# Media Language vs. Ordinary Language



## lammn

Hi, Wishfull, glad to know that you have watched the same TV. 

I have been told (more than once) that I should not learn Japanese through anime, because the style of speech is different from the real one, and blah, blah, blah...

But now you told me that the language used in TV-dramas can also be fictionary. I'm so frustrated that I almost want to give up learning Japanese. orz


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## Wishfull

NO.
You don't have to worry too much.

Please think about Hong Kong movies. It is the same thing.
In real world, smugglers and politicians speak differently, according to their education level, circumstances, etc, right?

So the movie writer or directer tries to make it real. He makes acters/actress speak in the character's way of speaking.

Going back to 小公女セーラ；
志田未来, whom I like very much , is a actress. She doesn't speak in that way in her real life. She had to practice and remember the phrase of セーラ’s way of talking.
Because 未来　was acting セーラ. Because 未来　was not セーラ, of course.

Here, セーラ is a very noble girl, whom I supposed to meet never in my life, and speaks very noble language.
Then, what is the noble language?
Maybe it is something which is old, traditional Japanese.
Maybe English equivalent might be Shakespeare's English or Elizabethan-English.

If an anime's character is an ordinary high school student, then he/she speaks real thing.
If a drama's heroin is an ordinary working girl, then she speaks ordinary Japanese.
If a drama is a 時代劇, then, they speaks old Japanese, of course.

If it is alien like ケロロ軍曹, then he speaks an old-military-fashioned Japanese. He must speak differently, because he is different from usual human being.

If you think a little bit of the situation of each anime, you will learn the difference.
Because native-Japanese children are doing the same thing.
So don't worry too much.

Wishfull


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## almostfreebird

I haven't watched the anime, so I don't really know, but I don't believe eight-year-old Sara is talking like The Imperial Family.

According to Wiki, it's based on the novel "A Little Princess"(a 1904 children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett),
and
far from being spoiled, Sara is a bright, imaginative, and empathetic child who loves books and storytelling. In short order she befriends even the most outcast of her fellow pupils, as well as the scullery maid Becky.

Considering this, I must say she's talking like ordinary people even if she sometime says "ですもの".

I think that the reason why the talking style sounds a little different from that of real life is because it's sort of too perfect.


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## lammn

Wishfull said:


> NO.
> You don't have to worry too much.
> 
> Please think about Hong Kong movies. It is the same thing.
> In real world, smugglers and politicians speak differently, according to their education level, circumstances, etc, right?


 
Thanks for your advice!

But please do believe me, in Chinese language, there is not much big difference between drama/anime language and real life language. I think the same can apply to English. Japanese, on the other hand, is so unique.



almostfreebird said:


> I haven't watched the anime, so I don't really know, but I don't believe eight-year-old Sara is talking like The Imperial Family.
> 
> According to Wiki, it's based on the novel "A Little Princess"(a 1904 children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett),
> and
> ...
> 
> Considering this, I must say she's talking like ordinary people even if she sometime says "ですもの".


 
For your information, I am refering to the live TV version, not the anime.
And the one whom I heard saying ですもの is the middle-aged female principal, not Sara.


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## almostfreebird

lammn said:


> For your information, I am refering to the live TV version, not the anime.
> And the one whom I heard saying ですもの is the middle-aged female principal, not Sara.



I realize how rarely I watch TV these days、 because it's mostly crappy.

I don't even know who 志田未来 is.(^_^)


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## Wishfull

lammn said:


> But please do believe me, in Chinese language, there is not much big difference between drama/anime language and real life language. I think the same can apply to English. Japanese, on the other hand, is so unique.



I don't think so.

I didn't mean that there are difference between drama/anime language and real life language.

What I wanted to say is this;
The Japanese when I was ten years (1970) and the Japanese when I was 40 years old (2000) are different.
1600's Japanese are different.

High school students Japanese and my Japanese are different.

Children's Japanese and adults' Japanese are different, because the number of vocabulary. 

Professors' Japanese and Janitors' Japanese are different.

I think it is common to all languages.

BTW,
Women's Japanese and Men's Japanese are different. (I think this would be a unique phenomenon in Japanese.)

///////
I don't know about your language, but about English, I think it is the same thing.

In a Cinderella story of a prostitute, she spoke dirty English for the beginning, but after training as a lady, she finally spoke a lady's English. (Sorry, I'm confusing Pretty Woman and Audrey Hepburn's original movie.)

Natives of English only forum always request us to provide context.
Such as "Is it 1970's movie or 2000's ?" 
They say that* today's English *and *English spoken ten years ago* are completely different.

I mean that standard/formal language is staying unchanged for a long time, but colloquial expressions are changing rapidly.

I can hardly believe young Chinese people and old Chinese people speak the same colloquial expressions.
I can't believe that Chinese people use the same informal/colloquial expressions just like the ear of before-WWII.


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## Wishfull

almostfreebird said:


> I haven't watched the anime, so I don't really know, but I don't believe eight-year-old Sara is talking like The Imperial Family.



Yes, she is! She's talking just like the Imperial Family.
It's very very unreal things which has happened in that TV.
Because it is a fiction.
It is from 小公女　”The Little Princess" story, originally.


So I imagine that Mirai Shida must have spend hard days to memorize such  phrases. She might have done a lot of NGs.
And I think non-natives Japanese learners should not remember her Japanese.


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## lammn

Wishfull said:


> Women's Japanese and Men's Japanese are different. (I think this would be a unique phenomenon in Japanese.)


 
You've got the point.
Besides gender, 上下関係 is also an unique feature in Japanese.
If one's social status is low, I don't think one can say ですもの naturally.



Wishfull said:


> I don't know about your language, but about English, I think it is the same thing.
> 
> In a Cinderella story of a prostitute, she spoke dirty English for the beginning, but after training as a lady, she finally spoke a lady's English. (Sorry, I'm confusing Pretty Woman and Audrey Hepburn's original movie.)
> 
> Natives of English only forum always request us to provide context.
> Such as "Is it 1970's movie or 2000's ?"
> They say that* today's English *and *English spoken ten years ago* are completely different..)


 
Okay, I withdraw my theory about English. 

For your information, the movie about a prostitute becoming a fair lady is "Pretty Woman".
The movie in which the heroine(not a prostitute) finally spoke in a lady way is Audrey Hepburn's "My Fair Lady". 



Wishfull said:


> I can hardly believe young Chinese people and old Chinese people speak the same colloquial expressions.
> I can't believe that Chinese people use the same informal/colloquial expressions just like the ear of before-WWII.


 
In Chinese language, new words are "created" day by day, but the basic language remains quite the same. At least in the WR Chinese forum, I don't seem to hear people asking whether it is a Chinese spoken now or 10 years ago. We only concern about dialects.


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## YangMuye

Chinese has also changed a lot.
As I know, more than one hundred kanjis' pronunciations and their usages have been changed in this ten years. (and have been admitted into dictionary)
The Chinese we used 50 years ago is quite different.

The government recommend us to write the same thing as we say. It's a shame to write something that the uneducated can't understand.
On the other hand, the Modern Chinese is standardized by “classic, famous, standard literature”.
If I recall correctly, both of them are written in lows or any government documents. 

However the spoken language and written language are still very different.  When I studied at senior high school in Shanghai, some of my classmates had complained that my Chinese was too "literary" that they couldn't understand. 

Unlike Japanese, the grammar did not changed a lot in the recent years.


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## kuuzoku

Wishfull said:


> They say that* today's English *and *English spoken ten years ago* are completely different.



_They_ are being a tad overly dramatic.


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## almostfreebird

YangMuye said:


> Unlike Japanese, the grammar did not changed a lot in the recent years.



I didn't notice Japanese grammar changed a lot in recent years.


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## Flaminius

Moderator Note:
This thread has been branched from here.

There are many contributions in this thread that are too valuable to lose, but the tendency of the thread to be about anything and everything at the same time is unmistakable.  Please keep sidelines at the minimum and focus on how the style of speech in animes, dramas etc. is different from the real one.

Happy discussion,
Flam


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## Seikun

I have read that one can learn Japanese by watching anime, too. Regardless of the style of speech in anime, how long time one would have to spend watching anime a day in order to end up understanding the language?


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## rukiak

lammn said:


> Hi, Wishfull, glad to know that you have watched the same TV.
> 
> I have been told (more than once) that I should not learn Japanese through anime, because the style of speech is different from the real one, and blah, blah, blah...
> 
> But now you told me that the language used in TV-dramas can also be fictionary. I'm so frustrated that I almost want to give up learning Japanese. orz



I don't agree with the opinion.
It depends.
What you should take care of is character's position. If you see a character who is some kind of a soldier for example, and you imitate and use the similar phrase in business or school, it will cause some trouble. If you choose and imitate correctly, it works. 
And more importantly, any situation in real life has rules of it's own and you have to obey that at each situation. This is not the story only for anime or TV-dramas, but for everything.


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## lammn

kuuzoku said:


> Wishfull said:
> 
> 
> 
> They say that* today's English *and *English spoken ten years ago* are completely different.
> 
> 
> 
> _They_ are being a tad overly dramatic.
Click to expand...

 
Glad to know that. 



Wishfull said:


> In a Cinderella story of a prostitute, she spoke dirty English for the beginning, but after training as a lady, she finally spoke a lady's English. (Sorry, I'm confusing Pretty Woman and Audrey Hepburn's original movie.)


 
I forgot to add that in the movie "Pretty Woman", the heroine was not trained to speak in a lady manner. Only her appearance (and heart perhaps?) was changed.

In the movie "My Fair Lady", starring Audrey Hepburn, the linguistic professor has taught her the correct way of _pronunciation_ only, because Audrey (a flower hawker) spoke with terrible _accent_. He has never taught her the wordings that are presumed to be spoken by a fair lady.

So I'm afraid the two examples above are not very good to demonstrate how different characters speak with different *wordings* in _English_.



YangMuye said:


> The government recommend us to write the same thing as we say. It's a shame to write something that the uneducated can't understand.
> On the other hand, the Modern Chinese is standardized by “classic, famous, standard literature”.
> If I recall correctly, both of them are written in lows or any government documents. .


 
Hi YangMuye, so you are agreeing that the written Chinese language has undergone relatively little changes for the past 50 years? 



YangMuye said:


> However the spoken language and written language are still very different. When I studied at senior high school in Shanghai, some of my classmates had complained that my Chinese was too "literary" that they couldn't understand.


 
May I ask you which part of China do you come from?
Did you speak Mandarin or Shanghaiese with your classmates?

In order to keep more in line with the topic under discussion, do you think that it is fairly safe for people to learn Chinese language via TV, movie and anime, because the media language has no *big* difference with the ordinary Chinese language?



rukiak said:


> I don't agree with the opinion.
> It depends.
> What you should take care of is character's position. If you see a character who is some kind of a soldier for example, and you imitate and use the similar phrase in business or school, it will cause some trouble. If you choose and imitate correctly, it works.
> And more importantly, any situation in real life has rules of it's own and you have to obey that at each situation. This is not the story only for anime or TV-dramas, but for everything.


 
Thank you, Rukiak. 
I agree with your points.

However, it seems that quite a lot of _old-fashioned_ manner of speech, or _fictitious_ language, whatever you call it, are incorporated into Japanese anime, TV dramas or movies. And this is the thing that get on my nerves. I spent quite a lot of time to learn Japanese via the media and was just told the the media language is not reliable.


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## Wishfull

lammn said:


> I spent quite a lot of time to learn Japanese via the media and was just told the the media language* is not reliable*.



I (or we) don't mean that *the media language isn't reliable*.
It is a* real *Japanese.
A *real* Japanese of real high school girls, in some instances.
A* real* Japanese of smugglers, in another instance.
A* real* Japanese of a lawyer, in another case.

My advice is to be conscious to such context/background, if possible. 

And now, I advise you to forget about what I said.
The media language is reliable, indeed.
And you'll know the difference, naturally.
Because all native children do the same thing.


・・・・・・・
BTW,　in the movie Pretty Woman, it was not Julia Roberts but Richard Gere who had changed. I know that. 
What I wanted to say is a little different. The message of these two movies are the same; *The most important thing is not appearance nor social status, but HUMANITY.*
Humanity is more important than appearance, job, social status, way of speaking. 
In order to reach that conclusion, the directors of the movies tried to make scenarios, right? In such scenarios, the directors tried to be conscious about the difference of a poor-girl's-way-of-speech and a lady's speech.....
Well, it is a little too difficult for me to convey my logic. Please forget about it.
And have a nice day.


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## YangMuye

lammn said:


> Hi YangMuye, so you are agreeing that the written Chinese language has undergone relatively little changes for the past 50 years?


Of course not. According to the literatures written before 50 yeas ago, I don't think so.
If you say "past 10 years", I think so.



lammn said:


> May I ask you which part of China do you come from?
> Did you speak Mandarin or Shanghaiese with your classmates?


Yes, they think my Mandarin is perfect, even when I was speaking dialect.  I'm from Henan, but my dialect is similar to Anhui's.
It may be just a joke. Of course they can understand all what I said. But some of them really don't like 成語 and some simple 文言詞句, e.g 譬如、倘若、而、即、則、以……



lammn said:


> In order to keep more in line with the topic under discussion, do you think that it is fairly safe for people to learn Chinese language via TV, movie and anime, because the media language has no *big* difference with the ordinary Chinese language?


Since I never watch TV(really, since senior high), I'm not sure.
Chinese anime is terrible, you know. I think it's pretty safe to learn everything from it. 
As for TV play and movie, some of them(especially historical drama) really contain obsoleted expressions. But most of (almost all of) them are simply "modern people, but wearing old clothes".

But one point must be mentioned:
The background and settings of anime are usually not real world. Sometimes it's not suitable to imitate. For example, in China, you will never call the elderly with strange titles.
I am reminded of an interesting story:
1931年農民革命風起雲湧，湖南軍閥何鍵憤而上書教育部：“近日課本。每每狗說。猪說。鸭子說。以及猫小姐。狗大哥。牛公公之詞。充溢行間。禽獸能作人言。尊稱加諸獸類。鄙俚怪誕。莫可言狀。”

1931年、農民革命は風が起こり雲が湧くように（引きも切らず）、湖南軍閥の何鍵が憤（いきどお）って上書（じょうしょ、書を差し上げる）した「近日の教科書、しばしば狗が言うとか、猪（ぶた）が言うとか、家鴨（あひる）が言うとか、及び　猫お嬢とか、狗兄貴とか、牛お爺さんとかいう詞（ことば）に、行間が満ち溢れる（氾濫する）。禽獣が皆人語を作し得るし（なしうる、できる）、尊称を獣類に付けるし、鄙俚（ひり、野卑）怪誕（かいたん、奇怪な嘘）、誰も言状す可かず。（誰も言葉で形容できない）」


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## lammn

YangMuye said:


> The background and settings of anime are usually not real world. Sometimes it's not suitable to imitate. For example, in China, you will never call the elderly with strange titles.
> I am reminded of an interesting story:
> 1931年農民革命風起雲湧，湖南軍閥何鍵憤而上書教育部：“近日課本。每每狗說。猪說。鸭子說。以及猫小姐。狗大哥。牛公公之詞。充溢行間。禽獸能作人言。尊稱加諸獸類。鄙俚怪誕。莫可言狀。”


 
I don't watch dubbed anime for a long time. I watch original Japanese anime only. So I think it's no use for both you and me, who do not watch Chinese anime at all, to comment on the relevance of the language used in Chinese anime.

What I find interesting is that the language used in the 1931 story you just mentioned is very much the same as those used by me and the people around me. (I am not refering to the animals talks, of course. And I don't add full-stop at the end of each sentence.)

Should I put myself and my friends, colleagues and boss into a museum?

One of my colleagues, who came from Mainland China, once quoted her husband saying, that Traditional Chinese (comparing with Simplified Chinese) are very close to ancient Chinese. Her husband took major in Chinese language and so I think his comment counts. I am still of the opinion that Chinese language used in my birthplace (HK) is still much the same as those used 50 years ago.


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## almostfreebird

I have watched this old Japanese movie. http://www.geocities.jp/smokefree_alley/movie/wakadaisyo/wakadaisyo.html

They're talking very naturally（in the movie） and I don't see any difference in comparison with today's Japanese language.


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## lammn

Wishfull said:


> I (or we) don't mean that *the media language isn't reliable*.
> It is a* real *Japanese.
> A *real* Japanese of real high school girls, in some instances.
> A* real* Japanese of smugglers, in another instance.
> A* real* Japanese of a lawyer, in another case.
> 
> My advice is to be conscious to such context/background, if possible.


 


almostfreebird said:


> I have watched this old Japanese movie. http://www.geocities.jp/smokefree_alley/movie/wakadaisyo/wakadaisyo.html
> 
> They're talking very naturally（in the movie） and I don't see any difference in comparison with today's Japanese language.


 
Thank you both!
You restore my confidence in learning Japanese via the media. 

However, our respectable moderator-san's comments (see below) lead me think that there are _fictitious_ languages designed for _stereo-type_ characters. I think this trend is particularly obvious in anime or TV adaptations from comics or novels. What do you think?




Flaminius said:


> What is the function of もの here?
> 
> 
> 
> Outside animes, I don't think this expression is very often used within the earshot of a commoner like yours sincerely.
Click to expand...





Flaminius said:


> A while ago, we discussed じゃ that the thread starter read/heard an old man say in an anime or manga. It is a literary device to mark an utterance as belonging to an elderly. Now, no one just realises one day that they are old enough and starts ending every sentence with じゃ. If an elderly uses it, they must have been using it since they first learnt to speak. In other words they use it because it is part of the dialect used by everyone in the local community. Thus, じゃ by an elderly is a fictitious language with no basis on how the spoken language actually is.


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## 涼宮

Seikun said:


> I have read that one can learn Japanese by watching anime, too. Regardless of the style of speech in anime, how long time one would have to spend watching anime a day in order to end up understanding the language?


 
I think it depends on how much they talk, because if it is an anime in which there is a lot of action they are not going to talk so much, don't you think? but, on the other hand if you watch an anime like for instance ''Gunslinger girl'' in which they talk a lot, you will hear a lot of words and so on.

I think based on each episode lasts at least 24 minutes , with a minimum of 4 or 5 episodes per day is enough, as long as you take notes and pay attention to the context, but in my opinion learning through the anime would be much better the more real it is, because if it has a lot of fantasy you will hear words that are not commonly used in real life.

まいどまいど


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## lammn

涼宮 said:


> I think based on each episode lasts at least 24 minutes , with a minimum of 4 or 5 episodes per day is enough, as long as you take notes and pay attention to the context, but in my opinion learning through the anime would be much better the more real it is, because if it has a lot of fantasy you will hear words that are not commonly used in real life.


 
Even though I like watching Japanese anime, I would not recommend people to learn Japanese _just_ by watching anime. As 涼宮 has pointed out already, the anime world can be so unreal. I would also like at add that there are too many stereotyped characters, whom's style of speech should not be imitated at all. For example, I have been watching a few episodes of InuYasha(犬夜叉), in almost each and every episode, InuYasha will say something like 「てめえ！」、「くそ！」、 「畜生！」,etc. If you speak to Japanese people in that way, I am sure 100 out of 100 Japanese people will not want to make friends with you.


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## almostfreebird

In case of English(language) anime, or movies all you have to do is avoid four letter words and something like that to learn decent English.

On the other hand, in case of Japanese anime, 
besides (てめえ！、くそ！、 畜生！,etc.)(Japanese version of four letter word) 
there're many kinds of sentence ending.


Take "Is that so?(そうなんですか？)" for example.

In rough English they may say "Is that phucking so?", then you just avoid saying phucking.

In case of Japanese anime, there're several ways of saying "Is that so?":

(A)  そうなんですか？(polite)
(B)  そうなの？(polite)
(C)  そうなのか？(a little impolite)
(D)  そうだってのか？(defiant)
(E)　そうでございますか？(oddly polite)
(F)　そうでござるか？(fictitious)
(G)　そうでござんすか？(fictitious)

So it would be alright if you follow the characters who talk like (A)or(B), and generally those who talk like (A)or(B) use ”わたし”or”ぼく”.


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## 涼宮

> (F)　そうでござるか？(fictitious)


 
Hello almostfreebird.

I want to say something about that sentence, as far as I know saying でござる、でござらない、でござった,etc was supposed to be used by 侍 as well as the pronoun 拙者「せっしゃ」=私, so that would be really fictitious? I mean if that is true, of course nowadays it is nor used anymore, unless you are in a thearer, but that would be really fictitious if that existed? sorry if my information is wrong.


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## almostfreebird

涼宮 said:


> Hello almostfreebird.
> 
> I want to say something about that sentence, as far as I know saying でござる、でござらない、でござった,etc was supposed to be used by 侍 as well as the pronoun 拙者「せっしゃ」=私, so that would be really fictitious? I mean if that is true, of course nowadays it is nor used anymore, unless you are in a thearer, but that would be really fictitious if that existed? sorry if my information is wrong.



First of all, all stories except those which are non-fiction must be fictitious.

When I say fictitious here, I mean nobody knows how they were speaking in  daily conversation in 侍(samurai)era(14th century?~).

You think "~そうでござる"、"~そうでござんす","拙者" etc. were supposed to be spoken by people in 侍era., because you watched samurai dramas on TV.

In anime, you may find characters who use words like "~そうでござる"、"~そうでござんす","拙者" etc. They are fictitious, unreal, and only exist in anime.


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