You can learn by watching anime, but you’ll sound like a 14-year-old. Japanese has various levels of politeness that need to be mastered if you don’t want people to think you’re an idiot.
*source: speak Japanese, lived in Tokyo since late 00s. I often sound like an idiot in Japanese, so don’t get your pants in a bunch.
late 00s
I was really confused at first because I thought of 1900s.
I’m an old, but not quite that old
if you pick up japanese from watching shounen, you’ll sound like a punk.
if you pick up japanese from watching shojou, you’ll sound like a little girl
if you pick up japanese from watching seinen, you’ll sound violent.
if you pick up japanese from watching all three, you’ll sound like a violent little girl punk.
…
if you pick up japanese from watching josei HOLY SHIT WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU FIND IT WHO THE HELL IS EVEN MAKING IT ANYMORE AND HOW DO I GET IT TOO
I learned a ton of Japanese from anime. I also took two semesters in college, but anime was a huge portion. I signed on as a translation cleanup guy for a fansub group back in the day. We had a guy in Japan who could write broken English for the dialogue in anime episodes, and then I was the guy who was excellent with English but only had a basic grasp of Japanese (grade school level). Between us, we could get a script.
I learned more from cleaning up his scripts than I EVER did in two semesters of college.
Nowadays, I am not sure what the word for it is, but I can understand spoken Japanese at a high level but I cannot speak back very fluently. My spoken word is full of pauses as I try to think of the right word. But if you speak to me in Japanese, I understand very well.
So… is the meme accurate? I guess partially. It’s not like I would ever call myself fluent. I can just watch anime without subtitles now.
I learned a lot of the English language watching cartoons. You even can get a basic understanding of culture through them.
However the crusty nerd Japanese simp is someone using pop culture to try and become Japanese. It’s as silly as coming to America and dress as John Wayne and expect Texans to accept you a one of their own.
It’s not about language at all it’s about culture and a feeling of belonging. There’s nothing wrong with it in essence. Say a Japanese dude dressing as cowboy going to a bar will probably have a good time and get entertained by texan people loving their weird fascination.
However, should they go live there and expect to be considered a true texan, they will find out that it doesn’t really work that way…
I mean, you probably could eventually to some extent… definitely not enough to have a conversation, but you might be able to vaguely understand someone saying something to you.
I’m to the point where I can tell when some things are poorly translated in the subs—i.e. how they could better be translated to english to convey their original meaning. And if I close my eyes I can definitely understand bits and pieces of the conversation. Anime re-uses lots of phrases and expressions, and some words are very distinctive or even happen to sound like an english counterpart of similar meaning. So I’ve learned a good amount of them from sheer repetitive exposure.
Honto ni!
There’s a method of language learning - comprehensible input - that is basically this.
Though you need to start by watching/listening things you can actually understand. So start with Peppa Pig level, where they use basic vocabulary, repeat often, and use many visual aids, then work up to content for adults.
Trouble is finding enough learner level content to watch (without going insane). You need many hundreds of hours of content that you understand 90-95% of.
But even if you start with content way too advanced you’d be surprised what many hundreds of hours of listening to a language can do. Not efficient or recommended, but if they’re ACTIVELY listening to the sounds of the language they could pick up a lot of meaning over such large amounts of time.
My first language is Korean. It’s impossible not to get a few concept of Japanese language watching anime for extended period of time. They are very similar to each other, with most of the concept more straightforward in Japanese.
I think what makes Japanese hard(especially for the westerners) is reading/writing. Most Korean people learn Hanja or, in Japanese, Kanji(they are not 100% same but almost interchangable) to some degree. This was a huge advantage for me learning Japanese since I can read/write most of the common words before I even speak the language.
The cognates are what make it so easy. It’s like adding -o to English words to get Spanish; you can just add -u to Korean to get Japanese pronunciation like 약속 --> やくそく
Cultural concepts translate directly, e.g., 선배/후배 --> 先輩/後輩, honorifics in general, 月火水
Also you might enjoy this: https://youtu.be/HiUGWXe6Yzk?si=8g35dQxxbXOGW27c
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/HiUGWXe6Yzk?si=8g35dQxxbXOGW27c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
My high school Spanish teacher said she learned English after immigrating to the US by watching English soap operas like Days of Our Lives and things like that. I’m sure the same could be done but not sure how exactly. It would probably take a lot of active listening.
My MiL moved here from India and watched soap operas not just to learn idiomatic English but to learn how to dress for cold weather.
Growing up in Colombo and Chennai, it never got cold enough to need socks; she was in Midland Ontario and the soaps taught her how to wear snow boots, winter jackets, scarves, wool hats.
I studied some English in school but I really learned it watching series with English subtitles
