How to learn to understand really casual speech

Japanese
#1

Lately I’ve been reading And Yet the Town Moves (それでも町は廻っている) on Piccoma. I read the Chinese translation a long time ago, and this time I wanted to try the original Japanese. What really stood out to me was how casual and free-flowing the dialogue is, much more so than other anime or dramas I’ve watched.

Here’s one passage that really gave me trouble. I could parse all the grammar, but I still couldn’t grasp what they were trying to convey until I looked up the translation:

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What are some good resources for learning casual Japanese? I found an old thread which recommended Let’s learn Japanese from small talk!, but I’ve listened to them for some time and I think their conversation is still more structured.

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#2

Tell me if I am wrong but I think perhaps you’re struggling with the contractions? If so then this article covers most of the stuff you’d generally come across.

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#3

Honestly, most of my growing familiarity with that sort of casual stuff has come from reading/watching things that use it. It’s frustrating at first, but as you see certain patterns repeatedly you’ll get more used to them.

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#4

There’s definitely a little bit of that, thanks for the great reference! However I think what gave me more trouble was the lack of conjunctions (like が、ので or けど) and pronouns or subjects. I often couldn’t tell whether a sentence was meant to agree with or contrast the one before it, and that’d throw off my understanding of the entire dialogue.

That’s probably what I will do for now. Luckily there are plenty of material to learn from!

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#5

While contractions and ellipsis are also a feature of casual Japanese, I think it’s important to distinguish between the written conventions of manga dialogue and written and even spoken casual speech, because the two are not the same.

I don’t know if it’s because of the need to save space in word bubbles, or because of stylization, or even just plain convention, but manga tends to use contractions to a point beyond even what casual spoken Japanese would do, as the grammar point for しかない on Bunpro notes, for example. Manga dialogue is often really elliptical for the same reasons. Other written expressions of spoken Japanese, like in (non-light*) novels, will rarely use uncommon contractions often, unless they’re trying to emphasize a character’s accent or unusual voice in some way.

This is all just to say: there is no better way to learn this kind of manga stylization besides just reading more manga, preferably armed with a guide like the one CursedKitsune posted above. And for your problems understanding conversational flow, you might want to listen to more Japanese reality TV, panel shows and/or YouTube channels that feature pairs or groups of people using lots of casual language. You’ll learn to pick up on unspoken nuance and subtext in conversation better if you do.

*non-light novels, because light novels tend to also use the conventions of manga dialogue.

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#6

That’s very interesting, I wasn’t aware of manga-stylization.

Do you have any recommended YouTube channels? I watched a few videos from Kevin’s English Room, but the topics (mostly about junk food!) don’t interest me as much.

#7

If youre good with having gameplay as a backdrop, groups of JP streamers playing competitive team games, co-op games, or just group games usually have casual speech flying back and forth. Most JP clips will have JP subs too

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