Should i learn Japanese? Whatts so hard about it?

Question

I'm a 15 year-old American and i can speak full English and i am learning intermediate Spanish. I am thinking about learning Japanese, but i have heard the writing system (katakana, kanji, etc.) is very difficult, and the sentence structure is hard for English-speakers to memorize. Would it be very hard to learn Japanese?

Answer 1

Japanese is very different from European languages, but isn't particularly difficult. The sentence structure and grammar is a lot simpler than in English, in many ways. There is no word for 'the' and most words don't have plurals, you just tell from the context. The writing will require you to memorize a lot of characters. There are three alphabets in Japanese. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Hiragana has about 50 characters, and can be used to write most words. Each symbol represents a sound (eg. wa, ha, i). It is not that hard to learn Hiragana if you practice with flashcards every day for a while. Learn a few at a time. Katakana is only used for foriegn words (for example haroukiti Hello Kitty) or sometimes bold advertisements. It has the same number of symbols as Hiragana, for the same sounds. Katakana looks a bit like Hiragana so is easy to learn when you know Hiragana. Kanji are more difficult. There are thousands of them - to read a Japanese newspaper you must know almost 2000! However, you only need to learn a few at a time. Kanji have specific meanings. They can represent whole words or parts of them. These words could be written in Hiragana but the Japanese write them in Kanji. That way the meaning is clearer. Kanji might seem difficult at first but if you have a photgraphic memory they can be quite easy to remember. Just practice a lot.

I have been learning Japanese for a year now, I know some basic vocab, sentence structures etc. Also I can read and write Hiragana, Katakana and about 120 Kanji. I love Japanese, it's my favourite school subject. And I went to Japan in October. It was AWESOME! So I would recomend Japanese, it's not really that hard, I think it's easier than, say, French, would be!

Hope this has been helpful to you. Sorry it's a bit long...

Answer 2

Japanese is very challenging, but it's not impossible. I've been doing self-study off and on and it's frustrating at times because of the amount of effort you have to put into it. Katakana and Hiragana takes about a month to learn if you're pretty dedicated and Kanji, well, you'll always be learning those. The stroke order and everything is what makes learning Kanji the toughest. Plus not to mention whether or not to use the kun or on pronounciation when used in a sentance. Japanese is easy to pronounce most of the time; just listen to a Japanese song and you can see for yourself. Plus, the word order is SOV, not SVO, like in English. So it's I hamburger eat, not I eat hamburger. Japanese is a beautiful language with a rich culture behind it, so please don't give up! I wish you the best of luck. :)

Answer 3

The sentence structure and vowels of Japanese are very similar to that of Spanish. The characters are hard to memorize, but it's actually easier if you start with Hiragana, which is almost like drawing. Learning Japanese is a lot harder for an English speaker to learn than Spanish, but if you finish learning Spanish first it will be easier for you.

Answer 4

It is one of the 5 hardest languages. Japanese has words that sound the same but the difference is the inflection. There are many intricate parts of the language that take time to learn. I think it is actually listed as being harder to learn than English. There are no tricks like in Spanish. It will be very valuable depending on what you want to do for a career though. If you have the chance to take a beginner's class I would so go for it. It's going to be pretty hard though

Answer 5

Sorry, but it will be pretty difficult so only take it if you're really set on learning it. It's one of the hardest languages to learn. I'm 16 taking Chinese and the writing is very similar to Japanese. So just study hard. Actually, if you want to go in the business world when you're older, knowing Japanese can be very helpful and useful. And not all of the kanji characters are hard to write.

Good luck!

Answer 6

If you're a visual learner, then it really isn't too hard, though I must admit the sentence structure can seem quite difficult. Here are some sites that might help

Answer 7

Hi. I studied Chinese (hanyu pinyin) for a few years and it takes a little while to 'get' the picture type language, but no. My opinion.