As a monoglot, I find it amazing that people can adapt that way. Just the theory and study of another language is trying enough: the actual physical movements (mouth, tongue and lungs) must be learned through muscle memory, which is an entirely different mode of learning and often intensely more difficult and time-consuming. You can't intellectualize being "mouth fluent", it's simply a matter of doing it for hours a day for years and years. I had a Japanese professor in college who wrote amazingly in English but sounded like Mr. Miyagi when he lectured.
@@jplovesthequads Why wouldn't there be? Using one word to explain your exact state or position is a lot faster that negating a different noun, the latter of which may or may not imply several other possibilities in some cases.
@@harveywallbanger3123 In a way, it helps that English and Japanese are so different. In English my voice is relatively high pitched in my opinion, and my Japanese followed suit when I was using a typical gaijin accent, but after studying Japanese phonetics and thus using the back of my mouth and different tongue positions etc. my Japanese voice has ended up being much deeper. I think it must be the same for people who have reached a very high level like Dogen; it's like two completely different sets of sounds, so the switch is clear if you've got it on tap. He certainly sounds more spritely and slightly higher pitched when he speaks English.
@@harveywallbanger3123 A friend from Spain said that I sound older when I speak English instead of Spanish, it's fairly normal. I think it's normal to have a different tone or pitch when speaking another language to help with distinguishing them.
True, Dogen's playing some pro 4D Chess here. However... Why not have a conversation and then proceed to Eigo jōzu them? You'll most likely get a reply or at least then maybe they'll understand how it feels to be jōzu'd.
I found the katakana thing super funny. most kanji are so much easier to make look good than katakana it's actually insane. For instance I wrote a 者 last night, sat back and just thought "damn, that looks good". Meanwhile I write カレー and I want to cry it looks so ugly. It seems like it should be so much easier but it's simplicity is what makes it so hard to get right
@@JynIsBored wa is a topic marker, ga is a subject marker. By not understanding the difference in English grammar the twit'er can't explain it properly.
@@jameshart8523 I really don't think he's actually joking, even though it sounds kind of funny. Like, most native English speakers (myself included until I started learning Japanese and had to think about it more) have no idea about concepts such as the topic, subject, object etc etc.
I'm with you on the kanji learning. I learned all the radicals in a fairly short time just because I felt it would help a lot with recognition, which I think it did, but otherwise I think by just reading stuff and building vocabulary you can learn them through repetition fairly simply. If you know the word and not the kanji it's often not too hard to guess what the kanji is for from context, though I'll admit I've found Matt's suggestion of using the Yomichan plugin to be an invaluable tool. Overall it seems more natural and ensures you don't spend time learning obscure ones you'll rarely see. I seriously do suggest people learn the radicals from the outset, though.
My problem is that I can read the Kanji but can’t write it. It’s like remembering faces of people, you remember the face but it is difficult to remember each feature on its own.
I agree as well. I know this is kind of an endless discussion, and different people have different preferences, but having tried both (learning radicals and Kanji on their own in great detail versus just learning vocab), I found that I actually remembered more the vocabulary way. In the end it also comes down to efficiency. Learning by vocab is inherently efficient: the more relevant a word is to you, the more often you come across it, and the better you will memorize it's Kanji. Learning Kanji in isolation on the other hand always means that you will try to save a lot of information that is ultimately not useful to you. You are therefore wasting effort and straining and frustrating yourself, which can often lead to worse retention even for those Kanji you actually need.
@@TomMRF I agree about the repetition. And maybe it has something to do with context as well. When learning Kanji in isolation you lack of context which in my case doesn't help memorization. And I was totally at a loss when two or more kanji were put together, even if I know their individual meanings.
@@zaharar7818 I've found the solution to this is to write every kanji/word you learn a LOT. It sort of gets internalized very fast that way, at least for me
@@zaharar7818 I've seen enough people that bothered to learn writing and stroke order say it ended up being useless in day to day life that I'm not putting time into it that could be better spent elsewhere. It's up to you one way or another and a lot of people can learn them better through repeated writing, but when you already remember them it feels (to me) like an unproductive use of precious time.
Hearing "real Dogen" where you're translating on the fly and everything isn't polished and perfect on the 4th take gives me a lot more confidence. I thought when I had to pause or re-state something I was processing in my head that was a mistake, but it seems a lot of people do it. I also learned a lot of new words from anime and even drama. Watching an aquarium drama I learned all kinds of animal names, tanks, pipes, and I think one was even about captive breeding of Tuna. Thanks for the jouzu nihongo, brother.
When you acquire a second language like dogen you never translate anything in your head. When he pauses, it's the same reason why you would pause when you're talking in your native language, to come up with a better way to say whatever it is you want to say.
0:43 This is actually the kanji-learning approach I see advocated for the most, and I personally agree as well. I also used an Anki deck based on Remembering the Kanji to first demystify the characters, but I've never once studied the individual readings of each one. I just have an intuitive sense for them now after learning a ton of vocab words.
Absolutely. RTK is really amazing for learning to distinguish and remember the core meanings of the Kanjis. Once one is able to recognize a Kanji, the readings will come naturally with more and more vocab. Learning multiple readings for over 2K characters, especially when the readings are not unique, is not optimal unless one has genius level memory.
@@quanta8382 I agree. First, kanji meanings; second, words & vocab & reading; third, listening & pronunciation. We are talking about years and years of studying with no reward whatsoever.
Honestly I'm not sure you even need to study English meanings of kanji via something like rtk either I've just been studying words without studying kanji in any form and I've not found having to learn to recognize the kanji along with the words that use it to cause me much trouble (the only times i really have trouble with them is with the words that have more esentric/unpredictable readings, that studying kanji isn't going to help with anyways) so I find I remember the kanji words just as well as the kana only words And i gradually pick up the meanings and readings from encountering the words that use them, so sometimes I'm still able to predict what a kanji word means or how it's read even without knowing what the assigned English meaning of the kanji is or all its readings The only thing i lack doing it this way is writing, but honestly how often will i need to write them anyways, i don't even write regularly in english But this is just my experience and how i learn, if you find it easier having used rtk or something keep doing that, the goal is to learn however you find works for you
@@quanta8382 RTK is outdated, and there is a much better way, really just go watch Matt vs. Japan, he created a new deck better than rtk and he was a former rtk supporter, surely you know of refold?
Starts conversation with bad Japanese to break the ice and gets 日本語上手。 *Proceeds to speak 日本語 better than a native* 日本語上手 the native. *Confused why got rejected, instructions not clear*
They will 日本語上手 you even if you message in perfect japanese. Its their way of saying "i did a nice thing and complimented him to feel good before ghosting him" lol.
How many people look at the word "television" and think: "Okay so tele- is ancient Greek meaning 'distant', and vision refers to sight so this means..." and so on? No one does that. You see the word television and you know that it refers to that netflix machine sitting in your living room. And then combined with the knowledge of other words like telephone, teleport, telescope, telepathy etc. you understand what "tele-" means even though you didn't look it up or have someone explain it to you. Imagine if people trying to learn English were asking "Bro how do I memorize all these Latin and Greek prefixes or suffixes?". Then imagine if there was a group of people trying to scam these innocent English-learners by telling them they need to devote 3 months to learning some Greek/Latin words before they can start studying the English language proper? Wouldn't that be ridiculous.
I agree with you to a certain point, but some kanji studying can still be helpful. Because kanji aren't as analogous to words, as their are to letters. Even if you don't know what 'tele' means, you can still read it because you know the alphabet. A kanji instead is more like just a bunch of random scribbles. And you need to recognize them to learn words, even if you don't need to know their meaning.
@@dorsal937 I agree, that "some kanji studying can still be helpful", but then again, so can studying Greek/Latin affixes help in learning English. I also think that your point strengthens my point in a sense. For example 生 meaning life/birth is "sei" in some compound words and "jou" in others, but it becomes "I. kiru" in "to live", "U. mu" in "to give birth", "Ha. eru" in "to sprout", "Na. ru" in "to bear fruit", "Nama" in "raw"/"natural" and probably many many more. You are making the argument that this means it is beneficial to study this kanji and it's readings. I'm saying it's way easier to learn all these words when they come up in speech, without worrying about attaching the kanji to it initially. Also,on the point of kanji being "random scribbles", as you learn some words, the phonetic components in their kanji will become easier to recognize. For example, every single kanji that includes 扁 is always "hen", 采 is always "sai", 五 almost always "go", 官 almost always "kan", 司 almost always "shi" and so on. you eventually develop a feel for this and become able to guess the reading of words you see for the first time and reading it out in your head lets you remember the word because you have heard it before while listening. My point is you don't need to "learn kanji in order to learn words". Speech exists, and there are no kanji in speech. A lot of new learners think that Meaning, Kanji and Pronunciation form a triangle but honestly it's more like a line from pronunciation to meaning, and a line from kanji to pronunciation. If you see a new word for the first time, you can try to pronounce it in your head, which might give you the word you are looking for. While listening, the connection between pronunciation and meaning is everything and kanji are irrelevant. While reading, there is a triangle between kanji, word and meaning but you can also just use the pronunciation and context to find the meaning. If you are seeing the phrase 木を植える for the first time, you can think "ok, it's something to do with trees and it's kun'yomi ends with 'eru'. ", which might remind you of that one time you heard the word "ueru" while listening. Still, to each, their own. I am not saying "never look up kanji", I am saying "don't try to chart the entire course before you even set sail. Even if it sound like a good idea on paper, you are just missing out on all the great shortcuts.". At earlier levels, kanji are used in many compounds like 生 is used in 700 words, 一 in 1700, 人 in 900, 日 in 1400. But later you get so many kanji that are only used in 1 or 2 words at which point, trying to study the kanji for so many of them leads to burnout really fast.
@@haydarinna631 Everything you said makes sense, but you're assuming I said things I didn't. I still think it's beneficial do some upfront work on kanji. What I'm talking about is the way MattvsJapan suggests which is focusing on recognition: looking at a kanji and going 'oh yeah, I know this, this is X', where X is a keyword (and doing so for popular kanji). This is something you already need to do to learn a word (whereas you don't need to do it with affixes at all, again, because kanji are more like letters). Now you can pick up recognition while learning words, and as you said there are shortcuts involved because you see kanji in context. However, there are also advantages in learning kanji on its own, because kanji has lots of reocurring patterns, so you can learn similar kanji together and incrementally which is perfect for mnemonics. Now I can't prove you that it's the best way to learn, but it feels efficient to me. But yeah, I do agree that doing more work than that on kanji is sub-optimal. You really only 'learn' them by making connections as you consume the actual language.
"anime is a good resource to learn japanese!" Me, fan of One Piece: "at some point i will be really great at saying "pirate king" and probably nothing else"
7:47 I've legit broke the ice with a Japanese girl before by saying『 これはペンです』after a friend of mine introduced me with "He's studying Japanese!". Poor Japanese is an effective strategy!
I, a Japanese who can't write katakana beautifully, decide to restart to practice katakana (I bought a textbook to practice katakana a few years ago but I quit doing it soon). and the way you learn new words is the same as mine :)
I super agree with studying words that contain kanji rather than all the readings! If you see 米 for the first time, it doesn't really mean much to know that it can be pronounced こめ、べい、and まい. Just learn the key vocab and you'll grow to understand the key readings. I love this format of video btw!!
Memorizing kanji is difficult, even for Japanese people. A Japanese elementary school student learns 1,000 kanji by doing homework for six years, writing the same kanji dozens of times in a notebook.
I don't speak Japanese but I read and speak Chinese as my first language. On that 'how do you learn kanji' issue, Dogen's advise surprisingly matches how chinese people learn chinese characters (hanzi as we call them in chinese). Not only is it less boring, but it helps you to understand the hanzi/kanji better. For example, according to dictionaries (both chinese and japanese) 雷 means 'thunder' or 'explosives', but this word '雷人' (shocking/surprising), newly created by chinese internet folks, has nothing to do with 'thunder' nor 'explosives'. My explanation is, unlike English 'words', hanzi/kanji doesn't have well defined meanings, but it gives you a vague impression of something: 雷 could be the thunder itself but it can also remind you the explosive/shocking effect of thunder, thus words like 魚雷 (torpedo) or 雷人. This kind of understanding cannot be obtained by remembering the meanings of a single hanzi/kanji, but by learning numbers of words in which that single hanzi/kanji has different meaning but gives similar impression. In short, don't bother learning kanji's one by one, just read more text and study more words.
@@魚炭 bruh I said I don' read japanese😅, I google translated it and I hope I understood your argument. I think you want to say that kanji are different from hanzi because meanings of kanji remain static, they simply have multiple meanings. Maybe you are right, but my point is that the meanings of hanzi/kanji vary so drasticly that learning them on their own is probably very confusing. This confusion can be reduced if you find the subtle connections of those meanings by learning words that contains the kanji/hanzi. It doesn't matter whether the meanings are static or not. You talked about japanese doesn't make any new words with kanji but with katakana. I disagree: I call that rewriting words, not making. japanese made quite a lot of kanji words in the past (忍者，警察，民主，probably 鱼雷 as well), to chinese speaker, they are constructed just the same as any other hanzi words, which means to certain extend, JP did use kanji just like how CH uses hanzi, just nobody do it these days. '雷人' is indeed meaningless in japanese (except as a person's name), it is exclusivly used on chinese internet, not even in spoken/written language. However it is not a 外来语, it is created by chinese internet folks, and clearly they didn't consult dictionaries for 雷. Which proves my point on how hanzi are used
@@benjaminmei6644 I'm studying Chinese, so I'm sure I understand the difference between kanji and hanzi. Japanese borrowed hanzi to write the Wago language(大和言葉). That is where the distinction between on-yomi and kun-yomi arose. There is no tone (four tones) in Japanese. Katakana loanwords(カタカナ外来語), of course, were not created by the Japanese (just tracing the voices of foreign languages). There are about 2000 common kanji in Japan, but probably more hanzi are used on a daily basis in China. I recently bought a Simplified Chinese(簡体字) exercise book. I can't speak Chinese yet, but I think it's a very interesting language.
Dogen is right, you can make girls reply to you often by purposely speaks in bad Japanese So you'll get nihongo jouzu'd and you'll both will become closer All is according to -keikaku- plan xD
Thanks for answering my question. I think I've spent a total of 4 hours on pitch accent (probably 1,5 hours if I subtract youtube debates with japanese from zero), So I guess is premature to give up. Weirdly I kind of reached the same conclusion of having my more impresive skills centered arround reading and writting. My end goal is probably more about being able to read Dogen (the 13 century monk) than to sound like Dogen and maybe to write nice looking postcards.
As someone who couldn't originally hear the pitch accent but can now, I'll tell you how I did it. I started studying mandarin, every syllable has a different pitch accent on it. Go do two or three classes with a real teacher and explain to them that learning tone is your priority. It's all pitch accent all the time and now coming back to Japanese it's really easy for me to hear the pitch accent differences in Japanese. You don't have to study mandarin, Cantonese might even work better but any tonal language will definitely help you in this area.
@@hamsolo474 I'm Chinese, but for most of my life I never knew pitch accents were a thing in Japanese and I just assumed it was up to the speaker's accent. So I noticed them but didn't pay much attention. Now I can recognise when the pitch accent is off most of the time, but I'm not confident about speaking with accurate pitch accent. Kinda like the difference between being able to read and being able to write kanji.
@@krnsk563 As a native English speaker who began learning Mandarin as an adult, learning to hear Chinese tones was a big struggle for me, so I pay a lot of attention to them. I'm guessing this could be one of those differences between natives and language learners. My Chinese teacher would often ask me where the stress in an English word would be and I would rarely be able to explain it, it's just natural for me but he's really aware of it when he's speaking English.
There is an Anki deck for learning pitch accent. You can edit it so it has audio on the front and pitch accent on the back. Just going through that for a bit helps.
Glad you mentioned that Kanji method! Learning kanji as words rather than as ‘kanji’ just seems like the most optimal technique, and is actually kind of fun. Also, a big thing Matt from MvJ says is that you remember Kanji almost like a face of a person. Without seeing them, you may not be able to accurately draw the fine details of Dogens eyes, nose, mouth, facial structure etc. but when you see his face you instantly recognise it as him. Likewise, if you told me to draw a certain kanji, I probably couldn’t, but if I see it I absolutely 100% know what it is. Anyways love you as always Dogen ❤️
When was the last time you thought negatively of someone with a strong accent who made grammar mistakes in English? Never, right? It doesn't happen. People will know Japanese is not your first language. They won't be upset with you. Stop worrying about making mistakes, everyone.
It does happen, but most people don't mind. Some people do, but you have to remember that they are just assholes. At least in Spanish, there are people who very much think negatively of you if you speak Spanish with a strong English accent.
Jokes on you Dogen, I started my Japanese learning journey with Katakana and wrote purely in Katakana for a solid half a year. I like to pretend that never happened though.
ngl seeing dogen pause to structure his sentence, and then restructure, then pause again to restructure is *so encouraging*. like, if the god of japanese himself is confused, then who am i not to?
My personal advice to add onto his advice for learning kanji would be to use a method like one in the "Remembering the Kanji volume 1". This will give you a firm base of kanji meanings and help you identify and distinguish similar looking kanji as well as write them. From there I totally agree with Dogen's advice. I only recommend this because I have found it incredibly effective in my own studies.
This is basically Matt's approach in the refold japanese guide. You basically start with an RRTK deck in anki, which is just focused on recognition (from what I remember, normal rtk just also has a writing component in addition, which slows down the learning process), and after you finish it you can move to learning kanji directly from context and words in vocabulary type of decks like core2/6/10k or sentence mining decks and reading.
Learning Kanji through WaniKani initially in learning Japanese, the whole onyomi and kunyomi thing was a focus for me, but after discovering immersion learning, Matt, heisig, anki, and all that, that whole process looks like such a joke now, and incredibly inefficient towards learning how to read.
Wanikani is good for learning kanji. That's all really, although it's can be a good base if you are dedicated enough. Heisig is the same thing mind, just, well, more prescribed.
@@tams805 Yea I see what you're saying. I think its pace is just the main problem. With heisig and anki you can get through the jouyou kanji much faster, getting you on the way to reading quicker, that was my experience at least. I remember seeing MattvsJapan's video criticizing wanikani and while I don't think it's terrible, I was convinced that there was a better and free way to go about what they were trying to do
I too decided to focus on being able to read words first, and as time goes on I'll try to pick up the individual meaning of each kanji, followed (slowly) by writing the ones I see the most of that I find interesting/amusing. It works for me so far, and enabling myself to get into reading asap instead of studying writing is quickly improving my Japanese.
I recently told my one of my Japanese followers on Twitter that I learn Japanese in an informal way, by only mimicking sentences and normal conversations when replying to them and only truly say something on my own when I am confident like saying おはようございます and when replying おはありです (their internet shortcut for "thanks for saying good morning to me") every morning. He was impressed on my method of learning and wants to follow my example which I humbly not recommending to him.
I think the best way to explain the difference between wa and ga is: 'Watashi wa Watashi ga America-jin desu' (Doing it in Romanji for the folks just starting learning Japanese) is a grammatically correct sentence. translated to English it is: "As for me, I am an American." In Japanese, the subject is almost always understood from context, but when you absolutely have to make it clear who or what the subject of the sentence is, or when you are changing subjects, use 'ga.'
For the last guy, when you get 日本語上手'd, just reply with "ジョーズ？でかいサメ?何？" It'll break the ice and show her that you're funny. Or maybe it won't. I think it's funny though. lol
HOW TO LEARN PITCH: Sing in your local free choir (Especially opera/religious with a real conductor), learn the basics. Pitch-deafness or Congenital amusia can be trained depending on how serious it is. Tonal language users are a proof of it even though it can cause problems sometimes even for natives. (it's exhausting at the beginning, but then your learning slope is the same, my sister did this)
As a Canadian-born Chinese who learned Chinese writing from a young age, I have to agree that katakana is difficult to make to look good (like English is difficult to sing beautifully in). The roundness of hiragana makes it easy enough to render half-beautifully, but katakana is angular and kind of crunchy and yet it demands to aspire to the same aesthetic principles. The contradiction is quite difficult to manage.
probably the best way is to first learn the kanji simply for it's meaning, then learn the pronunciations when you run into words. then by knowing the meaning of the kanji, it helps with learning the word, and learning the word helps you learn the pronunciation. 正しく一石二鳥。
I don't know how accurate this is but for functionality I find this works: When the subject and the topic are the same, one of them is dropped. So if it was koko wa koko ga hiroi desu then you could drop the topic or the subject depending on what you'd rather have focused on (the topic or the adjective). So they aren't interchangeable but have instances where they would repeat and are thus omitted. I'm going to reiterate that this is my own technique and I am terrible at linguistic analysis like this so please do not debate me (debating yourself is fine) as I have zero confidence in my own theory.
This totally hits home. Last week we had a quick test in the class. Teacher said "Learn all the new kanji, they will be on the test." But then the day came. And half of that was just katakana and especially difficult spelling words. The moment we all saw those words to translate, we just became terrified. That moment when kanji is easier than an alphabet....
Watching unusual Japanese movies to acquire new vocabulary --> this is actually what I do with English too. I would watch different variety of English program/movies to expose myself to new words/phrase/terminology.
For the person trying to get better at pitch perception, I'd recommend trying to learn singing. I say *trying* because you don't have to be a pop star to perceive pitch but you will get a feel for it very soon when you're starting out. You can stop as soon as you feel like you're not tone deaf anymore. Find a song that's in your vocal range and record yourself singing. When you listen to it back and notice you're off pitch, try to figure out if you're too low or too high. If you already play an instrument, try transcribing.
when you're somewhat new to learning japanese and your vocabulary consists of hundreds and hundreds of out of the ordinary words from anime, and like 200 of the common "N5" words >< . This is why you need a little formal study mixed in with your anime "immersion" lol...
I can't entirely deny that assertion. I fairly often get a "😮 how do you know that word / phrase?" reaction from my wife (Japanese). Yet I can't for the life of me remember how basic Japanese grammar like wa/ga/etc is used.
7:42 I’ve seen that on Twitter before 🤣🤣🤣Someone had like a big crush on a Japanese cosplayer and that person started to write in Japanese to talk to the cosplayer
My wife gets angry at me when someone tells me I speak good Japanese and I reply that I don't think my Japanese is all that good yet... But hey, at least I can understand what her granny is saying. Even though her granny doesn't seem to grasp the concept that I do understand her.
She probably thinks her language is the hardest so literally cannot grasp the concept that a foreigner could possibly understand what she is saying, it's quite common in Spanish as well.
on learning kanji < as far as I know that is the method matt recommends for learning how to read kanji (through words that show up in immersion). But first you learn the English meaning for a bunch of kanji using mnemonics as in the book "remembering the kanji", based on their parts. I think he recommends what he calls RRTK, so google refold RRTK and it should come up.
I think that the RRTK method was what he recommended in the precursor to Refold (his language learning method), which was called the Mass Immersion Approach. Refold recently announced an Anki deck which contains vocab, but is also for the purpose of learning kanji through said vocab
You said that when foreigners are studying 漢字 do not try to meomorize onyomi and kunyomi at the same time. Rather, meomorize the word and the kanji for it together. I am Japanese . I totally agree with you. Also, that is the way Japanese children learn new 漢字. By the way, my home town is 竹田市 on 豊肥線😉
I get what you mean about learning more atypical words from Anime less grounded in reality or niche media. I'm a fan of the Dynasty Warriors/真·三國無双 series, and I'm learned some military terms from the Japanese version. 例えば 「軍師」とか「 火計」とか 、 そんなこと みたいです。 「義兄弟」 ということも 普段な言葉じゃありません。
It's useful to have musical ear to notice pitch accent. I like more repeat after woman's voice (not anime high pitched girl) cause I have a low voice and their pitch range but octave down better suits my speaking pitch range
i trained my ear to hear pitch accent by setting up a pitch display (spectrogram?) on audacity, putting on condensed anime audio and staring at it playing for 45 minutes it works really well and its not as boring as it seems because its almost like watching the anime normally
About learning kanji, YES! I can't recommend enough, to learn words > to learn kanji by themselves. I am no expert, but my take on this is for example: if you learn the word 会社 (kaisha ; company) then tadah! You already learned two of the most common readings of the kanji AND also a common word. 3 for the price of 1, instead of just trying to drill kanji in your brain for hours and then forget it next week (that's what I used to do... haha...)
Japanese pitch-accent and pronunciation lessons: www.patreon.com/dogen
....and there i was, on my path to become the next katakana master
Go Rafi Go !
カタカナマスター！
@@amadeosendiulo2137 kasakana masutaa? :P
@@Saulesme シャッドアップ!That was my 12 キー keyboard's fault!
@@amadeosendiulo2137 hehe, im just joking. It made me think of 傘仮名, a mysterious new umbrella script :D
The way he instantly becomes aggressively American on the word trench is amazing
As a monoglot, I find it amazing that people can adapt that way. Just the theory and study of another language is trying enough: the actual physical movements (mouth, tongue and lungs) must be learned through muscle memory, which is an entirely different mode of learning and often intensely more difficult and time-consuming. You can't intellectualize being "mouth fluent", it's simply a matter of doing it for hours a day for years and years. I had a Japanese professor in college who wrote amazingly in English but sounded like Mr. Miyagi when he lectured.
@@harveywallbanger3123 。。。。theres a word to just say you don't speak any other languages?
@@jplovesthequads Why wouldn't there be? Using one word to explain your exact state or position is a lot faster that negating a different noun, the latter of which may or may not imply several other possibilities in some cases.
@@harveywallbanger3123 In a way, it helps that English and Japanese are so different. In English my voice is relatively high pitched in my opinion, and my Japanese followed suit when I was using a typical gaijin accent, but after studying Japanese phonetics and thus using the back of my mouth and different tongue positions etc. my Japanese voice has ended up being much deeper. I think it must be the same for people who have reached a very high level like Dogen; it's like two completely different sets of sounds, so the switch is clear if you've got it on tap. He certainly sounds more spritely and slightly higher pitched when he speaks English.
@@harveywallbanger3123 A friend from Spain said that I sound older when I speak English instead of Spanish, it's fairly normal. I think it's normal to have a different tone or pitch when speaking another language to help with distinguishing them.
Dogen deadass recommending getting Nihongo jōzu'd on purpose as a pickup technique.
This is next level stuff.
This is some Joseph jostar plan lol
Your next line will be "日本語上手"
True, Dogen's playing some pro 4D Chess here. However... Why not have a conversation and then proceed to Eigo jōzu them? You'll most likely get a reply or at least then maybe they'll understand how it feels to be jōzu'd.
What's most impressive, imo, is how he came up with it WHILE replying, on the fly.
@@anoasjensen9499🤣🤣🤣
I found the katakana thing super funny. most kanji are so much easier to make look good than katakana it's actually insane. For instance I wrote a 者 last night, sat back and just thought "damn, that looks good". Meanwhile I write カレー and I want to cry it looks so ugly. It seems like it should be so much easier but it's simplicity is what makes it so hard to get right
Brutal response to the wa/ga question. I feel for the sender.
I don't get it. Could you explain it to me?
@@JynIsBored He's basically saying if you can't figure out how to explain wa and ga, then learn english better so you can explain it haha
わたし「は」を使うときは「他の人は知らないけど自分はやりましたよ」って言うニュアンスがありますし
わたし「が」を使うときは「自分だけがやりましたよ」ってニュアンスになりますよね
このトラブル解決するために動いた人は誰？
「私はやりましたよ」
→他の人もやったかもしれないけど私はやりましたよ
「私がやりましたよ」
→他の人はやってないし私だけがやりましたよ
さぁ、ここまでの日本語を解読できたあなたは日本語話者として素晴らしいと思います
@@JynIsBored wa is a topic marker, ga is a subject marker.
By not understanding the difference in English grammar the twit'er can't explain it properly.
@@jameshart8523 I really don't think he's actually joking, even though it sounds kind of funny. Like, most native English speakers (myself included until I started learning Japanese and had to think about it more) have no idea about concepts such as the topic, subject, object etc etc.
日本語学習者が英語で寄せた質問を、日本語に訳して話し、それに英語のサブタイトルまでつけてくれている。
つまり、このビデオは日本人向けの英語学習用ビデオである。
そして、このように日本語に興味をもってもらうのが嬉しくて仕方ないピュアな日本人の心までわしづかみにした、一粒で2度おいしい仕上がりの動画。Dogen氏は、なかなかなのである。
Exactly!
When you make a joke so good on a Dogen video that he hits you with a コメント上手
wwwwwwww
草
I honestly can't find the fine line between when you're actually giving advice and when you're being a troll :D And I love it.
0:23 の漢字学習法はdogenさんの言うとおりで単語で覚える（日本では熟語と言いますが)のが一番効果的です。日本の学校でも漢字は熟語で教わります。
I love this series! speaking japanese naturally without any cuts
and I can see that my 日本語 is improving
I'm with you on the kanji learning. I learned all the radicals in a fairly short time just because I felt it would help a lot with recognition, which I think it did, but otherwise I think by just reading stuff and building vocabulary you can learn them through repetition fairly simply. If you know the word and not the kanji it's often not too hard to guess what the kanji is for from context, though I'll admit I've found Matt's suggestion of using the Yomichan plugin to be an invaluable tool. Overall it seems more natural and ensures you don't spend time learning obscure ones you'll rarely see.
I seriously do suggest people learn the radicals from the outset, though.
My problem is that I can read the Kanji but can’t write it. It’s like remembering faces of people, you remember the face but it is difficult to remember each feature on its own.
I agree as well. I know this is kind of an endless discussion, and different people have different preferences, but having tried both (learning radicals and Kanji on their own in great detail versus just learning vocab), I found that I actually remembered more the vocabulary way.
In the end it also comes down to efficiency. Learning by vocab is inherently efficient: the more relevant a word is to you, the more often you come across it, and the better you will memorize it's Kanji. Learning Kanji in isolation on the other hand always means that you will try to save a lot of information that is ultimately not useful to you. You are therefore wasting effort and straining and frustrating yourself, which can often lead to worse retention even for those Kanji you actually need.
@@TomMRF I agree about the repetition. And maybe it has something to do with context as well. When learning Kanji in isolation you lack of context which in my case doesn't help memorization. And I was totally at a loss when two or more kanji were put together, even if I know their individual meanings.
@@zaharar7818 I've found the solution to this is to write every kanji/word you learn a LOT. It sort of gets internalized very fast that way, at least for me
@@zaharar7818 I've seen enough people that bothered to learn writing and stroke order say it ended up being useless in day to day life that I'm not putting time into it that could be better spent elsewhere. It's up to you one way or another and a lot of people can learn them better through repeated writing, but when you already remember them it feels (to me) like an unproductive use of precious time.
Hearing "real Dogen" where you're translating on the fly and everything isn't polished and perfect on the 4th take gives me a lot more confidence. I thought when I had to pause or re-state something I was processing in my head that was a mistake, but it seems a lot of people do it.
I also learned a lot of new words from anime and even drama. Watching an aquarium drama I learned all kinds of animal names, tanks, pipes, and I think one was even about captive breeding of Tuna.
Thanks for the jouzu nihongo, brother.
When you acquire a second language like dogen you never translate anything in your head. When he pauses, it's the same reason why you would pause when you're talking in your native language, to come up with a better way to say whatever it is you want to say.
Also, translating on the fly is pretty advanced stuff. Don't feel bad if your translations don't sound idiomatic in the target language.
0:43 This is actually the kanji-learning approach I see advocated for the most, and I personally agree as well. I also used an Anki deck based on Remembering the Kanji to first demystify the characters, but I've never once studied the individual readings of each one. I just have an intuitive sense for them now after learning a ton of vocab words.
Absolutely. RTK is really amazing for learning to distinguish and remember the core meanings of the Kanjis. Once one is able to recognize a Kanji, the readings will come naturally with more and more vocab. Learning multiple readings for over 2K characters, especially when the readings are not unique, is not optimal unless one has genius level memory.
@@quanta8382 I agree. First, kanji meanings; second, words & vocab & reading; third, listening & pronunciation. We are talking about years and years of studying with no reward whatsoever.
Honestly I'm not sure you even need to study English meanings of kanji via something like rtk either
I've just been studying words without studying kanji in any form and I've not found having to learn to recognize the kanji along with the words that use it to cause me much trouble (the only times i really have trouble with them is with the words that have more esentric/unpredictable readings, that studying kanji isn't going to help with anyways) so I find I remember the kanji words just as well as the kana only words
And i gradually pick up the meanings and readings from encountering the words that use them, so sometimes I'm still able to predict what a kanji word means or how it's read even without knowing what the assigned English meaning of the kanji is or all its readings
The only thing i lack doing it this way is writing, but honestly how often will i need to write them anyways, i don't even write regularly in english
But this is just my experience and how i learn, if you find it easier having used rtk or something keep doing that, the goal is to learn however you find works for you
@@quanta8382 RTK is outdated, and there is a much better way, really just go watch Matt vs. Japan, he created a new deck better than rtk and he was a former rtk supporter, surely you know of refold?
@@ereksomsamayvong1643 does this deck teach how to handwrite kanji and helps to disambiguate the similar-looking ones as RTK does?
Starts conversation with bad Japanese to break the ice and gets 日本語上手。
*Proceeds to speak 日本語 better than a native*
日本語上手 the native.
*Confused why got rejected, instructions not clear*
Task failed successfully
They will 日本語上手 you even if you message in perfect japanese. Its their way of saying "i did a nice thing and complimented him to feel good before ghosting him" lol.
How many people look at the word "television" and think: "Okay so tele- is ancient Greek meaning 'distant', and vision refers to sight so this means..." and so on? No one does that. You see the word television and you know that it refers to that netflix machine sitting in your living room. And then combined with the knowledge of other words like telephone, teleport, telescope, telepathy etc. you understand what "tele-" means even though you didn't look it up or have someone explain it to you. Imagine if people trying to learn English were asking "Bro how do I memorize all these Latin and Greek prefixes or suffixes?". Then imagine if there was a group of people trying to scam these innocent English-learners by telling them they need to devote 3 months to learning some Greek/Latin words before they can start studying the English language proper? Wouldn't that be ridiculous.
"The Netflix machine in my living room." Savage.
this is actually a Surpisingly good analogy for learning kanji, it lines up so well
I agree with you to a certain point, but some kanji studying can still be helpful. Because kanji aren't as analogous to words, as their are to letters. Even if you don't know what 'tele' means, you can still read it because you know the alphabet. A kanji instead is more like just a bunch of random scribbles. And you need to recognize them to learn words, even if you don't need to know their meaning.
@@dorsal937 I agree, that "some kanji studying can still be helpful", but then again, so can studying Greek/Latin affixes help in learning English.
I also think that your point strengthens my point in a sense. For example 生 meaning life/birth is "sei" in some compound words and "jou" in others, but it becomes "I. kiru" in "to live", "U. mu" in "to give birth", "Ha. eru" in "to sprout", "Na. ru" in "to bear fruit", "Nama" in "raw"/"natural" and probably many many more. You are making the argument that this means it is beneficial to study this kanji and it's readings. I'm saying it's way easier to learn all these words when they come up in speech, without worrying about attaching the kanji to it initially.
Also,on the point of kanji being "random scribbles", as you learn some words, the phonetic components in their kanji will become easier to recognize. For example, every single kanji that includes 扁 is always "hen", 采 is always "sai", 五 almost always "go", 官 almost always "kan", 司 almost always "shi" and so on. you eventually develop a feel for this and become able to guess the reading of words you see for the first time and reading it out in your head lets you remember the word because you have heard it before while listening.
My point is you don't need to "learn kanji in order to learn words". Speech exists, and there are no kanji in speech.
A lot of new learners think that Meaning, Kanji and Pronunciation form a triangle but honestly it's more like a line from pronunciation to meaning, and a line from kanji to pronunciation. If you see a new word for the first time, you can try to pronounce it in your head, which might give you the word you are looking for. While listening, the connection between pronunciation and meaning is everything and kanji are irrelevant. While reading, there is a triangle between kanji, word and meaning but you can also just use the pronunciation and context to find the meaning. If you are seeing the phrase 木を植える for the first time, you can think "ok, it's something to do with trees and it's kun'yomi ends with 'eru'. ", which might remind you of that one time you heard the word "ueru" while listening.
Still, to each, their own. I am not saying "never look up kanji", I am saying "don't try to chart the entire course before you even set sail. Even if it sound like a good idea on paper, you are just missing out on all the great shortcuts.".
At earlier levels, kanji are used in many compounds like 生 is used in 700 words, 一 in 1700, 人 in 900, 日 in 1400. But later you get so many kanji that are only used in 1 or 2 words at which point, trying to study the kanji for so many of them leads to burnout really fast.
@@haydarinna631 Everything you said makes sense, but you're assuming I said things I didn't. I still think it's beneficial do some upfront work on kanji. What I'm talking about is the way MattvsJapan suggests which is focusing on recognition: looking at a kanji and going 'oh yeah, I know this, this is X', where X is a keyword (and doing so for popular kanji).
This is something you already need to do to learn a word (whereas you don't need to do it with affixes at all, again, because kanji are more like letters). Now you can pick up recognition while learning words, and as you said there are shortcuts involved because you see kanji in context. However, there are also advantages in learning kanji on its own, because kanji has lots of reocurring patterns, so you can learn similar kanji together and incrementally which is perfect for mnemonics. Now I can't prove you that it's the best way to learn, but it feels efficient to me.
But yeah, I do agree that doing more work than that on kanji is sub-optimal. You really only 'learn' them by making connections as you consume the actual language.
"anime is a good resource to learn japanese!"
Me, fan of One Piece: "at some point i will be really great at saying "pirate king" and probably nothing else"
昔の動画よりも本当にネイティブみたいに話せていて凄いと思います！長母音が完璧になれば何もいうこと無し！
道元さんが発音を誤るのは単語を強調する時くらいですかね。基本的には発音に最低限の力しかかけない日本人より聞き取りやすいと思います。問題なく発音している時もあれば、単語を強調する時、「ジューギョ(授業)」「ジーケン(事件)」のように聞こえることがあった気がします。英語圏出身の人は強調したい時に音節によりストレスを置くので、その癖を抜いて日本語の強調方法(多分単語全体を強く読む)で単語を言うのはかなり難しいと思います。
という事はこの場合、
そのポイントを克服するために
ピッチアクセントの練習にフォーカスするべきということでしょうか？
英語のストレスアクセントは
全てのルールを
教科書で学ぶ事は残念ながら出来ないと聞きましたが、
日本語のピッチアクセントも
体系的なルール以外に
感情表現や抑揚など
反復練習しないとパッと表現出来ない
サウンドがあると思うので、
そういうのは見て聞いて発見して
修正していくしかないんですかね。
音声学で言うならプロソディとかそういう領域になってくると思うんですけど、何ていうか語学学習に終わりはないって気がしますね…w
I never thought I'd hear such a passionate case for learning how to write beautiful katakana
7:47
I've legit broke the ice with a Japanese girl before by saying『
これはペンです』after a friend of mine introduced me with "He's studying Japanese!". Poor Japanese is an effective strategy!
How's that going
@@amaranth7596 He's progressed from これはペンです to 私はペンです and now he's just living his best life
次、「これはパイナップルです」と言ったかな？
Lmao yeah being good at Japanese is no fun, actually you should pretend being bad
"this is pen" ?
I, a Japanese who can't write katakana beautifully, decide to restart to practice katakana (I bought a textbook to practice katakana a few years ago but I quit doing it soon).
and the way you learn new words is the same as mine :)
7:01 脱却 sounds more natural if anybody is curious.
Thank you
Top 3 Icebreakers for conversations:
- hobbys
- interests
-日本語上手
i was so used to dogen answering qs with jokes i was pleasantly surprised at the actual good advice
When you see someone using kanji that you can't even find in the jp keyboard you know you're dealing with a nihongo jouzu
本当に今さらなんだけど、日本語流暢すぎてヤバい
アニメから単語学習できていいですね☺ 英語学習者ですが、trenchとかfortressは英単語帳で覚えました。味気なかったので羨ましい...!
殆どの場合、日本語は順番を気にしなくても伝わります。
殆どの場合、順番を気にしなくても日本語は伝わります。
日本語は殆どの場合、順番を気にしなくても伝わります。
順番を気にしなくても、殆どの場合日本語は伝わります。
日本語は殆どの場合伝わります。順番を気にしなくても。
順番を気にしなくても日本語は伝わります。殆どの場合。
他にもパターンは沢山あるけど、意味は大体同じ。
なんという柔軟性
I super agree with studying words that contain kanji rather than all the readings! If you see 米 for the first time, it doesn't really mean much to know that it can be pronounced こめ、べい、and まい. Just learn the key vocab and you'll grow to understand the key readings. I love this format of video btw!!
And then you come across 米沢 and 亜米利加
@@shi_mo_neta exactly. 亜米利加 is just so unnecessary LMAO
@@TokuyuuTV LMAO WHY THE HELL I CAN READ THIS HAHAHAHA, it's kanji for America right?
@@dafaqu694 you have reached the highest level of woke Japanese - understanding the kanji usage designed solely to confused pesky foreigners 😌🙏
Memorizing kanji is difficult, even for Japanese people. A Japanese elementary school student learns 1,000 kanji by doing homework for six years, writing the same kanji dozens of times in a notebook.
ouch
You are the best Japanese teacher around. I learn so much even from your skits.
I don't speak Japanese but I read and speak Chinese as my first language. On that 'how do you learn kanji' issue, Dogen's advise surprisingly matches how chinese people learn chinese characters (hanzi as we call them in chinese). Not only is it less boring, but it helps you to understand the hanzi/kanji better. For example, according to dictionaries (both chinese and japanese) 雷 means 'thunder' or 'explosives', but this word '雷人' (shocking/surprising), newly created by chinese internet folks, has nothing to do with 'thunder' nor 'explosives'. My explanation is, unlike English 'words', hanzi/kanji doesn't have well defined meanings, but it gives you a vague impression of something: 雷 could be the thunder itself but it can also remind you the explosive/shocking effect of thunder, thus words like 魚雷 (torpedo) or 雷人. This kind of understanding cannot be obtained by remembering the meanings of a single hanzi/kanji, but by learning numbers of words in which that single hanzi/kanji has different meaning but gives similar impression. In short, don't bother learning kanji's one by one, just read more text and study more words.
日本語に「雷人」は見当たりませんね。
あるのは、「雷神(raijinn)」で、「いかづちのかみ」「かみなりさま」のことです。
中国では、外来語のほとんどを漢字(hanzi)で造語しているようですが、日本では、漢字(kanji)で新しい熟語を造るということがほとんどないように思います。漢字の意味は固定的であって、意味が変わることはないと思います。
外来語はカタカナで書かれ、発音も外来語のそれを模しています。「カタカナ語辞典」があるくらいです。
日本人は「雷人」を「ライト」と読み、人の名前として使っているようです。
@@魚炭 bruh I said I don' read japanese😅, I google translated it and I hope I understood your argument.
I think you want to say that kanji are different from hanzi because meanings of kanji remain static, they simply have multiple meanings. Maybe you are right, but my point is that the meanings of hanzi/kanji vary so drasticly that learning them on their own is probably very confusing. This confusion can be reduced if you find the subtle connections of those meanings by learning words that contains the kanji/hanzi. It doesn't matter whether the meanings are static or not.
You talked about japanese doesn't make any new words with kanji but with katakana. I disagree: I call that rewriting words, not making. japanese made quite a lot of kanji words in the past (忍者，警察，民主，probably 鱼雷 as well), to chinese speaker, they are constructed just the same as any other hanzi words, which means to certain extend, JP did use kanji just like how CH uses hanzi, just nobody do it these days.
'雷人' is indeed meaningless in japanese (except as a person's name), it is exclusivly used on chinese internet, not even in spoken/written language. However it is not a 外来语, it is created by chinese internet folks, and clearly they didn't consult dictionaries for 雷. Which proves my point on how hanzi are used
@@魚炭 but still, I don't speak japenese so I could be wrong on this, so feel free to correct me
@@benjaminmei6644 I'm studying Chinese, so I'm sure I understand the difference between kanji and hanzi.
Japanese borrowed hanzi to write the Wago language(大和言葉).
That is where the distinction between on-yomi and kun-yomi arose.
There is no tone (four tones) in Japanese.
Katakana loanwords(カタカナ外来語), of course, were not created by the Japanese (just tracing the voices of foreign languages).
There are about 2000 common kanji in Japan, but probably more hanzi are used on a daily basis in China.
I recently bought a Simplified Chinese(簡体字) exercise book.
I can't speak Chinese yet, but I think it's a very interesting language.
I like listening to the radio for an hour and writing down any new/unfamiliar words I hear, then looking them up.
Dogen is right, you can make girls reply to you often by purposely speaks in bad Japanese
So you'll get nihongo jouzu'd and you'll both will become closer
All is according to -keikaku- plan xD
漢字に限らず殆どの言語的要素は文脈で憶えるべきです
Just discovered your channel! It is criminally underrated.
Thanks for answering my question. I think I've spent a total of 4 hours on pitch accent (probably 1,5 hours if I subtract youtube debates with japanese from zero), So I guess is premature to give up. Weirdly I kind of reached the same conclusion of having my more impresive skills centered arround reading and writting. My end goal is probably more about being able to read Dogen (the 13 century monk) than to sound like Dogen and maybe to write nice looking postcards.
As someone who couldn't originally hear the pitch accent but can now, I'll tell you how I did it.
I started studying mandarin, every syllable has a different pitch accent on it. Go do two or three classes with a real teacher and explain to them that learning tone is your priority. It's all pitch accent all the time and now coming back to Japanese it's really easy for me to hear the pitch accent differences in Japanese.
You don't have to study mandarin, Cantonese might even work better but any tonal language will definitely help you in this area.
@@hamsolo474 I'm Chinese, but for most of my life I never knew pitch accents were a thing in Japanese and I just assumed it was up to the speaker's accent. So I noticed them but didn't pay much attention. Now I can recognise when the pitch accent is off most of the time, but I'm not confident about speaking with accurate pitch accent. Kinda like the difference between being able to read and being able to write kanji.
I didn't know there was a Dogen who was a 13th-century monk. Is this Dogen named after that Dogen?
@@krnsk563 As a native English speaker who began learning Mandarin as an adult, learning to hear Chinese tones was a big struggle for me, so I pay a lot of attention to them. I'm guessing this could be one of those differences between natives and language learners. My Chinese teacher would often ask me where the stress in an English word would be and I would rarely be able to explain it, it's just natural for me but he's really aware of it when he's speaking English.
There is an Anki deck for learning pitch accent. You can edit it so it has audio on the front and pitch accent on the back. Just going through that for a bit helps.
Glad you mentioned that Kanji method! Learning kanji as words rather than as ‘kanji’ just seems like the most optimal technique, and is actually kind of fun. Also, a big thing Matt from MvJ says is that you remember Kanji almost like a face of a person. Without seeing them, you may not be able to accurately draw the fine details of Dogens eyes, nose, mouth, facial structure etc. but when you see his face you instantly recognise it as him. Likewise, if you told me to draw a certain kanji, I probably couldn’t, but if I see it I absolutely 100% know what it is. Anyways love you as always Dogen ❤️
When was the last time you thought negatively of someone with a strong accent who made grammar mistakes in English? Never, right? It doesn't happen. People will know Japanese is not your first language. They won't be upset with you. Stop worrying about making mistakes, everyone.
Yup honestly
It does happen, but most people don't mind. Some people do, but you have to remember that they are just assholes. At least in Spanish, there are people who very much think negatively of you if you speak Spanish with a strong English accent.
Great advice as always
Jokes on you Dogen, I started my Japanese learning journey with Katakana and wrote purely in Katakana for a solid half a year. I like to pretend that never happened though.
ngl seeing dogen pause to structure his sentence, and then restructure, then pause again to restructure is *so encouraging*. like, if the god of japanese himself is confused, then who am i not to?
Who’s Nigel?
@@cleanphreak5103 Nigel is the guy who's Not Gonna Lie, smh fam fr no cap.
Your pronunciation is so clear Mr Dogen
He is giving 4D chess advice to the 日本語上手'd guy.
Sasuga Dogen-sensei.
日本語にとってアクセントなんてどうでもいいところあるからなぁ…文脈から判断できるし…
それよりも英語のほうがアクセント気をつけないといけない
My personal advice to add onto his advice for learning kanji would be to use a method like one in the "Remembering the Kanji volume 1". This will give you a firm base of kanji meanings and help you identify and distinguish similar looking kanji as well as write them. From there I totally agree with Dogen's advice. I only recommend this because I have found it incredibly effective in my own studies.
This is basically Matt's approach in the refold japanese guide. You basically start with an RRTK deck in anki, which is just focused on recognition (from what I remember, normal rtk just also has a writing component in addition, which slows down the learning process), and after you finish it you can move to learning kanji directly from context and words in vocabulary type of decks like core2/6/10k or sentence mining decks and reading.
Also watching your videos is a good way to increase your vocabulary beyond ‘day to day transactions’ and ‘fun with friends’ 😀
Learning Kanji through WaniKani initially in learning Japanese, the whole onyomi and kunyomi thing was a focus for me, but after discovering immersion learning, Matt, heisig, anki, and all that, that whole process looks like such a joke now, and incredibly inefficient towards learning how to read.
Wanikani is good for learning kanji. That's all really, although it's can be a good base if you are dedicated enough.
Heisig is the same thing mind, just, well, more prescribed.
@@tams805 Yea I see what you're saying. I think its pace is just the main problem. With heisig and anki you can get through the jouyou kanji much faster, getting you on the way to reading quicker, that was my experience at least. I remember seeing MattvsJapan's video criticizing wanikani and while I don't think it's terrible, I was convinced that there was a better and free way to go about what they were trying to do
道元さんまじで日本語うまいな。
スクリプト無い方が自然。
かなり前から存じ上げてるつもりだけど、こんなにうまいとは知らなかった。
I too decided to focus on being able to read words first, and as time goes on I'll try to pick up the individual meaning of each kanji, followed (slowly) by writing the ones I see the most of that I find interesting/amusing. It works for me so far, and enabling myself to get into reading asap instead of studying writing is quickly improving my Japanese.
Thanks for the video :)
I recently told my one of my Japanese followers on Twitter that I learn Japanese in an informal way, by only mimicking sentences and normal conversations when replying to them and only truly say something on my own when I am confident like saying おはようございます and when replying おはありです (their internet shortcut for "thanks for saying good morning to me") every morning. He was impressed on my method of learning and wants to follow my example which I humbly not recommending to him.
わかありです。
@@魚炭 それもありますか？なるほど！
無意識に使ってて気づいてなかったけど「逆に」って言葉めっちゃ有能
逆に、多用してると
使うパターンをたまに間違えて
内心恥ずかしい気持ちになるから、
あまり使うのは避けるようにしてますw
I think the best way to explain the difference between wa and ga is: 'Watashi wa Watashi ga America-jin desu' (Doing it in Romanji for the folks just starting learning Japanese) is a grammatically correct sentence. translated to English it is: "As for me, I am an American." In Japanese, the subject is almost always understood from context, but when you absolutely have to make it clear who or what the subject of the sentence is, or when you are changing subjects, use 'ga.'
For the last guy, when you get 日本語上手'd, just reply with "ジョーズ？でかいサメ?何？"
It'll break the ice and show her that you're funny. Or maybe it won't. I think it's funny though. lol
It took a few seconds, but I got it, LOL
That's super cute, clever. ( . ̫ . )⸝⸝⸝♡
素晴らしい 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
that part where he said "the ones who usually use long kanji are foreigners who wanna be praised on" hits me
デスノートとかも勉強に良さそう
Studying Japanese from ''Attack on Titan'' is the same as studying English from the Bible.
HOW TO LEARN PITCH: Sing in your local free choir (Especially opera/religious with a real conductor), learn the basics. Pitch-deafness or Congenital amusia can be trained depending on how serious it is. Tonal language users are a proof of it even though it can cause problems sometimes even for natives. (it's exhausting at the beginning, but then your learning slope is the same, my sister did this)
私は日本語ネイティブなので厳密には日本語学習者の感覚はわかるとは言えませんが、漢字に関しては本をずっと読み続ければいいだけなんじゃないかと思っていたので、道元さんも同じ意見なようなので良かったです。
またおそらくマットさんも概ね同じかなと推測します。
なにか漢字というものの独特な外見や特徴ばかり言われることが多いのですが、そこに留まるのではなくて、漢字云々ではなくただひたすら文章を読む、ひたすら日本語の文章を読む作業を積み重ねるだけで大体の漢字は頭に入ってくるのではないかと思います。
やや過激な言い方をすると漢字自体はどうでもいいです。まあどうでもいいってことはないけど、そこじゃなくてとにかく日本語の文章を滅茶苦茶読みまくる。読みまくるということは知らない単語や知らない漢字にたくさんぶち当たります。その都度、読みと意味を調べることになりますが、初めはなかなか進まなくてもその内少しずつ読みでつっかえる箇所が減ってきて、すると加速度的に読み進められるのではないでしょうか。
そして、漢字の読みに関して言うと、文章を難なく読み進められる水準まで達したということは同時にそれ相応に漢字を読む能力を獲得しているということになります。
漢字を勉強して文章を読めるようになるのではなく、文章を読めるように勉強を重ねると結果漢字も読めるようになっている、というのが私の考えです。
読む素材としては、冒頭で本と書きましたが、私は週刊誌がいいのではないかと思っています。
よく日本語には(どの言語もそうだと思いますが)話し言葉と書き言葉があると言われます。私は更に、書き言葉にの数種類あると思っています。それは単純な｢ですます/である、だ｣の違いというだけでなく、媒体によって数段階のもの書き方に分かれるというものです。
それらを今思い付く限りで簡単に並べると、例えばLINEにおけるやり取りの文章はほぼ口語に近いものです。
次にネット掲示板における文章。これはその掲示板の体質や話題、また個人にもよりますが、LINEなどのやり取りよりは口語性が減ります。ただ、少し口語っぽい部分も残ったりバランスが取られます。そして流れによっては弾みで口語モロ出しのような文章が書かれたりもします。
私が思うに、外国人の方がネットにおいて日本語を書かれる場合、文法の間違いはともかく、このモロな口語とかっちりとした書き言葉の中間くらいの文体の感覚を得ている人は非常に稀に見えて、口語モロ出しのパターンが多いです。
話が逸れましたが書き言葉の次の段階としては週刊誌に書かれるような文体です。どんな週刊誌かにもよりますが、ここでは週刊文春とか新潮とかとします。これはネット掲示板での文章よりは堅くなります。
最後に新聞とか論文などでの書き言葉です。この辺りが一番堅いです(例えば今書いた｢とか｣などは引用以外では書かれないでしょう)。
もっと考察するとまだいくらでも細分化できてしまいますが、今ざっくり思い付くところで言うとこれら4段階くらいでしょうか。
もし自信があるなら新聞をガンガン読み進められるならば語彙も漢字力も爆上がりすることは間違いないです。週刊誌の文章は基本的には新聞よりは易しいと思いますが、これでも正直言ってかなり外国人の方には難しいでしょう。
ただ、内容は新聞で取り上げないような通俗的なものも多かったり下世話なものもあったり、時には強烈に扱き下ろしていたり皮肉を言っていたりで、好みもあるかもしれませんが取っつきやすいです。
そして、私は時々不思議に思うのですが、日本語を一応流暢に話す外国人の方が増えてきたとは言え、週刊誌を読んでいるような人ってほとんど見ないような気がします。私の視野が狭いだけかもしれませんが、週刊誌を読みまくっていけば日本語の能力や漢字の読み、理解も上がるのに勿体ないなと思います。
週刊誌をスラスラと読めるようになれば漢字力も日本語力もかなりの水準に達しているでしょう。
小説などもいいですが、小説の場合、作者のスタイルにもよりますが、日本語の妙をまずわかっている上で文体を崩したり創造的な表現を試みていることも多く、時に難解です。マットさんなどはそこで読む対象としてラノベに的を絞ったとのことですが、私が時々マットさんに感心するのはこの辺りの勘の良さですね(単にマットさんがオタ気質でラノベと肌が合ったというだけかもしれませんが)。
Or when you watch too much Takarazuka, you end up learning a whole lot of words relevant to the French Revolution and not much else lol
As a Canadian-born Chinese who learned Chinese writing from a young age, I have to agree that katakana is difficult to make to look good (like English is difficult to sing beautifully in). The roundness of hiragana makes it easy enough to render half-beautifully, but katakana is angular and kind of crunchy and yet it demands to aspire to the same aesthetic principles. The contradiction is quite difficult to manage.
4:05「エクサッ、運動をしながら」LMAOOO I do the same thing!!! Gotta maintain that 語彙力!!!
ワンポイント:
「駆り出す」は8割がた受動態でしか使われない
そこらへんの外国人と違うんだ！って思われたい🤣
日本人にとっても、カタカナをキレイに書くのは難しい！
似てるのもたくさんあるし！
「ソ」と「ン」とか…
@@joe_z That's it!😆
何かドーゲンさん性格まで日本人っぽい気がする笑
probably the best way is to first learn the kanji simply for it's meaning, then learn the pronunciations when you run into words. then by knowing the meaning of the kanji, it helps with learning the word, and learning the word helps you learn the pronunciation. 正しく一石二鳥。
漢字の習い方について言えば、私もドゲンと同さんです。漢字の音読みと訓読みを学ぶ代わりに、語彙を学ぶ時勉強している単語の漢字も勉強しています。このとおりに学んだら、音読みと訓読みも覚えて、新しい言葉を見えて、読めます。今大学で日本語学を勉強していますけど、この習い方を使って、私は私のクラスメートより漢字と語彙が上手と思います！＾＾私のクラスメートは語彙を学ぶ代わりに、全部漢字の読み方を覚えてみますけど、読み方を忘れ続けます。
That last tip is a game changer
I don't know how accurate this is but for functionality I find this works:
When the subject and the topic are the same, one of them is dropped.
So if it was koko wa koko ga hiroi desu then you could drop the topic or the subject depending on what you'd rather have focused on (the topic or the adjective). So they aren't interchangeable but have instances where they would repeat and are thus omitted.
I'm going to reiterate that this is my own technique and I am terrible at linguistic analysis like this so please do not debate me (debating yourself is fine) as I have zero confidence in my own theory.
I can’t tell when Dogen is being serious or when he is being sarcastic
Wait both the dictionary on my phone and yomichan says that 橋 is 尾高型? Is the pitch accent diagram at 5:12 wrong?
Yeah, I thought the same, I think it should be the diagram for 端 but I'm not sure.
This totally hits home. Last week we had a quick test in the class. Teacher said "Learn all the new kanji, they will be on the test."
But then the day came. And half of that was just katakana and especially difficult spelling words. The moment we all saw those words to translate, we just became terrified. That moment when kanji is easier than an alphabet....
Watching unusual Japanese movies to acquire new vocabulary --> this is actually what I do with English too. I would watch different variety of English program/movies to expose myself to new words/phrase/terminology.
For the person trying to get better at pitch perception, I'd recommend trying to learn singing. I say *trying* because you don't have to be a pop star to perceive pitch but you will get a feel for it very soon when you're starting out. You can stop as soon as you feel like you're not tone deaf anymore. Find a song that's in your vocal range and record yourself singing. When you listen to it back and notice you're off pitch, try to figure out if you're too low or too high.
If you already play an instrument, try transcribing.
when you're somewhat new to learning japanese and your vocabulary consists of hundreds and hundreds of out of the ordinary words from anime, and like 200 of the common "N5" words >< . This is why you need a little formal study mixed in with your anime "immersion" lol...
I can't entirely deny that assertion. I fairly often get a "😮 how do you know that word / phrase?" reaction from my wife (Japanese). Yet I can't for the life of me remember how basic Japanese grammar like wa/ga/etc is used.
7:42 I’ve seen that on Twitter before 🤣🤣🤣Someone had like a big crush on a Japanese cosplayer and that person started to write in Japanese to talk to the cosplayer
Ok...but how do I get a Japanese boy to reply?
Well since it's the other way around the only obvious solution is to flip the script and say 日本語上手 to the japanese boy.
@@Colopty 返事上手
My wife gets angry at me when someone tells me I speak good Japanese and I reply that I don't think my Japanese is all that good yet...
But hey, at least I can understand what her granny is saying. Even though her granny doesn't seem to grasp the concept that I do understand her.
She probably thinks her language is the hardest so literally cannot grasp the concept that a foreigner could possibly understand what she is saying, it's quite common in Spanish as well.
橋と、箸の区別がつかないと悩んでる方がいたけど普通の会話では『橋』の話をしてるときに、突然『箸🥢』の話をになることはまずないと思う。だから、聞き取れないと心配しなくても大丈夫だと思うなぁ。
聞き取れなくても、すぐに｢おかしいな？｣と分かると思う。
on learning kanji < as far as I know that is the method matt recommends for learning how to read kanji (through words that show up in immersion).
But first you learn the English meaning for a bunch of kanji using mnemonics as in the book "remembering the kanji", based on their parts.
I think he recommends what he calls RRTK, so google refold RRTK and it should come up.
I think that the RRTK method was what he recommended in the precursor to Refold (his language learning method), which was called the Mass Immersion Approach. Refold recently announced an Anki deck which contains vocab, but is also for the purpose of learning kanji through said vocab
It just makes it easier since starting to learn vocab without any exposure to kanji can be overwhelming. It's not necessary though.
日本人です
小学生レベルの漢字を勉強してしまえば
あとは部首とつくりで読み方は大抵okっすね
あと、塹壕自体は知りませんが
初見でも読み方は分かりますね
イントネーションに関しては、日本人でも地域によってかなり違うので、みんなあまり気にしないですよね。特に東京は、いろんな地方出身の方がいますし。
最後のアドバイスにニヤッとした。😆
i completely lost it twice during this video. you cant catch me off guard like that i was drinking
I actually thought "this video shouldn't make me feel attacked in any way at all" and then you got me in the first 30 seconds
100%同意します！漢字より単語の読み方を勉強した方がいいです。
I came for the jokes. I stayed for the advice.
1:44 Don't worry, I'm Japanese, and I can't explain those differences to other people too.
You said that when foreigners are studying 漢字 do not try to meomorize onyomi and kunyomi at the same time. Rather, meomorize the word and the kanji for it together. I am Japanese . I totally agree with you. Also, that is the way Japanese children learn new 漢字. By the way, my home town is 竹田市 on 豊肥線😉
I get what you mean about learning more atypical words from Anime less grounded in reality or niche media. I'm a fan of the Dynasty Warriors/真·三國無双 series, and I'm learned some military terms from the Japanese version. 例えば 「軍師」とか「 火計」とか 、 そんなこと みたいです。
「義兄弟」 ということも 普段な言葉じゃありません。
I'm pretty sure I encountered 塹壕 in the book that's in your background 😜
It's useful to have musical ear to notice pitch accent. I like more repeat after woman's voice (not anime high pitched girl) cause I have a low voice and their pitch range but octave down better suits my speaking pitch range
カタカナが難しいのは信じがたい。一番書きやすい字なのに
日本人がGame of Thronesを英語で見る感じかな？確かに知らん単語いっぱい出てくるけどcontextがあるから覚えやすい気がする。
"how to get replied more by Japanese people?"
Dogen: Have bad Japanese.
YEARS OF ACADEMIC TRAINING, WASTED!!!
i trained my ear to hear pitch accent by setting up a pitch display (spectrogram?) on audacity, putting on condensed anime audio and staring at it playing for 45 minutes
it works really well and its not as boring as it seems because its almost like watching the anime normally
That sounds very smart to me. Never thought about it.
i totally agree learning words with the kanji instead of onyomi and kunyomi individualy
About learning kanji, YES! I can't recommend enough, to learn words > to learn kanji by themselves. I am no expert, but my take on this is for example: if you learn the word 会社 (kaisha ; company) then tadah! You already learned two of the most common readings of the kanji AND also a common word. 3 for the price of 1, instead of just trying to drill kanji in your brain for hours and then forget it next week (that's what I used to do... haha...)
Amazing breakdown. How would I remember that 会社 is read as 'kaisha'? How do I drill it into my mind?