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Chinese or Japanese: which is easier? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4434 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes  Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 65 of 73 07 July 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
There are actually other input systems aside from the one which uses pinyin, and bopomofo is still actually used in some education systems and text books. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6306 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 66 of 73 11 July 2013 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
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If Japanese was written with only Romaji wouldn't it be considered a fairly easy language, especially
compared to other Asian languages? I mean from the little exposure I had to the language pronunciation seems dead easy, verbs, nouns and adjectives aren't conjugated? No genders and word order is consistent unlike German or Russian for example.The particles seem fairly straight forward to recognize and use, atleast at a basic level? There seems to be a wealth of good learning material with Romaji transcriptions, unlike languages like Arabic and Persian where you have to rely on the broken Arabic script and tedious learning materials. I'm sure it gets worse once you're past the basic stages, but even reaching some sort of functional conversational level seems to require a lot more in Arabic for example. Edited by anime on 11 July 2013 at 11:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4695 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 67 of 73 11 July 2013 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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If Japanese were written in Romaji, it would still be difficult: its grammar is much more difficult than the Mandarin one, and compared to a relatively easy Asian language (like Indonesian), Japanese pronunciation is somewhat complex, native-like accent is difficult to obtain (because of the pitch accent, nasals like the one in ARIGATO, and other things...). Edited by Camundonguinho on 11 July 2013 at 12:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4718 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 68 of 73 11 July 2013 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
Also, I wouldn't exactly call the word order consistent, at least not to the extent of English. It's usually analysed as SOV, but OSV isn't exactly out of the question. The fact that Japanese is a topic-prominent language kinda makes the whole subject-object dichotomy secondary in determining word order. It's even possible to make the verb the topic, or to have the verb as a comment, but with the topic coming after it (although the latter is sometimes interpreted as two sentences/clauses, with the second one clarifying the first one). The fact that information that is clear from the context can be left out entirely adds another layer to the complication. As for the pronunciation, it might actually be deceptively easy, in that it lulls the learner into a false sense of security. Sure, sounding "close enough" is easier than sounding "exactly native-like" for any language, but many learners seem to severely underestimate the gap between the two in the case of Japanese. It's often said that Romanized Japanese is supposed to be read with clear Italian/Spanish vowels and English consonants, so it's easy to overlook the fact that the Japanese "sh" is different from the English "sh", or that the "h" in "ha" and the "h" in "hi" are pronounced differently from each other (the fact that the "h" in "hu" is different does get reflected in its Hepburn transliteration as "fu", but the "f" in the Japanese "fu" is still different from the "f" of most European languages), or the fact that the i's and u's are devoiced between voiceless consonants (or, for that matter, that the Japanese "u" is actually a pretty uncommon sound). And that's not even getting into the pitch accent can of worms. Many visitors to Japan tell stories of how they addressed a local in Japanese only to get panicked responses in broken English. Many interpret this failure to recognize the foreigner's speech as Japanese as a result of a combination of panic and deep-seated stereotyping ("Oh crap, a foreigner! He's gonna talk to me in English, and I already forgot everything I learned in high school! Huh, was that Japanese just now? Nah, it can't be, not with a face like that! La-la-la, I can't hear you, la-la-la..."), but I wonder how often it's simply down to the foreigner's phonology being really off combined with the native speaker's lack of exposure to foreign-accented Japanese. All that I wrote above is not meant to dispute that the need to learn Chinese characters is a major, if not the major reason why Japanese is considered such a difficult language. But still, there are other obstacles to overcome. In the FSI ratings the agglutinative languages written in the Latin alphabet (Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish, etc.) are in one category below Japanese and the other top-difficulty languages, but the top category does include Korean, a language written in an alphabetic script with a grammar very similar to Japanese. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6306 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 69 of 73 11 July 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I definitely noticed they drop some sounds here and there, still didn't seem like anything major to me.
The u sounded somewhat like french y? But yeah pitch accent and all that seems like a lot of busy work. Probably wouldn't attempt this language without having access to native speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4718 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 70 of 73 11 July 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Edited by vonPeterhof on 11 July 2013 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6306 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 71 of 73 12 July 2013 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah okey well that's good news, I guess I could imitate it then if it exists in Swedish, but really you guys
have convinced me not to attempt this hellish language. Well the good news is I still kinda like some parts of Japanese culture (like Nintendo) and think it can sound pretty cool sometimes, unlike Korean ugh 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| freakyaye Senior Member Australia Joined 4784 days ago 107 posts - 152 votes | Message 72 of 73 29 July 2013 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't worry about pitch accent that much, if you imitate what you hear then you are using it correctly 😃. Plus, people like the accent mixes non natives have.
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