Quote:
Originally Posted by Henbaka
On a side note, I don't remember who it was that claimed japanese people mostly always talk in the polite "-masu"-etc way. Well, surely that's true for the professional world where you don't know those you talk with. In my experience (lived 4 months in a mixed gaijin-japanese guesthouse) however, my japanese friends _very_ often used/use the shortest possible way to communicate anything  Like "baiku motteiru?" and such things.
So really, I wouldn't have been able to understand any of those things they said with just knowledge of "proper" japanese. |
The main problem is that casual speech and short sentences, if getting formal learning, aren't really taught much in the classroom. For me, I still have trouble with forming sentences informally because I've learned formal for so long. I have a time trying to remember the correct endings and such.
That aside, I do feel that watching Japanese programs will help with maybe pronunciation improvement, as well as vocabulary, but, as it was said earlier, one shouldn't try to learn the language solely from that.