I’ve learned Hiragana and Katakana. The question is what’s next? I have anki set up and the core deck downloaded. It’s a bit tougher than I thought but that’s okay.
I have a few questions, is it ok to use anime for immersion? I’ve found YouTube channels I can use but I also want to use anime too. I keep finding things that say using anime is ok and others where it’s said I should avoid anime until later.
Is Tae Kim’s guide still a good resource nowadays? I keep seeing things that recommend Tae Kim and others that say I should avoid it. I’m looking forward to checking it out anyway I was just curious about that.
Lastly, I’m on Android. Is there a good free Dictionary for Japanese on Android?
I greatly appreciate any tips/advice. Thank you.
7 comments
You can’t exactly “immerse” unless you do those other things. Not even doing immersion twenty-five hours a day would help without a good foundation. No, kana by itself is not good enough.
As for anime, yes, it’s a good resource — especially if you’re already into it. It just has to be (a) level-appropriate and (b) grounded enough to the point that what you pick up will be of use to you elsewhere in your learning.
Being level-appropriate means that you aren’t needing to look up every single thing presented to you, but the stuff you do look up remain manageable. Being grounded means that the language used isn’t only applicable to that particular anime or that particular genre. For battle shōnens, which I watched very often when I was young, I learned name-calling and even how to declare an overly dramatic promise to murder my mortal enemies. You see what I mean? When the whole “anime = bad Japanese” thing came about, the most popular shows were very much battle shōnens and the stereotype stuck even in the modern day. If you watch school romances, you’re more likely to pick up ways to make and communicate with friends.
When I used Tae Kim, I treated it more as a crash course. Don’t take its word as gospel, and be prepared to have your understanding be adjusted and corrected as you interact with the language more and more.
tl,dr: grammar, and only as much vocab as you need while learning the grammar. When learning grammar, focus on kanji first.
In detail: Immersion will be a distraction for you this early in your journey; that’s not to say that Japanese media won’t be useful to you in keeping your enthusiasm for the language and culture up, which will be key in staying engaged with the process. Anime is fine, depending on the anime’s complexity – you want more slice of life, less giant robot with terms made up entirely for the show.
But, all of that is kind of moot – this is like asking whether you can immerse into English after learning the alphabet, no words or grammar. While technically the answer is yes, I do think you should slow your roll.
> Lastly, I’m on Android. Is there a good free Dictionary for Japanese on Android?
All the free dictionary apps generally use the same data source, Jim Breen’s EDICT project – so really at that point you’re just quibbling over UI/UX differences.
Rather than any app, I’ll recommend the web interface for EDICT, the WWWJDIC project: [http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic](http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic) WWWJDIC’s entries will link out to commercial dictionaries that can provide sample sentences etc and I think that’s useful.
If you don’t have much vocab or grammar, I wonder how you’ll be able to understand what you’re trying to immerse yourself in?
I think it’s fine to watch anime or consume Japanese media in general, especially for fun/relaxing while still getting the benefits of passive studying, but I don’t think it’s useful for active language learning. At least not at a very beginner level anyway.
You should do things you enjoy using Japanese in addition to drilling flashcards and using textbooks, building up a strong foundation in the basics of the language while also finding real life and fun applications of what you’re learning (ex: anime).
Of course you should use anime for immersion, anyone that says you shouldn’t either doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “immersion” or is just bristling at the fact that such a ‘common’ medium can actually be conducive to learning.
Of all the people I have met from around the world that speak perfect English, every single one of them has a favourite TV series, or movie, or band, or Youtube channel , or podcast, or whatever.
Every. Single. One.
It almost makes me angry that there could still be idiots in the world that say “hurr durr, don’t watch anime, that’s not authentic Japanese.”. I hate to break it to people, but no one normal speaks like the characters in “Big Bang Theory” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” or “Trailer Park Boys”, in fact that’s pretty much the entire point of the entertainment industry.
How exactly do you plan to immerse when you literally don’t know any words or grammar?
I have “Japanese Dictionary Tokoboto” (with a red octopus icon) and “Japanese” ( a red icon with “日本語” written vertically on the right) on my android phone.
They are both dictionaries, but I use them slightly differently. If I need to define a word, either work. However, if I need the stroke order, I prefer tokoboto because it’s not an animation for the stroke order. If I need to look up a kanji, I don’t know. However, I prefer Japanese as it has a function to look up the Kanji based on the radicals/components of a kanji
I find the word “immersion” a little problematic as people seem to define it very differently. Immersion is supposed to mean being immersed in an environment and learning a language without very little of the learner’s native language. Immersion classes I think are almost never purely 100% the other language, but it’s still mostly being “imersed” without much explanation in English. To be fair, there are probably many definitions of imersion even in academia, but that’s the theory at least.
People frequently talking about playing games, watching anime, or listening to Japanese music as “immersion”, but that’s not really the immersion method, even if it feels immersive. Whatever owrks is a good way to learn, it’s not bad just because it’s not immersion.
“[Japanese Imersion with Asami](https://www.youtube.com/@japaneseimmersionwithasami4249)” appears to have been discontinued, but is what I’d consider immersion learning. It teaches language and grammar from the ground up with very, very little English support, though I found it far too slow. The immersion method is somewhat intended to simulate the slow process of learning via context that native children use to learn their own language so being slow is expected, but if there’s an imersion channel that goes a bit faster, that might be better.
On almost any subject, I would encourage people to use multiple learning sources and methods, but the point of imersion learning is to avoid misconceptions and false analogies that learning another language’s words by defining them in English or translating Japanese might cause so it’s really supposed to be all or nothing. Either you learn Japanese by studying its grammer, translating things, enjoying Japanese media, and reading Tae Kim’s guide or another source, or you use the imersion method. If you use imersion as well as any other method, that kidna defeats the point.