That said, you are dead on about missing nuances. A lot of (maybe most?) fansubbers are not actually fluent in Japanese and it shows.

As it is, I can definitely say I’ve learned stuff from watching subbed anime, although my MAL total days is just a meagre 8.9. XD

Anyway, it’s nice to see a more positive view on L1 subs, that was something I’d come to decide for myself over a course of trial and error, and hoped it could be reconsidered. I think the thing is, people who are at a more advanced stage often forget what it’s like to be a real beginner, and don’t necessarily fully appreciate that perspective. At the real beginning, you don’t understand *anything*. It’s often difficult to keep things fun when that’s the case. Feeling obliged to listen to a lot of weird sounding gibberish you don’t understand, even if you have pretty pictures to go with it, is potentially a good way to end up frustrated and disliking your target language – especially if you really wanted to watch that show and now you can’t enjoy it fully because you have no idea what’s going on. I find I actually pick up far more words when I use the subs, because there’s an easy way to make the connection between a word and its meaning, and it’s easier to pick up on it when a word is being used multiple times. For instance, to use a simple example, if the subs say:

‘What pretty flowers!’
‘Yes, the flowers are at their best this time of year, aren’t they?’

and you’re listening attentively, you can pick up that the word はな keeps being used in sentences that you know are likely to (not 100% guaranteed, because subs aren’t always totally literal) to contain the word flower. jc’s example of ‘Shut up!’ made me smile, as that’s actually how I learned that, from keeping hearing ‘Urusai!’ and seeing that the subs said ‘Shut up!’ (thank you, Tales of the Abyss for that one). Without the subs? It’d just have been another word in a mass of incomprehensible words. I might have looked it up eventually, but I think it would’ve taken me much longer to click ‘Hey, this word keeps coming up, what is it?’, and look it up in a dictionary to see what it meant. In the meantime, I would’ve become extremely frustrated by the amount I didn’t understand. It wasn’t a particularly efficient way to learn words, or even get used to the sounds of Japanese.

So what I do now is, I watch with subs, then put the audio on in the background later (especially while doing reps, and when I get bored of music. I use episodes of anime as a reward for doing reps, it’s not a bad timeboxing method, reps, episode, more reps). Or sometimes, now I’m getting better able to understand a bit more, if it’s still entertaining without subs, I’ll watch without them, then with them so I can understand the show fully and check I wasn’t totally wrong about what I thought I understood, then audio in the background again. As you say, there are lots of ways to use subs. What is important however is that the person listens *attentively*. You need to be able to listen to the Japanese, as well as reading the subs (so a fast reading speed helps). I know myself, if I didn’t pay attention, I’d remember the show as though I’d seen it in English (although this is becoming less of a problem as I become more accustomed to Japanese). So, there is still some caution recommended, but it can work out fine if you’re aware of the potential issues and engaging actively with the target language.

So, 朝令暮改? Definitely think it’s a good thing in this case. : ) And now I’m going to watch Durarara!! With subs. (that show is also great as it has a lot of written Japanese on screen so you get a little reading practice too, recommend it)

over at D-addict they have quite a list of subs (in many different languages)
I’m just starting to do Sentences (figured it would be a little more helpful than MCD’s early on, I mean to my understanding the real benefit of MCD comes from the context, but if I can’t read any of the context it wouldn’t help me much, right?).
So my question is would be be safe to turn the J/E subtitles into srs cards?
My main concern is I may not get some of the nuances, since I’m JUST starting out with the sentences, my knowledge is quite small.

thx in advance to anyone that can help me.

I’m not sure I’d recommend this for widescreen usage though, but then again, it’s just more space for Japanese 🙂

Even then, you often don’t hear things clearly (Did that word start with a “D” like sound or a “CH” like sound?)

But as you get more into the intermediate stage L1 subtitles can be useful when you know many/most of the words said in a line. You can then match up individual unknown words (and get a LOT of grammar listening practice.)

Sadly, you will still have to deal with the clarity issue.

I really favor L2 subtitles (I’m learning Cantonese, so finding good audio/video with closely matching subtitles is a bit of a challenge as the written language isn’t word for word with the spoken language.)

Most of my studying involves mining words and sentences from videos with (often lame) L2 subtitles. It has increased my abilities a LOT. I don’t even try to SRS the stuff, I just keep watching / picking out words and sentences and saving them in a big spreadsheet. The repetition in the videos themselves is consistently increasing my comprehension and making the process faster and faster.

“Better than nothing” is exactly how’d I’d describe L1 subtitles. But if it keeps you going, it is golden. The worst method is the one that makes you quit. As in most of life: Success = Persistence.

You can find it [the movie] at nicovideo.jp, just type in the keywords 日本語 吹き替え and you’ll come across quite a few movies…oldies but goodies 懐ムービー！

go to youtube->game you like in japanese + 実況(or not.. it usually just pops up) = win. Make sure someone is talking in the background. These have no subs, so I often keep my 互いに辞書 next to the video to quickly type words here and there.

Also for those who like call of poopy games, you’ll find a plethora of voice overs for them in jap!! I think I saw one video on part 100+ something.. so there’s a lot lol.

Oh and one of the great thing about this… no anime voice, or movie drama voice.. straight raw from someone our age ^_^

VI. Read the L1 subtitles, then watch without subtitles, then (hopefully some time later, maybe after listening to the audio in the background) watch the episode or movie with subtitles.

A lot of, errr, “downloadable” anime comes with L1 subs that you can extract as text. You can also extract subs while ripping DVDs with a bit more effort.

I remember my subtitle-less purist days. I once made my fellow AJATTer sit with me through the movie Outrage (『アウトレイジ』) … maybe not the best choice, given that most of the movie is people screaming このやろう！ while killing each other, unless you catch how the characters are related to each other. (I appreciated a bit more on the second watch-through.)

Cheers,
Andrew

TLDR; Katz I love your method, please give thought to (some) L1 subs during the oft-forgot long-ass kanji phase that seems to drag on forever without any discernable increase in japanese skill (even though there is quite the increase)