Prompted by the discussion on Manadrin and Japanese, I thought it would be good to start a thread about why is Japanese so hard? Or rather so easy, if that's your personal opinion. Forget the writing system, let's discuss purely the spoken language.

For me the points that make it difficult are,
- many differnt verb forms ie passive, causative, passive causative, imperative, conditional. This makes it difficult to understand what someone is saying when they are using a verb you don't know in a complex verb form.
- Different levels of speech. i often make a mistake by chatting to the kids in my school in plain form then accidently talking to the principal like that. Very embaressing at times.
-Everyday life involves little spoken communication. you buy a train ticket grom a machine, you can buy a ticket in a cheap restaurant for your food and then just hand that over at the counter etc. In Japan, "convinient" ways of avoiding human communication are everywhere. Small talk with strangers and shop staff is not often on the agenda. This means that for a complete novice, it is very tricky to get your first step on the ladder as you are rarely forced into conversational situations when you first arrive.

Points that make it easy are,

- only two irregular verbs. Look at the irregular verb lists of any European langauge and you are immediately confused.
- simple everyday phrases and comments can be expressed very simply with just a single adjective of verb. You don' need to say "It is hot" just "hot" will do to make your point. Even more complex phrases can easily be condensed to quite short forms.
- a great deal of freedom in the word order. You are not looked into rigid rules of sentence structure. Japanese is a very loose and flexible language.

It always appears to me that the "Japnese is hard " mentality or even the "Japnese is the most difficult language in the world" mentality is purely driven by the myth of Japanese uniqueness. A right-wing myth that so many non-Japanese in Japan and outside fall for and believe. They are forced to believe this because the ideas are everywhere and when they go against this idea people think they are mad. People only think that Japanese is hard because the Japanese people love to think it is difficult to boost their nationlistic mentality.

Japanese is easy. Nouns have no gender. No articles to use different ones with different nouns based on that gender. No case. Only 5 vowel sounds. True, lots of verb forms, but they're optional. You can get by with past and non-past. The regularity of verbs is a big one, that you already mentioned. That's huge! No true plural/singular stuff. In other words, nouns don't have to change just because the number referred to change. "Mouse/mice". Verbs don't have to agree with the number of the subject. Or person ("I swim, she swims").

Japanese is hard. The writing system is a chore to get a handle on. Levels of formality is pretty tricky. We do that in English too, but not (I feel) with such a wide variety of forms. Maybe the Japanese feel about it they way I do about English? "One just doesn't use those words with the boss! It's just a matter of word choice." With me, it's not merely with changing the person I'm talking with. I'm all over the map all the time. I can be plain and abrupt in one sentence and then in the next sentence all flowery and formal. I'm told that it is pretty jarring, even to the point of comical. If it's really offensive, nobody has confronted me with it, but I sometimes worry about that. So, I'm trying more to be merely polite most of the time and wait a bit for the casual and highly formal phrases.

The thing that I like most about Japanese is that it is completely correct grammatically, to say what we Americans say all the time in "real talking", but that our school teachers tell us is improper. We'd be told it was a "sentence fragment". "That isn't a sentence! It has no subject!" Or no verb, or whatever.

I'd say the hardest thing about Japanese is the writing system, which prevents us from accessing tons of input, and getting a real easy look at normal Japanese. Listening is essential, but for the learner, it can be frustrating. It goes by so quickly and if you didn't get it, then it's gone. But the written language, at least you can review it, savor it. Disassemble it. Take an hour to look up every unfamiliar word in a brief utterance. Almost a time machine.

I'm taking my time and defeating that writing system! One baby step at a time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (and I) say "That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our capacity to do has increased". We grow accustomed to doing it. That which was awkward and unfamiliar, now is less so.

One quick point. All languages have about the same difficulty when learning them as a native language. A 5 year-old Japanese child and a 5 year-old European child are equally proficient in their native languages. The concept of a language being hard comes from learning it as a second language. The more different a language is from your native language, the more difficult it will be to learn. So for native English speakers, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic tend to be the most difficult languages. Whereas, French, Spanish, Italian are relatively easy. A Korean friend tells me that learning Japanese was "100 times easier" than learning English, because Korean, her native language, is much more similar to Japanese than it is to English.

But once your mind gets over how different Japanese is to English, it could never be termed as that difficult. A few years back I maet a very fluent speaker and I asked him what his number one tip would be. He said that you should look at how easy Japanese is and how simple it is. From then onwards things became so clear. As i said before the "Japanese is hard" mentality is purely a part of the right-wing agenda which most people fall for.

Once the elementary vocab and grammar has been fully internalised, let's say to the end of Minna no Nihongo II. It is easier to form a correct sentence in Japanese than in German or French.

"Forget the writing system, let's discuss purely the spoken language."

You cannot forget the writing system!
I think that's why japanese is so difficult, because the writing system. I am not a native speaker of english, but I learn english just reading a lot. Even I dont know the meaning of a word, I still can read this word. I still can guess the pronunciation... But in Japanese is differente, if you cannot read the kanji...

That's why I think japanese learners should focus on writing language, and not spoken language. I have been studyng japanese for 4 years, last years I stayed 10 months in Japan as a exchange student, I can speak at a daily conversation level and read some kanji.... But I am not able to read newspapers, magazines or websites, and this is very frustrating... After all this years studyng japanese I thing that the focus should be on kanji and reading. Of course you can focus on conversation, but dont expect to understand newspaper just talking... In order to improve your skills (even in your native language) you should read a lot. And to read read japanese you need know kanji, not few hundreads, but all the kanji.

Spoken japanese isnt that difficult. What is difficult is "japanese language learning", because you have to know the writing system.

But the writing system can be ignored regarding how easy or difficult a language is. I know a couple of people here who can speak perfect Japanese, well enough that on the phone you would think they were Japanese. These people cannot even read hiragana or katakana and look at this as being an impossible wall to climb. When I tell them that my Japanese is much lower than theirs but my reading skills are reasonable and I can see that with enough study I will be able to read paper etc, they are very suprised. Different minds, personalities work differently, that's all it is.
Reading and writing is such a personal quest, something that concerns only you and will go unnoticed by everyone else. People can spot immediately if you can speak a langauge, nobody knows if you can read it or not. People like us have different concerns on my mind. So the langauge can easily be learnt as a purely spoken form without any regard for the writing at all.

kyotokanji Wrote:But the writing system can be ignored regarding how easy or difficult a language is. I know a couple of people here who can speak perfect Japanese, well enough that on the phone you would think they were Japanese. These people cannot even read hiragana or katakana and look at this as being an impossible wall to climb.

How can the writing system be ignored? it's there. You can't just say "let's forget about the tough bit", and then go on to say that "Japanese is easy".

Whether or not other people consider it irrelevant or not. I would never consider myself "fluent" without being able to read/write as fluently as I do in English.

I'd be really interested in how your friends actually managed to reach such a superior level of spoken Japanese without learning hiragana, did they study all those words in romaji? (shudder).

Christoph Wrote:

kyotokanji Wrote:But the writing system can be ignored regarding how easy or difficult a language is. I know a couple of people here who can speak perfect Japanese, well enough that on the phone you would think they were Japanese. These people cannot even read hiragana or katakana and look at this as being an impossible wall to climb.

How can the writing system be ignored? it's there. You can't just say "let's forget about the tough bit", and then go on to say that "Japanese is easy".

Whether or not other people consider it irrelevant or not. I would never consider myself "fluent" without being able to read/write as fluently as I do in English.

I'd be really interested in how your friends actually managed to reach such a superior level of spoken Japanese without learning hiragana, did they study all those words in romaji? (shudder).

Technically they are fluent, but not literate. There is a difference. I've heard similar stories about such people, but never met one myself. They seem to generally have just picked up Japanese through exposure and never really studied it formally. Of course they'd need to have a job where Japanese isn't required, since inability to read or write would be a major problem otherwise.

On the topic of Japanese vs Chinese hardness, In my opinion the only thing harder in Japanese is the grammar. You could also also say the kanji readings are harder, but I've never had a problem keeping the multiple readings straight. Japanese phonology is fairly similar to English (albeit simpler), there are fewer kanji than the hanzi in Chinese (and they aren't simplified into the hard to remember abominations you'll probably learn first if you study Chinese formally - there is nothing for your mind to "grab" onto), no tones (those killed me when I was studying Chinese), and the phonemes are a lot more distinct (was pretty easy to confuse a few with each other in Chinese).

That said I do intend to re-start learning Chinese at some point. I've been collecting any Chinese language reference books I've seen in the pile of free-to-take journals in the Asian studies building. Scored myself a huge book on hanzi which looks to be a similar approach to Henshall. Amusingly it has the worst typesetting and binding I've ever seen on a book. Also scored some high level Chinese linguistics books I doubt I'll ever be at a proficiency to use.

I stopped learning Chinese before so that I could concentrate my energies on Japanese. Learning two languages at once isn't a great idea if your aim is fluency in both. I never confused what I was learning in Chinese with what I was learning in Japanese, which some people seem to be worried about, but time spent learning Chinese was time not spent on Japanese.

Japanese language itself isn't that difficult. It is difficult if you came from a country where kanji isn't used and your native language structure is very differente from japanese. Koreans can learn japanese very fast becous the language structure is similar, Chinese can learn becous they know the kanji. It is relative. I can learn spanish or italian in about one year or less, becous I speak portuguese. As I said, the language itself isn't difficult, what is difficult is the "learning process", which depends on where you live, what is your native language and what language you want to learn.

You cannot forgot the writing system, becous in order to achive literacy and knowledge of the language you should read. It is the same for your native language! People that read more use to know more about the language, use to know more word and write and also talk better that people that dont read anything. You can learn japanese without read, you can achive fluency, and it is not difficult. I speak fluently daily conversation and it is not difficult. Now, if you want to talk about economics, politcs, etc, just listen and talking will not help me, I know I should read....

Also we must remember that we are not native speakers, we are foreign language students, so reading is essential in our learning process.

Looks like we'll have to agree to differ here. So many people in the world are illiterate but can speak their own language. The written form and the spoken form is thus seperated for them completely. Written forms of langauges are such a new thing in the whole evolution of langauges.

kyotokanji Wrote:Looks like we'll have to agree to differ here. So many people in the world are illiterate but can speak their own language. The written form and the spoken form is thus seperated for them completely. Written forms of langauges are such a new thing in the whole evolution of langauges.

Were you replying to me or mairov? Cause thats basically what I said It is possible to be fluent and yet totally illiterate.

Let me speak about native speakers of English for a moment, since I'm one of those. I think that I can tell when a person is illiterate, from their word choices, and grammatical structures. They are functional adults, and interesting valuable people, but there is a difference in their speech. In my opinion, one does not achieve the best language without exposure to plenty of literature. Written instructions and policies and procedures abound. I don't want to devalue the person, but to "settle for" illiterate fluency is really not okay. It's not okay in my workplace, in my schools, and I think most Japanese would agree that it's just not okay. They may allow a foreigner the slack, and never expect a gaijin to learn to read, but I don't think (as a culture) they would think it was okay to be be illiterate. I've heard it said that their rates of literacy are high (compared to other nations), so I think that suggests how highly they regard it.

Campaigning for literacy on a site dedicated to learning to read is probably a given. But there is just too much fun that I think I'm missing out on by not being a good reader.

So, I just felt compelled to say that. I still maintain my position that the spoken language is easy, because it lacks the complexities that must be coped with in other languages (hard to pronounce vowels, of many subtle variations, number, case, gender, irregular verb conjugations, etc.). But to make it more difficult to study, they have this writing system that is (can we agree?) a bit on the tedious side to master.

I don't think anyone was advocating illiteracy...

I think Charley was merely saying that the writing system can't be left out of a discussion of the difficulty of Japanese. Learning to speak without learning to read isn't really learning the language, and while there certainly are languages out there without written languages at all, in Japanese there is generally a vast difference in ability between a literate Japanese speaker and an illiterate one. For most people, there is a limit to how much vocabulary and grammar you can learn to use without being able to read and write.

kyotokanji Wrote:Looks like we'll have to agree to differ here. So many people in the world are illiterate but can speak their own language. The written form and the spoken form is thus seperated for them completely. Written forms of langauges are such a new thing in the whole evolution of langauges.

I couldn't agree more with this statement. As rule of thumb, most mexicans have awful spelling. It's even more embarrasing to correct obvious spelling bloopers from university graduates (I personally suggest to think twice before correcting the spelling bloopers of doctors if they suffer from god complexis).

Do they speak spanish? Hell yes. Can they read? Yeah, but most of them only read TV Guide and tabloid newspapers. Are they really literate? Tough call given how many apparently educated people from good universities I've gotten to know commit really idiotic spelling errors.

Another thing that has already been put into the conversation is that not everyone knows how to read and write but they speak their native language very well. The rate of analphabetism in Mexico is only about 3% (maybe slightly higher cuse I haven't checked official data), but considering it's a country with a population of a bit over 100 million, that's still quite a lot of people. Fortunately most of them are older people from extremely poor communities in rural zones that didn't have access to elementary education as children (or better yet they never finished elementary school) but their children go to school.
Since I take classes in 3rd level public hospitals, you constantly see humble people from very isolated rural areas of the country. So far I've officially encountered two adults that never learned how to read or write and the way things are, they are so old now that it would probably be pretty hard to teach them how to read anyways. From the way they spoke I never even noticed they were analphabets, they spoke like everyone else that typically goes to these kinds of public hospitals. Obviously you wouldn't expect to normally bump into people that speak like Shakespeare on a daily basis. Just because a person can't read or write doesn't mean they can't speak their mother language pretty well. I see people that can obviously read and write that speak poorly all the time. There's probably a bit of everything.

Hrm... Japanese hard? Um... In comparison to figure ice skating, I'd say not really. I've only been relearning the basics since last July and I'm now reading pretty fast.
If I went to an ice rink today and do an Ina Bauer, I'd trip over my blade and fall right on my hip real bad.. again. (If you know who Shizuka Arakawa is, you'll probably know she's pretty damn good at doing the Ina Bauer). And it's not just physically knowing how to do the figures, it's the fact that if you add up what skaters do today with the sadly bunk school figures and the very very very sadly lost old American steps, you've got a sport that has over 2,000 different exercises to learn both mentally and actually being able to physically do them. It's not all just Triple Axels.

Quite frankly I don't find kanji to be that hard. It's just a lot of memorization and just reading, reading, reading. The more I read, the faster I read. Luckily I have a handful of Sailor Moon mangas so at least reading manga I like isn't too tedious. Now katakana, that's another thing. It's kinda discouraging to try to learn an alphabetic system where all the symbols look like eachother.

Maybe I just find Japanese to be pretty reasonable because I'm a med student and so I'm just used to doing tough things under pressure and reading a lot (and thank god I'm finished with Pharmachology).

Also, I personally believe that learning a 3rd (4th, etc..) language as an adult is far more easy than learning your second language as an adult. Once you can switch between two languages (doesn't matter too much which ones they are as long as you're fluent in both), learning other languages seems all more simple.

sailornyanko Wrote:As rule of thumb, most mexicans have awful spelling. It's even more embarrasing to correct obvious spelling bloopers from university graduates (I personally suggest to think twice before correcting the spelling bloopers of doctors if they suffer from god complexis).

Really? It was my understanding that Spanish was phonetic, if not one hundred percent, pretty damn close.

Megaqwerty Wrote:

sailornyanko Wrote:As rule of thumb, most mexicans have awful spelling. It's even more embarrasing to correct obvious spelling bloopers from university graduates (I personally suggest to think twice before correcting the spelling bloopers of doctors if they suffer from god complexis).

Really? It was my understanding that Spanish was phonetic, if not one hundred percent, pretty damn close.

Even highly phonetic spelling conventions won't give people perfect spelling if they're not very educated. English's rules for plurals and possessives are very simple, yet native speakers foul them up all the time.
Spanish is perfectly phonetic when reading it, but when writing it there are a few ambiguities. /s/ and /z/ are pronounced the same. /c/ is sometimes pronounced the same as /s/ and sometimes the same as /k/. /g/ can sometimes be pronounced like /j/, and /b/ and /v/ have identical sounds. And without a good understanding of the concept of syllables, it's easy for someone to not know the right place to write accents.

I guess Spanish spelling is a lot easier than English, but not that easy.

Quote:I guess Spanish spelling is a lot easier than English, but not that easy.

It cannot say exactly if english or easier than Spanish or vice-versa, but particularly, as a portuguese native speaker, I thing spanish, italian, french and portuguese are very complex languages. There are to many verb forms and there is the "word gender distintion", that is tough! I used to think that japanese is the hardest language, but after study japanese for sometime, even I cannot read all those kanji, the language structure itself is simple. English seems not so simple if compared with japanese, but I personally think it is not so complex like spanish or portuguese...

I seem to find the spoken language of any Japanese (or any other) the hardest aspect. I have a hard time comprehending what people say in Japanese and coming up with a response on the spot.

If your English skills are bad, would your Japanese be too? My skills are average in English.

Just out of curiosity how does reading books and newspaper improve your skills in languages? I read books and newspapers and yet still can't write a concise essay.

Reading expands your vocabulary and esposes you to various manners of expression. Without a lot of that type of input, you don't have much. In a way though, you have to keep an awareness about you and actively observe the sentences instead of just reading them, if you know what I mean.

That doesn't automatically translate into writing and speaking well, but I'd be surprised to meet someone who can write well and hasn't read extensively.