I recommend Cure Dolly!
a noob question I was had as a student:
is it ok to learn japanese way of speaking or even writing using manga/anime as reference?
because my teachers always said they speak silly and wrong
for example èĄă instead of saying èĄăŁăŠ they say èĄăïŒ
so what`s you opinion about this? to this day I have prejudice to learn like that, I always stick to genki politely way
Personally, I donât see it as a ârestrictionâ because Iâm going to have to learn the reading at some point anyway. I learnt readings for hanzi at the same time as meaning all the time in Chinese, and it didnât take me much longer. However, after reading the rest of your thoughts
Yeah, OK, I can see why you might prefer to focus on one thing at a time. Itâs true that it might be easier not having to learn two mnemonics at once. Again though, thatâs why my own mnemonics work based on integrating the two in an âobviousâ (for me) way so that thinking of one automatically triggers the other. But⊠thatâs not always possible, and I guess Iâm probably experiencing something similar to what youâre doing when I learn Japanese: I already know what most kanji mean, barring some exceptions like kanji that only exist in Japanese or special meanings that donât exist in Chinese, so I just have to learn readings, and I can use the meanings I already know to help me remember readings, instead of doing both at once. Itâs definitely easier doing one thing at a time. Is it necessarily more efficient if we add up the total time taken? I donât know, but itâs possible.
I⊠have to agree. Or to put it in another way, some feel hard to remember. I just looked at the ones for æ (L27) and ç (L60): I would never remember the æ meaning mnemonic because it means nothing to me (I donât comb my hair in my spare time â I call that a waste of time), and the reading mnemonic for ç sounds really tough. I mean, the fact that thereâs a system for common readings is really good, especially for onâyomi, but I still think there are ways to make more memorable, obvious mnemonics for individual kanji without such a system. In fact, without a system â at least in my opinion â making unique, interesting mnemonics is easier.
Totally feel you there. I speak English, Chinese and French fluently (though my Chinese is definitely getting worse every day), and I know another two language besides Japanese a bit more vaguely. Having a lot of sounds (and even different grammars and word orders!) to play with can be very helpful.
This, I agree with, especially after what I just saw above for ç.
Hm⊠I canât remember what order I learnt hanzi in. Oh well. Hahaha. But yeah, I think we usually started with simpler/more common ones and worked our way up. I have to say that I donât know what WKâs order is based on, because ç, for instance, definitely shouldnât be L60. Itâs so common in anime, never mind in other places. It should be a low-level kanji lumped together with other animal kanji or something. I think Heisig tends to group things by primitive, which is honestly pretty good. I mean, I usually think of kanji in terms of the primitives I already know in order to learn them (of course, Iâm not using Heisigâs system, but instead all the stuff I learnt studying Chinese), and I find breaking kanji down that way, even if I have to create nonsense components of my own, much better than having to absorb a ridiculously complex kanji for which I have no point of reference. For example (this is just for fun), é (the alternative kanji for the verb èĄćĄăïŒăĄăŹăïŒwould probably have been impossible for me to learn if I hadnât already seen kanji with similar components.
This is why I love RtK so much. I see the primitives and everything else fall into place. WaniKani stretches their radicals way beyond what theyâre first shown as often. Radicals might look completely different sometimes, and can often be hard to make out. This has become a common problem after level 10 where we receive more complex kanji. WaniKaniâs system shows all of its flaws all of a sudden.
And I also like Heisigs primitives way more than Wanikaniâs radicals. The radicals can be so lazy sometimes.
âThere is something white and small stuck in this cliff. Itâs⊠itâs⊠so original, you canât name it. Youâve never seen anything like it. Itâs the one and only thing of its type. You decide to just name it âoriginalâ because you arenât a very original personâŠâ
Take this one for example. I have no other words for it than plain lazy. This wonât make any stories stick to my memory.
Heisigâs primitives are way more detailed and often contribute to how the kanji is written. You can feel the thoughts behind them.
Itâs easier to keep my thoughts organized when I can fully focus on one of them(readings and meanings) at a time. Since I can focus on getting things right the first time, there is less time needed afterward to correct faulty memory. And that is how Heisig chooses to structure his book, and it works. So I donât want to stray from his methods since they work so well.
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Are one of your goals by learning Japanese to read manga? If so, youâll have to learn those âanimeâ words anyway at some point. So Iâd just start reading them If I was you. Itâs important to have fun while learning!
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I feel like you should start a new thread for this because I really donât think itâs related. You could also try âThe quick or short Language Questions Threadâ, though I doubt this will be all that short. Then again, Iâm mouthing off about kanji learning systems, so Iâm not in a position to talk. (Iâm not complaining, by the way. Itâs just that I think, for future reference, that thatâs how the forums work! 
)
Anyway, uhâŠ
Did all your teachers say this, or only some of them? Where did they teach you (in a school setting when you were in your teens/at university, for instance?) and do you still have those teachers?
As for the answer⊠see, I donât actually have any Japanese friends in real life, so I canât be certain, but what I can say is that from the chats Iâve seen my friend have with his Japanese university mates, along with what I see when I read stuff on Twitter and in the live chats of Japanese VTubers⊠no, anime usually isnât âwrongâ, though thereâs a lot of informal grammar (e.g. missing particles). Real Japanese people use the same sort of sentence structure when theyâre being casual, and some of them really speak like anime characters when theyâre fooling around and trying to be dramatic. The reason for this is not so much that anime is dramatic as it is that certain speech styles you find in anime match stereotypical sorts of personalities. (If you want an example, look for videos from, say, ăŻăăăăăĄăăŒïŒhajimeïŒon YouTube. Heâs usually quite polite when addressing the audience, but when heâs doing something crazy with his friends or when heâs being emotional, he talks more like an anime character.) In short, while some anime speech is definitely weird or wrong (e.g. adding ă§ă to every single sentence just to sound cute, even when thereâs no reason for it in grammar or the rules of politeness), most of it is still real Japanese. Do real Japanese people speak like that? Somewhat, but definitely not all the time. Definitely not. For some analysis, watch this video about anime characters who speak fairly realistically from a Japanese guy whoâs fluent in English:
As for this
Yeah, well, the issue here is that this is just rude in most situations in real life. èĄă is not incorrect Japanese: itâs just that itâs an order, whereas èĄăŁăŠ is a request, so èĄă is usually tons more forceful than youâd ever need to be in real life. However, there are situations where speaking âlike an anime characterâ is probably the right thing to do. For example, if something is going to fall on a strangerâs head, you donât sayăć±ăȘăă§ăïŒäžăèŠăŠăă ăăïŒă(âItâs dangerous/watch out! Look up, please!â) Thatâs going to get the person killed, because youâre taking too long. On the other hand,ăć±ăȘăïŒïŒïŒäžăć±ăȘăïŒïŒïŒèœăĄăŠăïŒă(âDangerous/watch out!!! Above you!!! Watch out!!! Itâs falling!â) is just fine here, because you need to convey the information fast. Social status isnât important here. Would it be right to use an imperative form here though, like ăă©ăïŒă(âGet out of the way!â)? I donât know. Possibly? But most request forms are about as long, so it probably doesnât matter, so you can stay polite. Real Japanese people do use the order/imperative form when theyâre being forceful though:ăćž°ăïŒă(â[Get lost and] go home!â) is what youâd get from an aggressive shop owner who doesnât like your face or something. But as you can see, thatâs rude, so you generally donât want to use it.
My opinion is that you should only use casual stuff with close friends. Itâs very important to learn the so-called âcasualâ forms though, because they actually have tons of uses outside of being casual, so donât feel like theyâre horrible, dirty words that you shouldnât touch. What you need to learn is to convert casual or even rude speech into polite speech. Thatâs how you can learn using anime/manga. Also, make sure you watch a variety of anime and manga, because in some anime, there are characters who use polite speech too. These characters are usually presented as softer/more polite characters, which is why they speak that way, but the point is, theyâre a good model to learn from, even if not all of their speech is 100% natural. At the very least, you can pick up grammar from them, and some vocabulary. All you need to do, once again, is to just convert those words into polite speech, unless theyâre very rude words to begin with, like⊠ăăăăă (means roughly âshi**y ba$âdâ) or something. Thatâs all.
Finally, just so you know⊠the reason I know practically all the N2 grammar points on a particular JLPT prep site is because I learnt them through anime. I also know about 50% of their N1 grammar points, again mostly through anime. Who says itâs not good Japanese? Learn to convert casual words into polite speech. Learn super polite speech too (keigo). However, also learn some casual speech, including from anime, because otherwise, if you ever have real Japanese friends, youâre going to end up sounding ridiculously stiff if you canât switch to casual speech when theyâre ready to accept you.
Fair enough. Whatever works best for you is good. Iâm used to making all sorts of utterly ridiculous links without mixing them up (my brain spontaneously does this), so Iâm fine with learning two things at once, but I agree that correcting incorrect knowledge is the worst. Itâs better to work with something clear and get it right the first time before moving on. 
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I think casual speech is for more than only close friends. Iâve been talking a lot to a Japanese person lately. From the very start, sheâs been using casual speech. Every single Japanese person Iâve been chatting with has almost instantly used casual speech.
It also seems like most internet chatter is casual speech.
You shouldnât do that. From what Iâve heard from people. Casual speech is the most common Japanese spoken amongst the Japanese. Unless you only plan on talking to one stranger to the next in real life, youâll use casual speech way more often than formal speech.
I started using Genki but quickly dropped it after realizing how many flaws it has. It instantly jumped to formal speech without explaining core Japanese grammar!
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It doesnât up to a certain ratio. And less than 5% time immersing and more than 95% looking for kanjis in the dictionary is below the threshold. It just makes immersion too unproductive. Itâs not 0 productivity, but itâs still waaaay too little for me.
@evandcs I guess I should have specified: I meant, âWhen youâre the one starting the conversation, you should only use it with close friends.â Thatâs the only surefire way to avoid offending anyone until youâve learnt more about politeness and how others see your relationship with them. However, yes, thereâs lots of informal chatter online, especially in YouTube live chats and on informal stuff on Twitter, and if somebody has decided theyâre fine with using informal speech with you and youâre on the same social level (e.g. both working at the same company at the same level, both students at a particular school of the same age, both casual players of an online game/sport), then you can use informal speech in return. (@JesperHH just provided some examples.) There are also some settings in which you can automatically assume casual speech is OK, like within the same class at school or within a single course at a university among students at the same academic level. On the other hand, if a superior is using casual speech with you, thatâs just because they can. You canât reply in casual speech, because thatâs disrespectful on your part.
I agree that this is a problem, butâŠ
I think the truth is that it depends on your relationship with that person. If youâre meant to be business-like all the time, then youâll be using polite speech forever.
What I will say though, is that Iâve heard that Japanese people find it tiring to use polite speech all the time, so Iâm pretty sure that theyâd prefer to use casual speech with someone as soon as they can, unless they find it necessary to keep a certain distance with that person.
I guess this is sort of true, but I donât think the issue is the amount of time spent looking into the dictionary. Like I said, the last time I watched the anime I mentioned above, I stopped the video every 30 seconds or so, possibly less â I think it was basically every time I hit a long sentence or a word I didnât know â and every look-up took at least a minute, I think. I think a realistic estimate was 1h to watch a 20-min episode. I still felt pretty productive ultimately. I think itâs more that, well, if someone needs to spend 95% of the time in the dictionary, then that person probably doesnât know enough Japanese (kanji, grammar or vocabulary) to piece together what the sentence means, and that means the material is too hard for that personâs current level. What Iâm getting at is that I think @ekgâs point was that thereâs no such thing as âtoo earlyâ provided you can find material that matches your Japanese proficiency, and I agree with that: if you had had a book with only kana and mostly words and grammar that you knew at the time, it probably would have been good immersion material. Thatâs all Iâm saying. But of course, oneâs choice of immersion material is going to have to be based on what level of productivity or study-to-consumption ratio one wants, among other things.
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This feels very unrealistic. I doubt anyone will learn Japanese and end up using it for business only. If you learn it to make friends youâll likely end up using casual speech. If you learn it for anime and manga youâll mostly read and hear casual Japanese. Jumping straight to formal Japanese is impractical no matter if your goal is business or not. Formal Japanese builds on casual(plain, basic) Japanese. Building a foundation from formal Japanese will only cause unnecessary confusion.
I havenât exactly followed the discussion here, but for me itâs a matter of attitude toward immersion. For manga I relied on furigana since I didnât know kanji. For games, I used dialogue extraction methods and digital dictionaries to look up words. And yeah, that could well mean a lot of the time spend was translation work and not playing. I still didnât have any problem being âimmersedâ doing this. Itâs a matter of how you view the whole activity I feel, whether youâre frustrated by it or you enjoy it. For me it was the latter, but itâs understandable that not everyone has the patience for that sort of thing.
Manga is much more accessible and a better starting point than games in any case. Then the threshold for whatâs enjoyable is more about vocab knowledge and basic grammar. The rest you can gradually absorb during reading. Anime is also easier to start out with.
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Not if you have to use it for work. And to be clear, I meant âusing polite speech foreverâ with that person only. Of course you should get a chance to use casual speech with other people, unless youâre not intending to make any friends. Iâm just saying that there are some relationships in which you might never need or be allowed to be casual.
Itâs not the best way, I agree, especially since native Japanese speakers definitely start with casual/dictionary-form Japanese and turn it into formal Japanese. Thatâs how Japanese grammar works too. However, itâs not impossible to start with formal Japanese and be introduced to informal Japanese later. It doesnât necessarily cause problems, as long as the transition happens quickly and is properly explained. I learnt formal Japanese first. Iâm not having any trouble chatting with my fluent friend (whoâs studying in Japan) entirely in informal Japanese. As long as you learn both, and early, in my opinion, itâll be fine. I donât like the fact that most Japanese textbooks teach formal Japanese first, but ultimately, thatâs just a matter of personal preference, and it doesnât matter. The real problem is that they donât (usually) teach informal Japanese until much later. That wasnât the case for me, especially because I had a book that was basically designed to take me from beginner all the way to N3, so I could learn it all without changing books.
Just a quick explanation: I found it easy to handle because the biggest change between formal and informal Japanese at the beginner level is verb forms, and since the masu-stem is the one that basically hardly changes anything at all (unlike ăŠ- and ă-forms), I just needed to learn how godan and ichidan verbs worked: for ichidan, I took the masu-stem and added ă. For godan, I could conveniently change ă into ă, and everything would be settled, and it helped me realise early on that stem changes were very natural. Thatâs why I donât think itâs necessarily problematic, because ultimately, for each verb, you still have one base form from which you can map to everything.
Agreed. And yeah, also agreed about the attitude â or perhaps goals? â of immersion bit. It depends on what youâre willing to do, what you enjoy, and how much you can tolerate. Not everyone will like the same sort of immersion, and thatâs fine. What matters is that everyone finds something that works.
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I highly recommend the Yo-kai watch series on Nintendo consoles. Theyâre very accessible for beginners. I find them very useful since theyâre full of text with furigana. Iâve used them a lot to improve my reading speed and with great results. The bits of gameplay once in a while keeps you from being burnt out too.
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1 hour for 20 minutes is super fast and productive. 4 minutes of gameplay for me required around 3 hours to get through and that was definately too early for me.
And going for something extremely primitive wasnât fun, so too early does feel like itâs a thing to me when it comes to Japanese specifically.
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Just wanna point out that there are fairly interesting, descriptive books that contain few kanji like Kikiâs Delivery Service. Itâs probably meant for children and the grammar isnât very complex, but thereâs quite a bit of vivid language. It has a Studio Ghibli adaptation too. However, yeah, whatâs âtoo earlyâ for you depends on what you want from immersion.
That was just an estimate. Iâm sure Iâve spent longer than that before. But yeah, four minutes in three hours⊠reminds me of the time I was working on some manga with a group of people. I was doing it for them, mostly, because I was generally more advanced and had been roped in to help out, but understanding what was going on on each page in about 5-10 minutes and then taking as much as an hour (or more!) to transcribe, translate and explain everything was irritating at times. I can see why you wouldnât want to settle for 4 min:3h. Itâs like how I refuse to start most anime without English subtitles because I know Iâm only fluent enough to handle all the classic everyday vocabulary, but Iâll probably be lost when it comes to words specific to the story, especially if itâs in a fantasy world.
Those are probably the least indicative of how Wanikani teaches Kanji. Iâd say anything around the mid-30s would be better to look at. The Kanji from level 51+ are the addons since WK originally only had 50 levels, so theyâre nowhere near as consistent as the lower levels.
My thinking is more along the lines of @Jonapedia in that Iâd really learn both at the same time rather than separately but Iâm glad itâs working out for you.
One thing I am interested in, though, is how much of that recall remains long term. Iâd love to hear how it goes for you in a year or so.
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Iâll take a look at those then. Thanks for the WK history tidbit as well. Iâd heard about that before, but it slipped my mind.
Yeah, thereâs a noticeable difference with those levels when going through them. Itâs almost like an entirely different team created them, which may be true.
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Yeah. There has to be balance, and that ratio is nowhere near acceptable. And I do know that the process speeds up as you go, but at this rate it would take too long to get to a decent pace.
Yeah, I was constantly revisiting things I wanted to read as I leveled up and I wasnât able to do so comfortably until around the 40s. For me thatâs the point where it became less about Kanji and vocab and more about grammar.
I was finally able to play video games too since I could muddle through the gist of things and only stop to look up if I wanted to completely understand something.
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