Anyway, do you happen to know some good Dutch (Nederlands) content for me to watch?

What would be pretty abhorrent to me: having to play the understudy for a textbook dialogue voiceover artist. And people saying that’s the only damn way I’m going to learn. Maybe that’s just my experience with textbook dialogues and there’s some really riveting stuff out there. (The closest I’ve seen in any language were the readings in the Cambridge Latin books–dogs dancing on the table, drunken ancillae, death and betrayal–all sort of crazy stuff.)

In my opinion, it doesn’t matter how “real” it is. I don’t want others to find themselves reading a newspaper article that they would never read just because some guy on the internet says not to learn from anime and manga.

I would say probably 75% of my audio is Anime, yet tons of Japanese people I talk with say I speak super naturally and that there is no　違和感.

So the whole thing with anime-japanese not being that real, I find to be false.
My Japanese self was born and raised on anime, and if all these people say that I am speaking perfectly, something must be going right. Of course, perhaps it’s one huge conspiracy and they just want to make me feel good so I get a false impression and then tell my boss 自分でやれ、この野郎！

Once you get good enough, your style of speaking is more of a choice anyways, just like it is in your native language. You won’t be formal papers with the “gonna” or “I’ma go…” in English, so why would you do the same in Japanese?

I use slang like no other, but when it comes time to use formal language, you gotta use it.

Most people who say the whole deal about anime, are usually not that good with Japanese in the first place. If you were good with Japanese, you would know the differences and how/when to use them.

Honestly, I’ve had more feedback from Japanese people on the vocabulary that I picked up from the news than I have from anime. They tell me it isn’t really used except for… well, in the the news.

You’ll pick up a different flavor of Japanese no matter what the material you use to study it with. These flavors will balance each other out, and you can choose the one that you like the most. You can get lots of different flavors from anime alone. I find it unlikely that someone will solely experience Japanese through anime anyway… and if they do, why should they even care if it is ‘real’ or not?

If you have problems believing that anime uses real Japanese then here’s an experiment:

Watching any random anime and try to find a phrase that is completely outlandish, unreal, and incorrect Japanese. Just try to find one….chances are you won’t.

Real live Japanese people talk just like in the text books- some of the time.

Sure, you don’t want to be a walking text book with no other registers at your disposal.

At the same time you don’t want to be without the ability to use that stuff. Unless you intend to be 13 forever.

Wow, that’s amazing. I’ll be sure to use my phrases I learned from fansubs!

It’s weird that online dictionaries tell me “onna” doesn’t mean “F###ing bitch!” and “yameru” doesn’t mean “Epic fail!” though..

/sarcasm

We’re all starting off as Japanese babies, we need to have our childhood before we can grow up.

After a while, it all sort of balances out. If I want to spend a few months reading graphic novels or science fiction, no problem. That gives me a nice, predictable “niche” that I can learn in depth. Eventually I get bored and go try something else.

After a while, it becomes really obvious that some words are very formal, and some words are very slangy. For example, “interpellé par la police” starts to sound like “arrested by the police”, and “chopé par les flics” starts to sound like “busted by the cops”, because they each appear in certain contexts. Even in a single cop show, there’s judges, police officers, coroners, and criminals, and each speaks a little differently.

But overall, it’s all the same language. Once you can understand *any* genre fluently, everything else just requires a little bit of exposure and you’ll adjust in no time flat. It’s like growing up in a small US town and watching Monty Python for the first time—sure, they speak funny, but after an hour, it’s no problem at all and you can already imitate them a little bit.

So read and watch whatever you want. When you get bored, try something else.