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Japanese is easy? An alternative viewpoint on the language
by Dale North, 05/06/2009
Japanese is easy? An alternative viewpoint on the language photo

My Japanese is not that great. I know enough to get around the country and understand the basics of simple conversation. For me, reading kana is fine, but not kanji so much. It's one of those things where I knew if I committed more time to study, I'd be better. This is all especially sad for someone who grew up in Japan and has since been immersed in the language.

It's easy to write off learning another language as too difficult. While I personally haven't, I can totally appreciate those who have. And all of the excuses sound like good ones to me. Maybe we're just looking at it wrong.

The Victory Manual says that we are. Japanese Is Easy, they say. While my instinct is to disagree, they make some really good points. They say that you have to get your head to throw out the Western ideas of language. After that, communication can be easy. Here's some bulletpoints on why the language is easier than we make it out to be:

  • a rarely wavering grammatical structure
  • a limited number of sounds, most of which are in English
  • lots of sources are available to study from
  • and Kanji is "like having a cheat sheet in the words themselves"

I'm not totally feeling the last bulletpoint, but the rest make sense. The article goes on to talk about the other strengths of the language, including the Heisig method and a reminder that there's plenty of manga to study from.

Interesting viewpoints, I'd say. They close by saying that "if you go into the game expecting to lose, you’ve already lost." I'd agree. For a lot of us, we're already pretty familiar with the language's sounds and rules. I think that actually setting aside to practice is a hurdle they don't mention here. Of course, that's all up to the learner.

What do you think? Is Japanese "easy" to you?

 





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Legacy comments:

Gee-Man

Well as one who is passibly (barely) fluent in Chinese, a bit of Japanese starts to make sense if you look at it in a certain way (after all, Kaniji is pretty much a Japanese knockoff of Chinese).

Well, that and a few months ago, I asked my friend who took advanced Japanese classes what he had learned. His response?

Baseball as "Besi-boru"

I seriously hope he was just shitting me.
 
Red Baylon

I think it's easier to learn another language like Japanese if you've grown up learning more than one language and that your brain is already "wired" to be able to function with a totally different language.

To be able to learn another language requires work and genuine interest. I think its just people are just really intimidated when they're presented with something very alien to them especially when they've never experienced learning another language before.

PS
Shouting words like "KAH-WAH-HEE" or "SUE-GOY" does not count as "knowing Japanese".
 
Shadow Master

When I go next year all I'll be saying is ore wa GUNDAM.
 
gwjunkie

The first point I don't know enough Japanese to agree with. The second is one point that I used in arguing that Japanese wasn't that hard to learn. But I need a source for it, since I haven't had time what with high school. Kanji can sometimes have a "cheat sheet" embedded in it, but not always in a useful way; I've noticed that the kanji for elements look remarkably similar and I mixed up "water" and "wood" once, if I remember correctly.

 
Heero Yuy

@G-Man: Baseball is Yakyuu.

Kanji isn't bad if you can get into the right mindset in relation to how they tend to write it. I mean, if you can put together the meaning behind the individual smaller kanji that make up some of the more complex ones, sometimes that works (other times it's totally "wtf?").

Sure a lot of it's wrote memorization of vocabulary, but the grammar in Japanese is virtually NOTHING by comparison to romance languages. I made the mistake of taking Latin in High School....Japanese is sooooo much nicer imo.

Note Cards are god-sends when it comes to learning a language, especially one that's so heavy on vocabulary like Japanese. But let's put things in perspective: What's the most your friends can do with their 3 years of Spanish? talk to people in South America and Mexico? wooopdeedo (I know there's more, but you're missing the point if you're dwelling on that). But Japanese though, well... do I even need to say?
 
Brad Rice

Well, the problem with the Heisig model is that if you already know kanji, you're fucked. It requires you to learn kanji in a very specific way, and sadly, most classes don't really teach a model.

I mean, I guess I could sacrifice all the kanji learning I've done so far to try and structure it better, but I'm not sure how well that'd go over.

The language takes some dedication, that's for sure. Is it harder than learning any other language? A bit for us Westerners, because we can relate a bit better to other Western languages.
 
ShinuZERO

I think it's easy in that it's very formulamatic. The problem is memorizing those formulas.....ugh it's like math all over again
 
RedSwirl

I know next to noting of Japanese. The only language I've tried to learn is German. Despite having lived in Germany for two years and despite German being basically the brother of English, after six years of classes I can understand it pretty well but can barely speak it.

I think this is all just an issue with American foreign language education which, compared that of most countries, is taught pretty late. A result of this is that American students end up being fairly good at understanding the language they learn, but not at speaking it. That's probably why we Americans are so notorious as monolingual people.

However, I have been told that for non-native speakers, English is actually one the hardest languages on Earth to learn because it has so many exceptions to its grammatical structure. I can definitely understand Japanese potentially being easier and the hard part just being unlearning what you've learned.

That goes back to the whole issue with Japanese language education though. Most American students don't have the opportunity to learn Japanese until at least high school - by which time they've reached a point where they'll probably never lose their accents.
 
Alex

Hello Dale and others - This is Alex from Victorymanual.com.

You wrote a sentence that highlights something I insinuated but didn't explicitly state in my original article.

You wrote, "It's one of those things where I knew if I committed more time to study, I'd be better."

That's an important point to keep in mind. I talk about Japanese being easy. It is. It's a very logical language. But that doesn't mean that learners can sacrifice effort in the learning process. It's a huge endeavor to learn a new language. It takes a considerable investment of time.

@Brad: You don't have to sacrifice the kanji you've learned so far to pick up the Heisig method. I majored in Japanese as a uni student, but came across Heisig only after I had already graduated. I use Heisig as a supplement to the kanji I already know, and as I was going through his RTK book I just skipped all of the kanji I was already comfortable with. (I used to be a Heisig skeptic, and you can probably still find some of my old comments on Tae Kim's blog)

I hope all of you here are progressing well in your own studies! Keep on the ball and the effort will pay off!
 
ChozoMM

[quote]@G-Man: Baseball is Yakyuu.
Sure a lot of it's wrote memorization of vocabulary, but the grammar in Japanese is virtually NOTHING by comparison to romance languages. I made the mistake of taking Latin in High School....Japanese is sooooo much nicer imo.
[/quote]

I second that. After taking French for 4 years, Japanese has been so much kinder. Mind you I've only had two semesters so that may yet change.

I can see the kanji as a cheat sheet. I can read sentences with kanji I know way better than ones in all kana. Once you associate them with something, it's easier to fill it with what you know then directly reading it. If that makes sense...

Plus I think Japanese is easier to get an ear for. Romance languages just seem to melt together when you listen to them.

 
Kageryu

I can write/read kana just fine, my vocab is extensive and my spoken Japanese is pretty damn snappy.

Kanji, not so much, not because it's difficult, it's just that I spent years SPEAKING Japanese and not READING it. After familiarizing myself with certain kanji over time, I can identify them at a glance and if you learn to write it the right way the first time, you'll never have a problem writing it again.
 
Gee-Man

@ Heero Yuy: Oh thank god, there's more to Japanese than bastardizations of english terms. And here I was really about to kick myself for taking Latin (which isn't as simple as adding '-us' to everything) instead of the seemingly easier Japanese.

 
The-Excel

I studied it in high school. Apparently I had a much easier time with it than most of my classmates. I mean, I didn't even think much of な adjectives.
 
The-Excel

And if anyone says it's hard, just bring up that if 130 million people can speak it without any problems, what's stopping you?
 
Colette Bennett

I am just beginning to learn, and I have to admit I do find it difficult, mostly because I keep striving to understand the direct equivalent in English. I also agree the Western thought is getting in the way. I like these ideas though, I am definitely going to keep them in mind as I progress with my studies.
 
Sigue

I think the biggest hurdle is simply the switch from Western languages to an Eastern one. I'd rather take up Japanese than, say, have to learn English as a second language.

 
ahbonk

I'm now in Tokyo studying the language. Actually I agree with Kanji being a cheat sheet in the words themselves.

I had no experience in writing or reading Kanji or any Chinese characters whatsoever, so at first it was very difficult. The problem was that I learned Kanji through brute force by memorizing the yomi-kata (how it's pronounced), especially those crazy two-or-more-Kanji words.

Then I took another approach, learn it by knowing the meaning of each individual character, yomi-kata to be put aside first. When you see two or more Kanji together, you somehow try to be a little imaginative and figure out its whole meaning.

In that sense, when I see one whole big paragraph riddled with Kanji, I'll at least be able to understand what it says, though reading it out will be a problem. But at least I understand it, after all Kanji is meant to be easily understood. And that's where I think Kanji is a cheat sheet, you know the meaning but you don't know how it's read.
 
nagato yuki

"Is Japanese easy?"
Ask me again after I take my JPNS 102 final
 
Heero Yuy

It's not really so much a difficult language as it is intimidating. Heck, learning any new language can be intimidating, but for Westerners, at least the romance languages have some words that look/mean the same across several of them in addition to using almost entirely the same alphabet.

Heck, just learn the vocabulary and you've got 3/4 of the language right there. Don't worry so much about kanji and just look at it like it's typical vocabulary. It's really not all that hard once you get used to it. Just practice a lot, jump into stuff beyond your difficulty level, and you'll notice your progress yourself which will help motivate you.
 
lastSKYsamurai

I tried learning the language off my iPod for about 6 weeks. but when all it teaches you is individual words & really short sentences, I gave up.

The problem was, & I myself have still not taken the time to understand this; is that as soon as you string a whole bunch of individual words together the way you say the sentence changes. So I got really frustrated with that.

- I still remember quitting Japanese in grade 4 & throwing my book in the bin. I raked up bark for the rest of the year, ha ha. ........"What have I done!".....

Here's a very useful page though. Understanding Japanese sentences can be a difficult thing. This guy I think is amazing in explaining how to understand sentences better. Lol, pretty much dissect the sentence from back to front. It's a mind trip alright. ,Bit a good one.

http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/jpp/pars.html
 
Mookie

Some of my Senpai created this amazing little website for anyone who is interested. It has a compilation of all vocab and kanji and radicals from the the books we use for years 1-3 of Japanese.

http://w3.djrance.com/GroupList.html

As for how hard it is? It's really hard when your good friend keeps feeding you slang that completely destroys everything that's been taught to you.
 
kamanashi

I plan to take Japanese in college. Right now, I know some short phrases that I can use in stores and such. But, if I try to have a conversation, I would probably sound like a retard.

 
Agata

Great! But I'll never manage to memorize it!
my space: http://www.myspace.com/
 
Agata

Great! But I'll never manage to memorize it!
my space
 
ChauInc

Japanese isn't too bad you just need to study the vocabulary intensely. Though i found the verb forms somewhat difficult.

たべる　たべない　たべた　たべなかった　
たべます　たべません　たべました　たべませんでした

たべたい　たべたがっている
たべられます　たべられる

Those are the ones i currently know. (plus the negative, past, and such for the last four but to lazy to put it all.

 
Brad Rice

@Alex I'll give it a try, then. Summer project, here we go!
 
Kiriska

Honestly, I do not think there is a language that I want to learn that is harder than English. English makes absolutely no sense. I love it, but seriously. This damn language has more exceptions than rules, borrows words from every other language, is grammatically flexible to the point of being ridiculously confusing, and is just in general a pain in the ass. It's always a bad sign when probably 70% of its native speakers can't write a grammatically proper paper to save their lives without looking things up.

Japanese is different and that's the only reason many English-speakers perceive it to be difficult. Chinese is my first language. I've always known Japanese to be a matter of memorizing some kana and re-translating a few of the kanji that strangely has different meanings. I just need to get around to it. :(
 
Yin

i was raised bi-langual(chinese-english), so picking up foreign language isn't that hard for me, like RedZie said, my brain is used to it. (though.... i forget things quickly if i don't use them, ie:spanish)

i think japanese is pretty easy, i learned most of them through watching dramas(since idk when though, cuz my mom was a j-drama addict), did a little hardcore study for the reading and writing katagana, it takes me a min or so to read a setence in kana; while i might not be able to read all kanji, i'm able to guess it's meaning, u just have to know the basic components of kanji.
(or maybe just because kanji is based on chinese characters, i have the advantage to it, but it's not suppose to be hard)

though.... i still can't read hiragana yet, but that's my summer project.
 
Kawaikunai

I definitely see where he is coming from. I've been studying Japanese for not quite 6 years (including two years and counting of living in Japan, which gives me a huge advantage), and I'm pretty confident about passing the JLPT2 this summer. The breakthrough for me came when I stopped trying to translate sentences and words into English (I'm still not quite sure how to translate "genki") and just started thinking in Japanese.

On the other hand, there are students who come to the eikaiwa I work at who have been studying English at a pretty good rate for about 10 years, not counting their typically abysmal high school English education, and still have trouble with things like "the" and "a" and not putting a "to" before gerunds like "go to shopping." English is tough! Thank your lucky stars if you're a native!
 
Seigfreid

Languages are easy. I just plug in the data slot into the back of my head.
 


  

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