(2016-03-16, 1:23 am)Zgarbas Wrote: Dudeist, I don't know if you've ever actually learned a different language and have personal experience to back it up, but the FSI are hardly a good reference point for a muggle... I think that most people who finish a 1200 hour course in English (a.k.a. the entire educated population of my country), enforced by constant immersion, are roughly B1 level. Ease is a highly subjective factor. The FSI and certificate hour requirements are just a general guideline, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with most people's experience.

I think the point he was trying to make is that Japanese (for english speakers) requires much more time to get to a functional level than most other languages.  Wether or not you agree with what level the fsi considers proficient, I'm guessing you would agree that the ratio of time requirements among the various languages are roughly accurate.

I can't say that I have learned another language to proficiency, but I did 2 years of Spanish and 3 years of Japanese at a much higher intensity and much more recently.  However I still believe I can understand more Spanish than I can Japanese.  Even though I have never studied French, I recently followed the instructions for a copper cleaning product because somebody covered the english instructions with a sticker.  Perhaps I could stumble through the Japanese instructions as well, but i've been studying the language for 3 years compared to zero French study.  Had I been studying French for 3 years with the same intensity, I would be much more functional in French than I currently am in Japanese.

(2016-03-14, 6:58 pm)Dudeist Wrote: That is the nature of F"The question you have to ask yourself is, how much do you want/need to know Japanese and is it worth learning say German, French and Italian at the same level, or 2 languages and a musical instrument or... well whatever.
If it is, expect it to take much longer before you can reach the milestones of a person learning Spanish."

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
― Earl Nightingale

In other words, if you have regrets and would rather spend the time learning two languages & a musical instrument, etc, then do it! The time will pass anyway no matter what you do with it. Might as well spend as much of it as possible in a way makes you feel fulfilled. Learn what you want to learn instead of being overwhelmed by the time it takes to learn Japanese. Learning about Japanese itself, and reading/watching things in Japanese is fulfilling to me, that's why I keep doing it. If it wasn't I think I would've quit long ago.

I agree with Bokusenou-san 100%. If you simply want to learn a language and it doesn't matter to you which language it is, then French or Spanish are clearly the best choices. You will achieve what is to you essentially the same result in a much shorter time.

Having said that I would also say that to truly know a language (however "easy") you have to either love it or need it. But many people are happy without going that deeply into the language. I am with languages other than Japanese, so I am not denigrating that at all.

For me Japanese is a wonderful adventure and it is the language I love. So substituting it for another language just doesn't make sense.

When I was learning Spanish I would practice by setting my (Japanese) games into Spanish and reading Spanish translations of Japanese manga. It wasn't that I knew any Japanese at that time. It was just that everything that interested me was originally in Japanese and there wasn't any Spanish-originated material I particularly wanted to read.

When I did start learning Japanese I realize that this was a language I actually loved, unlike other languages I had studied.

When I say that Japanese is easier to me, I don't mean that I have any special talent for learning it (I don't. I think I am pretty mediocre), and I am not saying I can learn it faster than I could learn a European language. What I am saying is that I know I will reach a level in Japanese that I would not reach in other languages, simply because I love it and am prepared to give a substantial part of my life to it.

But if someone asks "is it better to learn French or Japanese", I would tend to say, "All other things being equal, if you have to ask that question, then it is better to learn French".

Because if one is "language agnostic", then French (or another closely-related language) is certainly the more efficient choice. You can learn more in a shorter time, essentially because you know a fair portion of it already just by knowing English, and if you know a bit of Spanish too, then you know even more of it.