Learning the Japanese language can be challenging for many English speakers. With three different writing systems, two opposite sentence structures, and three separate writing systems, the situation becomes quite complex. How difficult is it to learn Japanese?
Japanese Writing System
In Japanese, there are two scripts (called kana) that represent two different sounds, Hiragana and Katakana. In addition to Hiragana and Katakana, there are only a few other “letters” that are actually simplified Chinese characters used to make phonetic characters.
Hiragana and Katakana
Grammar is the main use of Hiragana. Throughout our study of particles, we will observe this. The Hiragana characters are used when a Kanji contains unusual characters, a colloquial expression, or an onomatopoeia. For children and beginning Japanese students, it is also often used to put the Kanji they lack in their speech.
Despite being used to represent the same sounds as Hiragana, Katakana is more often found used to represent foreign words because Kanji cannot be used for words in the Roman alphabet. Those are the three topics that will be covered in the next three sections: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.
In the Japanese writing system, Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters. Associated with Japanese syllabic scripts hiragana and katakana, they serve as a complement. Kanji, which means Han characters in Japanese, is the Japanese term for Chinese characters. Despite its origins, this system utilizes the same characters as traditional Chinese writing, known as hanzi in Chinese. Though many Kanji have Chinese-like meanings and pronunciations.
Japanese Grammar
Japanese is a morphologically simple, agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language that has a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant lengths, and a pitch accent with lexical significance. Usually, words are arranged subject-object-verb with particles marking the grammatical function of each word, and sentences are structured as follows: topic–comment. All phrases in its compound sentences end with a head. Particles at the end of a sentence are often used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or to ask a question. There are no articles or grammatical numbers attached to nouns. Generally, verb tenses and voices are conjugated, but not individuals. The Japanese language also conjugates its adjectives. Japanese honorifics are distinguished by verb forms and vocabulary to show the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.
Gender Differences
In the Japanese language, certain words and grammatical constructions are associated with men or boys, whereas others are associated with women. These differences in speech patterns are sometimes described as gendered language. Japanese terms for such speech patterns include onna kotoba (女言葉, “women’s words”) or joseigo (女性語, “women’s language”), and those associated with men are referred to as danseigo (男性語, “men’s language”).
It is generally expected that men will speak in crude, defiant, or abrupt ways, while women will speak elegantly, more deferentially, or “softly”. Language specialists think that the “rough-soft continuum” describes male and female gender better than “male and female continuum”. In written Japanese there is no difference between men and women (with the possible exception of quoted speech), nor are there any differences in polite speech (teineigo).
Politeness
Verbs in Japanese can be expressed in three ways:
the simple form (くだけた, kudaketa, “chatty” or “impolite”), The simple polite form (ていねい, teinei, “polite”) as well as advanced polite forms (敬語, keigo, “honorific language”).
Verbs in kudaketa are compiled from dictionary forms. The tense endings of a verb stem are added to make a tinei verb.
The two main types of keigo are honorific and humble languages. Sonkeigo is characterized by elegant or arcane verbs and kenjougo by the presence of highly irregular verbs.
Sonkeigo” refers to speaking honorably about or about someone that is considerably higher than you. Kenjougo refers to speaking modestly or lowering your rank below the person you are speaking to.
Why Japanese Is Easier Than You Think
Japanese is often considered to be a difficult language to learn. I will try to demonstrate in this article that Japanese is very simple and easy to learn, even with thousands of ideograms.
Those who wish to learn any language must be dedicated and patient. Speaking Portuguese is generally a bit harder for me than learning Japanese.
Portugal has a complex and diverse language, full of different grammatical rules and nuances. Let’s get to the point and find out why. You might find it easier than you think to learn Japanese.
Simplicity in grammar and verbs
Japan has fewer conjugated verbs and personal pronouns than Portuguese. In comparison, Japanese only has two present tenses and two past tenses in the indicative. There is no subject-based conjugation in Japanese.
The Japanese language does not have genders for nouns and plurals (male and female). The Japanese language lacks definite and indefinite articles.
Pronunciation and syllables in Japanese
It is easy to learn Japanese pronunciation. It’s easy to pronounce Japanese because its syllables look and sound like Portuguese. In addition, the Japanese language only has a few syllables. Languages like German (109) have definite keys (words) and are generally easier to learn.
One more way to make learning Japanese easier is the fact that although there are 109 syllables, only 46 kana (printed letters) are used to represent them. A maximum of 71 different sounds are generated by two letters made up of 46 kana. The reasons for this might be because some Kanas have two dots or balls on top of them and thus have different pronunciations.
The formation of Japanese words
Almost all Japanese words come from Portuguese, proving it is an easy language to learn. A number of things and animal names, as well as some verbs. They are written in katakana when they are in another language’s version.
Even though many people are afraid of the ideal (kanji), it is actually very useful. When you learn Japanese ideology and see how the words are put into action, the Japanese language becomes easier and more understandable. As we see elements and shapes in the ideal, we perceive what that ideal means. Many Japanese words, like those in German, are combination words such as the example below.
木 (tree) = 林 (forest) = 森 (forest). All of them have the same symbol;
