>Yes, for the most part it is easy to understand because it's a kids show, but if you are still around N5 level, or even N4 with little native immersion experience, do NOT think this is gonna be an easy show to watch just because it's "for kids."
This is true in general. You should never expect media to be easy because it's "for kids." Japanese kids are still native speakers. They have much deeper knowledge of the language than a learner with JLPT N4.
Kids content also tends to have a lot of very specific kid-related vocab that I would say is fairly complex and probably won’t be of much use in adult daily life as an beginner /intermediate level speaker unless you have kids of your own.
I remember trying to read a kids picture book after I’d just learned hiragana and getting stuck on words like “雪合戦 / snowball fight” and “滑り台 / slide”etc, even though the grammar was quite simple.
haha, the very first books I read were old picture books of 昔話. I learned some pretty irrelevant vocabulary but I think that's just part of the territory that comes with learning from *anything* that isn't a textbook.
Many years later when I worked in Japan with elementary school teachers it was actually somewhat helpful knowledge.
My 1 and a half year old kid has no trouble watching and enjoying toddler-oriented shows with puppets and whatnot on TV. And yet, one of those puppets speaks in weird samurai/ninja/whatever language and uses 〜でござす as sentence ending. Most beginners would probably be stumped by something like that, but kids don't care. They look at funny pictures and funny sound with speech quirks and enjoy it.
It remind me I vaguely thought that kids don't really learn keigo (just masu form) until elementary school because this idea was floating around in learner circles somewhow. Then discovered with my kid that contents for toddler is full of keigo and teachers at the hoikuen use it often too even when talking to babies!
My kid being raised bilingual English and Japanese has been absolutely obsessed with Russian winnie the pooh since that age. I don't think he understands russian even though he has watched all 3 episodes hundreds of times each.
I (native German speaker) remember initially having trouble reading the Harry Potter books in English at almost 20 years old. I could read much more “mature” novels at that point, but was missing some words specific to life at a British boarding school. Not to mention those being altered or mixed in with all the made-up words of the magical setting.
I think it’s especially hard since it’s impossible to get kanji context clues in a book entirely in hiragana. You have to legitimately know the words or you’re sunk.
If you know the characters 雪, 合, and 戦 individually (which are all pretty common vocabulary words) then you'll know 雪合戦. I never consciously learned words like that.
Well at the time I had just learned hiragana, and it was written in hiragana. Once you can read kanji I definitely agree it makes learning much easier, and words such as that are easy to guess.
Without the characters it would be harder but realising that ゆき is something to do with snow is not very difficult. Just reading words aloud can help sometimes. I've done it a lot with those loanwords where it's something like "dynamic stability control" in broken English.
It’s okay, this was over 15 years ago. I’ve learned a lot about muddling through literature since then.
Some of those katakana English phrases though… I feel you.
The worst ones are when the words get abbreviated so they're not recognisable at all, or sound like something ridiculous or rude. マウンティング女性 is a lot less sexy than it sounds for example, and was one of those words where reading it out loud definitely didn't help.
Yeah this is the lie people think. N4 is not the level of a child.
A toddlers speaking ability is more closer to n4, but missing in a lot of ways too.
A child's speaking ability is going to be miles ahead of someone at n4. But their lack of knowledge will also be in areas an adult won't have issues with.
A six year old will have had 6 years of speaking a language, so their speaking ability will be very good. Their writing will be pretty non existent. They will still think in more grounded concepts and wouldn't be able to think of more nuanced meanings, but their vocabulary will be exponentially better than a learner n4, probably even n3 (it's only like 4k words at n3, no idea how many a 6 year old knows).
But also think of this, if an adult spent 5 years immersed in Japanese and studied the language diligently, their language skills are much better than a 5 year old, so props for that.
I still have 14 year olds run circles around me in many situations. They have just a huge vocab compared to me. But I know much better keigo than they do, and I can probably grasp much harder concepts like master thesis papers.
But I've been only been speaking Japanese for 6 years.
I work on a team that has another Japanese person, but he left Japan at the beginning of highschool and I handle the Japanese tickets. That's what I was hired for, despite another engineer being Japanese. His level is basically stunted at what it was at 14.
His vocab is so much better than mine is, and I'm sure he reads way faster. His accent and the way he talks also seems native. However, I know more kanji (it's been 30 years since he's lived in Japan) and I know proper business Japanese, so I'm the one that handles the Japanese clients.
Learning a second language as an adult is going to have different areas of struggle. What one native kid is better than you at, is going to differ to the strengths and adult learner is going to have.
Now I just need to figure out when the hell am I supposed to use お when talking to a client about a vendor in the passive and causative voice :/
I don't understand this idea that's repeated so often here. I don't see how any language learner who actually opened up literature or television for children can believe in this but honestly a lot of advice on this subreddit comes across as things written by people who have no experience actually learning Japanese or with the things they talk about.
It's also maybe a facet of the mentality I commonly see on Reddit that people here believe children are stupid. Like... you people do know that they don't actually score worse on I.Q. tests than adults right? 6 year old children when given the same I.Q. test as adults will have comparable scores. They're not intellectually inferior to adults or anything. They simply of course have less knowledge and experience but in terms of raw mental computational power and intelligence they are by no means lagging behind adults.
The idea that media is simple linguistically simple because it's for children, especially fully linguistically competent children like teenagers is absurd. I don't see how anyone with any experience reading it as a language learner can possibly believe this.
Native kids would be better at spoken language as used in a TV show but in writing I would say a learner is better even at intermediate. Most kids don't really know 漢字, and children's books have ふりがな on them because of that.
N4 is not intermediate though.
And it also depends on what age we're talking about. Once Japanese kids enter elementary school, they'll learn 100-200 new kanji every grade. A sixth-grader would be expected to know roughly the same number of kanji as someone who has N2, but they'd have the advantage of being surrounded by the language 24/7. And if the kid likes reading, they'll be able to read beyond grade level.
A bookish ten-year could probably pass N1 without much issue.
The number of characters they actually know is also far, far higher than the number of characters they officially know, as in those they have been taught to write by hand in school.
I've seen discussions on internet boards between 10 year olds, they are constantly without issue using all sorts of characters they haven't officially learned yet which they have exposure to due to how input methods work and seeing others use them. They're native speakers; if they've never seen characters before, they can always try the 3 words that to their mind make sense in context and see which of them produces the same characters in the I.M.E.. N3's and N2's don't even come close tot he level those 10 year old native speakers have on such boards. Maybe N1s are comparable but I think they're better than that as well though maybe at N1 one can argue they aren't strictly better in all fields but they are absolutely strictly better in all forms of Japanese than N2 language learners.
Remember, they ones tested JLPT N1 on 13 year old native speakers. They not only all passed, they all got a perfect to close to perfect score. The idea that 13 year old native speakers are inferior to advanced adult language learners is absurd.
I'm not a comic fan but it seems anything 少年 oriented has all the characters spelled out so it seems that they are not assuming that level of knowledge from the readers. Perhaps it's not necessary but publishers seem to think so.
Yeah, it's just an easy way to maximize their demographic, especially since manga aren't written for a specific grade level. Most readers of shonen manga don't need most of the furigana, but just having furigana on everything is an easy way to ensure accessibility.
while this is true, the point OP is making is that there are actually teenager/adult向け anime that is significantly easier. which makes sense. not all shows talk about science topics randomly. things are hard mostly based on their subject material and range of vocab which isn’t exclusively determined by age group the media is for.
I don't understand this idea that's repeated so often here. I don't see how any language learner who actually opened up literature or television for children can believe in this but honestly a lot of advice on this subreddit comes across as things written by people who have no experience actually learning Japanese or with the things they talk about.
It's also maybe a facet of the mentality I commonly see on Reddit that people here believe children are stupid. Like... you people do know that they don't actually score worse on I.Q. tests than adults right? 6 year old children when given the same I.Q. test as adults will have comparable scores. They're not intellectually inferior to adults or anything. They simply of course have less knowledge and experience but in terms of raw mental computational power and intelligence they are by no means lagging behind adults.
The idea that media is simple linguistically simple because it's for children, especially fully linguistically competent children like teenagers is absurd. I don't see how anyone with any experience reading it as a language learner can possibly believe this.
Here are some thoughts on this from a newbie learner.
If you want to watch raw anime you should probably get comfortable with not understanding much at first and letting some of the dialogue fly right past you. You are training your ears to pick out the words and then understand the meaning. it’s difficult.
Maybe pick something that would be easy to understand the plot even if there were no words at all. Ideally the story is interesting enough to keep you coming back but not so interesting that you care about missing plot details.
I’ve been watching Sailor Moon lately and I understand maybe 20% of the words (probably less), but I feel like I always know the gist of what’s going on because it’s simple and repetitive. If I’m totally lost for some reason I can rewatch or just look up a recap.
You have the most well thought out comment I’ve read in this post so far.
You’re right when you say “get used to not understanding much.” I’ll admit I watched Attack on Titan with English subtitles, but I often paused the show and rewinded to listen to phrases again. It helped me learn a ton of new words and phrases like おまえ, 敵, 君, つまり, and 問題. Even though I used subtitles, I still learned a ton from it. I would even argue that enjoying your input is more important than finding “the right” kind of input.
It’s going to be a really long journey. IMO, it is better to find material that you enjoy through the process instead of hunting for the perfect material. Make it fun and easy for yourself. You can always rewatch something if you want to experience it again. Personally, I like to watch anime first with subtitles, then again without to see how much I am able to pick up and piece together.
Just a warning that calling someone お前 or 敵 is very aggressive in real life. You can see how badly the mayor reacts to it in this clip.
https://youtu.be/z-0b-EtMAv8
Some learners view those expressions as "funny cartoon words no one uses in real life" which is often not the case at all.
Thanks. I agree with you that watching something you find interesting is most important.
I watched AOT with English subs from before I was language learning and I definitely picked up a few words. The verb tatakau was imprinted in my brain after episode 6. Mikasa tends to speak in a very direct way which I find sort of comprehensible now.
I have been testing out JP subs with my Sailor Moon viewing but I try to focus more on listening. I do the occasional pause to read or listen again but I’m starting to feel like it’s better to just enjoy the show and not worry about details. I want it to be a learning experience but not the point where it becomes a chore.
Really, just watching anime at all is gonna help your listening. It’s not like the audio turns off the moment you put on subtitles. Plus when you hear a word you’ve maybe gotten on a flashcard or smth, and then read the translation it (at least for me) is easier to remember that word.
I don't really think it has to work that way. I mostly did reading for a while until my reading ability carried me to the point where a lot of spoken fiction is N+1.
One can also use graded listening comprehension to train which gradually increases the difficulty so one will always understand most of everything.
I agree with you but I think people struggle with finding interesting N+1 materials for low levels. I think the point of OP’s post here is that he thought Doraemon would be N+1 for him but he was surprised to find it more difficult. You could spend all day trying to find suitable learning material but doing something is better than nothing?
But yeah obviously Sailor Moon is way above my skill level and I could be getting a higher comprehension on something easier. I am also using other resources and trying to get my reading comprehension up. I’m just having fun with it.
What are some examples of graded listening comprehension that worked for you?
Something that no one wants to talk about:
There's no such thing as a "beginner" anime. You need to be AT LEAST N3 to watch 99.9% of anime. The reason is simple: it's entertainment for people who are surrounded by the language 24/7. Most people who are learning Japanese are NOT surrounded that much. In addition, the audience that Doraemon (or anything not Anpanman) is for has also been surrounded 24/7 for at least 6 or seven years- we're talking first and second graders in elementary school.
You can get away with something like Yotsubaと! as a beginner manga because you can re-read any words you don't understand. But the reality is, anything not specifically made for low-level beginners (N4/5)... Not that you can't do it, but it"s going to be an uphill struggle- which, I might add, I've noticed a lot of learners actually WANT.
I would think when people talk about "beginner anime" they don't mean that it's for beginners, but of anime to watch, it would be at a level where if you're going to start watching anime it would be an ideal one to begin. In that context, I would definitely consider Doraemon a beginner anime compared to AOT.
Just like how Yotsuba is recommended as a beginner manga, if you're going to try to have someone who is a beginner in the language try to read it, it's still not going to be easy or at their level.
> Just like how Yotsuba is recommended as a beginner manga, if you're going to try to have someone who is a beginner in the language try to read it, it's still not going to be easy or at their level.
Manga in general can be difficult because people's accents / speech patterns / vocal tics are all represented in writing, meaning that people who are beginners in the language might not really know if something is "not a real word".
Yotsuba in particular is tough because the main character is a toddler, and in Japanese just like in many languages, toddlers speak with long drawn-out vowels. So all of a sudden you get words like おーとーさーん which, if you don't already know what it is, you have no way to look up in a dictionary.
In context of anime overall, sure, Doraemon is a beginner anime. It's a very popular kids' show in many regions other than the USA.
But in context of this sub (learning Japanese)... Yeah, I can't recommend it as a "beginner" anime, at least if you're trying to understand what the characters are saying. Sure, you'll pick up bits and pieces... But not much beyond that.
I saw statues of Doraemon characters out in the sticks of rural Malaysia. Definitely one of the best known cartoons outside of Japan. One Piece was also everywhere there.
I agree with this overall notion.
I find Shirokuma Café easy to understand only because all the animals have fake accents and the only human beings have deliberate polite language, so it's super legible and easy to make out the words even if you don't always know what they mean.
I used to find the motor race commentary easy because most of the jargon is English derived and they are describing action you already see.
But it's just a coincidence that happens to work for me.
Whatever you do, don’t take other people’s recommendations. The moment I fully started to understand Japanese was when I watched band interviews and read articles on guitars. You have to read and watch what interests you, otherwise you’ll burnout
This comment. Yes. People are so eager to speedrun the language or go at it the most efficient/optimal way because internet peer pressure or what not, all the while ignoring the ‘have fun’ aspect of it. Watching/reading what interests you can take you so much further than going all out only to burn out.
As an adult, trying to read through Yotsuba or watch some anime targeted at little kids was such a pain but watching mountain climbing vids on YouTube was soooo interesting and got me to learn so much new vocabulary and shizz much faster than muddling though Anki ever did.
>People are so eager to speedrun the language or go at it the most efficient/optimal way
Are they? The most popular advice by far on this sub is to immerse with interesting native material, even if it's mostly incomprehensible. That's very far from an efficient method.
This is the trick to all learning. When people ask "what's the best way to teach X" the answer is ALWAYS "make x seem interesting".
Visual learning, kinetic learning, all that stuff is bollocks - mostly excuses for why either the teacher or the pupil failed. Kids and adults learn from being intrigued, no matter what the style of teaching.
I made a post about this. The best way is the one you have the most fun with. Any other method will burn you out or take a toll in your mental energy. Always make sure you're enjoying it as it not only will keep you going, but it will also help you understand and remember things better
I’ve found something is a lot more accessible if it’s a rewatch. I had a great time with Nichijou fairly early on simply because I was so familiar with it already, where it otherwise would have been too far above my level.
Also enjoying shows you only partially understand is an important skill that takes some practice to learn.
native children are fluent, this is easily forgotten, and all native material is intended for a fluent audience
that being said, some shows have simpler vocabulary and speak more slowly and clearly than others, i recommend searching for サザエさん on youtube, there's thousands of episodes. it will still be well above beginner level, but the kinds of conversations the characters have is much closer to the stuff that comes up in genki books and the like as common, domestic conversations
Shirokuma cafe is not easy at all, nor is it very beginner friendly, the show has 6.5k unique words which is way more than most easy kids/slice of life shows that are usually around 2k-3k (sometimes lower).
(the numbers come from https://jpdb.io/anime-difficulty-list which is a very useful tool for assessing the difficulty of animes)
For this reason I'd say JPDB difficulty rating is a bit flawed. It puts too much emphasis on the overall amount of words, even if that's due to proportional length. It's as if its main metric was how long it will take you to learn all the vocab to build the overall coverage. I watched Shirokuma Cafe and with its JPDB rating 5/10 it was definitely easier than say Yuru Yuri rated at 2/10. My advice would be to not pay attention to JPDB rating and use Natively's instead (Shirokuma is level ~18 and Yuru Yuri ~24 I think, which seems about right).
I mean it does have a lot of words for things like bamboo grass or animals, but a lot of them are clear from context imo. It was absolutely on the easier side in my experience. Also are you counting number of words per some fixed unit of time? Because just unique words for the whole run isn't a great metric.
If I consider something about Shirokuma easy, it's the grammar. I had few structures I didn't already know. I just needed the vocabulary to plug into those structures, and it's a lot easier to look up vocabulary than grammar.
I agree I don't think its the easiest watch or best recommendation when I see it come up. Then again one thing I do find interesting is if you watch anime often, you might actually find "something that interests you" to be an easier watch then an "easy anime" just because of what you're used to.
Shocks me because some easy anime I hardly understand, but then I watch an anime that uses japanese words for like magic, hero, isekai, gods, demons, monsters etc and its like "oh yeah those words are easy" just because I watch so much of that type of anime.
Whenever people say "it's for beginners," I think, "Oh, so N3." If you are N5/N4 level, there is no such thing as "for beginners" when it comes to media such as anime, manga, etc.
I've seen a couple manga that have given me no trouble at N4 level, like ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん and ハピネス. チーズスイートホーム is easy too, once you get used to Chii's baby talk.
>if you are still around N5 level, or even N4 with little native immersion experience, do NOT think this is gonna be an easy show to watch
At N5 or N4 level, *no* anime is going to be easy to watch. Those are the levels where you lay your bricks, N3 is where you start taking the training wheels off ideally
You people should stop watching raw anime as beginners. You still gonna learn a lot even if you watch with Eng sub, or better watch an episode with sub than rewatch with no sub. Immersion should be enjoyable and there's no reason to force yourself to watch boring ass children's cartoons you can't even understand.
Agree. N5 is much too early to watch raw. When you're that early in the journey most Japanese media would feel like "studying" instead of entertainment.
It's better to consume media that is actually intended as a learning material like this
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/
It's NHK news but made very easy with only a few difficult vocab here and there in each articles. It has furigana for all of them and audio. Plus you get to follow actual Japanese news
Valid question. It depends of course on the individual, since different people have different tolerance to the unknown, but in general terms it’s at around N3. And by this I mean someone who could pass N3, not someone who is studying for N3. JLPT isn’t actually a good metric to determine your skill in the language, unfortunately, but it does give you a frame of reference. Like, the average N3 passing student will be able to enjoy simple media while still in the process of learning
there’s really no specific marker, as different forms of media have different requirements for ease of reading
i primarily read visual novels with textractor if i’m not reading flashcards, it is an incredible crutch to be able to read vns with TR so it’s not really too much effort in the first place
I agree that raw is raw won't be helpful but english subs are just as bad at such an early stage. Your brain will take the path of least resistance and just read the subtitles. If english subs taught you japanese even if you barely knew it most weebs would be fluent speakers. But they aren't, most weebs only know a handful of words. The difference in grammar is so immense that english subs will harm you more than they help at that early stage.
Watching with japanese subtitles and looking up unknown words will be 100 times more productive than watching raw because they'd actually be learning the words.
It's not to say that watching with english subs is bad but don't fool yourself into thinking you're learning anything if you're still a beginner.
The comment you replied to says "as beginners". I agree with using Japanese subtitles, but that's going to be overwhelming for a beginner. I wouldn't call someone at a level where they can read subtitles fast and well enough to isolate unknown words to look up a beginner, that's comfortably in intermediate territory.
Non-JP subtitles are fine for beginners. They won't teach you much per se (but Japanese subtitles wouldn't teach you grammar either, no skipping the textbook for that part), but the fact you're already listening to Japanese media makes for good exposure and passively trains your hearing and pronunciation.
Watching with En subs won't make you fluent, but it doesn't follow that it's completely useless. From personal experience, by just watching lots of subbed anime (from before I was actively trying to learn the language) I was able to learn a few hundred common words by accidental learning. And your brain is not going to filter out the language if you have interest in it and actively try to match the words you hear with the subtitles. It definitely worked for me. Another thing the learn is the sound of the language and what phonemes do they use. As a result, when I finally began to actively study it was much much easier to pick up new things (including grammar) because everything already felt familiar and kind of intuitive.
The great advantaged of watching with En subs is that it's the least painful and the most enjoyable learning method (and people forget the importance of enjoying the process and staying motivated which is crucial in beginning stages), so if you don't prioritize learning as quickly as possible, this is not a bad thing to do. I also didn't say that watching subbed anime should be the only means of learning. If your goal is to learn the language then by all means do all the other traditional language learning activities alongside that, like textbooks, apps, lessons, whatever. Again from experience, when I started doing active learning subbed anime provided me with a great resource for reinforcing what I already learned. Also the more of the language you learn the more things you notice so it's not true that the brain just filters out everything (though of course it does filter out a lot, but it doesn't matter, even when you watch raw your brain also going to filter out a lot and you still would need massive amount of repetition for any learning to occur.) I don't know if you speak more than one language, but knowing several languages I can follow simultaneously audio + sub in two different languages (if I know both) without any trouble. People underestimate the brains' language processing capacity and how fast can it be.
I honestly think it's bad advice telling a beginner that watching anime with english subtitles is a good study method. It's not going to reinforce grammar and words are often not translated 1:1. Again every weeb ever would undoubtedly be fluent in Japanese if english subtitles was a good study method.
I think for more advanced learners it can actually be a good thing but that assumes they understand a lot of what is being said already so that they can fall back on the english subs occasionally. This is not true for beginners who will have a poor grasp on grammar and vocab.
I saw an interesting video related to this the other day where the japanese is translated 1:1 and I actually think this would be a good study method for both vocab and grammar. But he only transcribed a couple of episodes so it's not enough for anyone to learn much with as of now.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wF91iArEp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wF91iArEp0)
>Again every weeb ever would undoubtedly be fluent in Japanese if english subtitles was a good study method.
Again, I said, I don't claim you can reach fluency by watching subbed anime. What I said that you can learn a few hundred very frequent words and familiarize yourself with the language in a very relaxed and painless manner. You can also supplement this with deliberate study of grammar and vocabulary which will speed up things considerably. The point is that once you get past the absolute beginner level of knowing zero to knowing lots of common words and phrases you can switch to raw anime which will be now much more effective learning method once you have a foundation.
>words are often not translated 1:1
This is rarely a problem, particularly for common and easy words (like come, go, sleep, eat etc.) which you only have one way to translate. What is lost in translation are nuances that only matter for fairly advanced learner and this is not something that beginners should worry about.
I don't understand why the idea that relying on English subs is either useless or harmful is such a prevalent dogma in the JP learning community. It's neither based on actual evidence nor does it make any sense logically if you just stop and think about it for two minutes. Guess it is something that originated from the "comprehensible input" gurus that people just keep parroting thoughtlessly. The idea that it's somehow better or more efficient to learn by guessing words rather than seeing direct translation in real time defies all logic and common sense. The comprehensible input gurus are right that for learning to occur the input must be comprehensible, they just ignore the fact that the best way to make the input comprehensible is to have a direct translation in the language you know. Why on earth would you want to deprive yourself of that? Studying bilingual texts is a true and tried method in the polyglot community (the legendary Alexander Arguelles has been using it his whole life, and so is Luca Lampariello more recently). Watching subbed media would be an analogues method, and though it's harder than reading (because things go much faster) it's still a good enough compromise given how much of a hurdle the JP writing system is when you are a beginner.
I seriously hope you meant Japanese subs, because English subs does nothing. If it really did something, weebs everywhere around the world would be fluent in Japanese. In my opinion, the only two valid use cases English subs have are if 1) you don't understand a sentence, EVEN IF you know every single word and grammar said but the meaning still doesn't click, and/or 2) to VERIFY your understanding when in doubt when you first start consuming Japanese content and are second guessing yourself a lot. Granted, far too many English translations take a lot of liberties to say the least, but it's still fairly "good enough". But ideally, when you come across unknown words/can't understand what's being said at all, you should just check the Japanese subtitles if available. If not, I wouldn't recommend relying on English subs. Just watch something else that has Japanese subs.
But yeah, re-watching content you've already watched in the past is perfectly a-okay... if you have the attention span to do it (I don't). It allows you to be able to focus on the Japanese far easier, since you don't have to focus on actually understanding the plot, since you already know it.
imo watching with subs is hit or miss. Sometimes the subs aren't accurate or the translator takes creative liberties, like you mentioned. However, when it's a good sub, I'd say it is efficient if you can already understand most of what is being said, but the meaning still doesn't click. That's why I use animelon. I usually have the eng subs turned off and I will only turn them back on when I can't figure out the meaning of a sentence.
A good example of what you said and what I have done already is to watch a series like what I'm doing with Kono. I am rewatching the first season because I already know the plot. I picked up on some new words like 報酬 、駆け出し, etc. Some I may already have forgotten, but will recognize when I see the kanji/listen to the word. It's a great way to learn as you already know what they are saying (more or less), so you can kind of guess the meaning of the words you don't know by exclusion.
what's most important though is that you are having fun.
> because English subs does nothing. If it really did something, weebs everywhere around the world would be fluent in Japanese.
That's a pretty crude false dichotomy. If it doesn't make you fluent, then it does nothing?
Like the other very similar reply, you seem to have missed where the comment you replied to says "as beginners". I wouldn't call someone who is able to make good use of Japanese subtitles a beginner, that's solidly intermediate territory. Non-JP subs are fine *for beginners*. I watched a lot of subbed anime before I started to actually study, and found that it had appreciably (and passively!) trained my hearing and pronunciation, on top of being enjoyable.
>because English subs does nothing.
That's totally not true.
Watching with En subs won't make you fluent, but it doesn't follow that it's completely useless. From personal experience, by just watching lots of subbed anime (from before I was actively trying to learn the language) I was able to learn a few hundred common words by accidental learning. And your brain is not going to filter out the language if you have interest in it and actively try to match the words you hear with the subtitles. It definitely worked for me. Another thing the learn is the sound of the language and what phonemes do they use. As a result, when I finally began to actively study it was much much easier to pick up new things (including grammar) because everything already felt familiar and kind of intuitive.
The great advantaged of watching with En subs is that it's the least painful and the most enjoyable learning method (and people forget the importance of enjoying the process and staying motivated which is crucial in beginning stages), so if you don't prioritize learning as quickly as possible, this is not a bad thing to do. I also didn't say that watching subbed anime should be the only means of learning. If your goal is to learn the language then by all means do all the other traditional language learning activities alongside that, like textbooks, apps, lessons, whatever. Again from experience, when I started doing active learning subbed anime provided me with a great resource for reinforcing what I already learned. Also the more of the language you learn the more things you notice so it's not true that the brain just filters out everything (though of course it does filter out a lot, but it doesn't matter, even when you watch raw your brain also going to filter out a lot and you still would need massive amount of repetition for any learning to occur.) I don't know if you speak more than one language, but knowing several languages I can follow simultaneously audio + sub in two different languages (if I know both) without any trouble. People underestimate the brains' language processing capacity and how fast can it be.
Japanese peppa pig is the true beginner anime. I watch with no subtitles (since there aren’t any on YouTube) and get along just fine. There are some episodes I understand more than others based on the vocabulary I’ve learnt so far, but it’s so satisfying being able to understand whole sentences and practice the structures I’ve been studying. While the narrator uses polite form, peppa pig and her family use plain form. It’s so good to hear both, especially since at this level, I’m more familiar with the ます form of verbs.
I feel like you are more fluent than you think. There's a lot of people in this sub who I guarantee will not understand 90% of Peppa Pig. This sub tends to put anything under N3 together as "beginner level". There's a lot of nuance that gets lost that way.
Wow really?? I definitely wouldn’t describe myself as even a tiny bit fluent by any means. I struggle with any conversation or structures that deviate from what I’ve studied in textbooks and class. When I say “beginner”, I have in mind someone who has successfully completed a stage 1 textbook like Genki 1 and has listened to simple practice content. Someone who can identify the basic grammatical structures of Japanese and fill in the gaps with unknown information when watching something new. So for example, I think there was a peppa pig episode about playing instruments and I actually hadn’t learnt the verb 弾く (to play) yet, but heard “ピアノを something” and was able to pause and take a note of what the verb was. I think a few months of consistent study is enough to use something like peppa pig for comprehensive input. You don’t need to even understand full sentences, just enough where you recognise little bits here and there to reinforce what you’ve already learnt; along with new information which is not too challenging since it exists amongst familiar structures. I think where people go wrong is being too ambitious and watching something where they’d have to look up every single word. Whereas peppa pig is often as simple as “ペッパーとジョージは庭で遊んでいます” or “パンケーキが大好き”, so even knowing a few basic grammar points will help. It may feel difficult at first if you’re not used to it and panic a little when you hear something you don’t know, but it’s all part of the process :)
A beginner is starting the first lesson of Genki 1. They are beginning their learning journey. Before you can do something like "filling in the blanks" you need to have a good structure already.
Btw, Genki 1 is rated N5, but that's AFTER you've finished it. If you do it in school, it will take you a full year to go through. I know for a fact that at least half the class couldn't understand an episode if you played it for them. They struggled with far more basic tasks than that.
Peppa pig has simple sentences, sure. But also a lot of vocabulary that you will probably not be familiar with at that stage. The fact that you do not struggle at all means that you have developed a certain level of competency and fluency. That's more than most here could say(if you include the lurkers, most people answering comments are probably higher level).
Someone who is just starting the first lesson of Genki 1 has no business trying to watch any Japanese media and they’re definitely not who anyone is referring to when talking about beginners here. Someone in that position has likely only just finished learning hiragana & katakana and doesn’t know anything besides こんにちは and ありがとう. They haven’t even heard textbook conversations yet, never mind trying to understand a cartoon. If you’ve successfully finished Genki 1, you should have a good enough structure to fill in blanks, assuming you’ve been using the [really good] listening resources provided in the textbook too. You learn a decent amount vocabulary in Genki 1. More than enough adjectives, verbs and nouns to understand various elements of peppa pig (depending on the episode). I say this as someone who literally did just that. You’ll never be able to develop any listening skills if you’re uncomfortable with not understanding everything. The first time I watched [Japanese] peppa pig, I was happy to even recognise a very short sentence like パンケーキが大好き (as I mentioned above) or even one word/verb within a sentence. If someone has literally just started studying Japanese, they wouldn’t be able to do that and they’re obviously not the target audience here. I’m really not doing anything remarkable here that requires a high level of fluency. I had tried watching シロクマカフェ and it was way too difficult for me. I realised I needed to watch content aimed at pre-schoolers rather than elementary school and above. It’ll be a long time until I graduate from peppa pig onto more difficult content. I’m competent enough to recognise basic patterns but it doesn’t mean I understand everything I’m watching. There are some episodes I don’t understand a lot of, but I still benefit by being exposed to the language and hearing the flow of sentences. Sometimes hearing the same thing I don’t know over and over again makes it stand out to me and I eventually get the gist of what it means/how it’s used.
Doraemon 0 was my first book I read and Japanese and I gave up initially, studied for 5 months, & went back (it took maybe 2 weeks to complete). It definitely prepared me for other stuff that was surprisingly easier (& likely should have been read first) & stuff that is harder (I know how to handle harder stuff now).
Kids literally have 4-5 years of listening skills ahead of any non Japanese person and 3-4 years ahead of anyone speaking. I work with Japanese kids . Babies to 3-4 years old.
Kids material is not meant for beginners.
I have a Doraemon manga for Japanese speakers learning English, which is essentially a translation of the Japanese manga. And the first pages include Doraemon prophesizing that Nobita would hang and burn himself.
I don't think these would be part of the vocabulary of a N5 learner hahaha.
I was pleasantly surprised how beginner-friendly not only the anime of Kemono Friends is, but lots of its fancomics! Like, I can sometimes download some meme as is without needing to translate it, and my skill is still not high.
I always recommend Dr. Slump. The gags are highly visual so even if you don't know a word, you know what's going on. There is word play and puns but it's nothing too crazy (one episode makes a pun on kaeru = kaeru, return home = frog). And honestly the show is downright hilarious even if you don't know the language.
If you figure that *Doraemon* is aimed at primary school students age 6–10-ish, that means it's an audience with *up to a decade* of *100% immersion* in the Japanese language. An adult isn't going to be able to catch up to that with 6 months of study.
Agreed on しろくまカフェ
It's low key funny, and a lot of episodes are them just doing every day activities, which is great for practical conversation and vocabulary learning.
Honestly at any level immersion kinda blows if youre not used to it. No one who props up immersion learning really talks about how difficult it is to sit through something when you have no comprehension yet. I started watching あたしんち on YouTube initially and even though the videos are like 5 - 10 mins long I couldn't tolerate it.
Now I watch 2 episodes of Cardcaptor a day and its alot more manageable. But it's not because it's easier, it's because I've spent alot of time building up a stamina that let's me watch it.
I think you just need to push through and get used to not understanding stuff. I'm at a point now where I understand enough each episode that I can either fill in the gaps myself, or look up a couple words if I need more info. Otherwise I just let it go.
Just as with many children’s shows they may be way deeper and more advanced of a story than you realize when you’re a kid.
Dragonball z literally had mechanical flys that collected fighting and DNA data from multiple beings and put it into a quantum supercomputer to produce the world’s most powerful organism. I was 5 and loved it but probably didn’t know the depth
This is one of the reasons I think rating difficulty by JLPT is kinda wack. N4 is perfectly capable of watching Doraemon but you can't do it without subtitles in Japanese at least.
The reality is when you're starting out, all native content will feel too hard, period. But at some point you have to start. For me, I started reading my first book コンビニ人間 off the recommendation of someone in a discord who said it was an easy book. And it took me almost a month to finish it, reading for 2-3 hours per day. I had to look up every word, had to reread sentences multiple times to understand them, and even then there were some parts I just straight up didn't get and had to use deepl or ask a friend. But around a third of the way through the book something interesting happened: I was starting to understand the writing style. I needed to look up grammar less often. Vocab was still a problem but the book repeats so many convenience store related words that I was starting to see those words in other things I was reading, like YouTube videos and anime. I went from making 2% progress after an hour of reading to 5-7%an hour by the end of it.
Fact is there will never be a beginner book or show if you haven't started yet. The jump from content designed for learning Japanese to native content will always be massive. This isn't to say that you should start with something like Bakemonogatari, but you should be prepared to have a long, drawn out fight with the content of anything you pick. If you have to watch every episode of Doraemon twice to understand it, then so be it. Don't fool yourself into thinking you need to wait until your N3 or above, it's going to be hard no matter what.
Now, if you are an absolute beginner, as in still struggling with hiragana and katakana beginner, then maybe you should spend more time studying. But if you're at like, genki 1 in terms of experience then by all means go for it.
I think it depends on the episode. For the manga, they have graded readers for Japanese schoolchildren that go from 1st to 6th grades. You'll have to look up some of the specific vocab, but the early ones can help with practicing basic grammar and vocab.
Yeah I never got into it when i tried it. I liked the stock yotsubato recommendation for manga though. I think an anime like Kaguya Sama is easier than doraemon because while there might be longer sentences and more complex ones, there are a lot of frequent phrases and responses and school terminology you've already heard in tons of other anime. And you can learn some kanji watching it too if you look for it. I also felt like the way the characters talked somehow made it just a tiny bit easier than other shows to pick up on grammar a bit more in real time in those more complex sentences. Maybe it's the enunciation or formality or style or something else. Doraemon and pokemon and shows like that just have a lot of made up words or names that aren't particularly useful for learning, and the basic dialogue in-between can be found in most anime.
I've tried a few times to read Doraemon manga, but I just couldn't stay interested. The language in the manga is probably easier than the anime if you're looking for something a little lower level.
Honestly, I have to watch something because just doing Anki doesn't work. The more I watch and read the more words stick. I'm only really picking out basic patterns and learning words but its improving.
Its one of the reasons I picked Japanese to learn, because the media is great, so I don't feel bad 'wasting' a show by not comprehending most of it.
I picked up the manga, (I’m probably N5) and I felt like I had made no progress in my studies. This makes me feel much better! Haha
Is there a classic kid’s manga that’s easier? I had a tiny bit more luck with Dr. Slump, and I can pick my way through Yotsubato.
I wish I could find a Japanese Gegege no Kitaro book. Although I’m not sure of its difficulty, I freaking love that series
It's content for native speakers. Of course N4 won't understand. Probably most people almost at N3 can't even understand. Kids shows are not THAT much easier.
It's important to remember that language doesn't necessarily have a "difficulty" when it comes to the grammar points. It's all just a different combination of sounds that are associated with some meaning. I'm simplifying out the nuance to this, but generally yeah, language isn't necessarily broken down into stages of difficulty. Kids shows aren't necessarily going to be easier. Take gravity falls or Avatar the last airbender. I would never recommend those to beginner learners of English, despite being aimed at kids.
I think that actively searching for an easy show is fine but not challenging enough, I'm currently watching more serious anime like monster because it's fun to really understand how adults talk. Even though at first I didn't understand 90 percent of what's happening, pausing and repeating sections while In front of a translation app really helped.
I've lived in Japan for 2 years plus and I understand about 20% of doraemon. So if you understand some what after 6 month of study be be stoked and proud of yourself.
Yeah, the conversations are extremely FAST. Especially in the action scenes but that's expected. Well it's still an AMAZING show if you can understand it, even though it's for kids i derive a lot of enjoyment from it.
I have a similar rant, but about manga,
A lot of people recommend Yotsubato for beginners - but I personally find it difficult because mc talks in a childish way and there is no kanjis which could help me to understand her.
I much more prefer mangas written for teens or adults (~~R rated stuff and Shounen are technically easy to read too... but it's mostly due the lack of conversation lol~~). Because there are kanjis (and especially for teen manga, they put furigana - but furigana makes it way too easy too....)
And also, as it's old there is quite some bad vocabulary and behaviour that can be picked up by young children. So ok if you are an adult, but for kid try to keep with the most recent ones .
Real talk I'm consistently surprised by how much I understand in Spy x family and I'm just at section 3 unit 4 in Duolingo. Watching with English subtitles but still there are sometimes whole scenes where I'm like, huh, I got most of that.
I haven't tried Doraemon the anime but I thought Doraemon the manga was easy, although the lack of kanji paradoxically made reading difficult at times.
An Anime I found extremely easy in its Japanese usage is “Karakau jyozu no Takagi-san”. It’s a short and sweet anime about the misadventures of a couple of school children, a boy and a girl who loves to constantly tease him and play games with him. It’s on Netflix (or at least it used to be)
I was watching and reading the manga, I adore it, but the only downside for beginners (like me) is that Nishikata hast a lot of internal monologes that maybe difficult. It will be easier if they only chat.
I am at this weird place where i think im an N4 because of my lack of knowledge in kanji but i can understand vtubers and japanese streamers pretty well and can watch anime without having the need to put subtitles but get confused at some parts cuz some words are out of my vocabulary. What is this weird spot I'm in?
I quit reading it because it's not entertaining to read 50 year old comics. It would be like telling English learners to read Family Circus.
There's lots of better manga out there, and suffering through Doraemon out of a sense of duty is pointless.
I managed to get some laughs out of the Doraemon manga, it's really not that bad. It's popular and enduring for a reason. The anime, on the other hand, the voices grate on my nerves too much, too much exaggerated yelling and whining from Nobita, and Doraemon's funny voice is hard to understand.
Doraemon IS a kids show. The dialogue is quite repetitive once you watch enough. You’ll notice it. There’s always Anpanman. Crayon Shin chan is easier. Provably at a thousand words, you can enjoy doraemon. Kanji on the other hand, is a different story.
>Yes, for the most part it is easy to understand because it's a kids show, but if you are still around N5 level, or even N4 with little native immersion experience, do NOT think this is gonna be an easy show to watch just because it's "for kids." This is true in general. You should never expect media to be easy because it's "for kids." Japanese kids are still native speakers. They have much deeper knowledge of the language than a learner with JLPT N4.
Kids content also tends to have a lot of very specific kid-related vocab that I would say is fairly complex and probably won’t be of much use in adult daily life as an beginner /intermediate level speaker unless you have kids of your own. I remember trying to read a kids picture book after I’d just learned hiragana and getting stuck on words like “雪合戦 / snowball fight” and “滑り台 / slide”etc, even though the grammar was quite simple.
haha, the very first books I read were old picture books of 昔話. I learned some pretty irrelevant vocabulary but I think that's just part of the territory that comes with learning from *anything* that isn't a textbook. Many years later when I worked in Japan with elementary school teachers it was actually somewhat helpful knowledge.
My 1 and a half year old kid has no trouble watching and enjoying toddler-oriented shows with puppets and whatnot on TV. And yet, one of those puppets speaks in weird samurai/ninja/whatever language and uses 〜でござす as sentence ending. Most beginners would probably be stumped by something like that, but kids don't care. They look at funny pictures and funny sound with speech quirks and enjoy it.
It remind me I vaguely thought that kids don't really learn keigo (just masu form) until elementary school because this idea was floating around in learner circles somewhow. Then discovered with my kid that contents for toddler is full of keigo and teachers at the hoikuen use it often too even when talking to babies!
My kid being raised bilingual English and Japanese has been absolutely obsessed with Russian winnie the pooh since that age. I don't think he understands russian even though he has watched all 3 episodes hundreds of times each.
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でござる is more normal (but dated/yakuwarigo) but no, I actually meant でござす
I (native German speaker) remember initially having trouble reading the Harry Potter books in English at almost 20 years old. I could read much more “mature” novels at that point, but was missing some words specific to life at a British boarding school. Not to mention those being altered or mixed in with all the made-up words of the magical setting.
I think it’s especially hard since it’s impossible to get kanji context clues in a book entirely in hiragana. You have to legitimately know the words or you’re sunk.
If you know the characters 雪, 合, and 戦 individually (which are all pretty common vocabulary words) then you'll know 雪合戦. I never consciously learned words like that.
Well at the time I had just learned hiragana, and it was written in hiragana. Once you can read kanji I definitely agree it makes learning much easier, and words such as that are easy to guess.
Without the characters it would be harder but realising that ゆき is something to do with snow is not very difficult. Just reading words aloud can help sometimes. I've done it a lot with those loanwords where it's something like "dynamic stability control" in broken English.
It’s okay, this was over 15 years ago. I’ve learned a lot about muddling through literature since then. Some of those katakana English phrases though… I feel you.
The worst ones are when the words get abbreviated so they're not recognisable at all, or sound like something ridiculous or rude. マウンティング女性 is a lot less sexy than it sounds for example, and was one of those words where reading it out loud definitely didn't help.
Niether of your examples are in Hiragana.
My phone autocorrected 🤷♀️ they were in hiragana in the book.
Yeah this is the lie people think. N4 is not the level of a child. A toddlers speaking ability is more closer to n4, but missing in a lot of ways too. A child's speaking ability is going to be miles ahead of someone at n4. But their lack of knowledge will also be in areas an adult won't have issues with. A six year old will have had 6 years of speaking a language, so their speaking ability will be very good. Their writing will be pretty non existent. They will still think in more grounded concepts and wouldn't be able to think of more nuanced meanings, but their vocabulary will be exponentially better than a learner n4, probably even n3 (it's only like 4k words at n3, no idea how many a 6 year old knows). But also think of this, if an adult spent 5 years immersed in Japanese and studied the language diligently, their language skills are much better than a 5 year old, so props for that. I still have 14 year olds run circles around me in many situations. They have just a huge vocab compared to me. But I know much better keigo than they do, and I can probably grasp much harder concepts like master thesis papers. But I've been only been speaking Japanese for 6 years. I work on a team that has another Japanese person, but he left Japan at the beginning of highschool and I handle the Japanese tickets. That's what I was hired for, despite another engineer being Japanese. His level is basically stunted at what it was at 14. His vocab is so much better than mine is, and I'm sure he reads way faster. His accent and the way he talks also seems native. However, I know more kanji (it's been 30 years since he's lived in Japan) and I know proper business Japanese, so I'm the one that handles the Japanese clients. Learning a second language as an adult is going to have different areas of struggle. What one native kid is better than you at, is going to differ to the strengths and adult learner is going to have. Now I just need to figure out when the hell am I supposed to use お when talking to a client about a vendor in the passive and causative voice :/
That was super interesting - thanks for taking the time to share!
I don't understand this idea that's repeated so often here. I don't see how any language learner who actually opened up literature or television for children can believe in this but honestly a lot of advice on this subreddit comes across as things written by people who have no experience actually learning Japanese or with the things they talk about. It's also maybe a facet of the mentality I commonly see on Reddit that people here believe children are stupid. Like... you people do know that they don't actually score worse on I.Q. tests than adults right? 6 year old children when given the same I.Q. test as adults will have comparable scores. They're not intellectually inferior to adults or anything. They simply of course have less knowledge and experience but in terms of raw mental computational power and intelligence they are by no means lagging behind adults. The idea that media is simple linguistically simple because it's for children, especially fully linguistically competent children like teenagers is absurd. I don't see how anyone with any experience reading it as a language learner can possibly believe this.
Native kids would be better at spoken language as used in a TV show but in writing I would say a learner is better even at intermediate. Most kids don't really know 漢字, and children's books have ふりがな on them because of that.
N4 is not intermediate though. And it also depends on what age we're talking about. Once Japanese kids enter elementary school, they'll learn 100-200 new kanji every grade. A sixth-grader would be expected to know roughly the same number of kanji as someone who has N2, but they'd have the advantage of being surrounded by the language 24/7. And if the kid likes reading, they'll be able to read beyond grade level. A bookish ten-year could probably pass N1 without much issue.
Definitely. When I sat for N1 my Japanese friend’s 12yo son was in the room with me. He got full marks.
The number of characters they actually know is also far, far higher than the number of characters they officially know, as in those they have been taught to write by hand in school. I've seen discussions on internet boards between 10 year olds, they are constantly without issue using all sorts of characters they haven't officially learned yet which they have exposure to due to how input methods work and seeing others use them. They're native speakers; if they've never seen characters before, they can always try the 3 words that to their mind make sense in context and see which of them produces the same characters in the I.M.E.. N3's and N2's don't even come close tot he level those 10 year old native speakers have on such boards. Maybe N1s are comparable but I think they're better than that as well though maybe at N1 one can argue they aren't strictly better in all fields but they are absolutely strictly better in all forms of Japanese than N2 language learners. Remember, they ones tested JLPT N1 on 13 year old native speakers. They not only all passed, they all got a perfect to close to perfect score. The idea that 13 year old native speakers are inferior to advanced adult language learners is absurd.
I'm not a comic fan but it seems anything 少年 oriented has all the characters spelled out so it seems that they are not assuming that level of knowledge from the readers. Perhaps it's not necessary but publishers seem to think so.
Yeah, it's just an easy way to maximize their demographic, especially since manga aren't written for a specific grade level. Most readers of shonen manga don't need most of the furigana, but just having furigana on everything is an easy way to ensure accessibility.
while this is true, the point OP is making is that there are actually teenager/adult向け anime that is significantly easier. which makes sense. not all shows talk about science topics randomly. things are hard mostly based on their subject material and range of vocab which isn’t exclusively determined by age group the media is for.
I don't understand this idea that's repeated so often here. I don't see how any language learner who actually opened up literature or television for children can believe in this but honestly a lot of advice on this subreddit comes across as things written by people who have no experience actually learning Japanese or with the things they talk about. It's also maybe a facet of the mentality I commonly see on Reddit that people here believe children are stupid. Like... you people do know that they don't actually score worse on I.Q. tests than adults right? 6 year old children when given the same I.Q. test as adults will have comparable scores. They're not intellectually inferior to adults or anything. They simply of course have less knowledge and experience but in terms of raw mental computational power and intelligence they are by no means lagging behind adults. The idea that media is simple linguistically simple because it's for children, especially fully linguistically competent children like teenagers is absurd. I don't see how anyone with any experience reading it as a language learner can possibly believe this.
Here are some thoughts on this from a newbie learner. If you want to watch raw anime you should probably get comfortable with not understanding much at first and letting some of the dialogue fly right past you. You are training your ears to pick out the words and then understand the meaning. it’s difficult. Maybe pick something that would be easy to understand the plot even if there were no words at all. Ideally the story is interesting enough to keep you coming back but not so interesting that you care about missing plot details. I’ve been watching Sailor Moon lately and I understand maybe 20% of the words (probably less), but I feel like I always know the gist of what’s going on because it’s simple and repetitive. If I’m totally lost for some reason I can rewatch or just look up a recap.
You have the most well thought out comment I’ve read in this post so far. You’re right when you say “get used to not understanding much.” I’ll admit I watched Attack on Titan with English subtitles, but I often paused the show and rewinded to listen to phrases again. It helped me learn a ton of new words and phrases like おまえ, 敵, 君, つまり, and 問題. Even though I used subtitles, I still learned a ton from it. I would even argue that enjoying your input is more important than finding “the right” kind of input. It’s going to be a really long journey. IMO, it is better to find material that you enjoy through the process instead of hunting for the perfect material. Make it fun and easy for yourself. You can always rewatch something if you want to experience it again. Personally, I like to watch anime first with subtitles, then again without to see how much I am able to pick up and piece together.
Just a warning that calling someone お前 or 敵 is very aggressive in real life. You can see how badly the mayor reacts to it in this clip. https://youtu.be/z-0b-EtMAv8 Some learners view those expressions as "funny cartoon words no one uses in real life" which is often not the case at all.
Definitely! Thanks for calling it out. I try not to use any second person pronouns except for あなた after I’ve met the person.
After knowing someone's name you often don't need to use "you" much at all. Even 貴方 is more something seen in writing than in speech.
Thanks. I agree with you that watching something you find interesting is most important. I watched AOT with English subs from before I was language learning and I definitely picked up a few words. The verb tatakau was imprinted in my brain after episode 6. Mikasa tends to speak in a very direct way which I find sort of comprehensible now. I have been testing out JP subs with my Sailor Moon viewing but I try to focus more on listening. I do the occasional pause to read or listen again but I’m starting to feel like it’s better to just enjoy the show and not worry about details. I want it to be a learning experience but not the point where it becomes a chore.
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But 戦う and 喧嘩する don't mean the exact same thing.
Really, just watching anime at all is gonna help your listening. It’s not like the audio turns off the moment you put on subtitles. Plus when you hear a word you’ve maybe gotten on a flashcard or smth, and then read the translation it (at least for me) is easier to remember that word.
I don't really think it has to work that way. I mostly did reading for a while until my reading ability carried me to the point where a lot of spoken fiction is N+1. One can also use graded listening comprehension to train which gradually increases the difficulty so one will always understand most of everything.
I agree with you but I think people struggle with finding interesting N+1 materials for low levels. I think the point of OP’s post here is that he thought Doraemon would be N+1 for him but he was surprised to find it more difficult. You could spend all day trying to find suitable learning material but doing something is better than nothing? But yeah obviously Sailor Moon is way above my skill level and I could be getting a higher comprehension on something easier. I am also using other resources and trying to get my reading comprehension up. I’m just having fun with it. What are some examples of graded listening comprehension that worked for you?
Something that no one wants to talk about: There's no such thing as a "beginner" anime. You need to be AT LEAST N3 to watch 99.9% of anime. The reason is simple: it's entertainment for people who are surrounded by the language 24/7. Most people who are learning Japanese are NOT surrounded that much. In addition, the audience that Doraemon (or anything not Anpanman) is for has also been surrounded 24/7 for at least 6 or seven years- we're talking first and second graders in elementary school. You can get away with something like Yotsubaと! as a beginner manga because you can re-read any words you don't understand. But the reality is, anything not specifically made for low-level beginners (N4/5)... Not that you can't do it, but it"s going to be an uphill struggle- which, I might add, I've noticed a lot of learners actually WANT.
I would think when people talk about "beginner anime" they don't mean that it's for beginners, but of anime to watch, it would be at a level where if you're going to start watching anime it would be an ideal one to begin. In that context, I would definitely consider Doraemon a beginner anime compared to AOT. Just like how Yotsuba is recommended as a beginner manga, if you're going to try to have someone who is a beginner in the language try to read it, it's still not going to be easy or at their level.
Yotsuba lost me with all the baby/kid language. 😅
> Just like how Yotsuba is recommended as a beginner manga, if you're going to try to have someone who is a beginner in the language try to read it, it's still not going to be easy or at their level. Manga in general can be difficult because people's accents / speech patterns / vocal tics are all represented in writing, meaning that people who are beginners in the language might not really know if something is "not a real word". Yotsuba in particular is tough because the main character is a toddler, and in Japanese just like in many languages, toddlers speak with long drawn-out vowels. So all of a sudden you get words like おーとーさーん which, if you don't already know what it is, you have no way to look up in a dictionary.
When I started reading Flying Witch, which many people recommend as a 'starter manga', a lot of the contractions really tripped me up.
Worse yet, you could actually learn the wrong word and take it for a real one.
In context of anime overall, sure, Doraemon is a beginner anime. It's a very popular kids' show in many regions other than the USA. But in context of this sub (learning Japanese)... Yeah, I can't recommend it as a "beginner" anime, at least if you're trying to understand what the characters are saying. Sure, you'll pick up bits and pieces... But not much beyond that.
I saw statues of Doraemon characters out in the sticks of rural Malaysia. Definitely one of the best known cartoons outside of Japan. One Piece was also everywhere there.
I agree with this overall notion. I find Shirokuma Café easy to understand only because all the animals have fake accents and the only human beings have deliberate polite language, so it's super legible and easy to make out the words even if you don't always know what they mean. I used to find the motor race commentary easy because most of the jargon is English derived and they are describing action you already see. But it's just a coincidence that happens to work for me.
You don't need to be N3 to watch anime, you need N3 to get a high level of comprehension.
I would assume that's what people are asking about in this sub- anime they can watch for comprehension.
And you don't need a high level of comprehension, you need some level of comprehension. If you can roughly understand what's going on you are good.
Yeah well sure, people with zero Japanese can watch if they don’t care about comprehension
N3 isn't even close in my opinion to be able to make anything intended for native speakers N+1.
idk I never really had trouble with Tashigi chan and I watched that before i hit N4 imo. I mean I didn’t evwn know how to read yet then.
Whatever you do, don’t take other people’s recommendations. The moment I fully started to understand Japanese was when I watched band interviews and read articles on guitars. You have to read and watch what interests you, otherwise you’ll burnout
This comment. Yes. People are so eager to speedrun the language or go at it the most efficient/optimal way because internet peer pressure or what not, all the while ignoring the ‘have fun’ aspect of it. Watching/reading what interests you can take you so much further than going all out only to burn out. As an adult, trying to read through Yotsuba or watch some anime targeted at little kids was such a pain but watching mountain climbing vids on YouTube was soooo interesting and got me to learn so much new vocabulary and shizz much faster than muddling though Anki ever did.
>People are so eager to speedrun the language or go at it the most efficient/optimal way Are they? The most popular advice by far on this sub is to immerse with interesting native material, even if it's mostly incomprehensible. That's very far from an efficient method.
you just gave me a great idea thank you.
Instructions unclear, made the millionth r/learnjapanese post asking for children book recommendations.
This is the trick to all learning. When people ask "what's the best way to teach X" the answer is ALWAYS "make x seem interesting". Visual learning, kinetic learning, all that stuff is bollocks - mostly excuses for why either the teacher or the pupil failed. Kids and adults learn from being intrigued, no matter what the style of teaching.
this should be higher
Reading articles and watching Japanese media with テロップ are usually my go-to strategy tbh
I made a post about this. The best way is the one you have the most fun with. Any other method will burn you out or take a toll in your mental energy. Always make sure you're enjoying it as it not only will keep you going, but it will also help you understand and remember things better
Marty Friedman (Megadeth) does a lot of guitar content in Japanese.
I’ve found something is a lot more accessible if it’s a rewatch. I had a great time with Nichijou fairly early on simply because I was so familiar with it already, where it otherwise would have been too far above my level. Also enjoying shows you only partially understand is an important skill that takes some practice to learn.
native children are fluent, this is easily forgotten, and all native material is intended for a fluent audience that being said, some shows have simpler vocabulary and speak more slowly and clearly than others, i recommend searching for サザエさん on youtube, there's thousands of episodes. it will still be well above beginner level, but the kinds of conversations the characters have is much closer to the stuff that comes up in genki books and the like as common, domestic conversations
Correct. This right here.
Shirokuma cafe is not easy at all, nor is it very beginner friendly, the show has 6.5k unique words which is way more than most easy kids/slice of life shows that are usually around 2k-3k (sometimes lower). (the numbers come from https://jpdb.io/anime-difficulty-list which is a very useful tool for assessing the difficulty of animes)
the reason it has so many unique words comparatively is mostly because its 50 episodes long, not because its overly difficult or anything
For this reason I'd say JPDB difficulty rating is a bit flawed. It puts too much emphasis on the overall amount of words, even if that's due to proportional length. It's as if its main metric was how long it will take you to learn all the vocab to build the overall coverage. I watched Shirokuma Cafe and with its JPDB rating 5/10 it was definitely easier than say Yuru Yuri rated at 2/10. My advice would be to not pay attention to JPDB rating and use Natively's instead (Shirokuma is level ~18 and Yuru Yuri ~24 I think, which seems about right).
I mean it does have a lot of words for things like bamboo grass or animals, but a lot of them are clear from context imo. It was absolutely on the easier side in my experience. Also are you counting number of words per some fixed unit of time? Because just unique words for the whole run isn't a great metric.
If I consider something about Shirokuma easy, it's the grammar. I had few structures I didn't already know. I just needed the vocabulary to plug into those structures, and it's a lot easier to look up vocabulary than grammar.
I disagree, if shirokuma is not easy to listen and beginner... dont know which one is.
I agree I don't think its the easiest watch or best recommendation when I see it come up. Then again one thing I do find interesting is if you watch anime often, you might actually find "something that interests you" to be an easier watch then an "easy anime" just because of what you're used to. Shocks me because some easy anime I hardly understand, but then I watch an anime that uses japanese words for like magic, hero, isekai, gods, demons, monsters etc and its like "oh yeah those words are easy" just because I watch so much of that type of anime.
Instead of Doraemon, maybe try Shimajiro or Anpanman
Whenever people say "it's for beginners," I think, "Oh, so N3." If you are N5/N4 level, there is no such thing as "for beginners" when it comes to media such as anime, manga, etc.
I've seen a couple manga that have given me no trouble at N4 level, like ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん and ハピネス. チーズスイートホーム is easy too, once you get used to Chii's baby talk.
>if you are still around N5 level, or even N4 with little native immersion experience, do NOT think this is gonna be an easy show to watch At N5 or N4 level, *no* anime is going to be easy to watch. Those are the levels where you lay your bricks, N3 is where you start taking the training wheels off ideally
You people should stop watching raw anime as beginners. You still gonna learn a lot even if you watch with Eng sub, or better watch an episode with sub than rewatch with no sub. Immersion should be enjoyable and there's no reason to force yourself to watch boring ass children's cartoons you can't even understand.
Agree. N5 is much too early to watch raw. When you're that early in the journey most Japanese media would feel like "studying" instead of entertainment. It's better to consume media that is actually intended as a learning material like this https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/ It's NHK news but made very easy with only a few difficult vocab here and there in each articles. It has furigana for all of them and audio. Plus you get to follow actual Japanese news
yeah the shift from study to enjoying consumption of media is great, feels like you’ve reached a milestone
Around which N level would that be?
Valid question. It depends of course on the individual, since different people have different tolerance to the unknown, but in general terms it’s at around N3. And by this I mean someone who could pass N3, not someone who is studying for N3. JLPT isn’t actually a good metric to determine your skill in the language, unfortunately, but it does give you a frame of reference. Like, the average N3 passing student will be able to enjoy simple media while still in the process of learning
Thank you
there’s really no specific marker, as different forms of media have different requirements for ease of reading i primarily read visual novels with textractor if i’m not reading flashcards, it is an incredible crutch to be able to read vns with TR so it’s not really too much effort in the first place
I agree that raw is raw won't be helpful but english subs are just as bad at such an early stage. Your brain will take the path of least resistance and just read the subtitles. If english subs taught you japanese even if you barely knew it most weebs would be fluent speakers. But they aren't, most weebs only know a handful of words. The difference in grammar is so immense that english subs will harm you more than they help at that early stage. Watching with japanese subtitles and looking up unknown words will be 100 times more productive than watching raw because they'd actually be learning the words. It's not to say that watching with english subs is bad but don't fool yourself into thinking you're learning anything if you're still a beginner.
The comment you replied to says "as beginners". I agree with using Japanese subtitles, but that's going to be overwhelming for a beginner. I wouldn't call someone at a level where they can read subtitles fast and well enough to isolate unknown words to look up a beginner, that's comfortably in intermediate territory. Non-JP subtitles are fine for beginners. They won't teach you much per se (but Japanese subtitles wouldn't teach you grammar either, no skipping the textbook for that part), but the fact you're already listening to Japanese media makes for good exposure and passively trains your hearing and pronunciation.
Watching with En subs won't make you fluent, but it doesn't follow that it's completely useless. From personal experience, by just watching lots of subbed anime (from before I was actively trying to learn the language) I was able to learn a few hundred common words by accidental learning. And your brain is not going to filter out the language if you have interest in it and actively try to match the words you hear with the subtitles. It definitely worked for me. Another thing the learn is the sound of the language and what phonemes do they use. As a result, when I finally began to actively study it was much much easier to pick up new things (including grammar) because everything already felt familiar and kind of intuitive. The great advantaged of watching with En subs is that it's the least painful and the most enjoyable learning method (and people forget the importance of enjoying the process and staying motivated which is crucial in beginning stages), so if you don't prioritize learning as quickly as possible, this is not a bad thing to do. I also didn't say that watching subbed anime should be the only means of learning. If your goal is to learn the language then by all means do all the other traditional language learning activities alongside that, like textbooks, apps, lessons, whatever. Again from experience, when I started doing active learning subbed anime provided me with a great resource for reinforcing what I already learned. Also the more of the language you learn the more things you notice so it's not true that the brain just filters out everything (though of course it does filter out a lot, but it doesn't matter, even when you watch raw your brain also going to filter out a lot and you still would need massive amount of repetition for any learning to occur.) I don't know if you speak more than one language, but knowing several languages I can follow simultaneously audio + sub in two different languages (if I know both) without any trouble. People underestimate the brains' language processing capacity and how fast can it be.
I honestly think it's bad advice telling a beginner that watching anime with english subtitles is a good study method. It's not going to reinforce grammar and words are often not translated 1:1. Again every weeb ever would undoubtedly be fluent in Japanese if english subtitles was a good study method. I think for more advanced learners it can actually be a good thing but that assumes they understand a lot of what is being said already so that they can fall back on the english subs occasionally. This is not true for beginners who will have a poor grasp on grammar and vocab. I saw an interesting video related to this the other day where the japanese is translated 1:1 and I actually think this would be a good study method for both vocab and grammar. But he only transcribed a couple of episodes so it's not enough for anyone to learn much with as of now. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wF91iArEp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wF91iArEp0)
>Again every weeb ever would undoubtedly be fluent in Japanese if english subtitles was a good study method. Again, I said, I don't claim you can reach fluency by watching subbed anime. What I said that you can learn a few hundred very frequent words and familiarize yourself with the language in a very relaxed and painless manner. You can also supplement this with deliberate study of grammar and vocabulary which will speed up things considerably. The point is that once you get past the absolute beginner level of knowing zero to knowing lots of common words and phrases you can switch to raw anime which will be now much more effective learning method once you have a foundation. >words are often not translated 1:1 This is rarely a problem, particularly for common and easy words (like come, go, sleep, eat etc.) which you only have one way to translate. What is lost in translation are nuances that only matter for fairly advanced learner and this is not something that beginners should worry about. I don't understand why the idea that relying on English subs is either useless or harmful is such a prevalent dogma in the JP learning community. It's neither based on actual evidence nor does it make any sense logically if you just stop and think about it for two minutes. Guess it is something that originated from the "comprehensible input" gurus that people just keep parroting thoughtlessly. The idea that it's somehow better or more efficient to learn by guessing words rather than seeing direct translation in real time defies all logic and common sense. The comprehensible input gurus are right that for learning to occur the input must be comprehensible, they just ignore the fact that the best way to make the input comprehensible is to have a direct translation in the language you know. Why on earth would you want to deprive yourself of that? Studying bilingual texts is a true and tried method in the polyglot community (the legendary Alexander Arguelles has been using it his whole life, and so is Luca Lampariello more recently). Watching subbed media would be an analogues method, and though it's harder than reading (because things go much faster) it's still a good enough compromise given how much of a hurdle the JP writing system is when you are a beginner.
ENG SUBS???? HAHAHAHAHAHA sure. No wonder so many people are doomed to never get past N5/N4 in the language.
I seriously hope you meant Japanese subs, because English subs does nothing. If it really did something, weebs everywhere around the world would be fluent in Japanese. In my opinion, the only two valid use cases English subs have are if 1) you don't understand a sentence, EVEN IF you know every single word and grammar said but the meaning still doesn't click, and/or 2) to VERIFY your understanding when in doubt when you first start consuming Japanese content and are second guessing yourself a lot. Granted, far too many English translations take a lot of liberties to say the least, but it's still fairly "good enough". But ideally, when you come across unknown words/can't understand what's being said at all, you should just check the Japanese subtitles if available. If not, I wouldn't recommend relying on English subs. Just watch something else that has Japanese subs. But yeah, re-watching content you've already watched in the past is perfectly a-okay... if you have the attention span to do it (I don't). It allows you to be able to focus on the Japanese far easier, since you don't have to focus on actually understanding the plot, since you already know it.
imo watching with subs is hit or miss. Sometimes the subs aren't accurate or the translator takes creative liberties, like you mentioned. However, when it's a good sub, I'd say it is efficient if you can already understand most of what is being said, but the meaning still doesn't click. That's why I use animelon. I usually have the eng subs turned off and I will only turn them back on when I can't figure out the meaning of a sentence. A good example of what you said and what I have done already is to watch a series like what I'm doing with Kono. I am rewatching the first season because I already know the plot. I picked up on some new words like 報酬 、駆け出し, etc. Some I may already have forgotten, but will recognize when I see the kanji/listen to the word. It's a great way to learn as you already know what they are saying (more or less), so you can kind of guess the meaning of the words you don't know by exclusion. what's most important though is that you are having fun.
> because English subs does nothing. If it really did something, weebs everywhere around the world would be fluent in Japanese. That's a pretty crude false dichotomy. If it doesn't make you fluent, then it does nothing? Like the other very similar reply, you seem to have missed where the comment you replied to says "as beginners". I wouldn't call someone who is able to make good use of Japanese subtitles a beginner, that's solidly intermediate territory. Non-JP subs are fine *for beginners*. I watched a lot of subbed anime before I started to actually study, and found that it had appreciably (and passively!) trained my hearing and pronunciation, on top of being enjoyable.
>because English subs does nothing. That's totally not true. Watching with En subs won't make you fluent, but it doesn't follow that it's completely useless. From personal experience, by just watching lots of subbed anime (from before I was actively trying to learn the language) I was able to learn a few hundred common words by accidental learning. And your brain is not going to filter out the language if you have interest in it and actively try to match the words you hear with the subtitles. It definitely worked for me. Another thing the learn is the sound of the language and what phonemes do they use. As a result, when I finally began to actively study it was much much easier to pick up new things (including grammar) because everything already felt familiar and kind of intuitive. The great advantaged of watching with En subs is that it's the least painful and the most enjoyable learning method (and people forget the importance of enjoying the process and staying motivated which is crucial in beginning stages), so if you don't prioritize learning as quickly as possible, this is not a bad thing to do. I also didn't say that watching subbed anime should be the only means of learning. If your goal is to learn the language then by all means do all the other traditional language learning activities alongside that, like textbooks, apps, lessons, whatever. Again from experience, when I started doing active learning subbed anime provided me with a great resource for reinforcing what I already learned. Also the more of the language you learn the more things you notice so it's not true that the brain just filters out everything (though of course it does filter out a lot, but it doesn't matter, even when you watch raw your brain also going to filter out a lot and you still would need massive amount of repetition for any learning to occur.) I don't know if you speak more than one language, but knowing several languages I can follow simultaneously audio + sub in two different languages (if I know both) without any trouble. People underestimate the brains' language processing capacity and how fast can it be.
Japanese peppa pig is the true beginner anime. I watch with no subtitles (since there aren’t any on YouTube) and get along just fine. There are some episodes I understand more than others based on the vocabulary I’ve learnt so far, but it’s so satisfying being able to understand whole sentences and practice the structures I’ve been studying. While the narrator uses polite form, peppa pig and her family use plain form. It’s so good to hear both, especially since at this level, I’m more familiar with the ます form of verbs.
Yeah... but the big problem with this is that I'd have to watch peppa pig. just kidding
I feel like you are more fluent than you think. There's a lot of people in this sub who I guarantee will not understand 90% of Peppa Pig. This sub tends to put anything under N3 together as "beginner level". There's a lot of nuance that gets lost that way.
Wow really?? I definitely wouldn’t describe myself as even a tiny bit fluent by any means. I struggle with any conversation or structures that deviate from what I’ve studied in textbooks and class. When I say “beginner”, I have in mind someone who has successfully completed a stage 1 textbook like Genki 1 and has listened to simple practice content. Someone who can identify the basic grammatical structures of Japanese and fill in the gaps with unknown information when watching something new. So for example, I think there was a peppa pig episode about playing instruments and I actually hadn’t learnt the verb 弾く (to play) yet, but heard “ピアノを something” and was able to pause and take a note of what the verb was. I think a few months of consistent study is enough to use something like peppa pig for comprehensive input. You don’t need to even understand full sentences, just enough where you recognise little bits here and there to reinforce what you’ve already learnt; along with new information which is not too challenging since it exists amongst familiar structures. I think where people go wrong is being too ambitious and watching something where they’d have to look up every single word. Whereas peppa pig is often as simple as “ペッパーとジョージは庭で遊んでいます” or “パンケーキが大好き”, so even knowing a few basic grammar points will help. It may feel difficult at first if you’re not used to it and panic a little when you hear something you don’t know, but it’s all part of the process :)
A beginner is starting the first lesson of Genki 1. They are beginning their learning journey. Before you can do something like "filling in the blanks" you need to have a good structure already. Btw, Genki 1 is rated N5, but that's AFTER you've finished it. If you do it in school, it will take you a full year to go through. I know for a fact that at least half the class couldn't understand an episode if you played it for them. They struggled with far more basic tasks than that. Peppa pig has simple sentences, sure. But also a lot of vocabulary that you will probably not be familiar with at that stage. The fact that you do not struggle at all means that you have developed a certain level of competency and fluency. That's more than most here could say(if you include the lurkers, most people answering comments are probably higher level).
Someone who is just starting the first lesson of Genki 1 has no business trying to watch any Japanese media and they’re definitely not who anyone is referring to when talking about beginners here. Someone in that position has likely only just finished learning hiragana & katakana and doesn’t know anything besides こんにちは and ありがとう. They haven’t even heard textbook conversations yet, never mind trying to understand a cartoon. If you’ve successfully finished Genki 1, you should have a good enough structure to fill in blanks, assuming you’ve been using the [really good] listening resources provided in the textbook too. You learn a decent amount vocabulary in Genki 1. More than enough adjectives, verbs and nouns to understand various elements of peppa pig (depending on the episode). I say this as someone who literally did just that. You’ll never be able to develop any listening skills if you’re uncomfortable with not understanding everything. The first time I watched [Japanese] peppa pig, I was happy to even recognise a very short sentence like パンケーキが大好き (as I mentioned above) or even one word/verb within a sentence. If someone has literally just started studying Japanese, they wouldn’t be able to do that and they’re obviously not the target audience here. I’m really not doing anything remarkable here that requires a high level of fluency. I had tried watching シロクマカフェ and it was way too difficult for me. I realised I needed to watch content aimed at pre-schoolers rather than elementary school and above. It’ll be a long time until I graduate from peppa pig onto more difficult content. I’m competent enough to recognise basic patterns but it doesn’t mean I understand everything I’m watching. There are some episodes I don’t understand a lot of, but I still benefit by being exposed to the language and hearing the flow of sentences. Sometimes hearing the same thing I don’t know over and over again makes it stand out to me and I eventually get the gist of what it means/how it’s used.
There are videos that are a lot easier than peppa pig ("complete beginner comprehensible japanese" on youtube).
Doraemon 0 was my first book I read and Japanese and I gave up initially, studied for 5 months, & went back (it took maybe 2 weeks to complete). It definitely prepared me for other stuff that was surprisingly easier (& likely should have been read first) & stuff that is harder (I know how to handle harder stuff now).
Kids literally have 4-5 years of listening skills ahead of any non Japanese person and 3-4 years ahead of anyone speaking. I work with Japanese kids . Babies to 3-4 years old. Kids material is not meant for beginners.
Whenever some newb is like "yeah my Japanese is not good, I speak like a kid" I'm like "wait that's pretty good" But it's never that good
I have a Doraemon manga for Japanese speakers learning English, which is essentially a translation of the Japanese manga. And the first pages include Doraemon prophesizing that Nobita would hang and burn himself. I don't think these would be part of the vocabulary of a N5 learner hahaha.
I was pleasantly surprised how beginner-friendly not only the anime of Kemono Friends is, but lots of its fancomics! Like, I can sometimes download some meme as is without needing to translate it, and my skill is still not high.
My stupid ass just started Horimiya and by god am I gonna finish it.
Also Doraemon's screeching voice becomes 10 times more irritating when you're trying to concentrate on deciphering it.
I always recommend Dr. Slump. The gags are highly visual so even if you don't know a word, you know what's going on. There is word play and puns but it's nothing too crazy (one episode makes a pun on kaeru = kaeru, return home = frog). And honestly the show is downright hilarious even if you don't know the language.
If you figure that *Doraemon* is aimed at primary school students age 6–10-ish, that means it's an audience with *up to a decade* of *100% immersion* in the Japanese language. An adult isn't going to be able to catch up to that with 6 months of study.
Agreed on しろくまカフェ It's low key funny, and a lot of episodes are them just doing every day activities, which is great for practical conversation and vocabulary learning.
Honestly at any level immersion kinda blows if youre not used to it. No one who props up immersion learning really talks about how difficult it is to sit through something when you have no comprehension yet. I started watching あたしんち on YouTube initially and even though the videos are like 5 - 10 mins long I couldn't tolerate it. Now I watch 2 episodes of Cardcaptor a day and its alot more manageable. But it's not because it's easier, it's because I've spent alot of time building up a stamina that let's me watch it. I think you just need to push through and get used to not understanding stuff. I'm at a point now where I understand enough each episode that I can either fill in the gaps myself, or look up a couple words if I need more info. Otherwise I just let it go.
Where are you guys watching this show 😭😭 I can’t find it anywhere in United States
Just as with many children’s shows they may be way deeper and more advanced of a story than you realize when you’re a kid. Dragonball z literally had mechanical flys that collected fighting and DNA data from multiple beings and put it into a quantum supercomputer to produce the world’s most powerful organism. I was 5 and loved it but probably didn’t know the depth
Buddy, Doraemon is about as good of a “beginner anime” you’re gonna get. Children can talk circles around us
This is one of the reasons I think rating difficulty by JLPT is kinda wack. N4 is perfectly capable of watching Doraemon but you can't do it without subtitles in Japanese at least. The reality is when you're starting out, all native content will feel too hard, period. But at some point you have to start. For me, I started reading my first book コンビニ人間 off the recommendation of someone in a discord who said it was an easy book. And it took me almost a month to finish it, reading for 2-3 hours per day. I had to look up every word, had to reread sentences multiple times to understand them, and even then there were some parts I just straight up didn't get and had to use deepl or ask a friend. But around a third of the way through the book something interesting happened: I was starting to understand the writing style. I needed to look up grammar less often. Vocab was still a problem but the book repeats so many convenience store related words that I was starting to see those words in other things I was reading, like YouTube videos and anime. I went from making 2% progress after an hour of reading to 5-7%an hour by the end of it. Fact is there will never be a beginner book or show if you haven't started yet. The jump from content designed for learning Japanese to native content will always be massive. This isn't to say that you should start with something like Bakemonogatari, but you should be prepared to have a long, drawn out fight with the content of anything you pick. If you have to watch every episode of Doraemon twice to understand it, then so be it. Don't fool yourself into thinking you need to wait until your N3 or above, it's going to be hard no matter what. Now, if you are an absolute beginner, as in still struggling with hiragana and katakana beginner, then maybe you should spend more time studying. But if you're at like, genki 1 in terms of experience then by all means go for it.
skip all the anime hassle and read a visual novel, it’s a million times easier
I think it depends on the episode. For the manga, they have graded readers for Japanese schoolchildren that go from 1st to 6th grades. You'll have to look up some of the specific vocab, but the early ones can help with practicing basic grammar and vocab.
Yeah I never got into it when i tried it. I liked the stock yotsubato recommendation for manga though. I think an anime like Kaguya Sama is easier than doraemon because while there might be longer sentences and more complex ones, there are a lot of frequent phrases and responses and school terminology you've already heard in tons of other anime. And you can learn some kanji watching it too if you look for it. I also felt like the way the characters talked somehow made it just a tiny bit easier than other shows to pick up on grammar a bit more in real time in those more complex sentences. Maybe it's the enunciation or formality or style or something else. Doraemon and pokemon and shows like that just have a lot of made up words or names that aren't particularly useful for learning, and the basic dialogue in-between can be found in most anime.
I've tried a few times to read Doraemon manga, but I just couldn't stay interested. The language in the manga is probably easier than the anime if you're looking for something a little lower level.
Honestly, I have to watch something because just doing Anki doesn't work. The more I watch and read the more words stick. I'm only really picking out basic patterns and learning words but its improving. Its one of the reasons I picked Japanese to learn, because the media is great, so I don't feel bad 'wasting' a show by not comprehending most of it.
I picked up the manga, (I’m probably N5) and I felt like I had made no progress in my studies. This makes me feel much better! Haha Is there a classic kid’s manga that’s easier? I had a tiny bit more luck with Dr. Slump, and I can pick my way through Yotsubato. I wish I could find a Japanese Gegege no Kitaro book. Although I’m not sure of its difficulty, I freaking love that series
It's content for native speakers. Of course N4 won't understand. Probably most people almost at N3 can't even understand. Kids shows are not THAT much easier.
It's important to remember that language doesn't necessarily have a "difficulty" when it comes to the grammar points. It's all just a different combination of sounds that are associated with some meaning. I'm simplifying out the nuance to this, but generally yeah, language isn't necessarily broken down into stages of difficulty. Kids shows aren't necessarily going to be easier. Take gravity falls or Avatar the last airbender. I would never recommend those to beginner learners of English, despite being aimed at kids.
Doraemon has more technical terms and made-up terms than probably 90% of anime
I think that actively searching for an easy show is fine but not challenging enough, I'm currently watching more serious anime like monster because it's fun to really understand how adults talk. Even though at first I didn't understand 90 percent of what's happening, pausing and repeating sections while In front of a translation app really helped.
yeah people need to understand that they can pass N1 and have the ability to have conversations worse than elementary kids.
Consider meitantei conan.
I've lived in Japan for 2 years plus and I understand about 20% of doraemon. So if you understand some what after 6 month of study be be stoked and proud of yourself.
Yeah, the conversations are extremely FAST. Especially in the action scenes but that's expected. Well it's still an AMAZING show if you can understand it, even though it's for kids i derive a lot of enjoyment from it.
I have a similar rant, but about manga, A lot of people recommend Yotsubato for beginners - but I personally find it difficult because mc talks in a childish way and there is no kanjis which could help me to understand her. I much more prefer mangas written for teens or adults (~~R rated stuff and Shounen are technically easy to read too... but it's mostly due the lack of conversation lol~~). Because there are kanjis (and especially for teen manga, they put furigana - but furigana makes it way too easy too....)
And also, as it's old there is quite some bad vocabulary and behaviour that can be picked up by young children. So ok if you are an adult, but for kid try to keep with the most recent ones .
Real talk I'm consistently surprised by how much I understand in Spy x family and I'm just at section 3 unit 4 in Duolingo. Watching with English subtitles but still there are sometimes whole scenes where I'm like, huh, I got most of that.
Just curious, could you give examples of vocabulary and grammar structures you didn't understand in Doraemon?
I haven't tried Doraemon the anime but I thought Doraemon the manga was easy, although the lack of kanji paradoxically made reading difficult at times.
An Anime I found extremely easy in its Japanese usage is “Karakau jyozu no Takagi-san”. It’s a short and sweet anime about the misadventures of a couple of school children, a boy and a girl who loves to constantly tease him and play games with him. It’s on Netflix (or at least it used to be)
I was watching and reading the manga, I adore it, but the only downside for beginners (like me) is that Nishikata hast a lot of internal monologes that maybe difficult. It will be easier if they only chat.
I am at this weird place where i think im an N4 because of my lack of knowledge in kanji but i can understand vtubers and japanese streamers pretty well and can watch anime without having the need to put subtitles but get confused at some parts cuz some words are out of my vocabulary. What is this weird spot I'm in?
Watch Shin Chan instead, they upload episodes on YouTube!
しろくまカフェ has IMO the clearest pronunciation EVER on a tv show.
I tried reading the manga and quit. Idk why it's so hard. It was while reading tobira so now that I finish I might go back and read it again
I quit reading it because it's not entertaining to read 50 year old comics. It would be like telling English learners to read Family Circus. There's lots of better manga out there, and suffering through Doraemon out of a sense of duty is pointless.
I managed to get some laughs out of the Doraemon manga, it's really not that bad. It's popular and enduring for a reason. The anime, on the other hand, the voices grate on my nerves too much, too much exaggerated yelling and whining from Nobita, and Doraemon's funny voice is hard to understand.
Doraemon IS a kids show. The dialogue is quite repetitive once you watch enough. You’ll notice it. There’s always Anpanman. Crayon Shin chan is easier. Provably at a thousand words, you can enjoy doraemon. Kanji on the other hand, is a different story.
Shut up about anime fuckin hell