More on Japanese from manga

Posted on March 25, 2005 by Brigid Alverson

Here is an event for those who are really serious about learning Japanese from manga—and are going to be in San Francisco in May. It’s a talk by the author of a book called Japanese the Manga Way.
There are several books on the market on how to learn Japanese using manga. I think it’s a good idea. When I first moved to a French-speaking area of Switzerland, over a decade ago, I found that my college French wasn’t up to the challenge of actually living in the language. I started reading a local paper that had lots of lurid crimes and juicy scandals, and I found it was a great textbook, for two reasons: 1. It was written in the local vernacular, not academic French, and 2. When you’re in the middle of a story about a murderous customs agent or the latest meusli scandal (yes they had them!), and you find a word you don’t know, you’re likely to go look it up right away. Reading a foreign language is hard enough; reading something boring in a foreign language is excruciating. So I like the idea of using something inherently interesting as a learning tool.
That shouldn’t be a great revelation, really. Maybe my French would be better if we had been reading Asterix in college instead of the little canned articles in our textbooks.

About Brigid Alverson

Brigid Alverson has been reading comics since she was 4. After earning an MFA in printmaking, she headed to New York to become a famous artist but ended up working with words instead of pictures, first as a book editor and later as a newspaper reporter. She started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters’ reading habits and now covers manga, comics and graphic novels as a freelancer for School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Comic Book Resources, the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and Robot 6. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Now settled in the outskirts of Boston, Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters.
This entry was posted in Mangablog. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to More on Japanese from manga

  1. Tivome says:
    March 25, 2005 at 4:50 pm

    Hey another manga blog! Cool beans…

    As for learning Japanese from manga.. there’s no better way of learning a language while being entertained at the same time. Yeah many people will say that you don’t learn a lot of formal Japanese.. so what? A lot of Japanese kids don’t understand the formal style anymore. Maybe gaijin shouldn’t be talking in the way they do in manga at first, but if your goal is to understand another cultuure through the use of their language, there’s no better medium. Plus when you go gaga over the anime adaptation, you’ll train your listening skills as well. There is just no better way to learn a foreign language without living there, IMHO.

  2. anastacia says:
    March 31, 2005 at 11:41 am

    Hey Jon did’t know you are reading this too :0. Greets

  3. bell says:
    December 19, 2006 at 2:59 pm

    Reading mangas are realy amazing. It is so cool how people have done this. I wish that they would just tanslate them. I luv manga but it is realy hard for some people to lurl a diferent language. Japanse rook!

Comments are closed.