Why You Really Really Really Shouldn’t Learn Japanese
(Warning: this is a parody on all of the articles out there that try to discourage you and tell you why you shouldn’t/can’t/won’t learn Japanese. Viewer discretion advised…)
Interested in Japan? Plan on ever going over? Then you should learn a little Japanese. Phrases like “I’m a foreigner,” “I don’t speak Japanese,” “Do you speak English?” and “Help . . .” go a long way. But please, oh god please, only learn a little. Anything more than a little is a lot. And learning a lot takes a lot more time than just a little. Beyond this, you need to do some reflecting on whether you really want to continue learning Japanese. And since you don’t know, I’m going to tell you.
It’s decision time. And decisions take time. I want you to sign up for Mars One. Wait 10 years. Take your one way trip to Mars in 2023. Landed and settled in? It’s time to think. There isn’t much else to do.
Do you really want to learn Japanese? No. You don’t. And I know best. Let’s learn why.
It’s going to take a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time (at least 1 year for each “o”)
Learning Japanese is a wild party? I wish I could tell you this. But really? Learning Japanese is the equivalent of counting every second of your remaining life with an abacus that is made of the fossils of a boring mathematician.
You think you can learn Japanese quickly? Awww, how cute. Like a puppy. I’m petting you right now because you are a cute puppy. You’ve seen websites that tell you can learn quickly? Japanese Level Up? More like Japanese Level Down!
You want to know about the few people I know that really mastered Japanese?
What time do you think they woke up every morning? 4am? Wrong! They didn’t sleep. They say Thomas Edison only slept like 20 hours a year. And since learning Japanese is the equivalent of inventing the light bulb if it was the year 1350, you better plan on lightening your sleep load.
Being awake wasn’t enough for them either. They created exactly 444 flash cards a day (It’s some weird Japanese superstition thing), lived at a language school, and actually on a daily basis drilled physical kanji into their bones. And this only covered 5% of their Japanese study schedule.
The big issue is that selfish Japanese learners always desire more. At first I just wanted to be able to ask where the bathroom was so that I didn’t have to piss my pants on a daily basis. But then I wanted to be able to have conversations with girls. And short conversations weren’t enough, so I wanted to have more complex conversations. And since they realized that wasn’t enough, I had to go become a doctor. And I’m still trying to figure out this whole brain surgery thing.
How long do I think it takes to learn Japanese? How old are you? 20? You might finally be able to have a fluent conversation as you are lying on your death bed.
You won’t be making it back as a human being capable of love or emotion
Of the 40,000 people I’ve seen study Japanese, only 3 have succeeded with any resemblance of respectable ability. After pulling out my “tabs on everyone” folder, I can tell you that everyone stopped (and may have committed suicide, but I can’t be sure).
Now it’s your choice. Your life. But it seems like a waste of time to buy a violin, take classes since you were 5 years old, have numerous rehearsals and concerts, and then 20 years later decide that you want to be a lawyer. Either become a violinist or don’t. Don’t try. Anyone who tries, but doesn’t do, doesn’t wear Nike shoes.
The average length of time most people last while studying Japanese is 20 days. In the beginning, you have the flame of Miyagi-san telling you to wax on and off. But eventually you realize that you are not going to win the tournament by learning 2 moves, regardless of how great your training montage was. You are going to realize that you are trying to bite off something much bigger than you can chew (like a 2-headed-alien-robot-dinosaur).
You must know how long this will take. If you plan on doing nothing else but Japanese for the rest of your life, please decide this before you start (that’s what Mars One is for). Trying something and subsequently giving up is just nonsense, and quite frankly ridiculous.
The cost of opportunities
According to my super awesome dictionary:
Opportunity cost: the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.
An easy example:
You buy an apple for $1. You can eat it, throw it, paint it, bury it, or give it to your girlfriend for a birthday present. But wait! Rather than have a happy girlfriend, you could have taken that one dollar and bought a lottery ticket. With that lottery ticket, you could have won 200,000,000. With that 200,000,000 you could have bought an island in Japan, and then hope that China doesn’t contest that it is really their island.
Studying Japanese costs money. And without winning the above stated lottery, it may be too much for you. But the real cost is time. In the time until your death that it takes to learn Japanese, you could’ve watched every single episode of every single TV show on Netflix, three times. And of course Breaking Bad five times.
The payout
The problem with learning Japanese is it’s actual use value. Yeah, you can use it Japan. That’s about it. To be honest, I don’t even know if it has any value in Japan.
How long will you be in Japan for? Even if you make a pact with the devil to learn Japanese in 1 year in exchange for your soul, if you are only there for one year, you’ve lost your soul, and a year, to enjoy a year. What if you are only in Japan for a month. Year + soul > 1 month of enjoyment (without soul).
Get it? Do you know how many people spend their entire lifetime learning Japanese, finally arrive in Japan, and then realize they are already dead? Even if they squeeze a few years out of their remaining life, they realize that they don’t like Japan as much as their anime and manga, and go home, and die. Violinist to lawyer? No. Please.
There is no need to learn Japanese
Now I’ve traveled to around 193 countries, and in my experience, Japan is the only country that tourists need 0% knowledge of the language to get by. Most foreigners get by with grunts, smiles, and good looks, and live a highly successful and happy life if they decide to stay.
Pretty much everything is in English these days, and Japanese are known for being incredibly articulate in English. If you try to speak in great Japanese to these English masterminds that are Japanese people, they will either respond in English, or grunt back at you hoping you’ll understand. Japanese people love to speak in English, are very proud of their ability, and try to show it off at every chance they can get.
Knowing Japanese is like having a scarlet kanji engraved into your forehead
Wherever you go, people will want and desire with unbridled energy that you speak in English. To them, you are superman, and your special power is speaking English (despite them also being able to do it as well. Some rumors state that they have language absorbing powers, which is why they demand to hear English, so they can secretly use it to improve their own.)
You speaking English is like spitting ecstasy pills into their eyeballs.
Whether you go to the bank, a convenient store, or supermarket, they will hope, and pray that you are going to say “Hello” and spout out beautiful Shakespearean prose.
If you speak in Japanese, they will tell you how great your Japanese is (while secretly annoyed that they don’t have an opportunity to absorb your English as mentioned above). To try to get you to speak in English, they will reply in English.
If they have already absorbed enough English for the day, they may just compliment you on your feeble Japanese attempt. If you are one of those unicorn-like people with amazing Japanese, they will reply with the word “heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy” no matter what you say because it actually turns out that Japanese only consists of one unit of vocabulary.
Japan, really?
Go to a country on a vacation and you will have a great time, guaranteed. Go to a country and live in it? It’s gonna suck. Things cost money, and you are going to have work, and use that money you made for work in exchange to pay for goods and services. It’s a system I don’t want to be a part of, and I don’t quite get.
From what I’ve seen through my vast experience living in Japan, life in Japan consists of three things: clubbing, onsen and karaoke. Each of these things cost money. Some more than others. Working to make things possible sucks. Any place you have to work will drain the fun out of everything else.
Now, I think it’s quite obvious from this article that I like Japan and all aspects of Japanese. Everything is good in Japan except for the buildings, the people, and the scenery. They kind of all suck. But don’t let that stop you.
Made your choice?
Do you still really really really really really really . . .
Really . . .
Really want to learn Japanese? I’m fully cheering you on. And when you are discouraged, you can read this article over and over. Now please . . . Get your ass (back) to Earth!
—————————————————————–
For those of you thinking to yourself “Woah! What the hell did I just read?”
This is a parody version of Ken Seeroi’s article that appeared on Japan Today titled “Why You Shouldn’t Learn Japanese.” This article stirred up a bit of emotion and controversy among Japanese learners everywhere back in May of this year.
Some readers from Japanese Level Up actually e-mailed me the article and asked what I thought of it.
Now Ken did succeed in writing an article covering a different approach to the question of whether you should learn Japanese. His writing is good and controversial. He is humorous, spent a lot of time on this, and he represents a certain type of person that engages with Japan and Japanese.
Obviously I completely disagree with everything in the article. While I understand he wrote it over the top for laughs, and I don’t know how much and to what extent he actually believes about what he wrote, I think it is extremely negative, discouraging, bias, and exaggerated. But I’ve met people with his attitude (if that is his real attitude towards learning Japanese), so there is an audience for it, and I respect that.
So I replied to those readers who sent me this article with the general idea of the above, trying to reassure them that it is just one negative opinion.
Fast forward months later.
I wanted to write up another topic for why you should learn Japanese, continuing on a previous motivation article. So to get some ideas, I entered “Why you should learn Japanese” into Google. And this is what came up as the first search result:
His article was number one. Now I understand the way SEO works. He has a lot of shares on Twitter, Facebook, etc. His keywords are good. And his goal of being controversial paid off. It is a very popular article, and one he should be proud of.
Which I think is fine if it was the number one result for people searching for “Why you shouldn’t learn Japanese.” These Google searchers are most likely looking for a reason to quit or not to learn Japanese in the first place.
But the fact that this came up as the number one article for people who are searching for the complete opposite bothered me. People who enter this search phrase are probably either starting out on their Japanese adventure or are having a down point and need some motivation. They need a boost. What they get is this article.
So my goal with this parody is simple.
Take all the bad things I dislike about this article and exaggerate them to such beyond extreme levels that anyone reading would see this as absolutely ridiculous. Hopefully then, if they see his article, they won’t take the original too harshly. And maybe I can knock his search ranking off of number 1 (though probably unlikely due to the popularity of his article). At least if I can get it to like 3 or 4, I’d be happy.
And there you have it. See what happens when readers on this site send me articles by e-mail . . . Again, no ill-feelings to Ken or his article. I just had to offer my version of it. Hey, parody is flattery right?
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
This quote will forever be a part of my motivational repertoire: “Anyone who tries, but doesn’t do, doesn’t wear Nike shoes.”
I would have hated to come across that article at the beginning of my Japanese studies. I’m really glad I was forwarded to this site and others at the very beginning, else I would not have come so far.
Yeah, that’s why it’s top rank annoyed me.
I’m glad my corny sense of humor can also motivate!
I read that article when I was first starting and it did feel like a punch to the gut. I saw other articles on that site and decided it was generally skewed towards the pessimistic side and decided to block it on the off chance I happened across a future article. I didn’t want any future punches to the gut to occur. One of these days I may unblock the website once I have a sturdier grip on my Japanese studies. Until then…
This post was hysterical! Best laugh I’ve had all week! Now I have to go and read that other article, just for curiosity. That Ken guy should pay you.
Haha he should. Just make sure not to take his article too seriously.
So I just had an encounter today with a cynic in Japan, so reading this parody was very timely. Everyone has their opinions but there are tons of foreigners that I’ve met with this attitude. It can be quite annoying to hear this because I continue to question why there are even in Japan. I do learn a few new things here and there from them but I generally come to the conclusion that I am the opposite. Why does anyone learn a language? Who gives a rats flippin ass if it’s not used 1000% worldwide. Learn what you wanna learn. And flip the bird to those who try to put you down for it. That should be my motto I guess.
By the way I did have a ‘WTF is this dude talking about?’ moment for a minute. Glad you had a disclaimer cuz I was going to ask why the change of heat all of a sudden.
That’s why I usually ignore this type of stuff. There are cynics everywhere who will complain about Japan at every chance they can get, yet decide to live there for years. You just for the most part have to laugh and ignore.
C’mon, would I actually ever seriously write an article like this!?
I read Ken’s blog regularly (he’s pretty hilarious, you have to say) and about half way through this post, I had to scroll up and make sure he wasn’t doing a guest post on here or something, haha.
But I do agree with you. His article is quite pessimistic and exaggerating – but then again all of his posts are, lol.
Keep up the good work.
Yea I haven’t read any of his posts before. It’s hard to tell if he’s just trying to be funny or if he seriously believes this.
This is where he confuses readers with his article. Because I checked out his blog and he seems to give plenty of regular advice on studying Japanese which would show he isn’t against it at all.
Although I just love the idea behind of this, I’m weary about tweeting something that’s titled “Why You Really…Shouldn’t Be learning Japanese”. I’ll wait for the motivational post on why one should <(^_^)
I couldn't even read his article… I don't understand his writing style enough to give it any time. Yours was much better, but it was a parody after all. I just hate anything that promotes "Japanese is such a difficult language! Don't learn it!" Not exactly my kind of comedy. (Referring to his article, not your parody, which was very well written!)
I was waiting for the, “Well, are you still motivated to learn? Then go for it! Don’t let any talk like this get in your way. Every step of Japanese you go through is an experience worth while and an adventure,” kind of turn. I didn’t know of Ken’s article.
I think that anyone who knows Jalup will know that there wouldn’t actually be a real article telling people not to study Japanese.
You aren’t alone. Anyone who seriously studies Japanese won’t find it funny. The people that like it are the “I’m frustrated, want to vent, and have someone else show my anger.”
“You speaking English is like spitting ecstasy pills into their eyeballs.” that seriously had me laughing out loud!
Good job on the article Adshap, both in terms of writing and standpoint.
Personally I don’t have the time a day to spend on people who talk Japanese down.
Thanks!
Agreed. It’s never worth it to pay attention or argue with people who have negative energy towards Japanese.
I was tempted not to write this because of this reason. But I figured as a complete outlandish parody, it would be fun and helpful to the readers of this site.
Anyone that reads Japan Today, and even more so the horde of misinformed orcs that comment there, deserve to be fed that mound of self-perpetuating rectal prolapse.
But great work on the parody! I had to check back to the title to confirm it was written by Adshap! I exploded in laughter at the ecstasy in the eyeballs bit, too.
I had never heard about Japan Today until seeing this article, but does most of it contain these negative and false/exaggerated stereotypes of Japan related things?
And thanks! I got a little wild with the writing.
After this comment I will now imagine all of the orcs in Orcs Must Die are disillusioned foreigners. Thanks for that!
Actually, World of Warcraft may have had more positive effects on my life than the Japanese study that I replaced it with. But learning Japanese is more fun.
I think the important point that’s being missed is that for someone who’s genuinely interested in either language learning or Japan, the process itself is worthwhile.
Haha, please do tell. While most people have fun with WOW, they curse the time drain that it is.
And you said it perfectly. It’s not just the destination. It’s the journey as well.
WoW was really excellent practice in the important and subtle skill of working together with both with people I liked (my friends and guild) and the occasional person I didn’t (a few in the random dungeon finder.)
Writing WoW addons was what got me back into programming, which I’m now making a career out of. Having the experience of being solely responsible for my users’ experience was very valuable. (Japanese has also provided this because of anki addons, but a smaller portion of my Japanese time is spent on programming than was of my WoW time.)
This would make a much needed replacement. I remember reading Ken’s article a while back, but by then I was far enough along my studies to be able to roll my eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but even if he wasn’t most of the people were taking it the other way. This was really funny, though. Thanks for the laugh. :) You couldn’t fool me, though. ;)
Yeah, I think his article should’ve ended in a more positive way, or at least show the point of what he was really trying to say.
Thanks. My goal now is to fool you in a future article.
First thing I thought when started reading this text was “WTF? Did someone hack JALUP? HALP, @APLUSK!!!”
All is safe for now.
I think his blog is pretty entertaining and it’s simply that…observations about life in Japan that are meant to be humorous and entertaining. Japanese Language study also happens to just be one part of his experience in Japan. From reading some of the articles on his blog, it seems he actually studies Japanese actively and has invested a lot of time trying to learn the language just like everyone that probably reads this website. I lived in Osaka for 5 years and I think a lot of what he writes about is an accurate depiction of life there. Again it is humor and it is supposed to be entertaining. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.
Regarding the specific article, I think what he is trying to convey is that learning Japanese really does take a long time. I also have witnessed that very few people are actually successful in becoming proficient and many do give up or start and stop over and over again. I am one of them. During the 5 years I lived there I also only encountered 2 non-native people (I mean westerners) that were truly fluent. This may be demoralizing for some but if you do actually become one of the few, you have truly achieved something that most people have not and for some that is also part of the allure.
Another point of the original article is that nowadays we have all these guys (most of them are guys) on youtube claiming they became fluent in a year or two and you can too if you just play dramas or manga in the background all the time and use an SRS or pay them 3000 dollars to be spoon fed their special program. Maybe it worked for them or maybe they are full of it. The article is satirical and points out the silliness of these claims that these people make that it took them ’18 months’ to do it. How could they possibly prove it and what difference does make anyway?
Many of his other language related articles provide another perspective on the prevailing recent views that many espouse that ‘classes suck’ or the sudden prevalence that SRS systems and creating ‘an immersion environment’ are the best way to go vs. the traditional classroom teacher / student learning model that has been around for many years and I can see his point of view. Where are the studies that one of these methods has a better rate of producing fluent speakers?
Ultimately, I think if there is something in the Japanese culture that you really love, whether is manga, dramas, connecting with people, tea ceremony, cooking or whatever, then studying Japanese isn’t a chore or a pain but ultimately it becomes something you do because you enjoy it. It brings you closer to whatever it is that you love, you are working toward whatever your goal happens to be and your world becomes richer and broader as result.
Anyway, the guy is just the same as you and me. He obviously loves Japan, he’s a Japanese language learner and his writing is entertaining. I recommend you take a break from your immersion environment (not too long) and check out his blog and have a laugh.
Nice bitter cheap-shots towards Khatzumoto. No one will ever know you’re talking about him.
“and you can too if you just play dramas or manga in the background all the time and use an SRS ”
…isn’t that the M.O. of this site? Immersion in conjunction with SRS repetition? Why are you here if you find the method so ridiculous?
Not to be a killjoy but doesn’t he actually have a point with the “Payback” paragraph?
Sadly, this article had the opposite intended effect. I got here by reading other items on your site and was starting to respect and trust your writing. I read through this entire thing thinking “Oh no! This guy feels he wasted his life studying Japanese. Maybe I’m wasting my time too!” It was actually pretty discouraging, and the explanation at the end that this is parody wasn’t much of an uplift. The feeling lingers of being so thoroughly discouraged, and you didn’t follow up in your afterword with much positivity.
You believe Ken “wrote it over the top for laughs,” and “the fact that this came up as the number one article for people who are searching [why they should learn Japanese] bothered me.” But then you parodied his parody in response. In my case it only perpetuated the problem.
Sorry to discourage you. This really parodies every “Japanese is impossible” type article. The original article made it seem like there was truth to what he was saying (which there wasn’t). This was a problem to me.
This article is supposed to be so incredibly far fetched and unrealistic that it shows that there really is no truth to these type of negative articles.
Every other article on this site is filled to the brim with positivity towards learning Japanese. So I hope some of those will lift you up!
May I suggest placing a “This is a work of satire” or some light disclaimer at the top of this article for your new readers? I had only read two or three articles before I got to this one and had no previous experience with the article you intended to parody. When a new reader who doesn’t know your writing or Ken’s article comes across this, it’s very difficult for them to interpret the exaggerated bits here as parody. Your concern over Ken’s discouraging article being the first thing someone needing a boost comes across was legitimate. Sadly, I think without a disclaimer at the top your article can have the exact same issues. Maybe it’s just me, a lot of your other commenters seemed to get it. But like you, I don’t want the over-the-top writing of your parody to accidentally discourage others.
Fair point. And I appreciate your feedback. I see no harm in adding a disclaimer at the beginning as well. So it’s up there at the top now also.
You’re ultra cool! Thank you for taking my feedback into consideration! I think I’d rather read this site than japantoday any day.
I’ve been considering learning Japanese for fun. After finding a tutor I googled, ‘why you should learn Japanese’ and was extremely disappointed when the first article was ‘why you shouldn’t learn Japanese’. And after reading that article I was concerned I’d made a mistake. But then after a little more research I found this article and after reading it I am definitely ready to hit the books. I knew immediately where this parody came from and was very relieved to see this point of view. This was extraordinarily encouraging. For me personally it really hit home that if learning Japanese is something I enjoy I should go ahead and do it regardless of the nay-sayers. Your points were well written and easy to understand. Thank you for putting the hope back into learning Japanese for me.
This makes me very happy to hear, as this accomplishes the purpose of this post. Focus on the positive side, and you will completely enjoy and be thankful that you started studying Japanese.
Adam I googled Why you should learn Japanese and now yours is the sixth result :) Yes, the first one is Ken’s, but all the others below are positive, with the second being 10 Excellent Reasons :)
Nice! Eventually one of those positive articles shall dethrone him haha.
I actually searched for “How to say I shouldn’t do something in Japanese”, and lots of “why you shouldn’t learn Japanese” met my eyes. Luckily I clicked this one.
Glad to hear it prevented unnecessary negativity!
Unfortunately for me the article you made a parody of was actually one of the very first Japanese related posts I read. Yesterday as it was, the article really discouraged me and I was actually looking for a written piece such as yours to bring back my motivation. Thank you very much for this, I can’t believe I was actually considering not learning Japanese.
I’m learning the language as of today
Oh and nice job on the article :)
Good luck on the start of your Japanese. It would’ve been terrible if one article prevented it all from happening.
I am studying Japanese very hard in preparation to being able to promote some control products from the U.S. to Japan. I am a long term China hand but now want to do what I do in China in Japan. I may have some perspectives that may be helpful to others:
1. I think it is a positive that Japanese is so complicated. Why? Because I am willing to do the work of studying Japanese, enjoy the work and profit from the work. Remember that if it is very difficult for Western people to study Japanese, the reverse is also true.
2. If you know Chinese, Japanese is in many ways just cool. So many homophones, so many characters, so many pronunciations for the same character. Just interesting. You might say complicated, yep, but think of the reward of being able to speak Japanese really well.
3. People like to stand out. Okay Japanese learners, here’s your chance. Do you want to stay in obscurity forever? Evidently in at least America, fame rather than accomplishment is increasingly valued, not a good thing in my opinion, but if you want to stand out here’s a way.
About a month ago I was walking down a backstreet in Beijing and I saw a women that would have looked totally ordinary in say Des Moines, take a phone call from someone on her mobile phone and said in completely fluent Mandarin “哎呀，我老公不在-Oh, wow my husband isn’t in.” She was talking about anything complicated but her fluency and totally all-American looks were shocking. For someone like myself living in China for 10 years, 7 of those years in Beijing which has the highest percentage of foreigners that speak Chinese (embassies) you just don’t see that kind of thing very often. Think about how special it is for a western person to be really fluent in Japanese.
4. In my study of Japanese I have really focused on having a massive vocabulary and being able to read. I did this on top of about 6 years of university Japanese. (Do the math, Japanese takes a lot of time.) I did this because in the last year (2014) I had a slow year for the business (i.e. no money) and spent a lot of time traveling for work. So I have concentrated on building up a massive, largely passive vocabulary. I have about 10,000 flashcards which in my case are mostly example sentences I take from my Casio electronic dictionary and sometimes from web dictionaries.
Money from the business is now on the way so the next thing for me will be to do online classes with native Japanese. Particularly what I want to do is make my largely passive vocabulary into active use by engaging the teacher to help me talk about things of professional and personal interest. Ideally we will also construct some dialogue that encapsulate some of the most challenging material, which I will use for further study and yes more flash cards.
5. One thing I find more challenging about Japanese than Chinese are the multiple syllable native Japanese phrases. Also many of the non-Chinese verbs. (In Japanese these would typically end with suru する。）I never had trouble memorizing Chinese, which is typically just one or two syllables but I have had this problem with Japanese. What I have found is that I need to make not 1 but say 10 flash cards with the term. An example is いきおい aka
勢い or ikioi, power, momentum. Wherever possible I try to memorize the Kanji and use the kana on the back of the card just to indicate pronunciation. Not sure that is what others should do. And of course I never ever use romaji for anything.
If anyone wants to recommend an online tutorially site I would appreciate it.
I don’t think most people would want to study Japanese the way I did, but for me knowing Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese very fluently means I have a lot of confidence in my ability to put my thoughts together if I have ample tools (vocabulary, patterns etc) to communicate with. The Chinese language experience also has influenced me to aim for a very high level of fluency. I have noticed with Chinese that many people who are quite good at Chinese at some point cut their study short when they could in fact get quite a bit better.
Thanks for sharing your ideas on the subject. I agree that the fact that it is such a challenge attracts many people to the language. If you are going to dream, dream big, right?
Overall it sounds like you’ve had a great experience with Japanese over the years, and you are filled with motivation. Best of luck! 応援しています。
This is going to sound pretty harsh but I honestly think that anybody Googling “why should you learn Japanese” probably shouldn’t learn Japanese at all.
Learning any language, whether it’s Japanese, Spanish, Swahili or whatever, takes a lot of time and effort. A huge percentage of people who start learning a language will give up fairly quickly.
The one thing every successful language learner has is a reason for learning. Everyone’s reason is different: some people want to move to a country that speaks the language, some people want to embrace their cultural heritage, whatever. Maybe their reason seems stupid to you – I know a guy, friend of a friend, who learned Italian *just* so he could enjoy certain operas in their original language – but the point is they have a reason that is important to them.
Anybody who is looking for someone else to give them a reason is probably going to fail quickly.
If you want to learn Japanese, then go for it, don’t let anybody discourage you. But if you’re not sure whether you should be learning it, then you probably shouldn’t be, don’t waste your time.
To be fair, a lot of the reasons I started learning Japanese for have been replaced by others, or joined by a lot of other motivating factors. I think it’s good for people to fully understand the scope of possibilities for what their embarking upon. There’s always more to learn about your interests, including why people find them so interesting in the first place! I wouldn’t want to miss out on learning language that I might end up loving, just because I didn’t understand its worth. Nothing wrong with being informed, even if you already have your reasons :)
Like James said, I think it’s not about needed to find a reason to study (I can’t imagine anyone starting to study Japanese without at least one good reason). It’s about giving you new motivation. You start with one reason, but reasons evolve, and as you see more and more reasons, it reaffirms you of all the great things you are getting of your studying and why you should keep moving forward.
Thank you very much for posting this article. It helped un-demotivate me after reading that extremely demotivating article prior to this one. I honestly don’t need to learn japanese but.my university requires a language and I wanted to try Japanese.
Thanks for posting this. I just happened upon kens article after looking up how to say a certain phrase in Japanese. I just switched my minor to Japanese language. So that article stirred up some annoyed emotions.
Yours gave me a good laugh and settled me down a bit. Thanks a bunch for writing it. I feel like if i ever start to lose motivation, ill keep chugging on just to spite cynical Japanese students haha.
As many have said before me, thank you for posting this!! I am about to start studying Japanese at university this year and was beginning to question myself when I read the original article. Needless to say, I felt much better about my decision to learn the language after reading this and I can only hope that others get the chance to hear both sides of the story before giving up without even starting. Thank you!
The article by Ken Seeroi mainly got me annoyed because it fails to mention that someone might actually get an intrinsic reward from learning a foreign language!
戯言信じますか?
I am proud of having studied English so I can understand all of your article, what was not possible 2 years ago. As soon as I started reading this article I recalled the original text so I laughed a lot.
I like Japanese culture but the reason I’m researching reasons not to study is due to the time it takes, I went through the same process in other languages, and considering my 1 year experience with Japanese I realized that It isn’t something easy and will take more than two years than english and spanish to get to fluency…
Yes, Japanese definitely takes more time than other romance languages! There is some variety in time that depends on your native language (for example, if you were a Korean or Chinese person studying Japanese).