when i first watched anime, like Bleach, i thought:
“there’s no way people speak like that, this must be comically exaggerated”. tonnes of people in the internet agreed , “yeah, i’ve been to Japan, those anime talky is soooo much different from IRL Japanese hahaha XD ”
then i saw some japanese movies, like Rashomon, people still talked like anime. i thought to myself:
“this is a movie. must be exaggerated.”
now, i’m actually learning japanese. the listening samples for JLPT N4 are practically indistinguishable from dialogues from “realistic” anime like Witch from Mercury.
NHK news broadcasters DO speak like someone straight from K-On.
people really DO react with “Eeee?” or “So-Desu ne~” in regular conversations.
of course, in formal occasions the Japanese speak in a very dry manner. but we’re talking about everyday conversations here.
now i that think of it, real life Americans really do speak like characters from those Hollywood action movies, and do use hillarious phrases like “ummm” “like~” “~man” “soooo~” etc. in their sentences.
IRL Spanish, Italian and Latinos, too, really do speak like Mario, rolll their R’s and wave their hands around like the Mexican telenovelas
so, why should IRL japanese be so drastically different from those of anime?
he.
now, i’m convinced that all those people who claim IRL japanese is different from “anime-speak” are americans who never left their country, and know nothing about Japan.
that’s all for today. thanks for listening to my Ted speech.
6 comments
When people say “anime is real not real life,” they are not referring to things like “eee?” or “sou desu ne” or that the grammar/vocabulary is different.
Rather, what they’re referring to are usually inflections and mannerisms that are unrealistic for a real life person, because anime characters are first and foremost *characters.*
Perhaps the most common of this is how anime characters frequently pick a single grammar politeness level and set of first/second person pronouns, and stick with it in all situations. This is done to quickly get across “this is a polite and demure character” or “this is a casual himbo” or what have you.
This leads language learners to identify certain character types they want to talk like, or be perceived as similar to, and to adopt their particular conjugation and pronoun choices in real life situations where it is not appropriate.
Anime is trying to use language to establish a character personality quickly and consistently. But in real life, you must change your grammar, pronoun choices, etc. *based on what the listener expects to hear for the situation*. Real life Japanese people swap effortlessly between all of these on any given day. Anime characters typically do not, or do so only rarely for effect.
In other words, a 15 year old shounen anime characters can get away with using “ore” and “jyane-” with a teacher and just seem vaguely badass. You, on the other hand, cannot.
how are you gonna respond to my japanese teacher from japan saying japanese people dont speak like they do in anime lol..
no, they don’t, really. just because you can select a phrase or two that mimics real life doesn’t mean that there aren’t a ton of things that are horrible to copy. inflection in women’s speech is extremely exaggerated, men speak in tough guy modes and use words like 手前 and 貴様 and such that will get even a polite japanese native to look at you askance or even walk away, everyone’s way more overly casual all around in general, and there’s a ton of highly stereotyped speech meant to convey character tropes with limited actual speech involved but are not natural, including but not limited to racist portrayals of different ethnic groups. it’s fine to watch anime as part of study, but don’t assume it’s all proper to emulate. additionally, even domestic, so-called everyday shows do not necessarily display japanese culture accurately, and highly stereotype things – in particular many, many elements of portraying young women in various extremely problematic ways.
I agree with you. But, I think the reason that many people disagree on this statement is the meaning of “speaking”. You mean it literally, you are talking mostly about the pronunciation and enunciation (as your example about Mario shows). A little bit about phrasing and communication flow. Which yeah, just like you conclude at the end of your Ted talk, this is not surprising.
People who object to this idea might interprete “speaking” more towards the ridiculous topics (think gintama vs. a slice of life), the stereotyped voices and body languages (for example I cannot stand that girl characters are speaking differently based on their chest size and that that is usually the extend to their character profile). There is also such a range in anime that I as a fan of slice of life agree with you, but someone who might only consume isekai-harem stuff might/should not.
Anyways, american movies also sound like americans and yet, it more often than not is a stereotyped/dramatized representation and not truely a mirror image, right? Think euphoria or breaking bad, trendy and surely very american, but does it represent a normal life experience? So, language use is somewhat accurate and yet one should never forget that media usually not accurately depict reality. I think this is what this is all about.
お前もう死んでいる
I am a Japanese living in Japan, and I think that the way people speak in anime is theatrical and not natural.
That is why Hayao Miyazaki does not want to use professional voice actors very often. He said. Female voice actors speak in a way that says, “I’m pretty, aren’t I?”
The reason why there are so many professional voice actors in Japan is because they learn their particular way of speaking in specialized schools.