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I took a year of Chinese in college and there is hardly any grammar. The only thing that is "hard" is memorizing the characters. The only grammar we had to learn is the word "le."
I tried to learn Japanese from two books from the library. My God, the grammar is really complicated. You also have to conjugate verbs. "Tabumasu" (to eat) vs "tabumosen" (let's eat), for example. Also three sets of words/symbols. Also word order is unusual.
The books I used were crummy and that adds to it. If you want to learn a language from a book, it should be a textbook and not a "conversational" book. I also recommend basic books by McGraw Hill.
I took a year of German in high school. Nouns are broken into three genders which means you have to remember for stuff. Spanish only has two.
I minored in Japanese as an undergrad (Linguistics major). The grammar is actually not the hard part of Japanese. Compared to any European language, verbs are a piece of cake. There are only a few forms (four or five for each verb), they don't conjugate for person unlike say Spanish or German, which both have a zillion verb forms, and only two verbs are irregular.
Your example of tabemasu/tabemasen (eat/not eat) is a perfect one to show how regular verbs are. You can take any verb ending in "masu," which is the polite present tense, change it to "masen," and it becomes negative. Ikimasu/ikimasen (go/not go). Kimasu/kimasen (come/not come). Nomimasu/nomimasen (drink/not drink). Yomimasu/yomimasen (read/not read). There are no exceptions. This is not hard.
There are no genders, no articles (a/the), and no plural forms. Technically there are no real pronouns, and the subject of a sentence is left out whenever possible. Yes, the word order differs from English; verbs come last in a clause or sentence. Plus, prepositions come after nouns. So instead of "I go to school," the word order is "I school-to go." But that's not hard either, just different.
The pronunciation is also straightforward, with only one or two sounds that seem mildly unusual for an English-speaker.
The hard parts of Japanese are A) the writing system (the two syllabaries are simple; the kanji or characters are kind of a beast), and B) the register. By register I mean that you have to use different verb forms and often different vocabulary words depending on whom you are speaking to. If you're female, you use certain words, and if you're male, you use others. If you're speaking to a teacher or your boss, you use entirely different verb forms than if you're talking to your friend or a subordinate at work. I didn't mind learning the writing system, but that all drove me nuts because it is unlike anything we have in English. If all Japanese was spoken in the "plain form," it would honestly be one of the easiest spoken languages around.
Chinese may not have a grammar that seems complicated but it is not as easy as it is sometimes made to seem. Every single word is unfamiliar to Westerners. Every single word has a separate character that has to be memorized. (Japanese, actually, does not.) There are many, many phrases that are meaningless unless you know the ancient story that they are referring to--it's a very high context language. Tones are very difficult to foreigners who speak non-tonal languages to master. And as long as sentences are on the level of "You have a nice house" or "I went to the store," the syntax is similar to English, but it gets a lot more complicated and unlike English than that.
Spanish is fairly simple at the outset, but the verbs! So so many verb forms conjugated for every person in every one of many tenses. German has a steeper learning curve for beginners, but it gets easier. (I took three years of each in high school and am currently continuing to study German). Both languages are relatively easy for English-speakers, certainly much easier than either Chinese or Japanese.
If someone is interested in learning a little bit of a foreign language it's of course preferable to hear, speak, read AND write the language, so I would always recommend an in-person class or at least an online program over a book. I have found Babbel pretty good. It's surprising how well their method makes words and phrases stick in the memory.
I minored in Japanese as an undergrad (Linguistics major). The grammar is actually not the hard part of Japanese. Compared to any European language, verbs are a piece of cake. There are only a few forms (four or five for each verb), they don't conjugate for person unlike say Spanish or German, which both have a zillion verb forms, and only two verbs are irregular.
Your example of tabemasu/tabemasen (eat/not eat) is a perfect one to show how regular verbs are. You can take any verb ending in "masu," which is the polite present tense, change it to "masen," and it becomes negative. Ikimasu/ikimasen (go/not go). Kimasu/kimasen (come/not come). Nomimasu/nomimasen (drink/not drink). Yomimasu/yomimasen (read/not read). There are no exceptions. This is not hard.
There are no genders, no articles (a/the), and no plural forms. Technically there are no real pronouns, and the subject of a sentence is left out whenever possible. Yes, the word order differs from English; verbs come last in a clause or sentence. Plus, prepositions come after nouns. So instead of "I go to school," the word order is "I school-to go." But that's not hard either, just different.
The pronunciation is also straightforward, with only one or two sounds that seem mildly unusual for an English-speaker.
The hard parts of Japanese are A) the writing system (the two syllabaries are simple; the kanji or characters are kind of a beast), and B) the register. By register I mean that you have to use different verb forms and often different vocabulary words depending on whom you are speaking to. If you're female, you use certain words, and if you're male, you use others. If you're speaking to a teacher or your boss, you use entirely different verb forms than if you're talking to your friend or a subordinate at work. I didn't mind learning the writing system, but that all drove me nuts because it is unlike anything we have in English. If all Japanese was spoken in the "plain form," it would honestly be one of the easiest spoken languages around.
Chinese may not have a grammar that seems complicated but it is not as easy as it is sometimes made to seem. Every single word is unfamiliar to Westerners. Every single word has a separate character that has to be memorized. (Japanese, actually, does not.) There are many, many phrases that are meaningless unless you know the ancient story that they are referring to--it's a very high context language. Tones are very difficult to foreigners who speak non-tonal languages to master. And as long as sentences are on the level of "You have a nice house" or "I went to the store," the syntax is similar to English, but it gets a lot more complicated and unlike English than that.
Spanish is fairly simple at the outset, but the verbs! So so many verb forms conjugated for every person in every one of many tenses. German has a steeper learning curve for beginners, but it gets easier. (I took three years of each in high school and am currently continuing to study German). Both languages are relatively easy for English-speakers, certainly much easier than either Chinese or Japanese.
If someone is interested in learning a little bit of a foreign language it's of course preferable to hear, speak, read AND write the language, so I would always recommend an in-person class or at least an online program over a book. I have found Babbel pretty good. It's surprising how well their method makes words and phrases stick in the memory.
Thank you for your helpful post saibot
I am very interested in learning Japanese .... I notice your reference regarding Babbel and will check that out. Are you familiar with Busuu, and if so, would you have any opinions on their methods ?
Thanks again !
kantan ja nai, honto ne (それともほんとに) <- install Japanese language in windows btw and type phonetically .
Personally I've been struggling with it for 2+ years - grammar isn't the biggest issue, the 3 writing systems + the words that often rhyme are the biggest issue. I can get by or watch movie without subs but often miss words and sentences and can't get what's going on...
Plenty of loanwords though: hoteru, aisukurimu, doa, boifriendU - for some of them there are japanese eq.-lents like kareshi = bf, doa = to etc. Plenty of slangs too such as "shiran" (negative of "know" - ****e iru), " "sugoi" = "cool/nice", "ore" (men saying "I" to sound more manly and cool instead of 'watashi' -the universal book form). Etc.
Edit: I had to edit since citydata censors the abbreviation "***." from "Japanese" silly...
But the point remains: it only matters if it sounds nice, which it does.
Thank you for your helpful post saibot
I am very interested in learning Japanese .... I notice your reference regarding Babbel and will check that out. Are you familiar with Busuu, and if so, would you have any opinions on their methods ?
Thanks again !
I'm not familiar with Busuu, unfortunately, will have to look that one up.
Babbel, which is European-focused company, does not offer Japanese. That is too bad! Some years ago I was hearing ads for Babbel and was interested in brushing up on Japanese, only to be disappointed. Much more recently I used their German course and really liked it.
kantan ja nai, honto ne (それともほんとに) <- install Japanese language in windows btw and type phonetically .
Personally I've been struggling with it for 2+ years - grammar isn't the biggest issue, the 3 writing systems + the words that often rhyme are the biggest issue. I can get by or watch movie without subs but often miss words and sentences and can't get what's going on...
Plenty of loanwords though: hoteru, aisukurimu, doa, boifriendU - for some of them there are japanese eq.-lents like kareshi = bf, doa = to etc. Plenty of slangs too such as "shiran" (negative of "know" - ****e iru), " "sugoi" = "cool/nice", "ore" (men saying "I" to sound more manly and cool instead of 'watashi' -the universal book form). Etc.
Edit: I had to edit since citydata censors the abbreviation "***." from "Japanese" silly...
But the point remains: it only matters if it sounds nice, which it does.
The censorship is too funny.
I agree with you about the words that sound the same. Most of them are Chinese loanwords, and that issue is greatly magnified in Chinese.
Watching movies to learn Japanese is a fun way to learn. You might also try "News in Slow Japanese," which I enjoyed. This is a great resource because the articles are short and you can choose to listen first in slow speech, then at normal speed. Really helps with comprehension. There are complete vocabulary lists, too.
In China and Japan today, all kids are taught the Western alphabet, is that right? Because that's how you enter those languages into computers.
There's a way to write Chinese or Japanese characters using a touchscreen; however, most people don't sit there for hours writing like that, is that right?
In China and Japan today, all kids are taught the Western alphabet, is that right? Because that's how you enter those languages into computers.
There's a way to write Chinese or Japanese characters using a touchscreen; however, most people don't sit there for hours writing like that, is that right?
I can't speak for China, but the Japanese are familiar with the Western alphabet although they can have difficulty reading a large amount of Japanese if it's written this way.
It's not necessary to use a touchscreen to write in Japanese. I have a Microsoft Japanese keyboard system installed on my computer and it's extremely fast and easy to use. It toggles between hiragana and katakana. If I am in hiragana mode, for example, I type on my keyboard k i and get the corresponding kana for the syllable ki (き). I can leave it at that, or press the space bar to get a series of kanji which match that pronunciation, to choose from: 聞 木 気 and so forth. It works for kanji combinations too; けいたい (keitai) gives a choice of 携帯 or 形態. Really very efficient when you are used to it.
Then they say something in Japanese, but alas… nobody understands. lol
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