So, how's Japanese compare to other languages?

[Bueller_007]

Maybe the spelling isn't so hard but I thought in general. Not everyone thinks that languages are easy so.

That could just be because you're Swedish. From what I understand, Swedish is a true Germanic language. English is also a Germanic language, but it got "romanticized" a lot during the Norman occupation, and because of the use of Latin in the Catholic Church. So English and French have a lot in common.

Swedish and French have very little in common though, I think.

[Outkast]

And the language families make learning within them easier too. If you pick up one very well, it becomes simpiler to get the rest. I learned Spanish growing up, and some Latin in school (for nursing & anatomy classes) and as a result even though I've never studied French, Italian, or Portuguese, I can still read them well when I see them.

As for Japanese, it seems like it is organized better than some other languages, so it isn't necessarily easier, but at least simpiler. To me, the guttaral languages are harder. I listen to Farsi speakers and can't imagine how they can start and stop with sound like they do...

[mikuji]

皆さん、

Japanese is my 5th language (well, 7th if you count Latin and ancient Greek in school)and I must say I am finding it difficult to learn but not necessarily because it is intrinsically difficult - only because it is very different from the other languages Europeans like me are familiar with. In such languages I can guess the meaning often by referring to Latin or Greek roots or Germanic roots, but in Japanese I cannot guess the meaning of a word I have not encountered before (unless it is in kanji and I happen to know the meaning of them).

In addition there is the fact that up to now there has been very little study material available to help gradual learning so very few people have dared tackle Japanese - the web has changed all that !

May I say it is so comforting to see that some non-native japanese speakers have mastered the language- I hope one day to get to the state where I get the gist of most things I hear immediately - then my learning will speed up as happened with English many years ago.

Equally, how depressing it is to receive the occasional patronising comment about 'how good my Japanese is' from native speakers when they clearly do not mean it!

They don't seem to appreciate that what matters to me is not being told I have arrived (when clearly I have not - and I know it, too) but being encouraged on my way to get there and being appreciated for my courage in daring to appear incompetent for a (potentiallly long) while for the sake of learning their language.

皆さん、頑張ってくださいね。

mikuji

[Brody]

Mikuji, you're my hero! sevenlanguages? Do you speak them all fluently?
I am also very surprised to see that English is not your native language; you write it incredibly well (and no, I'm not patronizing you. I mean it! ) May I ask how long you've studied it and how? It's always been my goal with Japanese to speak it as well as I speak my native English; I'm trying to figure out how long that would take me and what I need to do to reach that level. I'd say it looks like you speak/write English on a native level: what did it take you to accomplish that?

I, too, am always glad to see other non-native Japanese who have mastered the language. I've been studying the language for almost three years now and there were so many times that I wanted to give up, thinking I just wasn't smart enough. People like Peter-san and my friends who already know Japanese have helped keep me going. I now think that all I need is a lot ( A LOT!) of practice and time and that I too will get a very good grasp on Japanese.

Finally, I too always get that comment from Japanese people. I think you have it spot on: they are mostly saying it in order to encourage you on a very hard path and to show appreciation for a non-Japanese learning Japanese (that doesn't happen too much). I also think they are empathizing with you, being that many Japanese study a second language (I have never respected foreigners more here in America until I seriously started studying this second language; I now know how hard it is and I know that any gains are significant ones and ones to be proud of). I remember when I was staying with a host family for a month in Japan that I constantly heard this out of politeness, but one time my Japanese host father was trying to speak to me in English and forgot a word and, under his breath, tried to remember the Japanese word. Somehow, I picked up what he was saying and provided the English translation. He looked at me in almost-shock and said, "You really ARE good at Japanese." (Even though I was a beginner; I had been only studying for some six months, but it was some rare word that I had just happened to luckily pick up). Scored me a few points though.


I'll now put in my piece about French from a Japanese perpsective:
My Japanese friend who speaks English too is also studying French. He says the pronunciation is a lot harder for him than English pronunciation. He thinks French grammar is a little easier in some ways. Ultimately, he like English better (he says this is probably because he has a lot of motivation to study English and already speaks it VERY well).

[Tensei]

My biggest gripe about Japanese is not Kanji, but the lack of spaces. Makes it VERY hard for beginners to translate a sentence when 2 or more words are together that you dont know. You dont know when one word is ending and when another is beginning, so you have to keep checking the different combinations until you get one that makes sense. Not so in English (for nouns, anyway. Its hard to deconjugate verbs in English to look up because theyre mostly irregular).

[Brody]

^^^I had the same problem too, but don't worry, you'll soon get use to it. There are many more things to find issue with in Japanese.

[francis1989]

well, actually, i can say japanese is my 4th language, and i find the real problem is actually the speed, because in spanish, there`s not too much speed, fluent and street english is hard, because its too slangy, and polish is really hard , because the most important thing, is that you have to look at the spelling and writing`cause the ending if its man, women, animal, things, changes fron word to word, genre to genre, the counting is really hard, etc.

Francisco-san
yoroshiku o-negai shimasu

[Tensei]

You know, I used to think that "So You Want To Learn Japanese" thing (you know, http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/ ) was like 90% joking.

Now after about a rigorous 2 years of study (like a whopping hour a day, woo hoo ) I now see its a lot more serious than I thought it was.

From what I can tell, the "flexibleness" of Japanese REALLY means "There about 50 different ways to say this word, depending on how badly you want to offend somebody."

Japanese is also way context sensitive. Based on the amount of "I think I translated this right, but I cant tell without the context." or "I cant really figure this out without some context...) posts its a little TOO context-sensitive. How often is context CRUCIAL to a sentence that you pull randomly out of a movie or book in English? Not very often, because the vaguest set of words we have is pronouns. Japanese often doesnt even use that, and its NEVER used for verbs. Things "I like you." and "You like it." often sound exactly the same. Various nuances in English regarding sentence order are a pain to English learners in how non-sensical it is, but once youre fluent those nuances become conveniences in specificity. For example, "You aren't tall!", "Aren't you tall!" "You aren't tall?" and "Aren't you tall?" mean different things in English and are said differenty. In Japanese theyre exactly the same (except for an added ka), and once again, it all depends on context. Sorry if I offended anyone by saying that I think Japanese has some flaws. But English has some serious flaws too. Every other word in English is irregular. If anybody tells you that to make the past tense in English you usually just add '-ed' you can just dismiss that because its pretty much a lie for the most part.

Another flaw of Japanese is an awful lot of words sound/are spelled the same and have different meanings. The common ones in English are "read" and "red" and "to" and "too" but red and read is pretty hard to get mixed up and most people dont even differentiate between to and too anyways. In Japanese...how many meanings does iru have? Like, over 6! And some of those meanings are shared with other words. Like iru can be to need, but tsukau is also to need. Pah.

I still think Japanese is a better SOUNDING language though, even if it is a little fast for me. But thats just something you can get used to.

[atomsk]

learning japanese seems hard. But the only real obstacle I see is reading, and even more writing it.

the grammar actually makes it easy. Because the grammar is so regular and there are only endings and particles (aglutinative, no declension). So you have to learn every word just once, and for adjectives if its na or i adjective. (correct me if im wrong)

My native language is german. I was learning french in school and i remember that i spent most of the time learning the conjugations of all those irregular verbs and the cases of the nouns. So putting reading/writing aside then learning french is much harder than japanese.

[Bueller_007]

learning japanese seems hard. But the only real obstacle I see is reading, and even more writing it.

the grammar actually makes it easy. Because the grammar is so regular and there are only endings and particles (aglutinative, no declension). So you have to learn every word just once, and for adjectives if its na or i adjective. (correct me if im wrong)

My native language is german. I was learning french in school and i remember that i spent most of the time learning the conjugations of all those irregular verbs and the cases of the nouns. So putting reading/writing aside then learning french is much harder than japanese.

This is true at the elementary level, but it's different for advanced students.

Once you reach a certain level, the reading becomes second nature. It's the listening and speaking that are difficult because you have to apply a multitude of weird grammar structures, and do it in real-time. And figuring out in real-time which homonym is being used when listening isn't much fun sometimes either. (Whereas if you're reading, the kanji just give it away.)

Such is my experience anyway.

[Brody]

Japanese is also way context sensitive. Based on the amount of "I think I translated this right, but I cant tell without the context." or "I cant really figure this out without some context...) posts its a little TOO context-sensitive.

Any language is like that, especially when you're trying to translate it into another language. If you were translating from English into Japanese, you would have to have context in even more situations. This is one of my biggest problems when I try to speak Japanese. Try to translate, "I got it." Would it be 取った? The sort-of literal translation of "got."
???
What's the context? Well, my friend was going to get off the couch to grab some more chips, but I offered to get them instead, "Don't worry, keep watching the movie. I got it." That would change it more to an idea of "Leave it to me 私に任せて."

But ultimately, the greatest reason you get so many people asking for context when you post translation help requests is that we are not (for the most part) really fluent speakers. For instance, that last translation about eating the bread you posted was something I just couldn't understand. I thought if we had more information about it maybe we could understand it better. If guarantee that if you asked a person who spoke very fluent Japanese and English, that person could have gotten it without context help.

Ultimately, I like English so much more than Japanese because of all these unique definitions and idioms we use. I find Japanese to be lacking a lot in this aspect. Of course, I do not speak fluent Japanese, so perhaps I need to dive in deeper, but it seems Japanese is actually easier, in that it is more literal in its meanings (i.e. where you could say "I got it" for so many situations in English ["I picked it up'; "I bought it"; "I found it" "I have it" etc], in Japanese it seems you would need to use a specific verb for each different idea. But like I said, this may seem only this way because I've only been reading novels, which may be more literal, or that I just don't have enough exposure.

[Tensei]

<i>Any language is like that, especially when you're trying to translate it into another language. If you were translating from English into Japanese, you would have to have context in even more situations. This is one of my biggest problems when I try to speak Japanese. Try to translate, "I got it." Would it be 取った? The sort-of literal translation of "got." </I>

Well, like I said, 'it' is a pronoun, and thats the vaguest set of words we have. Japanese is even worse in that regard because they dont even specify even that much, assuming theres previous context. Id MUCH rather try to translate "I got it!" into another language in a complete, proper sentence with a subject and verb rather than just "Got!"

[Brody]

I had that problem too, but when you get down to it, it all makes sense from the conversation, context, what not. But yeah, I see your point: if you just heard someone yell, "Got!" It'd be kind of confusing. heh

[Brody]

'Course, to add to that, it would make sense in Japanese as well. If one yelled, "Got it!" one would naturally assume the speaker was referring to oneself, exactly as in English. If the idea was "YOU have it/YOU got it" Japanese would include some form of "you." It does make sense, in its own unique way.

[francis1989]

I know each time you try to learn a new language, it`s gonna be hard...
but some languages become easier, just because you start to like them.
as i see the japanese language is a very context depending language,
that`s why I love it..

if you are 5-6 year old, your brain develop the capacity to learn a language.
when I was 5 year old kid, momma took me to Poland, there, in 3 weeks, I started to speak fluently their native spoken language (polish), and i think, kids got facility to learn in an incredible fast & furious way...

so, my recomendation, is, take your kids everywhere you like to, make this language knowledge, an advantage for them...

English is hard, I know, but Polish, I think it`s a bit harder.