|
 |
Is Japanese ridiculously hard? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lexii Senior Member United States Joined 5223 days ago 162 posts - 194 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 33 of 60 04 September 2010 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Tae Kim has also recently released an app version, available on ITunes. It, too, is free. It's completely offline and, of course, portable! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| vexx Groupie Australia Joined 5219 days ago 81 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 34 of 60 06 September 2010 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
^ Thanks all!
I will definitely attempt to learn Japanese within the next few years, may do some basic stuff next year, or at the end of it. May have more questions then^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| loliveira85 Tetraglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5198 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Japanese | Message 35 of 60 08 September 2010 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
I have been doing the japanese rosetta stone for a little while and I can confidently say, it is not that hard. I have made great strides and i remember every word I ever learned. I also have japanese word of the day on my iphone. You have to be dedicated, but that is really the case with any language. Regarding the script, it will take you a little bit because they use three different types of script. Hiragana, katakana and kanji. But even though it takes a while to learn all of them, they appear more intimidating than they really are. If you take a look at it, you will see that there is a system to their writing, and that knowledge will cut your work in half. Good luck! Let me know about your progress. I'd be happy to help!
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5829 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 36 of 60 12 September 2010 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
You'll want to make sure you listen to as much spoken japanese as possible, in addition to your other studies. At
first it will sound like gibberish and you won't know where one word stops and the next begins, but slowly you'll learn to recognize the sounds and the spaces between words, even if you don't understand what it means yet. This is vitally important to learning to listen and speak. Another benefit of massive listening input is that your brain will automatically start to learn grammar rules and correct intonation/pronunciation. It's a subtle effect- you'll just notice that when you screw up it will "feel funny" or "sound wrong" for some unidentifiable reason. In combination with studying this can be really useful. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5153 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 37 of 60 30 November 2010 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
So could you please explain what is difficult in Japanese? Is the advanced grammar much more difficult than it looks at the beginning? Does it get harder or something else? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 38 of 60 30 November 2010 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I studied Italian with little effert for 2 semesters when I was in college, over 15 years ago. After 2 years of studying Japanese intensively, it's still easier for me to read an Italian text than a Japanese text. For most European languages, at least the Germanic and Romance ones, reading and being exposed to new words is often enough to acquire them. They are fairly transparent, for the most part. You could learn the word for "information" in German, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Italian, French, Portuguese, etc. in a matter of seconds, but remembering the Japanese jouhou is a lot harder because it's impossible to guess, not to mention remembering the kanjis for it, and remembering that it's not joukyou, kyoujou, etc. which all sound so similar. The grammar, too, is much more opaque. Claiming that learning French is harder than Japanese is like saying that learning kanji is easier than learning the Russian alphabet: it's simply false. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5153 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 39 of 60 30 November 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
For most European languages, at least the Germanic and Romance ones, reading and being exposed to new words is often enough to acquire them. They are fairly transparent, for the most part. You could learn the word for "information" in German, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Italian, French, Portuguese, etc. in a matter of seconds, but remembering the Japanese jouhou is a lot harder because it's impossible to guess, not to mention remembering the kanjis for it, and remembering that it's not joukyou, kyoujou, etc. which all sound so similar. The grammar, too, is much more opaque. Claiming that learning French is harder than Japanese is like saying that learning kanji is easier than learning the Russian alphabet: it's simply false.[/QUOTE] Thanks for your info. But I still have some questions. The writing in Japanese, Chinese and Korean are the most difficult ones making these languages the most difficult even if they have much simpler grammars than many others. Secondly the Japanese words must be transparent for the Chinese and Koreans. They also should have difficulties while remembering the French words. Is it not possible to learn only the Japanese grammar with another alphabet or simply the Latin alphabet? My underlying question is that is it impossible for them to get rid of Kanji? If it is so then I think there should be a limit in the grammar for the foreigners to learn. I was told that it was good to learn little Arabic with Latin letters but after a point it is even much more difficult to continue as the Latin letters don’t suit Arabic. A friend of mine learned little Japanese with Latin letters and said that the grammar was very easy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 40 of 60 30 November 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
|
Maybe your friend said so because he only learned "little Japanese", which would be why he doesn't know what he's talking about.
If you want to learn Japanese without kanji, fine, but you'll quickly be very limited in the kind of language you can be exposed to. Of course, the problem of opacity is still the same. As for grammar alone, it's not that it's impossible to learn, but it does present very different problems, structures and points of view from the ones we are used to seeing in the European languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
