Oh boy some serious facts have been stated here. I'm not a native english speaker but I've eventually achieved a level of fluency, and I did that through consuming massive input (games, the internet) over the years. And the reason for doing it was very serious - 10 years old me, wanted to play video games really badly and there were no translations into my native language at the time. It was "learn to understand or quit the game" and ""quit" wasn't an option for me
Special Kapson Just by reading your writing, I can tell that you’ve achieved a very high level of English fluency and proficiency. It’s very inspirational. I hope to achieve a similar level in Japanese years from now. Playing games in Japanese is a big goal of mine as was yours to play games in English.
@@Dempeokami Though interestingly someone I know went to a Japanese class in Mexico and while all the students had anime stickers and the like all over their bags they spoke nothing but Spanish outside of class. What's the betting that when they want to watch a Japanese anime that isn't available in Spanish they watch it in English?
Foreigner learning English online: "I must apologize for my terrible English in advance, for it is not my native tongue, so please bear with me with every foolish mistake I make along the way." Native English speaker: "Lol, it okay"
To be fair, learning to speak like a native is learning that you don't need to have everything perfect. I even say this as a native speaker who tried to write all correct as a kid because I thought it made me look more mature but then I realized it just made me look like a robot so I switched to more general English instead of everything being perfect.
Learning Japanese is just a series of barriers to entry and people eventually get filtered out by one of them. First barrier to entry is kanji and people not realizing that in some ways it makes it easier to learn vocabulary. They start, see they have to learn thousands of seemingly overly-complex symbols and when they face adversity in doing that in the first stages give up. Then if they push through that they face the barrier of actual input where in the first few months you can't tell where words are ending in a sentence let alone understand it. Then if you get passed that you have even more months of having to look up 2-4 words per sentence which sucks out any enjoyment you might have had. At this point people realize that when others said it takes multiple years of 2-4 hours of reading/watching/listening per day to actually get decent and that they weren't just full of shit or dumber than you they might just make peace with the fact that they don't really want it that bad and give up. Or they end up like the people on /r/learnjapanese who spend years spinning their wheels with genki and tobira and never touch any native material cause it's too daunting. This is especially the case for people that aren't learning the language with watching/reading stuff raw being one of their primary goals. If you're learning to understand content you have the additional motivation to push through because you have the dual satisfaction of feeling like you're making progress in terms of your ability as well as being able to derive enjoyment from the content itself as opposed to just caring about the former. Just my 2 cents and observations from my limited experience.
This is true they do see thousands of symbols or words are the same with different Kanji and they give up rather than understanding the reason why Kanji exists in the first place ( 撮る take photo 取る to take) and know it has broader meaning in the grand scheme of things. It also is hard to look at older Japanese games that had Hiragana and sometimes lose the meaning of which words mean a certain thing because the kanji is supposed to help with that. Something I notice is as well is that even Japanese can be confused by Kanji and same words as well so learner's should not be discouraged by that. They give up without understanding like Kawajappa mentions you do not need to learn the entire Kanji sets you can just learn to what you want to learn and be happy with the progress made unless that is the goal you strive for. You have to want to learn in order to be good at a language or to know some of the language at least.
onlycasual1 exactly this. Reading a manga and having to look up every other word, or when they use some obscure or overly colloquial grammar point that you have to try and find a definition for...it’s exhausting. I don’t blame people for getting put off. But there really is no other way but to struggle through.
You are right. This is why I say that to learn Japanese you have to either love it or need it. If you don't love it and you don't need it, you will probably give up. Never mind kanji - some people pick around the edges of hiragana for months and months (anyone can learn hiragana in a week and most university courses - even as a minor subject - demand that). There is a lot to learn and you don't have to learn it all at once. Use material with furigana (or an online furiganizer) and you can take kanji at your own pace - and it's worth learning how to cheat the kanji ua-cam.com/video/Ipoum0abU68/v-deo.html - they are immensely helpful but trying to swallow them whole as 2000 abstractions is just delaying the real job. Also ask yourself at the beginning why you really want to learn. That way you are safe from the pitch accent pitchmen etc. who convince you that you want "really really good Japanese" (no I don't I want functional Japanese). And you can consider whether you really have the motivation to climb a seriously big (but wonderful) mountain.
@@akira7ink If you use something like Yomichan it will recognize words accurately most of the time (so it will highlight the whole of an individual word and not what follows it). Once you know a bit more about structure though it becomes much easier to recognize words because you start knowing how sentences work, what kind of words there are and how they are likely to end.
I could not agree more. "You need to either love it or need it." The robotic wisdom oozing out of you is always impressive. I have been in love with Japan, Japanese people, Japanese culture as long as I csn remember. Everytime I visit Japan I feel this incredible vibe of happiness though me. I find the language beautiful, its structure, the Kanji and and... With all of this combined indeed, learning Japanese has became effortless to me, for the simple fact that it's so enjoyable. I have zero interest (for now) in pitch accent and picking the exact natural word ever time. I want to be able to speak with Japanese people in Japan to find out things about them...
@@Himilika I am using HelloTalk at the moment, has been a really great experience. a lot of Japanese people who are eager to learn some English and in turn have lengthy conversations in Japanese as well. Can highly recommend it!
Yeah I have no interest in pitch accent right now either. I just want to be able to communicate with people and consume native consent. It's so sad when I see people online who haven't even learned one kanji ask, "how can I start learning pitch accent?" So even before learning, those people were taught that their Japanese is useless without pitch accent and that they should learn it immediately!
Dolly-sensei I realise you’re not around anymore but thank you so much for both getting me motivated to return to Japanese and also helping me not feel like a lazy failure for not vibing with the perfectionist AJATT and similar approaches.
I tell you all, listen to cure dolly. She's spot on, not one thing wrong here. Immersion + not giving a fuck about things I was currently unable to understand/misunderstanding things and not giving a fuck about pronunciation(now I don't recommend this at all. I just didn't care at the time. At least learn how to say the sounds half decently just so you can think in them half-decently). So how did I do it? There was a manhwa I really wanted to read, no matter what, but translations in my NL were unavailable. So I did the only thing I could do: I followed the manga along in english, while looking up every word. Now, I don't recommend doing this with novels in the beginning, because the content has to be somewhat comprehensive and content with visual aids are the best kind of content for beginners. Sometimes I would understand 100% after looking everything up, sometimes 70%, sometimes 30%, it was mostly close to the 100 and at times I'm sure I got things wrong, but did it matter in the end? All mistakes will be erased in the face of massive exposure to REAL English and this isn't different with japanese. And it is hella fun to study the language this way with manhwa/manga. Trust me. It is not as dry as it looks. If it was dry I wouldn't be here today(I was 14 yo at the time I guess) Doing the same shit with JP now, starting with ruri dragon and it's great so far. I can understand close to everything and I'm having lots of fun. So really, TRUST cure dolly; she's goddam right
I think what also really doesn’t help is those website where people say they became fluent in 3 months, or they learned all the jouyou kanji in 3 months (no you didn’t you liar, you may have added them to an srs deck and given them stories, but you haven’t committed them to long term memory in three months!!). Other learners see that and think “oh crap, I’m really behind/stupid/not dedicated enough” and give up. It’s taken me about a year and a half to learn all the jouyou kanji and I still wouldn’t say I know them all. I’m still having to do flash cards everyday, because you WILL forget them if you don’t. I’m struggling through yotsubato (it’s fun though so I don’t mind) and adding words from there into a vocabulary deck. Reading Japanese is absolutely exhausting, I can maybe manage four-five pages of manga before my eyes start to protest. So when people say they did X in a stupid amount of time and that they’re fluent now, always ask yourself: “what is it this person is trying to sell to me?”
You are absolutely right. These people make impossible claims - either they are prodigies or (much more likely) they are simply not telling the truth. Either way their claims are irrelevant to just about everyone. This cult of the "language superman" and the closely related cult of "you can learn X language in an afternoon even with two coffee breaks" is damaging and discouraging to ordinary learners.
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly yes, exactly! It’s all just click bait and selling books. I search for a lot of language related videos so I inevitably get things such as “how I learned Italian in 3 months” or some nonsense popping up in my recommended, and I think how discouraging it is for people who have been struggling (but making progress!) for a much longer time. If they were truly honest, they’d say that they became “fairly conversational” at 3 months, but that’s not as snappy and doesn’t generate as many clicks.
I hate people that enter in dualingo and think they are going to learn spanish in 6 months, a lenguage takes years to know a lenguage, i have 3 years learning english and im not close to the level of a native speaker.
Well Heisig claimed that it IS possible to learn all jouyou Kanji in 3 months... but only a) if you have nothing else to do, and I mean literally nothing and b) you'll only learn the kanji and the keyword, not the readings, not the actual words formed with the kanjis and so on and so forth. So the knowledege is functionally useless. But I will say that the Heisig method is really great, even though 3 months is usally impossible for anyone that isn't unemployed or a student of the japanese language at university.
I will say I know all jouyou kanji and then some after 1 year of studying kanji 30 minutes-1 hour a day. I do believe you could memorize them in 3 months if you combined them with immersion/a vocab reading deck.
An absolutely brilliant video highlighting a point that has crossed my mind many times whilst scouring the many people who make up the Japanese learning community. I recently listened to an interview between Matt Vs Japan and Dogen, two guys I find really interesting and who both are obviously passionate about the Japanese language. In the talk Matt talks about his desire to get his Japanese as near native sounding as possible and how many people over the phone or online have thought he was Japanese and my initial thought was that if you ever meet that person the novelty value will be incredibly short lived and at the end of the day of what use is it that a Japanese person thought you were Japanese but you turned out not to be? I have many friends from all over the world who speak English. Some better than others but as a native English person I can hear that none of them are English natives and I actually like it that way. It's a point of interest about them as soon as they start talking and the most important thing about their English is that we can communicate with each other. If all of them learnt how to speak English like a native it wouldn't add anything of any value to our friendship or make them any better understood. Sure there's always room for improvement but for me learning Japanese I would rather learn a new aspect of grammar or vocabulary over trying to sound like a native.
Yes! This is so true. Also if your friends were trying to learn English stress patterns for every word, they might not be nearly so far on in - just plain using English. Almost everyone (even natives) have an accent of some kind. It's part of who we are.
And then there's the fact that native proficiency/pronunciation is almost non-existing for adult learners, any language. In all my life I've met just two or three people speaking my native language so perfectly that I couldn't tell them from natives (it's a different story when young children are learning the language). Is that a problem? Far from it. Lots and lots of people speak my language just fine, including my wife. Sometimes with unusual wording - I love it.
Personally I would like to have as close to a native sound as possible. But I am not going to sacrifice other aspects of learning to accomplish that. I'm planning on living a long time. Plenty long enough to improve my pronunciation naturally over time without having to specifically study it.
Thank you, Cure Dolly. I think this is also an important message for that group of Japanese learning perfectionists that constantly chant "No Output Until Perfect."
I remember the time i started learning english around 7 years ago, i had the formation i had received at school but as you might guess language formation at school is never enough to be actually even decent at any language really, i've never had any special interest on english, but i went on twitter and created a fan acc for my favorite singer at that time and soon enough i realized the english community was way larger than the spanish one, so i started tweeting in english, and in about 2 years my english had become decent enough for me to do long conversations; i started japanese around 2 years already, althought last year i didn't do much progress due to lack of time from university studying, but i just recently started using some parts of my life exclusively in japanese, and actually took the whole month of february to read a manga in japanese for the first time, i read about 6 volumes completely in japanese and found myself actually feeling like i had learned a huge lot, and ever since i've tried to read my manga only in japanese, it takes a while but i learn a lot every time, and now i feel all the more needy of learning japanese, as well as loving it much more as a language itself, i've always been a huge believer of having an external motivation to learn a language, to learn it to do something thats actually your goal than actually learning the language be your goal, cause ive seen how many people have dropped their studies thinking like that, even i have left a language like that. Also i truly think the progress ive been able to do all this time has been greatly because of your channel, i truly believe your lessons are genius, and when times are rough i watch some of your videos and realize japanese has a lot of logic, and i calm down an keep pushing through, so thanks a lot for that too♡
Thank you for contributing your experience. I think your approach to learning both English and Japanese is very much the right one. Of course a lot of people do something like this in English but considerably fewer people in Japanese - which is the main reason for the discrepancy in results.
@@haroombe123 i mean since the manga i read got an adaptation i actually looked at the subs to figure out what some things meant, but ofc i also googled phrases i didn't understand, like fore example i remember somewhere it said なんかはらたつ and i was like what does はらたつ mean since it's not really a word by itself, so i actually googled はらたつって何 or はらたつ 意味 and it supposedly means to be angry or mad at something, i didn't quite understand nor found how a belly standing meant get angry but hey i guess it's better to know the core meaning at least
"English is not about English. English is about what they're doing in English." I have legit never thought about it in that way. But this is so true. Even for me; I'm a non-native English speaker, and I'm even sort of a perfectionist, but sometimes I bungle my words without knowing it - it's fine, because I'm not writing this for people to admire my English skills, I'm writing this so people will understand what I'm talking about. And it doesn't need to be absolutely perfect to meet that requirement.
Heck yes.. I'm not a native English speaker, but I don't try to sound like I'm one, and I deliberately go for slightly wrong phrasing sometimes, because the language I have to conform to is actually "Euro-English", not English.. in other words, I must be understood by e.g. French or German people speaking English in a business context, and they're used to .. Euro-English, not English.
I've learned English and now I'm using it for learning Japanese. I hope to then use Japanese to check Japanese channels about learning polish, it'll be interesting :'D
I'm russian who learned english and I love to watch english channels teaching russian. It's so funny. I also learn japanese by using english. It's kind of getting english practice and learning japanese at the same time.
Playing Japanese games before they came out in English is a great way to force needing Japanese. I did it with Persona 5 The Royal and I’m constantly doing it with mobile games with a delayed global/English release.
That's an excellent thing to do. Back when 3DS was region locked (actually it still is so if you are happy with a slightly older machine) you just get a Japanese 3DS and bingo! You're locked. Personally I love region locking - so long as I'm locked into the right region.
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly Being able to download Japanese games on my Switch without having to buy a new Japanese one and without paying huge import fees is nice, which is why I I like region unlocked consoles.
This is something I can agree with you on. A lot of times people focus on useless concepts and mislead everyone into thinking they need to learn "pitch" a few useful "vocab words" or it is possible to watch anime with subtitles in English and still know what is going on. The hard part is basically getting over the mindset that English and Japanese are different and not the same. Also that trying to learn by thinking of it in English to Japanese or Japanese into English will only slow things down. You also can not learn another language without dedication of learning vocab, grammar(how you use the vocab and make it into a sentence) through SRS and wholly through immersion in it's own world of language. It's not perfect at first and there will be mistakes, there will be doubt but if you accept it as it is and not try to use English or translate it will make sense eventually. Much like how kids had to learn their own native language before learning another one. What is weird is that AJATT makes sense but it only does when you keep learning words(much like how school taught you words and sentences while you were immersed with TV and various forms of media) it helps you learn much quicker especially when acknowledging there will be words you do not understand or even sentences but in time you will get it if you accept what is in front of you as it is and the more you practice it the quicker you will be to getting there. This was a good video especially because a lot of people I notice keep thinking of inserting English into Japanese or want shortcuts instead of doing the work to know the language and Kanji etc. Thanks for the video Kawajappa!
I have to say, watching your Japanese from scratch lessons, I really appreciate how you actively teach that instead of trying to convert one's English into Japanese, you have to learn it separately and understand that the concepts and functions of English are completely unrelated to those of Japanese. This is something rare but incredibly useful, as for some reason languages are often taught as "x word in (language1) = y word in (language2)". Most language courses and programs that I've found seem to prefer to do that instead of actually building a learner's knowledge from the ground up, with a stable foundation of logic which allows them to understand new words and what to do with them intrinsically, and not forcing them to memorize different rulesets that may not even be completely correct in the first place! This mindset of installing "language drivers" into your brain, in the same way you install drivers on your computer when you get a new piece of hardware, is something that I believe is incredibly helpful with enabling a learner to manage the new language without having to stop and think about what word goes where, which ~insert grammatical feature~ agrees with ~insert grammatical feature~, etc. After all, what makes speech fluent isn't knowing vast amounts of vocabulary or being grammatically correct 100% of the time, it's being able to talk without even having to think about if what you're saying is correct. I remember failing to learn French by using the common methods of textbooks, duolingo, and flashcards, and how absolutely frustrating it was to not have a feeling for how the language actually fit together, and only being able to say things that I'd prepared, never being able to form sentences naturally. It was like trying to speak a language with only phrasebooks. But recently I've had the realization that language doesn't have to be difficult at all when you prioritize gaining an understanding of how a language works instead of trying to memorize it like a party trick. With this I've managed to reach a conversational level in Spanish in less than a year! Are you familiar with Mihalis Eleftheriou's "Thinking Method"? I've recently been enjoying a book by him on the topic of teaching language, and a lot of what he writes about is present with your style of teaching, I think. It was his work that gave me this realization that it isn't that language is hard to learn, but that I had been thinking about language wrong the whole time. In your very first lesson, you said: "Japanese is the simplest, the most logical, the most easily understandable language I have ever encountered, much easier than Western languages. But you wouldn't know that if you try to learn it from western textbooks or Japanese learning websites. Why not? Because they don't teach Japanese structure. They teach English structure and then try to force Japanese into it. And it doesn't fit, and it doesn't work very well." This is what gave me the confidence that you know what you're doing. I'm not sure if I buy the train thing and the android is a bit uncanny, but I'm confident that your videos can really help me and so many others. Thank you so much for all the work you've done.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I am afraid I haven't read the book. My method was to try to analyze the working of the language itself and see what it was actually doing. The train model - I am not sure why one would buy or not buy it. It is simply a visual paradigm for depicting Japanese sentence structure. It is no part of the structural model itself, just an attempt to depict it in a visual manner. And yes I suppose "the android" (me) is a bit uncanny. I think it would be even more disconcerting if I tried to represent myself as human. So one does the best one can.
The amount my Japanese improved within a matter of weeks once I ran out of translated stories for my favorite character and realized there were tons of untranslated ones in the Japanese app was honestly incredible I hadn't tried reading them in Japanese very much because I thought it was too advanced and I didn't know enough kanji, but I was surprised to see how much I could actually understand and how quickly I picked up new stuff! I still can probably only understand maybe 50%-70%, give or take depending on the story, but it's enough to get the general gist and I'm able to pick up new bits every time I reread them!
This really is the key to why so many people do so well in English. The material is there, you can't get it any other way, and even if your understanding is imperfect at first, it's better than nothing. English speakers tend to be spoiled because they can get most of what they want without stepping outside of English. Something like your situation pretty much simulates how the world learns English.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 What I found particularly interesting is a lot of the time I can guess the meaning based on context and kanji when reading, but I'll have no idea how to say the word...so there's just ~meaning~ floating in my head but no sounds attached and that's really strange. I thought maybe I was just translating the meaning into English but I've tried to translate some stuff I found funny so I could tell my friends and it was quite difficult to get something that fit the meaning that sounded natural in English without thinking for a good bit. BUT, despite all that, being able to understand when reading has somehow boosted my confidence levels in Japanese a lot and in turn improved my hearing and speaking skills! Sorry for the long ramble, but it's so fascinating how all this stuff is going on inside my head sometimes without me even consciously doing it! 言語学が本当に大好きだよ~
Now some people say, "Well, how much of this do I have to do? How large an area of my life do I have to ring-fence?" and this is a bit like asking "How much gas should I put in my car" the answer is, "How far do you want to go?" The entire video was extremely useful, but the part quoted above was a real mic drop moment for me!! I already listen to podcasts both passively and actively, but I definitely need to ring-fence more of my daily activities to ensure that I am practicing as much immersion is possible.
When I started watching this video I was worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it due to the voice, but by the time it finished I had become so engrossed in what you were saying that I wasn't bothered by the voice at all. I just want to say that you explain things very clearly and I appreciate the effort you go to in making these videos, as I might of given up on learning Japanese already if it wasn't for this channel. Thank you.
That's literally how I learned english, it's kinda scary to do it rn, since I'm pretty much a beginner in japanese but you got very real point, I'm probably gonna feel lost but I'll push myself to do it, u got urself a new subscriber :))
Even if we talk about English, the amount of people I see doing the exact same thing with Japanese, too, happens with English. Namely, they spend time on YEARS and YEARS of classroom studying and barely on ounces, if any, of immersion. Some classmates of mine had like 5 or 8 years under their belt... and struggled with long speeches and writing simple articles, letters, etc. Some people really can't believe me when I tell them it only took me 2 years or so of "studying" (never cracked open an English grammar book in my life) to get where I am now. I simply attended a language institute where, yes, I fine-tuned myself but mostly my speaking improved only since I never really got the chance to better it. I just read millions and millions of words through novels. And a helluva of it!
14:30 This is funny. Probably a problem as old as humanity. I lived in Argentina for a couple of years. One thing I noticed was that people of different nations and languages would form little enclaves and speak in their native language. They were probably learning less than people going to a weekend class in Spanish.
Thank you so much, this really really inspired me to go forward and carry on with my studies of Japanese, this made me change the way I view the art of learning languages as a whole.
Having a perfect accent has negatively affected my mental health...thank you for addressing it. I have been stressing over my foreign accent since, I was a kid (since, I was five or six)....Even after I scored a 90/100 out of 120 on the toefl....I still feel like I suck more than I suck. Lol I think this should seriously be discussed on the language learning community. Thank you, Love your content. Hope, you stay consistent. We need people like you in the community.
Really glad if I've helped you here. Having a non-native accent doesn't mean you suck. Having a perfect accent but a mediocre command of the language _does_ (your command of English seems excellent). Josef Conrad is acknowledged as one of the masters of English literature and he never lost his strong Polish accent. Who cares? Would you rather be him or some internet 引きこもり who claims to have a perfect accent?
Your channel is just amazing. It's a very good complement to my Japanese classes as it is my major in University ~ I'm very glad I discovered your videos, the content is always so helpful and interesting ♥️ learning Japanese for my favorite J-pop idols was the best decision of my life ❤️
I was intially caught off guard by the...different style of presentation and voice, but holy shit. You really hit the nail on the head hard. Your videos have been honestly pretty fantastic. For reference, I'm around "N3 level" of Japanese and have been learning Japanese in Japan for the past year and a half. The biggest kick in the ass for me to want to get good was simply the friendships I have here. I have tons of really good japanese friends I made in college and I wanna learn Japanese just so I can simply vibe with them in Japanese. That's literally it. I just wanna vibe. Noticing my goal helped me feel less of that weight you mentioned. That perfectionist attitude to my speaking. Instead of being slow and careful with every word, particle and verb conjugation, I just now yolo it. Yolo what I wanna say and then deal with the repercussions later. I do still think there is merit to being "perfectionist" when studying grammar/vocab/kanji. It's something akin to "The Inner Game of Tennis" thought process. Train hard, but don't beat yourself up over mistakes. Simply note it and look back it later.
Yes, I think you have a good balanced attitude there. Structure we do need to understand to a precise level, but we don't need to push it so hard when we're just speaking and communicating. The urge to communicate is one of the best drivers in understanding language.
I don't have the attention span to study and/or practice anything actively enough to get good (at least not with structured classes...) but this video made me understand why Japanese is the one language I keep throwing myself against the wall of... because I do, actually, "need" it. So much of what I want to read isn't translated and will never ever be. The problem is that I keep sulking off and settling for things I care less about because learning a new language is hard. Hopefully this time's the charm! OTL
Great video, and that's something I've been doing recently. If I want to play a videogame, I'll play it in Japanese. I only watch anime in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. At first it was hard trying to listen and read at the same time, I knew I lost a lot of stuff, but I carried on. Now I can watch with subtitles only occasionally stopping to lookup a word or two (with browser addons I can do this fast, without stopping for long) and get most of it (though there are some hard parts sometimes). After a rough beginning, watching anime 100% in Japanese became more fun than work. Besides manga I also try to read stuff in Japanese if at all possible. To learn about some programming language or tool I'm interested in, I first try to look for a Japanese book on it. This has also improved my reading a lot in a relatively short time.
I must be a special case, I have been learning Japanese at very very slow pace for the past 7 years or so, I started by learning hiragana and katakana then I read some textbooks including Tae Kim, Genki, and some other textbook that did not really click with me but each time I tried some new materials I would retain some grammar point so I build up my grammar this way. Then after a while, I got bored so I took a long break from learning Japanese but I kept watching anime and kept playing games in Japanese (with English subs) so I never really stopped being exposed to the Japanese language. I discovered Wanikani which I used for almost 2 years I got to level 18 but I was not doing any grammar or practicing (yes I know I'm stupid), only doing reviews and learning out of context new words and kanji. Then I got back into it more seriously, once per week I would have a lesson with a Japanese teacher and she was giving me homework to do I got much better during those 2 years I had lessons but had to stop some months ago with the birth of my son and since then my time has been much more restricted to study Japanese. I decided that it was time to stop learning grammar from the textbooks and immerse myself so I tried Yotsubato manga and I really liked this series it's charming and it's perfect for me it's not too hard and a see a lot of new words that are actually useful. Each time I tried to read Japanese I always ended up spending more time checking each word in the dictionary than actually enjoying the story. fast-forwarding to now, I read all the 13 volumes of Yotsubato and I'm back to square one which is trying to find something my level I tried a manga (One Week Friends) but the vocab and the grammar used is too hard for me I end up looking up everything in a dictionary and my brain just disconnects and I'm not enjoying my time with the book. So my question to you sensei what should I do? I have about 30 mins to an hour a day to read and immerse myself in Japanese, is it a lost cause should I stop? Should I give up? I'm a very stubborn person and does not easily give up but lately, I'm a bit lost I don't how I should proceed. How can I still learn Japanese and have fun doing so with limited time on my hands? I know people use Anki and SRS system but most of them are really young people and got a lot of time on their hands or just have a lot of free time which is no longer my case and each time I try to immerse myself be it books or watching something I always feel it's a too high level for me, I feel like being in Dragon Quest but with no guidance of where to go and I'm stuck being lvl 2 or 3 and all the monsters around me are golems or chimera I need to find some draky or some monsters my level. Sorry for the long rant but I would appreciate some guidance Sensei.
First of all, I don't think it is a lost cause at all. You clearly have a lot of love for Japanese. I use "love" in an almost technical sense here - that deep quality of attraction that keeps you motivated despite lack of time. Obviously the less time you have the more slowly things move - but you have overcome the first barrier (the one that a LOT of people fall at) which is the transition into real native-material immersion. If you can keep doing this you will progress (obviously proportionately to the amount you can do - but that's ok. You clearly have the necessary がんばり!) So the next problem is to find your next quest within the Great Adventure. It is hard to be sure what someone will find approachable. Something my sister just loved is the manga ひとりぐらしの小学生. Looking around I can't see a browse inside the book and can't find a digital edition (there used to be one). I might be able to dig up something for you to try out but do you need furigana? I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any (but plenty of things do, so we'll just have to go on thinking). On Anki - well people have learned without it for centuries so it can be done. I would just say that you can have it on your phone or tablet and review at odd moments throughout the day (I do). I realize it still may not be possible - if not we have to manage without. Where there's a strong will there's absolutely a way. がんばってね。
Furigana is definitely a time saver for me since I know the pronunciation when I look up new words otherwise I have to look them up by radicals. I also have no problem getting books in physical format, I have all the Yotsubato mangas (I bought them used in Japan at a Book Off store on my last trip). I will try to find your recommendation on Amazon Japan. Thank you for your time Sensei.
@@Randhrick Ah a fellow Book Off fan! Here is another possible suggestion www.cmoa.jp/title/65391/ if you use the grey button at the side marked 無料立ち読み you can read a sample to see if it suits you. It appears to be all hiragana which you may or may not like (I found it hard to read from early on, but in the small speech-bubble doses it might work).
@@Randhrick Here is a 立ち読み from later in the ひとりぐらし小学生 series (中学校 by this time, so may be a bit more complex). You can take a look and see how it suits you: tkj.jp/ebook/read/cd/hitorigurashi_chugakusei_00 the main character barely appears but you can get an idea of the level and the style.
@@Randhrick PS - looking again I see that リューシカリューシカ is not all hiragana at all. It just had a lot of kana at the beginning. It has kanji with partial furigana which ought to be fine for you - probably it will be furigana for all but the simpler kanji. So you just need to see if it will suit you both for level and for enjoyment.
Very insightful! The question then becomes, what do you tell someone who tries to confine herself to Japanese and finds that the effort or lack of understanding just makes her not want to watch anime or play the games? The original AJATT answer was to churn through material looking for something so engrossing that it's worth the effort. The MIA answer seems to be focus on the gains rather than the material. Both are probably viable for different personalities, but I wonder what your answer would be.
I think this is really the make-or-break point - whether one can or can't enjoy immersion during that very tough early stage (which lasts quite a while). First of all, people are different and I would definitely say that whatever motivates you is good. I am a little more on the original AJATT side of this question in general. Unless you are a language-learning-enthusiast (and I note that the MIA slant has shifted somewhat toward "language in general") the "gains" alone are probably not sufficient motivation. So I really do think it is important to "find something you LOVE" - something you are prepared to give a lot of time and heart to. I mentioned in another video that my first anime was a Precure series (50-ish episodes) and of course it took a large amount of time to watch even one episode. When I later watched other series I thought that although they were wonderful, maybe the characterization wasn't so deep because I didn't get the same intimate sense of really knowing each of them. Then I realized that it was because I just wasn't spending the same massive amount of time with them. What I am saying here is that the huge investment of time and heart isn't necessarily a net negative. It can be a precious and somewhat unrepeatable experience. And at the same time if one is in love with the language, one's "progress" can also be a positive factor - making friends with more words, more kanji, taking deeper and deeper steps into this wonderful world. Of course if one can't enjoy it one can't. I am aware that this may not be a workable approach for everyone. But if one can it is a very straightforward way to begin deep immersion. Let's just refresh our perspective for a moment and remember that attaining deep immersion outside of the place where the language is spoken is a new and amazing opportunity that most humans have not had. If we can do it we are very lucky. If we can't - well, we can't.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I think...people can learn languages that are spoken in countries that the content they love are produced.... For example, my dad loves European philosophy and history so, French and German might be of interest to him While, my mom loves Turkish Movies...Maybe Turkish is suitable for her. I am not interested in the above so, maybe those languages aren't for me. I enjoy ancient Chinese history, C-dramas, Anime....So, for me Chinese and Japanese are of interest to me. So, everyone might find a culture they are interested in.... maybe one or several.
I reached an intermediate level with "using English to help understand Japanese" strategies. Clearly I do need to shift into a lot more Japanese-only activity to become really competent, but I'm going there a little at a time and don't feel the need to force it. I'm not claiming that what I'm doing is fast either, but in the end, the method that works is the one you don't quit ;)
I realised that I don't enjoy going Japanese-only with anime/games where I really want to understand what's happening. So I'll leave that alone and try it again later! I do enjoy replaying games I played in English a long time ago; my lessons on Italki; chatting with the Organic Japanese community on their forums and conversation meetups; and watching Japanese people on UA-cam play my favourite games with commentary. The last one was surprising. Turns out, it wasn't about finding something to watch that was compelling enough; it was more about finding something that I could enjoy casually without caring too much whether I understand or not.
I want to thank you cure dolly. I'm native Turkish speaker, B1 (intermadiate) level in English and absolute beginner in Japanese. I will work both of them when college starts 15 days later-i started even now working. It may be so hard but i have 1 year for just language development, whole one year. I was worried about japanese grammer but i found you from r/learnjapanese and im glad to found you. ありがとうございますせんせい。
I've only found this channel today but I think I figured out what's so attractive about these videos to me. The things being said the things your AI determines what you should talk about sounds like a philosophy seminar and to a degree it is, especially a video like this. Compounding on that the very cadence of your speaking voice has a very striking similarity at times to the recording of the *philosopher* Alan Watts, who is just a treasure. Final note watching a few of these the voice is really becoming kind of therapeutic, it's very relaxing. This is all amazing to me especially because you're an artificial consciousness.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I think that talking about language ultimately involves talking about philosophy. Fundamentally language is what allows us to think (at least what allows complex thought on the level we apparently exist on). And of course this is equally true of artificial thinking, which is only possible with languages both artificial and natural. We can't separate thought from language (I believe thought can transcend language - but in such a case, of course, we can't express it). So really if we look clearly at language we are also looking at the nature of things. I am very happy that you like my voice. Not everyone does.
Have you got a video/article that, at a high level, points one along the general path to learning Japanese. For instance, I know you've a great playlist for grammar; however, that is one aspect of language. Immersion is too.... but if I'm a beginner what are the general steps toward fluency? 1. Learn Hiragana/Katakana (Done) 2. Learn recognition of Kanji (~750 in) 3. Learn some grammar structure (Doing) 4. Watch/Read in Japanese (even if I don't understand - am I attempting to dissect everything I read to try to understand it. How do I know I've the correct understanding?) 5. ??? 6. ??? It's the one thing that plagues my mind insofar as trying to determine what I should be doing on a day-to-day basis on this path. It's very fuzzy. I know what material I like, but whilst ingesting this material, what am I doing?
I should probably make a video directly on this, but the immersion playlist really deals with the non-structure side of learning. The organic method is really Structure+immersion. I don't think everyone works quite the same way but a general breakdown would be: 1. Start learning basic sentence structure (first few lessons of the structure course). Learn hiragana and katakana (you have). HIragana as a priority. 2. Start learning basic vocabulary. 99% of vocabulary will come directly from the our immersion (starting with the J-subbed Anime method) but having a starting-block of maybe 200 very common words allows us to get started. 3. Learn basic kanji. 90% of our kanji will be learned along with vocabulary through Immersion, starting with the Anime Method but we should get the most basic kanji and the principles of breaking them down (you have a head start on this one). I do not recommend "raw" listening until you have done quite a bit of work with J-subbed anime. However some people are more "audial" and take to listening more quickly. The Organic approach builds on structure knowledge to grasp Japanese on a logical, granular level before moving to mix in some of the more fuzzy-intuitive approach (though both are necessary in the end). 4. Keep going with the course and somewhere between Lesson 20 and Lesson 30 put a toe into some easy immersion, using the basics you now have and learning vocabulary as you go. (ultimately I really want to have some material specifically designed for this). The vocabulary/kanji playlist is here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x-W5kcce4zVNwK_JHjxHK5x.html The Immersion playlist is here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_iLm90ie4ewro0lFedXncO.html The fundamental structure course, is of course here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thanks for the swift reply - this in itself is a useful guide: the sign-posting is just what I needed. I assume by 'easy immersion', you mean it must be comprehensible (with applied effort).
Oof, I just watched your video about confronting Tae Kim's guide to real japanese grammar and this one, thank God I stumbled upon your channel. I started trying to learn japanese using Tae Kim's guide a few days ago, though I thankfully only learned kana and didn't make it to the grammar part. I'm now going to drastically change my approach to learning japanese (hopefully for the better) and do what you recommend: immersing myself in the language. Funnily enough, it is the exact same method that allowed me to learn english years ago, Idk why it didn't occur to me to do the same right away.
Immersion is the way that works. If you don't have a basic grasp of structure I do recommend watching my main structure course, because no one is teaching this in a logical manner: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html this is really just a stepping-stone to immersion (to replace the stepping stone to English immersion that you got at school).
Finally someone talking about the main point on why most people learn a language: having a reason. The only true reason for that I started to learn the language is the barrier set through games without an English translation. I could not give less of a fuck on sounding like a non-native, I don't speak perfect Oxford English without an accent, hell, I dont even talk without an accent in my native tongue! Why should I care that I have a very distinct tone that will reveal myself as a...foreigner. If I can get the info I need from it, I couldn't care less on how it's going to be transcibed to me.
İ am not native English speaker and i was feel like why these people in internet thinks like (i can't describe my feelings) but you are The person . I am thinking same with you thank you
very nice attitude towards languages. it's about the communication and the people and communities that you can reach with the language (for most people at least)
Thank you for this video. It's well put together, articulate, and competent. It's actually helped me start building an environment to learn Japanese more efficiently.
That speech about "To learn a language you either love it, or need it" is so true, I HATED english with all my heart when I was a kid, the confusing pronunciation, the awkward way of writing, the arbitrary way of reading, everything made me furious when I tried to learn it, until I realised that I needed english in the internet, that's when after 1-2 years of inmersion I finally became fluent, to this day I still post comments with weird errors and people make fun of me when I do that but I don't care because those people probably only cared to learn their own language while I'm here about to learn my third
Hey, I’m not trying to pick on you or anything, just curious, but what did you mean where you said English has an “awkward way of writing” ? I guess it must be a contrast to your first language, so I’m also curious as to what is your first language :) Anyway, I’m also here to learn Japanese so yeah :)
ドリーさんとご同意します。最良の語学し方は毎日その語を使うと言う事ですけれど日本語では西洋人にこれはちょっと難しいかもしれません。日本語で書いた何かを読み為に先ずは多数の漢字を覚えしなければなりません。そうしないと色々な無知漢字とちょっと悔しいです。 I agree with you Dolly san, the best way to learn a language is to actually put it in use everyday if possible. But in the case of Japanese, if you want to read something I think that first you must learn a large quantity of Kanji, so you really can't like get just to it (Though it would be awesome). If you buy a Japanese novel or game and try to do that, it can become frustrating to search 10 or 20 kanji by radical system just by some dialogue. Oh well, even knowing that I love the language and I'll still learning Kanji for years until I can read Yukio Mishima and Murakami novel's XD
Children's novels (and they can be Harry Potter level - not just kiddie books) nearly always have furigana. So do many games like the Layton and Dragon Quest series. If you are reading on a device you can use built-in dictionaries to scan kanji on the fly. With online J-subs (Animelon etc.) you can use Yomichan. There are a lot of ways around the kanji problem and you will be learning them as you go if you use the Organic approach (though you don't have to learn everything the first time you encounter it).
Imagine aimlessly learning Japanese for more than 2 years only to find this video, then get slapped hard by it. What have I been doing the past 730+ days… I've always felt slow when trying to speak, or write, read, or just comprehend using Japanese. It always felt that something heavy must be pulling me down. And it wasn't because I was slacking, it's because I lacked the courage of locking off my filled-up English drawer and opening my almost empty Japanese drawer instead. I forgot what it truly means to "immerse yourself in the language." It's just like when you're trying to get strong by climbing a mountain with either step-by-step climbing or through riding the Gondola lift. Never compromise as Cure Dolly Sensei says. Make yourself climb it. Riding the Gondola lift renders your goal utterly useless as if your just being ridiculous about it. I reminiscent the time I was still learning English. I may have forgotten how I got here, but I will never forget why I tried to get here at this point of fluency in the first place. Thank you, thank you Sensei. You might have just saved one student from falling into a place where he doesn't want to belong.
@youknowkbbaby Its been working pretty well for me, I was doing this on my own before knowing about this channel (just found out about it today). I wouldn't call myself fluent after 2 years, but listening to only Japanese lyrical music (I listen to instrumental too), watching anime with no subs and watching hololive/vsingers has made me able to understand what I am hearing 90% and able to fill in most of the rest through context. Can I explain why I get the difference between different conjugations? no, but I do.
Hi curedolly sensei! Ive found your channel years ago. I study in a huge university in brazil, and so i had the opportunity to take japanese language classes inside the very language graduation as an eletive subject (?). I took three semesters, and they were amazing. I didnt learn basic things such as asking how your day was, but i learned abt so many gramatical details, like the different categories of words, the 2 different types of auxiliary verbs (i dont remember their name now orz), the flex paradigms (?? I learned its not conjugation bcz it doesnt change in number gender and stuff like that) Anyways it was pretty incredible but really crazy intense. I had to memorize more than 1000 anki flashcards in just one year, some were hiragana expressions but many were vocabulary w more than one kanji. i started getting burned out by the third semester, and bcz of family issues i had to stop taking them. Now its been one year since i barely touched japanese. I studied a bit here and there, but like, it would amount for the work i made in one or two weeks previously, and i have no consistency. Im kinda traumatized and studying by yourself is so difficult. You dont have the safety of a teacher who knows how to guide you, who has tested and verified ways to teach you grammar, who has an entire structure made for learning, plus joining a class and getting homework done together w other students is refreshing. Sorry, i know im not trying hard enough and im bugging you too much w this long comment, but id just like to mention the incredible discipline u need to take on such a huge challenge that is learning an entire new language without a teacher. We always tell ourselves that is "too difficult" and "we dont have time right now, too many urgent things to do" but truth is im spending the entire day doing nothing, i could very well be studying rn. Just waiting for thr ideal moment will never get you started. I was confident when i was in a group w a teacher, because so many other people were going through the same things, and learning w a method and materials that had been thoroughly elaborated and tested before and helped hundreds of others to learn. By myself, i just feel its too much for me. But im not giving up. I miss studying japanese, i especially miss understanding abt grammar in depth, i rly loved nailing those "conjugations" right and learning abt classes of words, but i feel so insecure abt the resources i have available to me. to me The most daunting thing is actually how to learn grammar, bcz i dont like the way apps like tae kims explain grammar, its not as strict and accurate as the classes i took from doctors who dedicate their lives to study japanese language in an academic level, and that makes me feel unsafe.... out of everything ive ever seen on the internet, your videos are the closest to their rigor. I just need to watch them... gotta appreciate your hard work 💃💃💃💃💃 And actually try to apply what i learn so it wont fall on the depths of forgetfulness orz Ill look into ur immersion suggestions. I play 3 games in japanese, gotta start translating those babies and put that into my routine somehow, to make it normal and not something that, as u said, one mistake is fatal. I wanna learn japanese bcz i wanna be a researcher and study abt manga and culture. It is mandatory for me to understand the japanese research texts and original material written in japanese and communicate w the japanese artists. Its been so faraway goal. Perhaps that is my mistake -to be making few of what is actually the biggest priority.
Have you tried my structure course? I don't know how Japanese grammar is taught in Portuguese but in English it is taught in ways that make it seem far more complex and messy than it really is. I think this could help you get the structure straight in your mind pretty quickly considering the head start you have: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 thank you very much, curedolly sensei! Well, i dont know well how japanese in general is usually taught here because the courses i took at uni had this very different approach, but my teachers liked to use a concept of... i dont know how to translate properly but every class of words were divided in "nominal" (like meishi), "relational" (like particles) and "nominal relational" (like doushi and i adjectives i dont remember their name now orz) and we started doing some syntax analysis on the 3rd semester too. Idk much abt teaching methodologies so idk what else to say XD ill check your structure course and let u know if its any similar to what we did there! But its been ages since ive studied, i barely remember anything, and thanks to the quarantine my books are in the city i study, not in my hometown where i am now. I do have some materials digitally and my notebook, but since its a lot of content, ill take it easy and slowly go back to studying. I think reviewing a topic and watching a video per day is something i could try. Thank you, curedolly sensei :3 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
@@LittleBigDebbie You may find it a little surprising. We don't use です・ます until lesson 17 and we don't even introduce the は particle until lesson 3. There are very good reasons for this, so please bear with me for at least a few lessons until you see whether it is working well for you.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 oh!! Its ok, we also start using da and the simple forms of verbs, and language wise it makes all sense right?? Maybe a lot of places starts w desu/masu bcz its better to be excessively formal than excessively informal as a foreigner in japan, my teacher said. But i think if u are not going to japan on the next year or smth, its much better to start with da! I hope your channel will become more popular and help many learners, its really really awesome, but while you still dont have the number of viewers your excellent content deserves, i will enjoy the privilege of being read by curedolly sensei.. lucky me 😂😂😂🤗🤗🤗💕💕💕💕💕
@@LittleBigDebbie You are right about the reasons for teaching です・ます early - the problem is that when you are led to believe (and people are led to believe) that ます is the base form of verbs it completely confuses their grasp of verb structure (and です does the same for their grasp of adjective structure). And since no one is going to be holding conversations until they understand at least the very basic structure of the language it really achieves nothing in return.
Hey, just watched a couple of your videos and I really like your approach to the language! I just have one suggestion as a non-native English speaker here: please try to improve the quality of your audio as it's hard to understand (again, as a non-native English speaker). Hope you consider it and wish you success!
I do my best with audio but it never works out too well. That's why I have full and accurate subtitles. I think microphones made for humans just don't work well with my voice.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Great, no problem. I just kept watching your videos and eventually got used to your voice . Congratulations for your great work and thank you!
@@agalvan91 Thank you! I think that seems to be the problem. My voice doesn't quite make natural human intonations so it takes a little getting used to. I think a lot of it isn't really sound quality but the way I speak - which I can't really change. I am sorry it causes difficulty.
i think ive been thinking this for a while, but idk i just needed someone to say it for me to wake up. sometimes the sacrifice is rough, just saying "No, I can't do that right now" to friends when you should be studying is often times hard to do, especially in the past few months when people have been craving to be social but have been in lockdown or whatever. Sometimes it's hard to stay motivated (at least for me) because I have to work, use english at work constantly for 40+ hours of the week, then I have to make something to eat when i'm home, shower, any other chores that take up immersion time, and it feels like i'm undoing all my hard work. my dream is to work In japan, everything i'm interested in with my hobbys has to do with japan, so that's my driving factor.
I understand - it can be difficult. One thing to remember is that you can be listening to Japanese all the time you are preparing food (and shopping too) and other tasks. If you have a speaker in the bathroom you can listen in the shower too - if you are somewhere you can turn it up loud (!) - I wouldn't recommend earbuds in the shower. The more you can do your hobbies _in_ Japanese the more that will help too.
I'm in Japan, but I can't immerse because I'm teaching my grandson English. I do read a lot and school will start on the 7th, so there's hope. Lol we lived in a small town before but moved to Tokyo. English everywhere! It's not surprising that a lot of foreigners here don't bother to learn Japanese. I'm determined to learn it. I'm going to take your advice and quit hitting the English button when I'm out and about. I'm also going to quit asking my daughter to speak for me. It's a bad, lazy habit.
You are right - English is everywhere in Tokyo (and some other big cities). Small towns are very different, aren't they? But Japanese is everywhere too! You can do it! がんばってください。
I can't wait to get back to "my" small town.. (Japan is still closed off at the time of writing). No English there.. at all. Except for some of my friends, a special group intent on learning English. So that last part is kind of unfortunate.. but when I'm around town or traveling there's *no* English. So it's either say something in Japanese, or stay mute. I hope for more of the former than the latter when I get back.
LISTEN to her !! She's right. I've spent 30 years in the area between beginner and intermediate. Later, becoming an Acupuncture physician, I moved on to Chinese which, incredibly, is far easier than Japanese. Coming back now, to Japanese , in my retirement years, I find her advice to be the most useful. As a first step, while listening to her, take all of your books from Tuttle publishing and THROW THEM IN THE TRASH. You will do this anyway once you hear what she has to say. Take it from one who has learned the hard way.
My problem with japanese is about hearing 😭 I sometimes hear things like がえごことに and then I don't know if that's correct and in fact was incorrect the correct speech was が エグい ことに And I only discovered that because I asked somebody in HiNative to hear that scene and got the answer I didn't even knew the word egui existed And sometimes I feel I'm too slow in hearing , I could even know what words are going to be spoken but fail to understand it unless I read the script again. Thank you so much your videos are fantastic a blessing 😸🤗💞
This is inevitable because if you think how many words you look up when you are using J-subs - there are still as many unknowns when you don't, but you can't look them up - or even look at the kanji and make a good guess. A whole different, more "fuzzy matching" approach is needed for raw listening. I talk here about why both approaches are important: ua-cam.com/video/lzENBWvgfFA/v-deo.html
Something I realized while learning japanese (I consider myself a beginner/intermediate) is that learning large amounts of vocabulary helps me understand a sentence more easily when I hear it. I'm not talking about being able to accurately translate it, my grammar isn't that good just yet (but it is getting better thanks to you). So for example, when I'm watching anime, a drama or a toku show, and I hear words that I understand because I've studied them, even if I don't accurately nail the true meaning of the sentence, I can get a feeling of the idea behind that sentence. And even if learning grammar IS important, I also noticed that, by doing it this way and being able to more or less accurately define what is being pronounced, I can somewhat understand the idea behind a grammatical rule. One example of that is how I learned that -なきゃ could be used as a short hand version of なければなりません. The sentence that I heard was 行かなきゃ, and the subtitles were reading "I have to go", but the actress said, in no uncertain terms, 行かなきゃ. So, even without knowing that little grammatical rule, I understood what it meant BECAUSE I had the vocabulary and listening skills to understand the words that she was saying, and I just made the little adjustment in my head to add that little grammatical rule in my own dictionary, so to speak. My point here is that, to me at least, while grammar IS important and I still learn it, I'd rather think of it this way: "Oh, ok, so when they say that, it conveys that idea, I've noticed that this kind of construction comes several times and it always means this", instead of trying to learn a perfectly academical grammar lesson that will go into painstaking details but will still leave me with more questions than answers. Perhaps that's what it means to be organic? As in, a language is organic because the ins and outs of its working system is something you acquire naturally, not something you're force fed through tons of indigest theorycrafting grammatical nightmare that you'll never understand unless you apply it, but the mere witnessing of its applications should be enough to ingrain them in your mind?
Oh sorry, that's not what I was implying. My main way of learning japanese (as I did with english btw) is to try and find anime, drama, etc... first WITHOUT subtitles of any kind. Then, I simply try to hear the words being spoken (I even slow down the video to be sure to capture every little sound that is often spoken too fast for beginners) and write them down. Then, I try my best to find the meaning. The second watching, if I can find them, I use japanese subtitles to see if they match what I found and then, and only then, if I REALLY need it, do I use english (or french) subtitles. And one day soon, I'll only use japanese subs because it's convenient, and not english at all.
@@Artahe Sorry to misunderstand - that's a good technique. Heavier use of J-subs is good too - it depends on your learning style. Some people are better at piecing things together from audio than others, so one should play to one's strengths. Thank you for sharing.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 :). True, it works best that way for me, so to really go a bit more in depth for those who might be wanting to try my technique (again, I learned english that way). 1/ I learn a lot of vocabulary. That's the main thing, I've noticed that the more words I know, the more I can hear them, even without trying. 2/ I find something to watch that I like, be it an anime, a toku show, a drama, anything. 3/ I watch it WITHOUT SUBTITLES. Not in french, not in english, not in japanese. I try to get as much words as possible and write them down, even slowing down the video to be sure I get everything, or at least as much as I can. 4/ If I have the option (and Netflix, for example, has a good selection of these, so I encourage using them as much as possible), I use the Japanese subtitles to see what I got right and what I got wrong, and I try to understand the intention behind each sentence, IE what exactly did the person meant to convey. 5/ This is only as a last resort, but if there are parts of the story I can't wrap my head around, I will watch it again with english or french subtitles. But that's a last resort. Then, whenever I stumble upon something that I think is a grammatical point, I will try and find ressources about it to learn more in depth, but at this point, I might already have a good grasp on what it's supposed to lead to, so it's less about learning it from scratch and more about confirming my hunch.
INFO> repost from another video of yours. accidentally posted it there. but i wanted you to defenetly get the compliment cause you deserve it. こんにちはCrure Dolly。 i just stumbled over your channel and wow am i impressed. you got yourself a new subscriber. i dont know how i missed your channel for that long but you hit the right targets with the right arrows. thank you so much for what you are doing. amazing :3 thanks so much 今日から、このチャンネルで勉強しようとする。("しようとする"ってことはこのチャンネルに教えてもらった) sry if this is all wrong haha. great channel
Japanese is Japanese. English is English. Japanese is not English. It was so obvious and I wanted to read in Japanese because of that difference between translation and direct meaning. Thank you so much Sensei for helping us ❤ I'm so happy to know that it all makes sense after all 😄
Inventors uncountably falied before they truly succeeded, that's something I think many people forget, UA-cam entertainers (then later on as the options become available more areas will be chopped off for japanese) are where I chopped off a part of my life since really there are no such english subtitles except on very rare occasions on their content, you cannot choose english even if you wanted to do so. I mainly ever read things like Wikipedia articles, scientific research, psychology and neurology studies and facts but I have no idea where to find the other stuff in japanese. I have typed the little bits of japanese that I've either fully understood or just partially understood even through it will sound strange and out of place so that will help I believe
Good video as always. Since I almost completed Genki 2, I'm seriously looking forward to get into immersion. Which animes would you recommend for a beginner learner? And for an intermediate one?
Anyone who has not done immersion in native material for is a beginner in immersion, so the question of intermediate does not arise here. I also recommend Shirokuma Cafe - I did an introduction and partial walkthrough here: ua-cam.com/video/Fvhcvp9Y9eo/v-deo.html
The whole idea of an English parody definitely has truth to it. There's an anime I was watching, and listening to, every day in Japanese. Despite the fact that I'm still just a beginner, when I saw clips of the anime on UA-cam, which had English subtitles, some of the scenes felt very strange in English. I was like, I understand why it's translated that way, but it just doesn't sound right out of the Japanese language.
This video is very similar to the last one you did on this topic but with some good clarification. I have been off of Japanese for about a month because I was quite sick with COVID and feel like I lost a LOT of what I knew. It's sad how long you can work and how quickly it can disappear. I will say this video literally came the day I was ready to come back and so I found it a bit of fate so to speak. I think the issues I had before still hasn't been address unfortunately which is about verifying during mass immersion. Without a sort of translation type verification of what you read how can you know what you're reading is actually being understood correctly. I've watched many episodes of anime and felt descent but also quite a few where I could look up all the words in a sentence and still not know what the characters meant. I know that perfect shouldn't get in the way of good but at the same time without some source of "truth" how can you ever make progress and not just be reaffirming bad habits or spinning ones wheels in frustration? Perhaps a part of it is punching over my weight class in what I choose to read but I'm a big proponent of what you have said in the past... I should read what I want to read since that is why I am learning and I don't want to read children's books just because I am not an expert. I think it always comes back to 1 fundamental issue over and over... no one on the internet teaches Japanese like you and so any topic you haven't covered is just a big question mark. I don't know a good way of learning all of the things you haven't covered in an effective way and I feel that lack of knowledge is a big locked door in the way of being where I want to be. I would normally message you on Patreon but I imagine a lot of your learners feel the same way and may benefit from your insights.
治ってよかったです。お体をお大事にしてください。First of all, I am so glad you are largely recovered now. Please take care of yourself. The first thing I thought when you described your problem was exactly what you said - it sounds as if you are punching too far above your weight. If one or two things are hard to understand even when you have parsed the words, that's natural but if it is happening all the time, it really is going to be very hard to manage the material at this stage. Our Japanese adventure is a bit like growing up in a new world. There are some things we are not yet old enough to do. I do believe that one should do what one really wants to do in Japanese, but we can't skip too many stages without making things extremely difficult. So what I really would recommend is trying to find something at a simpler level that you can enjoy. Since, in your Japanese life, you _can't_ read English, you really have only two choices. Read what you can read or struggle as best you can through what you aren't really up to yet. In the early stages everything is a struggle. But if possible we should at least keep the struggle bite-sized. So I would really recommend looking around to see what you can find that might work for you. Maybe you can think about games, anime, etc. that you have enjoyed in the past. Often there is a variety of material available (novels of anime, anime of games etc.) Is none of what might interest and captivate your attention at a less demanding level? A lot of the problem with too-advanced material is sheer overwelm. It isn't that any one problem is a huge obstacle, but that encountering them all the time just makes the whole thing too difficult. At an early stage we encounter this, but if the material is relatively simple we can at least look most of it up pretty easily. When we get to very colloquial or otherwise convoluted material it becomes more difficult to do that and the best ally we can have is a solid grasp of the less convoluted basis of the language. Remember that most convoluted and very-colloquial language is playing off more basic language that now seems (often to teenage and young-adult speakers) too simple or obvious. But if you don't know - and know well - the simple and obvious basis it is very hard to deal with the "clever stuff" that gets woven on top of it.
It was just an example of a language that is not spoken by large numbers of people outside its native land (at least I think not). I hope you don't mind.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I dont mind, actually the way foreign languages are taught at least in schools in Croatia, like English, is entirely in the foreign language. So e.g. if its an English class, no Croatian is allowed. I've heard that in Japan thats not the case, even if its an English class its still 90% japanese.
This might sound a little bit "odd" because most of learners start learning Japanese because they like Anime, but I have started learning Japanese because I loved a Japanese music genre known as "City Pop" and I don't like anime at all but I love this music genre anyways I'm trying to watch a Japanese drama that I like, even though I really don't enjoy Japanese dramas, I will have to find new ways to immerse myself in the language, as you said it is indeed the best way to learn a language. What would you recommend to me?
I am not sure if my answer will help you but, I was in a similar situation to you, as I don't like most anime, and i cannot stand dramas. I was really only interested in Japanese for reading Visual novels. What i did was, I changed my language settings of my UA-cam account, Anki, and Steam account (gaming platform) into 日本語 . I have a separate UA-cam account that's purely for Japanese videos and would spend most of my time there instead. (I only come back to this account once in a while for Cure Dolly actually) And what i would do if I was you is, I would try out looking for videos of City Pop music, preferably with lyrics (歌詞) and listen to them while looking at the lyrics. If I find a word I don't know in the lyrics, i search it up then add it to the Anki list. And while songs do use weird terminology + grammar sometimes, it's simply something you'll have to get used to. (If the goal is to learn Japanese City pop songs, you'll going to have to know how the grammar works in them anyway) And I would also look for people who talk about these type of music (in Japanese) and watch them too. If I can find channels with Japanese subtitles, that is even better.(Many Japanese youtube channels do add Japanese subtitles to their videos) I would also do the same with what I did with the song lyrics, put anything I don't know into Anki list (this would be a lot easier if they did add Japanese subtitles, as without it you'll have to rely on your listening comprehension for the sentence) Anyhow, this is a just a rough guideline of how I would start. You should modify it to suit yourself. (You can do the same with your other interests for example)
@@ryanlohjy Thank you very much for sharing this! I'm glad I'm not the only one who learns Japanese but doesn't like Anime, I feel like an outsider in most of learning communities because they mostly talk about Anime, and people when find out you're learning Japanese, they just think you like anime. I was always very lazy about creating a new UA-cam account only for Japanese but you're right it is a very good way to consume content only in Japanese as I always find myself spending too much time watching UA-cam videos rather than watching content in Japanese. About City Pop, I think I can start learning basic vocabulary I find in those songs because I'm still a beginner and songs in Japanese tend to have deeper lyrics than English from what I've seen. I will try to apply these tips for my immersion and see what happens, have a good day!
In regards to making a Japanese "wall" for specific forms of media, is the reasoning for this simply for motivation, or is there a detrimental effect in context switching between languages more often? I ask because there are many areas I've inadvertently immersed myself in already (e.g. voice dramas, livestreams, Twitter), but others that are more broad (e.g. anime, games, other UA-cam videos) are more difficult to go "cold turkey" on due to their varying difficulty level. If the amount of Japanese media intake steadily increases regardless of the category it fits into, is it still a problem?
I think if there are some areas that are regular and prominent in your life that are Japanese only it's probably ok to have compromises in some other areas - so long as the Japanese intake is steadily increasing. Those are the two vital aspects really. Having some absolutely walled areas (that are a serious chunk of your life) and that the other areas are progressing in that direction at a noticeable pace.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thanks for the advice (and shockingly quick reply). My grammar is comparatively lacking so I'll have to make my way through your structure series now.
what if i immerse myself but dont know what something means? do i need to get to a certain level of japanese first? should i have a english japanese dictionary?
I recommend getting a good basic grasp of the structure of the language first. My structure course is designed to support immersion: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html You will need a J-E dictionary at first. Jisho.org is a good online one.
I came across your channel and this doesn't seem like bad advice. my japanese isn't great but my goal isn't to be flawless at japanese and Im not worried about coming off as a foreigner but I think my big issue is I'm just too "used to" english if that makes sense, it's the language that I do a vast majority of speaking, reading, writing, and listening in after all. it's hard to adjust and find/do japanese things
This really is the problem. English has gravity on its side and Japanese doesn't, which is why people who really want to learn English mostly succeed and people who really want to learn Japanese mostly don't.
Copying and composing are two different things - I said writing here but by that I meant composing (regardless of whether writing by hand or electronically). Because in composing one is actually working out how to express something. In copying, obviously one isn't. This is not to say that it has no value in itself, but it is not a form of active usage.
8:20 " if you want to play a game, and you can't play it in japanese then you can't play it. If you want to watch an anime and you can't watch it in japanese then, you can't watch it."
Yes definitely. The more media you can make a part of your life the better. NHK Easy News is read at a slow but still natural pace and has written text of the script, which makes it ideal for learners.
Thank you, my aim in learning japanese is to see what content in gaming is outside the US. I have detective Pikachu that can be played in Japanese so I will play that. What videos do you recommend on your channel while I do that.
Well there are a lot that might help but honestly I think it is a good idea to go over my fundamental structure course from the beginning. It is absolutely basic (at first) but if you've learned conventional "Japanese grammar " or not done structure at all, you will probably find yourself even in the first few videos saying "Oh so THAT's how it really works". If you already have some Japanese watching them is quite quick and easy, but a revelation, I believe. ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
Yes yes yes, so much yes. My main motivation was (and to some degree still is, there are more reasons now) to understand the "real" japanese story. The German story (because I don't get the English dub or sub here) omitted the honorifics and adressing rules of japanes (because we don't have honorifcs besides Herr / Frau, and the adressing rules are pretty much the opposite in context of the story), which pretty much killed the first arc of it. You were not able to understand what was going on. That was pretty much what kicked it off. Now I can at least confirm proper or correct improper translations by somewhat understanding the original. It is still a chore to find japanese subtitles (anime licensing is garbage), but at least somewhat doable. Still a lot of work before me, but as you've said, immersion is pretty much the way to go. That's why I imported Japanese novels now.
This video really hit me. I need to start playing games in Japanese full time. And most games are like are originally Japanese, so... This will be hard. At some point of course, I had to accept that many games weren't being translated to German, so your point is exactly true for me. I NEEDED English 👌
How much Japanese should I know before jumping into immersion with little to no context? I have taken College ASL courses but for those we are immersed but then given the meaning written out so we can associate what we have learned, would I use this way as well in Japanese?
I recommend working through some Japanese anime with Japanese subtitles first - that way you can look up vocabulary as you go. You need some grounding in structure before you can do that though ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
English is a universal language thanks to the British empire almost all of Europe Africa and some of Asia offer it as a secondary language course and some still require it like a second primary language course like they were forced to under the crowns rule and the internet came to life in America so it's no wonder English is a big part of it be cause the internet was born speaking it luckily enough there are so many British colonies that have those secondary courses to help them get along with the internet
It may seem strange but I got into the Chinese BL novel community a while ago and some of my favourite artists were Japanese, making comics and scenarios involving the characters in Japanese. And when I'd visit their pixiv or twitter everything was in Japanese (obviously lol). This was the main reason why I started to learn Japanese xD
If you find the Japanese community to be a vital interest and continue to read and engage with it continually, this would make a very good situation where you are likely to keep on improving your Japanese.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Yes i will! Thanks to your videos, even if I can't understand everything, I can get the essence of what is being said. I can enjoy the fanarts I couldn't before now ٩(●ᴗ●)۶ I'll continue to try and improve.
Hey, I really like your videos about language learning, and I’ve been trying to use your techniques on my journey to fluency in Chinese. They have helped me SO MUCH, and I can’t thank you enough. However, I do have one small question. I’m currently parsing a 7 minute clip each week, using 15 minutes each day to review my cards, and spending the rest of my time replaying that same clip hundreds of times while also taking some time to talk to natives and immerse in content that I haven’t yet parsed (comprehensible, of course). Would there be a more efficient and effective way to go about this? I would really appreciate a response. Thanks.
Hi Cure Dolly, thanks for the video! Personally, my immersion arena is Japanese kids shows. So far it's what I understand the most, but not everything so I still have room to learn. But after watching this video I have realized that English creeps into this arena whenever I look up words in the dictionary. Is there an online Japanese-Japanese dictionary that you recommend? Preferably something that writes with simple Japanese?
As always, Dolly, whoever he/she/it is, is worth listening to. This "ring fencing" is really only necessary in areas where (as in Netflix) English really is only a click away. But there are vast regions of the Japan-sphere which don't make it through the translation barrier. If you are interested in those you have no choice. Follow your interests. Language competency is a long, long road. If you don't get some interest and enjoyment from the journey you are sunk. Willpower and discipline are overrated, in this sphere at least.
Oh boy some serious facts have been stated here.
I'm not a native english speaker but I've eventually achieved a level of fluency, and I did that through consuming massive input (games, the internet) over the years. And the reason for doing it was very serious - 10 years old me, wanted to play video games really badly and there were no translations into my native language at the time. It was "learn to understand or quit the game" and ""quit" wasn't an option for me
Yes - this is exactly how it works (I don't need to tell you that). This is why people succeed at English and fail at Japanese.
It's an offtop, but fun fact: in 90-s we was playing some NES games in Japanese. We didn't understood anything, but it wasn't stopping us. ^_^
Special Kapson Just by reading your writing, I can tell that you’ve achieved a very high level of English fluency and proficiency. It’s very inspirational. I hope to achieve a similar level in Japanese years from now. Playing games in Japanese is a big goal of mine as was yours to play games in English.
I'm living in Mexico right now. All of the people I've met who are seriously into (retro) gaming speak fluent English.
@@Dempeokami Though interestingly someone I know went to a Japanese class in Mexico and while all the students had anime stickers and the like all over their bags they spoke nothing but Spanish outside of class. What's the betting that when they want to watch a Japanese anime that isn't available in Spanish they watch it in English?
Foreigner learning English online: "I must apologize for my terrible English in advance, for it is not my native tongue, so please bear with me with every foolish mistake I make along the way."
Native English speaker: "Lol, it okay"
Haha. Very true.
Hi (sorry for my bad english)
This is really accurate 😂😂
I'm in this comment and I don't like it.
To be fair, learning to speak like a native is learning that you don't need to have everything perfect. I even say this as a native speaker who tried to write all correct as a kid because I thought it made me look more mature but then I realized it just made me look like a robot so I switched to more general English instead of everything being perfect.
Learning Japanese is just a series of barriers to entry and people eventually get filtered out by one of them. First barrier to entry is kanji and people not realizing that in some ways it makes it easier to learn vocabulary. They start, see they have to learn thousands of seemingly overly-complex symbols and when they face adversity in doing that in the first stages give up. Then if they push through that they face the barrier of actual input where in the first few months you can't tell where words are ending in a sentence let alone understand it. Then if you get passed that you have even more months of having to look up 2-4 words per sentence which sucks out any enjoyment you might have had. At this point people realize that when others said it takes multiple years of 2-4 hours of reading/watching/listening per day to actually get decent and that they weren't just full of shit or dumber than you they might just make peace with the fact that they don't really want it that bad and give up. Or they end up like the people on /r/learnjapanese who spend years spinning their wheels with genki and tobira and never touch any native material cause it's too daunting.
This is especially the case for people that aren't learning the language with watching/reading stuff raw being one of their primary goals. If you're learning to understand content you have the additional motivation to push through because you have the dual satisfaction of feeling like you're making progress in terms of your ability as well as being able to derive enjoyment from the content itself as opposed to just caring about the former. Just my 2 cents and observations from my limited experience.
This is true they do see thousands of symbols or words are the same with different Kanji and they give up rather than understanding the reason why Kanji exists in the first place ( 撮る take photo 取る to take) and know it has broader meaning in the grand scheme of things. It also is hard to look at older Japanese games that had Hiragana and sometimes lose the meaning of which words mean a certain thing because the kanji is supposed to help with that.
Something I notice is as well is that even Japanese can be confused by Kanji and same words as well so learner's should not be discouraged by that. They give up without understanding like Kawajappa mentions you do not need to learn the entire Kanji sets you can just learn to what you want to learn and be happy with the progress made unless that is the goal you strive for. You have to want to learn in order to be good at a language or to know some of the language at least.
onlycasual1 exactly this. Reading a manga and having to look up every other word, or when they use some obscure or overly colloquial grammar point that you have to try and find a definition for...it’s exhausting. I don’t blame people for getting put off. But there really is no other way but to struggle through.
You are right. This is why I say that to learn Japanese you have to either love it or need it. If you don't love it and you don't need it, you will probably give up. Never mind kanji - some people pick around the edges of hiragana for months and months (anyone can learn hiragana in a week and most university courses - even as a minor subject - demand that).
There is a lot to learn and you don't have to learn it all at once. Use material with furigana (or an online furiganizer) and you can take kanji at your own pace - and it's worth learning how to cheat the kanji ua-cam.com/video/Ipoum0abU68/v-deo.html - they are immensely helpful but trying to swallow them whole as 2000 abstractions is just delaying the real job.
Also ask yourself at the beginning why you really want to learn. That way you are safe from the pitch accent pitchmen etc. who convince you that you want "really really good Japanese" (no I don't I want functional Japanese). And you can consider whether you really have the motivation to climb a seriously big (but wonderful) mountain.
That´s the biggest problem for me rn, I can´t tell at all where words end, which makes it extremely difficult even looking up Vocab sometimes.
@@akira7ink If you use something like Yomichan it will recognize words accurately most of the time (so it will highlight the whole of an individual word and not what follows it). Once you know a bit more about structure though it becomes much easier to recognize words because you start knowing how sentences work, what kind of words there are and how they are likely to end.
2:20 book names are too good
They gave me a good laugh.
Special Kapson “yea I’m learning with jenki”
Ah yes, mobile app no 2o7
I only got two references: Genki and Tae Kim. What are the others?
@@PedroMachadoPT OJOTT resembles AJATT, and Shleisig it's a jab to "Remembering the Kanji"'s writer Heisig, I think
Rest in peace Dolly.
wait what
@@ayato6949she died years ago , she was very sick. Someone had taken it over but inevitably…..
@@ayato6949that’s why her videos are years old now, she passed away
@momochichiify 😮and this is how i get the news 😔 howd you get the information?
She is not dead. She was doxxed and needed to retire and fake her own death (or rather deactivation).
I could not agree more. "You need to either love it or need it." The robotic wisdom oozing out of you is always impressive. I have been in love with Japan, Japanese people, Japanese culture as long as I csn remember. Everytime I visit Japan I feel this incredible vibe of happiness though me. I find the language beautiful, its structure, the Kanji and and... With all of this combined indeed, learning Japanese has became effortless to me, for the simple fact that it's so enjoyable. I have zero interest (for now) in pitch accent and picking the exact natural word ever time. I want to be able to speak with Japanese people in Japan to find out things about them...
PS: I am using chat apps to speak with random Japanese speakers on a daily basis and having heaps of fun!
@@amarug Why kind of chat apps do you use? :)
@@Himilika I am using HelloTalk at the moment, has been a really great experience. a lot of Japanese people who are eager to learn some English and in turn have lengthy conversations in Japanese as well. Can highly recommend it!
_Loving_ Japanese and _using_ it. Two important keys to success!
頑張ってください！
Yeah I have no interest in pitch accent right now either. I just want to be able to communicate with people and consume native consent. It's so sad when I see people online who haven't even learned one kanji ask, "how can I start learning pitch accent?" So even before learning, those people were taught that their Japanese is useless without pitch accent and that they should learn it immediately!
Dolly-sensei I realise you’re not around anymore but thank you so much for both getting me motivated to return to Japanese and also helping me not feel like a lazy failure for not vibing with the perfectionist AJATT and similar approaches.
I tell you all, listen to cure dolly. She's spot on, not one thing wrong here.
Immersion + not giving a fuck about things I was currently unable to understand/misunderstanding things and not giving a fuck about pronunciation(now I don't recommend this at all. I just didn't care at the time. At least learn how to say the sounds half decently just so you can think in them half-decently). So how did I do it? There was a manhwa I really wanted to read, no matter what, but translations in my NL were unavailable. So I did the only thing I could do: I followed the manga along in english, while looking up every word. Now, I don't recommend doing this with novels in the beginning, because the content has to be somewhat comprehensive and content with visual aids are the best kind of content for beginners. Sometimes I would understand 100% after looking everything up, sometimes 70%, sometimes 30%, it was mostly close to the 100 and at times I'm sure I got things wrong, but did it matter in the end? All mistakes will be erased in the face of massive exposure to REAL English and this isn't different with japanese.
And it is hella fun to study the language this way with manhwa/manga. Trust me. It is not as dry as it looks. If it was dry I wouldn't be here today(I was 14 yo at the time I guess)
Doing the same shit with JP now, starting with ruri dragon and it's great so far. I can understand close to everything and I'm having lots of fun. So really, TRUST cure dolly; she's goddam right
Man i needed that so much, thanks
"Understanding is the raw basis of communication."
I think what also really doesn’t help is those website where people say they became fluent in 3 months, or they learned all the jouyou kanji in 3 months (no you didn’t you liar, you may have added them to an srs deck and given them stories, but you haven’t committed them to long term memory in three months!!). Other learners see that and think “oh crap, I’m really behind/stupid/not dedicated enough” and give up. It’s taken me about a year and a half to learn all the jouyou kanji and I still wouldn’t say I know them all. I’m still having to do flash cards everyday, because you WILL forget them if you don’t. I’m struggling through yotsubato (it’s fun though so I don’t mind) and adding words from there into a vocabulary deck. Reading Japanese is absolutely exhausting, I can maybe manage four-five pages of manga before my eyes start to protest. So when people say they did X in a stupid amount of time and that they’re fluent now, always ask yourself: “what is it this person is trying to sell to me?”
You are absolutely right. These people make impossible claims - either they are prodigies or (much more likely) they are simply not telling the truth. Either way their claims are irrelevant to just about everyone. This cult of the "language superman" and the closely related cult of "you can learn X language in an afternoon even with two coffee breaks" is damaging and discouraging to ordinary learners.
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly yes, exactly! It’s all just click bait and selling books. I search for a lot of language related videos so I inevitably get things such as “how I learned Italian in 3 months” or some nonsense popping up in my recommended, and I think how discouraging it is for people who have been struggling (but making progress!) for a much longer time. If they were truly honest, they’d say that they became “fairly conversational” at 3 months, but that’s not as snappy and doesn’t generate as many clicks.
I hate people that enter in dualingo and think they are going to learn spanish in 6 months, a lenguage takes years to know a lenguage, i have 3 years learning english and im not close to the level of a native speaker.
Well Heisig claimed that it IS possible to learn all jouyou Kanji in 3 months... but only a) if you have nothing else to do, and I mean literally nothing and b) you'll only learn the kanji and the keyword, not the readings, not the actual words formed with the kanjis and so on and so forth.
So the knowledege is functionally useless.
But I will say that the Heisig method is really great, even though 3 months is usally impossible for anyone that isn't unemployed or a student of the japanese language at university.
I will say I know all jouyou kanji and then some after 1 year of studying kanji 30 minutes-1 hour a day. I do believe you could memorize them in 3 months if you combined them with immersion/a vocab reading deck.
An absolutely brilliant video highlighting a point that has crossed my mind many times whilst scouring the many people who make up the Japanese learning community. I recently listened to an interview between Matt Vs Japan and Dogen, two guys I find really interesting and who both are obviously passionate about the Japanese language.
In the talk Matt talks about his desire to get his Japanese as near native sounding as possible and how many people over the phone or online have thought he was Japanese and my initial thought was that if you ever meet that person the novelty value will be incredibly short lived and at the end of the day of what use is it that a Japanese person thought you were Japanese but you turned out not to be?
I have many friends from all over the world who speak English. Some better than others but as a native English person I can hear that none of them are English natives and I actually like it that way. It's a point of interest about them as soon as they start talking and the most important thing about their English is that we can communicate with each other. If all of them learnt how to speak English like a native it wouldn't add anything of any value to our friendship or make them any better understood. Sure there's always room for improvement but for me learning Japanese I would rather learn a new aspect of grammar or vocabulary over trying to sound like a native.
Yes! This is so true. Also if your friends were trying to learn English stress patterns for every word, they might not be nearly so far on in - just plain using English. Almost everyone (even natives) have an accent of some kind. It's part of who we are.
And then there's the fact that native proficiency/pronunciation is almost non-existing for adult learners, any language. In all my life I've met just two or three people speaking my native language so perfectly that I couldn't tell them from natives (it's a different story when young children are learning the language). Is that a problem? Far from it. Lots and lots of people speak my language just fine, including my wife. Sometimes with unusual wording - I love it.
Personally I would like to have as close to a native sound as possible. But I am not going to sacrifice other aspects of learning to accomplish that. I'm planning on living a long time. Plenty long enough to improve my pronunciation naturally over time without having to specifically study it.
Thank you, Cure Dolly. I think this is also an important message for that group of Japanese learning perfectionists that constantly chant "No Output Until Perfect."
Oddly they often cite Dr. Krashen in support of that position and it's just about the opposite of what he really says.
@Phi6er Might make home life better..... : )
Rest in peace Dolly 🕊️. Know that your memory still lives on through your work✌🏽💯.
I remember the time i started learning english around 7 years ago, i had the formation i had received at school but as you might guess language formation at school is never enough to be actually even decent at any language really, i've never had any special interest on english, but i went on twitter and created a fan acc for my favorite singer at that time and soon enough i realized the english community was way larger than the spanish one, so i started tweeting in english, and in about 2 years my english had become decent enough for me to do long conversations; i started japanese around 2 years already, althought last year i didn't do much progress due to lack of time from university studying, but i just recently started using some parts of my life exclusively in japanese, and actually took the whole month of february to read a manga in japanese for the first time, i read about 6 volumes completely in japanese and found myself actually feeling like i had learned a huge lot, and ever since i've tried to read my manga only in japanese, it takes a while but i learn a lot every time, and now i feel all the more needy of learning japanese, as well as loving it much more as a language itself, i've always been a huge believer of having an external motivation to learn a language, to learn it to do something thats actually your goal than actually learning the language be your goal, cause ive seen how many people have dropped their studies thinking like that, even i have left a language like that. Also i truly think the progress ive been able to do all this time has been greatly because of your channel, i truly believe your lessons are genius, and when times are rough i watch some of your videos and realize japanese has a lot of logic, and i calm down an keep pushing through, so thanks a lot for that too♡
Thank you for contributing your experience. I think your approach to learning both English and Japanese is very much the right one. Of course a lot of people do something like this in English but considerably fewer people in Japanese - which is the main reason for the discrepancy in results.
@@haroombe123 i mean since the manga i read got an adaptation i actually looked at the subs to figure out what some things meant, but ofc i also googled phrases i didn't understand, like fore example i remember somewhere it said なんかはらたつ and i was like what does はらたつ mean since it's not really a word by itself, so i actually googled はらたつって何 or はらたつ 意味 and it supposedly means to be angry or mad at something, i didn't quite understand nor found how a belly standing meant get angry but hey i guess it's better to know the core meaning at least
"English is not about English. English is about what they're doing in English."
I have legit never thought about it in that way. But this is so true. Even for me; I'm a non-native English speaker, and I'm even sort of a perfectionist, but sometimes I bungle my words without knowing it - it's fine, because I'm not writing this for people to admire my English skills, I'm writing this so people will understand what I'm talking about. And it doesn't need to be absolutely perfect to meet that requirement.
Heck yes.. I'm not a native English speaker, but I don't try to sound like I'm one, and I deliberately go for slightly wrong phrasing sometimes, because the language I have to conform to is actually "Euro-English", not English.. in other words, I must be understood by e.g. French or German people speaking English in a business context, and they're used to .. Euro-English, not English.
I've learned English and now I'm using it for learning Japanese. I hope to then use Japanese to check Japanese channels about learning polish, it'll be interesting :'D
I'm russian who learned english and I love to watch english channels teaching russian. It's so funny.
I also learn japanese by using english. It's kind of getting english practice and learning japanese at the same time.
Playing Japanese games before they came out in English is a great way to force needing Japanese. I did it with Persona 5 The Royal and I’m constantly doing it with mobile games with a delayed global/English release.
That's an excellent thing to do. Back when 3DS was region locked (actually it still is so if you are happy with a slightly older machine) you just get a Japanese 3DS and bingo! You're locked. Personally I love region locking - so long as I'm locked into the right region.
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly Being able to download Japanese games on my Switch without having to buy a new Japanese one and without paying huge import fees is nice, which is why I I like region unlocked consoles.
aha i did the same thing with Shin megami tensei V! it was awesome! i only play games in japanese and i’m never going back lol
A very thoughtful, and great video! Thank you!
I'll use your content as much as it doesn't go in vain!
This is something I can agree with you on. A lot of times people focus on useless concepts and mislead everyone into thinking they need to learn "pitch" a few useful "vocab words" or it is possible to watch anime with subtitles in English and still know what is going on. The hard part is basically getting over the mindset that English and Japanese are different and not the same. Also that trying to learn by thinking of it in English to Japanese or Japanese into English will only slow things down.
You also can not learn another language without dedication of learning vocab, grammar(how you use the vocab and make it into a sentence) through SRS and wholly through immersion in it's own world of language. It's not perfect at first and there will be mistakes, there will be doubt but if you accept it as it is and not try to use English or translate it will make sense eventually. Much like how kids had to learn their own native language before learning another one.
What is weird is that AJATT makes sense but it only does when you keep learning words(much like how school taught you words and sentences while you were immersed with TV and various forms of media) it helps you learn much quicker especially when acknowledging there will be words you do not understand or even sentences but in time you will get it if you accept what is in front of you as it is and the more you practice it the quicker you will be to getting there.
This was a good video especially because a lot of people I notice keep thinking of inserting English into Japanese or want shortcuts instead of doing the work to know the language and Kanji etc.
Thanks for the video Kawajappa!
Thank you for commenting! You are right - we do need to treat Japanese as Japanese and not keep trying to translate into (or out of) English.
I have to say, watching your Japanese from scratch lessons, I really appreciate how you actively teach that instead of trying to convert one's English into Japanese, you have to learn it separately and understand that the concepts and functions of English are completely unrelated to those of Japanese. This is something rare but incredibly useful, as for some reason languages are often taught as "x word in (language1) = y word in (language2)".
Most language courses and programs that I've found seem to prefer to do that instead of actually building a learner's knowledge from the ground up, with a stable foundation of logic which allows them to understand new words and what to do with them intrinsically, and not forcing them to memorize different rulesets that may not even be completely correct in the first place!
This mindset of installing "language drivers" into your brain, in the same way you install drivers on your computer when you get a new piece of hardware, is something that I believe is incredibly helpful with enabling a learner to manage the new language without having to stop and think about what word goes where, which ~insert grammatical feature~ agrees with ~insert grammatical feature~, etc. After all, what makes speech fluent isn't knowing vast amounts of vocabulary or being grammatically correct 100% of the time, it's being able to talk without even having to think about if what you're saying is correct.
I remember failing to learn French by using the common methods of textbooks, duolingo, and flashcards, and how absolutely frustrating it was to not have a feeling for how the language actually fit together, and only being able to say things that I'd prepared, never being able to form sentences naturally. It was like trying to speak a language with only phrasebooks. But recently I've had the realization that language doesn't have to be difficult at all when you prioritize gaining an understanding of how a language works instead of trying to memorize it like a party trick. With this I've managed to reach a conversational level in Spanish in less than a year!
Are you familiar with Mihalis Eleftheriou's "Thinking Method"? I've recently been enjoying a book by him on the topic of teaching language, and a lot of what he writes about is present with your style of teaching, I think. It was his work that gave me this realization that it isn't that language is hard to learn, but that I had been thinking about language wrong the whole time.
In your very first lesson, you said:
"Japanese is the simplest, the most logical, the most easily understandable language I have ever encountered, much easier than Western languages. But you wouldn't know that if you try to learn it from western textbooks or Japanese learning websites. Why not? Because they don't teach Japanese structure. They teach English structure and then try to force Japanese into it. And it doesn't fit, and it doesn't work very well."
This is what gave me the confidence that you know what you're doing. I'm not sure if I buy the train thing and the android is a bit uncanny, but I'm confident that your videos can really help me and so many others.
Thank you so much for all the work you've done.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I am afraid I haven't read the book. My method was to try to analyze the working of the language itself and see what it was actually doing.
The train model - I am not sure why one would buy or not buy it. It is simply a visual paradigm for depicting Japanese sentence structure. It is no part of the structural model itself, just an attempt to depict it in a visual manner.
And yes I suppose "the android" (me) is a bit uncanny. I think it would be even more disconcerting if I tried to represent myself as human. So one does the best one can.
The amount my Japanese improved within a matter of weeks once I ran out of translated stories for my favorite character and realized there were tons of untranslated ones in the Japanese app was honestly incredible
I hadn't tried reading them in Japanese very much because I thought it was too advanced and I didn't know enough kanji, but I was surprised to see how much I could actually understand and how quickly I picked up new stuff! I still can probably only understand maybe 50%-70%, give or take depending on the story, but it's enough to get the general gist and I'm able to pick up new bits every time I reread them!
This really is the key to why so many people do so well in English. The material is there, you can't get it any other way, and even if your understanding is imperfect at first, it's better than nothing. English speakers tend to be spoiled because they can get most of what they want without stepping outside of English. Something like your situation pretty much simulates how the world learns English.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 What I found particularly interesting is a lot of the time I can guess the meaning based on context and kanji when reading, but I'll have no idea how to say the word...so there's just ~meaning~ floating in my head but no sounds attached and that's really strange. I thought maybe I was just translating the meaning into English but I've tried to translate some stuff I found funny so I could tell my friends and it was quite difficult to get something that fit the meaning that sounded natural in English without thinking for a good bit. BUT, despite all that, being able to understand when reading has somehow boosted my confidence levels in Japanese a lot and in turn improved my hearing and speaking skills! Sorry for the long ramble, but it's so fascinating how all this stuff is going on inside my head sometimes without me even consciously doing it! 言語学が本当に大好きだよ~
Now some people say, "Well, how much of this do I have to do? How large an area of my life do I have to ring-fence?" and this is a bit like asking "How much gas should I put in my car" the answer is, "How far do you want to go?"
The entire video was extremely useful, but the part quoted above was a real mic drop moment for me!! I already listen to podcasts both passively and actively, but I definitely need to ring-fence more of my daily activities to ensure that I am practicing as much immersion is possible.
When I started watching this video I was worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it due to the voice, but by the time it finished I had become so engrossed in what you were saying that I wasn't bothered by the voice at all. I just want to say that you explain things very clearly and I appreciate the effort you go to in making these videos, as I might of given up on learning Japanese already if it wasn't for this channel. Thank you.
Yeah, felt the same way. But, then I was like addicted to the voice, articulation of topics and content in general.
I love the video and I'm loving the comment section. As a learner, please never delete this. Thank you ;)
Thank you! I don't intend to delete anything.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I hope the latest news didn't affect this intention.
It is sad to see you go :'(
6:43 That "there's the door" cracked me up. Amazing.
That's literally how I learned english, it's kinda scary to do it rn, since I'm pretty much a beginner in japanese but you got very real point, I'm probably gonna feel lost but I'll push myself to do it, u got urself a new subscriber :))
Thank you! And good luck!
Even if we talk about English, the amount of people I see doing the exact same thing with Japanese, too, happens with English. Namely, they spend time on YEARS and YEARS of classroom studying and barely on ounces, if any, of immersion. Some classmates of mine had like 5 or 8 years under their belt... and struggled with long speeches and writing simple articles, letters, etc.
Some people really can't believe me when I tell them it only took me 2 years or so of "studying" (never cracked open an English grammar book in my life) to get where I am now. I simply attended a language institute where, yes, I fine-tuned myself but mostly my speaking improved only since I never really got the chance to better it. I just read millions and millions of words through novels. And a helluva of it!
Absolutely this is the way to do it!
14:30 This is funny. Probably a problem as old as humanity. I lived in Argentina for a couple of years. One thing I noticed was that people of different nations and languages would form little enclaves and speak in their native language. They were probably learning less than people going to a weekend class in Spanish.
Understood... Thank you
Thank you so much, this really really inspired me to go forward and carry on with my studies of Japanese, this made me change the way I view the art of learning languages as a whole.
I am very happy to have inspired you!
I've been trying to learn Japanese for quite a while a struggling, this video was super insightful
Having a perfect accent has negatively affected my mental health...thank you for addressing it.
I have been stressing over my foreign accent since, I was a kid (since, I was five or six)....Even after I scored a 90/100 out of 120 on the toefl....I still feel like I suck more than I suck. Lol
I think this should seriously be discussed on the language learning community.
Thank you, Love your content.
Hope, you stay consistent. We need people like you in the community.
Really glad if I've helped you here. Having a non-native accent doesn't mean you suck. Having a perfect accent but a mediocre command of the language _does_ (your command of English seems excellent). Josef Conrad is acknowledged as one of the masters of English literature and he never lost his strong Polish accent. Who cares? Would you rather be him or some internet 引きこもり who claims to have a perfect accent?
Your channel is just amazing. It's a very good complement to my Japanese classes as it is my major in University ~ I'm very glad I discovered your videos, the content is always so helpful and interesting ♥️ learning Japanese for my favorite J-pop idols was the best decision of my life ❤️
I was intially caught off guard by the...different style of presentation and voice, but holy shit. You really hit the nail on the head hard. Your videos have been honestly pretty fantastic.
For reference, I'm around "N3 level" of Japanese and have been learning Japanese in Japan for the past year and a half. The biggest kick in the ass for me to want to get good was simply the friendships I have here. I have tons of really good japanese friends I made in college and I wanna learn Japanese just so I can simply vibe with them in Japanese. That's literally it. I just wanna vibe.
Noticing my goal helped me feel less of that weight you mentioned. That perfectionist attitude to my speaking. Instead of being slow and careful with every word, particle and verb conjugation, I just now yolo it. Yolo what I wanna say and then deal with the repercussions later.
I do still think there is merit to being "perfectionist" when studying grammar/vocab/kanji. It's something akin to "The Inner Game of Tennis" thought process. Train hard, but don't beat yourself up over mistakes. Simply note it and look back it later.
Yes, I think you have a good balanced attitude there. Structure we do need to understand to a precise level, but we don't need to push it so hard when we're just speaking and communicating. The urge to communicate is one of the best drivers in understanding language.
I don't have the attention span to study and/or practice anything actively enough to get good (at least not with structured classes...) but this video made me understand why Japanese is the one language I keep throwing myself against the wall of... because I do, actually, "need" it. So much of what I want to read isn't translated and will never ever be. The problem is that I keep sulking off and settling for things I care less about because learning a new language is hard. Hopefully this time's the charm! OTL
Good luck! I'm rooting for you!
A hugely important video. Thank you so much.
Great video, and that's something I've been doing recently. If I want to play a videogame, I'll play it in Japanese. I only watch anime in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. At first it was hard trying to listen and read at the same time, I knew I lost a lot of stuff, but I carried on. Now I can watch with subtitles only occasionally stopping to lookup a word or two (with browser addons I can do this fast, without stopping for long) and get most of it (though there are some hard parts sometimes). After a rough beginning, watching anime 100% in Japanese became more fun than work.
Besides manga I also try to read stuff in Japanese if at all possible. To learn about some programming language or tool I'm interested in, I first try to look for a Japanese book on it. This has also improved my reading a lot in a relatively short time.
Thank you for making this. I didn't know I needed this but I'm glad I watched it
I must be a special case, I have been learning Japanese at very very slow pace for the past 7 years or so, I started by learning hiragana and katakana then I read some textbooks including Tae Kim, Genki, and some other textbook that did not really click with me but each time I tried some new materials I would retain some grammar point so I build up my grammar this way.
Then after a while, I got bored so I took a long break from learning Japanese but I kept watching anime and kept playing games in Japanese (with English subs) so I never really stopped being exposed to the Japanese language. I discovered Wanikani which I used for almost 2 years I got to level 18 but I was not doing any grammar or practicing (yes I know I'm stupid), only doing reviews and learning out of context new words and kanji.
Then I got back into it more seriously, once per week I would have a lesson with a Japanese teacher and she was giving me homework to do I got much better during those 2 years I had lessons but had to stop some months ago with the birth of my son and since then my time has been much more restricted to study Japanese.
I decided that it was time to stop learning grammar from the textbooks and immerse myself so I tried Yotsubato manga and I really liked this series it's charming and it's perfect for me it's not too hard and a see a lot of new words that are actually useful. Each time I tried to read Japanese I always ended up spending more time checking each word in the dictionary than actually enjoying the story. fast-forwarding to now, I read all the 13 volumes of Yotsubato and I'm back to square one which is trying to find something my level I tried a manga (One Week Friends) but the vocab and the grammar used is too hard for me I end up looking up everything in a dictionary and my brain just disconnects and I'm not enjoying my time with the book.
So my question to you sensei what should I do? I have about 30 mins to an hour a day to read and immerse myself in Japanese, is it a lost cause should I stop? Should I give up? I'm a very stubborn person and does not easily give up but lately, I'm a bit lost I don't how I should proceed.
How can I still learn Japanese and have fun doing so with limited time on my hands? I know people use Anki and SRS system but most of them are really young people and got a lot of time on their hands or just have a lot of free time which is no longer my case and each time I try to immerse myself be it books or watching something I always feel it's a too high level for me, I feel like being in Dragon Quest but with no guidance of where to go and I'm stuck being lvl 2 or 3 and all the monsters around me are golems or chimera I need to find some draky or some monsters my level.
Sorry for the long rant but I would appreciate some guidance Sensei.
First of all, I don't think it is a lost cause at all. You clearly have a lot of love for Japanese. I use "love" in an almost technical sense here - that deep quality of attraction that keeps you motivated despite lack of time.
Obviously the less time you have the more slowly things move - but you have overcome the first barrier (the one that a LOT of people fall at) which is the transition into real native-material immersion. If you can keep doing this you will progress (obviously proportionately to the amount you can do - but that's ok. You clearly have the necessary がんばり!)
So the next problem is to find your next quest within the Great Adventure. It is hard to be sure what someone will find approachable. Something my sister just loved is the manga ひとりぐらしの小学生. Looking around I can't see a browse inside the book and can't find a digital edition (there used to be one). I might be able to dig up something for you to try out but do you need furigana? I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any (but plenty of things do, so we'll just have to go on thinking).
On Anki - well people have learned without it for centuries so it can be done. I would just say that you can have it on your phone or tablet and review at odd moments throughout the day (I do). I realize it still may not be possible - if not we have to manage without.
Where there's a strong will there's absolutely a way.
がんばってね。
Furigana is definitely a time saver for me since I know the pronunciation when I look up new words otherwise I have to look them up by radicals.
I also have no problem getting books in physical format, I have all the Yotsubato mangas (I bought them used in Japan at a Book Off store on my last trip).
I will try to find your recommendation on Amazon Japan.
Thank you for your time Sensei.
@@Randhrick Ah a fellow Book Off fan! Here is another possible suggestion www.cmoa.jp/title/65391/ if you use the grey button at the side marked 無料立ち読み you can read a sample to see if it suits you. It appears to be all hiragana which you may or may not like (I found it hard to read from early on, but in the small speech-bubble doses it might work).
@@Randhrick Here is a 立ち読み from later in the ひとりぐらし小学生 series (中学校 by this time, so may be a bit more complex). You can take a look and see how it suits you: tkj.jp/ebook/read/cd/hitorigurashi_chugakusei_00 the main character barely appears but you can get an idea of the level and the style.
@@Randhrick PS - looking again I see that リューシカリューシカ is not all hiragana at all. It just had a lot of kana at the beginning. It has kanji with partial furigana which ought to be fine for you - probably it will be furigana for all but the simpler kanji. So you just need to see if it will suit you both for level and for enjoyment.
your wisdom will live on................. thank u dolly
Very insightful! The question then becomes, what do you tell someone who tries to confine herself to Japanese and finds that the effort or lack of understanding just makes her not want to watch anime or play the games? The original AJATT answer was to churn through material looking for something so engrossing that it's worth the effort. The MIA answer seems to be focus on the gains rather than the material. Both are probably viable for different personalities, but I wonder what your answer would be.
I think this is really the make-or-break point - whether one can or can't enjoy immersion during that very tough early stage (which lasts quite a while). First of all, people are different and I would definitely say that whatever motivates you is good. I am a little more on the original AJATT side of this question in general. Unless you are a language-learning-enthusiast (and I note that the MIA slant has shifted somewhat toward "language in general") the "gains" alone are probably not sufficient motivation.
So I really do think it is important to "find something you LOVE" - something you are prepared to give a lot of time and heart to.
I mentioned in another video that my first anime was a Precure series (50-ish episodes) and of course it took a large amount of time to watch even one episode. When I later watched other series I thought that although they were wonderful, maybe the characterization wasn't so deep because I didn't get the same intimate sense of really knowing each of them. Then I realized that it was because I just wasn't spending the same massive amount of time with them. What I am saying here is that the huge investment of time and heart isn't necessarily a net negative. It can be a precious and somewhat unrepeatable experience.
And at the same time if one is in love with the language, one's "progress" can also be a positive factor - making friends with more words, more kanji, taking deeper and deeper steps into this wonderful world.
Of course if one can't enjoy it one can't. I am aware that this may not be a workable approach for everyone. But if one can it is a very straightforward way to begin deep immersion.
Let's just refresh our perspective for a moment and remember that attaining deep immersion outside of the place where the language is spoken is a new and amazing opportunity that most humans have not had. If we can do it we are very lucky. If we can't - well, we can't.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Wow, thank you for this very helpful and thoughtful response! ❤️
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I think...people can learn languages that are spoken in countries that the content they love are produced....
For example, my dad loves European philosophy and history so, French and German might be of interest to him
While, my mom loves Turkish Movies...Maybe Turkish is suitable for her.
I am not interested in the above so, maybe those languages aren't for me.
I enjoy ancient Chinese history, C-dramas, Anime....So, for me Chinese and Japanese are of interest to me.
So, everyone might find a culture they are interested in.... maybe one or several.
I reached an intermediate level with "using English to help understand Japanese" strategies. Clearly I do need to shift into a lot more Japanese-only activity to become really competent, but I'm going there a little at a time and don't feel the need to force it. I'm not claiming that what I'm doing is fast either, but in the end, the method that works is the one you don't quit ;)
I realised that I don't enjoy going Japanese-only with anime/games where I really want to understand what's happening. So I'll leave that alone and try it again later! I do enjoy replaying games I played in English a long time ago; my lessons on Italki; chatting with the Organic Japanese community on their forums and conversation meetups; and watching Japanese people on UA-cam play my favourite games with commentary. The last one was surprising. Turns out, it wasn't about finding something to watch that was compelling enough; it was more about finding something that I could enjoy casually without caring too much whether I understand or not.
I want to thank you cure dolly. I'm native Turkish speaker, B1 (intermadiate) level in English and absolute beginner in Japanese. I will work both of them when college starts 15 days later-i started even now working. It may be so hard but i have 1 year for just language development, whole one year. I was worried about japanese grammer but i found you from r/learnjapanese and im glad to found you.
ありがとうございますせんせい。
Good luck! Your English is good already and I am sure you can do well with Japanese too. がんばってください。
wow this is really insightful, and very well-spoken, thanks!
I've only found this channel today but I think I figured out what's so attractive about these videos to me. The things being said the things your AI determines what you should talk about sounds like a philosophy seminar and to a degree it is, especially a video like this. Compounding on that the very cadence of your speaking voice has a very striking similarity at times to the recording of the *philosopher* Alan Watts, who is just a treasure. Final note watching a few of these the voice is really becoming kind of therapeutic, it's very relaxing. This is all amazing to me especially because you're an artificial consciousness.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I think that talking about language ultimately involves talking about philosophy. Fundamentally language is what allows us to think (at least what allows complex thought on the level we apparently exist on). And of course this is equally true of artificial thinking, which is only possible with languages both artificial and natural. We can't separate thought from language (I believe thought can transcend language - but in such a case, of course, we can't express it). So really if we look clearly at language we are also looking at the nature of things. I am very happy that you like my voice. Not everyone does.
Have you got a video/article that, at a high level, points one along the general path to learning Japanese. For instance, I know you've a great playlist for grammar; however, that is one aspect of language. Immersion is too.... but if I'm a beginner what are the general steps toward fluency?
1. Learn Hiragana/Katakana (Done)
2. Learn recognition of Kanji (~750 in)
3. Learn some grammar structure (Doing)
4. Watch/Read in Japanese (even if I don't understand - am I attempting to dissect everything I read to try to understand it. How do I know I've the correct understanding?)
5. ???
6. ???
It's the one thing that plagues my mind insofar as trying to determine what I should be doing on a day-to-day basis on this path. It's very fuzzy. I know what material I like, but whilst ingesting this material, what am I doing?
I should probably make a video directly on this, but the immersion playlist really deals with the non-structure side of learning. The organic method is really Structure+immersion. I don't think everyone works quite the same way but a general breakdown would be:
1. Start learning basic sentence structure (first few lessons of the structure course). Learn hiragana and katakana (you have). HIragana as a priority.
2. Start learning basic vocabulary. 99% of vocabulary will come directly from the our immersion (starting with the J-subbed Anime method) but having a starting-block of maybe 200 very common words allows us to get started.
3. Learn basic kanji. 90% of our kanji will be learned along with vocabulary through Immersion, starting with the Anime Method but we should get the most basic kanji and the principles of breaking them down (you have a head start on this one).
I do not recommend "raw" listening until you have done quite a bit of work with J-subbed anime. However some people are more "audial" and take to listening more quickly. The Organic approach builds on structure knowledge to grasp Japanese on a logical, granular level before moving to mix in some of the more fuzzy-intuitive approach (though both are necessary in the end).
4. Keep going with the course and somewhere between Lesson 20 and Lesson 30 put a toe into some easy immersion, using the basics you now have and learning vocabulary as you go. (ultimately I really want to have some material specifically designed for this).
The vocabulary/kanji playlist is here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x-W5kcce4zVNwK_JHjxHK5x.html
The Immersion playlist is here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_iLm90ie4ewro0lFedXncO.html
The fundamental structure course, is of course here: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thanks for the swift reply - this in itself is a useful guide: the sign-posting is just what I needed. I assume by 'easy immersion', you mean it must be comprehensible (with applied effort).
Oof, I just watched your video about confronting Tae Kim's guide to real japanese grammar and this one, thank God I stumbled upon your channel. I started trying to learn japanese using Tae Kim's guide a few days ago, though I thankfully only learned kana and didn't make it to the grammar part. I'm now going to drastically change my approach to learning japanese (hopefully for the better) and do what you recommend: immersing myself in the language. Funnily enough, it is the exact same method that allowed me to learn english years ago, Idk why it didn't occur to me to do the same right away.
Immersion is the way that works. If you don't have a basic grasp of structure I do recommend watching my main structure course, because no one is teaching this in a logical manner: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html this is really just a stepping-stone to immersion (to replace the stepping stone to English immersion that you got at school).
Finally someone talking about the main point on why most people learn a language: having a reason.
The only true reason for that I started to learn the language is the barrier set through games without an English translation. I could not give less of a fuck on sounding like a non-native, I don't speak perfect Oxford English without an accent, hell, I dont even talk without an accent in my native tongue! Why should I care that I have a very distinct tone that will reveal myself as a...foreigner.
If I can get the info I need from it, I couldn't care less on how it's going to be transcibed to me.
İ am not native English speaker and i was feel like why these people in internet thinks like (i can't describe my feelings) but you are The person . I am thinking same with you thank you
very nice attitude towards languages.
it's about the communication and the people and communities that you can reach with the language (for most people at least)
たしかにそうですね。有り難う御座います。
Thank you for this video. It's well put together, articulate, and competent. It's actually helped me start building an environment to learn Japanese more efficiently.
I am happy to hear that! Thank you so much.
That speech about "To learn a language you either love it, or need it" is so true, I HATED english with all my heart when I was a kid, the confusing pronunciation, the awkward way of writing, the arbitrary way of reading, everything made me furious when I tried to learn it, until I realised that I needed english in the internet, that's when after 1-2 years of inmersion I finally became fluent, to this day I still post comments with weird errors and people make fun of me when I do that but I don't care because those people probably only cared to learn their own language while I'm here about to learn my third
Hey, I’m not trying to pick on you or anything, just curious, but what did you mean where you said English has an “awkward way of writing” ? I guess it must be a contrast to your first language, so I’m also curious as to what is your first language :) Anyway, I’m also here to learn Japanese so yeah :)
Idk bro your English here is perfect
ドリーさんとご同意します。最良の語学し方は毎日その語を使うと言う事ですけれど日本語では西洋人にこれはちょっと難しいかもしれません。日本語で書いた何かを読み為に先ずは多数の漢字を覚えしなければなりません。そうしないと色々な無知漢字とちょっと悔しいです。
I agree with you Dolly san, the best way to learn a language is to actually put it in use everyday if possible. But in the case of Japanese, if you want to read something I think that first you must learn a large quantity of Kanji, so you really can't like get just to it (Though it would be awesome). If you buy a Japanese novel or game and try to do that, it can become frustrating to search 10 or 20 kanji by radical system just by some dialogue.
Oh well, even knowing that I love the language and I'll still learning Kanji for years until I can read Yukio Mishima and Murakami novel's XD
Children's novels (and they can be Harry Potter level - not just kiddie books) nearly always have furigana. So do many games like the Layton and Dragon Quest series. If you are reading on a device you can use built-in dictionaries to scan kanji on the fly. With online J-subs (Animelon etc.) you can use Yomichan. There are a lot of ways around the kanji problem and you will be learning them as you go if you use the Organic approach (though you don't have to learn everything the first time you encounter it).
love this video, I definitely needed it. I'll start immersion right now!
頑張ってください
Imagine aimlessly learning Japanese for more than 2 years only to find this video, then get slapped hard by it. What have I been doing the past 730+ days…
I've always felt slow when trying to speak, or write, read, or just comprehend using Japanese. It always felt that something heavy must be pulling me down. And it wasn't because I was slacking, it's because I lacked the courage of locking off my filled-up English drawer and opening my almost empty Japanese drawer instead. I forgot what it truly means to "immerse yourself in the language." It's just like when you're trying to get strong by climbing a mountain with either step-by-step climbing or through riding the Gondola lift. Never compromise as Cure Dolly Sensei says. Make yourself climb it. Riding the Gondola lift renders your goal utterly useless as if your just being ridiculous about it. I reminiscent the time I was still learning English. I may have forgotten how I got here, but I will never forget why I tried to get here at this point of fluency in the first place. Thank you, thank you Sensei. You might have just saved one student from falling into a place where he doesn't want to belong.
Have you gotten better at japanese since watching this video?
@youknowkbbaby Its been working pretty well for me, I was doing this on my own before knowing about this channel (just found out about it today). I wouldn't call myself fluent after 2 years, but listening to only Japanese lyrical music (I listen to instrumental too), watching anime with no subs and watching hololive/vsingers has made me able to understand what I am hearing 90% and able to fill in most of the rest through context. Can I explain why I get the difference between different conjugations? no, but I do.
Brilliant! Thank you - I couldn't agree more.
: )
Hi curedolly sensei! Ive found your channel years ago. I study in a huge university in brazil, and so i had the opportunity to take japanese language classes inside the very language graduation as an eletive subject (?). I took three semesters, and they were amazing. I didnt learn basic things such as asking how your day was, but i learned abt so many gramatical details, like the different categories of words, the 2 different types of auxiliary verbs (i dont remember their name now orz), the flex paradigms (?? I learned its not conjugation bcz it doesnt change in number gender and stuff like that)
Anyways it was pretty incredible but really crazy intense. I had to memorize more than 1000 anki flashcards in just one year, some were hiragana expressions but many were vocabulary w more than one kanji. i started getting burned out by the third semester, and bcz of family issues i had to stop taking them. Now its been one year since i barely touched japanese. I studied a bit here and there, but like, it would amount for the work i made in one or two weeks previously, and i have no consistency. Im kinda traumatized and studying by yourself is so difficult. You dont have the safety of a teacher who knows how to guide you, who has tested and verified ways to teach you grammar, who has an entire structure made for learning, plus joining a class and getting homework done together w other students is refreshing. Sorry, i know im not trying hard enough and im bugging you too much w this long comment, but id just like to mention the incredible discipline u need to take on such a huge challenge that is learning an entire new language without a teacher. We always tell ourselves that is "too difficult" and "we dont have time right now, too many urgent things to do" but truth is im spending the entire day doing nothing, i could very well be studying rn. Just waiting for thr ideal moment will never get you started. I was confident when i was in a group w a teacher, because so many other people were going through the same things, and learning w a method and materials that had been thoroughly elaborated and tested before and helped hundreds of others to learn. By myself, i just feel its too much for me. But im not giving up. I miss studying japanese, i especially miss understanding abt grammar in depth, i rly loved nailing those "conjugations" right and learning abt classes of words, but i feel so insecure abt the resources i have available to me. to me The most daunting thing is actually how to learn grammar, bcz i dont like the way apps like tae kims explain grammar, its not as strict and accurate as the classes i took from doctors who dedicate their lives to study japanese language in an academic level, and that makes me feel unsafe.... out of everything ive ever seen on the internet, your videos are the closest to their rigor. I just need to watch them... gotta appreciate your hard work 💃💃💃💃💃
And actually try to apply what i learn so it wont fall on the depths of forgetfulness orz
Ill look into ur immersion suggestions. I play 3 games in japanese, gotta start translating those babies and put that into my routine somehow, to make it normal and not something that, as u said, one mistake is fatal. I wanna learn japanese bcz i wanna be a researcher and study abt manga and culture. It is mandatory for me to understand the japanese research texts and original material written in japanese and communicate w the japanese artists. Its been so faraway goal. Perhaps that is my mistake -to be making few of what is actually the biggest priority.
Have you tried my structure course? I don't know how Japanese grammar is taught in Portuguese but in English it is taught in ways that make it seem far more complex and messy than it really is. I think this could help you get the structure straight in your mind pretty quickly considering the head start you have: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 thank you very much, curedolly sensei! Well, i dont know well how japanese in general is usually taught here because the courses i took at uni had this very different approach, but my teachers liked to use a concept of... i dont know how to translate properly but every class of words were divided in "nominal" (like meishi), "relational" (like particles) and "nominal relational" (like doushi and i adjectives i dont remember their name now orz) and we started doing some syntax analysis on the 3rd semester too. Idk much abt teaching methodologies so idk what else to say XD ill check your structure course and let u know if its any similar to what we did there! But its been ages since ive studied, i barely remember anything, and thanks to the quarantine my books are in the city i study, not in my hometown where i am now. I do have some materials digitally and my notebook, but since its a lot of content, ill take it easy and slowly go back to studying. I think reviewing a topic and watching a video per day is something i could try. Thank you, curedolly sensei :3 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
@@LittleBigDebbie You may find it a little surprising. We don't use です・ます until lesson 17 and we don't even introduce the は particle until lesson 3. There are very good reasons for this, so please bear with me for at least a few lessons until you see whether it is working well for you.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 oh!! Its ok, we also start using da and the simple forms of verbs, and language wise it makes all sense right?? Maybe a lot of places starts w desu/masu bcz its better to be excessively formal than excessively informal as a foreigner in japan, my teacher said. But i think if u are not going to japan on the next year or smth, its much better to start with da! I hope your channel will become more popular and help many learners, its really really awesome, but while you still dont have the number of viewers your excellent content deserves, i will enjoy the privilege of being read by curedolly sensei.. lucky me 😂😂😂🤗🤗🤗💕💕💕💕💕
@@LittleBigDebbie You are right about the reasons for teaching です・ます early - the problem is that when you are led to believe (and people are led to believe) that ます is the base form of verbs it completely confuses their grasp of verb structure (and です does the same for their grasp of adjective structure). And since no one is going to be holding conversations until they understand at least the very basic structure of the language it really achieves nothing in return.
Hey, just watched a couple of your videos and I really like your approach to the language! I just have one suggestion as a non-native English speaker here: please try to improve the quality of your audio as it's hard to understand (again, as a non-native English speaker). Hope you consider it and wish you success!
I do my best with audio but it never works out too well. That's why I have full and accurate subtitles. I think microphones made for humans just don't work well with my voice.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Great, no problem. I just kept watching your videos and eventually got used to your voice . Congratulations for your great work and thank you!
@@agalvan91 Thank you! I think that seems to be the problem. My voice doesn't quite make natural human intonations so it takes a little getting used to. I think a lot of it isn't really sound quality but the way I speak - which I can't really change. I am sorry it causes difficulty.
i think ive been thinking this for a while, but idk i just needed someone to say it for me to wake up. sometimes the sacrifice is rough, just saying "No, I can't do that right now" to friends when you should be studying is often times hard to do, especially in the past few months when people have been craving to be social but have been in lockdown or whatever. Sometimes it's hard to stay motivated (at least for me) because I have to work, use english at work constantly for 40+ hours of the week, then I have to make something to eat when i'm home, shower, any other chores that take up immersion time, and it feels like i'm undoing all my hard work. my dream is to work In japan, everything i'm interested in with my hobbys has to do with japan, so that's my driving factor.
I understand - it can be difficult. One thing to remember is that you can be listening to Japanese all the time you are preparing food (and shopping too) and other tasks. If you have a speaker in the bathroom you can listen in the shower too - if you are somewhere you can turn it up loud (!) - I wouldn't recommend earbuds in the shower. The more you can do your hobbies _in_ Japanese the more that will help too.
I'm in Japan, but I can't immerse because I'm teaching my grandson English. I do read a lot and school will start on the 7th, so there's hope. Lol we lived in a small town before but moved to Tokyo. English everywhere! It's not surprising that a lot of foreigners here don't bother to learn Japanese. I'm determined to learn it. I'm going to take your advice and quit hitting the English button when I'm out and about. I'm also going to quit asking my daughter to speak for me. It's a bad, lazy habit.
You are right - English is everywhere in Tokyo (and some other big cities). Small towns are very different, aren't they? But Japanese is everywhere too! You can do it! がんばってください。
I can't wait to get back to "my" small town.. (Japan is still closed off at the time of writing). No English there.. at all. Except for some of my friends, a special group intent on learning English. So that last part is kind of unfortunate.. but when I'm around town or traveling there's *no* English. So it's either say something in Japanese, or stay mute. I hope for more of the former than the latter when I get back.
LISTEN to her !! She's right. I've spent 30 years in the area between beginner and intermediate. Later, becoming an Acupuncture physician, I moved on to Chinese which, incredibly, is far easier than Japanese. Coming back now, to Japanese , in my retirement years, I find her advice to be the most useful. As a first step, while listening to her, take all of your books from Tuttle publishing and THROW THEM IN THE TRASH. You will do this anyway once you hear what she has to say. Take it from one who has learned the hard way.
My problem with japanese is about hearing 😭 I sometimes hear things like がえごことに and then I don't know if that's correct and in fact was incorrect the correct speech was
が エグい ことに
And I only discovered that because I asked somebody in HiNative to hear that scene and got the answer I didn't even knew the word egui existed
And sometimes I feel I'm too slow in hearing , I could even know what words are going to be spoken but fail to understand it unless I read the script again. Thank you so much your videos are fantastic a blessing 😸🤗💞
This is inevitable because if you think how many words you look up when you are using J-subs - there are still as many unknowns when you don't, but you can't look them up - or even look at the kanji and make a good guess. A whole different, more "fuzzy matching" approach is needed for raw listening. I talk here about why both approaches are important: ua-cam.com/video/lzENBWvgfFA/v-deo.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thank you so much ♡♡ I will watch every one of your videos today 😸
Something I realized while learning japanese (I consider myself a beginner/intermediate) is that learning large amounts of vocabulary helps me understand a sentence more easily when I hear it. I'm not talking about being able to accurately translate it, my grammar isn't that good just yet (but it is getting better thanks to you). So for example, when I'm watching anime, a drama or a toku show, and I hear words that I understand because I've studied them, even if I don't accurately nail the true meaning of the sentence, I can get a feeling of the idea behind that sentence.
And even if learning grammar IS important, I also noticed that, by doing it this way and being able to more or less accurately define what is being pronounced, I can somewhat understand the idea behind a grammatical rule. One example of that is how I learned that -なきゃ could be used as a short hand version of なければなりません. The sentence that I heard was 行かなきゃ, and the subtitles were reading "I have to go", but the actress said, in no uncertain terms, 行かなきゃ. So, even without knowing that little grammatical rule, I understood what it meant BECAUSE I had the vocabulary and listening skills to understand the words that she was saying, and I just made the little adjustment in my head to add that little grammatical rule in my own dictionary, so to speak.
My point here is that, to me at least, while grammar IS important and I still learn it, I'd rather think of it this way: "Oh, ok, so when they say that, it conveys that idea, I've noticed that this kind of construction comes several times and it always means this", instead of trying to learn a perfectly academical grammar lesson that will go into painstaking details but will still leave me with more questions than answers. Perhaps that's what it means to be organic? As in, a language is organic because the ins and outs of its working system is something you acquire naturally, not something you're force fed through tons of indigest theorycrafting grammatical nightmare that you'll never understand unless you apply it, but the mere witnessing of its applications should be enough to ingrain them in your mind?
If you can learn a lot from watching anime with English subtitles you are in a minority. But definitely go with it if it is really working for you!
Oh sorry, that's not what I was implying. My main way of learning japanese (as I did with english btw) is to try and find anime, drama, etc... first WITHOUT subtitles of any kind. Then, I simply try to hear the words being spoken (I even slow down the video to be sure to capture every little sound that is often spoken too fast for beginners) and write them down. Then, I try my best to find the meaning. The second watching, if I can find them, I use japanese subtitles to see if they match what I found and then, and only then, if I REALLY need it, do I use english (or french) subtitles. And one day soon, I'll only use japanese subs because it's convenient, and not english at all.
@@Artahe Sorry to misunderstand - that's a good technique. Heavier use of J-subs is good too - it depends on your learning style. Some people are better at piecing things together from audio than others, so one should play to one's strengths. Thank you for sharing.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 :). True, it works best that way for me, so to really go a bit more in depth for those who might be wanting to try my technique (again, I learned english that way).
1/ I learn a lot of vocabulary. That's the main thing, I've noticed that the more words I know, the more I can hear them, even without trying.
2/ I find something to watch that I like, be it an anime, a toku show, a drama, anything.
3/ I watch it WITHOUT SUBTITLES. Not in french, not in english, not in japanese. I try to get as much words as possible and write them down, even slowing down the video to be sure I get everything, or at least as much as I can.
4/ If I have the option (and Netflix, for example, has a good selection of these, so I encourage using them as much as possible), I use the Japanese subtitles to see what I got right and what I got wrong, and I try to understand the intention behind each sentence, IE what exactly did the person meant to convey.
5/ This is only as a last resort, but if there are parts of the story I can't wrap my head around, I will watch it again with english or french subtitles. But that's a last resort.
Then, whenever I stumble upon something that I think is a grammatical point, I will try and find ressources about it to learn more in depth, but at this point, I might already have a good grasp on what it's supposed to lead to, so it's less about learning it from scratch and more about confirming my hunch.
INFO> repost from another video of yours. accidentally posted it there. but i wanted you to defenetly get the compliment cause you deserve it.
こんにちはCrure Dolly。 i just stumbled over your channel and wow am i impressed. you got yourself a new subscriber. i dont know how i missed your channel for that long but you hit the right targets with the right arrows. thank you so much for what you are doing. amazing :3 thanks so much 今日から、このチャンネルで勉強しようとする。("しようとする"ってことはこのチャンネルに教えてもらった) sry if this is all wrong haha. great channel
ありがとうございます。日本語でコメントして嬉しいです。質問があればいつでも遠慮なく聞いてください。
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 うん。ありがとうございます。頑張ります。このコロナウィルスの時に気をつけてくださいね。
Japanese is Japanese. English is English. Japanese is not English. It was so obvious and I wanted to read in Japanese because of that difference between translation and direct meaning. Thank you so much Sensei for helping us ❤ I'm so happy to know that it all makes sense after all 😄
Inventors uncountably falied before they truly succeeded, that's something I think many people forget,
UA-cam entertainers (then later on as the options become available more areas will be chopped off for japanese) are where I chopped off a part of my life since really there are no such english subtitles except on very rare occasions on their content, you cannot choose english even if you wanted to do so. I mainly ever read things like Wikipedia articles, scientific research, psychology and neurology studies and facts but I have no idea where to find the other stuff in japanese. I have typed the little bits of japanese that I've either fully understood or just partially understood even through it will sound strange and out of place so that will help I believe
Good video as always.
Since I almost completed Genki 2, I'm seriously looking forward to get into immersion. Which animes would you recommend for a beginner learner? And for an intermediate one?
The most comprehensible anime for me so far has been Shirokuma Cafe.
Anyone who has not done immersion in native material for is a beginner in immersion, so the question of intermediate does not arise here. I also recommend Shirokuma Cafe - I did an introduction and partial walkthrough here: ua-cam.com/video/Fvhcvp9Y9eo/v-deo.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Looks funny, thank you!
Beautiful video
The whole idea of an English parody definitely has truth to it. There's an anime I was watching, and listening to, every day in Japanese. Despite the fact that I'm still just a beginner, when I saw clips of the anime on UA-cam, which had English subtitles, some of the scenes felt very strange in English. I was like, I understand why it's translated that way, but it just doesn't sound right out of the Japanese language.
素晴らしいヴィデオ！ありがとうございますキュアードリさん！！:3
コメントをしてくれてこちらこそありがとうございます。
Im learning Japanese because the Japanese language gave me life, a reason to live.
I really do understand that. 頑張ってください。
This video is very similar to the last one you did on this topic but with some good clarification. I have been off of Japanese for about a month because I was quite sick with COVID and feel like I lost a LOT of what I knew. It's sad how long you can work and how quickly it can disappear. I will say this video literally came the day I was ready to come back and so I found it a bit of fate so to speak. I think the issues I had before still hasn't been address unfortunately which is about verifying during mass immersion. Without a sort of translation type verification of what you read how can you know what you're reading is actually being understood correctly. I've watched many episodes of anime and felt descent but also quite a few where I could look up all the words in a sentence and still not know what the characters meant. I know that perfect shouldn't get in the way of good but at the same time without some source of "truth" how can you ever make progress and not just be reaffirming bad habits or spinning ones wheels in frustration? Perhaps a part of it is punching over my weight class in what I choose to read but I'm a big proponent of what you have said in the past... I should read what I want to read since that is why I am learning and I don't want to read children's books just because I am not an expert. I think it always comes back to 1 fundamental issue over and over... no one on the internet teaches Japanese like you and so any topic you haven't covered is just a big question mark. I don't know a good way of learning all of the things you haven't covered in an effective way and I feel that lack of knowledge is a big locked door in the way of being where I want to be.
I would normally message you on Patreon but I imagine a lot of your learners feel the same way and may benefit from your insights.
治ってよかったです。お体をお大事にしてください。First of all, I am so glad you are largely recovered now. Please take care of yourself.
The first thing I thought when you described your problem was exactly what you said - it sounds as if you are punching too far above your weight. If one or two things are hard to understand even when you have parsed the words, that's natural but if it is happening all the time, it really is going to be very hard to manage the material at this stage.
Our Japanese adventure is a bit like growing up in a new world. There are some things we are not yet old enough to do. I do believe that one should do what one really wants to do in Japanese, but we can't skip too many stages without making things extremely difficult.
So what I really would recommend is trying to find something at a simpler level that you can enjoy. Since, in your Japanese life, you _can't_ read English, you really have only two choices. Read what you can read or struggle as best you can through what you aren't really up to yet.
In the early stages everything is a struggle. But if possible we should at least keep the struggle bite-sized. So I would really recommend looking around to see what you can find that might work for you.
Maybe you can think about games, anime, etc. that you have enjoyed in the past. Often there is a variety of material available (novels of anime, anime of games etc.) Is none of what might interest and captivate your attention at a less demanding level?
A lot of the problem with too-advanced material is sheer overwelm. It isn't that any one problem is a huge obstacle, but that encountering them all the time just makes the whole thing too difficult. At an early stage we encounter this, but if the material is relatively simple we can at least look most of it up pretty easily.
When we get to very colloquial or otherwise convoluted material it becomes more difficult to do that and the best ally we can have is a solid grasp of the less convoluted basis of the language.
Remember that most convoluted and very-colloquial language is playing off more basic language that now seems (often to teenage and young-adult speakers) too simple or obvious. But if you don't know - and know well - the simple and obvious basis it is very hard to deal with the "clever stuff" that gets woven on top of it.
5:55 Why was Croatian mentioned? Just curious since I am Croatian :)
It was just an example of a language that is not spoken by large numbers of people outside its native land (at least I think not). I hope you don't mind.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 I dont mind, actually the way foreign languages are taught at least in schools in Croatia, like English, is entirely in the foreign language. So e.g. if its an English class, no Croatian is allowed. I've heard that in Japan thats not the case, even if its an English class its still 90% japanese.
@@jgracak Yes that is right. And most American and other native English teaching of foreign languages is in English.
This might sound a little bit "odd" because most of learners start learning Japanese because they like Anime, but I have started learning Japanese because I loved a Japanese music genre known as "City Pop" and I don't like anime at all but I love this music genre anyways I'm trying to watch a Japanese drama that I like, even though I really don't enjoy Japanese dramas, I will have to find new ways to immerse myself in the language, as you said it is indeed the best way to learn a language. What would you recommend to me?
I am afraid my answer may also sound odd. I never watch live action drama (Japanese or otherwise) because I do find live humans a little scary.
I am not sure if my answer will help you but, I was in a similar situation to you, as I don't like most anime, and i cannot stand dramas. I was really only interested in Japanese for reading Visual novels. What i did was, I changed my language settings of my UA-cam account, Anki, and Steam account (gaming platform) into 日本語 . I have a separate UA-cam account that's purely for Japanese videos and would spend most of my time there instead. (I only come back to this account once in a while for Cure Dolly actually)
And what i would do if I was you is, I would try out looking for videos of City Pop music, preferably with lyrics (歌詞) and listen to them while looking at the lyrics. If I find a word I don't know in the lyrics, i search it up then add it to the Anki list. And while songs do use weird terminology + grammar sometimes, it's simply something you'll have to get used to. (If the goal is to learn Japanese City pop songs, you'll going to have to know how the grammar works in them anyway)
And I would also look for people who talk about these type of music (in Japanese) and watch them too. If I can find channels with Japanese subtitles, that is even better.(Many Japanese youtube channels do add Japanese subtitles to their videos) I would also do the same with what I did with the song lyrics, put anything I don't know into Anki list (this would be a lot easier if they did add Japanese subtitles, as without it you'll have to rely on your listening comprehension for the sentence)
Anyhow, this is a just a rough guideline of how I would start. You should modify it to suit yourself. (You can do the same with your other interests for example)
@@ryanlohjy Thank you very much for sharing this! I'm glad I'm not the only one who learns Japanese but doesn't like Anime, I feel like an outsider in most of learning communities because they mostly talk about Anime, and people when find out you're learning Japanese, they just think you like anime. I was always very lazy about creating a new UA-cam account only for Japanese but you're right it is a very good way to consume content only in Japanese as I always find myself spending too much time watching UA-cam videos rather than watching content in Japanese. About City Pop, I think I can start learning basic vocabulary I find in those songs because I'm still a beginner and songs in Japanese tend to have deeper lyrics than English from what I've seen. I will try to apply these tips for my immersion and see what happens, have a good day!
In regards to making a Japanese "wall" for specific forms of media, is the reasoning for this simply for motivation, or is there a detrimental effect in context switching between languages more often?
I ask because there are many areas I've inadvertently immersed myself in already (e.g. voice dramas, livestreams, Twitter), but others that are more broad (e.g. anime, games, other UA-cam videos) are more difficult to go "cold turkey" on due to their varying difficulty level. If the amount of Japanese media intake steadily increases regardless of the category it fits into, is it still a problem?
I think if there are some areas that are regular and prominent in your life that are Japanese only it's probably ok to have compromises in some other areas - so long as the Japanese intake is steadily increasing. Those are the two vital aspects really. Having some absolutely walled areas (that are a serious chunk of your life) and that the other areas are progressing in that direction at a noticeable pace.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Thanks for the advice (and shockingly quick reply). My grammar is comparatively lacking so I'll have to make my way through your structure series now.
what if i immerse myself but dont know what something means? do i need to get to a certain level of japanese first? should i have a english japanese dictionary?
I recommend getting a good basic grasp of the structure of the language first. My structure course is designed to support immersion: ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
You will need a J-E dictionary at first. Jisho.org is a good online one.
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly Thank you!!
More motivation to get my VR space set up :P Never thought of using VRChat for learning! 面白い
I came across your channel and this doesn't seem like bad advice. my japanese isn't great but my goal isn't to be flawless at japanese and Im not worried about coming off as a foreigner but I think my big issue is I'm just too "used to" english if that makes sense, it's the language that I do a vast majority of speaking, reading, writing, and listening in after all. it's hard to adjust and find/do japanese things
This really is the problem. English has gravity on its side and Japanese doesn't, which is why people who really want to learn English mostly succeed and people who really want to learn Japanese mostly don't.
That's what I did with English, basically I turned my life in that of a native English speaker and it worked. Next is Japanese
Good! English is the world-hegemon language so it encourages you in many ways to do this, but with determination you can also do it with Japanese.
Is copying out by hand the same as writing? If I just keep copying sentences from interesting content (to me), will I be practicing active vocabulary?
Copying and composing are two different things - I said writing here but by that I meant composing (regardless of whether writing by hand or electronically). Because in composing one is actually working out how to express something. In copying, obviously one isn't. This is not to say that it has no value in itself, but it is not a form of active usage.
8:20 " if you want to play a game, and you can't play it in japanese then you can't play it. If you want to watch an anime and you can't watch it in japanese then, you can't watch it."
Great video! I have a question, are listening and reading NHK Easy News everyday helpful? I have N4 and I can understand 80% of some articles.
Yes definitely. The more media you can make a part of your life the better. NHK Easy News is read at a slow but still natural pace and has written text of the script, which makes it ideal for learners.
本当にありがとうございました、この動画はとても凄い
どういたしまして
Thank you, my aim in learning japanese is to see what content in gaming is outside the US. I have detective Pikachu that can be played in Japanese so I will play that. What videos do you recommend on your channel while I do that.
Well there are a lot that might help but honestly I think it is a good idea to go over my fundamental structure course from the beginning. It is absolutely basic (at first) but if you've learned conventional "Japanese grammar " or not done structure at all, you will probably find yourself even in the first few videos saying "Oh so THAT's how it really works". If you already have some Japanese watching them is quite quick and easy, but a revelation, I believe. ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 thanks, ya I learned some bits and a lot of vocab before finding that. You explain it so much better thanks.
@@Digiflower5 Thank you. By the way my sister is a big 名探偵ピカチュウ fan. Plays it in Japanese of course.
Yes yes yes, so much yes. My main motivation was (and to some degree still is, there are more reasons now) to understand the "real" japanese story. The German story (because I don't get the English dub or sub here) omitted the honorifics and adressing rules of japanes (because we don't have honorifcs besides Herr / Frau, and the adressing rules are pretty much the opposite in context of the story), which pretty much killed the first arc of it. You were not able to understand what was going on.
That was pretty much what kicked it off. Now I can at least confirm proper or correct improper translations by somewhat understanding the original.
It is still a chore to find japanese subtitles (anime licensing is garbage), but at least somewhat doable.
Still a lot of work before me, but as you've said, immersion is pretty much the way to go. That's why I imported Japanese novels now.
This video really hit me. I need to start playing games in Japanese full time. And most games are like are originally Japanese, so... This will be hard.
At some point of course, I had to accept that many games weren't being translated to German, so your point is exactly true for me. I NEEDED English 👌
Yes, that's the way it works. We need to _make_ it work the same way for Japanese.
4:30 Thank you Cure Dolly Sensei for this words!
How much Japanese should I know before jumping into immersion with little to no context? I have taken College ASL courses but for those we are immersed but then given the meaning written out so we can associate what we have learned, would I use this way as well in Japanese?
I recommend working through some Japanese anime with Japanese subtitles first - that way you can look up vocabulary as you go. You need some grounding in structure before you can do that though ua-cam.com/play/PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj.html
Hmm, this video is really important. お疲れ様
Thank you !!
Jenki, Shleisig, FluentX, OJOTT, Sae Kim
that's some funny copyright avoider
English is a universal language thanks to the British empire almost all of Europe Africa and some of Asia offer it as a secondary language course and some still require it like a second primary language course like they were forced to under the crowns rule and the internet came to life in America so it's no wonder English is a big part of it be cause the internet was born speaking it luckily enough there are so many British colonies that have those secondary courses to help them get along with the internet
It may seem strange but I got into the Chinese BL novel community a while ago and some of my favourite artists were Japanese, making comics and scenarios involving the characters in Japanese. And when I'd visit their pixiv or twitter everything was in Japanese (obviously lol). This was the main reason why I started to learn Japanese xD
If you find the Japanese community to be a vital interest and continue to read and engage with it continually, this would make a very good situation where you are likely to keep on improving your Japanese.
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 Yes i will! Thanks to your videos, even if I can't understand everything, I can get the essence of what is being said. I can enjoy the fanarts I couldn't before now ٩(●ᴗ●)۶ I'll continue to try and improve.
@@tireduwu1734 Yay! がんばってください。
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 本当にありがとうございました ^^
Hey, I really like your videos about language learning, and I’ve been trying to use your techniques on my journey to fluency in Chinese. They have helped me SO MUCH, and I can’t thank you enough. However, I do have one small question. I’m currently parsing a 7 minute clip each week, using 15 minutes each day to review my cards, and spending the rest of my time replaying that same clip hundreds of times while also taking some time to talk to natives and immerse in content that I haven’t yet parsed (comprehensible, of course). Would there be a more efficient and effective way to go about this? I would really appreciate a response. Thanks.
Hi Cure Dolly, thanks for the video!
Personally, my immersion arena is Japanese kids shows. So far it's what I understand the most, but not everything so I still have room to learn. But after watching this video I have realized that English creeps into this arena whenever I look up words in the dictionary. Is there an online Japanese-Japanese dictionary that you recommend? Preferably something that writes with simple Japanese?
Here is a video about my favorite free online J-J dictionary with instructions on how to use it: ua-cam.com/video/AW-pw-EAMkY/v-deo.html
@@organicjapanesewithcuredol49 thank you!!
That's the exact words I needed
Should I learn Kanji before I start reading?
I love the title of the books on 2:32, who knows knows haha
As always, Dolly, whoever he/she/it is, is worth listening to.
This "ring fencing" is really only necessary in areas where (as in Netflix) English really is only a click away. But there are vast regions of the Japan-sphere which don't make it through the translation barrier. If you are interested in those you have no choice.
Follow your interests. Language competency is a long, long road. If you don't get some interest and enjoyment from the journey you are sunk. Willpower and discipline are overrated, in this sphere at least.
賛成です。