@@jovidmtp lol assume it's north star, もうしん is not a single word it is もう(already, now)+死(し)ぬ(dead) You can't randomly change hiragana into kanji, since there are so many kanjis that read the same but different meaning(is it called homophones? What's the correct choice of word to use here?)
I think Immersion is literally how 95% of all ESL speakers learned english, me included. A bit in school but with every single game and piece of media on the internet being in english, it is really difficult not to learn the language.
Exactly. School gave me the basic rules and vocabulary, but I still didn't understand a lot of media. I had to immerse myself into it. I would read a text and use the context to know what the missing words probably meant or just looked them up. No need to make it unnecessarily complicated.
I have been studying English with tutor for like 3-4 years now and sometimes i feel like "I know this gosshhh why we are even learning this crap". As a person who speaks 4 languages. In 3 of them i am fluent and the one i am yet to become fluent. I INSIST on being IN the language you learn. My 4th language is Polish, i literally live in Poland, i study in Polish school, but i don't watch youtube or other inputs and as a result it's difficult for me to speak Polish.
Trenton: "Comprehensible input is key." Pearl: "How are you supposed to learn anything when you can't even comprehend the input?" Me: "How are you able to criticize him when you can't even comprehend what he was saying?"
Oriental Pearl will silence ANY comment debunking her. To those of you who don't know Japanese yet you can't tell, but, for someone that according to her have been learning Japanese for 12 years, started learning in China, being already fluent in Chinese, and, therefore, with a leg up regarding anyone form the West that don't speak Chinese, had lived in Japan for YEARS and lives with a Japanese her Japanese is PRETTY BAD! And it's easy o prove that. Her Japanese is NOT at all impressive considering her situation. It's more than lacking.
@@sspiker More importantly is that her Japanese IS NOT good for her background. She mad fun in one of her videos of one saying you need 10,000 hours in Japanese. She needs to get her 10,000 hours! She acts as if she's god. SHE IS NOT.
@@nolandderlugner1351 And she's deliberately deceiving people. She indeed has a god level of Japanese. But starting from being fluent in Chinse, living in China, have been learning Japanese for 12 years, living in Japan for years and years, and living with a Japanese her Japanese should be WAY better. Anyone following her "advices" saying you don't need to do passive listening learning from English, from your home in the West forced to live most of your day in you native language is DOOMED TO FAIL.
I don’t understand that critics. Anybody learning a language will do it. It’s learning new words directly from the content consumed, show how useful it is in reality (if a word pop up multiple times, it’s certainly a good one) and it gives a context. Coming from the content someone see makes it so easier to learn it too.
@@rakedos9057 Because it's actually a BS waste of time. You have to know at least a certain amount of vocab in order to effectively immerse, and at that point sentence mining isn't even necessary. Everybody in the comments are claiming to have learned through immersion, but all of them also say that they studied in school as well (including the guy who made this video btw. He also admits to learning vocab and going through RTK). This whole "immersion" craze is just a bunch of people disregarding their first phase of study as unnecessary because they don't actually understand how they learned the language, and don't see how the beginning phases contributed to their studies.
@@adamboross1110 you are making the same mistake as the woman in the video. It is clearly stated that you should start sentence mining when you have a good base. So what do you think that a good base means? And one doesn’t exclude the other. You can combine learning grammer and vocab with immersing in the language. I can tell you that immersing works because I can understand English.
@@adamboross1110 I'm one of them. My case: my English was crap through all my years of school, but skyrocketed when I watched videos for natives (non educational) and read books. Of course someone has to learn the basic (especially grammar) outside of "immersion", nobody say the contrary. But basics aside, one can dive into input/immersion quickly. That's what I'm doing with Japanese and it's working so far. I'm picking more and more words while watching anime for example. For my English, reading books was a big pain in the butt at first but really paid off. I was less and less prone to open the dictionary as I read a book. The simple fact of mining words or sentences from the content I consumed made it so much easier to remember AND I had tons more input than school. Mining words also give a context which seems so so important in Japanese.
@@adamboross1110Immersion doesn't mean starting with immersion. Think about the way you learn new vocabulary in your native language. Rarely do you ever learn words like you would for foreign languages.
Hi! Thanks for mentioning my video) I am learning Japanese and you inspired me to listen to much more podcasts 👍 and the way you learn very much corresponds to how I see this process, but with your unique tweaks. And I thought I should tell my viewers in detail about the method you used. In my vid I basically skipped the theoretical part about Krashen and so on, because my viewers are very much familiar with all that and went straight into how you did it and commented on your way of learning from my perspective
Hey! I actually found your video because my friend is learning Russian with this method and uses your videos for immersion material :) I watched your video (although I had to use English auto-generated subtitles) and thought it was good!
Bro she is just bashing you without completely listening to your videos. Your videos are literally the reason why I started learning a new language. Keep doing what youre doing big DAWG 🔥
@@Gigusx yeah while i disagree with her here, people are getting way over the top in the comments about her. I guess because they haven't seen her other contrnt where she's usually pretty chill.
I like how she goes "kanji is useless?! Noooo!" And looks over at the dude and he just agrees with her and gets all shifty eyed like he was just trying avoid an argument.
I genuinely don't understand how ANYONE could doubt your advice. you SINGLEHANDEDLY changed my entire view about language learning. I'm currently learning german and I'm so genuinely thankful for your videos, I've started being okay with not understanding absolutely everything, which resulted in making so much more progress than I used to make. Your videos are absolutely amazing and I'll be continuing to watch them even if I'm no longer learning japanese. danke schön!
Viel Erfolg! and do you have some input suggestions? I have a friend who learns German, but as a German it is not that easy to rank something as for beginner or advanced.
I mean Pearl literally has japanesepod101 listed in her description and pushes it in her videos. Maybe a bit cynical of me to say but it's not surprising she would advocate for paid traditional methods when she has a vested interest in it.
The pod101 courses are kind of a turn off for me because of all the English in them. I guess that is okay for absolute beginners, but it means less material in the target language and a generally slower learning process.
Which is kind of funny because she literally criticized other UA-camrs for selling BS courses, funnily enough in that same video she had MattvsJapan on her channel, you know the guy who popularized immersions
Ah, I guessed you were more of an expert than you let on - so you are a linguist! Thanks for this rebuttal. I’m not a linguistic expert but one thing I do know about is epistemology and bias in science. Oriental Pearl is very genuine I’m sure, but she demonstrates classic false attribution bias, which is very common among academics (they assume that they way they learned and teach is the only way its possible). One wonders how she thinks how the millions of people throughout history learned multiple languages before there were textbooks.
The fact that she made that reaction video "members only" (ie, behind a paywall) tells a lot about how secure she feels about the critics she mades. I think, at least.
Because people will write garbage in comments, and for the most part, the 'Input' community of language learning has a very vocal minority that acts more like a cult.
I was halfway through the video and went back later to see it was no longer accessible 😢 But I find a lot of her advice regarding language learning comes off as defensive and demeaning tbh
@@jcvp2493LMAO way are you so pathetic? really? a cult? how did you even think this is the BEST way to deflect criticism ENTIRELY ! ALSO STOP lying!!! seeing how you use such a dishonest pathetic excuse to deflect criticism and the fact she made member only to have HER OWN CULT defend here and be the yes MEN in an echo chamber, i find it funny you even thought you can come here without a shame and insult people, same as she insulted people that use this method of learning language
I never understood why people dislike immersion or anything similar of the sort. Im bilingual in English and French, and most of my French skills was at a slump and decline for a while. Until I started immersing a lot more, suddenly I jumped from a B1.5 level to almost C1 and someone who can confidently say I'm bilingual.
As someone whose first language isn't English, I'm going to be brutally honest for a second and say that anyone opposing the immersion method has never studied a language to fluency. Textbooks and classes only get you so far. On another note, I found your anecdote about frameworks in linguistics to hit the nail on the head. I studied translations and it's the same story there, just a pile of made up frameworks. In a way, I feel that's just the reality of arts disciplines. Lastly, I agree you don't need to learn writing kanji or hanzi. I speak Chinese fluently and have only ever needed to write characters in tests. I do know how to read them and understand the individual radicals, of course.
I have been studying English with tutor for like 3-4 years now and sometimes i feel like "I know this! why we are even learning this crap?". As a person who speaks 4 languages. In 3 of them i am fluent and the one i am yet to become fluent. I INSIST on being IN the language you learn. My 4th language is Polish, i literally live in Poland, i study in Polish school, but i don't watch youtube or other inputs and as a result it's difficult for me to speak Polish.
I don't know - I studied Swedish at school and have barely used the language, but it's stuck with me and I can think in it and express myself in it. Of course, the disuse and limited learning context (classroom) means I don't have the greatest active vocabulary (I literally learned 'andvändbart', ie. 'useful' from a Days and Words video. The joke, of course, is that I definitely didn't learn my English in school, but from videogames and Internet forums, and my English is well and truly fluent, and that the language classes I had in school tried to stay monolingual as thoroughly as possible.
And it's even considered backwards in classes themselves lol My foreign language teacher emphasized immersion in the classroom (Rules like no English words in class). The only time we started seriously cracking open textbooks was preparing for a standardized test, and she said herself that we weren't the language, we were learning a test
One thing I never really liked in the language learning community is "No, you're learning it wrong." "You should do it this way!" "No! Don't do it that way!" To me, as long as you see yourself making improvement and are happy with yourself learning, that's all that matters! Everyone has different learning styles! You've helped me learn a style of learning I enjoy, so keep at it! 👍
Yes. It’s not literally useless but if you were to budget a certain number of hours in the first year to Japanese, how much would you do for writing kanji? Maybe 1 percent? Which basically rounds to zero.
I struggled for like 10years with English, cause it's mandatory to learn as a second language, but watching everything in English and reading in English was a complete game changer
11:47 "Idk why the hell this guy is studying Japanese for" that comment made me dismiss any other critique she gave for the rest of the video. Like, she doesn't even NEED to know why anyone studies a language that they do. I'm confident that 90% of Western foreigners who study Japanese most likely do it for the fun of it, because they like the language, or simply because they want to be able to watch anime without subs. Sometimes studying a language is a fun challenge to pick up for the heck of it, and if you want it to be fun, just use immersion. Saying that kind of stuff just feels snobby and dismissive of what works for the person you're talking about.
Yeah. It seems like she has a certain "goal" in her mind that everyone's ought to strive towards, and since he isn't going about it her way, she can't understand what his point is. That's probably why she's able to keep up the image of being fluent to herself - in her mind, being "balanced" is an acceptable goal, and excuses her shortcomings despite the myriads of people who are a lot better than her in intonation, understanding, vocabulary, among other things - all while having spent less time studying. It's the mentality of someone who strictly goes by-the-book, and she's gone to the extreme end of it.
Ngl I agree and don't think this whole thing is "drama" or anything that serious but having said that my respect towards OrientalPearl is significantly lower after seeing this
@@attachou she did have somewhat of a point in that since some people really do exaggerate their abilities in a language when they can only say basic phrases and not actually communicate in said language. Her trying to throw a shot at immersion mind you a cheap shot since she wanted to keep the video under wraps, is comical considering she started this when she invited MattvsJapan on her channel something she wants everyone to forget.
Trenton, it’s been 6 days since I watched your video, and 5 since I decided to give actually learning Japanese (and not just romaji)a real shot at the age of almost 34. I’m almost at the point already where I can read and distinguish all of the hiragana including the dakuten, handakuten, and diagraphs. I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I read です out loud with no assistance a couple days and realized what I just did. Additionally I’ve listened to about 200 episodes of Nihongo Con Teppei for Beginners and occasionally googling new words in either in English or Japanese. It’s very fun and even though it’s less “efficient” than a textbook it is obviously working - at least for now. Anyways I say all this to say “thank you” (or ありがとう！). Forget the haters! You brought up good points in this response video but I also feel like people who have an interest in practical learning will intuitively understand exactly what you meant anyway. Don’t give away too much of your energy to stuff like this. There will always be critics, and in my experience most of them aren’t interested in charitable interpretations or acting Socratically about things with which they may disagree. Looking forward to the next video whenever it comes! Nick
"This one word i cherrypicked cause it was on one of your Anki cards is not worth learning. Don't waste your time on anything that won't show up every single day." "I COMMAND YOU TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE KANJI BY HAND EVEN THOUGH YOU WILL ONLY HAVE TO DO IT ONCE OR TWICE BECAUSE LEARNING EVERYTHING AND HAVING BALANCE IS SO IMPORTANT"
What Pearl also doesn't seem to understand is not everyone is a bookworm or learns well from mostly textbooks. I was never good at that form of studying, but I always excelled with hands on and verbal studying. I drive trucks for a living, immersion is perfect for me considering I can be on the road for 10 hours at a time. Your video is what got me into this, I was using some mobilie apps to learn Japanese for almost two years with little progress. I've only been doing immersion for about 2-3 weeks and I can already see that my comprehension is improving, Thanks for your video!
I started learning Japanese on renshuu two months ago, when your "Learning Japanese isn't that hard" video came out, i've watched all of your videos since. I started Anki, Genki books, input etc.. Every moment I spend taking input, and hearing words that I've either mined, or studied on Renshuu, Anki, Memrise etc.. Has been one of the best feelings of my life, that small tick in my brain of "Wait I know what that means!" especially when I can understand a whole sentence is lovely(Kirei). There's even words that I learned just be input alone that made me remember, like "welcome home"(Okaeri), "I'm home"(Tadaima), "oh really? or "It looks that way"(Sodesune) and things when watching terrace house. Then I would come across them in Anki later on in a deck, or Genki and be like HAHA! Those moments where I don't know what something means, doesn't kill my morale, it just makes me curious what it means, and either makes me mine it for anki, or hope I can comprehend what it means later. (If any of those phrases or something I said was wrong lemme know, also my windows won't let me write Hiragana so I'm stuck with typing it in Furigana lul.) Thank you for all of your advice and your videos Trenton, they've helped tremendously. It's boosted my motivation, and has made me even get out of my shell and really start trying to find ways to communicate with Japanese speakers to practice my output as well.
@@niicespiice勉強しているときに幸せを感じます I haven’t used 感じる (kanjiru/feel) or 感じます in a sentence yet so I hope that it’s correct, but sentence structure and stuff might be off I’m still trynna get used to that and verbs. (my brain is reading it backwards like, feel-happy-time-when-studying for some reason but I know it’s Subject Object Verb etc.. my brain is already rattled)
It's pretty simple to install a "japanese keyboard" for windows using your typical English keyboard. At least for windows 10. Go into settings then time and language. Click the language tab then add the language you want. Once installed you can swap between outputting English or Japanese when you type, with windows key+space
@@nathanortiz4598 sadly on windows 11, the issue is that the language pack doesn’t actually install, it acts like it does, but then resets itself automatically and never downloads itself. I tried looking through many threads and forums to fix it but most people came down to just resetting their windows, and I can’t be doing that lmao. but thank you for the recommendation 🫡
Personally, I find that Oriental Pearl is one of the most gatekeepy language channels, and the way she uses her SO as a weird prop for her videos creeps me out.
YES! Also there is something about her content that feels.....exploitative? Her videos on the homeless population or taking her husband to 8-mile "America's Most Dangerous City", or just the critical videos of others. She's horrible
But you see she’s more credible because she dates a Japanese guy 🙃 Gosh I hate how much people tend to fetishize their own partners if they are into anything Asian 🙃 I witnessed so many cases at Uni where women were dating Asian guys just because they are Asian… Or how marrying a Japanese guy was even under profs some kind of status symbol 🙃
@@nichijou_techo oh my goodness...I actually really love the homeless people video because she was exposing a hidden side to the country & it was really nice to hear from those people who are usually silenced. It's kinda wild the ppl in that video were happy to talk to her but some random people on the internet are upset about it 😅
Sorry, but is that not just you projecting onto them? Genuinely asking why you think she "uses" him? He's the one who asked her out in the first place & he seems more than happy to be with her. It's not like he has to be with her
Finally someone who brings that up, it’s hilarious she wants to forgot that she caused this since she gave MattvsJapan a massive platform who at the time was the biggest advocated for immersion, but now she wants everyone to forget she ever did that.
@@AuxxiliaryATC Also a fan of both folks. Originally, she was started calling out "fake" polyglots then it evolved into "my way is more efficient than your way". She is a scholar and I do have a lot of respect for her. I'll hold out on how she responds. If she doubles down and continues to be condescending, I'll reconsider my support for her.
@@johnengooyen Seems pretty reasonable, I mean she is very skilled in what she does, but its confusing that she wants to "die on this hill" of what is the most efficient in a subject that tends to have lots of ways to go about learning languages.
I'm really disappointed in the video against you. A person who simply dismisses your ideas because "she knows better" is just wrong. I mean, I learn English over the internet and now I'm in my first year learning Japanese again using this method. If someone says "textbooks are the key to learning or you have to learn it this way" that's just wrong. Please do your thing and don't listen to these people, they have their own methods and if she says immersion learning is bad she's probably speaking against a higher than average percentage of people who learn it this way.
Most people who dismiss the comprehensible input theory have usually only learned one other language besides their native one. I guess that's why they're dismissive on some of your ideas. But I'm glad you're defending your position since, well, you're right. I have also noticed these people usually believe a native language is acquired in a different fashion from their second or third language. A belief I've always found odd because the biggest evidence as to why CI works is simply them speaking / understanding English.
@@ダットさん-54 I don't have any positive motivation. I just want to escape from the real world, which mostly consists of Japanese things in my case. One way is by using English, which helps me forget about what happened to me there.
"Oh no, UA-camrs who praise the immersion method don't know what they're talking about. I would have never been able to read the Hunchback of Notre Dame in Japanese if I started there" YEAH, that's the damn point. You have to look for something that is *slightly* above your level, as in start easy and work yourself up from there instead of fighting the endboss unequipped. Man, that bit comes off as extremely dishonest from her side, geez...
And, if we're being honest, why read the Hunchback of Notre Dame of all books? Literature is best read in its original language, and if you don't know that, read it in your native language, the one where you're the most confident
As a non english speaker, The only way i was able to understand english was through immersion, I can speak fluent English and still don't know what an adverb is, I Just kept watching movies , shows, and videos where they speak english and just listen , I don't know how it did not occur to me that i can do the same with japanese, You just earned a sub, Thank you.😊
The only real obstacle with that method will be their champion-grade fucked up writing system. Why do we live in the timeline where Korea did away with hanja ;__; Kanji's legit been the biggest source of Japanese demotivation for me. Being illiterate wrt words I'd know in my sleep from listening is amazingly frustrating. It's extra fucked up that when I was browsing Japanese and Korean MTG cards to compare the localization, I just spotted 순간마법 _sungan mabob_ in the text of one card and went, waitaminute, _I know that word._ Why? Because I'd acquired _shunkan_ from watching too much anime, and it's the same Chinese loanword in both languages. But I could easily read 순간 because it's written in an alphabet. 瞬間、at that point in time? Not a snowball's chance in Hell. It's insane to be able to read a word in a language I don't know and be illiterate in the one I know better. I'd recognize it now since I've used that example so much, but it's absolutely maddening. And the hordes of people saying the country would sink into the sea if they adopted phonetic writing don't help.
@@Komatik_ I agree, I'm struggling with kanji, I even considerd not learning it and only rely on Katakana and hiragana i knew it's impossible but i thought that maybe if i did a lot's of immersion i can get a hang of the normal daily conversations thus learning to speak more will be easier, The same goes for the Kanji, i thought that maybe learning only katakana and hiragana first will be easier and relying on them might not be the easiest but it's possible, When i Begin to have no problem's recognizing letters, Then Kanji might not be As impossible as i thought it would be, That's just my advice, about the conversation thing, yes i did it with english always start with the easiest get a hang of it, nothing will be as hard as it seemed at first. I will not start learning now, i plan to start in my summer brake since this year of school, i will study another languages, Kurdish and french sadly it is not by choice, anyway i hope that everyone who plans on learning a language to never give up, i can speak i little french, arabic, english, and will learn kurdish this year.
@@suraugaili-uw6bn honestly man, probably not good of me, but I've studied this language a long time, I'm intermediate now, I understand between 30-50% of anime at this point, though I still have a long way to go. I never used the input method primarily, but now I do, and I have seen substantial growth in these last two months of using it. But Kanji...feels more of a detriment to me at my current level, than a saving grace. For example, it is said you should read a language to get better at the language a lot quicker. I would agree, if only it was not kanji...you have to learn more than 10000 words to get fluent, and then need to learn to read those words again :( it's like hey! you might know the word "otoko" or "Jinsei" but you still can't read it. That is really demotivating. If I could read Manga to 30-50% like I understand anime that would be great, but the reality is...that if you just want to be fluent in speaking as quickly as possible, reading can take a back seat, it's too complex I feel to justify for a beginner or intermediate learner. When you can speak the language really well and plan to live in the country, then learning the kanji I feel makes more sense (which is my plan) The big thing to me is though, at the end of the day, let's say you can't read or write Japanese, and you are in a situation where you can't get by with Hirigana, Katakana and real time translation, then you can just ask "sumimasen, mata nihongo o yonde dekimasen node, kore kanji no imi o tetsudai kure nai no?" or "Sumimasen, kono kanji o yonde dekimasen, tetsudai mo ii desu ka?" etc Is it practical to always ask native speakers? NO! but honestly, if you can speak the language 100% at least then you can rely a bit more on the native speakers around you, and let's say you can read 50% and speak 50%, well...then what's really more important? being able to read more menu's and books? or actually being able to make friends, explore Japan etc? XD like it sounds terrible, but to me, right now, Kanji just....seems like hell man, and it's the only thing in the language that makes me feel the language is just a pain to study.
How often do you hear immigrant kids tell you they learned English watching SpongeBob vs every American adult telling you they retained absolutely nothing from high school Spanish? Immersion is king.
It's really funny because Pearl brings up that she's studied for 12 years and yet her intonation is very foreign sounding and her vocabulary in general appears to be lacking just from how she speaks. Then she has the native there for who knows what reason, not even giving any real feedback and basically just nodding along. I wouldn't criticize the native dude too much though since I wouldn't expect a native to have much to comment on learning Japanese as a foreigner anyway. The video is just kinda absurd. そうはいっても動画がバズり炎上されておめでとうございます！
This. It threw me off the first time I watched her videos, she sounds like a beginner despite marketing herself as fluent... but that's what a lot of polyglots do
I've been learning Japanese for 4 years now and really resonate with your videos, it feels like I'm on the right track. Currently in intermediate hell but after upping my input every day I'm seeing a big jump in my comprehension. I'm also a very extroverted person with a lot of Japanese friends, so I wouldnt agree with that point about "input is for introverts" 😅I just feel I learn more from listening than speaking.
Same! I'm five years and also intermediate! just started using the input method 2 months ago and doing good! but...damn man, the memorizing from anki kills me, I remember a word then forget it...this results in 500 words learnt, but about 80-100 forgotten :( it's like taking one step forward and two steps back! very frustrating!
@@DeckardManc85 XD a couple more years friend. The best part is when I ask Chat GPT, "hey GPT what's the difference between this word and this word?" and it's like "oh yes, they are essentially the same word, but are used in slightly different contexts." oh, cool so I can use it like this? "No, you have to use it like this" right...okay, so like this, in this context for this reason? "yes" and then I go through a couple of hundred vocab with this same thing being like "Japan...there is something like too much detail" XD lol Hopefully with this input method it goes faster! :D
She dismisses immersion learning, and yet that's how the military does it. If I was going to trust anyone to give me an efficient way to do something, it's them. The point is that you have to combine immersion with study (again, what the military does). It just seems like she's going into this critique with bad faith, and her reaction just comes off as snooty
@srslywtfcl4p404 I've heard that, too. Her video came off to me as "I went to college and therefore i know better." I went to college, too, and learned more through having to actually use dialog templates (basically acting) than I did in the classes where I had to use a textbook.
That's the thing traditional learners don't grasp; if you go into any other field, you'll know that it's practice (and immersion in the work) that gets you the most gains. You'll learn more about something in one month of a professional job than you will in a year of school. Immersion and practice gets you knowledge faster than studying. Studying gets you the technical details immersion and practice will miss. It's that simple.
It’s weird as she tried to say immersion or any government agencies don’t use it, when literally everyone big agency and the government does, heck one guy on UA-cam even had a video on it. They have an insane amount of material to study and they also use immersion to get their soldiers used to the language. “They eat, breathe and sleep in the language”
Of course, the first video I stumble upon on your channel is the one with drama haha… Love how you make language learning so approachable on your channel. You just earned yourself a new subscriber!
I choked on my food at 3:50 when you mentioned your degree and just busted out laughing at the criticism that was thrown at you. I've liked your videos. I've already seen Pearl, MattVsJapan, Migaku, AJATT, Dogen, and every other major JP learning youtuber out there and their advice has not helped as much as MattVSJapan's. That is, until I seen your videos. Learning that you have a degree in Linguistics because of someone criticizing you made this situation extremely comical from my perspective. Keep making videos! :D
I commented on her video, and she even misinterpreted my comment and got defensive as well. I was just saying 'FOR ME' this method works, but that it highly depends on your goals and everyone should do what is best for them, but that the immersion method is GOOD and not a waste of time just because she thinks it is.... then she just kind of threw it in my face... something like 'oh lots of people are just learning as a hobby on the side'.... well my wife is Japanese and I'm trying to get to a native level, so it's exactly what I need to get to where I want to be. I'll admit, she knows a lot more words and grammar than I do, as I'm only arounds N3 level, but her pronunciation is nowhere near the level it should be for her knowledge, in my opinion. that is where IMMERSION helps.
thanks man for sharing your knowledge, ive been studying for years with books and stuff and its just so stressing. I started doing immersion a while back and i have been improving without even realizing, its honestly amazing
I really like your approach. And good for you for staying level headed. Seeing someone react to your video like that could be initially tough to work through. Wish she didn't have to be so reactionary and laugh at your thoughts. Kind of disappointing. I have met people that REALLY struggle with ambiguity. Like...they refuse to let it be a thing.
it honestly sounds like the people who are against input learning are the ones who learned through textbooks and traditional classes and are perhaps insecure about there being a much better and less painful method, like "how dare you not go through the same pain i did" i'm not saying they're deliberately doing this, it could be entirely in their subconscious i would've loved to listen more from the japanese dude next to her, especially when she was arguing about "learning to write kanji is useless", it really seemed like he was gonna say "i mean... maybe it is kinda useless yeah" but she didn't let him talk. me personally i love learning how to write kanji, but i'm fully aware of how useless it is, its mostly for fun. comparing the stroke orders of 右 and 左, or 心 and 必, seeing myself get better at writing (slow and steady), its all really fun for me, but i would never advocate this for anyone willing to learn japanese unless they truly want to do that as well
It's funny because I've learned two languages to a usable level, one through traditional schooling (Swedish, the classes strove to be as monolingual as possible) and one through mass input (English, via video games and discussion forums). Both clearly work but my English level is far higher (admittedly I basically live my life in English and have barely used Swedish for anything except reading food packaging labels. The language has somehow stuck with me in a usable state where I can think in it and speak in it, but more sort of English thoughts said with Swedish words and limited command of native idiom due to disuse). That immersion works, there's no question: I'm fluent in a foreign language basically entirely thanks to being terminally online.
I think writing practice has helped me a TON in being able to tell them apart, instead of looking like masses of overlaid lines scribbled on top of each other. Which is even more helpful when fonts are often sized for English, which doesn't need as much space to clearly show all the details. Also I decided that for SPECIFICALLY 左 and 右 I no longer care about correct stroke order, lol. There's a very short list that I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna cheat." It feels like they don't even follow their own rules. (For context, I wrote all of the jouyou kanji, without bothering with meanings or readings, just to get used to kanji in general, marking difficult ones and quizzing till I got stroke orders right just by seeing the character and writing them.)
@@Aeroxima i'm really not sure if writing them helps me personally to set them apart, because i started learning kanji already writing them down. so maybe it does! i feel like learning the radicals/components is potentially the biggest helper, not exactly writing them down, but im sure writing them down has at least *some* benefit to memorization which is likely a lot of cost for little benefit in the long run (but again, i love doing it, so i do it)
Yeah I think for me physically writing kanji (and kana actually) at least a few times helps me see the differences. But I think using it as a learning method vs memorizing stroke order or working to perfect writing them by hand isn't important. And I think Pearl conflated the two ideas.
@@squeezlepop In my case it was less about memorizing stroke order, and more about having an intuitive understanding of how it generally works. The rare exceptions are just whatever, but being able to see and dissect a kanji quickly I think helps in multiple ways, including quick recognition and looking them up. I'll also say the way I was doing it was to see it briefly, and them copy it down from memory, which I think is also part of what helped. It's training a skill in and of itself, exactly that kind of quick recognition and remembering what the parts were, because for complex ones trying to just remember 12 strokes at a glance would be really hard. Just "it's one of those, these and then a couple of those" is way more doable, and you build familiarity with radicals/components, and the ability to see and distinguish them quickly, which inherently includes telling them apart. Unfortunately the site I used is paid, but it made it like a game, where I don't think I'd have done the same with a paper notebook. Instant feedback when a stroke is wrong also takes a lot of the burden off. So for me, I don't intend to really write them by hand. I was just doing it to help deal with the hell that is kanji, making them more manageable.
your videos and this video aswell are just right, all you say is completely logical and just makes sense, it's how sooooo many of us learned english in the first place and i find the people who say "oh yeah only children can learn a language without studying it and using only input" just ignorant, in reality ANYONE can, I started learning japanese because of your videos, and I am putting in some serious work despite living in a very noisy and overall distracting enviroment, in 2 days it's gonna be a week since i started and I already learned all katakana and hiragana, you insipred me to pick myself up and do something productive, so keep on keeping on brother! One day I will be able to understand 3 languages and I don't care how long or how hard it's gonna be, I. WILL. MAKE. IT.
I personally don’t mind which is “more efficient,” textbooks or input, I think what’s more important is actually enjoying the process and I’ve enjoyed input with Japanese music, UA-cam, tv shows, etc far more than reading a textbook. I’ve made lots more progress with that as well, but not everyone learns the same so the difference in view points between you too makes sense. You’ve already said it when you mentioned how nobody (using the word nobody loosely) in Linguistics really had “proven theories,” nor agreed 100%. Anyway, I’m no major in that so I could just be wrong. I enjoy your videos though, it made learning Japanese less of a struggle since it put some things into perspective for me. Keep up the good work!
Pearl has been pretty underwhelming recently. Her whole thing became criticism, and she's casting too wide a net if you're getting caught in it. When I saw her come at a guy with a degree in linguistics, that spoke for itself. The obvious fake polyglots should be called out, sure, but she's getting caught in the "criticism for content" business model and it's a bit sad to witness. She's got cool insights but she's gotta let other people have their methods too instead of just trying to call people out constantly.
I think at the end where she kinda calls youtube viewers introverts in a demeaning way towards the end is exactly why she made that video members only now. Even as I was viewing it she started getting folks calling her out on it.
Until I found your channel my Japanese learning was practically at a stand still, I was following bad advice and not getting many gains from the practice I was doing at the time. After I changed my methods and follow more in line with what you've taught I've noticed exponential growth. To hear someone even try to challenge very helpful advice is comical to me. Thank you for all that you've been doing on UA-cam and happy language learning everyone.
Does it sound as noticeable as her English lisp? I'd never actually seen her videos as side from the thumbnails, so it was a bit of a suprise that she was so lispy
I agree. Knowing how to write kanji outside of the basic stroke orders is a complete waste of time. In my adult life, I almost never handwrite things in English. Everything is done on the computer so spending 2,000 hours memorizing how every kanji is written is just not going to be worth it. Recognizing it in text is really all you have to do and even Japanese people are forgetting how to write a lot of kanji that they know how to read.
After watching your video and trying out some of the tips you mentioned, my Japanese has indeed improved from however I was learning before. Immersion helped a ton, so I guess she just... didn't even try it? Also Oriental Pearl makes those "Oh they didn't know I speak their language" videos constantly so I automatically disregard everything she says.
They gave no good points tho, even if u did nit give very useless tips (u gave greaf ones) theyre not even giving constructive criticism, instead shes like "oh he doesnt have this one specific kanji in his deck oh nooo" as if thats important. The overall message is whats important and bc if it me and many others are able to know where to begin learning. Thanks trenton
While I'm not interested in learning japanese myself anytime soon, I find your videos quite enjoyable. I like the pacing, and the clarity and nuance of your sentences are enough to me to know you know your stuff. I've been studying how learning works myself for the past 4 years or so - although I started in the context of learning fighting games, and found out over time that a lot of the notions I've explored are much more general than what I expected - and I agree on about everything you said in your videos.
I've fallen into the vocab vacuum for almost 2 years now but your videoes have completely like slapped me in the face of what i need to be doing instead of getting frustrated and burnt out. Your videos are super easy to understand and make so much sense and it's a same people are trying to use you as bait
Listening to "uncomprehensible input" is underrated. At the very beginning, the point isn't to understand anything, it's to train yourself to parse phonemes. It doesn't matter how long you put it off, no amount of textbooks or whatever is going to prepare you.
Perhaps, but I've been stuck with that for a looooong time. I found that it's become a bit harder to listen for understanding, because it's just the automatic response now to sort of let it go in one ear and out the other, just assuming I won't understand it. Same with seeing kanji and thinking I just won't be able to understand it. Nothing that can't be overcome, just sharing my experience. I think it's easier to learn to parse if you have native subtitles, especially if the writing matches the pronunciation, like hiragana and katakana, but kanji make it more difficult (furigana helps). It helps correct your hearing to match and conceptualize it, and catch the stuff that sounds similar. とりあえず was kind of hard to hear at first for me.
I am stuck with incomprehensible input with the two new language I am learning: Tai Ahom(𑜋𑜩𑜒𑜑𑜪𑜨) and Shan/Tai yai(တႆး). The first one is a dead language with no native speakers and only scholars or people who want to connect with that culture learn it. The second one is mostly spoken in the Shan State of Myanmar. There is literally only one youtube channel teaching in English. It's way easier to learn English and Japanese because there is plenty of content in the internet.
It is still non efficient compared to other methods of studying. Sure it can be useful but what amount is needed for what amount of progress ? Being efficient is not only about the progress you make because you will see progress no matter the method given unlimited time.
A huge part of language learning for me was the motivation of knowing how to read the things I'm interested in. If The Hunchback of Notre Dame is your passion.. Why not use that as a study material? You're getting words out of it that truly mean something to a subject you're interested in
In my experience input works... Sure I was 7, but at that I age my parents moved us from the UK to France. Within six months my comprehension skills were enough that I was no longer in a school where they taught or spoke English. There is a lot to be said about the elasticity of a child's brain, but at the end of the day, that mass exposure combined with the lack of choice make it so that I went from not knowing a single word of French to being fully fluent in less than a year.
The eternal fight between pedagogy and linguistics. I always am taken aback by attending linguistics conferences because there are so many studies, theories and conclusions that have no material reality in either teaching or learning. Input theory and textbooks can live side-by-side but shouldn't be used as sole methods which I think most of your videos touch on. (Getting a base knowledge of grammatical structure then learning language through input and correction)
Ive been applying your method and this is the longest streak of Japanese learning i ever did and im actually enjoying this journey compare to when i had to sit down and a write down notes and kanji by forcing myself to remember. Seeing how you motivated me too start trying to pursue learning Japanese again. I would too thank you very much for helping
Instead of saying "no don't do that!", maybe they should've opted to investigate/explore why different methods of learning exist. I learned English by doing a lot of listening and reading, often collecting words I didn't understand and studying them for later. This was fun. I don't see why this wouldn't work in Japanese, so I applied it after watching your series of videos. It's working great so far. It's made the past year of painful slogging through textbooks and apps a lot more fruitful.
I found your channel by accident, and now I found the oriental pearl thanks to this video, and tbh my life was better without knowing her, I am tired of this youtubers with egomaniac syndrome,that look everyone over the shoulder, specially westerns ones, but yeah this internet we pass from the society of the spectacle to the society of ego. On the other hand I have to native language by born and always I wanted to learn english but was quite impossible for me, I learn it with the immersion method due I was not available to have any conversation in English until I move to London (God bless the British pubs that was my best school) and now I am living in Japan and I am trying to use kinda the same method but with a bit of help because is not the same(and I am working with English not Japanease), and as you mention this is a long run, anyway all the best luck and I love your sense of humour, keep going.
I'm not really sure why she approached this in such an inflammatory way, she clearly has good experience and has a very valid view point, but to share that with others you don't need to tear someone else down
Yeah I find Oriental Pearl to be quite hypocritical in this regard. She talks about how clickbait is terrible because of all the people who DON'T WATCH the video and just take it for what it says in the title, which in my opinion, is dumb... If anyone just accepts a UA-cam title at face value, that's their problem. But also, her videos are massively clickbaity in their titles... She just has a different definition of clickbait that happens not to include her own videos.
Man I cannot stand her with the face-palming no no no before you even finish your sentence. I hope you speed run to become the biggest language learning UA-camr polyglot there is.
i never thought a penguin would’ve made me actually keep my streak and stay motivated to learn, but here i am ever since watching your first video, and my motivation has remained at an all time high! thanks to you, the pressure of studying a language has been lifted and i just enjoy my input through shows i’ve been already enjoying in english, and i’ve noticed great progress! at first, watching all these motivational how to learn a language videos were a rabbit hole that i couldn’t actually gain much from. but guess that has changed with your video now :’) so thank you!
No hate to Pearl, since no reason to be spreading hate, but I really like how you took a respectful approach towards this and saying, "oh maybe I worded that wrong", but I disliked how she seemed to just insult or belittle things. I don't know. Textbooks helped me learn, but I feel like input and immersion has done more for me in learning the language than textbooks have. Good vid mate. You do you, boo
All of your advice has been exactly what I've been thinking since starting Japanese myself a number of years ago and is probably one of the best starting points out there for anyone just starting. Keep it up!
Its been about a month since I saw your vid and started taking things seriously and I have made real genuine progress that im proud of, so you’ve done something right
Your immersion method really helped me with my korean ear. I am able to listen to things once and understand the words I know right away. It’s only been about a month since I watched the immersion video of yours and my Korean skills skyrocketed after that.
I started learning english with metal songs and a dictionary, I translated the words literally just so grasp what the songs talk about, then I got access to cable tv and started to listening series and movies with subtitles and that help me to associate english to my language and was able to understand/translate, then finally have some english lessons trough public school, I was pretty bad at general school, but english was so easy just because I already had that submersion in the language
Your video helped me break the barrier I had of thinking it was too difficult to learn. I remember the first time I saw it in my recommended I passed on it, then went back the next time I saw it. Considering your method is free, and passive, it doesn't hurt to try! You've been a big help. Arigato!
It mainly seemed like she didn't want to feel like the time she spent studying the "normal" way was invalidated by hearing your methods that suggest a different approach. The way she references low morale and all the time she spent with her books; it seems like she just didn't want people to think that studying normally is a bad thing or that she wasted her time doing it, which is obviously not the takeaway here. That said, I do think insinuating that people who prefer an input method are "insecure" in some way is a bit much.
She told me to not to mistake academic criticism of your channel for blasting. Then I called out her smirk and laugh when she commented on your advice. And no response from her and her making it members only shows she herself can’t take academic criticism. Hypocritical and just bad behavior. 🤦♂️ I also criticized how she never fully watched all your videos on why you didn’t emphasize writing kanji. She wants to make a jail bait being video without getting evidence to back her argument. Then in her video after her bashing she advertises her tutoring in the description box.
The best evidence for “immersion learning” or “Input learning” by Stephen Krashen is a study by Heidi M Feldman. Its an article named “How young children learn language and speech: Implications of theory and evidence for clinical pediatric practice”.
I think your videos are helpful due to the fact that I accidentally learn how to comprehend and speak english in intermmediate level just by listening to self help podcast, in the beginning it was difficult for me but i gradually increase my vocabulary just by mining vocabularies in the podcast that I had been watched and also through book that I wanna learn and by accumulating vocabularies through it and currently I don't have any idea what's happened then i just realized that I already know how to write and speak, I don't even practice how to speak but I managed to do it. For almost 2 years this is the only thing that I did, listening , mining, reading book that I'm curious about, well your right about "Eventually you'll get there". That's exactly what happened to me without even realizing it and now I'm completely convince because of your videos and also based on my experience. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK BRUH 👊
Someone else commented that she has a sponsor link or other link to japanesepod101 in her descriptions, which would make sense if so Otherwise I don't know but I find it pretty likely (that or insecurity the way she speaks of her own learning and cuts off his video to mock her interpretation of what he's trying to say).
I was part of the first generation of spanish people who learned english in elementary school, that was 6 years, plus 6 years in high school. 12 years for basically only knowing how to read. I didn't really learned to use and became fluent in english until I found a funny YT channel which subtitled every conversation in gameplay videos. After that I became more confortable listening to english podcasts and the rest is history. The only other major bump in my english proficiency was at work, when I had to defend some work my team had done to a guy who was getting mad at us for no reason. Immersion works. I guess the difference is how much traditional education every different person need to reach the point where immersion and study clicks.
I pretty much checked out when she started willfully misinterpreting your arguments and omitting important words from your statements to make you and your viewers seem like losers. Really just looks like engagement bait. Keep doing your thing kyoudai. We're all behind ya.
To be fair, there were little to no arguments from her, besides ,,no, my books. And no , i've learnt it this way." So i wouldnt take it too harshly. The most disappointed i am is in her demeanor, that immersion is just for insecure people. All benefits of it aside, but the hell are you supposed to do for example, if there are no classes or outlets for that in your vicinity. Congrats on your first drama! For me it was the same for english, i was just on youtube a lot and adapted.
Immersion method has been proven to be effective for a long time. In my country the kids who live in the nothern mountain region are poor and some dont even go to school, yet many of them speak english fluently just because their towns are tourist attractions so they work as tourist guides and speak with foreigners all the time.
I think I'm more motivated when I listen to something I don't know, then catch a word I recently learned and I'm like "Wow I know that one!" and feel proud of myself lol
Hi, Trenton! I don't know if you remember me from my other comments, but i keep doing the method you showed and I'm getting pretty good results for my first month of Japanese! I'm doing Anki and immersing with podcasts, anime, games and generally watching content i like in Japanese. I did not understand a single thing in my first week, I would read kana at the pace of a snail because i didn't remember the sounds, and all of the podcasts i watched were total fuzzy for me. I'm 1 month in now and I can understand enough of intermediate podcasts to have a base of understanding what the person's talking about, and I'm getting some random phrases from anime too! All of this to say that it's slowly working, and that your advice is awesome. Also, congrats on your first drama video
I'm with you, because almost all my English came from internet and input! I don't like to judge and negate any kind of tool when speaking about the learning process because everything is valid, what'll go to determine the amount we absorve is a mix of necessity x desire. We learn a lot complex subjects and things just because we want to, take for example games and the tons of info we simple... learn by input. Thanks again for one more golden content video! If I may, I would like to request you to record more japanese videos for us learners to have one more input!
As someone trying to follow a similar pattern to what you recommend, I still see the benefits of textbooks and class instruction. Input is extremely important and getting as much of it as possible is hard, my japanese exploded once I managed to get myself watching japanese content purely in japanese as a significant portion of my conent consumption
he starts off the video being all “YIPPEE! i got drama!”
and immediately switches to japanese to assert dominance
"お前は猛進でいる"
-bro probably
i probably wrote it wrong
@@jovidmtpyou trying to say the fist of the north star thing?
@@jovidmtp I just installed a Japanese keyboard thanks to the help from some chap in the comments of the Anki video
お前はもう死んでいる
@@CloudXDP そうだよ
@@jovidmtp lol assume it's north star, もうしん is not a single word it is もう(already, now)+死(し)ぬ(dead)
You can't randomly change hiragana into kanji, since there are so many kanjis that read the same but different meaning(is it called homophones? What's the correct choice of word to use here?)
Congratulations on your first drama www
thanks, it's a huge step for me
baby's first youtube drama
they grow up so fast 🥲
Took like what, 2 weeks? Its gotta be close to a record
W in the chat
I think Immersion is literally how 95% of all ESL speakers learned english, me included. A bit in school but with every single game and piece of media on the internet being in english, it is really difficult not to learn the language.
Exactly. School gave me the basic rules and vocabulary, but I still didn't understand a lot of media. I had to immerse myself into it. I would read a text and use the context to know what the missing words probably meant or just looked them up. No need to make it unnecessarily complicated.
That's basically how I learned so I definitely agree. Music, videogames, movies, etc. All of them improved my reading and listening comprehension.
I have been studying English with tutor for like 3-4 years now and sometimes i feel like "I know this gosshhh why we are even learning this crap". As a person who speaks 4 languages. In 3 of them i am fluent and the one i am yet to become fluent. I INSIST on being IN the language you learn. My 4th language is Polish, i literally live in Poland, i study in Polish school, but i don't watch youtube or other inputs and as a result it's difficult for me to speak Polish.
Totally agree, I literally didn't even try to learn English, I unironically became fluent by accident XD
Yup. Video games and youtube videos. School gave me a little bit of the basics but that's it.
Trenton: "Comprehensible input is key."
Pearl: "How are you supposed to learn anything when you can't even comprehend the input?"
Me: "How are you able to criticize him when you can't even comprehend what he was saying?"
Oriental Pearl will silence ANY comment debunking her. To those of you who don't know Japanese yet you can't tell, but, for someone that according to her have been learning Japanese for 12 years, started learning in China, being already fluent in Chinese, and, therefore, with a leg up regarding anyone form the West that don't speak Chinese, had lived in Japan for YEARS and lives with a Japanese her Japanese is PRETTY BAD! And it's easy o prove that. Her Japanese is NOT at all impressive considering her situation. It's more than lacking.
@@JohnnyLynnLee her credibility was shot when she decided her name was oriental pearl... that's all I am saying.
@@sspiker More importantly is that her Japanese IS NOT good for her background. She mad fun in one of her videos of one saying you need 10,000 hours in Japanese. She needs to get her 10,000 hours! She acts as if she's god. SHE IS NOT.
Shes a narcist@@JohnnyLynnLee
@@nolandderlugner1351 And she's deliberately deceiving people. She indeed has a god level of Japanese. But starting from being fluent in Chinse, living in China, have been learning Japanese for 12 years, living in Japan for years and years, and living with a Japanese her Japanese should be WAY better. Anyone following her "advices" saying you don't need to do passive listening learning from English, from your home in the West forced to live most of your day in you native language is DOOMED TO FAIL.
The moment she compare sentence mining to textbooks was the moment I couldn’t take her serious anymore.
I don’t understand that critics. Anybody learning a language will do it. It’s learning new words directly from the content consumed, show how useful it is in reality (if a word pop up multiple times, it’s certainly a good one) and it gives a context.
Coming from the content someone see makes it so easier to learn it too.
@@rakedos9057 Because it's actually a BS waste of time. You have to know at least a certain amount of vocab in order to effectively immerse, and at that point sentence mining isn't even necessary.
Everybody in the comments are claiming to have learned through immersion, but all of them also say that they studied in school as well (including the guy who made this video btw. He also admits to learning vocab and going through RTK). This whole "immersion" craze is just a bunch of people disregarding their first phase of study as unnecessary because they don't actually understand how they learned the language, and don't see how the beginning phases contributed to their studies.
@@adamboross1110 you are making the same mistake as the woman in the video. It is clearly stated that you should start sentence mining when you have a good base. So what do you think that a good base means?
And one doesn’t exclude the other. You can combine learning grammer and vocab with immersing in the language.
I can tell you that immersing works because I can understand English.
@@adamboross1110 I'm one of them. My case: my English was crap through all my years of school, but skyrocketed when I watched videos for natives (non educational) and read books.
Of course someone has to learn the basic (especially grammar) outside of "immersion", nobody say the contrary. But basics aside, one can dive into input/immersion quickly. That's what I'm doing with Japanese and it's working so far. I'm picking more and more words while watching anime for example.
For my English, reading books was a big pain in the butt at first but really paid off. I was less and less prone to open the dictionary as I read a book.
The simple fact of mining words or sentences from the content I consumed made it so much easier to remember AND I had tons more input than school.
Mining words also give a context which seems so so important in Japanese.
@@adamboross1110Immersion doesn't mean starting with immersion. Think about the way you learn new vocabulary in your native language. Rarely do you ever learn words like you would for foreign languages.
The moment i heard "I actually have a degree in linguistics" ,i knew it was over for them .
Hi! Thanks for mentioning my video) I am learning Japanese and you inspired me to listen to much more podcasts 👍 and the way you learn very much corresponds to how I see this process, but with your unique tweaks. And I thought I should tell my viewers in detail about the method you used. In my vid I basically skipped the theoretical part about Krashen and so on, because my viewers are very much familiar with all that and went straight into how you did it and commented on your way of learning from my perspective
Hey! I actually found your video because my friend is learning Russian with this method and uses your videos for immersion material :)
I watched your video (although I had to use English auto-generated subtitles) and thought it was good!
@@トレントン wow, cool! 😊 Thank you! 🙏
I watch both of you guys and I cannot express enough how exciting seeing you commenting on each other makes me feel :D
Greeting from Moldova 🇲🇩
@@bjornhorberg2690
It is so great when your 2 most lovely channels interact with each other .
It is so cool to watch how people around the world connect and understand each other, despite being raised in totally different conditions and places.
Bro she is just bashing you without completely listening to your videos. Your videos are literally the reason why I started learning a new language. Keep doing what youre doing big DAWG 🔥
What lenguage are you studying?
Where did she bash him?
Her videos are also a reason for why many people have started learning a language. It's okay for people to disagree. Good luck in your studies!
She thinks she deserves a monopoly in the learning space and that's messed up.
@@Gigusx yeah while i disagree with her here, people are getting way over the top in the comments about her. I guess because they haven't seen her other contrnt where she's usually pretty chill.
I like how she goes "kanji is useless?! Noooo!" And looks over at the dude and he just agrees with her and gets all shifty eyed like he was just trying avoid an argument.
I genuinely don't understand how ANYONE could doubt your advice. you SINGLEHANDEDLY changed my entire view about language learning.
I'm currently learning german and I'm so genuinely thankful for your videos, I've started being okay with not understanding absolutely everything, which resulted in making so much more progress than I used to make.
Your videos are absolutely amazing and I'll be continuing to watch them even if I'm no longer learning japanese. danke schön!
Viel Erfolg! and do you have some input suggestions? I have a friend who learns German, but as a German it is not that easy to rank something as for beginner or advanced.
EYOOOO GERMAN LERNER! HALLOOO :DDD
DU SCHAFFST DAS! ICH GLAUB AN DICH :DDD
@@PunkHerr search up Easy German on youtube, they're absolutely amazing imo
@@Dreaming-Void DANKE BRUDER!
@@PunkHerr "easy german" is great imo, I still use them to this day
I mean Pearl literally has japanesepod101 listed in her description and pushes it in her videos.
Maybe a bit cynical of me to say but it's not surprising she would advocate for paid traditional methods when she has a vested interest in it.
Shills gotta shill! Get them kickbacks.
The pod101 courses are kind of a turn off for me because of all the English in them. I guess that is okay for absolute beginners, but it means less material in the target language and a generally slower learning process.
Which is kind of funny because she literally criticized other UA-camrs for selling BS courses, funnily enough in that same video she had MattvsJapan on her channel, you know the guy who popularized immersions
I watch free Japanesepod101 videos for Risa and only Risa 😂
@@RealNTAFreal
Ah, I guessed you were more of an expert than you let on - so you are a linguist! Thanks for this rebuttal. I’m not a linguistic expert but one thing I do know about is epistemology and bias in science. Oriental Pearl is very genuine I’m sure, but she demonstrates classic false attribution bias, which is very common among academics (they assume that they way they learned and teach is the only way its possible). One wonders how she thinks how the millions of people throughout history learned multiple languages before there were textbooks.
The fact that she made that reaction video "members only" (ie, behind a paywall) tells a lot about how secure she feels about the critics she mades. I think, at least.
i found it weird she suddenly switched it. i got notifications that she responded to comments and i cant see the full response😭 haha
Because people will write garbage in comments, and for the most part, the 'Input' community of language learning has a very vocal minority that acts more like a cult.
I was halfway through the video and went back later to see it was no longer accessible 😢 But I find a lot of her advice regarding language learning comes off as defensive and demeaning tbh
@@jcvp2493 It's hard to believe she wouldn't be aware of potential criticism before making the video. She's made 343 videos over the past half decade.
@@jcvp2493LMAO way are you so pathetic? really? a cult? how did you even think this is the BEST way to deflect criticism ENTIRELY ! ALSO STOP lying!!!
seeing how you use such a dishonest pathetic excuse to deflect criticism and the fact she made member only to have HER OWN CULT defend here and be the yes MEN in an echo chamber, i find it funny you even thought you can come here without a shame and insult people, same as she insulted people that use this method of learning language
I never understood why people dislike immersion or anything similar of the sort. Im bilingual in English and French, and most of my French skills was at a slump and decline for a while. Until I started immersing a lot more, suddenly I jumped from a B1.5 level to almost C1 and someone who can confidently say I'm bilingual.
What media did you use to immerse?
@@Hunter_Adrian train documentaries (no joke) also Wakfu, that series was fire
Those people need a way to justify the years they spent learning, by shitting on new methods.
@@Entropic_Alloy anytime someone has spent learning a language, even if it isn't immersion will always be useful when combined with immersion.
they probably want to sell courses that don't teach so people lose more money trying to learn
As someone whose first language isn't English, I'm going to be brutally honest for a second and say that anyone opposing the immersion method has never studied a language to fluency. Textbooks and classes only get you so far.
On another note, I found your anecdote about frameworks in linguistics to hit the nail on the head. I studied translations and it's the same story there, just a pile of made up frameworks. In a way, I feel that's just the reality of arts disciplines.
Lastly, I agree you don't need to learn writing kanji or hanzi. I speak Chinese fluently and have only ever needed to write characters in tests. I do know how to read them and understand the individual radicals, of course.
I have been studying English with tutor for like 3-4 years now and sometimes i feel like "I know this! why we are even learning this crap?". As a person who speaks 4 languages. In 3 of them i am fluent and the one i am yet to become fluent. I INSIST on being IN the language you learn. My 4th language is Polish, i literally live in Poland, i study in Polish school, but i don't watch youtube or other inputs and as a result it's difficult for me to speak Polish.
And Polish ofc i studied by books... That's just stupid... I mean it's stupid to learn by using only books, it just doesn't work this way.
I don't know - I studied Swedish at school and have barely used the language, but it's stuck with me and I can think in it and express myself in it. Of course, the disuse and limited learning context (classroom) means I don't have the greatest active vocabulary (I literally learned 'andvändbart', ie. 'useful' from a Days and Words video.
The joke, of course, is that I definitely didn't learn my English in school, but from videogames and Internet forums, and my English is well and truly fluent, and that the language classes I had in school tried to stay monolingual as thoroughly as possible.
as someone who native language is not english, his ways is the best way. i only know english by playing games.
And it's even considered backwards in classes themselves lol My foreign language teacher emphasized immersion in the classroom (Rules like no English words in class). The only time we started seriously cracking open textbooks was preparing for a standardized test, and she said herself that we weren't the language, we were learning a test
considering i learned basically the exact same way you did and pearl's japanese accent I'd say you're probably not a liar
🫵🧍♂️
Yoo, cool to see you hey Jay, i watched your video about moving to Japan, and enjoyed it alot, you had some great tips in there too!
Oh look it's Jay
Hello StellarJaypanese :3
YO THOSE GLASSES CAUGHT ME WAY OFF GUARD WHAT 4:18
hOLY WHAT THE
That's a weird flex
I didn’t even notice that WTH
LMFAO WHAT
Hahahahahaha
One thing I never really liked in the language learning community is "No, you're learning it wrong." "You should do it this way!" "No! Don't do it that way!" To me, as long as you see yourself making improvement and are happy with yourself learning, that's all that matters! Everyone has different learning styles! You've helped me learn a style of learning I enjoy, so keep at it! 👍
Especaillly with Japanese, probably has the most gatekeeping of any language
11:39 writing is useless
the guy instantly think "hell yeah he's right"
Yeah he looks like he's trying so hard not to agree with him
was thinking the same thing too lol
I KNOW he was trying soooo hard not to agree with the video 🤣🤣 just for her
Yeah, exactly. I know that look. He's agreeing with the video but can't say it. lol
Yes. It’s not literally useless but if you were to budget a certain number of hours in the first year to Japanese, how much would you do for writing kanji? Maybe 1 percent? Which basically rounds to zero.
I struggled for like 10years with English, cause it's mandatory to learn as a second language, but watching everything in English and reading in English was a complete game changer
You're right, I did the same thing and it works
congrats we'll be expecting a ukulele and tears for next week's vid
Lmao
11:47 "Idk why the hell this guy is studying Japanese for" that comment made me dismiss any other critique she gave for the rest of the video. Like, she doesn't even NEED to know why anyone studies a language that they do. I'm confident that 90% of Western foreigners who study Japanese most likely do it for the fun of it, because they like the language, or simply because they want to be able to watch anime without subs. Sometimes studying a language is a fun challenge to pick up for the heck of it, and if you want it to be fun, just use immersion. Saying that kind of stuff just feels snobby and dismissive of what works for the person you're talking about.
Yeah. It seems like she has a certain "goal" in her mind that everyone's ought to strive towards, and since he isn't going about it her way, she can't understand what his point is. That's probably why she's able to keep up the image of being fluent to herself - in her mind, being "balanced" is an acceptable goal, and excuses her shortcomings despite the myriads of people who are a lot better than her in intonation, understanding, vocabulary, among other things - all while having spent less time studying.
It's the mentality of someone who strictly goes by-the-book, and she's gone to the extreme end of it.
He even specifically mentioned it in the first video: because he's a weeb and 90% of people watching are weebs.
Ngl I agree and don't think this whole thing is "drama" or anything that serious but having said that my respect towards OrientalPearl is significantly lower after seeing this
She's always got on my nerves ever since she came on the UA-cam polyglot scene
@@attachou she did have somewhat of a point in that since some people really do exaggerate their abilities in a language when they can only say basic phrases and not actually communicate in said language.
Her trying to throw a shot at immersion mind you a cheap shot since she wanted to keep the video under wraps, is comical considering she started this when she invited MattvsJapan on her channel something she wants everyone to forget.
@@reflex9238yeah i think she got defensive too early and assumed this youtuber was the same category.
bro got drama before silver play button 🎉🎉🎉
THANK GOD, not a repetitive Gta 6 jokes atleast.
We got people getting tired of "GTA 6 Jokes" even before GTA 6 has released! Damn! (lol)
Trenton, it’s been 6 days since I watched your video, and 5 since I decided to give actually learning Japanese (and not just romaji)a real shot at the age of almost 34. I’m almost at the point already where I can read and distinguish all of the hiragana including the dakuten, handakuten, and diagraphs. I nearly fell out of my chair the first time I read です out loud with no assistance a couple days and realized what I just did.
Additionally I’ve listened to about 200 episodes of Nihongo Con Teppei for Beginners and occasionally googling new words in either in English or Japanese. It’s very fun and even though it’s less “efficient” than a textbook it is obviously working - at least for now.
Anyways I say all this to say “thank you” (or ありがとう！).
Forget the haters! You brought up good points in this response video but I also feel like people who have an interest in practical learning will intuitively understand exactly what you meant anyway. Don’t give away too much of your energy to stuff like this. There will always be critics, and in my experience most of them aren’t interested in charitable interpretations or acting Socratically about things with which they may disagree.
Looking forward to the next video whenever it comes!
Nick
"This one word i cherrypicked cause it was on one of your Anki cards is not worth learning. Don't waste your time on anything that won't show up every single day."
"I COMMAND YOU TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE KANJI BY HAND EVEN THOUGH YOU WILL ONLY HAVE TO DO IT ONCE OR TWICE BECAUSE LEARNING EVERYTHING AND HAVING BALANCE IS SO IMPORTANT"
What Pearl also doesn't seem to understand is not everyone is a bookworm or learns well from mostly textbooks. I was never good at that form of studying, but I always excelled with hands on and verbal studying. I drive trucks for a living, immersion is perfect for me considering I can be on the road for 10 hours at a time. Your video is what got me into this, I was using some mobilie apps to learn Japanese for almost two years with little progress. I've only been doing immersion for about 2-3 weeks and I can already see that my comprehension is improving, Thanks for your video!
I'm Japanese. Japanese people don't usually use the word '考証' in daily life, but it is often used in books or when discussing historical dramas.
this is exactly it. Does she also think learning any words other than "すみません！" aren't worth learning lmao
I started learning Japanese on renshuu two months ago, when your "Learning Japanese isn't that hard" video came out, i've watched all of your videos since. I started Anki, Genki books, input etc..
Every moment I spend taking input, and hearing words that I've either mined, or studied on Renshuu, Anki, Memrise etc.. Has been one of the best feelings of my life, that small tick in my brain of "Wait I know what that means!" especially when I can understand a whole sentence is lovely(Kirei). There's even words that I learned just be input alone that made me remember, like "welcome home"(Okaeri), "I'm home"(Tadaima), "oh really? or "It looks that way"(Sodesune) and things when watching terrace house. Then I would come across them in Anki later on in a deck, or Genki and be like HAHA! Those moments where I don't know what something means, doesn't kill my morale, it just makes me curious what it means, and either makes me mine it for anki, or hope I can comprehend what it means later. (If any of those phrases or something I said was wrong lemme know, also my windows won't let me write Hiragana so I'm stuck with typing it in Furigana lul.)
Thank you for all of your advice and your videos Trenton, they've helped tremendously. It's boosted my motivation, and has made me even get out of my shell and really start trying to find ways to communicate with Japanese speakers to practice my output as well.
さあ、勉強の感じるはいい？
probably wrong use of の - i’m still sensing out grammar
@@niicespiice勉強しているときに幸せを感じます
I haven’t used 感じる (kanjiru/feel) or 感じます in a sentence yet so I hope that it’s correct, but sentence structure and stuff might be off I’m still trynna get used to that and verbs. (my brain is reading it backwards like, feel-happy-time-when-studying for some reason but I know it’s Subject Object Verb etc.. my brain is already rattled)
you can indeed install a japanese keyboard but if its the system that preventing you from doing it then idk
It's pretty simple to install a "japanese keyboard" for windows using your typical English keyboard. At least for windows 10. Go into settings then time and language. Click the language tab then add the language you want. Once installed you can swap between outputting English or Japanese when you type, with windows key+space
@@nathanortiz4598 sadly on windows 11, the issue is that the language pack doesn’t actually install, it acts like it does, but then resets itself automatically and never downloads itself. I tried looking through many threads and forums to fix it but most people came down to just resetting their windows, and I can’t be doing that lmao. but thank you for the recommendation 🫡
Personally, I find that Oriental Pearl is one of the most gatekeepy language channels, and the way she uses her SO as a weird prop for her videos creeps me out.
YES! Also there is something about her content that feels.....exploitative? Her videos on the homeless population or taking her husband to 8-mile "America's Most Dangerous City", or just the critical videos of others. She's horrible
But you see she’s more credible because she dates a Japanese guy 🙃 Gosh I hate how much people tend to fetishize their own partners if they are into anything Asian 🙃 I witnessed so many cases at Uni where women were dating Asian guys just because they are Asian… Or how marrying a Japanese guy was even under profs some kind of status symbol 🙃
the name alone should be enough of a red flag lmfao. white woman with an asian boyfriend who calls herself "oriental" is never a good sign
@@nichijou_techo oh my goodness...I actually really love the homeless people video because she was exposing a hidden side to the country & it was really nice to hear from those people who are usually silenced.
It's kinda wild the ppl in that video were happy to talk to her but some random people on the internet are upset about it 😅
Sorry, but is that not just you projecting onto them? Genuinely asking why you think she "uses" him? He's the one who asked her out in the first place & he seems more than happy to be with her. It's not like he has to be with her
"Theres more than one way to make an omelette" -Oriental "my way is the best way" Pearl, debating MattVSJapan
There are more than one ways to make an omelette, but some omelettes are tastier and looks better than others…
Finally someone who brings that up, it’s hilarious she wants to forgot that she caused this since she gave MattvsJapan a massive platform who at the time was the biggest advocated for immersion, but now she wants everyone to forget she ever did that.
@@reflex9238I’m a fan of mattvsjapan and oriental pearl but I’m confused on why she’s doing this honestly. Matt seems like he stays in his own lane.
@@AuxxiliaryATC Also a fan of both folks. Originally, she was started calling out "fake" polyglots then it evolved into "my way is more efficient than your way". She is a scholar and I do have a lot of respect for her. I'll hold out on how she responds. If she doubles down and continues to be condescending, I'll reconsider my support for her.
@@johnengooyen Seems pretty reasonable, I mean she is very skilled in what she does, but its confusing that she wants to "die on this hill" of what is the most efficient in a subject that tends to have lots of ways to go about learning languages.
A penguin talking about drama about japanese was not on my bingo card this year
I'm really disappointed in the video against you. A person who simply dismisses your ideas because "she knows better" is just wrong. I mean, I learn English over the internet and now I'm in my first year learning Japanese again using this method. If someone says "textbooks are the key to learning or you have to learn it this way" that's just wrong. Please do your thing and don't listen to these people, they have their own methods and if she says immersion learning is bad she's probably speaking against a higher than average percentage of people who learn it this way.
Most people who dismiss the comprehensible input theory have usually only learned one other language besides their native one. I guess that's why they're dismissive on some of your ideas. But I'm glad you're defending your position since, well, you're right.
I have also noticed these people usually believe a native language is acquired in a different fashion from their second or third language. A belief I've always found odd because the biggest evidence as to why CI works is simply them speaking / understanding English.
Alberto, que honda amigo!
As a Japanese, I can completely agree with “practicing writing kanji is useless” www
Sorry for unrelated question but how you find motivation to learn English?I want to do the same with Japanese too
@@ダットさん-54
I don't have any positive motivation. I just want to escape from the real world, which mostly consists of Japanese things in my case. One way is by using English, which helps me forget about what happened to me there.
@@tyddlup almost same
@@kotonoha634 suck to hear that,hope everything will at least go better for you
@@tyddlupI think you are soulmates. You should take contact to each other
Congrats on your UA-camr journey.
"Oh no, UA-camrs who praise the immersion method don't know what they're talking about. I would have never been able to read the Hunchback of Notre Dame in Japanese if I started there" YEAH, that's the damn point. You have to look for something that is *slightly* above your level, as in start easy and work yourself up from there instead of fighting the endboss unequipped. Man, that bit comes off as extremely dishonest from her side, geez...
And, if we're being honest, why read the Hunchback of Notre Dame of all books? Literature is best read in its original language, and if you don't know that, read it in your native language, the one where you're the most confident
I'm Japanese and your videos are very encouraging to me to learn English.
As a non english speaker, The only way i was able to understand english was through immersion, I can speak fluent English and still don't know what an adverb is, I Just kept watching movies , shows, and videos where they speak english and just listen , I don't know how it did not occur to me that i can do the same with japanese, You just earned a sub, Thank you.😊
The only real obstacle with that method will be their champion-grade fucked up writing system. Why do we live in the timeline where Korea did away with hanja ;__;
Kanji's legit been the biggest source of Japanese demotivation for me. Being illiterate wrt words I'd know in my sleep from listening is amazingly frustrating. It's extra fucked up that when I was browsing Japanese and Korean MTG cards to compare the localization, I just spotted 순간마법 _sungan mabob_ in the text of one card and went, waitaminute, _I know that word._ Why? Because I'd acquired _shunkan_ from watching too much anime, and it's the same Chinese loanword in both languages. But I could easily read 순간 because it's written in an alphabet. 瞬間、at that point in time? Not a snowball's chance in Hell. It's insane to be able to read a word in a language I don't know and be illiterate in the one I know better. I'd recognize it now since I've used that example so much, but it's absolutely maddening. And the hordes of people saying the country would sink into the sea if they adopted phonetic writing don't help.
@@Komatik_ I agree, I'm struggling with kanji, I even considerd not learning it and only rely on Katakana and hiragana i knew it's impossible but i thought that maybe if i did a lot's of immersion i can get a hang of the normal daily conversations thus learning to speak more will be easier, The same goes for the Kanji, i thought that maybe learning only katakana and hiragana first will be easier and relying on them might not be the easiest but it's possible, When i Begin to have no problem's recognizing letters, Then Kanji might not be As impossible as i thought it would be,
That's just my advice, about the conversation thing, yes i did it with english always start with the easiest get a hang of it, nothing will be as hard as it seemed at first.
I will not start learning now, i plan to start in my summer brake since this year of school, i will study another languages, Kurdish and french sadly it is not by choice,
anyway i hope that everyone who plans on learning a language to never give up, i can speak i little french, arabic, english, and will learn kurdish this year.
As someone who speaks English tbh I don’t really know what an adverb is myself 😭
@@suraugaili-uw6bn honestly man, probably not good of me, but I've studied this language a long time, I'm intermediate now, I understand between 30-50% of anime at this point, though I still have a long way to go. I never used the input method primarily, but now I do, and I have seen substantial growth in these last two months of using it.
But Kanji...feels more of a detriment to me at my current level, than a saving grace. For example, it is said you should read a language to get better at the language a lot quicker. I would agree, if only it was not kanji...you have to learn more than 10000 words to get fluent, and then need to learn to read those words again :( it's like hey! you might know the word "otoko" or "Jinsei" but you still can't read it. That is really demotivating. If I could read Manga to 30-50% like I understand anime that would be great, but the reality is...that if you just want to be fluent in speaking as quickly as possible, reading can take a back seat, it's too complex I feel to justify for a beginner or intermediate learner. When you can speak the language really well and plan to live in the country, then learning the kanji I feel makes more sense (which is my plan)
The big thing to me is though, at the end of the day, let's say you can't read or write Japanese, and you are in a situation where you can't get by with Hirigana, Katakana and real time translation, then you can just ask "sumimasen, mata nihongo o yonde dekimasen node, kore kanji no imi o tetsudai kure nai no?" or "Sumimasen, kono kanji o yonde dekimasen, tetsudai mo ii desu ka?" etc Is it practical to always ask native speakers? NO! but honestly, if you can speak the language 100% at least then you can rely a bit more on the native speakers around you, and let's say you can read 50% and speak 50%, well...then what's really more important? being able to read more menu's and books? or actually being able to make friends, explore Japan etc?
XD like it sounds terrible, but to me, right now, Kanji just....seems like hell man, and it's the only thing in the language that makes me feel the language is just a pain to study.
@@Singularity-vp9xo Yes my point is to atleast study The letters and Know a Bunch of vocab the rest will be easy
How often do you hear immigrant kids tell you they learned English watching SpongeBob vs every American adult telling you they retained absolutely nothing from high school Spanish? Immersion is king.
It's really funny because Pearl brings up that she's studied for 12 years and yet her intonation is very foreign sounding and her vocabulary in general appears to be lacking just from how she speaks. Then she has the native there for who knows what reason, not even giving any real feedback and basically just nodding along. I wouldn't criticize the native dude too much though since I wouldn't expect a native to have much to comment on learning Japanese as a foreigner anyway. The video is just kinda absurd. そうはいっても動画がバズり炎上されておめでとうございます！
Pride is what makes people look stupid, why would she even make that video😭😭😭
The native guy I believe is her husband
yeah the guy next to her is her husband, I don’t believe he’s that fluent in English so he may not have been able to give much feedback
You could tell that he wasn't fully comfortable with agreeing with her on certain points, but couldn't outwardly disagree.
This. It threw me off the first time I watched her videos, she sounds like a beginner despite marketing herself as fluent... but that's what a lot of polyglots do
I've been learning Japanese for 4 years now and really resonate with your videos, it feels like I'm on the right track. Currently in intermediate hell but after upping my input every day I'm seeing a big jump in my comprehension. I'm also a very extroverted person with a lot of Japanese friends, so I wouldnt agree with that point about "input is for introverts" 😅I just feel I learn more from listening than speaking.
Right there with you in intermediate hell, when will this nightmare end?!!!
Same! I'm five years and also intermediate! just started using the input method 2 months ago and doing good! but...damn man, the memorizing from anki kills me, I remember a word then forget it...this results in 500 words learnt, but about 80-100 forgotten :( it's like taking one step forward and two steps back! very frustrating!
@@DeckardManc85 XD a couple more years friend. The best part is when I ask Chat GPT, "hey GPT what's the difference between this word and this word?" and it's like "oh yes, they are essentially the same word, but are used in slightly different contexts." oh, cool so I can use it like this? "No, you have to use it like this" right...okay, so like this, in this context for this reason? "yes" and then I go through a couple of hundred vocab with this same thing being like "Japan...there is something like too much detail" XD lol
Hopefully with this input method it goes faster! :D
She dismisses immersion learning, and yet that's how the military does it. If I was going to trust anyone to give me an efficient way to do something, it's them.
The point is that you have to combine immersion with study (again, what the military does).
It just seems like she's going into this critique with bad faith, and her reaction just comes off as snooty
the mormons also do immersion learning and they are great at learning languages too. they always learn the language of where they go to proselytize
@srslywtfcl4p404 I've heard that, too.
Her video came off to me as "I went to college and therefore i know better."
I went to college, too, and learned more through having to actually use dialog templates (basically acting) than I did in the classes where I had to use a textbook.
@@shadowfoxx14and as it turns out the person she's criticizing also has a degree in linguistics and second language education ironically enough.
That's the thing traditional learners don't grasp; if you go into any other field, you'll know that it's practice (and immersion in the work) that gets you the most gains. You'll learn more about something in one month of a professional job than you will in a year of school.
Immersion and practice gets you knowledge faster than studying. Studying gets you the technical details immersion and practice will miss. It's that simple.
It’s weird as she tried to say immersion or any government agencies don’t use it, when literally everyone big agency and the government does, heck one guy on UA-cam even had a video on it. They have an insane amount of material to study and they also use immersion to get their soldiers used to the language. “They eat, breathe and sleep in the language”
Of course, the first video I stumble upon on your channel is the one with drama haha… Love how you make language learning so approachable on your channel. You just earned yourself a new subscriber!
I choked on my food at 3:50 when you mentioned your degree and just busted out laughing at the criticism that was thrown at you. I've liked your videos. I've already seen Pearl, MattVsJapan, Migaku, AJATT, Dogen, and every other major JP learning youtuber out there and their advice has not helped as much as MattVSJapan's. That is, until I seen your videos. Learning that you have a degree in Linguistics because of someone criticizing you made this situation extremely comical from my perspective. Keep making videos! :D
It annoys me when people start to critique and misinterpret the video without even understanding what it's about.
I commented on her video, and she even misinterpreted my comment and got defensive as well. I was just saying 'FOR ME' this method works, but that it highly depends on your goals and everyone should do what is best for them, but that the immersion method is GOOD and not a waste of time just because she thinks it is.... then she just kind of threw it in my face... something like 'oh lots of people are just learning as a hobby on the side'.... well my wife is Japanese and I'm trying to get to a native level, so it's exactly what I need to get to where I want to be. I'll admit, she knows a lot more words and grammar than I do, as I'm only arounds N3 level, but her pronunciation is nowhere near the level it should be for her knowledge, in my opinion. that is where IMMERSION helps.
トレントンさんの日本語を聞くとオリエンタルパールより発音的に上手いと気づいちゃってやっぱりネイティブのコンテンツで勉強する方がいいやな
わかる！多分インプット勉強の方法を使ったら、発音がもっと上手になると思うよ
それなｗ
thanks man for sharing your knowledge, ive been studying for years with books and stuff and its just so stressing. I started doing immersion a while back and i have been improving without even realizing, its honestly amazing
I really like your approach. And good for you for staying level headed. Seeing someone react to your video like that could be initially tough to work through. Wish she didn't have to be so reactionary and laugh at your thoughts. Kind of disappointing.
I have met people that REALLY struggle with ambiguity. Like...they refuse to let it be a thing.
it honestly sounds like the people who are against input learning are the ones who learned through textbooks and traditional classes and are perhaps insecure about there being a much better and less painful method, like "how dare you not go through the same pain i did"
i'm not saying they're deliberately doing this, it could be entirely in their subconscious
i would've loved to listen more from the japanese dude next to her, especially when she was arguing about "learning to write kanji is useless", it really seemed like he was gonna say "i mean... maybe it is kinda useless yeah" but she didn't let him talk. me personally i love learning how to write kanji, but i'm fully aware of how useless it is, its mostly for fun. comparing the stroke orders of 右 and 左, or 心 and 必, seeing myself get better at writing (slow and steady), its all really fun for me, but i would never advocate this for anyone willing to learn japanese unless they truly want to do that as well
It's funny because I've learned two languages to a usable level, one through traditional schooling (Swedish, the classes strove to be as monolingual as possible) and one through mass input (English, via video games and discussion forums). Both clearly work but my English level is far higher (admittedly I basically live my life in English and have barely used Swedish for anything except reading food packaging labels. The language has somehow stuck with me in a usable state where I can think in it and speak in it, but more sort of English thoughts said with Swedish words and limited command of native idiom due to disuse).
That immersion works, there's no question: I'm fluent in a foreign language basically entirely thanks to being terminally online.
I think writing practice has helped me a TON in being able to tell them apart, instead of looking like masses of overlaid lines scribbled on top of each other. Which is even more helpful when fonts are often sized for English, which doesn't need as much space to clearly show all the details. Also I decided that for SPECIFICALLY 左 and 右 I no longer care about correct stroke order, lol. There's a very short list that I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna cheat." It feels like they don't even follow their own rules. (For context, I wrote all of the jouyou kanji, without bothering with meanings or readings, just to get used to kanji in general, marking difficult ones and quizzing till I got stroke orders right just by seeing the character and writing them.)
@@Aeroxima i'm really not sure if writing them helps me personally to set them apart, because i started learning kanji already writing them down. so maybe it does!
i feel like learning the radicals/components is potentially the biggest helper, not exactly writing them down, but im sure writing them down has at least *some* benefit to memorization which is likely a lot of cost for little benefit in the long run (but again, i love doing it, so i do it)
Yeah I think for me physically writing kanji (and kana actually) at least a few times helps me see the differences.
But I think using it as a learning method vs memorizing stroke order or working to perfect writing them by hand isn't important. And I think Pearl conflated the two ideas.
@@squeezlepop In my case it was less about memorizing stroke order, and more about having an intuitive understanding of how it generally works. The rare exceptions are just whatever, but being able to see and dissect a kanji quickly I think helps in multiple ways, including quick recognition and looking them up.
I'll also say the way I was doing it was to see it briefly, and them copy it down from memory, which I think is also part of what helped. It's training a skill in and of itself, exactly that kind of quick recognition and remembering what the parts were, because for complex ones trying to just remember 12 strokes at a glance would be really hard. Just "it's one of those, these and then a couple of those" is way more doable, and you build familiarity with radicals/components, and the ability to see and distinguish them quickly, which inherently includes telling them apart.
Unfortunately the site I used is paid, but it made it like a game, where I don't think I'd have done the same with a paper notebook. Instant feedback when a stroke is wrong also takes a lot of the burden off.
So for me, I don't intend to really write them by hand. I was just doing it to help deal with the hell that is kanji, making them more manageable.
your videos and this video aswell are just right, all you say is completely logical and just makes sense, it's how sooooo many of us learned english in the first place and i find the people who say "oh yeah only children can learn a language without studying it and using only input" just ignorant, in reality ANYONE can, I started learning japanese because of your videos, and I am putting in some serious work despite living in a very noisy and overall distracting enviroment, in 2 days it's gonna be a week since i started and I already learned all katakana and hiragana, you insipred me to pick myself up and do something productive, so keep on keeping on brother! One day I will be able to understand 3 languages and I don't care how long or how hard it's gonna be, I. WILL. MAKE. IT.
9 video 40k sub and already one "youtube drama" this is the speedrun level I signed up for
I personally don’t mind which is “more efficient,” textbooks or input, I think what’s more important is actually enjoying the process and I’ve enjoyed input with Japanese music, UA-cam, tv shows, etc far more than reading a textbook. I’ve made lots more progress with that as well, but not everyone learns the same so the difference in view points between you too makes sense. You’ve already said it when you mentioned how nobody (using the word nobody loosely) in Linguistics really had “proven theories,” nor agreed 100%. Anyway, I’m no major in that so I could just be wrong. I enjoy your videos though, it made learning Japanese less of a struggle since it put some things into perspective for me. Keep up the good work!
Pearl has been pretty underwhelming recently. Her whole thing became criticism, and she's casting too wide a net if you're getting caught in it. When I saw her come at a guy with a degree in linguistics, that spoke for itself. The obvious fake polyglots should be called out, sure, but she's getting caught in the "criticism for content" business model and it's a bit sad to witness. She's got cool insights but she's gotta let other people have their methods too instead of just trying to call people out constantly.
It's a common fate for any one-trick pony of UA-cam
I think at the end where she kinda calls youtube viewers introverts in a demeaning way towards the end is exactly why she made that video members only now. Even as I was viewing it she started getting folks calling her out on it.
Until I found your channel my Japanese learning was practically at a stand still, I was following bad advice and not getting many gains from the practice I was doing at the time. After I changed my methods and follow more in line with what you've taught I've noticed exponential growth. To hear someone even try to challenge very helpful advice is comical to me. Thank you for all that you've been doing on UA-cam and happy language learning everyone.
Oriental Pearl's terrible accent in Japanese is the proof in the pudding.
Does it sound as noticeable as her English lisp? I'd never actually seen her videos as side from the thumbnails, so it was a bit of a suprise that she was so lispy
I agree. Knowing how to write kanji outside of the basic stroke orders is a complete waste of time. In my adult life, I almost never handwrite things in English. Everything is done on the computer so spending 2,000 hours memorizing how every kanji is written is just not going to be worth it. Recognizing it in text is really all you have to do and even Japanese people are forgetting how to write a lot of kanji that they know how to read.
Yooo! TBYS? That's a surprise. You should do a video on language learning methinks. Never expected you to be invested in this topic.
After watching your video and trying out some of the tips you mentioned, my Japanese has indeed improved from however I was learning before. Immersion helped a ton, so I guess she just... didn't even try it?
Also Oriental Pearl makes those "Oh they didn't know I speak their language" videos constantly so I automatically disregard everything she says.
They gave no good points tho, even if u did nit give very useless tips (u gave greaf ones) theyre not even giving constructive criticism, instead shes like "oh he doesnt have this one specific kanji in his deck oh nooo" as if thats important. The overall message is whats important and bc if it me and many others are able to know where to begin learning. Thanks trenton
While I'm not interested in learning japanese myself anytime soon, I find your videos quite enjoyable. I like the pacing, and the clarity and nuance of your sentences are enough to me to know you know your stuff. I've been studying how learning works myself for the past 4 years or so - although I started in the context of learning fighting games, and found out over time that a lot of the notions I've explored are much more general than what I expected - and I agree on about everything you said in your videos.
I've fallen into the vocab vacuum for almost 2 years now but your videoes have completely like slapped me in the face of what i need to be doing instead of getting frustrated and burnt out. Your videos are super easy to understand and make so much sense and it's a same people are trying to use you as bait
Listening to "uncomprehensible input" is underrated. At the very beginning, the point isn't to understand anything, it's to train yourself to parse phonemes. It doesn't matter how long you put it off, no amount of textbooks or whatever is going to prepare you.
Perhaps, but I've been stuck with that for a looooong time. I found that it's become a bit harder to listen for understanding, because it's just the automatic response now to sort of let it go in one ear and out the other, just assuming I won't understand it. Same with seeing kanji and thinking I just won't be able to understand it. Nothing that can't be overcome, just sharing my experience. I think it's easier to learn to parse if you have native subtitles, especially if the writing matches the pronunciation, like hiragana and katakana, but kanji make it more difficult (furigana helps). It helps correct your hearing to match and conceptualize it, and catch the stuff that sounds similar. とりあえず was kind of hard to hear at first for me.
I am stuck with incomprehensible input with the two new language I am learning: Tai Ahom(𑜋𑜩𑜒𑜑𑜪𑜨) and Shan/Tai yai(တႆး). The first one is a dead language with no native speakers and only scholars or people who want to connect with that culture learn it. The second one is mostly spoken in the Shan State of Myanmar. There is literally only one youtube channel teaching in English. It's way easier to learn English and Japanese because there is plenty of content in the internet.
It is still non efficient compared to other methods of studying.
Sure it can be useful but what amount is needed for what amount of progress ?
Being efficient is not only about the progress you make because you will see progress no matter the method given unlimited time.
@@naymeda8716 You have to start listening eventually. Textbook exercises won't get you there.
@@dycedargselderbrother5353 i agree but uncomprehensible is not efficient at 100%, it needs balance
Scandalous
apology video next week
@@トレントン please make it into a song like that one lipstick lady did
@@トレントン with tears and ukelele now
@@トレントンPull out the ukulele bro 😔
A huge part of language learning for me was the motivation of knowing how to read the things I'm interested in.
If The Hunchback of Notre Dame is your passion.. Why not use that as a study material? You're getting words out of it that truly mean something to a subject you're interested in
In my experience input works... Sure I was 7, but at that I age my parents moved us from the UK to France. Within six months my comprehension skills were enough that I was no longer in a school where they taught or spoke English. There is a lot to be said about the elasticity of a child's brain, but at the end of the day, that mass exposure combined with the lack of choice make it so that I went from not knowing a single word of French to being fully fluent in less than a year.
The eternal fight between pedagogy and linguistics. I always am taken aback by attending linguistics conferences because there are so many studies, theories and conclusions that have no material reality in either teaching or learning.
Input theory and textbooks can live side-by-side but shouldn't be used as sole methods which I think most of your videos touch on. (Getting a base knowledge of grammatical structure then learning language through input and correction)
100% putting it behind a paywall gives me the impression she's wrong and knows it
Ive been applying your method and this is the longest streak of Japanese learning i ever did and im actually enjoying this journey compare to when i had to sit down and a write down notes and kanji by forcing myself to remember. Seeing how you motivated me too start trying to pursue learning Japanese again. I would too thank you very much for helping
Instead of saying "no don't do that!", maybe they should've opted to investigate/explore why different methods of learning exist.
I learned English by doing a lot of listening and reading, often collecting words I didn't understand and studying them for later. This was fun. I don't see why this wouldn't work in Japanese, so I applied it after watching your series of videos. It's working great so far.
It's made the past year of painful slogging through textbooks and apps a lot more fruitful.
I found your channel by accident, and now I found the oriental pearl thanks to this video, and tbh my life was better without knowing her, I am tired of this youtubers with egomaniac syndrome,that look everyone over the shoulder, specially westerns ones, but yeah this internet we pass from the society of the spectacle to the society of ego. On the other hand I have to native language by born and always I wanted to learn english but was quite impossible for me, I learn it with the immersion method due I was not available to have any conversation in English until I move to London (God bless the British pubs that was my best school) and now I am living in Japan and I am trying to use kinda the same method but with a bit of help because is not the same(and I am working with English not Japanease), and as you mention this is a long run, anyway all the best luck and I love your sense of humour, keep going.
I'm not really sure why she approached this in such an inflammatory way, she clearly has good experience and has a very valid view point, but to share that with others you don't need to tear someone else down
The click bait queen of language learning is at it again.
Yeah I find Oriental Pearl to be quite hypocritical in this regard. She talks about how clickbait is terrible because of all the people who DON'T WATCH the video and just take it for what it says in the title, which in my opinion, is dumb... If anyone just accepts a UA-cam title at face value, that's their problem.
But also, her videos are massively clickbaity in their titles... She just has a different definition of clickbait that happens not to include her own videos.
Man I cannot stand her with the face-palming no no no before you even finish your sentence. I hope you speed run to become the biggest language learning UA-camr polyglot there is.
i never thought a penguin would’ve made me actually keep my streak and stay motivated to learn, but here i am ever since watching your first video, and my motivation has remained at an all time high! thanks to you, the pressure of studying a language has been lifted and i just enjoy my input through shows i’ve been already enjoying in english, and i’ve noticed great progress! at first, watching all these motivational how to learn a language videos were a rabbit hole that i couldn’t actually gain much from. but guess that has changed with your video now :’) so thank you!
No hate to Pearl, since no reason to be spreading hate, but I really like how you took a respectful approach towards this and saying, "oh maybe I worded that wrong", but I disliked how she seemed to just insult or belittle things. I don't know. Textbooks helped me learn, but I feel like input and immersion has done more for me in learning the language than textbooks have. Good vid mate. You do you, boo
All of your advice has been exactly what I've been thinking since starting Japanese myself a number of years ago and is probably one of the best starting points out there for anyone just starting. Keep it up!
Its been about a month since I saw your vid and started taking things seriously and I have made real genuine progress that im proud of, so you’ve done something right
I’m glad you’re able to achieve good progress.
Your immersion method really helped me with my korean ear. I am able to listen to things once and understand the words I know right away. It’s only been about a month since I watched the immersion video of yours and my Korean skills skyrocketed after that.
I started learning english with metal songs and a dictionary, I translated the words literally just so grasp what the songs talk about, then I got access to cable tv and started to listening series and movies with subtitles and that help me to associate english to my language and was able to understand/translate, then finally have some english lessons trough public school, I was pretty bad at general school, but english was so easy just because I already had that submersion in the language
Very maturely and confidently responded. Props to you, sir. 👌
im japanese native speaker and i didnt know the meaning of 考証, but i felt this is more of something i need to work on instead of laugh at.
Your video helped me break the barrier I had of thinking it was too difficult to learn. I remember the first time I saw it in my recommended I passed on it, then went back the next time I saw it. Considering your method is free, and passive, it doesn't hurt to try! You've been a big help. Arigato!
It mainly seemed like she didn't want to feel like the time she spent studying the "normal" way was invalidated by hearing your methods that suggest a different approach. The way she references low morale and all the time she spent with her books; it seems like she just didn't want people to think that studying normally is a bad thing or that she wasted her time doing it, which is obviously not the takeaway here.
That said, I do think insinuating that people who prefer an input method are "insecure" in some way is a bit much.
She told me to not to mistake academic criticism of your channel for blasting. Then I called out her smirk and laugh when she commented on your advice. And no response from her and her making it members only shows she herself can’t take academic criticism. Hypocritical and just bad behavior. 🤦♂️
I also criticized how she never fully watched all your videos on why you didn’t emphasize writing kanji. She wants to make a jail bait being video without getting evidence to back her argument.
Then in her video after her bashing she advertises her tutoring in the description box.
The best evidence for “immersion learning” or “Input learning” by Stephen Krashen is a study by Heidi M Feldman. Its an article named “How young children learn language and speech: Implications of theory and evidence for clinical pediatric practice”.
I think your videos are helpful due to the fact that I accidentally learn how to comprehend and speak english in intermmediate level just by listening to self help podcast, in the beginning it was difficult for me but i gradually increase my vocabulary just by mining vocabularies in the podcast that I had been watched and also through book that I wanna learn and by accumulating vocabularies through it and currently I don't have any idea what's happened then i just realized that I already know how to write and speak, I don't even practice how to speak but I managed to do it. For almost 2 years this is the only thing that I did, listening , mining, reading book that I'm curious about, well your right about "Eventually you'll get there". That's exactly what happened to me without even realizing it and now I'm completely convince because of your videos and also based on my experience. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK BRUH 👊
The cheeky correction of her mispronouncing 漢字検定 lol
Does she by chance sell language learning products which promote ideas which you denounce? or is she maybe sponsered by such products?
Someone else commented that she has a sponsor link or other link to japanesepod101 in her descriptions, which would make sense if so
Otherwise I don't know but I find it pretty likely (that or insecurity the way she speaks of her own learning and cuts off his video to mock her interpretation of what he's trying to say).
13:20 if that's how you decide whether a piece of information presented to you is useful/true or not then Incompetence is all there is to you, pearl.
💯
I was part of the first generation of spanish people who learned english in elementary school, that was 6 years, plus 6 years in high school. 12 years for basically only knowing how to read.
I didn't really learned to use and became fluent in english until I found a funny YT channel which subtitled every conversation in gameplay videos. After that I became more confortable listening to english podcasts and the rest is history.
The only other major bump in my english proficiency was at work, when I had to defend some work my team had done to a guy who was getting mad at us for no reason.
Immersion works. I guess the difference is how much traditional education every different person need to reach the point where immersion and study clicks.
I pretty much checked out when she started willfully misinterpreting your arguments and omitting important words from your statements to make you and your viewers seem like losers. Really just looks like engagement bait.
Keep doing your thing kyoudai. We're all behind ya.
To be fair, there were little to no arguments from her, besides ,,no, my books. And no , i've learnt it this way."
So i wouldnt take it too harshly.
The most disappointed i am is in her demeanor, that immersion is just for insecure people.
All benefits of it aside, but the hell are you supposed to do for example, if there are no classes or outlets for that in your vicinity.
Congrats on your first drama!
For me it was the same for english, i was just on youtube a lot and adapted.
Immersion method has been proven to be effective for a long time. In my country the kids who live in the nothern mountain region are poor and some dont even go to school, yet many of them speak english fluently just because their towns are tourist attractions so they work as tourist guides and speak with foreigners all the time.
I think I'm more motivated when I listen to something I don't know, then catch a word I recently learned and I'm like "Wow I know that one!" and feel proud of myself lol
Hi, Trenton! I don't know if you remember me from my other comments, but i keep doing the method you showed and I'm getting pretty good results for my first month of Japanese!
I'm doing Anki and immersing with podcasts, anime, games and generally watching content i like in Japanese. I did not understand a single thing in my first week, I would read kana at the pace of a snail because i didn't remember the sounds, and all of the podcasts i watched were total fuzzy for me. I'm 1 month in now and I can understand enough of intermediate podcasts to have a base of understanding what the person's talking about, and I'm getting some random phrases from anime too!
All of this to say that it's slowly working, and that your advice is awesome. Also, congrats on your first drama video
I'm with you, because almost all my English came from internet and input! I don't like to judge and negate any kind of tool when speaking about the learning process because everything is valid, what'll go to determine the amount we absorve is a mix of necessity x desire. We learn a lot complex subjects and things just because we want to, take for example games and the tons of info we simple... learn by input.
Thanks again for one more golden content video! If I may, I would like to request you to record more japanese videos for us learners to have one more input!
I HEAVILY agree with russian dude 😭🙏
youtube speedrun is working for you like for no one else (please never change the song in the background)
As someone trying to follow a similar pattern to what you recommend, I still see the benefits of textbooks and class instruction. Input is extremely important and getting as much of it as possible is hard, my japanese exploded once I managed to get myself watching japanese content purely in japanese as a significant portion of my conent consumption