Literally just any commentary YouTube channel will work. Any topic that seems mildly interesting will pull me in and make me so immersed in what they’re talking about. Preferably general gaming topics.
I know that I may sound robotic and a little nerdy if I do use this kind of language but I kinda already am like that in both English and my native language.
Edit: if it helps, I’m already 4-5 months into learning Japanese so I’ve already got a good grasp on the concept of Kanji and grammar.
32 comments
Yes do it! If it works for you go for it!
Yes, but usually such methods are less time efficient. Also quite often people already had some solid base before doing it, like learning foreign languages at school. So overall it’s less about what is better or worse, and more about what people like to do and if it’s something fun for you, then why not.
Are you talking about just watching videos, without any outside studying? That will not work; ultimately you might have fun but you will learn very little.
If you mean supplementing a more structured beginner course with youtube videos, that is fine and it’s good to have something to be interested in.
That depends.
Language acquisition for children (10 and under iirc) is very different than learning for adults.
You’ll have to do more legwork in the beginning before getting anything out of commentary videos
The best way to learn a language is to have a need for it. The more you need it, the more likely you are to learn and learn fast. English is a prime example of this because so many people have learned passively in a very simillar way, where through constant exposure and with some vocabulary you can slowly start to “reverse engineer” the grammar because you have a good idea of what “sounds right” and after that it’s a matter of learning more and more vocabulary.
However English has a few things going for it. For starters people are pretty much inundated with english through every aspect of their surroundings. Movies, TV shows, video games, the internet itself etc. That coupled with the fact that English is structurally simillar to many other languages, makes this method viable for a lot of people, but not all. If you’re Japanese, listening to English sounds as foreign as the reverse does, and simply seeing it everywhere doesn’t mean you’ll naturally just pick it up and learn to a great degree. I’ve been consuming content in Japanese for many many years and while I understand some things ultimately I never learned much from that alone aside from a few words.
This will work, but only if you’re already at a level where you can understand most of what’s being said. If you know little to no Japanese you’ll just be wasting your time.
Never hurt to try
Of course it’ll work. Do what is enjoyable for you though. A more optimized method is to add study, subtitles (JP), reading+writing to the mix too. The initial wall going into East Asian languages is a lot higher if you’re coming from a latin character/based language though. So while you could listen, without reading assistance it’s going to take a lot longer to make sense of things especially on complex commentary topics. It’s hard to get absorbed if you can’t comprehend enough to actually follow along.
Adding to what other people are saying, I grew up watching both anime and TV shows in English. I am not a native speaker of either, but right now I have native level English fluency. Not Japanese though.
I didn’t become any good at Japanese simply because
1 I’ve had no previous knowledge of it before I started engaging with the material. No formal study of grammar and vocab like I’ve had for English in school and my own self study outside of school.
2 Japanese is so much faster than English that unless you have background understanding you’ll have no idea wtf is going on. Catching grammar in material made for natives is seriously hard without knowing what to look for. Words can blend into each other in a way that does not happen in English.
Ever since I started formally learning Japanese I’ve improved a lot over the few vocab words that I knew before such as ‘baka’ and ‘sukidesu’ lol I can now watch more native materials and understand what’s going on. Even a few months of formal learning makes a difference.
Good luck either way.
sure but you said you’ve done it since you were little. so for like… 10 years? more?
it takes a long time to learn that way.
That’s the same reason I’m good in English more than any other person in my school (In Indian schools most of the time students are not that great at english and prefer hindi) And I have been watching anime for 7 years now and i did hold a conversation against a japanese in a restaurant. But I would say its less time efficient.
I am only few months in serious learning of Japanese so I am not expert. I always thought that I learned English from videos in middle school thinking that learning grammar basic in school for like 9 years before was a waste of time. However when I applied the same technique of just watching anime for few years I didn’t learn it. Now I appreciate basic the school thought me. I think that watching content is only beneficial when you already understand most of it.
This is totally true. Commentary videos with the same personalities, people taking each other are good examples. People often recommend TEDtalk, news like CNN, BBC, but they are not as good as commentary or podcast-like types Youtube videos. The worse recommendation is to watch movies, and music. Trying to learn English from them is useless.
I believe the same way applies. Watching Japanese Youtuber commentary is good enough. Also watching Youtube channels that teach Japanese is not good at all. They are just for entertaining.
The only thing this may not work for Japanese learners is that they don’t really have other interest to learn from Japanese Youtube channels. Because I have to keep up with politics, economics for my profession, I watch a lot of English videos on Youtube and other video sites like bitshuts, odysee, brighteon. This helps me come to understand almost 100% of what they say although I still have a difficulty in speaking to the native level (even if I have taught college classes and spoke in the conference). As far as I see on this subreddit, people are interested in the Japanese test, and studying Japanese to pass the test is probably less productive to actually learn Japanese to use.
You’re getting lots of mixed opinions here. I think your way of learning is fine, so long as you enjoy what you’re doing
As long as you’re doing frequent enough lookups and have good enough comprehension then yes you’ll get better at comprehending media, then you can reproduce what is said
Once you study the basic grammar and built up some beginner vocabulary, you can absolutely learn in the same way.
It works when you already know some basic vocabulary words
I mean that’s how children learn a language. One problem as an adult I can see is that without consciously thinking about the spoken language in the video, it will take a long time for japanese to stick when you’re used to western languages.
You can; you’ll eventually develop the so-called intuitiveness people bring up so often, but it will take way longer since Japanese can deviate very heavily at times. Having reference material at the ready to check all grammar points will massively speed this up. Then there’s the vocabulary and kanji wall, which you’ll have to climb sooner or later via your chosen method (anki, lookups, free-form study, etc.).
Still, you’ll struggle when people make references to idioms, sayings, and cultural knowledge that is presumed to be known. You’ll have to learn to recognize them and read up.
TL;DR it can be done, but you’ll have to take many precautions if you want to make it work.
It kinda works after n3/n2 vocabs and grammar but there are still a lot of things going on that you will have absolutely no clue.
I’m a newbie in Japanese, but I also learned English in the same manner and had the same thoughts as you. From my experience it seems like the answer is both yes and no. On one side, that’s the only way to actually learn a language. There is no other method, you have to actually use it until you’re NOT thinking of grammar rules. The problem, though, is that the barrier to entry for that type of study is much higher. Yes, that would be the best way to study, but a lot of people just aren’t on a level where they can even begin to do so.
It’s also important for you to realize that your English probably isn’t a good metric for comparison, since for most people there’s a lot of advantages you get when immersing in English, such as:
1. Most people are already immersed in English to some extent before actively trying to learn it, since English is ubiquitous around the world through exported culture, tech, etc.
2. English is probably closer to your own language than Japanese. There’s a lot less weird gramatical gaps you have to overcome to understand a sentence.
3. There’s more diverse media made in English than any other language. Honestly Japan is pretty top tier compared to other languages when it comes to the amount of stuff “outsiders” want to consume, but English is on another level. Even non-natives who know English will use the language in order to make content. It’s really hard to find anything that’s unreachable in English, so getting content from your level, in the format you want and in the amount you need is so much easier.
So yes, that’s a good way to learn it, but it won’t be as manageable as it was with English, and supplementing it with normal studying might be needed in the beginning.
What is your native language? If it’s not Korean, Japanese will be very hard.
I think you will need to get japanese from proper study, at least if you plan to have any literacy at all. Japanese is not written phonetically (for kanji) so it can’t be picked up orally if you want to read.
That said, you could definitely learn daily life japanese with just watching people speak it. It might not be the quickest way, but people have learned languages like this for thousands of years. It used to be the only way, unless you were some rich noble who took classes.
I think you would have best success with little kid shows aimed at teaching kids (doesn’t have to be strictly teaching language to kids, even general little kid education will not have kanji etc. and be simple content if aimed at little kids). Also lots of interviews etc. Those will be much more mature content wise but still offer daily japanese. Many others but you get the idea of trying to stick with simple content that has natural japanese.
I think one of the first things I did fully in japanese was play cooking mama haha 🙂
Yes
Yes. There are people who speaks japanese just from watching anime and dman am i jealous
It depends on your mother tongue and age.
When little kids whose native language is similar to English watch/play/enjoy contents provided in English so often, they may be fluent in English.
You’re an adult and Japanese language may be really different from your mother tongue. The whole situation is different from the one that you had whilst learning English when you were a kid.
Yes
But most Japanese is going to sound exactly the same. Knowing when sentences end and begin end up being a gigantic challenge. Knowing kanji helps you makes more sense of all of this so the more kanji you know, the easier it can be.
I would suggest you have a look at Stephen Krashen’s theory of language acquisition. You can find a couple of videos on YouTube as well. As for the gist of it, you learn languages naturally, given that the input is simple and you are not even thinking about learning at all. So this explains how most of us learned English without studying much.
Yeah! Check out the [https://learnjapanese.moe](https://learnjapanese.moe) discord channel for a huge list of channel recs! Plenty of people have got fluent using youtube.
Nope, I tried, thought the exact same you did since thats the way I learned english too, you gotta actively study japanese alongside with watching japanese content, japanese its extremely hard to pick up and make sense of, since the grammar is so different and the alphabet doesn’t help. Unless your native language is korean if im not wrong share a lot of similarities with japanese.
I watch super GT 2023 races on YouTube which has Japanese commentary I can recognise some basic terms
you probably were very young when you learned english, and your linguistic skills were not very well formed out yet. when you’re a kid you will naturally connect the words people use to concepts/objects.
for example when your mom asked if you were thirsty, you would understand that thirst= needing water and that’s how your brain registered the concept of “thirst”. since you were so young you probably did the same thing with the youtube commentary.
however, when you are older and you have a knowledge of simple concepts and of foreign languages, you have the tendency to translate rather than register the words.
this is mainly because you already know what a concept is so you don’t need a word to connect with. let’s say that somebody asks you “渇きか” (are you thirsty?) you will want to know the translation of what they said rather than register 渇き=needing water.
so yeah it won’t really work. if you were to be dropped into japan without knowing any japanese and people would actually make an effort to help you register concepts in your nogging like you were an infant then yeah maybe it could happen but just hearing people talk the language without them interacting with you when you are already this old will not really work