Is Japanese easy to learn?

Question

I'm deciding between 2 languages...

Answer 1

It's all relative, but since I'm assuming your native language is English then I would say it's going to be very difficult due to the vast differences between the languages. The foreign langauge institute gives its students three times longer to learn Japanese than the students that are studying european languages like German or Spanish. Japanese is hard but so is any language, just make sure you really want to learn it because to be able to read, write, speak, etc. is very time consuming (3 hours a day is my current regime and after a year I can speak and understand about 80-90 percent but when it comes to reading I have trouble making it through one paragraph.) I hope this helps in your decision. Good luck with your language learning!

Answer 2

No language is inherently harder to learn than any other. Babies around the world learn every language imaginable so, if you're born somewhere that language is easy to learn. That being said, once you're an adult it becomes harder. If you are a native English speaker, Japanese is not very hard to learn to speak. There are only a few sounds in Japanese that native English speakers don't already know how to pronounce and those sounds are not all that hard.

However, if you want to be fluent in Japanese, like a native, you will have to read Japanese and that is much harder. First, you have to learn the romanized alphabet (like the ABCs, but the way they are pronounced in Japanese) as well as two Japanese alphabets. The Japanese phonetic alphabet has 49 characters (like the western alphabet has 26 letters) and they have two symbols for each character: one symbol is for foreign words and one symbol is for Japanese words. After you learn all of that, you can BEGIN learning "kanji" which is Chinese characters that the are used in combination with the two Japanese alphabets. These are like picture words (a tree looks roughly like a tree, etc.) This will take years. Japanese kids study kanji every day in school and it isn't until they are in junior high school that they can even read the average newspaper in Japan! So imagine how long it will take you.

That being said, it is very fun to learn katakana and hiragana (the Japanese alphabets) and kanji.

So to answer your question, it depends on what you want out of your language learning experience. Which language is more practical for you? Why do you want to learn a language? Do you love Japanese culture or want to live in Japan? If so, learn Japanese. Are you just fulfilling a foreign language requirement (if so, choose something easier!)?

I have studied both Japanese and French. French was much easier to read and write but much more difficult to pronounce. Also, when I went to France, the people there were very picky about things like pronunciation and grammar, whereas the Japanese people are very gracious when you speak Japanese -- even with mistakes they are thrilled that you make the attempt.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

The 3 most difficult languages to learn are Chinese, English and Japanese.

Answer 4

If you're trying to focus on speaking only, it shouldn't be much more difficult than other foreign languages. But if you want to learn reading and writing Japanese letters, yes, it's very difficult!

Answer 5

Difficult

Answer 6

reading yes because of kanji, speaking isnt too bad, some people think it is because its so different than english but not really