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As much as I wish I knew how to speak it perfectly, the only Japanese that I memorize is usually what I hear from anime and video games. That isn't to say that I don't understand it at all. Over the course of a few years, I've managed to piece together rough translations of some of the things I've heard more than once. I just hope I'm right on most of them...

Doushta? -> What's wrong?

Muda -> Useless

Amai -> either "weak" or "not enough"

Youkai -> Demon

Asobi -> playtime

Owari da. -> It's over.

Sugoi! -> Awesome!

Koros -> Kill

Omai wa -> You are

Itai! -> Ow!

Toki -> time

Soshite... -> And now...

Eto... -> Um...

Mina -> Everyone

I'll add more of what I've learned later. If anyone knows if I'm wrong in any of these translations, please correct me.

To say the least, you made many mistakes. Here's the corrected Japanese. As is said millions of times. DO NOT LEARN FROM ANIME. Anime is not real Japanese, and you demonstrated everything!

I'm so sick of all this! Why don't people understand?!?I'm sorry that this kind of mistake bothers you so much, but that could've been put FAR more politely. You're acting like I'm some kind of hardheaded idiot who just ran in here and started ranting about how "what I know is right and no one can correct me" or some crap like that. All I asked for was assistance and correction, not to be talked down to like an inferior.

While anyone who has been in a place like this for a while should always remember not to ream noobs for common mistakes (which is akin to berating an infant for falling down while they're learning how to walk)... SharinganPhoenix, you kind of left yourself open for that. Not that anyone deserves harsh words straight off the bat, but you did ask for correction on what you got wrong.

On the other hand, saying what you said like you said it -- "i've heard this repeatedly enough to recognize it, now what does it mean?" -- is a common way that children learn their native language. How many times has a child asked, "Mommy, what does X mean?" And I think that's what you're getting at.

There are posts here that catalog favorite and useful sites for learning Japanese as a whole, but you have a point with a thread like this -- sometimes you hear this one word like /everywhere/, and you almost get what it means, but you just want someone to explain the nuances of this one particular word, because it BUGS you to not know! That happened to me a lot before I took classes at the university. We could say, "oh, just go look at one of the hundreds of sites we have linked," but surely there's room on this forum for hands-on discussion of minutia.

For example:

-- owaru (おわる) means "to end," so "owari da" is, a little more literally, "it has ended." you also might need to know that the "da" is a conjugation of the verb "desu," which you could probably successfully look up in a dictionary or online guide for a more in-depth explaination.

-- toki (とき、時) means time, yes.

-- korosu (ころす) does mean to kill, and when you hear it as 'koros,' it's because Japanese often whisper 'u's and 'i's in words, especially 'u's at the end.

-- doushita (どうした) does not only mean "what's wrong." in a more literal sense, it means "what has happened." However, you've probably seen it mostly used in a scene where one character would be asking another in English, "what's wrong?" Shita (した) is the past plain for suru (する), which basically means "to do."

-- minna (みんあ) means everyone.


To answer your original question, learning from anime is not a very good way. On the other hand, picking words out and asking what they mean surely isn't a harmful way to learn.

"learning from anime" in the bad way is, "i've never taken a japanese class, all i've seen is inuyasha, and now i know all the japanese i'll ever need!"

i still say that listening to the native language, /even if it's in a stylized setting like an anime or a movie/, and hearing something that you think you know and then asking what it actually means... is not a horrible way to learn. In fact... that's probably more effective learning than reading a dry textbook and trying to converse about your day with another student who is just as much a beginner in the language as you are.

because seriously. When you hear an English word that you didn't know before from a television program, you may ask the people around you what it means. That's how we learn our native tongue; hand-on inquiries from people who know.

yes, anyone who is serious about studying the language should go out, either on the internet or IRL, and acquire a real piece of literature that will instruct you up from ground zero. but to repeatedly shoot down people who ask "i've heard this word, what does it mean?" is not only unkind to the point of cruelty, it stifles the desire to learn in the first place.

yes, we should tell SharinganPhoenix to get a "real" form of Japanese instruction. We could also not shoot him out of the sky the moment he sets foot in here and tell him that he's evil for using his brain while watching anime.

At first I tried learning from anime and manga, but when I used the words from it when talking to a Japanese girl online, she said that it was incorrect. After that I stopped trying to learn from anime. It's a common mistake made by real beginners. I know better now.

I don't think that learning from or using anime/drama is exactly a bad thing; even when you're starting out. While people who solely rely on them are idiots, you can use it as a subconscious means to reaffirm what you know and get better. Use it to get used to the sounds first of all, and then as a subtle way to confirm and recognise grammar and vocab that you've learnt. But just don't use words from anime or anything like that until you get them checked first as a general rule [to avoid looking or sounding dumb].

It's also annoying how some people treat using Japanese media and the use of a Japanese textbook to learn the language as being mutually exclusive =_= Doing both will get the best results!!

Hmm, I don't think you're learning Japanese the wrong way per se, but it's just not the recommended way. If you do need some guidance in figuring out what to learn first and such, then check out AJATT's five phases to learning Japanese: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/about/overview-page

's a long list of japanese words that i have learned from my sensei jang
Ai-love
ami-rain
mukashi-long time ago
genki-energy
ki-tree
kiou-today
aka-red
ao-blue
mizu-water
momo-peach
hana-flower
wan-bowl
sora-sky
futari-two people
nagare-to float
that's it for now