I'm a Black American. I lived in a Russian speaking household for 8 years. During that time, I learn to read and write the Russian language fluently. Total immersion IS the way!
As a Japanese speaker, I can attest to the old dialect. You can generally get the jist but there are many more yamato-kotaba than modern Japanese and many words/expressions are just different, such as 拙者 and かたじけない. Having a background of graduate study in medieval Japanese history and having seen some jidai geki, I could do okay but the subtitles were absolutely necessary. I never would have known the meaning of 紅天 (“kouten” for Crimson Sky) without them.
@@ayszhang Yes, they always referred to Japan as “hi no moto”, which of course is quite similar to the modern “日本”. In contrast, I found the Japanese in The Last Samurai to be perfectly understandable. Of note, Tom Cruise’s accent was much better than Peter Pettigrew’s even though he was supposed to be the expert. 🤣
You must be one of the younger generation who didn’t get to watch many jidaigeki (basically weekly samurai dramas) that used to be on air almost everyday. I’m much older so I don’t need cc to understand SHOGUN, with just a few new words maybe but could understand the general meaning from the context. Jidaigeki is apparently out-of-date but I see it unfortunate because the younger generations are robbed of the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the rhythm of pre-Standard Japanese language. Edit: jidaigeki uses mostly today’s Japanese with some old ways of expression. I think newer dramas use less of such expressions
@@Astrid-jx5dw I’m 48 but I am a non-native speaker. I grew up outside Japan so yes, I didn’t get to watch jidaigeki growing up. As old as you may be, you grew up postwar so you acquired modern Japanese and learned words like 貴殿 from shows you watched as a child. I’m sure you understand that you are in the minority of Japanese native speakers in this regard.
I lived in Japan for 8 years, and I know more than a bit of the language. I've been told that Japanese is 'difficult' but I find Thai much more challenging. I speak a fair bit of German and French as well, although I'm not fluent in any of the languages. I know a Japanese professor of Japanese at a Thai university, and he gave me a backhanded compliment by saying 'Your Japanese is ALMOST OK!' lol
Anyone learning Japanese needs to try visual novels. There are two famous animes based on vns. Fate/Stay Night and Steins:gate. both 60 to 100 hours, all dialog voiced. The pacing of visual novels is better for learning, and you can repeat lines.
I find stuff like this so fascinating. I haven’t watched SHōGUN, but I hear nothing but praise. I enjoyed your video on it! Also I’ve been learning Russian for 4 years and finally purchased your Story Learning A2 level, I love it. After being a subscriber for ages I’m happy to finally contribute- great work good sir 🙌🏾
@@storylearning It’s a really good learning resource! Learning reading is always hard but especially when the script is entirely different and the book is very well-presented. Well done!
I have attempted learning quite a few languages: - I started with english, since I was born and raised in Italy (hence I'm not a native speaker), so first I learnt the basics (sentences, grammar etc.) in school, and was then able to get the rest as I was exposed to the internet and I'd say I'm now about as fluent as I am with italian (although I still struggle with pronunciation from time to time); - In middle school I was exposed to spanish (further more, with a teacher born in South America) and while I am in no way fluent in it, I can communicate with a Spanish speaker without too much trouble; - In high school I started learning latin (and since I am still in high school, I'm also still learning it) and I've gotten to a point where I do struggle a bit with making sentences on my own, but, given a vocabulary, I am able to understand most phrases (both in modern latin used by the church to this day and ancient latin used by Caesar or even earlier, although anything older than 2200-2300 years is very much a struggle); - About half a year ago, I started studying japanese, and while it is my weakest out of the ones I mentioned, using a vocabulary and a decent ammount of time I am able to understand most sentences; as of currently, I can read both alphabets and I'm trying to build a basic "inner vocabulary" by studying JLPT N5 kanjis; I can count up to 9999 (as well as count things) and I can make some basic sentences (although since my knowledge in kanji is still limited, without a vocabulary I'd write most words in hiragana, which for those who don't know, is one of the two basic alphabets in japanese).
Good idea on prepared lines. I did this for Japanese for certain situations. It's easier nowadays with Google Translate and AI to have these prepared lines and practice it beforehand.
Hi Olly! I love your content and find your language learning tips incredibly helpful. Could you make a video recommending books and other reading materials specifically for intermediate Spanish learners? It would be great to have a curated list to help us progress to the next level. Thanks!
I'm Japanese and understand all Japanese spoken in the drama without subtitles. Other Japanese too. The language is a bit different but we are used to those period language through manga, movie, drama and school classes where we learn the old language.
The most difficult languages i learnt as an adult were Greek and Aramaic. They are a huge brain-shift about how thoughts are structured, how much about time and space and number can be conveyed in a single verb, and how much a verb's base meaning is altered by context. Greek reminded me how much language controls how you think and what you even think of. Oddly, I spoke Navajo and Spanish via Navajo when I was a kid. While I lost facility in Navajo around 10, I believe it was what engendered my interest in how language changes observation, expectation and imagination.
I cannot comprehend learning Japanese so quickly. I’ve been studying for a year now and some days I will spend 8 hours or more studying but I hit a wall and my brain refuses to absorb any more information after a certain point.
That's the problem. You cannot do it fast. 2 years is the bare minimum for people to be able to converse simple conversation in restaurants or supermarkets. 5 years of decent exposure of Japanese doesn't even guarantee you will have a top notch ability to speak and read. The only way to escalate it is through work. Working on the customer service field will definitely shoot your Japanese skill into space. But beware of the harassment you'll get due to your lack of skill in Japanese. People will mock you anyway Ow, also don't push your brain to learn that many hours in a day. It doesn't help with your ability to memorize anyway, it's more giving you stress.
8 hours is INTENSE! Of course your brain hits a wall. I'd suggest slowing down on the rate that you're trying to learn new words and grammar. If you go too fast, none of it sticks. Instead, halve the rate that you are learning new stuff and double the amount of practice you do for words and grammar you have already learned.
@@キラキラくりくり頭 I’d say more than half the time I spend studying is actually reviewing, writing Kanji, and reading stories, the rest of the time I spend listening. I spend very little time studying vocabulary and grammar, after 4 years of German I discovered it’s way easier for me to acquire those through context and passively recognizing patterns in the language that you pick up on naturally after lots of exposure.
You might be interested to know there is a similar French movie called Michael Kohlhaas with Mads Mikkelsen who did not speak French but delivered a convincing French without actually learning the language. If it werent for the fact that my second language, spanish is important because it is the language of my country of residence, I would be having a crack at Japanese as I love that country and culture having also been there once to teach for a while (a month). Nonetheless, as a second language learner who wants a better command, reading is absolutely the way to go. I read local spanish authors and find english translations and flip back and to between them. It really accelerates acquisition. I should add that I am currently watching Shogun, having also seen the 70s version and think it is incredible.
Thank you for making this video which celebrated cosmo so much. I loved the TV show and I was so disappointed in the behind The scenes featurette when they barely spoke to him.
I'm from Switzerland. In school I had to learn English and French and High German. For us, High German is a bit like a foreign Language. Now I learn Japanese.
I studied French and Portuguese and speak Japanese and Arabic, but the toughest languages I have encountered so far are Thai and Khmer. South African languages such as Xaosa are quite challenging phonetically.
Well made video, and I agree the process Cosmo Jarvis went through is impressive. I’ve studied about a dozen languages and the hardest by far was Sanskrit, due to the phenomenally complex grammar and sophistication of the language. And I had studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan (modern and literary), and Spanish. I’d say among the modern languages, Japanese and Russian are both hard. Russian because of the grammar (too many cases) and Japanese because it has the most complicated writing system in the world. Having to learn 2,000+ kanji each with 2-8 readings is tough and makes Chinese look easy. Japanese phrasing (sentence order and grammar) is also the reverse to English so it requires thinking in a different way. But Sanskrit kicks your ass unlike anything else.
I have started with japanese about a half year ago. Sometimes I think I can never learn it. Its hard. But I love it and I will not back out. Every day I invest at least 5-10 minutes to is so it eventualy stay in my head :) Its a long road ahead :)
I learned spanish by watching movies and shows in spanish with english subs, and my step dad is from mexico, so while i was young, i mimicked his accent, and it helped with pronouncing words
I'm looking forward to seeing this when it becomes available in my region (Japan). I think some mention is warranted of the fact this was made into a drama 40 years ago with many of the same difficulties faced and overcome.
I enjoyed the video very much! I am relearning English so that I can read the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Being familiar with period dramas, the old Japanese was very familiar to me. So I enjoyed it as usual. However, not the language, but I had to look up the reason for hanging the pheasant because I had no idea why they hung the pheasant. I think everyone was feeling wisteria at that time lol.
I've studied Kiswahili and isiXhosa and they are by far the hardest i have studied, especially isiXhosa, Mandarin chinese was like a 6 out of 10, Kiswahili was like 8 maybe 7.5 the hardest parts with that language was mostly the different classes of the words, but isiXhosa was a solid 10 out of 10! The pronunciation was the easiest part about the language, so that tells you alot about just how difficult i found it! With the words constantly having prefixes and suffixes added to them, changing the pronunciation with vowel harmony and latent i:s and having to remember what suffix and prefixes to use to match the class of the noun! An absolute nightmare! It was fun tho and would have been more fun had it not been in uni where you have exams to pass and where you need to know grammar rather then just learning the language in a more laidback fashion. I do still have the textbook and plan to return to it! The adjectives where also pretty simple, there are actually only very few adjectiv words which are used for different kinds of meanings that are related, like one word for big, large, wide, and so on. Another hard language would be northern Sami, it's the language ive studied the third most (excluding my native language, the order is English German Northern Sami). And it has a lot of different cases and just love to change the words in different ways,but id say that sami is about at a 6 out of 10, so like Mandarin Chinese, but more like a 9 out of 10 cus there are so little resources to access and learn the language, i have to translate from Sami to Norwiegian and THEN to Swedish (sometimes it's straight forward, other times the word has a different meaning or i dont know it at all). Muhto liikon Davvisámegiella ja lea nu ollu historjját!
The actor portraying the Portuguese Priest has had to work much harder on his Japanese. Cosmo's character is meant to have only a weak grasp on the language.
I learned English through music, then I had to use it because I was in a relationship with someone who did not use my language despite living in my country. I went to Ireland and to the UK. I learned more there than I ever would. I still do to this day, and the funny part is, I kept the Irish accent for parts of the words that I learned there.
idea regarding prepared phrases. in our new weird age of large language models, you can just ask a LLM to generate such phrases for you. even very job specific prepared phrases. thank you for this video.
I lived in Greece for 8 years , there I also learned English and German , some basic Italian , Then I move to England where I worked and started to study Russian and now I am living in Taiwan and learning Chinese.
The part where his translator shifted the words for better understanding is the same way modern translating is done. And why its hard to learn Japanese from watching anime, because what the subtitles say can be quite a bit different from what is being said for example from the show Backflip the characters are trying to gove a nickname to their rookie member but hes nor having it "Way to go Newbie Ace" "don't call me that" is basically what we get in rhe subtitles but the character says "Newbie Ace I am not" This example is pretty similar to the intent of whats being said, but I've come across times where whats being said and whats translated is vastly different. Even with manga translations I've seen huge differences between fan translation and official translations
When you brought up Shakespeare English I understood more the difficulty. Even a little more closer to modern Endglish, it was challenging for me to read Edgar Allen Poe.
The only decent Japanese speaker was the Portugese Priest, everyone else sucked. "Kaiiiizoku waaaa shina nakerebanarimaseeeeeen". Rote memorized lines is nice and all, but the only one fluent in two languages is Mariko and she paraphrased every translation at a 65 - 75% accuracy rate.
Exactly. Every non-Japanese person’s pronunciation was trash except for the priest. I lived in Japan for several years after college, passed JLPT level 2 and worked in a bilingual environment for about 10+ years after that. The Japanese spoken in Shogun is nothing to be impressed by. A native Japanese person would have trouble understanding what the hell this guy was saying because Japanese people have VERY limited experience listening to anything but perfectly pronounced Japanese spoken by native speakers. My Japanese wife needed the subtitles to follow him.
So the courses are divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced, and each one is a separate payment? If new material added to each level over time?
The toughest language I tried to learn was actually Japanese, but I didn’t have the motivation. I’m learning Russian now, but I’m a lot more disciplined now that I’m a bit older, and so my Russian is improving quite a bit. I may return to Japanese at some point, although I have other languages I want to learn, and Japanese is not one of them right now.
There is a lot of truth here. This is also a lot of work, one that a good actor is up to. As an actor with a specific job you are learning with a gun to your head. Memorizing word for word is incredibly tedious though… ask any Shakespearean actor. But then acting in a language that isn’t one you’re fluent in, you have to partially memorize the lines being spoken to you as well. And then… you have to adjust your accent to your character’s level of fluency… PTSD is kicking in now.
You have to partially memorize the other actor’s lines because you need the cues that inspire your next line and you also have to have an opinion about what they are saying.
Toughest Language learning right now: Japanese... already learned: english, italian... native language: german ... I enjoy the ride a lot... but it is HAAAAARD :D
I’m an American who learned Russian-which absolutely fried my brain. I then tried to tackle Japanese but Russian broke my simple brain. Works still like to study Japanese but I’m still having Russian grammar flashbacks.
@@storylearning Already watched it! 👏🏻 I really enjoyed the overlap of Tokyo Vice and Shogun during S2 and S1 respectively. In case you see this, I just wanted to say I love your channel as an aspiring polyglot. (German, Spanish, Korean, and warming up to Russian, Japanese, and French). After living in Busan three years and now itching to go back, I’ve been studying Korean every day for the past year since I’d want to approach fluency if I take the leap a second time. It’s been so rewarding noticing my recognition of Korean go from null (especially in Busan dialect where it sounded like everyone was yelling gibberish at each other) to being able to identify each word and parse together meaning based on my growing vocabulary. ❓I’m approaching the end of the Duolingo Korean course now (which has been beneficial, despite it not working for everyone), and I had a question about your Story Learning courses. Does purchasing grant you access to all the Korean courses or is it restricted to a particular level? I’m not sure whether I’m a beginner or intermediate now, so I’m uncertain which one I need.
early in the show i misheard "banjin" (barbarian) as "anjin", so i believed until i looked it up that they were essentially calling him "Lord Barbarian" instead of "Lord Pilot" (maybe "Sir Pilot" is a better 17th century feudal translation of ”Anjin-sama" as a low ranking samurai?) also, not related but i knew Cosmo must have dark eyes... his blue eyes as Anjin-sama just looked so odd. i remember thinking that surely we're at the stage where more realistic blue eyes could be feasible with filters instead of contacts? maybe it's not worth it in the budget, and my family members never seem to notice how strange blue contacts on dark eyes look in movies/shows unless i point it out...
@@雀-t6c yep. i think my comment was confusing. when they called him "Anjin" as a title, the subtitles just said "Anjin" so i didn't know the meaning. when they called him "banjin", the subtitles said "barbarian", but i misheard it and falsely believed "anjin" meant "barbarian" for a few episodes xD
7:40 The toughest language I have tried to learn is probably Mandarin, I just can't seem to break through the pronunciation of the various consonance. the tones weren't challenging, it was the several different "Xi, Shi, Ji," etc. Been studying Japanese a long time, I also tried learning Korean, but I found that the accent seemed too similar, so my brain defaulted to Japanese when trying to speak Korean to native speakers.. 😅
I find it very strange that American actors (male/female) can't act with any accent, but actors (male/ female) from another country ( e.g. UK, Australia, etc...) are capable to act speaking perfect English. I speak 3½ language (Thai, Lao, English, and some Japanese), and the language that was difficult for me to learn was French and German.
Chinese. I'm learning Chinese, and, bro.. it's really, really hard. I learnt English phonetically (Mostly. Like, only from the beginning to until when im kinda fluent enough), and I thought that 'Eh, if I've learnt English phonetically, along with my native language having bunch of consonants and vowels, then why should it not be so hard?' I was so cocky lo. Oh, yeah. I'm learning Japanese as well. ye im just a dumb person.
There's a good show, eye love you, that sort of has this translation issue going on. of course, it's more of a rom com than anything... but interesting
This guy is gonna have a similar problem as teenagers learning Japanese from Naruto; sounding like an antique early modern Samurai may not be the best when ordering food or chatting on social media.
Well for mi as a Brazilian portuguese speaker the most difficult language to learn it's japanese, I'm studying for 3 and half years so far and I'm still not at the which I wish
First you say he learned Japanese, then you show him saying that he learned Japanese by memorizing the lines phonetically. So which one is it, did he actually learn the language, or did he just parrot the lines? 🤷♂
Yet they speak English when they should be speaking Portuguese (when they're actually speaking Portuguese, of course). I loved the series, but I'm still pissed that my language didn't get the same treatment.
7:44 by far swiss german for multiple reasons: - it's a spoken language ONLY - it has NO grammar NO dictionary - you constantly need to ask and swiss are absolutely not helpful, nor friendly, nor grateful when you learn their absurd ugly language - it's only used by 60% of the country and NOWHERE else - it's ridiculously ugly (i know i said it twice) And now I'm learning japanese, a lot more complexe language: - huge amount of signs to learn - large level of precision (depending on who you're speaking with) - very precise writing - very very large amount of culture, rules and tradition to understand) BUT japanese are SOOOOO friendly, polite and helpful (despite Honne to Tatemae) ❤
The only sad thing about this series is exactly the turning Portuguese and non-japanese languages in English point. I mean like, this is such an amazing series, the ambience it creates, they could definitely hire a lot of portuguese actors to make it even more realistic and accurate. There must be a lot of portuguese speaking talents that could get this opportunity to role. Not to mention that everyone in the worlds beside native English speakers are used to watch hole movies and series completely subtitled and throwing away the opportunity to make this masterpiece language accurate just to make things 'easier' and appealing to the English speaking audience sounds nothing but lazy, not only by the producers but especially from the audience...
Do they really need to learn the language when the movie isn't shot in one take? Cant they just memorize lines like they do in their own language with practice for enounciation?
Hey Olly Richards! I love reading your books! They're very good and keep me motivated on my language learning journey. Is it okay if you make more arabic books for beginners? That would be great!
اي برو.. 😁😁😁 about my language mean Example ها Olly جي حالي وضعى طا جيا طي ش كوي بي زحمات ❤ or if real say come him learn us language aaaaaooo really hardly difficult language 😢😢or.. gracie😊😊as
Who learned better Japanese? Cosmo or this guy? 👉🏼 th-cam.com/video/mhG_yveTubE/w-d-xo.html
I'm a Black American. I lived in a Russian speaking household for 8 years. During that time, I learn to read and write the Russian language fluently. Total immersion IS the way!
As a Japanese speaker, I can attest to the old dialect. You can generally get the jist but there are many more yamato-kotaba than modern Japanese and many words/expressions are just different, such as 拙者 and かたじけない. Having a background of graduate study in medieval Japanese history and having seen some jidai geki, I could do okay but the subtitles were absolutely necessary. I never would have known the meaning of 紅天 (“kouten” for Crimson Sky) without them.
That’s fascinating! I didn’t know it was quite so distant!
From that short clip, I caught "hi no moto no kotoba" instead of "nihongo" 😂 yamato kotoba everywhere
@@ayszhang Yes, they always referred to Japan as “hi no moto”, which of course is quite similar to the modern “日本”.
In contrast, I found the Japanese in The Last Samurai to be perfectly understandable. Of note, Tom Cruise’s accent was much better than Peter Pettigrew’s even though he was supposed to be the expert. 🤣
You must be one of the younger generation who didn’t get to watch many jidaigeki (basically weekly samurai dramas) that used to be on air almost everyday. I’m much older so I don’t need cc to understand SHOGUN, with just a few new words maybe but could understand the general meaning from the context. Jidaigeki is apparently out-of-date but I see it unfortunate because the younger generations are robbed of the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the rhythm of pre-Standard Japanese language.
Edit: jidaigeki uses mostly today’s Japanese with some old ways of expression. I think newer dramas use less of such expressions
@@Astrid-jx5dw I’m 48 but I am a non-native speaker. I grew up outside Japan so yes, I didn’t get to watch jidaigeki growing up. As old as you may be, you grew up postwar so you acquired modern Japanese and learned words like 貴殿 from shows you watched as a child. I’m sure you understand that you are in the minority of Japanese native speakers in this regard.
I lived in Japan for 8 years, and I know more than a bit of the language. I've been told that Japanese is 'difficult' but I find Thai much more challenging. I speak a fair bit of German and French as well, although I'm not fluent in any of the languages. I know a Japanese professor of Japanese at a Thai university, and he gave me a backhanded compliment by saying 'Your Japanese is ALMOST OK!' lol
Easy answer. He learned by studying with a personal tutor for eight hours a day because it was his only job for the span of a few months.
Anyone learning Japanese needs to try visual novels. There are two famous animes based on vns. Fate/Stay Night and Steins:gate. both 60 to 100 hours, all dialog voiced. The pacing of visual novels is better for learning, and you can repeat lines.
Shogun is awesome! And the old Japanese an absolute thrill-ride! Thanks for the explanation.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I find stuff like this so fascinating. I haven’t watched SHōGUN, but I hear nothing but praise. I enjoyed your video on it! Also I’ve been learning Russian for 4 years and finally purchased your Story Learning A2 level, I love it. After being a subscriber for ages I’m happy to finally contribute- great work good sir 🙌🏾
That basic Italian course is mighty tempting!
I’ve been learning MSA Arabic just for fun for a couple of years now and Short Stories in Arabic is due to arrive this afternoon. 🎉
🎉
@@storylearning It’s a really good learning resource! Learning reading is always hard but especially when the script is entirely different and the book is very well-presented. Well done!
I have attempted learning quite a few languages:
- I started with english, since I was born and raised in Italy (hence I'm not a native speaker), so first I learnt the basics (sentences, grammar etc.) in school, and was then able to get the rest as I was exposed to the internet and I'd say I'm now about as fluent as I am with italian (although I still struggle with pronunciation from time to time);
- In middle school I was exposed to spanish (further more, with a teacher born in South America) and while I am in no way fluent in it, I can communicate with a Spanish speaker without too much trouble;
- In high school I started learning latin (and since I am still in high school, I'm also still learning it) and I've gotten to a point where I do struggle a bit with making sentences on my own, but, given a vocabulary, I am able to understand most phrases (both in modern latin used by the church to this day and ancient latin used by Caesar or even earlier, although anything older than 2200-2300 years is very much a struggle);
- About half a year ago, I started studying japanese, and while it is my weakest out of the ones I mentioned, using a vocabulary and a decent ammount of time I am able to understand most sentences; as of currently, I can read both alphabets and I'm trying to build a basic "inner vocabulary" by studying JLPT N5 kanjis; I can count up to 9999 (as well as count things) and I can make some basic sentences (although since my knowledge in kanji is still limited, without a vocabulary I'd write most words in hiragana, which for those who don't know, is one of the two basic alphabets in japanese).
Even though I'm not learning Japanese, this video was so interesting to watch. Currently I am refreshing my French and learning Dutch.
Good idea on prepared lines. I did this for Japanese for certain situations. It's easier nowadays with Google Translate and AI to have these prepared lines and practice it beforehand.
I can't wait to watch it I hope they put it on TH-cam
Hi Olly! I love your content and find your language learning tips incredibly helpful. Could you make a video recommending books and other reading materials specifically for intermediate Spanish learners? It would be great to have a curated list to help us progress to the next level. Thanks!
I'm Japanese and understand all Japanese spoken in the drama without subtitles. Other Japanese too. The language is a bit different but we are used to those period language through manga, movie, drama and school classes where we learn the old language.
The most difficult languages i learnt as an adult were Greek and Aramaic. They are a huge brain-shift about how thoughts are structured, how much about time and space and number can be conveyed in a single verb, and how much a verb's base meaning is altered by context.
Greek reminded me how much language controls how you think and what you even think of. Oddly, I spoke Navajo and Spanish via Navajo when I was a kid. While I lost facility in Navajo around 10, I believe it was what engendered my interest in how language changes observation, expectation and imagination.
Nice, I'm going to learn Greek and Dannish on next year . Those languages are interesting . That going to be my 2025 Language Challenge.🇬🇷🇩🇰.
Can you elaborate on the verb-number thing and how Greek is different?
40 years ago I read the Shogun book in one sitting, that will get your mindset to start learning Japanese.
I cannot comprehend learning Japanese so quickly. I’ve been studying for a year now and some days I will spend 8 hours or more studying but I hit a wall and my brain refuses to absorb any more information after a certain point.
That's the problem. You cannot do it fast. 2 years is the bare minimum for people to be able to converse simple conversation in restaurants or supermarkets. 5 years of decent exposure of Japanese doesn't even guarantee you will have a top notch ability to speak and read. The only way to escalate it is through work. Working on the customer service field will definitely shoot your Japanese skill into space. But beware of the harassment you'll get due to your lack of skill in Japanese. People will mock you anyway
Ow, also don't push your brain to learn that many hours in a day. It doesn't help with your ability to memorize anyway, it's more giving you stress.
8 hours is INTENSE! Of course your brain hits a wall.
I'd suggest slowing down on the rate that you're trying to learn new words and grammar. If you go too fast, none of it sticks.
Instead, halve the rate that you are learning new stuff and double the amount of practice you do for words and grammar you have already learned.
I’d think immersion helps tremendously. But going to Japan to study is a huge expense that most cannot achieve, so the rest of us learn real slow 😂
@@キラキラくりくり頭 I’d say more than half the time I spend studying is actually reviewing, writing Kanji, and reading stories, the rest of the time I spend listening. I spend very little time studying vocabulary and grammar, after 4 years of German I discovered it’s way easier for me to acquire those through context and passively recognizing patterns in the language that you pick up on naturally after lots of exposure.
Don't worry, im learning japanese for 2 years now (since 2022) and my conversation skill is still choppy.
You might be interested to know there is a similar French movie called Michael Kohlhaas with Mads Mikkelsen who did not speak French but delivered a convincing French without actually learning the language.
If it werent for the fact that my second language, spanish is important because it is the language of my country of residence, I would be having a crack at Japanese as I love that country and culture having also been there once to teach for a while (a month). Nonetheless, as a second language learner who wants a better command, reading is absolutely the way to go. I read local spanish authors and find english translations and flip back and to between them. It really accelerates acquisition.
I should add that I am currently watching Shogun, having also seen the 70s version and think it is incredible.
Thank you for making this video which celebrated cosmo so much. I loved the TV show and I was so disappointed in the behind The scenes featurette when they barely spoke to him.
I'm from Switzerland. In school I had to learn English and French and High German. For us, High German is a bit like a foreign Language. Now I learn Japanese.
I studied French and Portuguese and speak Japanese and Arabic, but the toughest languages I have encountered so far are Thai and Khmer. South African languages such as Xaosa are quite challenging phonetically.
Well made video, and I agree the process Cosmo Jarvis went through is impressive. I’ve studied about a dozen languages and the hardest by far was Sanskrit, due to the phenomenally complex grammar and sophistication of the language. And I had studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan (modern and literary), and Spanish. I’d say among the modern languages, Japanese and Russian are both hard. Russian because of the grammar (too many cases) and Japanese because it has the most complicated writing system in the world. Having to learn 2,000+ kanji each with 2-8 readings is tough and makes Chinese look easy. Japanese phrasing (sentence order and grammar) is also the reverse to English so it requires thinking in a different way. But Sanskrit kicks your ass unlike anything else.
Any plans to add a course in Icelandic?
Hey, that's me. 😮
Hi, you.
I have started with japanese about a half year ago. Sometimes I think I can never learn it. Its hard. But I love it and I will not back out. Every day I invest at least 5-10 minutes to is so it eventualy stay in my head :) Its a long road ahead :)
This is highly inspiring!
I learned spanish by watching movies and shows in spanish with english subs, and my step dad is from mexico, so while i was young, i mimicked his accent, and it helped with pronouncing words
I'm looking forward to seeing this when it becomes available in my region (Japan). I think some mention is warranted of the fact this was made into a drama 40 years ago with many of the same difficulties faced and overcome.
Wait, this isn't avaiable in Japan?
@@doppelkammertoaster Not on Netflix or Hulu it isn't.
I enjoyed the video very much!
I am relearning English so that I can read the original Sherlock Holmes stories.
Being familiar with period dramas, the old Japanese was very familiar to me. So I enjoyed it as usual.
However, not the language, but I had to look up the reason for hanging the pheasant because I had no idea why they hung the pheasant. I think everyone was feeling wisteria at that time lol.
I've studied Kiswahili and isiXhosa and they are by far the hardest i have studied, especially isiXhosa, Mandarin chinese was like a 6 out of 10, Kiswahili was like 8 maybe 7.5 the hardest parts with that language was mostly the different classes of the words, but isiXhosa was a solid 10 out of 10! The pronunciation was the easiest part about the language, so that tells you alot about just how difficult i found it! With the words constantly having prefixes and suffixes added to them, changing the pronunciation with vowel harmony and latent i:s and having to remember what suffix and prefixes to use to match the class of the noun! An absolute nightmare! It was fun tho and would have been more fun had it not been in uni where you have exams to pass and where you need to know grammar rather then just learning the language in a more laidback fashion. I do still have the textbook and plan to return to it!
The adjectives where also pretty simple, there are actually only very few adjectiv words which are used for different kinds of meanings that are related, like one word for big, large, wide, and so on.
Another hard language would be northern Sami, it's the language ive studied the third most (excluding my native language, the order is English German Northern Sami).
And it has a lot of different cases and just love to change the words in different ways,but id say that sami is about at a 6 out of 10, so like Mandarin Chinese, but more like a 9 out of 10 cus there are so little resources to access and learn the language, i have to translate from Sami to Norwiegian and THEN to Swedish (sometimes it's straight forward, other times the word has a different meaning or i dont know it at all).
Muhto liikon Davvisámegiella ja lea nu ollu historjját!
The actor portraying the Portuguese Priest has had to work much harder on his Japanese. Cosmo's character is meant to have only a weak grasp on the language.
I learned English through music, then I had to use it because I was in a relationship with someone who did not use my language despite living in my country. I went to Ireland and to the UK. I learned more there than I ever would. I still do to this day, and the funny part is, I kept the Irish accent for parts of the words that I learned there.
idea regarding prepared phrases. in our new weird age of large language models, you can just ask a LLM to generate such phrases for you.
even very job specific prepared phrases.
thank you for this video.
Ooh. Anjin-sama!
I lived in Greece for 8 years , there I also learned English and German , some basic Italian , Then I move to England where I worked and started to study Russian and now I am living in Taiwan and learning Chinese.
The part where his translator shifted the words for better understanding is the same way modern translating is done. And why its hard to learn Japanese from watching anime, because what the subtitles say can be quite a bit different from what is being said for example from the show Backflip the characters are trying to gove a nickname to their rookie member but hes nor having it
"Way to go Newbie Ace" "don't call me that" is basically what we get in rhe subtitles but the character says "Newbie Ace I am not"
This example is pretty similar to the intent of whats being said, but I've come across times where whats being said and whats translated is vastly different. Even with manga translations I've seen huge differences between fan translation and official translations
His English even sounds very sophisticated and like he's not entirely from our time I can see why he was cast in this role
When you brought up Shakespeare English I understood more the difficulty. Even a little more closer to modern Endglish, it was challenging for me to read Edgar Allen Poe.
The only decent Japanese speaker was the Portugese Priest, everyone else sucked.
"Kaiiiizoku waaaa shina nakerebanarimaseeeeeen".
Rote memorized lines is nice and all, but the only one fluent in two languages is Mariko and she paraphrased every translation at a 65 - 75% accuracy rate.
Thank you for being the only commenter who says it how it is
Exactly. Every non-Japanese person’s pronunciation was trash except for the priest. I lived in Japan for several years after college, passed JLPT level 2 and worked in a bilingual environment for about 10+ years after that. The Japanese spoken in Shogun is nothing to be impressed by. A native Japanese person would have trouble understanding what the hell this guy was saying because Japanese people have VERY limited experience listening to anything but perfectly pronounced Japanese spoken by native speakers. My Japanese wife needed the subtitles to follow him.
@@benjacook3771 Well, this guy's channel exists to sell his courses, so I'm not suprised :(
@@jasonjackson4555She also needed the subtitles because he was speaking 400-year-old Japanese, but whatever.
@@jasonjackson4555 You missed the fact that they were speaking a 400 year old language and not a modern one it seems.
I would be willing to learn it if I was ever casted for a show/movie like this. I would finally have extrinsic motivation for once.
So the courses are divided into beginner, intermediate and advanced, and each one is a separate payment? If new material added to each level over time?
The toughest language I tried to learn was actually Japanese, but I didn’t have the motivation. I’m learning Russian now, but I’m a lot more disciplined now that I’m a bit older, and so my Russian is improving quite a bit. I may return to Japanese at some point, although I have other languages I want to learn, and Japanese is not one of them right now.
Arabic and Turkish are the toughest languages I have tried to learn for a prolonged period. They are still underway.
Top series. I felt so agonized all the times Mariko perverted or flat-out censored Blackthone's real intentions when translating.
Currently learning Japanese and Korean at the same time they are mostly very different
There is a lot of truth here. This is also a lot of work, one that a good actor is up to. As an actor with a specific job you are learning with a gun to your head. Memorizing word for word is incredibly tedious though… ask any Shakespearean actor. But then acting in a language that isn’t one you’re fluent in, you have to partially memorize the lines being spoken to you as well. And then… you have to adjust your accent to your character’s level of fluency… PTSD is kicking in now.
You have to partially memorize the other actor’s lines because you need the cues that inspire your next line and you also have to have an opinion about what they are saying.
Toughest Language learning right now: Japanese... already learned: english, italian... native language: german ... I enjoy the ride a lot... but it is HAAAAARD :D
I am currently watching this TV series, interesting
I’m an American who learned Russian-which absolutely fried my brain. I then tried to tackle Japanese but Russian broke my simple brain. Works still like to study Japanese but I’m still having Russian grammar flashbacks.
He didnt learn Japanese. He learned his lines.
Ansel Elgort did a pretty good job for his portrayal of Jake Adelstien in Tokyo Vice, however.
Check out Ansel Elgort's story here: th-cam.com/video/mhG_yveTubE/w-d-xo.html
Be that as it may… he did great. Pronunciation was fantastic.
@@storylearning Already watched it! 👏🏻 I really enjoyed the overlap of Tokyo Vice and Shogun during S2 and S1 respectively.
In case you see this, I just wanted to say I love your channel as an aspiring polyglot. (German, Spanish, Korean, and warming up to Russian, Japanese, and French). After living in Busan three years and now itching to go back, I’ve been studying Korean every day for the past year since I’d want to approach fluency if I take the leap a second time. It’s been so rewarding noticing my recognition of Korean go from null (especially in Busan dialect where it sounded like everyone was yelling gibberish at each other) to being able to identify each word and parse together meaning based on my growing vocabulary.
❓I’m approaching the end of the Duolingo Korean course now (which has been beneficial, despite it not working for everyone), and I had a question about your Story Learning courses. Does purchasing grant you access to all the Korean courses or is it restricted to a particular level? I’m not sure whether I’m a beginner or intermediate now, so I’m uncertain which one I need.
Yeah, but still.
I lived in Germany for 4 years and tried learning as much German as i could by being around as much german and as many german people as i could.
cosmo i believe did music then became a actor. his music is pretty good.
Now i got a new strategy
Omoshiroi!
early in the show i misheard "banjin" (barbarian) as "anjin", so i believed until i looked it up that they were essentially calling him "Lord Barbarian" instead of "Lord Pilot" (maybe "Sir Pilot" is a better 17th century feudal translation of ”Anjin-sama" as a low ranking samurai?)
also, not related but i knew Cosmo must have dark eyes... his blue eyes as Anjin-sama just looked so odd. i remember thinking that surely we're at the stage where more realistic blue eyes could be feasible with filters instead of contacts? maybe it's not worth it in the budget, and my family members never seem to notice how strange blue contacts on dark eyes look in movies/shows unless i point it out...
Several people called him 蛮人 as well
@@雀-t6c yep. i think my comment was confusing. when they called him "Anjin" as a title, the subtitles just said "Anjin" so i didn't know the meaning. when they called him "banjin", the subtitles said "barbarian", but i misheard it and falsely believed "anjin" meant "barbarian" for a few episodes xD
Between the Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, & German classes, I found German the most diminishing returns for the amount of effort I put in.
7:40 The toughest language I have tried to learn is probably Mandarin, I just can't seem to break through the pronunciation of the various consonance. the tones weren't challenging, it was the several different "Xi, Shi, Ji," etc.
Been studying Japanese a long time, I also tried learning Korean, but I found that the accent seemed too similar, so my brain defaulted to Japanese when trying to speak Korean to native speakers.. 😅
Cosmo Jarvis's Gay Pirates is the best song ever!
If no one spoke English, how did the guy translate for him in English if he's Portuguese?....
Congrats to Sawai Anna and all the cast for the Emmy nominations. This and House of The Dragon are the two greatest live action series I’ve ever seen
Here's the solution to every language learning problem that's every existed, or ever will exist: REPETITION is the Mother of all learning.
At least at first
Tried to learn Mandarin in college just to find out everyone in my area spoke Cantonese
there's a lot of videogames nowadays trying to simulate the immersive experience
I find it very strange that American actors (male/female) can't act with any accent, but actors (male/ female) from another country ( e.g. UK, Australia, etc...) are capable to act speaking perfect English. I speak 3½ language (Thai, Lao, English, and some Japanese), and the language that was difficult for me to learn was French and German.
Hardest language I ever attempted was Mandarin followed by Middle Welsh .
Chinese. I'm learning Chinese, and, bro.. it's really, really hard. I learnt English phonetically (Mostly. Like, only from the beginning to until when im kinda fluent enough), and I thought that 'Eh, if I've learnt English phonetically, along with my native language having bunch of consonants and vowels, then why should it not be so hard?' I was so cocky lo. Oh, yeah. I'm learning Japanese as well. ye im just a dumb person.
Should add the word Ancient to the title. Up the WOW factor. Or 'nearly extinct'
I learned how to read Russian perfectly but unable to speak it. I learned Russian from my math teacher in high school years ago.
I wish they had also spoke Dutch instead of English to be more accurate too. But then again they may not have cast Cosmo Jarvis.
There's a good show, eye love you, that sort of has this translation issue going on. of course, it's more of a rom com than anything... but interesting
Any native Japanese person can understand the language used in period dramas without subtitles.
This guy is gonna have a similar problem as teenagers learning Japanese from Naruto; sounding like an antique early modern Samurai may not be the best when ordering food or chatting on social media.
If you can not tell that he is mispronouncing every word then you are not proficient in Japanese.
Well for mi as a Brazilian portuguese speaker the most difficult language to learn it's japanese, I'm studying for 3 and half years so far and I'm still not at the which I wish
Not at the place you wish?
First you say he learned Japanese, then you show him saying that he learned Japanese by memorizing the lines phonetically. So which one is it, did he actually learn the language, or did he just parrot the lines? 🤷♂
how much language you know ❤❤❤❤ only your english❤❤
Why everyone named Yukari are so cool?
I'm currently learning German . I like it but it is not easy at all.
French is difficult,they gender objects so you need to varry your setence depending on the object's gender and quantity.
i went to live in kyoto in a machiya wooden house with an old man who spoke not a word of english
Yet they speak English when they should be speaking Portuguese (when they're actually speaking Portuguese, of course). I loved the series, but I'm still pissed that my language didn't get the same treatment.
I'm just glad you call it "Show-goon"
Hollywood folks tend to go "Show-GUN" which always irk me so 😅
@@BrokenSoulConfession you probably just Looove “carry-oh-key” :p
Showgoon is so offensive. Please have some respect.
@@nsevv I suspect that you don’t know much about Japanese pronunciation.
Sake: “Socky” vs “sah-keh”
@@rieyuki Salmon?
Yeah... But when they supposed to talk portuguese, they don't. As a brazilian guy, that's disappointing...
The video explains why.
私も 将軍の日本語を学びたいです。Thanks from Tokyo😊
the toughest language i ever tried to learn is Japanese
speaking human is the toughest language.
7:44 by far swiss german for multiple reasons:
- it's a spoken language ONLY
- it has NO grammar NO dictionary
- you constantly need to ask and swiss are absolutely not helpful, nor friendly, nor grateful when you learn their absurd ugly language
- it's only used by 60% of the country and NOWHERE else
- it's ridiculously ugly (i know i said it twice)
And now I'm learning japanese, a lot more complexe language:
- huge amount of signs to learn
- large level of precision (depending on who you're speaking with)
- very precise writing
- very very large amount of culture, rules and tradition to understand)
BUT japanese are SOOOOO friendly, polite and helpful (despite Honne to Tatemae) ❤
navajo
The only sad thing about this series is exactly the turning Portuguese and non-japanese languages in English point. I mean like, this is such an amazing series, the ambience it creates, they could definitely hire a lot of portuguese actors to make it even more realistic and accurate. There must be a lot of portuguese speaking talents that could get this opportunity to role. Not to mention that everyone in the worlds beside native English speakers are used to watch hole movies and series completely subtitled and throwing away the opportunity to make this masterpiece language accurate just to make things 'easier' and appealing to the English speaking audience sounds nothing but lazy, not only by the producers but especially from the audience...
Cosmo Jarvis is a fox🖤
Or I want before language I learn انگليزي.. e n g l i s h or after Español ❤❤❤
Do they really need to learn the language when the movie isn't shot in one take? Cant they just memorize lines like they do in their own language with practice for enounciation?
Hey Olly Richards! I love reading your books! They're very good and keep me motivated on my language learning journey. Is it okay if you make more arabic books for beginners? That would be great!
اي برو.. 😁😁😁 about my language mean Example ها Olly جي حالي وضعى طا جيا طي ش كوي بي زحمات ❤ or if real say come him learn us language aaaaaooo really hardly difficult language 😢😢or.. gracie😊😊as
Hungarian for me
If Blackthorn isn't pissed in this film, i shan't watch it.
All he wants, constantly, is his ship and his men... He's pissed!!
Trust me, his mood is pissed like 95% of the time.
Japanese
Why bother use Old Japanese if the other languages were changed to modern English? To make it difficult to Japanese viewers? It doesn’t make sense.
Haha, yes, that didn’t make sense to me either.