Comments

Japanese is Impossible to Learn — 8 Comments

  1. Good point, Adshap! As time goes on and more technology and resources become available, it’s definitely becoming easier and easier to study a foreign language (or just about any subject, for that matter). Japanese is a great example, as it’s a difficult language from a country very far away from us Western denizens.

    One minor knit-pick – I think JET was founded a few years before 1990, so you could possibly get a job teaching English back then.

    Good post!

  2. Japanese is still played as one of the most difficult languages to learn by linguists, at least according to the dictionary.reference.com’s articles I’ve seen. It’s really amazing what the general perception of Japanese is, because I think it’s one of the easier languages. Perhaps it was because the language was hard to access that linguists feel this way.

  3. Oh, and probably because linguists look at a foreign writing system like kana and kanji, and a system of grammar and syntax that is completely different than English, and analyze that as difficulty. I feel that the more different a language is, the easier it is to internalize it as separate, rather than directly translated over from English. If you’re really in love with the culture, it’s going to be easier to learn than any other language, because you’ll be more motivated and dedicated. That’s why Japanese is easier than French to me.

    • Well, how difficult a language is for someone to learn is rather subjective… I’m required to take German classes at school, and while I don’t really pay attention to them much, I suppose I’d pick up German faster than Japanese, if I were to really learn it – a lot of the words/syntax are similar to English (even if English isn’t my native language).

      I often find Japanese sentences hard to understand, even if I know all words in them, because the Japanese express their thoughts in a completely different way than we do in English. Still, I don’t think it’s as difficult as people make it out to be – if you really like Japanese and want to learn it, it’s just a hurdle that you’re going to climb on the way – and you’ll probably have a lot of fun doing so.

    • Yeah, even though I’m a native French, I find it hard as hell to learn.
      Japanese grammar feels eaaaaasy to me, and maybe because I’m older(I started self learning Engilsh at 9) I also find Japanese easier to learn than English but this may have nothing to do.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>