Learning Japanese via ‘manga’

Check out a new site to help you understand/learn that pesky Japanese slang! Japanese in Anime & Manga.

“Manga” comic books and “anime” films are building up interest around the world in learning Japanese.

Providing a link: A Web site operated by the Japan Foundation features English translations of Japanese phrases typically spoken by “manga” and “anime” characters.

But students of the language are having a tough time understanding the colloquial expressions that abound in manga and anime, for instance when a samurai character ends a sentence with “gozaru” or a man from Osaka says “desse,” because dictionaries and language textbooks say sentences end with the polite forms “desu” or “masu.”

The Japan Foundation, a public entity supervised by the Foreign Ministry, launched a Web site earlier this month to teach foreigners phrases spoken by typical anime and manga characters.

via Learning Japanese via ‘manga’ | The Japan Times Online.

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