'The Reason Japanese is Hard Is...' #learnjapanese

[indigofenrir]

Japanese is hard, but the life of a Japanese salaryman is harder.

[drkblu]

Yeah, every time I getting a little stumped by a Japanese concept or grammer point, I just gotta remind myself that English makes way less sense, and I use it every day with zero difficulty. If I can do that, I can learn Japanese

[joshdaniels]

There are aspects of English that are tricky even for many native speakers! Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses ("that" vs. "which"), subjunctive moods ("were" vs. "was"), subjective vs. objective pronouns ("I" vs. "me"), confusing homophones (they're/their/there, its/it's, then/than). I myself occasionally screw some of these up if I'm writing something in a hurry.

[eakyrtk]

I'm Turkish and Japanese is very easy for us lol. Sad thing is most of the sources are in English so when I put English between, it's like that one Undertale scene where Papyrus walks us around the town to invite us to his house but we return to the same place after at the end after that long walk :D

[AristizabalixGrimm]

Yuuta, I have a question. If you've ever tried learning Spanish, what did you find to be difficult? I'm willing to wager that, as a Japanese native, the pronunciation was likely the easiest part. Most likely, it was perhaps the grammar and verb conjugations which were most difficult.

[Jovak_art]

Even some of the native English speakers can't differentiate we're and were, everyday and every day 😂

[MrDragos]

I find Japanese kinda easy compared to English. The grammar seems logical and way easier than Latin languages grammar. The pronunciation is easier because it doesn't have words that sounds in a way but are written differently, also no cursive writing 😅
My problem is remembered the words(this is a general problem with all foreign languages, I don't even know all the words in English) and the pitch accent that I am deaf to.
I am not at Kanji level, my teachers says I should learn grammar, reading kana and words on kana firstly. But I don't belive they are as hard as some say.

[maplmage]

people complain about kanji, but most of the time, you only need to recognize the kanji representation of words so that you can read the newspaper, novels and so on, and to be able to write your thoughts in online forums, send text messages to your friends and relatives and so on. kanji knowledge is virtually useless in daily conversations. arguably the hardest part in learning Japanese is vocabulary. People over-estimate how much vocabulary they know - possibly because they use anime as a benchmark -, and under-estimate how much vocabulary they need to know. Also, like i said previously, acquiring vocabulary is more than just knowing A in English is B in Japanese and vice-versa. You need to know the kanji representation of the words, when and in what context to use said words, the nuance underlying the word and how it differs from similar words, etc. Besides things like verbs, adjectives and nouns, you need to also know idioms and other expressions such as 熟語, ことわざ, 故事成語, etc, and i haven't touched on regional dialects.

[Nemu]

I’d like to know, if i can know it correctly. When someone is speaking with a sranger, he/she will use keigo with him/her. For example when it’s reaning on a day and you want to ask someone if he/she has an umbrella, you will say: “今日は雨ています。傘はありますか？”　But when you speak with a friend and don’t use keigo, then can you say: “今日、雨。傘はあるか？” Or if it’s a negative sentence: “傘はあるないか？” Is it correct?

[name]

I wonder what languages are close to Japanese. I mean what language family is Japanese from?

[thearchlich]

I feel like English writhing system is a lot harder than the Japanese one. Nothing is spelled phoneticly in english.

[MecchaKakkoi]

Once you get used to it, the grammar in Japanese is very logical. If it wasn't for that pesky kanji!... 😭

[Allanchan-nel]

Japanese is absolutely more difficult than English for the simple fact of how many kanji there are and that there are no spaces between words.

By knowing the 26 letters of the English alphabet, you can recognise and read ANY text, even if you can't pronounce a word or know it's meaning, you can continue to read the text, and you can determine the specific word you need to look up.

Whereas in Japanese, if you don't know the kanji, you can't possibly know how to read the word, and it's harder to look it up.

[BeltDragon]

Oh you mean like how Japanese don't like using the letter L. I've notice that when seeing a video of ordering a "Happy Meal", but it's called a " Happy Set".

[JohnSmith-jewf]

Yuta is wrong again linguistically. This is a factor among other special sides of the language, but it's not that big. I've studied Japanese for quite a few years and can tell that after kanji, which are hard for beginners, when you start memorizing enough words the worst is how phonetically poor Japanese is. While it has whole 46 moras, those are made up of merely 15 sounds. While for the face value it is much more than in Europe, practically it's just half. Many words sound close to many other words, if not the same making memorization very difficult. This is because Japanese culture evolved in such isolation, unlike European languages borrowing from each other. May be that's why the Japanese people like to insert japanglish words so much, it just makes speech more comprehensible.

[HavelockVetinarii]

pfft, didnt even take me a year to learn Swedish from English I imagine It'd possibly be even faster to learn German with English and Swedish under my belt.

でも日本語はとても難しいです