How do you feel about other youtubers like Asagi calling you and street interviewers scammers and accusing you of cherry picking the people you decide to show, suggesting you want to only show people who show a certain narrative you want to portray about Japan? I find these accusations unfounded and ridiculous, especially since you are japanese as well. Just was wondering if someone has brought this to your attention or if you are aware of this way of thinking about street interviews and what you would say to that.
Takashi your disinterest to the all interviewees is extremely noticeable. Your body language shows you do not actually care about what is being sad at all. 15:06 This effect happens in all countries with non native speakers of a language living in a foreign country, once they know enough to survive... they switch their brain off...they're too lazy to continue learning as they know enough to get by in daily life...
"It's really exciting to hear words I learned" is so real as a language learner. This is one of the factors that motivates me to study more Japanese so that I can understand more Japanese sentences when watching dramas or anime even without subtitles.
Also it's really motivating, when you start to form some new phases with new and old grammar and connect them together. Like "wow, i really can do something with what i knew!"
ive been learning japanese as of the past few months, and subtly picking up on a few words is so cool, its like an automatic instant translation in your head
I'm trying to rewatch my fav anime in the raws rn, so I can pick up on words and listen better! And hearing stuff I know and being able to piece together the sentences without the subtitles feels so rewarding!
TAKASHii managed to get connections with all of these Japanese teachers and online content creators including Sayaka. They are collaborating. That’s neat.
Anyone reading this that's learning Japanese and is around an N5 to N4 level: Watching Terrace House is one of the best things you can do to level up your ability to understand and speak ACTUAL conversational Japanese. Watch a season once with English subtitles, then go back and watch it again with Japanese subtitles. Terrace House was the show that propelled me from N5/4 into the N3 zone. Taking the N2 this summer in Fukuoka. 💪 Good luck to the other test takers.
Thanks for the tip! I am an absolute beginner at the moment and until recently I have not had the free time to dedicate towards learning. However once I get myself to a point where I am a bit more comfortable with my ability I will be certain to give this idea a try. Thanks again and I am wishing you all the best for the future!
When she talked about Spanish & Japanese similarities in pronunciation, I absolutely agree. As a Spanish speaker, I was so surprised at how much of both languages sound similar when speaking!
I totally agree, As a Spanish speaking Nikkei, Japanese pronunciation was very easy to learn for me. But I can see native Spanish speakers having a little bit of difficulty with "Tsu","Za", "Zu","Zo". They make it sound all like "S".
I was watching anime in my room and then I went out of my room and my mom asked what novela u watching, I told her I’m watching anime. She was like Que 😮
I’ve said this for sooo long to people but could never really explain it the best. When I was learning Japanese in school all my Spanish speaking classmates had the BEST accent and pronunciation.
In another of Takashii's interviews, the guy he was interviewing said we live in a golden age of language learning: with the technology available to us today, there's never been a more ideal time in human history to learn another language. That has stuck with me ever since. I feel so lucky being able to hear from all these language teachers any time of the day or night.
I'd be more inclined to see we live in the age where learning languages is unnecessary and just a hobby, while many should keep disappearing into obscurity. I don't particularly like English, but I see no purpose in using anything but English worldwide and online. Once the non tech generations cease to exist it will also become easy to use it more frequently while traveling.... Learning languages is a hobby - I can use 4, and I'm aiming for 6 more but it becomes so hard to choose when in reality so many are minority languages even if they are "household names", take any nordic language (north germanic - swedish, danish, norwegian) or finnish as an example; each of them have around 9 million natives and most of those natives understand english better than their neighbouring countries languages... Rinse and repeat with most eastern european and asian languages. Only languages with soft international power are english, spanish, japanese, korean, mandarin, french, arab and maybe russian.
@Raindropv5wt I don't know what you are on about... I never claimed English was a universal language per se as far as I recall as I find both Universal language and lingua franca as stupid terms, and I certainly did not claim it is the most natively spoken language at all. I did also claim mandarin has relevance, unlike the many random hindu languages that not even them themselves use all that often due to how many they are in a small geographic area (to the utmost of my knowledge). The greek language thing is straight up a lie by the way, and back them there were many more languages than there are today. English is the most used language worldwide, as in through a wide geographic area while the likes of Mandarin are stuck to the China borders, likewise for Russia... So I fail to see any point on your reply to me, the resources are there? Sure, the need is the one that is no longer there and as time goes by this will be ever more true... Languages will disappear, those that are just niche like many Indian dialects, and serve no purpose beyond cultural emblems and allowing people that don't know any other one to communicate (which as I said, overtime will go away). If therer is no need to learn languages, even if the resources become more plentiful, then language learning becomes a hobby and not a necessity - which nowadays is the current state of things ONLINE beyond the key languages mentioned. Also, the only reason greeks had the influence they had in us was due to how many thinkers they had with access to written language and the ability to leave evidence of this while other nations were waging wars for survival, most people had not idea how to read or write most languages that existed back then and things like the library of Alexandria were so emblematic due to this - and this is representative now of how the world knowledge is now preserved digitally in ENGLISH, as every research paper is required to have an abstract in english even when the whole thing is in, for example, spanish.
this is SO true. I tried to learn Japanese in highschool in 1998, but bounced off how hard it was to learn kana with the available methods-- no podcasts, youtube didn't exist yet, decently translated Japanese media (if you tried to "learn from Anime" from some of those translations you would be learning from someone who knew barely more Japanese than you did!) no apps. Spaced Repetition was known as a learning technique but not taught and the tools available to assist were nonexistent. There were relatively few advances from the 1940s when wire recorders allowed "language labs" full of recorders and players for the first time until like almost literally 2005 or 6. Language learning until the smartphone era really took off in 2012 or so looked like studying a textbook at home speaking out loud to the wall and once or twice a week sitting in a row of cubicles with headphones repeating phrases and hoping you remembered them and perhaps a professor or two walking around listening for obvious errors and correcting you. It was the dark ages.
@@raizan5946 I cannot agree with this at all. In my field, IT, the gulf of language-speaking forums is immense. If you spend most time in the old "first world" (US allied nations of the cold war) you need only English really. But if you ever go to the "second world" (former soviet allies) Russian will avail you more and English will be more uncommon, though it's not like it was in the cold war where only military officers would speak English but they PREFER not to speak English in many areas, especially within Russia. If you're in a field where that matters, like IT Security, you will be far more effective if you learn Russian. Similarly there's a lot of fields where if you don't speak one of the languages of India you won't fit in.
The different perspectives of everyone was really interesting: Anannya had the anime-fan/solo learner perspective. Sayaka's answers were really focused on the linguistic part of language learning and pronunciation as well as how the language actually sounds when spoken conversationally. Kozy really focused on the sentence structure and used good grammatical examples. and Risako had the experience of knowing a roman derived language to compare it directly to japanese. So cool!
I disagree with your justification but I do agree that she seems very smart. (As in, being able to express your thoughts clearly and well is a sign of being smart in itself, but the amount of languages you can do it in is not as important depending on how you learn them) My pov: I grew up in Luxembourg, where the average person speaks 3.5 languages, so most people can speak 3 or 4, and usually people can express themselves well in at least 3. (so usually Luxembourgish, German, French and/or English for natively Luxembourgish people, and native tongue + sometimes secondary native tongue + english and/or french and/or german for immigrants, who are about half of the population.) I've seen plenty of people who can speak really well in 3 or 4 languages, but are complete morons lol. I think there is actually not so much difference between being able to express yourself clearly in one language and 4 languages if you grow up in some circumstances. If you go to school where you must communicate in at least 3 languages for your classes, you will be able to express your thoughts in 3 languages even if your head is empty otherwise. Anyway, I don't think this applies to Risako and in general people who learn languages to fluency of their own volition rather than due to the systems they are surrounded by. All I'm saying is: perhaps she doesn't *have* to be very smart. Still is!
00:00 📚 Learning Japanese: Start by focusing on pronunciation, hiragana, and katakana. 01:07 📺 Watching anime aids Japanese learning: It helps with pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary, but beware of informal language. 02:31 🌍 Language differences: Spanish shares pronunciation similarities with Japanese, aiding Spanish speakers in learning Japanese. 03:36 🎌 Language structure: Japanese learners face challenges with particles and sentence framework. 05:52 🚫 Pitfalls of anime learning: While helpful, learning solely from anime may lead to picking up uncommon phrases and rude expressions. 08:00 🧠 Effective learning strategies: Emphasize practical vocabulary over rote memorization, and balance kanji acquisition with vocabulary learning. 10:33 📝 Mistakes to avoid: Focus on pronunciation accuracy and practical vocabulary rather than exhaustive verb memorization. 11:59 🔤 Kanji importance: Recognizing kanji aids comprehension and reduces cognitive load, though writing proficiency may be less critical. 15:04 🛋 Immersion in Japanese culture: Living in Japan doesn't guarantee language fluency; active engagement and practice are essential. 16:34 🎉 Advice for beginners: Enjoy the learning process, embrace mistakes, and cultivate courage to immerse yourself in Japanese language and culture.
Living in a bubble isnt necessarily good. This isnt 1990 with social media and internet we are more of a global society also Japan gain a lot of income nationally and businesses by exporting their culture. Economically no country is an island unless you wanna become north korea. But tourism is huge@TheDarthpsi
this video is proof that japanese shouldn't be shy about their "japanese accent". trying to sound "like a native" and that kind of perfectionism is foolish. instead the goal should be closer to "being understandable." even native english speakers have so many accents. your accent is part of your culture. be proud! :D
Not only Japanese, all Asians in general should be respected no matter what their accent is. I've seen some trolls online who specially quote accent whenever they wanna mock a whole country. Asians are amazing...they should in fact be praised for being multilingual ! I personally speak 5 languages and it's annoying when people mock my English for having an Indian accent. 🤔🤔😑
That's a great point. I think sounding like a native is an unrealistic expectation. And as a language teacher, I think comprehensibility trumps pretty much everything else.
exactly. If you hear a native japanese speaking fluent english with an accent it doesn't mean their english is bad. Nobody really thinks about it because the important part is you can understand them
Right on. And within the community of people trying to learn Japanese for instance, they peddle the narrative that 'perfect/native' pronunciation trumps all else. If one's goal with a language is not to communicate, connect or consume native content from that language I can't imagine it being for many other reasons that feeding ego and bragging rights in line with one of those clickbait 'Person from x race SHOCKS natives with language abilities!' People with various accents are everywhere and make the world more colourful because they offer glimpses into unique backgrounds, upbringings and cultures that shaped their cadence.
I speak Spanish, and my Japanese teacher/sensei tells me my Japanese pronunciation is very good. So we do have that advantage because in Spanish, our r’s sound the same or similar to Japanese, as well as vowels, and the bilabial sounds like b, p, and also the t, d are the same. I began learning Japanese on Duolingo 2 yrs ago and began lessons also 2 yrs ago. I love it!
Because Spanish pronunciation is a bit similar to Japanese. But it is not the pronunciation that is important in Japanese, but the intonation or pitch. Because as long as the pitch is accurate, my daughter can often understand what I'm saying even if I have a toothbrush in my mouth. lol
@@TheMakoyou I’m sure! That pitch and intonation will come later for me. I wish I could learn it now. I’m just focusing on vocabulary and grammar for now. I am just beginning to understand putting sentences together and learning the verb conjugation for I, na, and te form verbs. I’ve got a lot to go!
@@Taetae-ye8zb En el curso que estoy tomando, Kanji viene un poco mas luego. El profesor nos mando las notas por email y segun lo yo veo de kanji, hay que mirar a cada letra de kanji… y separarlas de sis partes. Ciertas características de las letras tienen algo en comun. Otras parecen a lo que quieren a representatar por ejemplo, agua. Veo tambien que hay ejercios a donde tengo que distingir una letra kanji con otras que de presentan. ASI uno va poco a poco mirandolas y notando las Que son iguales. Casi todas tienen partes diferentes y hay que mirar a esto. Yo tendria que escribirlas en cartas y escribir que significan al Otto lado de la carta. No mas de 5 o 6 a la vez. Espero que esto le ayuda un poco.
All this mention of Sayaka is great but seeing so little praise for an Indian girl speak fluent Japanese. She's very good for foreigner. Props to her. Always heard south Indian languages have similar/identical grammar structure to Japanese so nice to hear confirmation from her.
Sayaka is the best. Her teaching is lively and makes we too can speak easily like her. I have often switched channels when i saw others as they look very fast making to feel very difficult to speak like a native. I like NATIVE Japanese teachers. I am an Indian and see only content by natives who inspire confidence. I watch Sayaka even though am doing my N1 as I like her pronunciation and her confidence inspiring style.
I love what Sakaya said about the most important thing just being able to communicate! I think the thing that holds people back from practicing is the fear of making mistakes, when it doesn’t even matter, and is just an opportunity to learn! It’s not like I care when people from other countries make mistakes in English so why would anyone else care?! Loved this video! Very inspirational as I finally embark on my Japanese learning journey!
I mean, it depends on your goal. For a lot of people, their entire goal is being able to consume content, which aside from getting a Japanese gf/bf or a perma tutor, it's probably the fastest way to actually get good at the language. For those people, talking isn't really all that important. Lucky for those people, the best part about that is that even if you don't speak, by merely learning Japanese and consuming tons of content, when they do decide on speaking, they'll be able to because simply immersing and consuming tons of content allows for your output potential to be so much more. After that, it's just refining, and getting comfortable with actually speaking.
That is what language pedagogy of the past 20-30 years says. A lot of teachers are out of date or some think they can teach because they are native lol
My Japanese partner helps me learn Japanese by having me do daily tasks in Japanese, and using/listening/reading practical Japanese every day. That plus going to Japanese school here in the US has helped me a lot and speaking Spanish helps with pronunciation
@@doublebubblebarb7606 yep the phonetics and vowels are the same. The problem I have is, when I speak Spanish, I speak too fast. So when I speak and pronounce Japanese, I pronounce it the same speed and I make a mess.
Ive been thinking about that, i feel like my Spanish upbringing helped with my Japanese a ton, like im able to mentally tie vocabulary between the languages to remember definitions, and pronunciations (as previously commented) are also shared which helped a lot. Really interesting stuff
I saw Sayaka and I am here already... To find Sayaka Sensei 0:43 Intro 1:45 To start from 5:50 Anime pros and cons 11:17 Common mistakes 14:21 Japanese on textbook 16:16 No matter where you are, speak! 17:22 Advice
I am a current student of Kouji sensei on preply and LOVE his teaching style and guidance. He always has answers for my questions and can always comment on the context in which to use certain Japanese words/grammar.
As someone who speaks 5 languages (🇧🇷🇺🇸🇫🇷🇲🇽🇯🇵) fluently and some conversational, here are my observations that people reeeeally don’t talk about enough why na show people learn fast or not: (the same applies for Japanese people learned English) 1) western countries are low context, we speak directly “this tastes bad” vs Japan (eastern mostly) is high context “maaaaaaaaaaaa this is…… oooookay…..” 2) people don’t emphasize enough how the grammar structure is different West: SVO vs Japan: SOV I eat apples “(I) apple eat” 3) countries whose first language is not English but use the same Roman alphabet tend to learn faster, they don’t have to waste time learn yet a new set of letters (which is why Japanese English education should start in kindergarten, some junior high school students STILL switch “b” and “d”, even “p” or “q” sometimes…) 4) if you already speak a second language, your brain is already used to “learning languages” 5) if the language(s) you already speak are PHONETIC, that’s yet another advantage 6) if the language you already speak is part of a particular “family”, that’s another advantage, that’s how I learned French and Spanish, they’re both from Latin and there’s a lot of overlap in grammar, word roots, verb tenses, etc. There’s nothing similar to japanese the same way Romance languages are to each but the closest would be Chinese and Korean. Chinese for the kanji (word order is like English, and they don’t have verb tenses) and Korean for the vocabulary similarity (many video’s online demonstration that) Bonuses 1) a friend/bf/gf 2) time 3) drive/motivation (not really a bonus, that’s a given)
I love your channel so much. It’s always insightful and your interviews have lots of meaning. I’m currently learning Japanese and I feel fortunate because I have several Japanese coworkers that have been so helpful in my learning. Immersion has been key to my learning.
Thank you so much for this video. I'm currently learning Japanese and I think that these experiences and advices are pure gold. Greetings from Argentina! ありがとうございます。
Took Sayaka-Sensei's classes all the way through, can attest that she is very good and my Japanese is better thanks to her instruction! Highly recommend!
I loved all the teachers and Ananya (she made me look into my South Indian mother tongue to find similarities!). Kozy Sensei seemed such a patient and wonderful teacher. I follow him now. Thank you Takashi. I always learn something new from your channel.
this was comforting. A lot of the recommendations and considerations were already part of my plans. Mainly using duolingo to get initial grasp of the characters. I have workbooks for learning to write, but mainly hoping it will assist with me recognizing them - just using them as another medium for learning them. That way I can progress to typing which will be my main learning tools apart from dramas/tv shows. I do enjoy anime/songs, but with the creative freedoms in both, I know they can't be completely relied on just like with related content in english. Thanks for this video
Hey Takashii, thank you for all of your content. I have been learning Japanese for a little over a month, and I watch your videos every day. I appreciate you very much.
3:57 I would totally agree. The vowels are very similar between Spanish and Japanese. I have often told my native Spanish speaking students about this as a way to persuade them to learn Japanese.
I’m an American living in Mexico for five years and about to venture to Japan. I will now think more about how continuing learning Spanish can help in my learning Japanese. I’ve already become aware of the certain similarities in sound and pronunciation. Thank you. ありがとう。
I'm currently trying to learn Japanese, but I'm in the phase before being able to watch japanese content because I don't know enough vocabulary :( I am trying to learn vocabulary and Grammar everyday for multiple hours and I hope it won't take too long, until I can watch some Japanese Content even if it's a children tv show, because I learned english that way and for me it worked great. Thank you for the Video, it really motivates me to keep studying!
I took it to mean that he is thankful for all of the watching that I have done up until this point, but that he will no longer be thankful for any watching I do from this point forward.
Great vid and great tips, thank you! For me what helped in the beginning was associating certain Hiragana and Katakana letters with specific things. For example the N kana always resembled the let's say "n" in my native language so it was easy to memorize. And the "E" kana reminded me of a man just waving his hands in surprise like "eee" so got that down as well and so on. The disadvantage is that it obviously doesn't work for everything and since I use it while trying to learn other languages it can often get confusing.
Good evening Mr Takeshi, i love your content, but i have noticed it is mainly aimed at the younger viewers, i am 56 and have loved everything Japanese for many years, when i was much younger there was no way to learn Japanese except visiting Japan, i hope one day to visit and learn the language. Take care and thank you for your video's, perhaps you could do a video about older Japanese people and how they feel about friendship with non Japanese people. Tony
I always give an example of two individuals speaking a language fluently, one with a heavy accent but with an immense vocabulary and another that has no accent but with a small vocabulary. Now, which would you rather work and or be friends with? Pretty easy. This is to say, being able to communicate effectively is a million times more important than sounding native. In many cases natives prefer a different accent and even the new, interesting and sometimes funny ways non native may say something. If you sound native you are just another one of 100s of millions.
When it clicks it is incredibly rewarding. I came to visit Japan in March 23 and am back in the country now. It is night and day different in how much better I am at using Japanese now. To the point where I ended up chatting with a little group of locals during a festival. It wasn’t necessarily philosophy at its finest, but we all understood what we were talking about. They were so excited I could speak with them 😂. I then got the traditional Japanese helpfulness when they learned I was just going to walk back to my hotel (about an hours walk), so one of them basically demanded I let them drive me home 😂.
Forty years ago, we didn't have all these online resources although I wish we did. But when you're in a relationship with a Japanese girlfriend or boyfriend and especially if you live with them, you're on a steep learning curve. This helps too.
I've been studying Japanese for the last few years and I agree with most of the advice. My advice when learning new words in is to look for sentences in either video subtitles or written texts that have less than 3 words that you don't know yet, and make a review card for that sentence. That way you'll learn just a bit more than you already did. Trying to memorize entire sentences with 5+ words you don't know is way too much information to actually learn and remember quickly.
This gives me hope. As someone who’s been struggling on-and-off to learn Japanese for the last three years+, I take hope away from this, if only for the love of a people & culture and the desire to communicate with both. Domo arigatougozaimasu for the video! 🙇♂️🙂
I started learning Japanese through Duolingo, for almost two years now, and since January, I have been learning through a tutor on Preply. I have plans on going to Japan in the near future, yet I'm making sure to take a more slow and steady approach on learning the language, so that I can hold decent conversation when the time does come to go there.
I started learning over a decade ago while I was in highschool, but then so many things happened in life that my passion for learning Japanese was put on the back burner. Now, in my 30s, I'm starting to pick it back up and I can say that there are far more resources today than there were back then. This video is so encouraging! 🙏
Hey, I remember being interested in having Sayaka tutor me, but sadly she was always all booked up. Glad to see the teachers recommend hiragana and katakana. When first learning and searching online, everyone recommends Genki, Tobira, or Minna no Nihongo, but no one says anything about learning hiragana and katakana first.
Only good advice was from Anannya. Don't ask fish how to catch fish. Ask a fisherman. Foreigners who learned as adults and had to grind to fluency are going to give you better advice than Japanese people who learned it naturally growing up.
@@niwa_s Certainly. I just think that their advice about how to learn English is gonna be better than their advice on how to learn Japanese. Their advice isn't gonna hurt, but I'd much rather take my main advice from people who made it there deliberately.
I wouldn't say it was the "only" good advice, but I'm with you on how helpful it was. I'm learning Japanese from the very start and I want to become fluent in the language, so Anannya's advice was very relevant. I also admire her attention to detail and just how well-spoken she was. Tips like immersing and surrounding yourself with the Japanese language, and image training to study Kanji were very helpful for me. I almost wish she would tutor me 😩
Absolutely loved this video! It's so refreshing to find content that's both informative and entertaining from real people who's went through the same thing as you have. For me personally, I've been using apps like Ling and other online resource such as NHK Japanese to expand my knowledge. They've been incredibly helpful in making learning accessible and fun. Keep up the great work with these videos. Love from UK!
@@tacoslover4765 pitch accent is relatively easy compared to grammar and kanji. Idk bout you but I got good listening skills and I can imitate pitch and intonation fairly easy. Learning moras is easy.
thank you so much Takashii. I always think your video is fun and great. From your videos, I always learn many things. I am hoping that I can watch your video as soon as possible.
Just like English was way easier for me to learn than Japanese is now (I'm from Brazil so I speak Portuguese, or rather Brazilian, since we're so much bigger than Portugal now 😂🎉). But English was way more present and there was more pressure to learn. The actual pronunciation I think Japanese is way closer to Latin languages like Portuguese (specially here in Brazil where we have a lot of Italian ascendancy and even some Japanese, so there's direct influence of Japanese in Brazilian Portuguese), but the writing being so alien hurts a lot. If it was only for speaking, I think Japanese would probably be as difficult as English or even easier, though Japanese uses setence orders closer to English (Portuguese is almost always Subject then Verb than Object or Adjective or whatever, while in Japanese is often the complete opposite 😂🎉)
I love your content, man. I've always wanted to learn more about what Japanese people think and what's Japanese culture is like but I've never managed to learn enough Japanese language to be able to understand what people are really saying. It also makes me very happy that younger generation is more open to foreign people/languages/cultures/way of thinking. I think it's no secret that people from all over the world are fascinated with Japan and we've been waiting for you guys to join us ❤
For me, I find it’s easiest to learn when actually having conversations with Japanese people. The textbook can only teach you so much. My Japanese teacher would bring in Japanese students in our classroom and we’d learn Japanese that way, while the Japanese students would learn English. It was pretty fun.😊
As I grow older, I’ve found this channel to be one of the best RU-vid channels for educational purposes when learning about different perspectives and stories living in Japan!
Great video! About learning with anime, the best ones in my opinion are not the action or fantasy ones, but the ones depicting everyday life, like Atashinchi (あたしンち). They have a youtube channel and the episodes are nice and short. I have learned tons of useful words and expressions by watching this show. I try to listen on 75% speed so I can catch everything they’re saying. I highly recommend it to anyone learning Japanese!
It was a very, very nice video. The way some candidly explained sometimes how Japan is and how they all, including you, encouraging us to learn is very great. And yes, I am an American with Puerto Rican ancestry, and our vowels and hoy you pronounce Japanese is the same. Always good to see what binds us and not what separates us.
The most important thing to learn anything, specially languages, wasn’t mentioned by anyone, which is: one should decide the reason to learn Japanese before starting out. You rather learn for becoming an entrepreneur in Japan, maybe another type of professional worker. Or maybe is just for playing video games, reading manga, watching anime. Doing so it’s easier to keep your mindset strong. I did that when I learned French and it helped me a lot.
started learning japanese recently, i find memorizing vocabularary the hardest part lol, so far im okay with the grammars. The genki textbook makes it easy to understand.
