I’d like to consume more Japanese things. Right now I’m reading H2O \~footprints in the sand\~, which is a lovely, but also pretty easy, visual novel. I’d like to be able to take in more Japanese when I’m too tired to pore over dictionaries and grammar conjugations – is watching anime in Japanese, with Japanese subtitles, a good next step? If I do begin doing that, should I pause to better understand a sentence? Should I not pause? What’s the best way to experience JP anime with JP subtitles, basically.
6 comments
If you’re watching something simple aimed at kids like Conan or Shin-chan you shouldn’t ever need to pause to get the overall conversations and plot development. Spy Family or anything with significant non-daily life plot threads (diplomacy, spycraft etc) you probably cannot enjoy without busting out your dictionary, so if you’re just looking for relaxing passive input avoid things that aren’t simple.
Something like Kimetsu no Yaiba or Sword Art Online are a good balance between being very easy to understand 95% of the time and sometimes randomly making you bust out the dictionary (the speech at the end of the first episode and the letter to the master in the third(?) episode come to mind).
You can pause and look things up if you really want to mine, but I think you’re already doing enough mining through your books so I’d just sit back and enjoy it as much as possible.
Disclaimers: I’m assuming you are around N2. I admit I don’t really like anime and have tried many times to get into it and got bored so perhaps if you watch a lot of anime fantasy jargon becomes easier for you over time.
Almost everything will use most of the conjugations so if they aren’t natural yet everything will be a struggle until you’ve got them down
What should you expect? Ginormous eyes, tiny mouths, odd colored hair, ridiculous costumes, ludicrous situations, and a sudden urge to sleep with a long pillow with a picture of your favorite 2D girl, who you will refer to as your “waifu”.
The most important things are:
1. learn to be ok with not understanding everything
2. look at your progress every 6 months or so, because that’s how long it takes in my experience to actually notice that you’re getting better
This stage is all about experimentation.
Try without subtitles, see how much you can understand.
Then try with subtitles, is it better?
If your hearing isn’t very well trained I would recommend pausing and replaying lines… this is easier done with Language Reactor and Netflix on a browser. I’ve pissed off my smart TV by pressing the rewind 10 sec button too much.
Language reactor has a hover dictionary, and my stance is to look up words as I go, as I’m not very good at picking up from context.
When you’re too tired to pore over a dictionary, just passive listen with subs. Just let the show play through and pick up what you pick up.
I would try to not look at the subs, and only glance at them if I’m lost. But ultimately that’s up to you.
Too much reliance on subs, and not enough ear training WITH subs, will cause you to just read the whole episode and not gain any listening experience at all.
But again if it’s just passive immersion while you’re off the study clock so to speak, then it doesn’t really matter. 🙂
I’d just watch it with JP subs (or JP+ENG), and only pause if something really grabs your attention. Animelon is one good tool for this. If you wanna do more deliberate listening practice, use Subs2srs to make an Anki deck for a particular episode.
Pausing too much can drive you crazy though. If there’s vocab or something you wanna grab, you can always go back and do that after the ep