Learn Japanese with Gundam

September 26, 2007 on 7:03 pm | In About, Books, Media | | Email This Post

I’m not ashamed to admit that I used to be a reasonably hardcore anime fan back when I was in Iowa. The main reason though, was that I could hardly get my hands on any other Japanese media to learn Japanese from. Of course, I watched movies rooted in reality like Shall We Dance and Tampopo over and over and over again, but I also had a healthy dose of anime as well. This was back in the day of VHS, and anime wasn’t available for download (easily) via my 56.6k modem either. Most of the stuff I got I purchased at Best Buy.

Anyway, one thing I noticed about anime, was that a lot of the vocabulary I picked up from them, was near useless in real life. Space ships, fancy weapons, magic, overly flamboyant phrases… All those things don’t come up in everyday conversation, so while it was fun, it was never a serious part of my Japanese study. I would say it helped with general listening comprehension though…

Now though, I came across this book on JList…

Learn Japanese from Gundam

Apparently this book seriously takes you through Gundam dialogs and teaches you Japanese from it English to Japanese readers. Of course, Language learning is a two-way street right? So theoretically, one could use this book to learn Japanese. You’d probably have to be a bit more proactive about it than with a regular textbook however.

I’ve always said that the best way to learn a foreign language is just to interact with the language in the most fun way possible… But wow. These guys are really taking it literally!

One confession though… I’ve never really watched Gundam.

Can you believe it? I’ve been here this long and never gotten into Gundam? I have seen Evangelion, all the Miyazaki Hayao movies, and even have read and watched One Piece… But I never got into Gundam… If I was, I would have loved to have this book. Ah well.

- Harvey

Related Posts... (in theory)   Gundam 3D on You Tube    Japan Wallpaper - Updated    Animal Crackers  

Click here to Stumble Upon it!

8 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. Gravatar

    Um…that is definitely a book that teaches English through the Gundam series…

    So, theoretically it could be used in reverse to study Japanese…but that’s not what it was meant for. The title is ガンダムで英語身につける本. “Book for Acquiring English through Gundam.” Just thought I’d point it out.

    Comment by Deas — September 26, 2007 #

  2. Gravatar

    So in your world, Tampopo is rooted in reality? Interested…

    Comment by Joe — September 26, 2007 #

  3. Gravatar

    Alright Joe, sure Tampopo is as close as Japan gets to a Disney story, but it is much more reasonable than Gundam!

    And, OOPS. I didn’t even read the actual title. Talk about jumping the gun.

    How backwards is that? Learn English from a Japanese Anime?! I want to meet the Japanese kids who try this :-)

    Comment by harvey — September 26, 2007 #

  4. Gravatar

    Haha, I just noticed the “relevant links” have the 3D gundam post linked from this. If you haven’t seen that video, check it out. It’s classic!

    Comment by harvey — September 26, 2007 #

  5. Gravatar

    The writeup on J-List that your affiliate link leads to is misleading, too. You might want to tell Peter to get on that. It’s not cool if people buy this thinking it’s something it’s not.

    Comment by Deas — September 26, 2007 #

  6. Gravatar

    That’s actually what got me confused in the first place. I’m sure Peter knows what’s up. I’ll drop him a line to get it fixed.

    Comment by harvey — September 27, 2007 #

  7. Gravatar

    Yeah - I sent in a contact form. Anyway. :-)

    Comment by Deas — September 27, 2007 #

  8. Gravatar

    Tampopo is such a great movie :D

    I tend to gravitate towards high school anime, so I’m learning all kinds of vocabulary that would be useful if I ever taught at one, I guess. But I hate teaching, so I doubt that will ever happen ;>

    The only Gundam I’ve seen is Gundam Wing, which is cool the first time, but then extraordinarily maddening the second time. It’s neat to watch the conspiracy unravel if you don’t already know everything behind it. But once you do, it just pisses you off. Or at least it did me!

    Great music, though.

    Comment by Heather Meadows — September 27, 2007 #

Leave a comment

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Study Japanese with help from J-List!
Study Japanese with help from J-List!

Cheap Electricity - Renegade motorhomes - Mortgage - Credit Cards

Powered by WordPress with Pool theme design by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^