When a menu item at a restaurant is designated as spicy, it needs at least 3 pepper images next to the name before you have a chance of feeling a hint of spice.
Something I've noticed is that the more time passes as I study japanese, the more enjoyable Dogen videos become. An additional motivation to keep me going !
I’ll never forget asking my sensei to come to my graduation party. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, in Japanese: “I will try to be there” Which we all know really means: “no, I won’t be coming.”
I'm not really studying anymore but if I study my main reason is to get reincarnated into an anime world/isekai in my next life. The isekai gods will say "You thought in Japanese at least 51% of the time so we decided to bring you to a world where Japanese is the only language" or something lol
I can understand why he put it in the video. The most Japanese would say that your Japanese is good becouse 1 they want to be polite and 2 they are happy that their language is appreciated by foreigners. But I still disagree on that fact. Becouse fluent is = "good" even without a correct pitch accent. Or kanji stroke order. And getting fluent is just a matter of time. (you will be!)
I don't really understand this, you can be good without speaking it perfectly. I know loads of foreigners who speak decent or good English without it being anywhere near perfect.
"You're actually studying English." Absolute fact. When trying to study Japanese I have ended up learning about English and things like how words go together. It's pretty interesting.
As a french who used english to learn japanese , it is true . They are so many stuff for learning japanese in english than in french that is it way better to do that if you don't have a teacher . I don't say that i'm bad in english but i'm far from perfect so learning japanese with english requieres to understand english way better than the daily life sometimes ^^
Same goes for native Japanese speakers learning English. The common sentiment is "Your English is only ever as good as your Japanese," but in Japanese class nobody learns anything about grammar.
@47997137x but a japanese native could speak japanese , so they must have learn that grammar , right ? Or they just learn by watching other people around them by copying them and don't really understand why you should say this and that but know what to do anyway ? like you know what you should say but don't know why , and if you could have this "why" you would have an advantage , a knowledge who could help you to learn other language. i don't know if i'm wrong , but i like to think it could be true (feel free to correct me )
@@Eldiran1 Like with most languages, natives simply learn the grammar through copying and intuition. Of course, like with a lot of countries, they do also teach the grammar in school in the sort of "this is how this works" but I'm not sure what they teach exactly since I'm not Japanese. I can only share what we do here in the Philippines. We learn English and Tagalog growing up, and then the linguistic grammar at school for both, although we tend to retain the English terms for grammatical stuff better. Either way, we mostly just forget about it after exams (depending on how nerdy we are or how the teacher taught) until we need the stuff again next school year. Interestingly, the stuff we learn for English and Filipino in terms of grammar is basically the same (i.e. after we learn the lesson in English, the lesson in Filipino is just the English lesson translated into Tagalog) but with several exceptions of course, most of which are obvious, and some we don't understand even as (or especially as) native speakers (like the difference between English's future tense and Tagalog's imperfect aspect; they're both commonly used for things happening in the future).
I'm 15age japanese student. ive studied english for 3 years in school. im gonna write my opinion abt studying japanese In my opinion as a Japanese, honestly, you dont need to study Kanji very much. because Kanji is not necessary to talk in Japanese, write a message on the phone( if u need to write a letter, it is necessary).First U need to memorize how to read Kanji. also, don't forget to speak and listening Japanese every day. Listening and speaking are most important thing to learn Japanese. Do you know why many Japanese cant speak English? because what we need to study for exams is reading and writing (grammar) . that's why we cant communicate in English. i didn't know how many people are studying Japanese. im so happy to hear that. Hope u guys to succeed. i will study English so hard too
Playing videogames that doesn't get released in the west(so it doesn't get translated to english) is also another reason to learn Kanji. But I guess they aren't going to use obscure ones in videogames.
thanks for this comment, im trying to pick up japanese again but i dont want to study kanji because it seemed a little worthless if i cant pick up conversations, so i thought that learning conversational skills first as a priority would make it faster and would make me like the language and pick things along the way, but i was scared that i was doing it wrong, so its nice to hear a japanese person say that kanji is not that important, thank you!
aahhh i want to work in Japan but I'm dyslexic and i stuggle with spelling words and pronountion even in my own language. Sometimes I don't feel native in my language.
I'm a Japanese 17-year-old student. I’m going to write my opinions depending on your purposes to learn Japanese. 1, for watching animation without subtitles you need to learn EASY grammar and listening skills. About grammar, it is only to learn「を(wo)」「が(ga)」「は(wa)」「だから(dakara)」and so on. About listening skills, it's good for you to watch animations and movies! You needn't watch formal radio, TVnews because our language has very deep sense, and such things always use such a formal grammar. We never use them everyday life. 2, for reading book It's so difficult skill. Many Japanese can't read books because Japanese writers have too deep thought for us to understand what they wanna convey. However, for improving reading skill, you need to read! I recommend some writers or books. Tsujimura Mizuki (辻村深月) has beautiful sense and she use easy metaphors. It's great! Kuromajosan ga toru(黒魔女さんが通る！). It's a book and very very interesting. It always has ふりがな for Kanji, so it's easy to read. If you want to read Natsume Soseki, Murakami Haruki, Mori Ogai, etc, you should learn Japanese almost completely. Their works are so difficult. I can't read them🤣 3 for speaking You need to learn grammar, listening skills, mainly. I recommend you to watch Japanese movies and dramas by using AmazonPrime, Netfrix. In them, actors uses casual words and grammar. You need to learn them. my recommend↓ 家政婦のミタ (Kaseifu no Mita) Soooo interesting! It's a Japanese MOST famous drama. マザー(Mother) It's also very interesting and deep. It discribes child abuse and victim(a girl)'s teacher try to protect her by kidnapping. ALL Japanese cried😭😭 アンフェア (unfair) It has some series. It's a detective drama, and very interesting, but so difficult, so if you want to learn high level Japanese, let's try! That's all! My English is so bad, sorry😭 Please comment here if you want to know more.
自分は英語を勉強してるんだけど、この動画見て、外国の人も頑張って日本語を勉強してるって思うとモチベがめっちゃ上がる！！みんな頑張ろう！！ I'm studying English, but watching this video and thinking that people from other countries are also studying Japanese hard really motivates me! Let's all do our best!
I’m trying to tackle several languages, two that are still being spoken, japanese and spanish, and two (technically) that are dead, latin and sindarin elvish which technically counts as a dead language My problem just happens to be that I have a reeeeeeally hard time learning languages so this will be fun😅
@@FISHGOMOO4321 it’s from the phrase ‘空気読めない’ (kuuki yomenai) which literally translates to ‘can’t read the air’. It’s basically the equivalent of calling someone who can’t ‘read the room’
@@FISHGOMOO4321There's a common phrase in Japanese called 空気を読む Literally 'to read the air' it means ' to understand the situation without words' or 'to sense someone's feeling' as in Japanese culture it's more polite to be less direct , it's important to 'read the air' for example , if you asked a person a question and the person replied with ' それはちょっと...' that means 'its a little..' that is the person is trying to say that ' it's a little inconvenient/tough to answer' , in various situations like this it's required to 'read the air'.
I've been studying japanese for 2 years and i enrolled in a japanese school (OJLEC) in April this year and when you said "Japanese people don't really say that." it just hits too close to home :')
Ah luckyyyy. Do you think you'' be able to still study in Japan with the restriction still being up or are you hoping they will allow people back in by the time it's time for you to study there? Wish I was doing the same. I'm 25 and still want to learn Japanese but hard to do between my modules at University. Hope I can do Work Abroad or cultural immersion in Japan though eventually and still learn the language enough to live there for a while. What are you going to be studying there?
@@danielwhyatt3278 As for your questions regarding my opinion, I won't be answering them as what I think and wish for really doesn't matter because I can't make those decisions anyways (the japanese government does). Although, as someone with experience of studying Japanese I would advise you to rethink upon your decision once more. Not to discourage you or anything, but Japanese is NOT by any means an easy language. Moreover, your views and interest in Japan might change once you actually try and live there as a resident and not as a tourist. Though i can't really say much about that last one since I myself am still forced to study online until who knows when and am currently not living there.
I started last week with putting effort in learning the sentence structures and I have been continuously quizzing and memorizing Hiragana and Katakana. I've listened to Japanese Music for along time, not knowing what stuff said. I watched Anime since like 2012. so when I hear people speak Japanese now, I understand single words in sentences but not necessarily entire phrases yet (though some basic ones I understand). My comprehension is surprisingly good for a N5 level and even decent for N4. But anyways, in 2023 summer I am planning an internship in Japan and then depending on how that goes. I will finish my senior year in my communications program in 2024 and then I will spend perhaps another year learning and hopefully I could be at a N2 level by summer 2025. Then move to Japan in that summer.
I know is old but thats nothing exclusive with the japanese if you have learn any language before, that phrase is said of any language you pick since people doesn't talk as is written in a book... the thing is you don't suppose to learn random phrases, books are to get along with the grammar and common ways of speaking but the thing is language change fast and books can't keep updated, you need to listen actual conversations by actual human beings, and read a lot.
I have been studying Japanese for about a month on Duolingo. I am proud to say that I clearly heard "pencil" in the video. Also, my greatest accomplishment so far was being able to sound out about 95% of the title card in One Piece last night. (I'm actually extremely happy about this even if it seems lame.)
If you wanna be a really special foreigner, you should learn the hardest of all Japanese dialects, the Miyako Dialect. If you love Japanese for how simple its syllables are, Miyako is perfect because it has such simple and easy to pronounce words as “fks” and “kff” and “psks”
Why try to be special at all? I like the language and the culture so I study it Not trying to surpass any other person who also likes the language and culture
It's not a dialect in the same manner as US English and UK English are, it's a sperate Japonic language. You're misleading people who want to learn Japanese into learning something that's not Japanese.
I feel like everyone learning Japanese has a love/hate relationship with the language and really strong on both sides, same as with living in Japan as a foreigner, or at least it's a phase that everyone must go through haha
I also love/hate Duolingo. In essence it is a really fun learning tool but then I want more grammar or vocabulary and read about a mistake in a practice sentence again and again, so I stop using it. But then again, I don't have a good enough replacement, so I just end up not learning as much as I'd like to.
After starting to learn Chinese, I never realized how thankful I am for katakana In Chinese they just use Chinese characters for EVERYTHING So for example, 三明治 is "sandwich" (Sānmíngzhì) So I'll just be reading along and be like "three bright cure? Wtf?" but no, it's just sandwich 😭 There's no obvious way to tell that something is a loan word or name at first 😭😭😭
Chinese is a fossil that should really be buried at this point With no alphabet system its really hard for chinese to merge and evolve with the world (probably what china wants) And with china being one of the biggest powers in the world their language being so shit is a massive problem (I am chinese and know chinese but i am not from china)
Katakana is awful for those learning English though. They already have in their heads a set way to pronounce a seemingly English word and it's super hard for them to rewire their brain to use the correct pronunciation. It's really frustrating because the katakana pronunciation is sometimes so close to the English pronunciation but it goes right over their heads to the point where they don't seem to know what the word is at all. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
While it could be a bit frustrating when you try to learn Chinese, one could argue that keeping the number of loan words to a minimum makes a language more coherent, logical and in fact easier to master. Clearly you were trying logically discern the meaning of 三明治, which you would be able to do with the majority of words in Chinese. Actually we have the Japanese to thank for translating a lot of western concepts into logical combinations of Chinese characters during the Meiji era. Of course, with languages like English one can more readily borrow a lot of words from other languages, but for example, what does taxonomy have to do with taxes? The meaning of a word is far less transparent to someone seeing or hearing it for the first time. One actually has to be put in a lot more effort to learn all the root words (speaking from personal experience).
Right but what you'll actually see more of the time in Chinese literal translations instead of trying to imitate the pronunciation of the native language. For example "Bluetooth" = 蓝牙 (literally "blue" and "tooth"- doesn't make any more sense in Chinese than it does in English), Santa = 圣诞老人 ("Christmas old man"), Superbowl = 超级碗 (literally just "super" as in "extra" and "bowl" like a physical dish, again doesn't really make sense in either language if you think about it), Star Wars = 星球大战 ("Star/planet war"), etc. Whereas all these would just be written in katakana in Japanese. I actually like it because they are translating _meaning_ rather than just sound. Japanese people hear these words and understand what they are as a concept, but it's less likely that they know what it actually _means_ on a linguistic level. Sure it might be hard to figure out at first for English speakers because it doesn't sound like our language, but once you know the meaning of the most commonly used characters you can usually figure it out. Sometimes I think we're spoiled too much with katakana. Chinese gives us more of a challenge. 😂💪 ~:~
I started learning Japanese because Japanese music is such poetry and I love understanding all the feelings on tram or train like tonight when I just came exhausted from work. The best feeling. A whole different feeling. I am taken a different world.
I'm the same! Although I watched anime forever, dubs or subs were always there. The music was special and I wanted to understand it more, to be able to listen and translate it myself. I'm starting a Jmusic cover band and I'm writing a lot about the genre, language, and music theory behind it on my blog. There's not many Jmusic fans around the world, and anime fans may know a theme song, but not the name or the artists behind them. It's hard getting into it if you don't know the language since Japanese labels don't try to promote internationally, so I wanted to help share it and make it more accessible 🥰
Yep, the Japanese does often put a LOT of heart into their lyrics, & that had been the case even back in the 60s & 70s. as someone who's of Chinese ethnic background & listening to Chinese music during my formative years, a period of which a crap ton of Chinese songs actually came from Japan, it's really appalling when i found in my later years, just how LAZILY WRITTEN & CRAPPY the lyrics of those Chinese songs are, when compared to their Japanese counterparts most of the time.
You're truly a man of culture For me it's almost the same I want to start learning Japanese for two reasons The first is for the music because j-pop has some musical elements that western music lacks (not to mention the poetic feel) But also the language as a whole, Japanese sounds very pleasant to the ear, it's just indescribable
I love this, especially because you said that sometimes the direct translation isn't the best, then translated "chotto matte" to "Let me double-check that" even though it directly translates to something more like "wait a moment".
I laughed so hard at the 適当 thing. I remember spending so much time trying to find a definition that actually made sense with the way I heard people using it.
@@mobbarley1102 whenever you look up the word 適当 (pronounced tekitō) in a dictionary or on Google translate it will tell you that it means "appropriate" or "suitable." When in reality, 9 out of 10 times Japanese people use it to mean "half-assed" or "half-hearted."
Amusing. An Osaka guy told me off for my perfect Tokyo accent. I was so proud of that. If you want to impress Japanese, learn some kanjis that even they can't read. Learn to read the headlines in Japanese newspapers. Always good for conversation openers.
Certain aspects are much easier than romantic languages, including English. Verb conjugation is straightforward. Learn one, learn them all. In English, French, or Spanish, etc, that's a big nope. Where Japanese is difficult is the different ways of speaking to different people (honorific / familiar), ever changing idiot that can differ dramatically from region to region, and of course Kanji, which requires learning tens of thousands of characters and semantic combinations thereof. While few Americans speak Japanese, it's clear from our cultural fascination between the Japanese and us Americans is that there's a strong bond between us. Much love and respect from Florida!
this is truly one of the most annoying things about learning japanese... i never paid attention in english class so i didnt know wtf a transitive verb, adverb, conditional form, etc was ... >< edit: Although I'm fairly certain Dogen is talking about all of the loan words in Japanese lol. My point still stands though
considering that my first language is Russian but I study Japanese through English recourses, I'm quite literally improving my English as well :D two birds with one stone
@@di_anso The same but with my polish. I find japanese closer to slavic languages than to english, grammatically and phonetically, so that make me laugh sometimes when I read long chapter about some grammatical pattern that exists in polish and I do not need explanation.
It’s so true for me because besides the “pronoun”, “adverb”, etc., (that, for some, I don’t even know in my native language), English is not my first language, and as I learn Japanese in English so I can improve in both at the same time, I learn probably one English word for every 20 or 30 Japanese words. Like, recently, I learnt the word : “scenery” which I never heard until now.
Seconded. But also media in general. There's so much content, video games, books, etc that we don't get much, if any translated access to other languages and it's nice to be able to interpret it in its original form
Idk, I'm in the camp of play weeb games, watch anime, read manga in Japanese if you like it. Anyone who says "bUt uWiLl sOunD LikE NaRitO"aNiMe" is dumb. Who cares? Immersion is immersion. If you're good enough to sound like anime characters, you'll eventually get good enough to know how to fix it. My recommendation is don't go too ham with difficulty level. I tried playing a VN way too early and wanted to cry. Way too literary, way too many obscure kanjis, and way too many japanese inside jokes. Go for stuff that is just above your difficulty level. Slice of Lifes are pretty great for that middle area imo. Also something that has been a lot of fun lately is playing online games with japanese folks. Randomly dropped into a lobby with Japanese folks and had an absolute blast. Only "down side", be ready to become an english teacher, but who cares. They're helping you with japanese, might as well pay it forward.
@@arizona_iced_out_boy I would love to be good enough at Japanese to reliably help Japanese people with their English. I guess that would be a rough goal for me.
Let me clue you in on a little secret: the way to get there is to do it. Just buy a Final Fantasy pixel remaster right away and set it on Japanese, it's not going to be too difficult to get through and while you won't get everything, you probably will understand enough and learn new kanji and vocabulary while doing it. Also, not a Japanese game of course, but I recently discovered that Skyrim has a full VO Japanese localization and it's been my primary means of study for the last couple of weeks, highly recommended. Especially if you have played it a lot before, as already knowing the content makes focusing on the language easier.
@@penttikoivuniemi2146 id argue that for people like me who want it to be applicable for all kinds of scenarios, (including games) its better to get a well rounded basis first before trying to focus into a game like that. I'm still in the process of learning grammatical rules and remembering the kata/hira alphabet enough to read outside of a learning environment, but as Matt VS Japan says, if you were to engage in content that isn't too applicable for the real world, most of what you learn will only be useful in few select case scenarios. That's why I bought some books and have just been writing down their contents in a notebook of my own, which has helped to the point of being able to read basic stories on duolingo without much assistance. It's been slow, but for roughly two months of consistent effort now, it's been good for me.
Thank you so much. I love Japan and I love Japanese more even though I'm learning it not like from a teacher, but by myself, I still try to find why a particular sentence is used, when not it's used, etc. Japan, Japanese and everything related to JAPAN is really special to me.
He hit the nail on the head with the air being something you read. I’ve studied for nearly 5 years and not once have I encountered 「空気を吸う」but always 「空気を読む」
A student taking a Japanese class on zoom during Covid, being in person and truly speaking the language with my classmates and teacher would help so much. There’s only so much you can practice when it’s just you alone at home. I would understand the language more if I were put in inperson situations as opposed to just online.
I just started learning on Duolingo and it’s been a lot of fun. Though I don’t know specifically why I’m trying to learn Japanese, it is just so much fun and such a thrill for me. I’m also bored and really wanting to do something productive with my spare time. Plus Japanese history and culture has always interested me! 😊
That's actually something i was picking up myself along the years of consuming japanese media; it seems to me that to understand japanese, as it is spoken, is more a case of understanding the overrall tone/intention of the phrase and applying that to your native language as best you can without losing the meaning rather than precisely translating 1:1. It makes sense to me because every fan-sub of any media, be it music, movie of anime, seems to have a different interpretation of how any given phrase should sound/how it would be applied in the desired language. Plus there seems to be a lot of nuances that get lost in direct translation, not only that it mostly comes off as gibberish most of the time. ...The problem is that i'm talking based on my experience; as a brazillian who is a self-taught english speaker i might just be applying the same "correlation" proccess i used to learn english to how i seem to understand japanese. In spite of this i truly believe latin people have an easier time learning Japanese because, phoneticaly speaking, the pronunciation really doesn't differ much so it might also be because of this, aaand i may or may not be just talking BS XD
When you write "tekito" in kanji, it is often understood to mean "appropriate," but when you write it in katakana, the nuance of "halfway" is easily understood.
Don't get focused on individual words. Rather, look at them in context and see how they function. Words are used to paint an overall picture and your job is to see that picture. 「今日の晩御飯の材料を適当に買ってくる。」(I'll go out to pick some stuff up [at the market] for dinner.) "Tekito" implies that they don't have an exact plan on what they are going to buy. The opposite would be showing up at the market with a recipe and purchasing every ingredient listed.) 「あの人はいつも適当なことばかりを言っている。」(You can never really trust what they say.) Basically describing a bullshitter...don't mean what they say most of the time.
I just came across this, i'm already in Japanese 3. You really do forget the Kanji so quickly 😭 but I like how the language sounds and flows, so I'm still gonna learn it even if it kills me. がんばります！
I’m just starting to learn Japanese. And when I saw the thumbnail, it was the first time that I saw Japanese writing and knew exactly how to read it and what it meant. Such a nice feeling.
At 14 I studied english (more like: read homestuck and not understanding one line, then my friends would tell me wtf was happening) because all my favourite video games/comics were in english. Now of course it’s all in japanese. Gotta do the whole process again for those sweet sweet visual novels…
Hahah Homestuck definitely brought my English to a next level, I had problems understanding it at first but kept googling difficult words and learned a whole bunch of them
That's why my goal in learning Japanese shifted from to easily understand Japanese watching anime to read works from Japan. I mostly have fun reading 小説 which I find in syosetu. I find interest that there was such an abundance of stories there that few only knows about. After all, as an aspiring writer I want to make a story unique from the ones I've read, by basically incorporating them to my own. That's all, gotta read Japanese again after this.
@@Ryyza7 I actually find great and ongoing series there to read. For example, 呪印の女剣士 by Hamitto which started 10 years ago and still ongoing with 2000+ chapters posted there.
Anime and youtube was my biggest motivation at first, but I'd have a harder time learning if I didn't know how to read (thus kanji is a necessity). I'd argue kanji is also useful even for a full fledged weeb, because it gives you that little reading comprehension needed for manga, games and youtube comments. Lately I've been reading manga from official online sources and I'd really like to read other works from Japan once I'm better at it.
at first i was confused at your "I mostly have fun reading 小説 which I find in syosetu" but realized that you're referring to syosetu websites 😅 i thought you're re-typing/only typing how to read the 小説 kanji (shousetsu)
この文章が出るということは、かなり日本語を深く研究されている方ですね。 「象は鼻が長い」という日本語の文章で「象は」も「鼻が」もどちらも主語となりえるという日本語文法における問題。 最近の日本語文法では二重主語として説明されたりしているが、実は今だはっきりしていない。 This is a problem in Japanese grammar that both "elephant" and "nose" can be the subject in this Japanese sentence "Elephants have long noses". In recent Japanese grammar, it is sometimes explained as a double subject, but in fact it is still not clear.
I was so hurt by someone telling me that that I stopped studying for years. I was so excited to be speaking Japanese. My goal was to go to Japan and when I introduced myself to a Japanese businessman he looked at me and in flawless English told me he did not understand a word I was saying.
@@carmelopappalardo8477 Don't be discourage by people like that. Generally all the japanese I have met are happy and proud that you're learning their mother tounge and because of that they are very friendly and want to encourage you to learn more. Hence the 上手 compliment everywhere. Take criticism with a grain of salt, everyone starts out talking like a baby. Don't stop learning
@@carmelopappalardo8477 i mean if you couldn't do something as simple as introduce yourself, the rest of your Japaness is probably just as bad lol もっと勉強するべきだよ。
I really just started learning because it was cool. But as I went further, I realized how amazing Japanese grammar is. That's when I screwed speaking and just learning from Duolingo, I started ordering books based on grammar and focused more on the writing part since I'm pretty good at pronouncing because of anime. It's an amazing language. I'm just on Katakana, but I really am looking forward. And if you can please read The Japanese Grammar Guide by Tae Kim :) I just spend time with the book, and only if I don't get the point, I come here on TH-cam. I don't know why I am learning Japanese specifically, but I really enjoy it as a hobby and I think I can make something out of it. P.S - Sorry for the block of text.
Yay! Another person who learns for fun! I started the same way with english lots of years ago and now I'm trying japanese. Thanks for the book recommendation, I'm going to look it up. Another language is never a bad thing to know!
@@phen-themoogle7651 You do. it's just that western people have a hard time telling when Japanese people actually mean 日本語上手 as the words themselves actually mean, & when Japanese people are saying 日本語上手 as in they're trying to be nice. doing so involves being able to see through Japanese fakeness , a very keen eye for reading the mood & for reading body language. those things ain't gonna come unless you've gotten well past intermediate levels & actually having met & talked to dozens of Japanese people.
@@josephinesakata9036 Oh shit, you made me remember all these times where he's explaining this super complicated stuff and I was pretending to understand, I prefer when it comes down to a rope or some string
While watching anime without subtitles is part of my goal, I also with to visit Japan and be able to fluently speak with people/read signs, so yes, I will need to study Kanji. I've already mostly memorized Katakana, so I need to start memorizing more Hirigana and studying Kanji (I'm only about 0.2% fluent in Kanji so far lol)
@@omegacardboard5834 I probably should have learned Hirigana first, but I guess it is what it is. Katakana has the simplest characters and is therefore easy to memorize, and it's quite common since many newer Japanese words are taken directly from other languages, primarily English. I have learned some Hirigana, and I should focus on that now.
Yes, you can always study Japanese from anime depends on your goal. I believe many people have said it, but please do remember that many words spoken in anime aren't used in real life, especially when it comes to keigo or respectful Japanese. At this point, just learn by watching Vtuber instead. Many of them actually use keigo.
"It's very rare that a direct translation is the best translation" Every early 2000s fansubber ever: "Don't tell me what to do old man... -sama*" * Sama (様, さま) is a more respectful version for individuals of a higher rank than oneself. Appropriate usages include divine entities, guests or customers (such as a sports venue announcer addressing members of the audience), and sometimes towards people one greatly admires. Supposedly, it is the root word for -san and there is no major evidence suggesting otherwise. Deities such as native Shinto kami and Jesus Christ are referred to as kami-sama, meaning "Revered spirit-sama". When used to refer to oneself, -sama expresses extreme arrogance (or self-effacing irony), as in praising oneself to be of a higher rank, as with ore-sama (俺様, "my esteemed self").
The good thing about Katakana is the fact there's a decent chance of looking forward to another good laugher when you preview a sentence and spotting new Katakana words in it, like スーパーマーケット or スペイン語 - it's always hilarious hearing the pronounciation of these words.
I started watching you when I was 13 and just beginning my studies in japanese.. Its been a few years, I've gotten marginally better at japanese thanks to multiple resources, and I still love your videos 😂 the only phrase I remembered without even trying for the first few months was "上手じゃない"
I just found your channel, and enjoy the videos. Thanks. I lived in Japan when I was younger, and can speak and read at the level of a typical middle school kid in Japan. I’ve never felt a need to improve beyond that. The potential benefits don’t seem to outweigh the costs. As a non-Japanese person, there was zero chance that I could ever obtain professional success in Japan. Besides, salaries for skilled professionals in Japan are quite low, and the hours are long. So, I didn’t see a reason to reach a professional level of proficiency, just so that I could get a job in which I’d be unhappy. I can’t say much for the whole anime thing. I’ve never watched anime, and have no interest in Japanese popular culture. I’d probably have no interest in Japan whatsoever if not for the happenstance of having lived there when I was younger. In fact, most Westerners I know who grew up there have little interest in going back. Many of us have jobs for which nominal Japanese language proficiency is a plus. But the benefits of that will go much farther in the West than in Japan.
Get over it. You will never be truly accepted there and cultural addiction is dumb i get annoyed by people obsessed with japanese culture. Altho im a bit hypocritical as a japanese person in love with colombia and Latin culture.🤣
@@Bosh7066 if i ruined a dream that easily you need a stronger dream dont you know a dream is not easy to achieve normally? You must have the will to pursue your dream otherwise there will be more people like me that are neg. Also mind you my family is from a rural remote part of japan. People in bigger cities have diff attitudes lol
Im coming to your country in october of this year, but unlike others who like anime or want to live there I want to explore a country that is not so westernized like Europe and NA. Something that will feel completely foreign to me
For me it's a good thing to keep in mind. There's always, and I mean always room for improvement, there's no point where you're perfect at speaking any language, even your native one. If I thought I'd already be excellent at something, I'd close my eyes towards further improvement, since i'd think it wasn't necessary.
@@kingo_friver Isn´t it the structure of the sentence? This specific sentence is used in Japanese language class to teach the は, が sentence structure. At least I came across it quite frequently..
I am actually studying Japanese not to graduate from my University, or to have somewhat of fine job with languages, or etc etc I just want to play Yakuza games in Japanese and understand 85% of the text freely That's all I wanted from my life at this point.
Ya , I tried to learn Japanese just as a brain exercise at the beginning of lockdowns , and I'm liking it ever since, it really complicated to relate the meanings, and surprisingly it helps me improve in my studies, and then I discover, I might really enjoy learning languages , even if I'm not going to do anything with this knowledge, my English is still the worst , please spare me for any mistakes.
Baaaassh I wanna learn japanese because I loooove love love the language!❤ Not for working not for understanding anime without subtitles! I just got hypnotized by the japanese language and their people's kindness!❤❤❤
I only know a little Japanese, but fortunately, you only need a little Japanese to appreciate the side-splitting subtle wit of his descriptions of learning Japanese!
Start with manga, light novels can be a bit daunting and might burn you out. just read read read and read (manga). That’s all I can recommend, supplement your reading with some grammar studying to help with reading comprehension and you’ll be on your way.
@@tilted6368 when i started reading some visual novels and one actual novel i was slow but i still learnt a lot. It was a bit hard and i read less and less. Then in the last few months i read some manga from start to finish and didn't look up much or study it explicitly. Took me 2 months to read nisekoi, quite a bit of dialogue, 230 chapters. Read a few hundred chapters in less dialogue heavy manga as well. The quantity alone improved my reading a lot, now when I continue the novels they're a lot easier than before (but still hard). I'm still nowhere near good at jp, but manga reading was a super nice boost. Quantity is king
currently, im studying in japan at a language school and have been studying for almost a year now and i can say….. everything you just said makes perfect sense now.
That's the point of the video. Some people get so elitist about a language that they start putting other people down and turning away new learners so they can maintain their sense of superiority. "Influencer teachers" like Dogen and Matt VS Japan are a pretty poor source for learning Japanese because they talk too much about what you shouldn't do, which is discouraging and confusing for new students of a language. If you're serious about learning Japanese, I'd turn away from channels like these if I were you. They will only slow you down. Japanese Ammo with Misa might be the only good channel if you really want a video format since they just focus on covering grammar rules instead of making useless videos like this one. I've only been studying for a year and I can already read most manga thanks to not wasting my time with channels like Dogen.
Thanks, TH-cam algorithm, this is really totally relevant to me. I mean, I'm trying to learn Polish, but I guess you at least got the flag colours correct, so that's a start.
soooooo funny!! His word is really true, but dont worry. Japanese people know that Japanese is a crazy language that even Japanese people can't understand. When you come on a trip, you don't have to worry about the politeness or rudeness of the language at all. I am very surprised and praise you when you speak fluently like he does.
I actually think katakanas are very helpful when reading. Unlike English, Japanese does not use spaces to distinguish each words; as foreign words tend to have different patterns to that of Japanese syllable orders, were it written in hiragana it makes it more difficult for the readers to pick out each words. The similar is probably in English that you sometimes will read your sentence, for example, as un-animous until you realise the word is unanimous; yu-na-nimous not an-ani-mous somewhere around m. highlighting foreign words by katakana is much easier to read than English sentences, especially Japanese has both phonograms and ideograms to simplify reading. (btw I am japanese)
"Air isn't something you breathe but something you read". I can totally understand this one. It's because I am Indian and we also use the same thing we call it "vastu". It's basically the atmosphere of a room. A lot of times I can understand the Japanese context because of my Asian origin. I mean Indian origin.
From my experience doing memotecnics with kanjis (im so glad this languages has Kanjis!) gives you a visual asociation later on when you find the "sound" and you asociate better the word (kanji+sound in practice) , also helps you to study as the source from wich you study usually is writen in Japonese. Memorizing sounds alone without a unique visual asociation image makes 3 times harder if not 4
"and the good thing about katakana... Wait what's the good thing about katakana again" I felt that on a spiritual level, I'm currently learning japanese and I memorized about 15 Kanji and all the hiragana (I only started like 2 weeks ago so don't judge me) but I just can't bring myself to learn katakana, like bruh why, it's just hiragana in a different font
SO DAMN GOOD!!!!! I could hear you speak all day cause sounds just like anime! It's also clear that you dont simply speak but is updated with their culture.
@@dreadinside654 maybe. Just I doubt that Japanese will ever be useful in my life. A chance to meet a Japanese person in my life is very low. And I'm too lazy to watch a show or read a book in an original language. Even American movies I watch in translation despite being capable to understand English.
@@RanmaruRei If you're not interested in learning Japanese better don't waste your time learning it. Like myself I have a mission 😀. And that's why I'm currently learning basic Japanese with a teacher.
2:13 my mother from nagoya has been nihongo jouzu'ing me lately so i thought maybe those two semesters of japanese i took a few years back when i was still going to college were finally paying off. thank you for reminding me that i'll never be anything more than another filthy nikkeijin, dogen-san.
Dogens right. My bf is from Kumamoto. Learning his slang is sooo fun (and it’s also agreed that Kumamoto-ben sounds cute). So, I’m also an advocate for Kagoshima dialect.
As a DLI graduate for a different language, this concept was hammered in early in the course. You will need to understand and be an expert in English grammar if you want to have a chance at understanding the target language beyond a simple base level. Understanding terms that were barely discussed in grade school like nominative, dative, accusative, genitive cases were required before I was able to turn the word salad vocabulary into coherent sentences. Next comes all of the cultural terms that have a myriad of meanings depending on the context. A great example in English is "bless your heart!" I could be saying something nice, supportive or just straight up insulting all based on context and situation.
I am native Japanese. You are really amazing!! I've been telling to my husband who is American that "You shouldn't study Kanji so work hard, just focus on SPEAKING and LISTENING. That's the best way to study Japanese because you will be able to communicate with Japanese. That's the most important.", but he never listens to me about it. I suggest that all ppl who's been studying Japanese, you should learn Japanese from your native speakers like him and also native Japanese as well. Because he knows the points in Japanese which I never noticed things. Such as what is the difficult parts in Japanese for global citizens. ところで、どうやって、そして何年間かけて日本語を勉強しましたか？ あなたの日本語は本当に素晴らしいです！！私の夫にも、あなたの様に日本語を話せるようになって欲しい！ Dear ppl who's been studying Japanese. You don't have to be like "native". Almost ALL Japanese are very happy if you speak Japanese, because we know Japanese language is ”local” in the world. That's why we are happy and admire you if you could. My English is not good, because I am not native. それでいいのだ！(*'▽')
What else do people need to know before studying English I mean japanese
When a menu item at a restaurant is designated as spicy, it needs at least 3 pepper images next to the name before you have a chance of feeling a hint of spice.
You have to forget about the pronouns
Don't
It's always 申し訳ありません、even if you do have a perfectly good 申し訳
@@ianlawrence1840 haha nice one
Something I've noticed is that the more time passes as I study japanese, the more enjoyable Dogen videos become.
An additional motivation to keep me going !
だよね！！！I was just thinking about this I swear to GOD !! THEN I READ YOUR COMMENT
me too!
this is how i feel when consuming the media now, its a completely different experience compared to when i had to rely on translations
The same here! Today I could even understand some of his sentences without reading subtitles! 🤩
This time it was the first time I laughed
I’ll never forget asking my sensei to come to my graduation party. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, in Japanese: “I will try to be there”
Which we all know really means: “no, I won’t be coming.”
Congratulations on your graduation
It's just like as in British English!
I remember making plans with my coworkers 100 times. Knowing it's all just to seem like we having a blast and can't wait to hangout next time
@@andrewcgs Brazilian portuguese too. "We should hang out someday" are just meaningless words that could mean anything
@@abelpf that is also true in American English
My main reason to study Japanese is to better get your jokes
same
Yeeah, I think that might help, even though I can figure some of it out because of context.
I'm not really studying anymore but if I study my main reason is to get reincarnated into an anime world/isekai in my next life. The isekai gods will say "You thought in Japanese at least 51% of the time so we decided to bring you to a world where Japanese is the only language" or something lol
FUCKING EXACTly LmfaO
Yesu
“No matter what anyone says, you are not good at Japanese” truer words have not been spoken 😭
I can understand why he put it in the video. The most Japanese would say that your Japanese is good becouse 1 they want to be polite and 2 they are happy that their language is appreciated by foreigners.
But I still disagree on that fact. Becouse fluent is = "good" even without a correct pitch accent. Or kanji stroke order.
And getting fluent is just a matter of time. (you will be!)
“The most important thing is to be understood, not to be perfect.”
-Adam Benn (Engvid)
I don't really understand this, you can be good without speaking it perfectly. I know loads of foreigners who speak decent or good English without it being anywhere near perfect.
@@fabixigg3954 No, good is only Dogen/Matt vs Japan level, anything below that is 日本語上手
@@rigelkent8828 exactly! our goal is to be fluent, not native.
"You're actually studying English." Absolute fact. When trying to study Japanese I have ended up learning about English and things like how words go together. It's pretty interesting.
yeah, we did something called 'nominalising' a few weeks back in class. never heard of it before that but apparently its something we do 😂
As a french who used english to learn japanese , it is true . They are so many stuff for learning japanese in english than in french that is it way better to do that if you don't have a teacher . I don't say that i'm bad in english but i'm far from perfect so learning japanese with english requieres to understand english way better than the daily life sometimes ^^
Same goes for native Japanese speakers learning English. The common sentiment is "Your English is only ever as good as your Japanese," but in Japanese class nobody learns anything about grammar.
@47997137x but a japanese native could speak japanese , so they must have learn that grammar , right ? Or they just learn by watching other people around them by copying them and don't really understand why you should say this and that but know what to do anyway ? like you know what you should say but don't know why , and if you could have this "why" you would have an advantage , a knowledge who could help you to learn other language.
i don't know if i'm wrong , but i like to think it could be true (feel free to correct me )
@@Eldiran1 Like with most languages, natives simply learn the grammar through copying and intuition. Of course, like with a lot of countries, they do also teach the grammar in school in the sort of "this is how this works" but I'm not sure what they teach exactly since I'm not Japanese.
I can only share what we do here in the Philippines. We learn English and Tagalog growing up, and then the linguistic grammar at school for both, although we tend to retain the English terms for grammatical stuff better. Either way, we mostly just forget about it after exams (depending on how nerdy we are or how the teacher taught) until we need the stuff again next school year.
Interestingly, the stuff we learn for English and Filipino in terms of grammar is basically the same (i.e. after we learn the lesson in English, the lesson in Filipino is just the English lesson translated into Tagalog) but with several exceptions of course, most of which are obvious, and some we don't understand even as (or especially as) native speakers (like the difference between English's future tense and Tagalog's imperfect aspect; they're both commonly used for things happening in the future).
I'm 15age japanese student. ive studied english for 3 years in school. im gonna write my opinion abt studying japanese
In my opinion as a Japanese, honestly, you dont need to study Kanji very much. because Kanji is not necessary to talk in Japanese, write a message on the phone( if u need to write a letter, it is necessary).First U need to memorize how to read Kanji.
also, don't forget to speak and listening Japanese every day. Listening and speaking are most important thing to learn Japanese.
Do you know why many Japanese cant speak English? because what we need to study for exams is reading and writing (grammar) . that's why we cant communicate in English.
i didn't know how many people are studying Japanese. im so happy to hear that. Hope u guys to succeed. i will study English so hard too
this dogen channel is the best to study Japanese
Playing videogames that doesn't get released in the west(so it doesn't get translated to english) is also another reason to learn Kanji. But I guess they aren't going to use obscure ones in videogames.
thanks for this comment, im trying to pick up japanese again but i dont want to study kanji because it seemed a little worthless if i cant pick up conversations, so i thought that learning conversational skills first as a priority would make it faster and would make me like the language and pick things along the way, but i was scared that i was doing it wrong, so its nice to hear a japanese person say that kanji is not that important, thank you!
@@itachi60001 good luck!!
aahhh i want to work in Japan but I'm dyslexic and i stuggle with spelling words and pronountion even in my own language. Sometimes I don't feel native in my language.
If you found yourself nodding or laughing at some point in this video you're closer to 日本語上手ness
that omae part is beautiful
@@Arc_Noir I laughed hard at that part, and then I broke my neck nodding heavily at the kuuki
Everyone is 日本語上手
@@christopherluke9658 and yet nobody is 日本語上手
＿人人人人人人人人人人人＿
＞ 日本語上手ness ＜
￣Y^Y^Y^Y^Y^Y^Y^Y^Y^Y￣
I'm a Japanese 17-year-old student. I’m going to write my opinions depending on your purposes to learn Japanese.
1, for watching animation without subtitles
you need to learn EASY grammar and listening skills. About grammar, it is only to learn「を(wo)」「が(ga)」「は(wa)」「だから(dakara)」and so on. About listening skills, it's good for you to watch animations and movies! You needn't watch formal radio, TVnews because our language has very deep sense, and such things always use such a formal grammar. We never use them everyday life.
2, for reading book
It's so difficult skill. Many Japanese can't read books because Japanese writers have too deep thought for us to understand what they wanna convey. However, for improving reading skill, you need to read! I recommend some writers or books.
Tsujimura Mizuki (辻村深月) has beautiful sense and she use easy metaphors. It's great!
Kuromajosan ga toru(黒魔女さんが通る！). It's a book and very very interesting. It always has ふりがな for Kanji, so it's easy to read.
If you want to read Natsume Soseki, Murakami Haruki, Mori Ogai, etc, you should learn Japanese almost completely. Their works are so difficult. I can't read them🤣
3 for speaking
You need to learn grammar, listening skills, mainly.
I recommend you to watch Japanese movies and dramas by using AmazonPrime, Netfrix. In them, actors uses casual words and grammar. You need to learn them. my recommend↓
家政婦のミタ (Kaseifu no Mita)
Soooo interesting! It's a Japanese MOST famous drama.
マザー(Mother)
It's also very interesting and deep. It discribes child abuse and victim(a girl)'s teacher try to protect her by kidnapping. ALL Japanese cried😭😭
アンフェア (unfair)
It has some series. It's a detective drama, and very interesting, but so difficult, so if you want to learn high level Japanese, let's try!
That's all! My English is so bad, sorry😭
Please comment here if you want to know more.
i want to know more
Your English is just amazing
Therefore ,That last sentence is useless
ありがとうございます。僕は半分日本人ですけど、僕の日本語和やばいです。でもよくなりたいです。ひらがながわかる、でもかんじわかりません。xD
あなたのえいごわじょおずです。
@@blasianking4827 あなたの日本語は少しまちがっていますが、きちんと伝わっていますよ！
@@ちゃんぴ-x1q ありがとう。よくなりたいです。
自分は英語を勉強してるんだけど、この動画見て、外国の人も頑張って日本語を勉強してるって思うとモチベがめっちゃ上がる！！みんな頑張ろう！！
I'm studying English, but watching this video and thinking that people from other countries are also studying Japanese hard really motivates me! Let's all do our best!
Good luck with your studies!
頑張ってね！
Haii , let's do our best ✨
I’m trying to tackle several languages, two that are still being spoken, japanese and spanish, and two (technically) that are dead, latin and sindarin elvish which technically counts as a dead language
My problem just happens to be that I have a reeeeeeally hard time learning languages so this will be fun😅
nihongo jouzu ne
何気なく動画開いたら主の日本語が信じられないくらい上手くてびっくりした
You know that your Japanese is good when you can do Japanese word-play and Japanese native speakers laugh.
"Air isn't something you breathe , but something you read"
Is what I've learned while learning Japanese.
Just like the room
I didn't get this one ☹️
@@FISHGOMOO4321 it’s from the phrase ‘空気読めない’ (kuuki yomenai) which literally translates to ‘can’t read the air’. It’s basically the equivalent of calling someone who can’t ‘read the room’
reading the atmosphere is much better than breathing the atmosphere.
@@FISHGOMOO4321There's a common phrase in Japanese called 空気を読む Literally 'to read the air' it means ' to understand the situation without words' or 'to sense someone's feeling' as in Japanese culture it's more polite to be less direct , it's important to 'read the air' for example , if you asked a person a question and the person replied with ' それはちょっと...' that means 'its a little..' that is the person is trying to say that ' it's a little inconvenient/tough to answer' , in various situations like this it's required to 'read the air'.
I've been studying japanese for 2 years and i enrolled in a japanese school (OJLEC) in April this year and when you said "Japanese people don't really say that." it just hits too close to home :')
慣れない海外まで勉強しに来るのはすごい
大変だろうけど頑張って！
It's great that you're willing to come to an unfamiliar country to study.
I know it's hard, but good luck!
Ah luckyyyy. Do you think you'' be able to still study in Japan with the restriction still being up or are you hoping they will allow people back in by the time it's time for you to study there?
Wish I was doing the same. I'm 25 and still want to learn Japanese but hard to do between my modules at University. Hope I can do Work Abroad or cultural immersion in Japan though eventually and still learn the language enough to live there for a while. What are you going to be studying there?
@@danielwhyatt3278 As for your questions regarding my opinion, I won't be answering them as what I think and wish for really doesn't matter because I can't make those decisions anyways (the japanese government does). Although, as someone with experience of studying Japanese I would advise you to rethink upon your decision once more. Not to discourage you or anything, but Japanese is NOT by any means an easy language. Moreover, your views and interest in Japan might change once you actually try and live there as a resident and not as a tourist. Though i can't really say much about that last one since I myself am still forced to study online until who knows when and am currently not living there.
I started last week with putting effort in learning the sentence structures and I have been continuously quizzing and memorizing Hiragana and Katakana. I've listened to Japanese Music for along time, not knowing what stuff said. I watched Anime since like 2012. so when I hear people speak Japanese now, I understand single words in sentences but not necessarily entire phrases yet (though some basic ones I understand). My comprehension is surprisingly good for a N5 level and even decent for N4.
But anyways, in 2023 summer I am planning an internship in Japan and then depending on how that goes. I will finish my senior year in my communications program in 2024 and then I will spend perhaps another year learning and hopefully I could be at a N2 level by summer 2025. Then move to Japan in that summer.
I know is old but thats nothing exclusive with the japanese if you have learn any language before, that phrase is said of any language you pick since people doesn't talk as is written in a book... the thing is you don't suppose to learn random phrases, books are to get along with the grammar and common ways of speaking but the thing is language change fast and books can't keep updated, you need to listen actual conversations by actual human beings, and read a lot.
I have been studying Japanese for about a month on Duolingo. I am proud to say that I clearly heard "pencil" in the video. Also, my greatest accomplishment so far was being able to sound out about 95% of the title card in One Piece last night. (I'm actually extremely happy about this even if it seems lame.)
Keep going!! I’m on my 65 days streak!! Hope you get better at Japanese we can do this!!
I wish it felt like I was actually learning anything using it
Congrats! I just hit my 300th day and I'm so happy too when I hear or read things on my own!
@@zekerdeath same, 250 day streak and I feel like all I all I learned is very basic phrases.
www~ “Pencil” is a great accomplishment,keep going!
If you wanna be a really special foreigner, you should learn the hardest of all Japanese dialects, the Miyako Dialect. If you love Japanese for how simple its syllables are, Miyako is perfect because it has such simple and easy to pronounce words as “fks” and “kff” and “psks”
宮古弁は難し過ぎるから辞めておいた方がいい
日本人でも少しも分からないし、あれはもう日本語じゃなくて他言語に近い
Finally, being a slav will be helpful for something!
Why try to be special at all? I like the language and the culture so I study it
Not trying to surpass any other person who also likes the language and culture
It's not a dialect in the same manner as US English and UK English are, it's a sperate Japonic language. You're misleading people who want to learn Japanese into learning something that's not Japanese.
@@alb2451 Yes. That is the joke
I love how watching your videos makes me both motivated and unmotivated to learn Japanese at the same time !!
I feel like everyone learning Japanese has a love/hate relationship with the language and really strong on both sides, same as with living in Japan as a foreigner, or at least it's a phase that everyone must go through haha
@@Hookat88 i have a love/hate relationship with japanese :(
Even me....😁😁😁
I also love/hate Duolingo. In essence it is a really fun learning tool but then I want more grammar or vocabulary and read about a mistake in a practice sentence again and again, so I stop using it. But then again, I don't have a good enough replacement, so I just end up not learning as much as I'd like to.
@@sizu_ha (⑉•̀ᴗ•́⑉)و✧頑張りﾏｽ!
After starting to learn Chinese, I never realized how thankful I am for katakana
In Chinese they just use Chinese characters for EVERYTHING
So for example, 三明治 is "sandwich" (Sānmíngzhì)
So I'll just be reading along and be like "three bright cure? Wtf?" but no, it's just sandwich 😭
There's no obvious way to tell that something is a loan word or name at first 😭😭😭
Chinese is a fossil that should really be buried at this point
With no alphabet system its really hard for chinese to merge and evolve with the world (probably what china wants)
And with china being one of the biggest powers in the world their language being so shit is a massive problem
(I am chinese and know chinese but i am not from china)
Katakana is awful for those learning English though. They already have in their heads a set way to pronounce a seemingly English word and it's super hard for them to rewire their brain to use the correct pronunciation. It's really frustrating because the katakana pronunciation is sometimes so close to the English pronunciation but it goes right over their heads to the point where they don't seem to know what the word is at all. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
I'd like a ThreeBrightCure to go, please.
While it could be a bit frustrating when you try to learn Chinese, one could argue that keeping the number of loan words to a minimum makes a language more coherent, logical and in fact easier to master. Clearly you were trying logically discern the meaning of 三明治, which you would be able to do with the majority of words in Chinese. Actually we have the Japanese to thank for translating a lot of western concepts into logical combinations of Chinese characters during the Meiji era. Of course, with languages like English one can more readily borrow a lot of words from other languages, but for example, what does taxonomy have to do with taxes? The meaning of a word is far less transparent to someone seeing or hearing it for the first time. One actually has to be put in a lot more effort to learn all the root words (speaking from personal experience).
Right but what you'll actually see more of the time in Chinese literal translations instead of trying to imitate the pronunciation of the native language. For example "Bluetooth" = 蓝牙 (literally "blue" and "tooth"- doesn't make any more sense in Chinese than it does in English), Santa = 圣诞老人 ("Christmas old man"), Superbowl = 超级碗 (literally just "super" as in "extra" and "bowl" like a physical dish, again doesn't really make sense in either language if you think about it), Star Wars = 星球大战 ("Star/planet war"), etc. Whereas all these would just be written in katakana in Japanese.
I actually like it because they are translating _meaning_ rather than just sound. Japanese people hear these words and understand what they are as a concept, but it's less likely that they know what it actually _means_ on a linguistic level. Sure it might be hard to figure out at first for English speakers because it doesn't sound like our language, but once you know the meaning of the most commonly used characters you can usually figure it out. Sometimes I think we're spoiled too much with katakana. Chinese gives us more of a challenge. 😂💪
~:~
I started learning Japanese because Japanese music is such poetry and I love understanding all the feelings on tram or train like tonight when I just came exhausted from work. The best feeling. A whole different feeling. I am taken a different world.
I'm the same! Although I watched anime forever, dubs or subs were always there. The music was special and I wanted to understand it more, to be able to listen and translate it myself. I'm starting a Jmusic cover band and I'm writing a lot about the genre, language, and music theory behind it on my blog. There's not many Jmusic fans around the world, and anime fans may know a theme song, but not the name or the artists behind them. It's hard getting into it if you don't know the language since Japanese labels don't try to promote internationally, so I wanted to help share it and make it more accessible 🥰
Yep, the Japanese does often put a LOT of heart into their lyrics, & that had been the case even back in the 60s & 70s. as someone who's of Chinese ethnic background & listening to Chinese music during my formative years, a period of which a crap ton of Chinese songs actually came from Japan, it's really appalling when i found in my later years, just how LAZILY WRITTEN & CRAPPY the lyrics of those Chinese songs are, when compared to their Japanese counterparts most of the time.
Me too! 😊
yessss
You're truly a man of culture
For me it's almost the same
I want to start learning Japanese for two reasons
The first is for the music because j-pop has some musical elements that western music lacks (not to mention the poetic feel)
But also the language as a whole, Japanese sounds very pleasant to the ear, it's just indescribable
I love this, especially because you said that sometimes the direct translation isn't the best, then translated "chotto matte" to "Let me double-check that" even though it directly translates to something more like "wait a moment".
あまりにも素晴らしい日本語の発音です。どれだけの研鑽を積まれたのか想像もできません。感服いたしました。
I FREAKING UNDERSTOOD THE TITLE AND IM SO PROUD OF MYSELF RN
EVEN THO I HAVE LITERALLY BEEN LEARNING JAPANESE FOR SIX YEARS
Are u russian too?
@@onesahara yep
I'm proud of you too 😘
@@chiamakaonuhxoxo awwww thank you! :3
I’m so proud of you!!! I hope I can make it like you did!! I’ve been learning Japanese for almost 2 months!!
I laughed so hard at the 適当 thing. I remember spending so much time trying to find a definition that actually made sense with the way I heard people using it.
I'm still confused with that word... Cuz in some context it can also mean "suitable" or "appropriate" too
Im too early into the Japanese learning stage that i dont even understand wtf is happening lmaoo
@@mobbarley1102 whenever you look up the word 適当 (pronounced tekitō) in a dictionary or on Google translate it will tell you that it means "appropriate" or "suitable." When in reality, 9 out of 10 times Japanese people use it to mean "half-assed" or "half-hearted."
@@mobbarley1102 same here lmfao
@@wayoftheneet2839 I've learned to use 適切 instead and stay away from that word no matter what
ドーゲンさんの動画って数分とかなのに話がよく出来ててほんと面白い。短い時間で記憶に残るのってすごいよね。
th-cam.com/video/aqDTh6pAes0/w-d-xo.html
Amusing. An Osaka guy told me off for my perfect Tokyo accent. I was so proud of that. If you want to impress Japanese, learn some kanjis that even they can't read. Learn to read the headlines in Japanese newspapers. Always good for conversation openers.
日本人はよく「日本語って難しいよね〜」と言います。なぜかというと、日本語が難しいからです。
わかるわ
なるほど
本当だ！
Certain aspects are much easier than romantic languages, including English. Verb conjugation is straightforward. Learn one, learn them all.
In English, French, or Spanish, etc, that's a big nope.
Where Japanese is difficult is the different ways of speaking to different people (honorific / familiar), ever changing idiot that can differ dramatically from region to region, and of course Kanji, which requires learning tens of thousands of characters and semantic combinations thereof.
While few Americans speak Japanese, it's clear from our cultural fascination between the Japanese and us Americans is that there's a strong bond between us.
Much love and respect from Florida!
小泉構文
「空気は吸い込むものではなく、読み物だ」wwww
www
最高
Best joke ever
誰か説明してくれる？
@@ジュリアン-x1p 日本語では「空気を吸う」という表現はあまり使われないけど、「空気を読む」という表現は頻繁に使われる。だから空気は吸うものではなく、読むもの
なんだ！ (*ﾟДﾟ)/
"you're actually studying english" is how i feel 99% of the time lmfao
this is truly one of the most annoying things about learning japanese... i never paid attention in english class so i didnt know wtf a transitive verb, adverb, conditional form, etc was ...
>< edit: Although I'm fairly certain Dogen is talking about all of the loan words in Japanese lol. My point still stands though
considering that my first language is Russian but I study Japanese through English recourses, I'm quite literally improving my English as well :D two birds with one stone
@@di_anso The same but with my polish. I find japanese closer to slavic languages than to english, grammatically and phonetically, so that make me laugh sometimes when I read long chapter about some grammatical pattern that exists in polish and I do not need explanation.
It’s so true for me because besides the “pronoun”, “adverb”, etc., (that, for some, I don’t even know in my native language), English is not my first language, and as I learn Japanese in English so I can improve in both at the same time, I learn probably one English word for every 20 or 30 Japanese words. Like, recently, I learnt the word : “scenery” which I never heard until now.
well now i just feel silly for complaining
Learning JP to play JP games flawlessly. That's the dream right there.
Seconded. But also media in general. There's so much content, video games, books, etc that we don't get much, if any translated access to other languages and it's nice to be able to interpret it in its original form
Idk, I'm in the camp of play weeb games, watch anime, read manga in Japanese if you like it. Anyone who says "bUt uWiLl sOunD LikE NaRitO"aNiMe" is dumb. Who cares? Immersion is immersion. If you're good enough to sound like anime characters, you'll eventually get good enough to know how to fix it.
My recommendation is don't go too ham with difficulty level. I tried playing a VN way too early and wanted to cry. Way too literary, way too many obscure kanjis, and way too many japanese inside jokes. Go for stuff that is just above your difficulty level. Slice of Lifes are pretty great for that middle area imo.
Also something that has been a lot of fun lately is playing online games with japanese folks. Randomly dropped into a lobby with Japanese folks and had an absolute blast. Only "down side", be ready to become an english teacher, but who cares. They're helping you with japanese, might as well pay it forward.
@@arizona_iced_out_boy I would love to be good enough at Japanese to reliably help Japanese people with their English. I guess that would be a rough goal for me.
Let me clue you in on a little secret: the way to get there is to do it. Just buy a Final Fantasy pixel remaster right away and set it on Japanese, it's not going to be too difficult to get through and while you won't get everything, you probably will understand enough and learn new kanji and vocabulary while doing it. Also, not a Japanese game of course, but I recently discovered that Skyrim has a full VO Japanese localization and it's been my primary means of study for the last couple of weeks, highly recommended. Especially if you have played it a lot before, as already knowing the content makes focusing on the language easier.
@@penttikoivuniemi2146 id argue that for people like me who want it to be applicable for all kinds of scenarios, (including games) its better to get a well rounded basis first before trying to focus into a game like that. I'm still in the process of learning grammatical rules and remembering the kata/hira alphabet enough to read outside of a learning environment, but as Matt VS Japan says, if you were to engage in content that isn't too applicable for the real world, most of what you learn will only be useful in few select case scenarios. That's why I bought some books and have just been writing down their contents in a notebook of my own, which has helped to the point of being able to read basic stories on duolingo without much assistance. It's been slow, but for roughly two months of consistent effort now, it's been good for me.
道元さん、日本語上手すぎる！
すごいですね、信じられないくらい上手いです。
この動画の音声だけ聞いたら、まず９９％以上の日本人は道元さんが日本人だと思うでしょう。
それくらい自然な日本語ですね。
そしてなにより文化も含めた日本語の理解が大変深くていらっしゃる。
この域に達するまでどれだけの労力と時間を掛けられたのかと思うと、本当に頭が下がります。
凄すぎる。敬服致します。
Thank you so much. I love Japan and I love Japanese more even though I'm learning it not like from a teacher, but by myself, I still try to find why a particular sentence is used, when not it's used, etc. Japan, Japanese and everything related to JAPAN is really special to me.
That last one shattered my last bit of confidence in my skills left q:
It has come to a point where I can't live without Dogen's sarcastic humor anymore.
He hit the nail on the head with the air being something you read. I’ve studied for nearly 5 years and not once have I encountered 「空気を吸う」but always 「空気を読む」
when atmosphere
@@beaclaster exactly. Because you 吸う your 息
How do you say the first word? I see the Kanji for sky in there, but thr 2nd one is new to me
@@robf1557its read as: kuuki くうき。 the second kanji is ki, き as in; 元気(genki) and 気分(kibun)
@@SelcraigClimbs thank you very much :)
A student taking a Japanese class on zoom during Covid, being in person and truly speaking the language with my classmates and teacher would help so much. There’s only so much you can practice when it’s just you alone at home. I would understand the language more if I were put in inperson situations as opposed to just online.
I just started learning on Duolingo and it’s been a lot of fun. Though I don’t know specifically why I’m trying to learn Japanese, it is just so much fun and such a thrill for me. I’m also bored and really wanting to do something productive with my spare time. Plus Japanese history and culture has always interested me! 😊
Duolingo sucks. There are absolutely better resources and stuff you can learn other than that app.
I also tried Duolingo, but college destroyed my ass, eating 10 hours a day D:
That's actually something i was picking up myself along the years of consuming japanese media; it seems to me that to understand japanese, as it is spoken, is more a case of understanding the overrall tone/intention of the phrase and applying that to your native language as best you can without losing the meaning rather than precisely translating 1:1. It makes sense to me because every fan-sub of any media, be it music, movie of anime, seems to have a different interpretation of how any given phrase should sound/how it would be applied in the desired language. Plus there seems to be a lot of nuances that get lost in direct translation, not only that it mostly comes off as gibberish most of the time.
...The problem is that i'm talking based on my experience; as a brazillian who is a self-taught english speaker i might just be applying the same "correlation" proccess i used to learn english to how i seem to understand japanese. In spite of this i truly believe latin people have an easier time learning Japanese because, phoneticaly speaking, the pronunciation really doesn't differ much so it might also be because of this, aaand i may or may not be just talking BS XD
Dude, great job at being a self-taught English speaker! Your English is fantastic!
Boooyyy (or girl?) you had me at "self taught" -you serious?! Mad Respect!
Banger. Incredibly relatable to everyone learning Japanese at various different 上手ness levels.
I think, it doesn't matter how 上手 i will ever be... i will never really feel 上手
When you write "tekito" in kanji, it is often understood to mean "appropriate,"
but when you write it in katakana, the nuance of "halfway" is easily understood.
It's rather mindboggling, I'd say, how that term changes in meaning from its original Chinese one, which actually does mean 'appropriate'.
Doesn't really mean "halfway." It means "don't overdo it (don't do more than is necessary)."
Don't get focused on individual words. Rather, look at them in context and see how they function. Words are used to paint an overall picture and your job is to see that picture.
「今日の晩御飯の材料を適当に買ってくる。」(I'll go out to pick some stuff up [at the market] for dinner.) "Tekito" implies that they don't have an exact plan on what they are going to buy. The opposite would be showing up at the market with a recipe and purchasing every ingredient listed.)
「あの人はいつも適当なことばかりを言っている。」(You can never really trust what they say.) Basically describing a bullshitter...don't mean what they say most of the time.
テキトー
@@yishihara55527 In (American) English you could say "military-quality" has the same meaning :p Alternatively, "good enough for government work"
I just came across this, i'm already in Japanese 3. You really do forget the Kanji so quickly 😭 but I like how the language sounds and flows, so I'm still gonna learn it even if it kills me. がんばります！
Haii , gambare ✊
I’m just starting to learn Japanese. And when I saw the thumbnail, it was the first time that I saw Japanese writing and knew exactly how to read it and what it meant. Such a nice feeling.
At 14 I studied english (more like: read homestuck and not understanding one line, then my friends would tell me wtf was happening) because all my favourite video games/comics were in english. Now of course it’s all in japanese. Gotta do the whole process again for those sweet sweet visual novels…
日本語を学ぶのは難しいだ
難しいだ、そして誰にも知らない
you started with homestuck??? I commend your efforts, it can be a chore to read even for native speakers lmaooo
@@GhostRevenant truee
Ayy homestuck fan
Hahah Homestuck definitely brought my English to a next level, I had problems understanding it at first but kept googling difficult words and learned a whole bunch of them
That's why my goal in learning Japanese shifted from to easily understand Japanese watching anime to read works from Japan. I mostly have fun reading 小説 which I find in syosetu. I find interest that there was such an abundance of stories there that few only knows about. After all, as an aspiring writer I want to make a story unique from the ones I've read, by basically incorporating them to my own.
That's all, gotta read Japanese again after this.
Ncode 小説 is like another level of universe. I went to rabbit hole there
@@Ryyza7 I actually find great and ongoing series there to read. For example, 呪印の女剣士 by Hamitto which started 10 years ago and still ongoing with 2000+ chapters posted there.
Anime and youtube was my biggest motivation at first, but I'd have a harder time learning if I didn't know how to read (thus kanji is a necessity).
I'd argue kanji is also useful even for a full fledged weeb, because it gives you that little reading comprehension needed for manga, games and youtube comments.
Lately I've been reading manga from official online sources and I'd really like to read other works from Japan once I'm better at it.
小説が読めるのはすごいですね!
私のお気に入りである米澤穂信、森見登美彦先生の作品をオススメしときます
at first i was confused at your "I mostly have fun reading 小説 which I find in syosetu" but realized that you're referring to syosetu websites 😅 i thought you're re-typing/only typing how to read the 小説 kanji (shousetsu)
Getting the 象は鼻が長い line really makes you feel like a nerd in the best possible way. Thanks for the content, Dogen!
I'm not sure I got it, is it a joke about は and が ?
@@blara2401 it's not a joke, it's a deep rabbit hole about grammar
@@takummie Care to point me to the entrance of that rabbit hole ? I'd love to go look in there.
「象は鼻が長い」これこそ日本語にまつわる最高のジョークだよね
？
主語がわからないんだっけ？
この文章が出るということは、かなり日本語を深く研究されている方ですね。
「象は鼻が長い」という日本語の文章で「象は」も「鼻が」もどちらも主語となりえるという日本語文法における問題。 最近の日本語文法では二重主語として説明されたりしているが、実は今だはっきりしていない。
This is a problem in Japanese grammar that both "elephant" and "nose" can be the subject in this Japanese sentence "Elephants have long noses". In recent Japanese grammar, it is sometimes explained as a double subject, but in fact it is still not clear.
え、この場合の象って主題なんじゃないの？
@@EEZ_protector述語的部分が長いだと思うから主語は「鼻が」かなぁ…
I am a Japanese person studying Japanese. I found this video very helpful.
I was in a study dump, but this really got me laughing. Thank you!
He saved the best for last. Cold blooded but I love it
I was so hurt by someone telling me that that I stopped studying for years. I was so excited to be speaking Japanese. My goal was to go to Japan and when I introduced myself to a Japanese businessman he looked at me and in flawless English told me he did not understand a word I was saying.
@@carmelopappalardo8477 Don't be discourage by people like that. Generally all the japanese I have met are happy and proud that you're learning their mother tounge and because of that they are very friendly and want to encourage you to learn more. Hence the 上手 compliment everywhere. Take criticism with a grain of salt, everyone starts out talking like a baby. Don't stop learning
@@carmelopappalardo8477 i mean if you couldn't do something as simple as introduce yourself, the rest of your Japaness is probably just as bad lol
もっと勉強するべきだよ。
yes, i'm thoroughly motivated to start learning japanese now. thank you.
oh boy your in for a life journey but it is very much worth it 日本語はいい言語
You are one of the best caucasian speakers ive ever heard in my life. Good job!
I really just started learning because it was cool. But as I went further, I realized how amazing Japanese grammar is. That's when I screwed speaking and just learning from Duolingo, I started ordering books based on grammar and focused more on the writing part since I'm pretty good at pronouncing because of anime.
It's an amazing language. I'm just on Katakana, but I really am looking forward. And if you can please read The Japanese Grammar Guide by Tae Kim :) I just spend time with the book, and only if I don't get the point, I come here on TH-cam. I don't know why I am learning Japanese specifically, but I really enjoy it as a hobby and I think I can make something out of it.
P.S - Sorry for the block of text.
yayy another person who likes the grammar! and i can also recommend tae kim's guide :D
@@gentlesharkman Yeah :)
I'm interested in grammar as well, thank you!!
@@Noctem0wl Most welcome :)
Yay! Another person who learns for fun! I started the same way with english lots of years ago and now I'm trying japanese. Thanks for the book recommendation, I'm going to look it up. Another language is never a bad thing to know!
I'm learning Japanese to watch Dogen videos without subtitles.
Yes. That's my only true motivation.
I'm learning Japanese to understand Dogen's intentionally misleading subtitles.
Goals. That’ll be mine too, makes sense.
Learning Japanese is a lifestyle. Once you get past 日本語上手レベル your golden in my opinion
* you're
@@eccarvu ratio
@@eccarvu as Dogen said, we're still learning english
I don't think you can really get past that level if you don't look Asian. Even Dogen gets referred to as 日本語上手な方 by people he meets sometimes.
@@phen-themoogle7651 You do. it's just that western people have a hard time telling when Japanese people actually mean 日本語上手 as the words themselves actually mean, & when Japanese people are saying 日本語上手 as in they're trying to be nice. doing so involves being able to see through Japanese fakeness , a very keen eye for reading the mood & for reading body language. those things ain't gonna come unless you've gotten well past intermediate levels & actually having met & talked to dozens of Japanese people.
“You can only use that phrase with a friends cousin” - perfect!
My brain just left the room after listening to your fluent Japanese. You've made my day, あざっす 😁
Your Japanese is so good! Well done! Your hard work and diligence has paid off beautifully!
" Dogen さんの日本語は上手ですね。”
That's what my teacher tell me when I misspelled a word.
Why does your teacher start random conversations about Dougen?
Dogen: "If you want to watch anime without subs you don't have to learn kanji."
That single kanji joke in Nichijou: "Am I a joke to you?"
What about all the kanji jokes in Bleach?
kanji jokes are all over the place in anime, not sure what hes talking about. Its funny how i only see kanji when its just with comedy.
Conan goes brrrrrrrr
@@josephinesakata9036 Oh shit, you made me remember all these times where he's explaining this super complicated stuff and I was pretending to understand, I prefer when it comes down to a rope or some string
Nichijou is in its own category
一番最適なのはyoutubeのコメントを見たり、twitterで日本人の文章読んだりすることなのかな。同じ日本人でも東にも西にも訛りが存在するから、アニメに出てくる標準語の日本語を勉強したいなら頑張るしかないのかなぁ。
わからない日本語の発音があった場合、外国の方はどのように勉強しているのか気になりますね。
私は日本語好きだから日本語に興味を持ってくれて嬉しい。
そんなことしたらみんな、なんJ民になっちゃう！
@@user-ee5lf2br9f 😂😂😂
I come back to this video every month to keep track of my learning progress
While watching anime without subtitles is part of my goal, I also with to visit Japan and be able to fluently speak with people/read signs, so yes, I will need to study Kanji. I've already mostly memorized Katakana, so I need to start memorizing more Hirigana and studying Kanji (I'm only about 0.2% fluent in Kanji so far lol)
Damn, I've never heard of anyone learning katakana first
@@omegacardboard5834 I probably should have learned Hirigana first, but I guess it is what it is. Katakana has the simplest characters and is therefore easy to memorize, and it's quite common since many newer Japanese words are taken directly from other languages, primarily English. I have learned some Hirigana, and I should focus on that now.
you can did it!
how far are you now (in terms of kanji / hiragana )?
@@DaVinc-hi7hd Not too far in terms of Kanji sadly, but now that I'm done school I'll be able to put a lot more focus into learning it.
The last one is basically 日本語上手 but without actually saying the line.
I see ...you can read the air then
@@suvilevi9211 I wonder if a true master could even 空気を書く！
@@Xezlec so ...am I a true master か？
Yes, you can always study Japanese from anime depends on your goal. I believe many people have said it, but please do remember that many words spoken in anime aren't used in real life, especially when it comes to keigo or respectful Japanese. At this point, just learn by watching Vtuber instead. Many of them actually use keigo.
That last one was funnier than I was prepared for and its sadly true
私は日本人ですが、
このチャンネル主はとても面白いです。
素晴らしい日本語です。
That feeling of accomplishment when you study constantly for 6 months and finally understand a dogen video without subtitles
"It's very rare that a direct translation is the best translation"
Every early 2000s fansubber ever: "Don't tell me what to do old man... -sama*"
* Sama (様, さま) is a more respectful version for individuals of a higher rank than oneself. Appropriate usages include divine entities, guests or customers (such as a sports venue announcer addressing members of the audience), and sometimes towards people one greatly admires. Supposedly, it is the root word for -san and there is no major evidence suggesting otherwise. Deities such as native Shinto kami and Jesus Christ are referred to as kami-sama, meaning "Revered spirit-sama". When used to refer to oneself, -sama expresses extreme arrogance (or self-effacing irony), as in praising oneself to be of a higher rank, as with ore-sama (俺様, "my esteemed self").
(translator’s note: keikaku means plan)
absolute gold
The good thing about Katakana is the fact there's a decent chance of looking forward to another good laugher when you preview a sentence and spotting new Katakana words in it, like スーパーマーケット or スペイン語 - it's always hilarious hearing the pronounciation of these words.
I 100% am with you on this boat. Learning Katakana was hillarious when I say example words. TaKuShi? BoKuSu? XD
1:10: The お前・貴様 paradox is always something that has amused me about Japanese.
お前 ironically became rude by being too polite, to the point where it basically just became sarcastic.
I started watching you when I was 13 and just beginning my studies in japanese.. Its been a few years, I've gotten marginally better at japanese thanks to multiple resources, and I still love your videos 😂 the only phrase I remembered without even trying for the first few months was "上手じゃない"
Search 'tips on learning japanese' and a 2 minutes 29 seaconds video pop up. Never felt any more motivated on learning a language before. Thank you.
The good thing about katakana bit made me laugh out loud.
as someone who has studied Japanese fulltime in my spare time for over a year, I can confirm this is 100% correct... especially that last one
I just found your channel, and enjoy the videos. Thanks.
I lived in Japan when I was younger, and can speak and read at the level of a typical middle school kid in Japan. I’ve never felt a need to improve beyond that. The potential benefits don’t seem to outweigh the costs. As a non-Japanese person, there was zero chance that I could ever obtain professional success in Japan. Besides, salaries for skilled professionals in Japan are quite low, and the hours are long. So, I didn’t see a reason to reach a professional level of proficiency, just so that I could get a job in which I’d be unhappy.
I can’t say much for the whole anime thing. I’ve never watched anime, and have no interest in Japanese popular culture. I’d probably have no interest in Japan whatsoever if not for the happenstance of having lived there when I was younger. In fact, most Westerners I know who grew up there have little interest in going back. Many of us have jobs for which nominal Japanese language proficiency is a plus. But the benefits of that will go much farther in the West than in Japan.
My reason to study Japanese is that I want to live in Japan one day, I absolutely adore the culture.
Get over it. You will never be truly accepted there and cultural addiction is dumb i get annoyed by people obsessed with japanese culture. Altho im a bit hypocritical as a japanese person in love with colombia and Latin culture.🤣
@@tekesters cool way to ruin someones dream 😌
@@Bosh7066 if i ruined a dream that easily you need a stronger dream dont you know a dream is not easy to achieve normally? You must have the will to pursue your dream otherwise there will be more people like me that are neg. Also mind you my family is from a rural remote part of japan. People in bigger cities have diff attitudes lol
good luck 💗
Im coming to your country in october of this year, but unlike others who like anime or want to live there I want to explore a country that is not so westernized like Europe and NA. Something that will feel completely foreign to me
Love how the last sentence completely crumbled my motivation to keep learning Japanese, thanks lmao
For me it's a good thing to keep in mind. There's always, and I mean always room for improvement, there's no point where you're perfect at speaking any language, even your native one. If I thought I'd already be excellent at something, I'd close my eyes towards further improvement, since i'd think it wasn't necessary.
The elephant reference is so specific, I love it.
What's the reference?
Maybe I don't get that elephant joke. It's hilarious because 象の鼻 (elephant's nose) actually doesn't refer to a nose but a trunk, right?
@@kingo_friver Isn´t it the structure of the sentence? This specific sentence is used in Japanese language class to teach the は, が sentence structure. At least I came across it quite frequently..
@@janina3879 Got it, ooh la la! Thank you. Elephants have long noses, indeed it's a good example to explain it.
It’s a famous video in Japanese.
I am actually studying Japanese not to graduate from my University, or to have somewhat of fine job with languages, or etc etc
I just want to play Yakuza games in Japanese and understand 85% of the text freely
That's all I wanted from my life at this point.
same lmfao
85%? That seems a bit ambitious my friend.
Yakuza games? Man of culture
Ya , I tried to learn Japanese just as a brain exercise at the beginning of lockdowns , and I'm liking it ever since, it really complicated to relate the meanings, and surprisingly it helps me improve in my studies, and then I discover, I might really enjoy learning languages , even if I'm not going to do anything with this knowledge, my English is still the worst , please spare me for any mistakes.
Baaaassh I wanna learn japanese because I loooove love love the language!❤ Not for working not for understanding anime without subtitles! I just got hypnotized by the japanese language and their people's kindness!❤❤❤
Just the (de-)motivation I need as I start to take up Japanese again…
I only know a little Japanese, but fortunately, you only need a little Japanese to appreciate the side-splitting subtle wit of his descriptions of learning Japanese!
I need Kanji exclusively. I want read Light Novels that don't get translated in any of the languages I know.
Start with manga, light novels can be a bit daunting and might burn you out. just read read read and read (manga). That’s all I can recommend, supplement your reading with some grammar studying to help with reading comprehension and you’ll be on your way.
Only Kanji. No kana.
Now that I think about it, that just sounds like Chinese.
@@tilted6368 when i started reading some visual novels and one actual novel i was slow but i still learnt a lot. It was a bit hard and i read less and less. Then in the last few months i read some manga from start to finish and didn't look up much or study it explicitly. Took me 2 months to read nisekoi, quite a bit of dialogue, 230 chapters. Read a few hundred chapters in less dialogue heavy manga as well. The quantity alone improved my reading a lot, now when I continue the novels they're a lot easier than before (but still hard).
I'm still nowhere near good at jp, but manga reading was a super nice boost. Quantity is king
But Dogen-sensei, I wrote a letter to a 12 year old Japanese kid during my first year at university and he said my 日本語 was とても上手!
currently, im studying in japan at a language school and have been studying for almost a year now and i can say….. everything you just said makes perfect sense now.
You've crushed all my hopes and dreams.
That's the point of the video. Some people get so elitist about a language that they start putting other people down and turning away new learners so they can maintain their sense of superiority.
"Influencer teachers" like Dogen and Matt VS Japan are a pretty poor source for learning Japanese because they talk too much about what you shouldn't do, which is discouraging and confusing for new students of a language.
If you're serious about learning Japanese, I'd turn away from channels like these if I were you. They will only slow you down. Japanese Ammo with Misa might be the only good channel if you really want a video format since they just focus on covering grammar rules instead of making useless videos like this one.
I've only been studying for a year and I can already read most manga thanks to not wasting my time with channels like Dogen.
Thanks, TH-cam algorithm, this is really totally relevant to me. I mean, I'm trying to learn Polish, but I guess you at least got the flag colours correct, so that's a start.
soooooo funny!! His word is really true, but dont worry. Japanese people know that Japanese is a crazy language that even Japanese people can't understand. When you come on a trip, you don't have to worry about the politeness or rudeness of the language at all. I am very surprised and praise you when you speak fluently like he does.
I actually think katakanas are very helpful when reading. Unlike English, Japanese does not use spaces to distinguish each words; as foreign words tend to have different patterns to that of Japanese syllable orders, were it written in hiragana it makes it more difficult for the readers to pick out each words. The similar is probably in English that you sometimes will read your sentence, for example, as un-animous until you realise the word is unanimous; yu-na-nimous not an-ani-mous somewhere around m. highlighting foreign words by katakana is much easier to read than English sentences, especially Japanese has both phonograms and ideograms to simplify reading. (btw I am japanese)
なるほど〜！うわったしかに！と頷きながらみている、楽しい🫰
"Air isn't something you breathe but something you read".
I can totally understand this one. It's because I am Indian and we also use the same thing we call it "vastu".
It's basically the atmosphere of a room.
A lot of times I can understand the Japanese context because of my Asian origin. I mean Indian origin.
From my experience doing memotecnics with kanjis (im so glad this languages has Kanjis!) gives you a visual asociation later on when you find the "sound" and you asociate better the word (kanji+sound in practice) , also helps you to study as the source from wich you study usually is writen in Japonese.
Memorizing sounds alone without a unique visual asociation image makes 3 times harder if not 4
"and the good thing about katakana... Wait what's the good thing about katakana again" I felt that on a spiritual level, I'm currently learning japanese and I memorized about 15 Kanji and all the hiragana (I only started like 2 weeks ago so don't judge me) but I just can't bring myself to learn katakana, like bruh why, it's just hiragana in a different font
A lot of stores use Katakana for their sign in Japan. That's probably the main use.
Damn hiragana in 2 weeks how far are you know over 2 years later?
Thank you for showing off. I have now learned that this is your thing. Wonderful.
SO DAMN GOOD!!!!! I could hear you speak all day cause sounds just like anime! It's also clear that you dont simply speak but is updated with their culture.
I started to watch Dogen, because I wanted to learn Japanese. Now I gave up on Japanese, but watch Dogen for fun.
You need a teacher and learn it properly.
@@dreadinside654 maybe. Just I doubt that Japanese will ever be useful in my life. A chance to meet a Japanese person in my life is very low. And I'm too lazy to watch a show or read a book in an original language. Even American movies I watch in translation despite being capable to understand English.
@@RanmaruRei If you're not interested in learning Japanese better don't waste your time learning it. Like myself I have a mission 😀. And that's why I'm currently learning basic Japanese with a teacher.
@@dreadinside654 I wish you good luck on the way.
@@RanmaruRei Thank you! 😊
2:13
my mother from nagoya has been nihongo jouzu'ing me lately so i thought maybe those two semesters of japanese i took a few years back when i was still going to college were finally paying off. thank you for reminding me that i'll never be anything more than another filthy nikkeijin, dogen-san.
Dogens right. My bf is from Kumamoto. Learning his slang is sooo fun (and it’s also agreed that Kumamoto-ben sounds cute). So, I’m also an advocate for Kagoshima dialect.
As a DLI graduate for a different language, this concept was hammered in early in the course. You will need to understand and be an expert in English grammar if you want to have a chance at understanding the target language beyond a simple base level. Understanding terms that were barely discussed in grade school like nominative, dative, accusative, genitive cases were required before I was able to turn the word salad vocabulary into coherent sentences. Next comes all of the cultural terms that have a myriad of meanings depending on the context. A great example in English is "bless your heart!" I could be saying something nice, supportive or just straight up insulting all based on context and situation.
I am native Japanese. You are really amazing!! I've been telling to my husband who is American that "You shouldn't study Kanji so work hard, just focus on SPEAKING and LISTENING. That's the best way to study Japanese because you will be able to communicate with Japanese. That's the most important.", but he never listens to me about it.
I suggest that all ppl who's been studying Japanese, you should learn Japanese from your native speakers like him and also native Japanese as well. Because he knows the points in Japanese which I never noticed things. Such as what is the difficult parts in Japanese for global citizens. ところで、どうやって、そして何年間かけて日本語を勉強しましたか？
あなたの日本語は本当に素晴らしいです！！私の夫にも、あなたの様に日本語を話せるようになって欲しい！
Dear ppl who's been studying Japanese.
You don't have to be like "native". Almost ALL Japanese are very happy if you speak Japanese, because we know Japanese language is ”local” in the world. That's why we are happy and admire you if you could. My English is not good, because I am not native. それでいいのだ！(*'▽')
I know it’s just a joke but I learnt kanji to read Japanese subtitles for anime.