The Beginnings of an Interest
This not-so-little block of text is from a post of mine on a MySpace group board... While I'm still waiting for confirmation or not from my manager (being born Japanese, she's obviously fluent), I figured "what the hell" and decided to stash it here anyway.
i think the dub/sub preference has the most to do with the kind of interest a person has in the anime they're watching.
if a person is watching anime to, well, watch anime, it seems to me like they're more likely to watch it dubbed than subbed. the Japanese language sounds like gibberish to a westerner with no interest in it, so the dub will most likely provide the better experiance.
however, if someone has as much of an interest in the CULTURE which spawned anime, someone who has INTEREST in the Japanese language itself, as they do in the anime, subtitles seem to be the majority favorite. i'm the perfect example of this.
in the last six years i've gone from a tentitive beginning with Cartoon Network's dub of DBZ, to stalking bittorrent trackers for esoteric titles like "Kannazuki no Miko", "Gravion", and "Saishu Heiki Kanojo", and the latest subs of mainstream blasts like "Bleach" and "Naruto", and old favorites like "Tenjou Tenge" and "Full Metal Alchemist". during that time, my interest has expanded to include the culture from which these fantasy worlds were born, and the language in which they were birthed with.
and i've got PLENTY to show for it. yea, used to be that i had to watch ever episode twice, once for the subbed story and dialogue, then again for the animation. but now i don't even need to be looking at the subtitles in order to read them; my peripheral vision parses them just fine. and i've become so used to listening to the sound and rhythm of the Japanese language that it no longer sounds like gibberish to me. i can actually match sections of the subtitles to spoken phrases on the fly, as i'm watching.
there's so much about the Japanese language that facinates me. its just so... simple: the subject is stated first, followed by verbs and then adjectives. when two subjects are stated, the self (or the subject closest personally to the self) is stated followed by the other, less "close" subject. there are NO tenses. "tori" equals "bird", "birds", "bird's", and "birds'", depending entirely on the context and suffixes attached to the contextual statement! its elegant, unlike crude, complex, clumsy english.
a simple, example sentence. in english, "You and I are the same." in Japanese, "Ore omae onaji desu." literally: "I you same are." but this simple formula appears to apply almost without exception across the entire spoken language. dialects merely change the proununciation of the characters, not their order or meaning.
"nai" is a sentence-suffix that unilaterally makes a statement negitive. "desu" is the formal, proper way to end most statements, but "da" and "ga" often replace it in casual or aggressive speech. "ja" is, by appearences, often used to relate a statment, verb or adjective to a particular person, while "ka" is the Japanese question mark. when mixing these, the "ja" prefixes the "nai" when used, while the "desu", "da", "ga", and "ka" always retain the final syllable when used and are mutually exclusive. "oo" seems to equate to "is/was/are", while "wa" by itself equates to "and" or "or", depending on the context; though i may very well have those last two backward ("wa" as "is/was/are"?). gotta check that.
"ore" (pronounced "oh-ray") is the accepted form of the english "I" for confident males to use. "boku" is the same, but for male children instead. hearing an adult male refer to himself as boku is either an apology, or an admission of embarrassment. whereas "atashi" is the feminine "I"; however, i've noticed several male characters use "watashi", seemingly in formal declaration -- i'm still working on that one. comparing "atashi" to "ore", the former is unilaterally polite while the latter can be used as a challange depending on the enunciation. of course, the character Kenshin Himura has made the archaic and ultra-super-polite "sessha" and the self-excusing "de gozarou" into something of a fixture amoung anime otaku, but neither have much of a place in the modern Japanese language.
"omae" (pronounced "oh-may") is the usual polite form of address ("you"), but "teme" (pronounced "te-may") and "kisama" are aggressive variants used to display disatisfaction, anger, or disgust with the person they are spoken to.
"no" is the Japanese "of". interestingly, they use the reverse order of subject and sub-subject. in english, "Shinta of the Red Fields". in Japanese, "Akanora no Shinta".
and lets not forget all those fabulous honorifics. english has "Mr", "Ms", "Mrs", and "Dr". Japanese has many more, and makes far better use of them, in the form of immediate (-ly after a person's name) suffixes. "-sama" is the highest of honors, only beneath the single prefix "O-" in terms of respect given. "-san" is the usual "Mr/Mrs" equivalent (the Kansai dialect uses "-han"), while "-dono" equates to "Ms". "-kun" and "-chan" are applied to masculine and feminine (respectively) names as terms of enderment or affection, though mixing gender and suffix is often a way of teasing a person about their manner: call a tomboy's name with "-kun" on the back and you'll get a glare, a fist in the face, an evil grin, or maybe something else entirely, depending on the kind of tomboy involved. and beyond those are the potential use of titles as honorifics. in english we say "Professor Brane", in Japanese, "Brane-sensei".