Any resources you know for learning colloquial Japanese?

10 comments

1. There’s this really cool source for learning slang japanese called social media

2. I recommend watching Terrace House on Netflix. When I was starting out, I watched all the episodes and would also listen to the episodes passively. I found it very useful for everyday language.

3. Twitter is good for this, but you end up learning things you probably should not say in person

   There are some area-specific dialect books, if you want to learn how to talk like Osaka people, for example

   You might enjoy transcripts of slice of life anime as reading material, all the fansub communities do this

4. I’ve got [Lately Japanese](https://latelyjapanese.com/) bookmarked.
   Each post from the author is a word or phrase, along with the origin and an example usage or two.

5. Dating apps are the best!

6. Just watch YouTube

   Basically anything that’s from the past 20 years and isn’t overly formal or niche

7. A lot of Japanese comedians are from Osaka ( Kansai dialect) but I found it very hard to follow the jokes. There is also some YouTube videos of Japanese trainee teachers teaching their peers about their dialects. If you want an understanding of basic casual form, you can understand the lectures probably.

8. The JLAB anki addon/deck has a lot of slang and colloquialisms from various forms of japanese media (dramas, anime, etc). I like this deck a lot for learning grammar as it’s a great mix of formal, plain, and casual with several examples for each point. Also, lots of variety in the cards since it’s not pulled from one source, so you get a ton of different voices and ways of speaking from natural japanese media sources.

9. Slice of life anime.

   Youtube.

   Twitter.

   Blogs.

   Terrace House (on Netflix) is also really good for casual Japanese.

10. “I am N5-N4 level”
    Learn more normal Japanese first and the rest will fall into place. It takes time.