英語や日本語は何のために勉強するのか? (w/ Matt VS Japan)
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2019
- This is the second part of my discussion with Matt VS Japan.
Watch our first video together (in English):
• Steve Kaufmann & Matt ...
Matt Vs Japan's Channel: / @mattvsjapan
Visit LingQ: www.lingq.com
My blog: blog.thelinguist.com/
![ОРБАН приехал к ПУТИНУ и "отчитался" о поездке в Киев 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_0ukDovOWq8/mqdefault.jpg)
I wrote a summary/paraphrase of their discussion (sorry in advance for English mistakes):
Steve talks about living in Japan for 9 years and how knowing Japanese turned out to be a valuable skill for his job. He explains that, actually, he wasn't required to learn it, but the fact that he could speak Japanese enabled him to eventually become able to do business with more ease and also enjoy social life more after work. Therefore he had practical reasons for learning the language. Then he asks Matt's opinion on why Japanese people should be interested in learning English. Matt points out that indeed Japanese people don't necessarily "need" to learn English, but of course it is useful for business and to gather information maybe not yet available in Japanese. He adds that there are already a lot of Japanese people eager to learn English and that we should make sure they achieve their language goals.
Steve promptly moves to the second topic of their discussion: whatever anyone's personal motivation to learn a language may be, what is the most effective method to learn a new language? Matt decisively replies that it all depends on the amount of input and exposure to the target language. Basically one should first focus on understanding the target language, by "actually" reading and listening to it to gradually absorb it. Once that is accomplished, almost naturally he/she will become able to produce output in the target language, i.e. speaking and writing. Hence, giving priority to input is the most effective way. Steve completely agrees on this point and proceeds to ask Matt if this is the way Japanese people go about learning English in Japan. Matt replies that in Japan the way English is taught is not input-based: middle and high school students study English to pass exams, they don't really study English, but memorize lists of words and grammatical patterns and somehow they attempt to translate English. "If this system is known to be highly ineffective, why is it still in place in Japan?" Steve asks. Matt explains it's due to the general mentality to treat language learning as any other subject, such as math or playing an instrument, where you have to actively practice exercises in order to learn and improve. Steve then points out that, indeed, even those people who want to pass an official language test, such as the TOEIC, would tremendously benefit from an input-based approach as they'd become able to answer to the questions more instinctively and, thus, more quickly, i.e. without relying on complicated grammar rules. Steve explains that thanks to a huge amount of input deriving from reading and listening to materials that you are able to comprehend and enjoy you eventually become able to use the language instinctively, without bothering to learn the minutia of grammar, and even if his Japanese is full of mistakes he's able to communicate with anyone with no major problems. So it's ok to focus on the material that interests you, even learning the jargon of the field you are interested into, be it history books for Kaufmann or anime for Matt. They reflect on how language schools are, in the end, businesses, and are offering you a product, so of course they are averse to the idea of independent input-based methods: they would go out of business!
Then they move to the third topic, which is studying a language other than English and how that broadens your mind, for example if you are from the USA and know only one language. That's why Steve is always eager to start a whole new language to learn about a new culture, even if he doesn't speak perfectly the languages he already knows. For example he has recently picked up Arabic and Persian and that endeavor has fundamentally changed the way he perceives Arab people. Matt acknowledges that Steve's approach to learning many languages to a certain degree has its merits, but he explains that being the perfectionist he is in life, he personally feels the need to focus and get as close as possible to perfection in the one language he studies, but that's just him. Steve agrees that it's a personal call: both studying every language in the world or getting perfect in just one is impossible. Shoutout to Laoushu at 16:10: they can see how much fun this dude is having at studying dozens of languages even if he's not always perfect in many of them. Basically, 十人十色 (ten people ten colors = to each their own). Matt states that life is long enough to both work and find time to learn new things: he himself has been learning Japanese for 8 years now and plans on taking up a new language in a couple of years. To conclude, Steve stresses again the importance of having a concrete goal and having fun along the way. Matt adds that it's important to have passion. Steve replies that "l'appétit vient en mangeant", which implies that you discover passion along the way. Matt points out that maybe if the Japanese school system switched to this input-based system, maybe kids in school would have more of a chance to develop this passion for foreign languages. Basically they call for a paradigm shift towards a system that prioritizes language comprehension rather than grading you on your grammar or pronunciation. They agree that you should find greater satisfaction in understanding the language rather than in being able to speak it or write it well at first.
Thank you
Most underrated comment ever.
i love you
Didn't need this, I feel like it's cheating even reading the paraphrase. Real life conversations have no English paraphrases.
日本人同士の会話よりも語彙が多く、内容も充実している。
言葉を使うってこういうことですよね
Mattさんの日本語うますぎるwwwwwww
スティーブさんの日本語は教養ある７０年代の紳士の日本語、マットさんは現代の若者の日本語を話している。驚き。
It's pretty cool to literally watch in real time Steve's Japanese come back as the conversation went on. Great conversation by two people with really really good Japanese.
I'm a Japanese student. I was really surprised to see Steve speaks excellent Japanese. My university accepts many exchange students speaking good Japanese. In most cases, they told me they grew up watching Japanese anime in streaming websites. Their pronunciation sounds really good, but they are not necessarily good at Keigo. We also have professors from English-speaking countries. Their reading and writing skills are perfect, however spoken Japanese is sometimes difficult to understand because their Japanese skills mostly come from intensive reading. I guess it is much easier for our generation to utilize foreign audio contents, compared to Steve's generation. This is simply because the Internet was everywhere when we started learning languages. However, Steve's pronunciation and Keigo usage are terrific. Even the way he uses filler is similar to Japanese adult men. I'm wondering how Steve improved verbal Japanese skill. What surprised me the most is Steve left Japan in 1982.
If I recall correctly, Steve spends even more time listening to content than reading. I'm sure he spent a lot of time listening to Japanese radio or something similar to improve his listening skills before the internet was a thing.
he lived in japan for 9 years
learned japanese in honkong before that so he has a solid base. he just listens and read, and occasional review flashcards. he also takes whatever is compelling to him and read about it
I don't usually drop any comments on YT, but I was so astounded by how Steve and Matt speak in their second language. Their use of vocabulary is simply terrific and even made me a bit ashamed of myself since I sometimes have difficulty putting words together in Japanese. Nevertheless as a native Japanese speaker who’s been studying English for a quite while, I got really motivated to go further on my English study and German that I picked up a year ago. I also really liked how Steve refers to studying foreign languages as “pay a visit to other cultures” . Thanks for making this great video and hope to see more from you all:)
They're both very good at Japanese. Matt's accent is much closer to native than Steve's, but it would not shock me if Steve's vocabulary and writing ability is greater. Matt and Dogen are both famous for focusing on identifying native speakers' pitch accent patterns religiously in the Japanese learning community, so it doesn't surprise me that those two are some of the best non-natives on UA-cam at pronouncing the language.
I am Japanese.
Both Japanese is perfect!!! After listening to the conversation,I also think I had to work hard to improve my English.I want to be a lifelong learner who enjoy the process of learning English.
まだ英語が上手ではないので拙い文章ですいません。ビデオ楽しみにしています。これからも体調に気をつけて頑張ってください。
Since you are a native speaker, I would like to ask you a question. I have made no effort to learn Japanese pitch accent. Did you find it difficult to understand my Japanese? Were you aware that I was not using Japanese pitch correctly?
Hello Mr. Steve. Your Japanese is very easy to understand for me as the Japanese. The way you speak is very accurate,logically .And te,ni,o,ha(てにをは) is accurate too .Your Japanese is only slightly different from the intonation that announcer is talking about.If anything your way of speaking is like a scholar.Anyway the way you talk is very familiar and pleasant.I also enjoy English and want to learn and deepen my comprehension.
Thank you very much.
Hi keiko, hopefully I am not to blunt. You seem to be a very attractive girl. If you want, we can talk; Giacomo Mallaci-Bocchio on Facebook.
@@keikohara4428 This is great to hear. Also, if you want to improve your English...why not try LingQ? :) It has 1000s of lessons, a great community, and much more.
Giacomo Mallaci Shut up, you’re disgusting.
i dont understand japanese but i watched the whole thing
use the subtitles
@@AwesomeMan2696 Japanese subtitles? That doesn't help too
Someone in the comments has narrated the whole thing in English
Thanks you Kaufmann. Seeing you being able to hold conversation in japanese among other languages you know, I feel aspired to try other languages I have interest in.
Love those guys... You guys are always inspiring!
Nice, I can understand a lot of it now.
Keep on uploading Man.
You are the best motivator for me to learn foreign languages.
awesome!
すごい！日本語うますぎる‼️ well done guys keeping going! Best wishes from Japan.
え、mattさんって日本人じゃないの、、、？日本語うますぎない、、？
そうです。日本人じゃないです。
😂😂
Matt sounds native, Steve sounds amazing also
All I can understand is "input" and "output"
looks like u need more input
色々なこと学んだんです。本当に勉強になりました。
プログレスどうだった？
Matt has some of the most pleasing Japanese to listen to. I know he isn't 100% native level, but he's more pleasing to listen to than most natives in my opinion.
When I made this comment I had a hard time keeping up with the conversation, yet now I can no problem. This despite having taken pretty much all of 2021 off from immersion learning. Shit works lads.
@@josedavidcortesgaray2495 "In my opinion". Though I don't think he's the most pleasing sounding anymore, there are others who sound nicer. Still sounds really good though.
He does a very good "Japanese voice" impersonation though, which is something that bothers me when I hear non-native Japanese speakers do. He does sound a bit like an anime character. Listen to someone like Toshiru Mifune, one of the most legendary Japanese actors, and he doesn't do any of the pitch stuff that Matt does. That's a native Japanese speaker who is very masculine and articulate, not an anime guy, and they don't sound the same.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Inspirador! Sou seu fã Steve!🙌🏽
6 months of MIA and I understand 90% woowww..
A lot of students in Japan hate English because of boring and laboring English lessons. Only mechanical students who can put aside their interesting and emotion ,and who are excel at memorization can achieve good grade in Japan (but maybe don't like English especially).
Most of students (average students) are not capable of memorizing a massive amount of stuff, which they are not interested at all. Japanese English lessons generate millions of hater of English as language every year. It is impossible to learn such a completely different language from mother tongue without any enjoyment or passion.
I don't want to see poor teenagers who are deprived of delight of learning other languages.
I am American, but I have Chinese blood, so every time my parents tell me to learn Chinese, I hate it. I've mastered Chinese to a point of being able to casually converse, but I didn't get there willingly lol. I got there because I was forced to talk a lot in Chinese because a good portion of my family doesn't know English. Recently I've started studying Japanese, and I've reached a point where I still can't speak that well, but I can understand most of the stuff in daily conversations. Everyday, my mom calls me a traitor :(. I feel the same way as those Japanese forced to learn English. They should also be able to choose their second language.
I think it would be really interesting if you also talking about things you don't agree on, or just things you do differently. Also how those differences may be because your goals differ.
You can check out Matt's channel, Steve asks about Matt's original method but Matt has difficulties answering the questions.
Eric of our office decided to skip the first part because very early on we lose connection.
I understand nothing) but it looks really cool when two non-Japanese guys speak so fast.
Are you a native speaker of Japanese?
I don’t think Steve’s Japanese is basic at all, it’s really good
I am studying 4-5 hours per day for 1 year now and his Japanese is definitely better than mine
Only his accent could use a bit of work , but when learning so many languages like he does you can’t really focus on perfecting a language like Matt does
@@FilipP88 "but when learning so many languages like he does you can’t really focus on perfecting a language" yeah that's why it doesn't sound fluent
ICEx Matt also lives in/lived in Japan, right? That makes a huge difference.
Also, to the person criticizing, it’s also possible that they speak different simply because they are different people. Some people are more thoughtful and pause before speaking in their own languages, others like to talk fast and fill in pauses. It’s not necessarily a reflection of language ability just personal speaking style.
@@susie2251 Yeah, but it's not that. Why all Japanese native speaker sounds native? Is because they talk in a way that sounds native and know their language. Matt's Japanese is way better than Steve's one, not only because Matt had spent 7 years learning and perfecting just Japanese but also because he teaches how to learn Japanese so his Japanese needs to be good.
Btw from what I know he doesn't live on Japan, he was in Japan but he almost didn't talk with people there, he focused on studying Japanese; but that's based in what I know so I'm not sure.
The best advice I received was to think of speaking Japanese to be like skating on ice. Trying to make it sound smooth and effortless is central to sounding natural. I think in a certain way stuff like pitch and grammar is just in service to that meta-goal of a beautiful speech aesthetic. Speaking in a way that's nice to listen to is surely the most important goal of any language speaker?
Magnificent metaphor! Input gives you instincts that let you know when a sentence sound wrong.
Oh man I am learning Japanese right now, Ill come back to this video in 7 years
Danke sehr,
ありがとうございます
I would love to see you two discussing a bit more about SRS too. How useful it is, and what role it should and should not play in the process. I feel like you two might have a bit of a different opinion on that.
I am not a fan of SRS. I am afraid that it would take up too much time. I'm not convinced that we don't learn better through massive input, acquire more familiarity with the language and still acquire the vocabulary we need.
@@Thelinguist I'm familiar with both yours and Matt's opinion, and that's the reason why I think it would render a good discussion. I think there are certainly different people who have more, or less of a synergy with the methodical and repetitive nature of SRS, so it's kind of subjective to a certain degree. Also the amount of time invested per day in language learning and the methods used to study probably also influence its effectiveness. But if it has potential to be effective, then I believe exactly when and how it should be used is also important to consider.
Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve But what if I just can‘t get myself to read manga and the stuff that I want to read is 99% formal language with a lot of uncommonly used words? Making a clear separation between studying and getting input is far more enjoyable.
Damn matt's voice sounds so soothing can listen to him speaking japanese all day!
二人の英語母語話者が日本語で英語の教育についてを会話しています。言語は本当に素晴らしいものですね～
I'm happy I understood 50% of this lol😀
これまでの日本の学校教育は文部省つまり政府が決めてます、既にカリキュラムが決まっているので学校の先生が英語指導がおかしいと思っていても変えることは出来ないのです。
ただし、近年の日本では人口構成において外国人の比率も増えてきているため、英語の位置づけも変わってきてますし、教育も読む為だけのものから変化してきているようです。
良いか悪いかは置いといて、英語圏(主に東南アジア)からの移民の方たちの存在によって日本人の英語能力も今後上がっていくものと考えています。
マットさんすごいんですけど
Steve coloca legendas em português ou inglês! Abraço
@0000 Z por que ?
スティーブさんもマットさんも凄い。
shoutout to Laoshu at 16:10
爷爷真的很厉害中文日语都很标准！
"Oh l'apétit vient en mangeant" good analogy there )
Almost every sentence, they start with "SONO"
什么时候出中文视频
どうやって、そのStevenKauffmanの言語使える仕事見つかれるよ？ なんか日本に住んでみたいよ！
You don’t study a language. You acquire it by doing, speaking and reading.
言語を勉強してはいけない。
読むと言うの振替えで取得することはできるはず。
たしかに、わざと"苦労したがってますね"日本。
Steve's Japanese is really good! I've never heard a white guy speak Japanese with a Chinese accent! 面白かった！～
@MATTvsJapan
今回のお話もとても興味深かったです。
日本人は中学、高校で試験、受験のために英語を勉強しますが、その６年間で心底英語の勉強が嫌いになります。
税金＋子供の時間を投入して、成果があがらないどころか、二度と勉強したくなくなる、という悪影響をしっかり残す現状は、とても残念なことです。
Does Steve speak in Kaisai Ben? At least it sounds like last.
Futari Tomo sugoi tomou imasu
Boco wa nihon ni 23 nen sundeiru desu kedo demo sona Jozu dewa arimasen
ローマ字 gang
もしかして
バイク好きですか？
中学生の子を持つ親です。
今の教科書には文法を文字で説明していないです。
らしき事は書いているけど、図で表記です。
先生が口頭で説明はしてくれるようですけど、３０数年前とは随分違う教科書にはなっていて羨ましいです。
おそらく、授業内容も違います。
ゆとり教育が始まった時から既に、文法解説は簡潔になっていましたよ。
ただ肝心の英文の量までドカッと捨ててしまいペラペラだったので、学校の授業では教科書、各単元の初日しか使ってなかったです…(もちろん数学や理科も)
ゆとり教育が終わり、文法の小難しい解説は抑えたまま、全体の量は戻してきているのでだいぶマシですよね。
多国籍企業/国家を所有する一族らからの圧力を何の抵抗もできず実行する国なので、当然子供の命や教育を守る気概もないのだと感じます。
議論の表層しかなぞれていないね😂
Great video Steve. I am annoyed at the somewhat cult like following that Matt has gained, but I think the full-on nature of his method attracts people like that to an extent. I am starting my Japanese journey at the moment and think Matt’s ‘MIA’ method is the most efficient path to fluency I can find, but I wish it didn’t promote such polarised views of language learning. Thanks for the video.
日本の英語教育も変わってきていてリスニング、スピーキングが重視され過ぎることが逆に危惧されている側面もあります。
動画、勉強になります。
I guess this is telling me that I need to learn more grammar
The question is will you learn to produce the language better, more naturally, more accurately, but studying grammar.
Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve I will try
typo...I meant write "by studying grammar"
@@Thelinguist editボタンがあること．．．知りますか?
もしこれが今頃の日本人同士の会話だったら、おそらく動画の冒頭二分内で「やばい」という単語が使われてしまうだろう
何が言いたいかというと、一般の日本人よりすでに二人の語彙力のほうが高いかもしれない
I understand no Japanese at all. Can someone summarize the discussion?
No
I wrote a summary/paraphrase of their discussion (sorry in advance for English mistakes):
Steve talks about living in Japan for 9 years and how knowing Japanese turned out to be a valuable skill for his job. He explains that, actually, he wasn't required to learn it, but the fact that he could speak Japanese enabled him to eventually able to do business with more ease and also enjoy social life more after work. Therefore he had practical reasons for learning the language. Then he asks Matt's opinion on why Japanese people should be interested in learning English. Matt points out that indeed Japanese people don't necessarily "need" to learn English, but of course it is useful for business and to gather information maybe not yet available in Japanese. He adds that there already a lot of Japanese people eager to learn English and that we should make sure they achieve their language goals. Steve promptly moves to the second topic of their discussion: whatever anyone's personal motivation to learn a language may be, what is the most effective method to learn a new language? Matt decisively replies that it all depends on the amount of input and exposure to the target language. Basically one should first focus on understanding the target language, by "actually" reading and listening to it to gradually absorb it. Once that is accomplished, almost naturally he/she will become able to produce output in the target language, i.e. speaking and writing. Hence, giving priority to input is the most effective way. Steve completely agrees on this point and proceeds to ask Matt if this is the way Japanese people go about learning English in Japan. Matt replies that in Japan the way English is taught is not input-based: middle and high school students study English to pass exams, they don't really study English, but memorize lists of words and grammatical patterns and somehow they attempt to translate English. "If this system is known to be highly ineffective, why is it still in place in Japan?" Steve asks. Matt explains it's because the general mentality is to treat language learning as any other subject, such as math or playing an instrument, where you have to actively practice exercises in order to learn and improve. Steve then points out that, indeed, even those people who want to pass an official language test, such as the TOEIC, would tremendously benefit from an input-based approach as they'd become able to answer to the questions more instinctively and, thus, more quickly, i.e. without relying on complicated grammar rules. Steve explains that thanks to a huge amount of input deriving from reading and listening to materials that you are able to comprehend and enjoy you eventually become able to use the language instinctively, without bothering to learn the minutia of grammar, and even if his Japanese is full of mistakes he's able to communicate with anyone with no major problems. So it's ok to focus on the material that interests you, even learning the jargon of the field you are interested into, be history books for Kaufmann or anime for Matt. They reflect on how language schools are, in the end, businesses, and are offering you a product, so of course they are averse to the idea of independent input-based methods: they would go out of business!
Then they move to the third topic, which is studying a language other than English and how that broadens your mind, for example if you are from the USA and know only one language. That's why Steve is always eager to start a whole new language to learn about a new culture, even if he doesn't speak perfectly the languages he already knows. For example he has recently picked up Arabic and Persian and that endeavor has fundamentally changed the way he perceives Arab people. Matt acknowledges that Steve's approach to learning many languages to a certain degree has its merits, but he explains that being the perfectionist he is in life, he personally feels the need to focus and get as close as possible to perfection in the one language he studies, but that's just him. Steve agrees that it's a personal call: both studying every language in the world or getting perfect in just one is impossible. Shoutout to Laoushu at 16:10: they can see how much fun this dude is having at studying dozens of languages even if he's not always perfect in many of them. Basically, 十人十色 (ten people ten colors = to each their own). Matt states that life is long enough to both work and find time to learn new things: he himself has been learning Japanese for 8 years now and plans on taking up a new language in a couple of years. To conclude, Steve stresses again the importance of having a concrete goal and having fun along the way. Matt adds that it's important to have passion. Steve replies that "l'appétit vient en mangeant", which implies that you discover passion along the way. Matt points out that maybe if the Japanese school system switched to this input-based system, maybe kids in school would have more of a chance to develop this passion for foreign languages. Basically they call for a paradigm shift towards a system that prioritizes language comprehension rather than grading you on your grammar or pronunciation. They agree that you should find greater satisfaction in understanding the language rather than in being able to speak it or write it well at first.
Barril, não entendi nada. Só entendo inglês e português.
Wow these guys are genius
Somali Drama not geniuses. Just motivated to put a lot of time and effort into something.
calling them geniuses takes all of their hard work away. "Oh yeah they are geniuses, that's why they are so good"
No, they spend a lot of time and work to reach those results. Basically everyone could reach this, you don't have to be a "genius".
Learning a language is really just a productive hobby it's not impressive in perspective of they can but what is is how much time they put in and hard work
Geovanny Exparza true. No skill is impressive. Human existence is nonessential and anything we do is pointless as we all eventually meet the same dark(literal) end. Truly, life and the act of living is simply a burden on the finite resources of the universe. Why do anything, why live, why die, why learn, we should just allow ourselves to cease to exist.
@@stevenmaillet not quite but you might want to get that checked out, depression is a big problem
Sorry, What did you say? 😁😂
why always I understand better non speakers than native Japanese speakers
Because the English language is slower than Japanese, native English speakers speak Japanese a micron slower than a native speaker
@@extrof actually it's because they speak more clear than Japanese natives since most natives don't make effort in sounding that clear(we can call it lazy speaking since i also do it in my native language). You can easily know this by hearing how japanese voice actors speak, and then hear normal native Japanese speak
Kaufmann: EIgo
日本語はJLPTN2のレベルだけど、日本人の友達がいないよ：（。 誰か友達なろうか？ 日本人じゃない人も大歓迎ｗ。
雪だわ！今日
よろしくお願いします!
It just sounds like steve is talking english
やっぱり未だ完璧に分からない。たぶん５０％か６０％理解している。
最初はそなこと十分です。
そう思うも。 インプット 大切です。日本語の勉強の理とても難しいみたいけれども面白いです。Please excuse the mistakes. It's easier to understand and speak Japanese than write....
Passed N1, lived in Japan, won a national japanese speech contest. agree with comments that Steve's japanese sounds very spotty / problems in pronunciation (ironic because you diss studying pitch accent, and here you are pronouncing words without the right pitch accent - it's like if an English learner pronounced words with the wrong stress).
native speakers are wow'd by a basic command of the language and are rarely honest about how bad one's accent is.
I will wait to hear from a Japanese native speaker as to whether my Japanese is "spotty". For the last 20 years I have hardly spoken Japanese at all, and for the last 12 years have put a lot of effort into learning other languages.
I don't claim to sound like a native, and no doubt could improve by doing more listening and reading. But I would improve through massive exposure and not through any deliberate effort to learn pitch which I think, from most learners, is an unnecessary complication, especially if introduced at an early stage in learning the language.
Lo and behold, a comment from a Japanese native speaker to one of my earlier videos in Japanese. pick L 1 hour ago
ここまで日本語が上手だとなんか顔も日本人に見えてくる。というかなんか自分の日本人のおじいちゃんが喋ってるように見えてくる。
ご年齢から見ても、私よりも長く日本語を話していらしてそうだし、、「上手」っていう表現がもう適当じゃない。もう当たり前だろ、みたいな笑笑 とにかく、本当にお上手です笑
Non native Japanese learners and people creating content for Japanese learners are the only people in the world who fuss about Japanese pitch accent.
N1 does not require a particularly high level of Japanese
The first video was Kaufman looking down on Matts method with scorn until the "conversation" at the end where Matt owned him. Steve goes away and memorises a few questions and phrases to mask him getting owned and the result is part 2!
A cultie fantasizes....
@@Thelinguist A guy that talks about learning 400 words a day, says he studies for just one hour a day making that 66 words every ten minutes, talks to me about fantasising.
Just gonna be honest here. I don't watch your vids often Steve (been some years actually) and only recently come to learn of Matt and cohorts, but this pitch accent conversation that is gaining speed lately is utter bullcrap. Learning accurate pitch accent for every word is not as important as people want to make it out to be. Japanese people are not the ones having a problem with it. It's other foreigners who want to (as westerners, particularly Americans, tend to do) define themselves as better than other learners for x or y reasons. Sure pitch accent is important in some aspects, but the overall flow is more important. Obviously if WE tAlK liKe thiS (caps being stressed), it would sound weird, but even if someone occasionally stresses the wrong syllable, as long as the sentence is accurate they will be understood without issue from native speakers. In fact, no one would even think about it because they are focused on the conversation itself, not nitpicking accents. And of course I'm talking about non-tonal languages right now. The fact is no one will ever sound 100% Japanese other than Japanese people because someone can always come through and pick out an error that they see. That's even in English or any language, even among native speakers. Language learning is about communication, and if your focus is not on that and is instead on trying to impress people, best believe people will see that, no matter how you try to hide it.
I think the goal for people that focus on pitch accent is to be as close as they possibly can to a "standard accent"
Of course it's not necessary - but if that is your goal then yes, studying pitch is necessary. Even Japanese people will nitpick other people's weird pitch accents because they will make mistakes themselves (or they might come from a region with a different dialect)
the point is that with little effort you can make a great deal of improvement. like with 10 hours of directed effort in the pitch accent (like over a month say) you can improve greatly your japanese. that's why it's kind of a revelation in the japanese learning community.
to give a parallel, when i learned about IPA and discovered that the English language has a stress pattern with reduction to 'uh' (such a concept doesn't exist in French), my accent improved dramatically and made it much easier for others to understand. but it took a bit of active work.
it's not really needed but it wasn't hard to do overall either and didn't take 10 years of hair splitting