For that kind of money, and given that then is your ONLY job, I'll take that deal any day of the week. I struggle to balance a day job with desperate attempts at learning Japanese, and if those 40 hours a week were taken away for half a year, I have no doubt I'd be running circles around my current level, backwards. It's also, since you address it, why I am WAY more impressed with a regular guy (or girl) getting into killer shape while holding a regular job than with, say, Daniel Craig going to THE best PT in the business and pretty much telling him "this is how I want to look in 9 months, and I have all day during that period". Mind you, hats off to both of them, but still, in their case it's not something they are doing on top of their job - it IS their job.
He has one of the highest motivations to do so. His very livelihood depends on it for the acceptable level on what he is suppose to accomplish. Although he won't likely reach a high level in the language, that is not the goal of the director. He will improve as long as the series continues.
@@RiccardoGabarriniKazeatari I would go nowhere near saying he's awful. Ansel's individual sounds may still sound similar to how he speaks English (pronouncing じょう like "Joe," a common mistake with English speakers), he has the idea of the rhythm and intonation of the language, which sells it so much more to me because that's one of the main things that actors can't just copy. They have to study the language and be able to pick up on the inflections and breaths people take to sound fluent. Also, his ぜひ at the end was almost perfect.
His pronunciation was a bit poor to believe he was fluent in the first season. He did more than the others anyway and I was impressed that there were a lot of Japanese lines in the show. Actors have high self-esteem, are not shy and are communicative. This speeds up the learning process incredibly.
hes good dont get me wrong but notice how he says i had to learn all the hiragana, which he doesnt even mention the real hard part which anyone who knows knows
@@user-de1dj9hd7e if you're referring to kanji, it seems like at 4:20, you get a look at what might be Ansel's notebook, which does have it. Not sure if it's actually his or just a prop shot for the video.
I study Japanese about 4 hours a day as well, and I feel like I make a lot of progress. I usually study vocab and grammar for 2 hours a day, and practice my listening and/or reading for another 2 hours a day. I have to keep it regimented as I'm still in college full time getting my computer science degree so I'm a busy bee studying human language and programming languages.
Wow, I’m also studying for a degree in comp sci and learning japanese on the side. With everything else on top it’s really hard to find the time even though I love it😢 In summer I’m going to grind 5h+ a day, though, which is gonna be so fun🤩
If I was paid $500k per episode and didn’t have to worry about being a broke ass normie with rent and bills to pay, yes, I could learn Japanese in 8 months.
When actors dedicate this much to learning a skill for a show, you know it will be a good one. I remember watching the very first trailer and reading comments from japenese people saying he is really good, a next lever immersion.
It's still pretty fucking impressive how fast he learned Japanese, a language that's very hard to learn for the average (non-Japanese) person. And he really does speak it (as in understands it), he is not just simply memorizing his lines. Check out this clip where he's on a Japenese type of comic con and the reporters ask him all kinds of questions in Japanese followed by him answering in Japanese.
I lived in Tokyo for three years and was just becoming conversational in Japanese by time I left. I was able to read a couple hundred Kanji and memorized katakana and hiragana. It was fun learning the language. It was a challenge. Every day I was better able to communicate. I admire how committed Ansel has been in learning Japanese.
Conversational means speaking. Vocabulary. Kanji means reading. There’s a difference. I can hold a conversation, even if my knowledge of Kanji was limited.
I became completely fluent in French during COVID and now live in France and only speak in French all day, with an accent so good the French often think I'm French. Voila quoi.
@@jacquelinebye6484 Shadowing for hours per day. We speak very little per day even in our own languages. So just a few hours of continuous shadowing podcasts, audio/videos etc. per day and you can catch up on your pronunciation. But you have to intentionally try to copy the pronunciations, not just repeat the words.
No, you just need to use the time u have wisely. Find the material that suits you best and stick to it. Whatever time you can afford is good enough as long as you stick to it, you'll be fine.
Absolutely love the StoryLearning method. Been going through the Japanese beginner course and now have the intermediate courses as well. It's so much better than any other method I have tried and it makes sense! Make more progress on my Japanese in 6 months than I ever have before. 100% recommend to everyone who wants to learn a language
I just started your Chinese Story learning course. I’m enjoying it. I’ve been working on learning for a few years. I’ve learned a lot but was totally stuck on not comprehending what people were saying to me. I’ve got great hope now, that I’ll get through that barrier. Videos like this, showing someone who succeeded in language learning are very inspiring.
Japanese is easy to pronounce relative to other languages for English speakers. Chinese would be more difficult. It’s the other elements of Japanese like the written alphabets and the grammatical structure which make Japanese difficult for English speakers.
@@storylearninghe has a very good accent and intonation. Impressive! But I wonder whether he learned to read and write kanji, as well as kana (which is pretty easy)? I had about 3 years of college Japanese, plus I worked in Japan for a couple of years and married into a Japanese family. I found it really easy to pronounce, and I wondered whether that was because the sounds were so similar to Spanish, which I had studied for a couple of years in school. But kanji was my downfall! (I was so envious of friends who seemed to learn kanji easily.) So I went back to Spanish and made inroads on Portuguese after Covid hit. It’s really difficult to get beyond an intermediate level without at least being able to read news stories and such.
@@roxyiconoclastI doubt he can read Japanese above an elementary level if most of his time was spent focusing on spoken Japanese specifically. Even really other proficient learners still take over 2 years of constant study to be able to read fluently.
@@coolbrotherf127I wouldn’t necessarily doubt it. The ability to read a language will generally come faster than the ability to speak a language, or rather to converse in it, and the ability to write it. Of course we’re talking about a secondary language and not one’s native language where the reverse is more often the case since you know . . . Immersion; but provided you learn a secondary language in school, or are self taught, reading is going to be your foundation for study.
When people don't have to worry about money, they can definitely achieve everything! They just stop doing everything in their lives, to focus on the 1 activity that pays their lifestyle!
Thanks for bringing it to our attention that season 2 dropped, Olly! It’s fascinating to learn what went on behind the scenes for Ansel to prepare for the role as it’s something I’ve wondered about. Nobody makes content like yours… keep it up!
A common theme i see among westerners who are conversationally fluent in Japanese is that they spent a considerable time in Japan and learning Japanese is essential their full time job.
This was exactly how I learned Japanese. Most language books are based on grammar, which is much easier and less important than people realise. What you need is vocabulary and sentence structures, so I just asked people how to say various phrases, and extrapolated the meanings, e.g like he says here, if you learn "Is it alright if I smoke?" you know how to say "Is it alright if I .....?" and just substitute in the word you need in the situation.
Being around Japanese people and trying to speak to them was probably the biggest push for him. As someone who's family moved to Germany when I was 10, I can tell you, you never learn a language faster than when you are immersed in it and depend on learning it to communicate with mostly anyone.
As a full time English teacher in Japan, I have to commit into making time to study 🇯🇵 daily. Even if I’m daydreaming, sleeping, or “relaxing” I try to find a way to get it in my brain. I don’t have time for language school, so I have to improvise my learning. My advantage is that I speak other languages that make it easier to learn it. It’s hard work, folks!! Keep going, though!!! 😊
I find the standards also work backward. As a Thai-Chinese native, it was much easier to learn Japanese than to learn French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German to me. (I have a degree in Western language interpretation, btw, not that I love any self-torturing challenges.) 😅😊😂
He being such a great actor helps him to pick a lot of subtleties and tonalities from the language. The work is massive though and coming from an a english speaker more.
Or Step one buy a textbook and open a CZcams account grab your bollocks and start learning. Put the effort in and regardless of how much money you have you will be able to speak the language.
My Japanese hasn't improved since taking the JLPT years ago. However i use it most days to chat with friends. They have gotten used to my broken Japanese so that's good enough.
During Covid I leaned into learning Mandarin, and the following year wrote, recorded, and released my first album of original songs with Chinese lyrics. Feedback welcomed! Thanks to you Olly for all you do. I have your books in multiple languages 🤘
Congratulations to Ansel for working hard to pick up the language and immerse himself. I believe one needs to understand your native language and grammar terminology to understand the textbook explanations, i.e. transitive and intransitive verbs, conjugating a verb, etc. Then one is not "stuck" when trying to understand the English explanation of a foreign language. Reading and writing Japanese can be quite difficult.
"zero to fluent in just a few months" is a bit of an overstatement, no? "he found his why" ... yeah 500k and a job that must be done or else his boss (Mann) tosses him out. Mann's a tough boss.
Exactly. I work so much I can’t even consistently put in an hour a day on the weekday. When they pay you to learn and you have time to attend a 9 hour language class everyday, you can become fluently quickly
People who've never mastered a second language like to throw around the word "fluent" like they know what it means. I really doubt the actor got fluent in 8 months.
I learnt Japanese🎉. But it was a long process. Years of listening practice from anime, & studying it at university only got me to basic point. However after living in Japan for the last 5 years, has me pretty fluent with an understanding of several hundred kanji, & kana. I now even think in Japanese sometimes
I feel like the skill of memorizing lines translates well to language learning retention. I can't image ever memorizing a script lol. Takes me long enough to memorize a menu in a new kitchen.
Because we don't analyze language to speak it fluently and japanese is very backwards compared to more similar languages like Spanish. Its about how much your brain has to rewire itself not the complexity of the language itself. Which the contextual aspect is still complex so... there is still that.
@@Zucr_ hmmm, I suppose for me that difference makes it easier, in the way that sometimes it’s easier to build something from the ground up than trying to renovate. Whenever I tried to learn Romance languages (from native English) I get stuck constantly fumbling between translation and using English grammar with, say, French, words. With Japanese, it’s a whole new system and so that doesn’t happen, and it becomes easier to think in Japanese. Kanji remains tough though, but it’s tough I think for everyone!
@@Zucr_ it's not backwards or any more difficult, it's just different from what you're used to and that will always be the case with any different language than your own. Look at other Indo-European languages that have a heavy emphasis on gender with words being either male or female or even neutral and sometimes they'd switch between singular and plural and tell me it won't be something completely alien for a native English speaker. Same story with Japanese but it doesn't mean it's any harder to learn than any other language, the things that just make it seem hard is kanji. Another issue tho with learning Japanese that makes it seem hard is that most grammar teaching material is kind of bad. The only sources I've found that made sense even with my still lackluster comprehension level are Cure Dolly's videos(rest in peace) and anyone who has tried to follow in her shoes ever since her passing like Juls.
I’m learning German (with Story Learning, and a native German tutor who can help me with my pronunciation). True story: I chose German over several other languages that I have dabbled in because the German word for cat is a grammatically feminine noun, and I have a female cat. Odd reason, but I have fallen in love with the language. I am determined to become fluent.
What is crazy about German, is WHO decides whether a German noun is masculine or feminine? WHY is the moon, DER Mond and the sun, DIE Sonne? The moon is traditionally feminine, and the Sun is traditionally masculine, in most cultures. And as a language, German pronounciation is quite precise, yet it contains a word, that is pronounced differently than it is written. Do you know the word for "look" in German is "gucken", but is pronounced, "kucken"? And lastly, native english speakers have a difficult time with the numbers, because they are backwards, i.E.: one and twenty is einundzwanzig.
@@erntefreudeWell it's not the moon that's masculine, it's the word "Mond" that's masculine, so it has nothing to do with culture. That's also why "Mädchen" is "das" and not "die" - it's a diminutive, so the grammatical gender is neuter not feminine even though the word translates to "girl". Technically there are rules to figure out the grammatical gender of a word, it's just that they're so complicated and contain so many exceptions, that learning them makes no sense (unless you're into linguistics and want to learn about the language instead of learning the language). It's easier to just learn the correct article in context together with the word.
Lucky you. I’m learning German only through Busuu and Duolingo, but so far so good. I wish I have a native German tutor. Don’t have the money for it though, but I have fallen in love with learning it. I’m used to learning the feminine and masculine nouns because apart from English, Spanish is also my native language as well
During Covid, I started learning Russian. The primary way I learned Russian, was watching Martial Art and Cooking Videos in Russian on CZcams. I did it that way, because I was already familiar with the vocabulary of Martial Arts and Cooking. So, I learned through context. 😊 Now, I watch Russian movies on Netflix and video podcasts on CZcams. :)
Exactly, besides motivation, learning some of these languages becomes really accessible with money. As somebody who loves Japanese I know plenty expensive courses where you only speak or write targeting teenagers fluency in a year or two, with money I would book my no return trip to Japan and subscribe immediately to these courses lol
@@Broodjemetbeleg yea but atleast they got money for content and actual classes and can make trips to japan, there is nothing better than immersion; its def harder on poorer people even with motivation lol
Japanese is only level 5 if you are learning to read and write Japanese, which is extremely difficult. As far as just learning to speak it fluently, it's fairly easy as far as pronunciation and grammar.
This! I have a N1 in the JLPT and could hold a conversation in Japanese, but don't ask me to write anything by hand because I just never learned it (and since I work online as a translator, I basically don't have to).
I'm studying mandarin about an hour a day. I was inspired to get back into languages when I got knocked down by Chronic fatigue and was stuck in bed watching K dramas on Viki. My brain slowly picked up vocab and I got exited to get into languages again. I eventually started watching more C Drama's these past 6 months so switched to studing Mandarin. I love languages and Japanese was my first love. I would love to actually get conversational in any of the 3 that I have tried to learn.
Never heard of this show. But I'm a Japanese language learner and I watched Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver. And so, I'm gonna watch this show to be challenged and inspired.
Money and time is a big one. If you have enough money to pay for a full-time program in a school and not work for 6 months, you'll progress fast. There's really no other shortcuts, you need to do a lot of input in the beginning. The fact that he is memorising lines for a job and acting out the situation probably really helps too. Role plays are very effective in language learning.
Ronan O'Gara, La Rochelle's rugby coach, inspires me to not be afraid of speaking a language. He speaks french with the thickest Munster Irish accent ever. Its kinda hilarious
I started learning Hungarian during lockdown via zoom lessons with a teacher. Really enjoyed it but found it hard to remember things or concentrate which at first I assumed was my age but turned out I had severe Long Covid. I had to drop out eventually. I have Hungarian ancestry so if I learn Hungarian, I could apply for citizenship if I wanted. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to go back to language learning or not.
I started learning Japanese when I was 15 because of family. They used to live there and I was picked to bring them back and be the translator. I would love to fulfill this for them so I study as hard as I can. ❤
where he got his motivation to do it? I think the half a mil a pop could have something to do with it. For example, I am destined to end up in a dead end Japanese corporation job to toil away the rest of my life for meager pay. My learning vibes, process and motivation are vastly different I can assure you.
I had a 2 week quarantine where is was super easy to get 10-12 hours per day of study (reading, writing, listening, speaking) because all of my meals were delivered to my door and there was literally no one to bother me.
I have been living in Japan since 2017 but I had been studying for over 10 years on and off. During Covid I had a baby so I had no capacity to learn language skills other than if it pertained to babies. I want to study again for JLPT so I can change jobs here.
Před 3 měsíci+1
Been studying alone for about 16 months now for a family trip in 2 weeks. I am worried my motivation will fall away afterwards, although I really want to take it further now I'm getting some sense of achievement. Funnily enough my vocabulary and grammar is ok for a beginner, but I still struggle to understand spoken Japanese with even Peppa Pig in Japanese often beyond me!!
Wait up!!! 😅 Let me 1'st to learn Deutschland, français, and a little bit Indonesian as well hahaha... Then going with Chinese, japanese und Greek 😂❤ I'm enjoying this video pretty much. Thanks 🙏🏼
"Tokyo Vice" was vastly underrated. It was "True Detective" set in Tokyo - less mystifying elements, but it's replaced with Yakuza. I absolutely loved "Tokyo Vice" & i envy anyone who will enjoy it on their 1st watch. Most critics liked "Tokyo Vice," but the show unfortunately did not gain a lot of viewers. The show ended with only 2 seasons, but it wrapped up its plot neatly with a solid finale.
I’ve really been interested in learning Italian as I work for an Italian company and many of my coworkers in my office are Italian. Question regarding your courses: the gold and platinum bundles look like such amazing values, but is there a way to do payment plans or would you have to bite the bullet on the the one time payment? Not many of have that kind of disposable income, especially in places like NYC where rent and the insane cost of living really limit our finances.
I'm learning Portuguese with your Portuguese uncovered courses because my son's girlfriend is Brazilian. I can recommend story learning as a method of learning. I love it.
I am learning Japanese and Russian right now and I don't really have a problem realignment my grammar in my head. I don't know if I'm just wired differently but fo me it makes alot of sense when I use super literal translation to get into the underlying reason about why each language has its grammar set up that way.
Learning Japanese is lil' hard on the beginning, but after a good time, it's easy. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji /ひらがな／カタカナ/漢字 after that, make words and grammar in SOV order. I'm learned Japanese in 3 years, my motivations were anime, music and culture. If anyone wants to learn it, keep going. Or in Japanese : はじめましよとがんばってくれえ。💪🇯🇵
As native Polish in my 20-ish years I've learned how to speak fluent Arabic in less than 5 years. Ever since I was watching Anime (it's been over 20 years) I managed to picked up some here and there. With some YT videos managed to learn the basics. Oh, and I also should mention I did learn English and managed to do interpretation from Arabic to English/Polish on-go. Most of my language skills I managed to obtain on my own. I'm looking into Spanish now, loved it after watching Narcos and Queen of the South.
I discovered my love for Filipino/Tagalog language during the pandemic I have been listening to thw language for yeara but lockdowns put me in that learn it mode
I was working on base in Sasebo, Japan,but was not really picking it up. I got married in the fall of 2019, and started living in the Japanese culture. COVID allowed me time to study. Last year I started using Duolingo to push more vocabulary and lean kana. Now I’m getting into verb conjugation and Kanji. I’m still translating as I go, but I’m starting to think more in Japanese and not have to translate every time.
He isn't fluent. I live in Japan and am a translator lol. His accent is horrible and I couldn't understand most of the stuff he said. Good effort, but saying that guy is fluent is like saying I am a healthy weight, just ain't gonna happen hahahaha
Haven’t seen your name in years. You speak pretty fluently from what I remember and your accent still doesn’t sound native level. I agree. Japanese people, more than foreigners, will have really hard time understanding what people are saying of the accent isn’t right, so him holding a conversation with random people like that seems unlikely.
I've been wanting to try and watch this show. Now seeing his progress from S1 to the next might be my motivator to actually watch. But for those that do watch Tokyo Vice, is it a show you'd recommend?
English isn't my first language but this was being taught in schools here in the Philippines. But I started learning Spanish and Japanese during the lockdowns. I know a few phrases as my work often leaves me exhausted! But the reason? Well, I have both Spanish and Japanese blood in my family and at the same time, historically, we were colonized by Spain and Japan occupied the country during WWII. If given a chance to continue, I would be proud to say, I know all the languages of the countries that colonized the Philippines - US included
Covid is what reinvigorated my language learning. It was in covid that I started playing VRChat, met an Israeli in there, and successfully revived my Hebrew. The fun of reviving Hebrew compelled me to study Spanish, which went great. I've now been studying Arabic and German which is going fairly well.
As someone who is studying Japanese it is a lot. However, if you make the time and have a genuine "why?" like they say you can learn a language faster. I still have not had my "click day" as it were. It is harder when you do not have the vast resources at your disposal. However, there is a vast wealth of knowledge right here on CZcams. There are no to low cost methods if you look. I see all the salty jealousy in the comments. Yes $500,000 per episode would be a life changing why. Being an already successful actor gives extra resources that most do not have. However, if you have a reason and the will to do something, you make ways not excuses for why not. I did not find this video to be helpful extra motivation. I do still appreciate the sharing of prominent success stories in language learning. Thank you for your hard work.
It's a very interesting true story about a sociopathic journalist who got a few people "disappeared" by the Yakuza.... (I've read the book too) Japanese is more like a category 3 language if you don't learn the writing. Romanji helps enormously with the general pronunciation 👍
I was an extra in a movie with Jackie Chan and yes- he was given his lines by a coach and he repeated it till they call “action”. So the gap between him hearing the lines and saying them was very close!
Meaning no disrespect toward Ansel, great actor, love him on the show. But to be able to spend 4 hours a day learning a new language (or anything), it probably mean you don't have to spend 8 hours a day on the job that puts food on the table. I am also trying to learn a new language (German), but I could never spend 4 hours on it everyday and still do my job and maintain a healthy amount of social and physical activity.
Weird... isn't Romanian a latin language? I don’t know much about it as it's to isolated of a language for me to care, but I remember checking it out and seeing lots of latin grammar Italian didn't even have....
You overestimate Tom Hiddleston by a lot. As a polyglot who spent decades learning in country over decades and with friends live once the internet and voice chat became more prevalent, I've heard Tom's attempts and he strikes me as a guy who highly overestimates his skills.
Think this guy learned better Japanese? 👉🏼 czcams.com/video/LGTuB65iIig/video.htmlsi=VsZ45DuXwdQew__0f
hes good for sure hes not that good as you guys are pumping him up
He’s not “fluent” and there are no short cuts to becoming so
Getting in top shape for a role is impressive but learning a language is another level of commitment.
He didn't really learn Japanese, long way to go.
For that kind of money, and given that then is your ONLY job, I'll take that deal any day of the week. I struggle to balance a day job with desperate attempts at learning Japanese, and if those 40 hours a week were taken away for half a year, I have no doubt I'd be running circles around my current level, backwards. It's also, since you address it, why I am WAY more impressed with a regular guy (or girl) getting into killer shape while holding a regular job than with, say, Daniel Craig going to THE best PT in the business and pretty much telling him "this is how I want to look in 9 months, and I have all day during that period". Mind you, hats off to both of them, but still, in their case it's not something they are doing on top of their job - it IS their job.
He has one of the highest motivations to do so. His very livelihood depends on it for the acceptable level on what he is suppose to accomplish. Although he won't likely reach a high level in the language, that is not the goal of the director. He will improve as long as the series continues.
The show is cool because it jumps from English to Japanese all through the episodes. It flows really well in the show.
The actor's Japanese is awful though. At least in the first scene being shown here
@@RiccardoGabarriniKazeatari I would go nowhere near saying he's awful. Ansel's individual sounds may still sound similar to how he speaks English (pronouncing じょう like "Joe," a common mistake with English speakers), he has the idea of the rhythm and intonation of the language, which sells it so much more to me because that's one of the main things that actors can't just copy. They have to study the language and be able to pick up on the inflections and breaths people take to sound fluent. Also, his ぜひ at the end was almost perfect.
His pronunciation was a bit poor to believe he was fluent in the first season. He did more than the others anyway and I was impressed that there were a lot of Japanese lines in the show. Actors have high self-esteem, are not shy and are communicative. This speeds up the learning process incredibly.
hes good dont get me wrong but notice how he says i had to learn all the hiragana, which he doesnt even mention the real hard part which anyone who knows knows
@@user-de1dj9hd7e if you're referring to kanji, it seems like at 4:20, you get a look at what might be Ansel's notebook, which does have it. Not sure if it's actually his or just a prop shot for the video.
@@alexlei2235 right but if he realy knew or knows what is hard he would have said something else which he didnt
@@user-de1dj9hd7e isn't that a personal thing lol?
by the second season his pronunciation sounds much more natural, that hard work was very noticeable
It's really obvious how much better and more comfortable of a Japanese speaker he is in the 2nd season even to me, an English only speaker.
I study Japanese about 4 hours a day as well, and I feel like I make a lot of progress. I usually study vocab and grammar for 2 hours a day, and practice my listening and/or reading for another 2 hours a day. I have to keep it regimented as I'm still in college full time getting my computer science degree so I'm a busy bee studying human language and programming languages.
Very impressive!
Wow, I’m also studying for a degree in comp sci and learning japanese on the side. With everything else on top it’s really hard to find the time even though I love it😢
In summer I’m going to grind 5h+ a day, though, which is gonna be so fun🤩
haha, CS and learning Japanese here too!
Omg same
@@zubinzuro lol, so many of us, maybe we will cross paths in the future
If I was paid $500k per episode and didn’t have to worry about being a broke ass normie with rent and bills to pay, yes, I could learn Japanese in 8 months.
Pretty much, this 😂
Agree
No bro you would learn it in 7 months
🤜 🤛
Yes bro, I already speak Japanese
i do it for 5 months
Half a million per episode would motivate anyone to learn something 😂
すごい!
As a person who is in the very basic stages of learning Japanese this is actually motivational for me😮.
He didn't really learn Japanese, long way to go.
@@sethaldrich6902 Did he told you?
When actors dedicate this much to learning a skill for a show, you know it will be a good one. I remember watching the very first trailer and reading comments from japenese people saying he is really good, a next lever immersion.
It's still pretty fucking impressive how fast he learned Japanese, a language that's very hard to learn for the average (non-Japanese) person. And he really does speak it (as in understands it), he is not just simply memorizing his lines. Check out this clip where he's on a Japenese type of comic con and the reporters ask him all kinds of questions in Japanese followed by him answering in Japanese.
if he was working on it that hard it wasnt that good but yes it was understandable with what he said
I don't see the clip?
I did 3 years Japanese in primary school and high school here in Australia and the 2 years at University. I never got past beginner level.
@@user-de1dj9hd7ejust like your English.
@@TheRyanos Japanese isn't that hard for a Chinese or Korean
I lived in Tokyo for three years and was just becoming conversational in Japanese by time I left. I was able to read a couple hundred Kanji and memorized katakana and hiragana. It was fun learning the language. It was a challenge. Every day I was better able to communicate. I admire how committed Ansel has been in learning Japanese.
Couple hundred Kanji isn't close to conversational
Conversational means speaking. Vocabulary. Kanji means reading. There’s a difference. I can hold a conversation, even if my knowledge of Kanji was limited.
@@BonanzaRoad 頑張る!
I became completely fluent in French during COVID and now live in France and only speak in French all day, with an accent so good the French often think I'm French. Voila quoi.
Awesome!
How? I've lived in France 20 years and still sound English 😂
Sure you do.
from listening and copying I assume@@jacquelinebye6484
@@jacquelinebye6484 Shadowing for hours per day. We speak very little per day even in our own languages. So just a few hours of continuous shadowing podcasts, audio/videos etc. per day and you can catch up on your pronunciation. But you have to intentionally try to copy the pronunciations, not just repeat the words.
so i just need a life changing amount of money and a lot of free time?
No, you just need to use the time u have wisely. Find the material that suits you best and stick to it. Whatever time you can afford is good enough as long as you stick to it, you'll be fine.
You can use the time that you whine on CZcams 😂
Absolutely love the StoryLearning method. Been going through the Japanese beginner course and now have the intermediate courses as well. It's so much better than any other method I have tried and it makes sense! Make more progress on my Japanese in 6 months than I ever have before. 100% recommend to everyone who wants to learn a language
I just started your Chinese Story learning course. I’m enjoying it. I’ve been working on learning for a few years. I’ve learned a lot but was totally stuck on not comprehending what people were saying to me. I’ve got great hope now, that I’ll get through that barrier. Videos like this, showing someone who succeeded in language learning are very inspiring.
Japanese is easy to pronounce relative to other languages for English speakers. Chinese would be more difficult. It’s the other elements of Japanese like the written alphabets and the grammatical structure which make Japanese difficult for English speakers.
They are both very difficult!
@@storylearninghe has a very good accent and intonation. Impressive! But I wonder whether he learned to read and write kanji, as well as kana (which is pretty easy)?
I had about 3 years of college Japanese, plus I worked in Japan for a couple of years and married into a Japanese family. I found it really easy to pronounce, and I wondered whether that was because the sounds were so similar to Spanish, which I had studied for a couple of years in school. But kanji was my downfall! (I was so envious of friends who seemed to learn kanji easily.) So I went back to Spanish and made inroads on Portuguese after Covid hit. It’s really difficult to get beyond an intermediate level without at least being able to read news stories and such.
@@roxyiconoclastI doubt he can read Japanese above an elementary level if most of his time was spent focusing on spoken Japanese specifically. Even really other proficient learners still take over 2 years of constant study to be able to read fluently.
@@coolbrotherf127agree
@@coolbrotherf127I wouldn’t necessarily doubt it. The ability to read a language will generally come faster than the ability to speak a language, or rather to converse in it, and the ability to write it. Of course we’re talking about a secondary language and not one’s native language where the reverse is more often the case since you know . . . Immersion; but provided you learn a secondary language in school, or are self taught, reading is going to be your foundation for study.
He's paid millions and has private tutors 24_7 and you don't. That's it.
During COVID I managed to go from being completely helpless in Korean to being conversational by the time restrictions got lifted
Just for fun I began to learn Japanese. Now I’m fascinated of the completely different grammar and writing concept.
When people don't have to worry about money, they can definitely achieve everything! They just stop doing everything in their lives, to focus on the 1 activity that pays their lifestyle!
Thanks for bringing it to our attention that season 2 dropped, Olly! It’s fascinating to learn what went on behind the scenes for Ansel to prepare for the role as it’s something I’ve wondered about.
Nobody makes content like yours… keep it up!
Dropped… it’s almost over
What a finale, amazing show.
A common theme i see among westerners who are conversationally fluent in Japanese is that they spent a considerable time in Japan and learning Japanese is essential their full time job.
This was exactly how I learned Japanese. Most language books are based on grammar, which is much easier and less important than people realise. What you need is vocabulary and sentence structures, so I just asked people how to say various phrases, and extrapolated the meanings, e.g like he says here, if you learn "Is it alright if I smoke?" you know how to say "Is it alright if I .....?" and just substitute in the word you need in the situation.
Being around Japanese people and trying to speak to them was probably the biggest push for him. As someone who's family moved to Germany when I was 10, I can tell you, you never learn a language faster than when you are immersed in it and depend on learning it to communicate with mostly anyone.
As a full time English teacher in Japan, I have to commit into making time to study 🇯🇵 daily. Even if I’m daydreaming, sleeping, or “relaxing” I try to find a way to get it in my brain. I don’t have time for language school, so I have to improvise my learning. My advantage is that I speak other languages that make it easier to learn it. It’s hard work, folks!! Keep going, though!!! 😊
I find the standards also work backward. As a Thai-Chinese native, it was much easier to learn Japanese than to learn French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German to me. (I have a degree in Western language interpretation, btw, not that I love any self-torturing challenges.) 😅😊😂
He's paid to learn Japanese. Very, very, very well. That's it.
He being such a great actor helps him to pick a lot of subtleties and tonalities from the language. The work is massive though and coming from an a english speaker more.
I bought your spanish, french, portuguese, german and russian stories. guess I'm learning 4 more languages than just portuguese 😂😂
Step One; Be a rich actor and have every opportunity at your disposal.
Or Step one buy a textbook and open a CZcams account grab your bollocks and start learning. Put the effort in and regardless of how much money you have you will be able to speak the language.
My Japanese hasn't improved since taking the JLPT years ago. However i use it most days to chat with friends. They have gotten used to my broken Japanese so that's good enough.
During Covid I leaned into learning Mandarin, and the following year wrote, recorded, and released my first album of original songs with Chinese lyrics. Feedback welcomed! Thanks to you Olly for all you do. I have your books in multiple languages 🤘
this show was his big breakthrough thats a lot of motivation
Tokyo vice is one of those shows that transitions really well between English and Japanese
Congratulations to Ansel for working hard to pick up the language and immerse himself.
I believe one needs to understand your native language and grammar terminology to understand the textbook explanations, i.e. transitive and intransitive verbs, conjugating a verb, etc. Then one is not "stuck" when trying to understand the English explanation of a foreign language. Reading and writing Japanese can be quite difficult.
"zero to fluent in just a few months" is a bit of an overstatement, no?
"he found his why" ... yeah 500k and a job that must be done or else his boss (Mann) tosses him out. Mann's a tough boss.
I don't think he meets any definition of fluent.
@@rsmith02 not according to this video 😂
Exactly. I work so much I can’t even consistently put in an hour a day on the weekday. When they pay you to learn and you have time to attend a 9 hour language class everyday, you can become fluently quickly
People who've never mastered a second language like to throw around the word "fluent" like they know what it means. I really doubt the actor got fluent in 8 months.
I learnt Japanese🎉. But it was a long process. Years of listening practice from anime, & studying it at university only got me to basic point. However after living in Japan for the last 5 years, has me pretty fluent with an understanding of several hundred kanji, & kana. I now even think in Japanese sometimes
Hat's off to Ansel! And great video, Olly!
I feel like the skill of memorizing lines translates well to language learning retention. I can't image ever memorizing a script lol. Takes me long enough to memorize a menu in a new kitchen.
I have never understood why Japanese (well, Kana and spoken Japanese) is considered so difficult. It's got an efficient and understandable structure.
Because we don't analyze language to speak it fluently and japanese is very backwards compared to more similar languages like Spanish. Its about how much your brain has to rewire itself not the complexity of the language itself. Which the contextual aspect is still complex so... there is still that.
@@Zucr_ hmmm, I suppose for me that difference makes it easier, in the way that sometimes it’s easier to build something from the ground up than trying to renovate. Whenever I tried to learn Romance languages (from native English) I get stuck constantly fumbling between translation and using English grammar with, say, French, words. With Japanese, it’s a whole new system and so that doesn’t happen, and it becomes easier to think in Japanese. Kanji remains tough though, but it’s tough I think for everyone!
@@Zucr_ it's not backwards or any more difficult, it's just different from what you're used to and that will always be the case with any different language than your own. Look at other Indo-European languages that have a heavy emphasis on gender with words being either male or female or even neutral and sometimes they'd switch between singular and plural and tell me it won't be something completely alien for a native English speaker. Same story with Japanese but it doesn't mean it's any harder to learn than any other language, the things that just make it seem hard is kanji. Another issue tho with learning Japanese that makes it seem hard is that most grammar teaching material is kind of bad. The only sources I've found that made sense even with my still lackluster comprehension level are Cure Dolly's videos(rest in peace) and anyone who has tried to follow in her shoes ever since her passing like Juls.
I’m learning German (with Story Learning, and a native German tutor who can help me with my pronunciation). True story: I chose German over several other languages that I have dabbled in because the German word for cat is a grammatically feminine noun, and I have a female cat. Odd reason, but I have fallen in love with the language. I am determined to become fluent.
What is crazy about German, is WHO decides whether a German noun is masculine or feminine? WHY is the moon, DER Mond and the sun, DIE Sonne? The moon is traditionally feminine, and the Sun is traditionally masculine, in most cultures. And as a language, German pronounciation is quite precise, yet it contains a word, that is pronounced differently than it is written. Do you know the word for "look" in German is "gucken", but is pronounced, "kucken"? And lastly, native english speakers have a difficult time with the numbers, because they are backwards, i.E.: one and twenty is einundzwanzig.
@@erntefreudeWell it's not the moon that's masculine, it's the word "Mond" that's masculine, so it has nothing to do with culture. That's also why "Mädchen" is "das" and not "die" - it's a diminutive, so the grammatical gender is neuter not feminine even though the word translates to "girl". Technically there are rules to figure out the grammatical gender of a word, it's just that they're so complicated and contain so many exceptions, that learning them makes no sense (unless you're into linguistics and want to learn about the language instead of learning the language). It's easier to just learn the correct article in context together with the word.
Lucky you. I’m learning German only through Busuu and Duolingo, but so far so good. I wish I have a native German tutor. Don’t have the money for it though, but I have fallen in love with learning it. I’m used to learning the feminine and masculine nouns because apart from English, Spanish is also my native language as well
@@erntefreudeI would just accept the way a language is and accept the rules it has unless you want to dive deep into linguistics
During Covid, I started learning Russian.
The primary way I learned Russian, was watching Martial Art and Cooking Videos in Russian on CZcams.
I did it that way, because I was already familiar with the vocabulary of Martial Arts and Cooking. So, I learned through context. 😊
Now, I watch Russian movies on Netflix and video podcasts on CZcams. :)
"I wonder where he got his inspiration" ... well, helloooo, $500K per episode? I would learn 2 of the hardest language for that amount per episode
Exactly, besides motivation, learning some of these languages becomes really accessible with money. As somebody who loves Japanese I know plenty expensive courses where you only speak or write targeting teenagers fluency in a year or two, with money I would book my no return trip to Japan and subscribe immediately to these courses lol
@@oumarroukia254link those courses rq
Won't guarantee you actually succeed 😂
@@Broodjemetbeleg yea but atleast they got money for content and actual classes and can make trips to japan, there is nothing better than immersion; its def harder on poorer people even with motivation lol
One thing i loved about the Tokyo Vice show was that the Japanese actors spoke English with a thick Japanese accent
Except Jason 😊
Japanese is only level 5 if you are learning to read and write Japanese, which is extremely difficult. As far as just learning to speak it fluently, it's fairly easy as far as pronunciation and grammar.
This! I have a N1 in the JLPT and could hold a conversation in Japanese, but don't ask me to write anything by hand because I just never learned it (and since I work online as a translator, I basically don't have to).
I'm studying mandarin about an hour a day. I was inspired to get back into languages when I got knocked down by Chronic fatigue and was stuck in bed watching K dramas on Viki. My brain slowly picked up vocab and I got exited to get into languages again. I eventually started watching more C Drama's these past 6 months so switched to studing Mandarin. I love languages and Japanese was my first love. I would love to actually get conversational in any of the 3 that I have tried to learn.
Never heard of this show. But I'm a Japanese language learner and I watched Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars and Baby Driver. And so, I'm gonna watch this show to be challenged and inspired.
Seeing his Instagram where hes now doing calligraphy and art pieces with kana characters and all is pretty inspiring. He's truly embracing the culture
Moved to Okinawa to learn Japanese. Making good progress.
Money and time is a big one. If you have enough money to pay for a full-time program in a school and not work for 6 months, you'll progress fast. There's really no other shortcuts, you need to do a lot of input in the beginning. The fact that he is memorising lines for a job and acting out the situation probably really helps too. Role plays are very effective in language learning.
Fascinating story - very impressive 🤓
Glad you enjoyed it!
Ronan O'Gara, La Rochelle's rugby coach, inspires me to not be afraid of speaking a language. He speaks french with the thickest Munster Irish accent ever. Its kinda hilarious
I started learning Hungarian during lockdown via zoom lessons with a teacher. Really enjoyed it but found it hard to remember things or concentrate which at first I assumed was my age but turned out I had severe Long Covid. I had to drop out eventually. I have Hungarian ancestry so if I learn Hungarian, I could apply for citizenship if I wanted. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to go back to language learning or not.
I started learning Japanese when I was 15 because of family. They used to live there and I was picked to bring them back and be the translator. I would love to fulfill this for them so I study as hard as I can. ❤
where he got his motivation to do it? I think the half a mil a pop could have something to do with it. For example, I am destined to end up in a dead end Japanese corporation job to toil away the rest of my life for meager pay. My learning vibes, process and motivation are vastly different I can assure you.
Great video!
Glad you liked it!
This video is very inspiring
I had a 2 week quarantine where is was super easy to get 10-12 hours per day of study (reading, writing, listening, speaking) because all of my meals were delivered to my door and there was literally no one to bother me.
I have been living in Japan since 2017 but I had been studying for over 10 years on and off. During Covid I had a baby so I had no capacity to learn language skills other than if it pertained to babies. I want to study again for JLPT so I can change jobs here.
Been studying alone for about 16 months now for a family trip in 2 weeks.
I am worried my motivation will fall away afterwards, although I really want to take it further now I'm getting some sense of achievement. Funnily enough my vocabulary and grammar is ok for a beginner, but I still struggle to understand spoken Japanese with even Peppa Pig in Japanese often beyond me!!
Just saying at 1min 20sec approx you missed an opportunity to add Joey speaking French from Friends. Great video again!
Wait up!!! 😅 Let me 1'st to learn Deutschland, français, and a little bit Indonesian as well hahaha... Then going with Chinese, japanese und Greek 😂❤ I'm enjoying this video pretty much. Thanks 🙏🏼
"Tokyo Vice" was vastly underrated. It was "True Detective" set in Tokyo - less mystifying elements, but it's replaced with Yakuza. I absolutely loved "Tokyo Vice" & i envy anyone who will enjoy it on their 1st watch. Most critics liked "Tokyo Vice," but the show unfortunately did not gain a lot of viewers. The show ended with only 2 seasons, but it wrapped up its plot neatly with a solid finale.
I’ve really been interested in learning Italian as I work for an Italian company and many of my coworkers in my office are Italian. Question regarding your courses: the gold and platinum bundles look like such amazing values, but is there a way to do payment plans or would you have to bite the bullet on the the one time payment? Not many of have that kind of disposable income, especially in places like NYC where rent and the insane cost of living really limit our finances.
Hey, my wife and I were in Japan in March/April of 2020!
I'm learning Portuguese with your Portuguese uncovered courses because my son's girlfriend is Brazilian. I can recommend story learning as a method of learning. I love it.
So glad you love it!
I am learning Japanese and Russian right now and I don't really have a problem realignment my grammar in my head. I don't know if I'm just wired differently but fo me it makes alot of sense when I use super literal translation to get into the underlying reason about why each language has its grammar set up that way.
I've seen him speak on some japanese Tv show, he is truely impressive.
Would love to see you do a video on how soccer players learn languages fast idk if you have already but that would be fun
Football and rugby players
I learned Korean, also a V rated language, during the shutdown. Just for the challenge. It is fun. 😊
Learning Japanese is lil' hard on the beginning, but after a good time, it's easy. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji /ひらがな／カタカナ/漢字 after that, make words and grammar in SOV order. I'm learned Japanese in 3 years, my motivations were anime, music and culture. If anyone wants to learn it, keep going. Or in Japanese : はじめましよとがんばってくれえ。💪🇯🇵
Take a look at the work of actor Ken Duken. He speaks German, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Norwegian.
As native Polish in my 20-ish years I've learned how to speak fluent Arabic in less than 5 years. Ever since I was watching Anime (it's been over 20 years) I managed to picked up some here and there. With some YT videos managed to learn the basics. Oh, and I also should mention I did learn English and managed to do interpretation from Arabic to English/Polish on-go. Most of my language skills I managed to obtain on my own. I'm looking into Spanish now, loved it after watching Narcos and Queen of the South.
I discovered my love for Filipino/Tagalog language during the pandemic I have been listening to thw language for yeara but lockdowns put me in that learn it mode
Would you release a short stories book in Esperanto, please?
yeah...ansel makes me feel pretty bad. my mandarin classes were shut down and i basically haven't done anything since...is guilt enough motivation?
$500k per episode! 😮
I was working on base in Sasebo, Japan,but was not really picking it up. I got married in the fall of 2019, and started living in the Japanese culture. COVID allowed me time to study. Last year I started using Duolingo to push more vocabulary and lean kana. Now I’m getting into verb conjugation and Kanji. I’m still translating as I go, but I’m starting to think more in Japanese and not have to translate every time.
He isn't fluent. I live in Japan and am a translator lol. His accent is horrible and I couldn't understand most of the stuff he said. Good effort, but saying that guy is fluent is like saying I am a healthy weight, just ain't gonna happen hahahaha
Haven’t seen your name in years. You speak pretty fluently from what I remember and your accent still doesn’t sound native level. I agree. Japanese people, more than foreigners, will have really hard time understanding what people are saying of the accent isn’t right, so him holding a conversation with random people like that seems unlikely.
I've been wanting to try and watch this show. Now seeing his progress from S1 to the next might be my motivator to actually watch. But for those that do watch Tokyo Vice, is it a show you'd recommend?
Yes absolutely. Just finished season 2, incredible show and finale.
English isn't my first language but this was being taught in schools here in the Philippines. But I started learning Spanish and Japanese during the lockdowns. I know a few phrases as my work often leaves me exhausted! But the reason? Well, I have both Spanish and Japanese blood in my family and at the same time, historically, we were colonized by Spain and Japan occupied the country during WWII. If given a chance to continue, I would be proud to say, I know all the languages of the countries that colonized the Philippines - US included
His girlfriend of, like, 10 years was Japanese. He might have started seriously studying it when he began this show, but he had a base beforehand.
That chart killed me..
Of course! i would learn it twice
パンデミックの間に私が日本語の勉強始まった。今頃日本に住んでいます。
Wasn’t aware of this show, now I’m curious.
Covid is what reinvigorated my language learning. It was in covid that I started playing VRChat, met an Israeli in there, and successfully revived my Hebrew.
The fun of reviving Hebrew compelled me to study Spanish, which went great. I've now been studying Arabic and German which is going fairly well.
My Japanese really took a hit during covid, I lost all motivation with no opportunities to practice
As someone who is studying Japanese it is a lot. However, if you make the time and have a genuine "why?" like they say you can learn a language faster. I still have not had my "click day" as it were. It is harder when you do not have the vast resources at your disposal. However, there is a vast wealth of knowledge right here on CZcams. There are no to low cost methods if you look. I see all the salty jealousy in the comments. Yes $500,000 per episode would be a life changing why. Being an already successful actor gives extra resources that most do not have. However, if you have a reason and the will to do something, you make ways not excuses for why not. I did not find this video to be helpful extra motivation. I do still appreciate the sharing of prominent success stories in language learning. Thank you for your hard work.
It's a very interesting true story about a sociopathic journalist who got a few people "disappeared" by the Yakuza....
(I've read the book too)
Japanese is more like a category 3 language if you don't learn the writing. Romanji helps enormously with the general pronunciation 👍
If you are young and have 9 to 4 hours to burn through intensive language classes daily, then go for it.
I was an extra in a movie with Jackie Chan and yes- he was given his lines by a coach and he repeated it till they call “action”. So the gap between him hearing the lines and saying them was very close!
Meaning no disrespect toward Ansel, great actor, love him on the show.
But to be able to spend 4 hours a day learning a new language (or anything), it probably mean you don't have to spend 8 hours a day on the job that puts food on the table.
I am also trying to learn a new language (German), but I could never spend 4 hours on it everyday and still do my job and maintain a healthy amount of social and physical activity.
I’m currently stationed in Sasebo Japan 🇯🇵 and I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to be that fluent in Japanese.
😂😂😂
I studied Chinese in college and it was way easier than Spanish. No conjugations... what a relief!
Weird... isn't Romanian a latin language? I don’t know much about it as it's to isolated of a language for me to care, but I remember checking it out and seeing lots of latin grammar Italian didn't even have....
sTILL NOT FLUENT, BUT i HAD BEGUN PRACTICE THESE 6 LANGUAGES TRYING TO USE AND IMPROVE THEM EVER SINCE, USING AN ASSIMILATIVE APPROACH
I studied Danish for 4 hours a day and I became proficient in 3 months.
You overestimate Tom Hiddleston by a lot.
As a polyglot who spent decades learning in country over decades and with friends live once the internet and voice chat became more prevalent, I've heard Tom's attempts and he strikes me as a guy who highly overestimates his skills.