that's also why in spoken Japanese 30% of the words are Chinese loan words, but in written Japanese, it's more like 50%. There's nothing wrong about loan words, and it doesn't degrade the language, whatever it means.
Wow this collab is great for MIA promotion
Love it
I grew up in a bilingual family (Portuguese and Spanish), but because I live in Angola and have more contact with Portuguese speakers, my Portuguese has always been slightly better. Then I started learning English and now I'm pretty good at it BUT my Portuguese is getting terrible. Now I'm planning to move to Japan and my language skills will probably get really funny
38:42
Dude... wtf?! So 勉強 and 練習 are 平板型?！ That rule is suuuuper intuititive. I feel like I instantaneously became smarter just from having heard that lol
german also gets more and more words from english. Sometimes i have the problem Dogen had in the video, speaking english to find the word in my german mother language. Languages change all the time, like they changed in the past, but because the whole world is connected today, almost all languages gets pulled in the direction of the most spoken languages like english, spanish, chinese...
35:45 Matt, Thank you so fucking much, this is exactly was I was thinking.
This is great thank you
What kind of impact will English loan words have on Japanese Sign language? It share many similarities with Taiwanese and Korean SL. With the adaption of more loan words, if the trend continues will people be forced to change JSL to conform and fit a new standard, or will there be a greater rift between the Japanese that someone who relies and uses JSL and spoken Japanese?
A game some of the ALTs play with their students at lunch is to not use any English or loan words, otherwise, they get a batsu. Sometimes the students aren't aware of how many words they use are loan words.
get laoshu on the show bruh i wanna see yall debate some shit
That would be amazing. He sadly passed on recently though.
Two of my heroes having a conversation in HD and high quality audio
Come on man... hero's? really?
@@sagefields5847 Yes?
@@sagefields5847 *heroes
24:18 I used to experience the same thing switching from English to Spanish and vice-versa (Spanish is my native language btw), but now it doesn't really happen to me anymore. I barely use Spanish when I'm on the internet these days (which is a loooooong time :p), but I don't really have difficulty switching from one language to the other, and I still retain my level on each one. I've spoken English for years now, and I've reached a point where some people don't even know that I'm Mexican (a Japanese friend of mine used to think I was Korean lol). It's still far from perfect, but I don't have much trouble understanding it, nor communicating in the language so I think that after you reach a certain point on a language, you stop having that happening to you.
I'm only speaking from my own personal experience though, so maybe that's different for other languages. Either way, it's an interesting thingですね hehe
I'm on exactly the same situation as you and I can most definitely feel myself struggling for words every day, although it's not *that* noticeable because the loss of vocabulary, or at least the struggle to find the word is mostly when using higher level vocabulary, trying to explain concepts and so on. The ability to make everyday conversation doesn't seem to suffer much.
Speaking of English loan words, I find it interesting because English is itself a messy culmination of loan words from various different languages.
Dogen and Matt content? This is epic.
This thing with implementing English words in another language is also happening in casual German conversation.
I myself as native German speaker think that English is just better and simpler
I don't know what it is.... Dogen sort-of looks like Trent Reznor!
Great video. Thanks guys :D
31:22 dogen trading his emeralds
i think the using of english words in other languages doesn't only apply to japanese. I hear "anglicisms" in many languages f.e. German
Me, a french native speaker, learning japanese from english. I do understand the feeling!
Matt I like your energy brah!
English loan words is a dangerous phenomenon. Tagalog speakers suffer from it, and often forget the traditional words.
Fellow Filipino here dude. Ako ay sang ayon saiyo. Habang sinusulat ko nga itong tugon ko sa iyong pahayag nahirapan akong buhuin ang pangungusap na ito na walang halong Ingles.
It would have been really interesting to see if you started talking to eachother in japanese for part of the interview!
This is a dream come true.
You guys should make a podcast!