Learn Japanese with Yuta: bit.ly/3oZGyoR Support me on Patreon: goo.gl/aiWNd5 Twitter: / thatyuta Instagram: / thatyuta Facebook: bit.ly/381qpHS Blog: www.yutaaoki.com/blog/
こんにちはユタ先生！あなたのシャネルをよく見ています。教えてくれてありがとうございました！まだ日本語が上手ではないんですけど、英語で続けます. . . I really appreciate your approach to learning language, and I love how you encourage your viewers to learn in so many different ways. As a big anime fan myself I really enjoy videos where you recommend anime that is good for learning, while pointing out the pitfalls and dangers in learning strictly from anime (like characters speaking in usual or silly ways for example). I’ve been watching a new-ish anime on Netflix called “Komi Can’t Communicate” (「古見さんは、コミュ症です」). Since the main character has trouble speaking she doesn’t say much in the anime, she has to write everything down. I really like this anime for learning because I can listen to the Japanese, see the writing, put on subtitles and pause when I need to, to take my time reading the Japanese. It’s kind of a high-school romance/ slice of life anime. If you have not seen it yet I recommend you check it out! Im hoping there are others out there learning Japanese that will benefit from this anime as I have ☺️✌️
@@Ice_2228 I don't mean channels for Japanese learners though, I mean normal channels Japanese people like about different topics. Like Veritasium or PewDiePie or Game Theory. Thank you though!
Why would he want to, he just wants to sell his products. First step: make a youtube channel change location to Japan and only sub Japanese channels. You will have tons of content.
Being excited about learning Japanese REALLY super-charged my first 3 months of learning. I got to a conversational level within 3-4 months, and I was able to stop focusing on Grammar and 'school style' learning. Now I'm mostly just consuming material for fun, and I'm already pushing into the N3 level, with very minimal studying, after just a couple of years. (I know maybe 500 kanji now too) I got here mostly by reading, speaking, texting my girlfriend daily, and absorbing content in my spare time through Anime and J-dramas. I also recommend you to get graded readers.
I honestly found learning song lyrics to be really helpful, both for vocabulary and pronunciation. You get a solid reference, and singing can be language agnostic, so you actually end up more familiar with Japanese sounds because you're less prone to projecting a foreign accent onto it.
I’m struggling on how to actually learn it, first I wanted to learn kanji and just read the haruhi novel but I just realised that probably won’t be a very productive way of learning it, so now I’m struggling to figure out what to do
@@jackster10101 One month later but I'm learning as well and I have finished hiragana already and if you know hiragana and katakana you should probably start with kanji, im learning Chinese as well and kanji does look quite similar to Chinese symbols so I sometimes mix them up, but really it's up to you.
@@wozwald0107 well I feel like i don’t have enough discipline but I’ve been trying to follow the Japanese from zero book and I’ve learned more than just hiragana like I’ve learned a few words some are hard to keep continuously using so i do need to go over them or just keep going to learn more sentences to make it easier to remember i do need to read through it on a more consistent basis but i feel like this is more helpful than jumping full force into kanji especially since with that wanikani site I found it hard plus it’s kinda useless if i don’t know what the words are, I know yuta says textbooks aren’t great but I’ve slowly learned a little of Japanese I learned a little about the word janai and daisuki but I think i can do it if I just read it on a more regular basis, so it’s more structured which is nice
@@user-jm1yv8zh1z I recommend you utaten, it has lyrics with furigana but it's mostly in japanese, so it might be hard to look around but if you put the song's name followed by "utaten" it should be there
I live in Quebec, and I remember when I was little my step-brother did a special project that was offered by the school. It was called "The immersion project" and for 6 months every class was done completely in English because for a brief moment in time the French Government realized the importance English would have in students' lives and the opportunities it would afford them. During the 6 months of English schooling, they were encouraged to consume media in English as much as they could with French subtitles if available and/or needed. I was already bilingual because of my mother, so for 6 months, I promised to speak nothing but English to him. Of course, we switched to French from time to time when he didn't know a word or didn't understand something. I think immersion like this is the perfect way to learn a language, but learning English for a francophone or vice versa is easier since both languages share an alphabet. The actual alphabets have always been the major hurdle for me in learning Japanese. I've picked up some phrases that I can say and can recognize words pretty ok when in Romaji, but the kanji and hiragana are really tough.
Hiragana at least is actually pretty easy. It requires a bit of memorizing but once you memorize it you know it. Flash cards are also really good for it since they have a very direct correlation
I love Quebec and Montreal! I kind of did the opposite. I wanted to learn French, so I tried immersing myself there for a few days for vacation. The people were so friendly and a secretary at my hostel even taught me French in the mornings when I saw here. Anyways, congrats on learning English and best wishes with your Japanese!
WAAA THE WORLD IS SO SMALL!! I too live in Quebec and we did the exact same thing in my school but like you I was already bilingual!! I learn English thanks to a game I used to play so much before and one day POOF I started to understand little by little. It was magical frl. It shows that immersion is the best and most efficace way to learn any language. Good luck and stay motivated!!
I am Chinese, I can only know kanji in Japanese. But some worlds produciation in Chinese are similar to Japanese. Such as Min nan Dialect(A dialect from Fujian),先生(In Minnan Dialect pronunced Sensei too)
Ditto, but sometimes the Japanese meaning does not fit with the Chinese meaning. Like 大丈夫 (Daijoubu) means “everything will be okay” in Japanese while in Chinese it literally just means big husband or “the man of the house that provides for the family”. The first time I listened to the music of 五月天 (Mayday) and 茄子蛋 (EggplantEgg)I thought they were speaking Japanese until I realised it was Minnan
With learning langugages, I love the Easy Language series on UA-cam. There's Easy Japanese, Easy Spanish, etc. What's cool is that in each episode, they interview people on the street on a specific topic. Because of this, many words and phrases are repeated, which helps with memorization. Also, because these are random people from the cities and villages, the language is more authentic and the people speak at a regular pace (which is freakishly fast for a beginner, LOL). Also, many of these questions asked are questions people usually ask each other (What's your favorite... Where do you like to...), so you are more prepared in real life when people ask you these. Best wishes in learning Japanese!
I like that you explicitly state that learning a language is not a linear experience. In my experience, which I'm right in the middle of, it's a lot more like watching a polaroid picture develop. I would like to offer the advice to anyone learning Japanese: To solidify hiragana and katakana, I highly recommend writing them, and often, because each time your brain needs to recall a character it reinforces the neural/memory pathway. I agree with what you've said about kanji, and I'm not recommending this as a strategy for learning kanji (there are too many, and the lack of consistency with the readings makes it too much for this to be effective), but for hiragana and katakana, I think that for me it really helped. I'm posting this comment because for anyone reading, I think if you're trying to learn hiragana and katakana, it really really helped me to write them a lot. Also if you're coming here, definitely learn to write your own name in katakana before coming.
Question: How would Paul be written in Hiragana/Katakana. Cause I neither know P (or pa) nor l. For L I'd use る though. And yes, I know my Name 'd be written in Katakana, but let's start with Hiragana, cause that's what I'm learning atm
@@paulusapfel In hiragana you'd have to think about the characters ぽ (po), ぱ (pa), and る (ru). In katakana, which as you pointed out it would be written, they use the dash to extend the vowel, so it'd be either po or pa, dash, ru... but in hiragana I think you'd just have to add the vowel あ (a) or お (o). I think it'd be Po-o-ru, which also sounds like the loan word "pole" when converted, but Pa-a-ru, Pa-ru, and Po-ru don't seem quite right. So, I think it would be ぽおる (po-o-ru) in hiragana. That or ぱある (pa-a-ru), but I think you're gonna find that with the way 'a' is pronounced, 'po' might work better than 'pa'.
@@thecleeze6359 Thx a lot, i knew the ha (ho) hiragana, and some extensions like ka->ga, but the little circle was new to me. my name is pronounced a little bit different cause im not from an english speaking country so I think I'd go with sth like Pa-u-ru, Pa-a-u-ru or Pa-o-u-ru. maybe i have to watch an anime or a tv show like mushoku tensei with a person called Paul with jpn subtitles.
My effort in learning the language is to click on entries on a certain one-winged letter website that has the 🇯🇵 flag instead of the 🇬🇧 flag. I stumble a lot with the kanji but I won't let them hinder my progress in finishing the material.
I realised that I can recognise the the kanji in their names 西方(Nishikata) and 高木(Takagi). Guess that's progress. I also realised I can read the title of the anime からかい上手の高木さん(surprisingly my keyboard knew what I wanted to type), 高 being the kanji of Height or tall, 木 being tree, hence 高木(Takagi)being the name. And 日本語上手 is a meme at these point so I won't forget these few 漢字 s at this point 笑...! Edit: Then again I have already cleared N5 and preparing for N4 , so I am not exactly a beginner either.
I think what intimidates me as I learn japanese is the true translation. Many common ordinary sentences are translated very different than a dictionary would.
this is great! I know a bunch of verbs and nouns and recognize them during conversations, but I always had questions with verbs like what does "te" imply, and why can u use it with negative form, but this clears up everything! I probably need to learn those inflections
Thank you. This will be a great video to send to people. I got all sorts of terrible advice about learning Japanese, but all of my progress has been made on authentic input in regular script.
I read your comment as "Thank you. This will be a great video to send to people. It's got all sorts of terrible advice about learning Japanese" and I was very confused lol
the tip for learning the alphabets is something i've been doing using song titles for a while (initially out of necessity to understand whats going on in spotify playlists, then i started activelly trying to associate letters w sounds instead of just "that one song has a title that looks like this") it's been going a lot better than my previous attempt at just memorizing (though that attempt was when i was very young so that could also be a factor lol), the main downside is i'm not entirely sure about certain ones being hiragana or katakana since song titles don't exclusively use one or the other, but i'm sure i'll figure it out with time/studying
When I'm watching reality shows to learn, I feel like I'm more reading the English subtitles rather than learning anything, even if I do understand some of what's being said . Any advice? 難しい . 手伝ってください
0:22 that was a good one, I love this type of humor ( although, some might say it is not humor...). And yeah I agree that learning hiragana that way is pretty good and cool, I just memorised everything with the hiragana and katakana chart. At the end both ways reach the same result but I would say now that I ve studied for a year that you will get more immersion the way Yuta said
Learning hiragana and katakana is super easy imo. It's like collecting some magical runes except they are actually used in real life. Learning how to write them is also fun, although not that vital. Kanji is the same, there's just way more so it feels way more intimidating.
There's a huge opportunity cost to spending your time on learning a language that's not spoken anywhere outside the borders of one country. So make sure you really want to do it before you take the plunge.
I learned hiragana in a week using only two phone apps, katakana took me two weeks but that was because I was a bit tired. For two more weeks I mastered all the possible combinations. It took me like an hour of studying a day and I was very enthusiastic at that time so it didn't seem a bore at all.
A really good way I practiced hiragana and katakana writing was by finding japanese songs that I liked, and then I would find the romaji lyrics, and then write then out in katakana or hiragana to practice, right from start to finish. This way I was interested in what I was doing, and it got me to use all of it at once. (do correct me if there is a better way of doing it, or if there are errors in this method)
I don't know about this one, I learned japanese by starting with learning the most basic stuff, than keeping on learning more and more advanced stuff. The immersion through manga and anime is something you can totally do in parallel of actually studying the grammar. The grammar is what gives you solid fondations to grasp what you will later learn through immersion imo.
Honestly I tried immersion first and my attention would drive away cuz almost no content was comprehensible enough for me. I still kept watching Japanese content but while studying grammar. It felt amazing how after each lesson everything I heard started making sense more and more.
> The immersion through manga and anime is something you can totally do in parallel of actually studying the grammar. That's pretty much what I said in the video. My point is you don’t have to finish an entire textbook before using authentic materials. It’s better to learn grammar when you know when and how it’s used rather than learning it in isolation or through artificial examples that often sound contextually wrong. I wouldn’t use the word immersion because people start assuming that you are not supposed to look up words and grammatical concepts.
Vocabulary >>> grammar. Japanese is notorious for having a specific word for the same damn thing, but used in different situations. And if you don't know that word for that specific situation no matter your grammar level the Japanese people will have no idea what you're trying to say. Like you can know how 自治体 translates directly but you've never experienced it in japan so the image about it in your head may be completely different from what Japanese know about it. 5+ years spent here and I still find new words for the same things here and there all the time. It's like they come up with these words on the fly just for that one specific event when it happens. And even knowing both vocabulary and grammar perfectly you still need to know the context behind these words or how things work. Since everything is done in repetitive patterns and everything is on rails or predetermined, there's always only one specific way to do things. Like a person in japan have to go down a specific route like 新卒 and 中途 system when applying for a job. There's just no other way. You come anywhere to do anything and you just must fill in an application. There's no other way. You can only experience all these things if you come and live here for a while. But honestly, don't learn Japanese more than it's required for your hobbies like anime and games. God forbid if you come here to Japan and to work in a Japanese company (shivers) it would be time and effort (and your mental health) down the drain. And I'm not even starting about low salaries, lack of career growth and economic stagnation. Its just not worth it in general. You can find other ways to suffer without investing so much into learning a language. I'm here only because my home country is far far worse. But most people from Europe and the US have nothing to win here and should better stay home for better opportunities. Don't worry, you won't be able to practice your speaking skill here anyway since no Japanese person will ever talk to you more than 5 minutes after he's done pulling out all the information about your nationality and pointing out all the stereotypes he knows about your country. Small talk doesn't exist in japan (even here in Osaka, which is known for open and talkative people) so you have much better luck using online language learning sites and apps to find natives to talk too. Remember, japan is best to experience as a tourist, but worst as a foreign resident.
I think it all depends on how well you can tolerate ambiguity and how much you enjoy learning grammar/vocabulary in isolation. I spent around 3 months just drilling vocab using Anki and learning grammar before attempting to read manga, but it was okay because I didn't find it boring. I tried to read よつばと right from the beginning and it was much worse, cause I'd have to check the dictionary all the time and it killed my motivation. I've been learning Japanese for about 2 years now, and while I still use Anki for mining new words and stuff, I almost never look up grammar explanations and just spend most of the time reading/watching stuff I enjoy. Sometimes I make a note of some sentence I didn't quite understand so I can pay attention when I see the same piece of grammar being used again and it eventually clicks after seeing more examples. No one method works for everyone. If you enjoy using textbooks, then use them; if you hate textbooks but doesn't mind drilling vocab/grammar, then do that; if you just want to watch anime/read manga and look up stuff from time to time, that's fine too. As long as you're getting enough comprehensible input and stick with it, you'll eventually acquire the language. Staying motivated is much more important than using the "perfect" method.
I’ve watched your channel for a years but I never actually started to try and learn Japanese for some reason. I recently started learning it on the same day this video was released. Hopefully this can help me go into the right direction on learning the language.
I often have fun taking words I vaguely remember and trying to add random inflections based on intuition and then checking if it actually means anything. One time I had a dream that was in full Japanese and I understood everything even tho I've never been fluent :')
I had no idea such a reality show existed in Japan! As for the characters, Hiragana is much easier for me to read. I don't use Katakana much, which is why I have trouble remembering them all.
I originally used duolingo to learn hiragana and then i learned katakana by reading japanese tweets and twitch chat, looking up the character if i could not think of what it was. But thats just the easy part of learning japanese
I've been watching anime for years and started watching Japanese youtuber for a year and i could understand lil bit of Japanese now. next i learn to read and write 90% of hiragana but reading is still child like. now after watching this vid i know my next step is to watch with japanese subtitles.👍
great video as always. Sometimes it is hard to find resources that have japanese subtitles (it's more common to find them with only english subtitles or no subtitles at all). Can you make a video of your top 5 resources with Japanese subtitles (preferably free!)?
Netflix is full of Japanese Series with Japanese Subtitles, that’s why it was in the thumbnail. Also during the last year they added a lot of RL-series, from J-dramas to films
about learning hirigana and katakana, idk how effective your method here is (i mean i could imagine it being pretty good because you get authentic audio input for letters which i imagine sticks even moreso at first) but i was able to memorise all of those letters in about a week just by seeing them all and saying them out loud a lot, so to anyone who wants to just learn it that way (all though probably more tedious) and just see them so much that they stick in your head thats still perfectly viable, i literally just wrote them all down and looked at all of them to see what i didnt remember and referred to the alphabet tables for help
I find that the channel Japanese Ammo With Misa helps quite a bit with clarification about most questions. It’s definitely helpful if you’re using apps/textbooks like me.
6:30 - I've noticed that Japanese people have this cadence on reality TV, interviews, etc. but never in anime or movies. It's like she emphasizes certain words and it sounds kinda tonal. But when Yuuta repeats the sentences, his cadence is completely different, much closer to a character's in a movie or show. Can anyone here explain this?
emotional weight is my guess. It takes guts to cause conflict in Japanese culture. Questioning surely has the potential to do so. So hesitation or emphasis. Same way in English right?
@@MorgurEdits - I think it's content-independent. There's a rhythm with pauses and points of emphasis (and maybe rise and fall in pitch) that I simply never hear in anime/movies. The way she says, "koko NI ... nan no mokuteki DE". "Normal" people on TV often speak like regardless of the topic, but movie characters never do.
This intonation you're talking about, in this particular instance, indicates consideration. However this can happen for a number of reasons, like trying to seem more "reserved" to being contemplative or emotional. But this actually isn't foreign and happens in English too. When someone is explaining something slowly a longer sentence can break into smaller logical pieces, as the speaker thinks about what to say next. There is no great shift in pitch because that is how English is not a tonal language. The most we get is a comma to denote a short pause when it's written text, but for a pitch language the pitch pattern actually changes depending on the speed and grouping of ideas. Also, this does happen occasionally in anime/movies, but to a far lesser extent. Why? Because the dialogue is scripted, so even when it does happen, it is artificially constructed. In general though, intonation varies quite a bit from TV/pro narration to casual Tokyo dialect despite them both being considered 標準語/standard Japanese. This is where the "this person sounds like an anime character" idea comes from. The good news though, most people will have no trouble understanding either style as long as the pronunciation is clear.
Week one done. Got hiragana done and katakana halfway done. Managed to get a concussion halfway through but still progressing just slower than I thought.
@@J2CHOZENN8 Yeah basically. It helped me to associate them with shapes i was familiar with. Like Ko looks like two koi fish. Ki looks like a key. Na looks like a knot. Etc. Theres this good video by " learn Japanese with Japanese pod 101" which goes over all of them. I set a goal of learning 10 per day and had no issues even with a concussion. I'm now on day 11 or 12 and I've learned all the hiragan and katakana and have started going through the genki textbook.
@@J2CHOZENN8 I will say, it will take longer to learn hiragana than it will to learn katakana. At least it did for me. Katakana was a breeze because they are simpler. For example the katakana for Ro is just a square. Some of them are even the same as hiragana too.
I rewatch Monogatari in the name of learning Japanese One doesn't need eng subs after watching an episode 2-3 times And we can slow the speed down during Arararagi's monologues
Aww, this is similar how I learned! I'm Arab, but autistic and mostly watched/read/played stuff in English, so I was most fluent in English, but wanted to watch Pokemon... didn't have access to the English dub, but the Arabic dub was very easy basic language (because it's a kodomo anime, even if it takes elements from shounen sports series with tournament arcs, etc.), there were barely subs for it back in the day (people don't like to subtitle children's anime often... fortunately, Pokemon now gets full series fansubs, but not back in 2004!), so I watched and slowly learned little by little, watching it in Japanese. Learned katakana first because it's what the Pokemon anime used the most, hiragana I picked up while watching Kogepan (since the narrator slooowly sounds outwards while the text is written slowly on the screen!). So I know hiragana and katakana now. ^^ I can understand a lot of basic language and can read little kid's books (ones meant for preschoolers or early elementary students) and comics, but I still have a lot of trouble with kanji. I did learn quite a few from a cool piece of like... scenery/background drawn with the characters representing what they are (like tsuki up in the sky as the moon, the forest trees being ki and mori characters, etc.) But yeah, learning from just watching and reading a lot of random stuff is how I learned English too. ^^
I was 16 when I started studying 日本語。 I don't know what I did right, but I learned hirigana and katakana in 2 weeks... self taught. I wish I had kept that full steam through learning kanji, but life happened. Probably could have learned at least high intermediate to fluent Japanese in two years 😢
Intermediate likely not fulent andless you're Chinese than fluency is very possible in 2 years actually it is possible in the right conditions such as you practice with japanese people and such
Back in the day we started with the family friendly “manga movie”(the word “anime” wasn’t actually used in the 90s) Urotsukidōji. That was coolest shit ever when your were 14. (Anime in general was seen as something much more adult and violent back then in the west. You know Akira, Patlabor, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in The Shell and that kinda stuff. The cute stuff arrived here much later.)
"Or you can go outside, and talk to people like a normal human being." Unfortunately, I don't live in Japan, Hawaii, or California, so practicing on my neighbors will result in a lot of strange looks. But I like a challenge. Also, you've sinpired me to sign up for your lessons.
Toggle IME so you can write Japanese with your keyboard e.g. you know a word like Arigato, you can just write it out in English and IME turns it to ありがと(う)
Yuta, I love different japanese musicians and idols: can I use japanese songs to practice? Or are some songs such as idol music not as useful for practicing japanese?
Learn Japanese with Yuta: bit.ly/3oZGyoR
So hard 😭😭😭😭😭
@@Littlefish1239 gross
@@christopherluke9658 what?
こんにちはユタ先生！あなたのシャネルをよく見ています。教えてくれてありがとうございました！まだ日本語が上手ではないんですけど、英語で続けます. . . I really appreciate your approach to learning language, and I love how you encourage your viewers to learn in so many different ways. As a big anime fan myself I really enjoy videos where you recommend anime that is good for learning, while pointing out the pitfalls and dangers in learning strictly from anime (like characters speaking in usual or silly ways for example). I’ve been watching a new-ish anime on Netflix called “Komi Can’t Communicate” (「古見さんは、コミュ症です」). Since the main character has trouble speaking she doesn’t say much in the anime, she has to write everything down. I really like this anime for learning because I can listen to the Japanese, see the writing, put on subtitles and pause when I need to, to take my time reading the Japanese. It’s kind of a high-school romance/ slice of life anime. If you have not seen it yet I recommend you check it out! Im hoping there are others out there learning Japanese that will benefit from this anime as I have ☺️✌️
YUTA
It would be amazing if Yuta-sensei could recommend some UA-cam channels in Japanese with varied subjects.
@@Ice_2228 I don't mean channels for Japanese learners though, I mean normal channels Japanese people like about different topics. Like Veritasium or PewDiePie or Game Theory.
Thank you though!
@@petrelli231 oops my mistake, sorry about that!
Why would he want to, he just wants to sell his products.
First step: make a youtube channel change location to Japan and only sub Japanese channels. You will have tons of content.
@@lastninjaitachi to what channels?
@@petrelli231 whatever ones you want
Being excited about learning Japanese REALLY super-charged my first 3 months of learning.
I got to a conversational level within 3-4 months, and I was able to stop focusing on Grammar and 'school style' learning.
Now I'm mostly just consuming material for fun, and I'm already pushing into the N3 level, with very minimal studying, after just a couple of years. (I know maybe 500 kanji now too)
I got here mostly by reading, speaking, texting my girlfriend daily, and absorbing content in my spare time through Anime and J-dramas. I also recommend you to get graded readers.
where to go for free vocabulary
I honestly found learning song lyrics to be really helpful, both for vocabulary and pronunciation. You get a solid reference, and singing can be language agnostic, so you actually end up more familiar with Japanese sounds because you're less prone to projecting a foreign accent onto it.
yess ! i learned a japanese song for fun and it helped me with my pronunciations throughout my lessons
yeah it also helps a lot with being able to speak faster and getting the feel of rhythm for complex words
I’m struggling on how to actually learn it, first I wanted to learn kanji and just read the haruhi novel but I just realised that probably won’t be a very productive way of learning it, so now I’m struggling to figure out what to do
@@jackster10101 One month later but I'm learning as well and I have finished hiragana already and if you know hiragana and katakana you should probably start with kanji, im learning Chinese as well and kanji does look quite similar to Chinese symbols so I sometimes mix them up, but really it's up to you.
@@wozwald0107 well I feel like i don’t have enough discipline but I’ve been trying to follow the Japanese from zero book and I’ve learned more than just hiragana like I’ve learned a few words some are hard to keep continuously using so i do need to go over them or just keep going to learn more sentences to make it easier to remember i do need to read through it on a more consistent basis but i feel like this is more helpful than jumping full force into kanji especially since with that wanikani site I found it hard plus it’s kinda useless if i don’t know what the words are,
I know yuta says textbooks aren’t great but I’ve slowly learned a little of Japanese I learned a little about the word janai and daisuki but I think i can do it if I just read it on a more regular basis,
so it’s more structured which is nice
"Or you can go outside and talk to real life people like a normal human being." As someone with severe social anxiety, that hurt a little lol.
Good
@@jrosse12 How kind ☺
Not to mention there are NO 日本語 speakers in my neighborhood that I know of for sure. .. 😒
@@AMadd3RHatt3R Same here
SAME
I think listening to your favorite japanese songs while reading the lyrics in japanese helps a lot to learn and remember hiragana, katakana
And remembering phrases like "aishteru" 🤣🍻
Hello! Where can I find Japanese lyrics with Japanese subs, please can you tell me?
@@user-jm1yv8zh1z I recommend you utaten, it has lyrics with furigana but it's mostly in japanese, so it might be hard to look around but if you put the song's name followed by "utaten" it should be there
@@user-mx1rb2vz3v thank you very much!
dr slump intro song helped me with hiragana and some words
I live in Quebec, and I remember when I was little my step-brother did a special project that was offered by the school. It was called "The immersion project" and for 6 months every class was done completely in English because for a brief moment in time the French Government realized the importance English would have in students' lives and the opportunities it would afford them. During the 6 months of English schooling, they were encouraged to consume media in English as much as they could with French subtitles if available and/or needed.
I was already bilingual because of my mother, so for 6 months, I promised to speak nothing but English to him. Of course, we switched to French from time to time when he didn't know a word or didn't understand something.
I think immersion like this is the perfect way to learn a language, but learning English for a francophone or vice versa is easier since both languages share an alphabet. The actual alphabets have always been the major hurdle for me in learning Japanese. I've picked up some phrases that I can say and can recognize words pretty ok when in Romaji, but the kanji and hiragana are really tough.
Hiragana at least is actually pretty easy. It requires a bit of memorizing but once you memorize it you know it. Flash cards are also really good for it since they have a very direct correlation
I love Quebec and Montreal! I kind of did the opposite. I wanted to learn French, so I tried immersing myself there for a few days for vacation. The people were so friendly and a secretary at my hostel even taught me French in the mornings when I saw here. Anyways, congrats on learning English and best wishes with your Japanese!
WAAA THE WORLD IS SO SMALL!!
I too live in Quebec and we did the exact same thing in my school but like you I was already bilingual!! I learn English thanks to a game I used to play so much before and one day POOF I started to understand little by little.
It was magical frl. It shows that immersion is the best and most efficace way to learn any language.
Good luck and stay motivated!!
I'm from bc and we had something similar but for French and I took it for 6 years.
@@chiragmathias771 6 YEARS?!?!
"Hen.." I see what you did there sir 🤣
One of the best outlets to learn certain types of Japanese words.
I am Chinese, I can only know kanji in Japanese.
But some worlds produciation in Chinese are similar to Japanese.
Such as Min nan Dialect(A dialect from Fujian),先生(In Minnan Dialect pronunced Sensei too)
oh chinese
Yes this is an important point
Ditto, but sometimes the Japanese meaning does not fit with the Chinese meaning.
Like 大丈夫 (Daijoubu) means “everything will be okay” in Japanese while in Chinese it literally just means big husband or “the man of the house that provides for the family”.
The first time I listened to the music of 五月天 (Mayday) and 茄子蛋 (EggplantEgg)I thought they were speaking Japanese until I realised it was Minnan
Being able to instinctively understand the subtitles at 11:36 even though it’s a simple sentence feels great
With learning langugages, I love the Easy Language series on UA-cam. There's Easy Japanese, Easy Spanish, etc. What's cool is that in each episode, they interview people on the street on a specific topic. Because of this, many words and phrases are repeated, which helps with memorization. Also, because these are random people from the cities and villages, the language is more authentic and the people speak at a regular pace (which is freakishly fast for a beginner, LOL). Also, many of these questions asked are questions people usually ask each other (What's your favorite... Where do you like to...), so you are more prepared in real life when people ask you these.
Best wishes in learning Japanese!
I like that you explicitly state that learning a language is not a linear experience. In my experience, which I'm right in the middle of, it's a lot more like watching a polaroid picture develop. I would like to offer the advice to anyone learning Japanese: To solidify hiragana and katakana, I highly recommend writing them, and often, because each time your brain needs to recall a character it reinforces the neural/memory pathway. I agree with what you've said about kanji, and I'm not recommending this as a strategy for learning kanji (there are too many, and the lack of consistency with the readings makes it too much for this to be effective), but for hiragana and katakana, I think that for me it really helped. I'm posting this comment because for anyone reading, I think if you're trying to learn hiragana and katakana, it really really helped me to write them a lot. Also if you're coming here, definitely learn to write your own name in katakana before coming.
Question: How would Paul be written in Hiragana/Katakana. Cause I neither know P (or pa) nor l. For L I'd use る though. And yes, I know my Name 'd be written in Katakana, but let's start with Hiragana, cause that's what I'm learning atm
@@paulusapfel In hiragana you'd have to think about the characters ぽ (po), ぱ (pa), and る (ru). In katakana, which as you pointed out it would be written, they use the dash to extend the vowel, so it'd be either po or pa, dash, ru... but in hiragana I think you'd just have to add the vowel あ (a) or お (o). I think it'd be Po-o-ru, which also sounds like the loan word "pole" when converted, but Pa-a-ru, Pa-ru, and Po-ru don't seem quite right. So, I think it would be ぽおる (po-o-ru) in hiragana. That or ぱある (pa-a-ru), but I think you're gonna find that with the way 'a' is pronounced, 'po' might work better than 'pa'.
@@thecleeze6359 Thx a lot, i knew the ha (ho) hiragana, and some extensions like ka->ga, but the little circle was new to me.
my name is pronounced a little bit different cause im not from an english speaking country so I think I'd go with sth like Pa-u-ru, Pa-a-u-ru or Pa-o-u-ru. maybe i have to watch an anime or a tv show like mushoku tensei with a person called Paul with jpn subtitles.
now i have another excuse to rewatch the entirety of Takagi-san all over again.
I've been watching your videos for years; thanks for all the great content. I finally decided to take learning japanese seriously and this helps alot.
You're incredible! Found you today and i'm hooked as a beginner. Informative and hilarious, thank you!
Doujins & Henti are actually a decent source of vocabulary and kanji, especially the ones that have furigana included.
nice information. THANKS!
Lmao
My effort in learning the language is to click on entries on a certain one-winged letter website that has the 🇯🇵 flag instead of the 🇬🇧 flag. I stumble a lot with the kanji but I won't let them hinder my progress in finishing the material.
What’s the website?
Can you tell me what website that is?
I think I know what website is it
bruh
@@Ace-vu1bw what is it?
This video is the best and most clear guide out there! ! Great job dude, thank you so much :)
Amazing video, thank you so much! Just what I needed!
this was very helpful! I've been learning Japanese for half a year now and this will totally help!
Currently binging language learning videos, this is a huge help!
Watching your videos always inspire me to learn more
I realised that I can recognise the the kanji in their names 西方(Nishikata) and 高木(Takagi). Guess that's progress. I also realised I can read the title of the anime からかい上手の高木さん(surprisingly my keyboard knew what I wanted to type), 高 being the kanji of Height or tall, 木 being tree, hence 高木(Takagi)being the name. And 日本語上手 is a meme at these point so I won't forget these few 漢字 s at this point 笑...!
Edit: Then again I have already cleared N5 and preparing for N4 , so I am not exactly a beginner either.
Good great Buddy 😀
that's sick! I also know around N4 kanji cause like 2 years ago I studied mandarin for like 6 months, and obviously they both use Chinese characters.
Nicely explained as always. These anime were a very nice suggestions, thanks
Really great teachings thanks a lot!
Very cool. When I was a kid I got a book at the library to learn Japanese but unfortunately I never stuck with it.
Thank you Yuta, very informal. 😊
I think what intimidates me as I learn japanese is the true translation. Many common ordinary sentences are translated very different than a dictionary would.
Thank you Sir. I subscribed to your channel.
Will definitely check out your other Japanese language videos
Learning particles are very important and useful for learning Japanese via assimilation
this is great! I know a bunch of verbs and nouns and recognize them during conversations, but I always had questions with verbs like what does "te" imply, and why can u use it with negative form, but this clears up everything! I probably need to learn those inflections
Thank you. This will be a great video to send to people.
I got all sorts of terrible advice about learning Japanese, but all of my progress has been made on authentic input in regular script.
I read your comment as "Thank you. This will be a great video to send to people. It's got all sorts of terrible advice about learning Japanese" and I was very confused lol
the tip for learning the alphabets is something i've been doing using song titles for a while (initially out of necessity to understand whats going on in spotify playlists, then i started activelly trying to associate letters w sounds instead of just "that one song has a title that looks like this")
it's been going a lot better than my previous attempt at just memorizing (though that attempt was when i was very young so that could also be a factor lol), the main downside is i'm not entirely sure about certain ones being hiragana or katakana since song titles don't exclusively use one or the other, but i'm sure i'll figure it out with time/studying
When I'm watching reality shows to learn, I feel like I'm more reading the English subtitles rather than learning anything, even if I do understand some of what's being said . Any advice? 難しい . 手伝ってください
Good news! Kyubey said he knows a way to get me to learn Japanese fast!
Now, this is what I want , straight to the point
The Hanekawa / Monogatari reference @ 3:17 make me chuckle. Good one Yuta-sensei!
Thanks for helpfully video
ありがとうございます。🙏🏻☺️❤️
1. Learn hiragana and katakana
2. Start immersing yourself in simple Japanese
3.Learn grammar basics as inflections and particles
0:22 that was a good one, I love this type of humor ( although, some might say it is not humor...). And yeah I agree that learning hiragana that way is pretty good and cool, I just memorised everything with the hiragana and katakana chart. At the end both ways reach the same result but I would say now that I ve studied for a year that you will get more immersion the way Yuta said
I’ve reached so far in Hiragana that I could at least read your name 😋 Naniittenno
なにいってんの
@@ummtulip っ*
@@user-vf2sq6pt7p yep that but I didn't know how to get the small tsu on keyboard
This is extremely useful, I’m currently starting to learn Japanese and then German and then I might learn something else like mandarin
Learning hiragana and katakana is super easy imo. It's like collecting some magical runes except they are actually used in real life. Learning how to write them is also fun, although not that vital. Kanji is the same, there's just way more so it feels way more intimidating.
I know right, when I see things in Japanese and can actually recognize some of them I feel like a wizard.
There's a huge opportunity cost to spending your time on learning a language that's not spoken anywhere outside the borders of one country. So make sure you really want to do it before you take the plunge.
Thank you so much :)
It really goes kind of easy with the hen..... with the manga of your choise. One day I may even finish it.
I CANT BELIEVE this video is free and not behind a paywall this is so helpful
Out of the many channels I've seen to learn japanese, I'm sticking to this guy.
I learned hiragana in a week using only two phone apps, katakana took me two weeks but that was because I was a bit tired. For two more weeks I mastered all the possible combinations. It took me like an hour of studying a day and I was very enthusiastic at that time so it didn't seem a bore at all.
I’m at that stage and I have no idea what’s the next step.
I feel like if I put on Japanese stuff it won’t help because i won’t get anything
@@primecreator5257 Try learning basic grammatical structure before moving on to simpler kanji
A really good way I practiced hiragana and katakana writing was by finding japanese songs that I liked, and then I would find the romaji lyrics, and then write then out in katakana or hiragana to practice, right from start to finish.
This way I was interested in what I was doing, and it got me to use all of it at once.
(do correct me if there is a better way of doing it, or if there are errors in this method)
I don't know about this one, I learned japanese by starting with learning the most basic stuff, than keeping on learning more and more advanced stuff. The immersion through manga and anime is something you can totally do in parallel of actually studying the grammar.
The grammar is what gives you solid fondations to grasp what you will later learn through immersion imo.
Honestly I tried immersion first and my attention would drive away cuz almost no content was comprehensible enough for me.
I still kept watching Japanese content but while studying grammar. It felt amazing how after each lesson everything I heard started making sense more and more.
> The immersion through manga and anime is something you can totally do in parallel of actually studying the grammar.
That's pretty much what I said in the video.
My point is you don’t have to finish an entire textbook before using authentic materials. It’s better to learn grammar when you know when and how it’s used rather than learning it in isolation or through artificial examples that often sound contextually wrong.
I wouldn’t use the word immersion because people start assuming that you are not supposed to look up words and grammatical concepts.
Vocabulary >>> grammar.
Japanese is notorious for having a specific word for the same damn thing, but used in different situations. And if you don't know that word for that specific situation no matter your grammar level the Japanese people will have no idea what you're trying to say.
Like you can know how 自治体 translates directly but you've never experienced it in japan so the image about it in your head may be completely different from what Japanese know about it. 5+ years spent here and I still find new words for the same things here and there all the time. It's like they come up with these words on the fly just for that one specific event when it happens.
And even knowing both vocabulary and grammar perfectly you still need to know the context behind these words or how things work. Since everything is done in repetitive patterns and everything is on rails or predetermined, there's always only one specific way to do things. Like a person in japan have to go down a specific route like 新卒 and 中途 system when applying for a job. There's just no other way. You come anywhere to do anything and you just must fill in an application. There's no other way.
You can only experience all these things if you come and live here for a while.
But honestly, don't learn Japanese more than it's required for your hobbies like anime and games. God forbid if you come here to Japan and to work in a Japanese company (shivers) it would be time and effort (and your mental health) down the drain. And I'm not even starting about low salaries, lack of career growth and economic stagnation. Its just not worth it in general. You can find other ways to suffer without investing so much into learning a language. I'm here only because my home country is far far worse. But most people from Europe and the US have nothing to win here and should better stay home for better opportunities.
Don't worry, you won't be able to practice your speaking skill here anyway since no Japanese person will ever talk to you more than 5 minutes after he's done pulling out all the information about your nationality and pointing out all the stereotypes he knows about your country. Small talk doesn't exist in japan (even here in Osaka, which is known for open and talkative people) so you have much better luck using online language learning sites and apps to find natives to talk too.
Remember, japan is best to experience as a tourist, but worst as a foreign resident.
@@HaohmaruHL last sentence speaks the truth 🙏
I think it all depends on how well you can tolerate ambiguity and how much you enjoy learning grammar/vocabulary in isolation. I spent around 3 months just drilling vocab using Anki and learning grammar before attempting to read manga, but it was okay because I didn't find it boring. I tried to read よつばと right from the beginning and it was much worse, cause I'd have to check the dictionary all the time and it killed my motivation.
I've been learning Japanese for about 2 years now, and while I still use Anki for mining new words and stuff, I almost never look up grammar explanations and just spend most of the time reading/watching stuff I enjoy. Sometimes I make a note of some sentence I didn't quite understand so I can pay attention when I see the same piece of grammar being used again and it eventually clicks after seeing more examples.
No one method works for everyone. If you enjoy using textbooks, then use them; if you hate textbooks but doesn't mind drilling vocab/grammar, then do that; if you just want to watch anime/read manga and look up stuff from time to time, that's fine too. As long as you're getting enough comprehensible input and stick with it, you'll eventually acquire the language. Staying motivated is much more important than using the "perfect" method.
Good tips.
I’ve watched your channel for a years but I never actually started to try and learn Japanese for some reason. I recently started learning it on the same day this video was released. Hopefully this can help me go into the right direction on learning the language.
How's it going now?
非常に役立つビデオ！
Kimagure Cook is a really good youtuber for high intermediate levels. You get to learn the names of different fish and foods, and how to prepare them
0:23 ok I will try and learn from those Mr Yuta, thank you very much kind sir.
Yuta avoiding copyright by adding online in the title
lmao i was thinking the same haha
sneaky sneaky
I often have fun taking words I vaguely remember and trying to add random inflections based on intuition and then checking if it actually means anything. One time I had a dream that was in full Japanese and I understood everything even tho I've never been fluent :')
Ive only just noticed the kyubey plush - its so cute tho lol
It really helps when you watch some j-drama , or even tokusatsu shows like kamen rider (recommended), super sentai or ultraman
I had no idea such a reality show existed in Japan! As for the characters, Hiragana is much easier for me to read. I don't use Katakana much, which is why I have trouble remembering them all.
I originally used duolingo to learn hiragana and then i learned katakana by reading japanese tweets and twitch chat, looking up the character if i could not think of what it was. But thats just the easy part of learning japanese
Oh, watching shows with Japanese subtitles is a good idea!
Can you do an in depth video on how you learned English for the very first time and what steps you took to learn English?
Yuta's 5 o-clock shadow is enviable - he looks damn good with the stubble! Share your beard genes 😭😭
I've been watching anime for years and started watching Japanese youtuber for a year and i could understand lil bit of Japanese now. next i learn to read and write 90% of hiragana but reading is still child like. now after watching this vid i know my next step is to watch with japanese subtitles.👍
My experience is that japanese vtubers are a great source of accurate japanese speech. And clips of them often japanese or english subtitles.
Yuta 1:48: go outside and speak to people like a normal person
Japanese: stares at their phones with earbuds on all the way from work to home.
very clearly spoken
確かに、JLPT日本語を勉強するだけじゃ、かならずしも他人と話せる訳はないね
油田さん、ありがとうございました。
Do a video on pitch accents please!! They’re gonna be the death of me
He's done some already. Search the channel.
good video
great video as always. Sometimes it is hard to find resources that have japanese subtitles (it's more common to find them with only english subtitles or no subtitles at all). Can you make a video of your top 5 resources with Japanese subtitles (preferably free!)?
kitsunekko has a bunch of japanese titles for anime and j dramas but youll have to set up them up yourself in your media player of choice
Netflix is full of Japanese Series with Japanese Subtitles, that’s why it was in the thumbnail. Also during the last year they added a lot of RL-series, from J-dramas to films
@@seanlennart4740 that's why i said 'preferably free' in my comment!
@@jinjurbreadman I’m so stupid lol
I second kitsunekko
about learning hirigana and katakana, idk how effective your method here is (i mean i could imagine it being pretty good because you get authentic audio input for letters which i imagine sticks even moreso at first) but i was able to memorise all of those letters in about a week just by seeing them all and saying them out loud a lot, so to anyone who wants to just learn it that way (all though probably more tedious) and just see them so much that they stick in your head thats still perfectly viable, i literally just wrote them all down and looked at all of them to see what i didnt remember and referred to the alphabet tables for help
I wish I had a 1 on 1 teacher.
I'm lost on things and have questions
I find that the channel Japanese Ammo With Misa helps quite a bit with clarification about most questions. It’s definitely helpful if you’re using apps/textbooks like me.
Get a tutor ig
6:30 - I've noticed that Japanese people have this cadence on reality TV, interviews, etc. but never in anime or movies. It's like she emphasizes certain words and it sounds kinda tonal. But when Yuuta repeats the sentences, his cadence is completely different, much closer to a character's in a movie or show.
Can anyone here explain this?
emotional weight is my guess. It takes guts to cause conflict in Japanese culture. Questioning surely has the potential to do so. So hesitation or emphasis. Same way in English right?
@@MorgurEdits - I think it's content-independent. There's a rhythm with pauses and points of emphasis (and maybe rise and fall in pitch) that I simply never hear in anime/movies. The way she says, "koko NI ... nan no mokuteki DE". "Normal" people on TV often speak like regardless of the topic, but movie characters never do.
Goku Goku drinking San is absolute Chad haha
This intonation you're talking about, in this particular instance, indicates consideration. However this can happen for a number of reasons, like trying to seem more "reserved" to being contemplative or emotional.
But this actually isn't foreign and happens in English too. When someone is explaining something slowly a longer sentence can break into smaller logical pieces, as the speaker thinks about what to say next. There is no great shift in pitch because that is how English is not a tonal language. The most we get is a comma to denote a short pause when it's written text, but for a pitch language the pitch pattern actually changes depending on the speed and grouping of ideas.
Also, this does happen occasionally in anime/movies, but to a far lesser extent. Why? Because the dialogue is scripted, so even when it does happen, it is artificially constructed.
In general though, intonation varies quite a bit from TV/pro narration to casual Tokyo dialect despite them both being considered 標準語/standard Japanese. This is where the "this person sounds like an anime character" idea comes from. The good news though, most people will have no trouble understanding either style as long as the pronunciation is clear.
@@user-mm7bs6vl2u - Thank you for the explanation!
One of my favorite shows I use to learn is Terrace House.
Same, but well it will never come back. Poor Hana :(
'family friendly manga' a very important qualification there :)
11:08 LMAO
Yuta thanks a lot for this helpful video!!
1:54
Man, Yuta's roasting skills are on a different level right now. He knows exactly where his viewers come from🤣
3:55 to 4:02 lol
if u can understand Japanese you'll know
there's this "Japanese From Zero" Book + video series that I can highly recommend for people looking to learn japanese
Kare no Uta is a Fun Drama
ありがとございます、豊か！;)
_"You only understand what you understand."_ I already liked the video, I can't like it again.
Week one done. Got hiragana done and katakana halfway done. Managed to get a concussion halfway through but still progressing just slower than I thought.
How have you finished hiragana in a week did you use mnemonics
@@J2CHOZENN8 Yeah basically. It helped me to associate them with shapes i was familiar with. Like Ko looks like two koi fish. Ki looks like a key. Na looks like a knot. Etc. Theres this good video by " learn Japanese with Japanese pod 101" which goes over all of them. I set a goal of learning 10 per day and had no issues even with a concussion. I'm now on day 11 or 12 and I've learned all the hiragan and katakana and have started going through the genki textbook.
@@J2CHOZENN8 I will say, it will take longer to learn hiragana than it will to learn katakana. At least it did for me. Katakana was a breeze because they are simpler. For example the katakana for Ro is just a square. Some of them are even the same as hiragana too.
I rewatch Monogatari in the name of learning Japanese
One doesn't need eng subs after watching an episode 2-3 times
And we can slow the speed down during Arararagi's monologues
Aww, this is similar how I learned! I'm Arab, but autistic and mostly watched/read/played stuff in English, so I was most fluent in English, but wanted to watch Pokemon... didn't have access to the English dub, but the Arabic dub was very easy basic language (because it's a kodomo anime, even if it takes elements from shounen sports series with tournament arcs, etc.), there were barely subs for it back in the day (people don't like to subtitle children's anime often... fortunately, Pokemon now gets full series fansubs, but not back in 2004!), so I watched and slowly learned little by little, watching it in Japanese. Learned katakana first because it's what the Pokemon anime used the most, hiragana I picked up while watching Kogepan (since the narrator slooowly sounds outwards while the text is written slowly on the screen!).
So I know hiragana and katakana now. ^^ I can understand a lot of basic language and can read little kid's books (ones meant for preschoolers or early elementary students) and comics, but I still have a lot of trouble with kanji. I did learn quite a few from a cool piece of like... scenery/background drawn with the characters representing what they are (like tsuki up in the sky as the moon, the forest trees being ki and mori characters, etc.)
But yeah, learning from just watching and reading a lot of random stuff is how I learned English too. ^^
JAV is a very good way to learn Japanese vocabulary because the actresses are always saying short phrases or single word sentences.
💀💀
I was 16 when I started studying 日本語。 I don't know what I did right, but I learned hirigana and katakana in 2 weeks... self taught. I wish I had kept that full steam through learning kanji, but life happened. Probably could have learned at least high intermediate to fluent Japanese in two years 😢
Intermediate likely not fulent andless you're Chinese than fluency is very possible in 2 years actually it is possible in the right conditions such as you practice with japanese people and such
Funny, I learned hiragana in 1 day and katakana in 2 weeks lol…
Men start watching this makes me want to go back learning Japanese. I used the know and memorize hiragana and katana characters.
Back in the day we started with the family friendly “manga movie”(the word “anime” wasn’t actually used in the 90s) Urotsukidōji. That was coolest shit ever when your were 14.
(Anime in general was seen as something much more adult and violent back then in the west. You know Akira, Patlabor, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in The Shell and that kinda stuff. The cute stuff arrived here much later.)
"Or you can go outside, and talk to people like a normal human being." Unfortunately, I don't live in Japan, Hawaii, or California, so practicing on my neighbors will result in a lot of strange looks. But I like a challenge. Also, you've sinpired me to sign up for your lessons.
Toggle IME so you can write Japanese with your keyboard
e.g. you know a word like Arigato, you can just write it out in English and IME turns it to ありがと(う)
ゆうたさん、こんにちは。ちょっと気になるんだけど、甚平はどこで買った？よさそうですね
Yuta, I love different japanese musicians and idols: can I use japanese songs to practice? Or are some songs such as idol music not as useful for practicing japanese?
woo shoutout to horimiya just finished it last night
次の夏休み、日本に来ている(≧∀≦)
Just a question,
Any reason why you havent been doing much street interviews?
I love your content Yuta!