Japanese: the hardest language?
This article from The Japan Times Online was in this week's edition of the Language Feed. I found it pretty entertaining.
[Edit: more on this can be found at Language Hat.]
ilani ilani
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- Name:Bridget Samuels
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4.03.2005
[Edit: more on this can be found at Language Hat.]
12 Comments:
Hi from Spain!
I have studied a couple of different languages, including Japanese. My Japanese is not good at all, but if I compare one year of German lessons, with a year of Japanese lessons, I would say that German can et even more difficult than Japanese, even though in German you don't have the handicap of learning a different alphabet.
Japanese is quite well structured and logical, their verb tenses are simple and they do not have gender (feminine or masculine words), so I wouldn't say it's that hard to learn, appart from the writting, which obviously is difficult. I wonder what people think when they are learning Spanish with all our grammar rules, and difficult phonemes :-)
Paqui
http://www.thebabeltower.blogspot.com
In Japan here. Sorry, but I think this article is crazy. Among the dozens of lanuages I've studied, Japanese is definitely the hardest. The author mistakes morphological complexity for overall language difficulty. Morphologically, japanese is incredibly simple. The nouns are immutable and genderless, and the adjective and verb conjugations are almost perfectly regular. But the manner of expression, the semantic structure of the language, is incredibly more complex. To use a metaphor, finnish nouns or arabic verbs in all their hell aside, employing all those painfully learned forms in actual spoken sentences is little more complex than walking a straight road downhill from the summit, with occasional detours in subordination and conjunction, but still all downhill, as far as you feel like walking. Speaking Japanese, on the other hand, is like building to the trunk of the tree from the outerfacing leaves inward. People are amazed at all the things Japanese can leave out without impairing communication, but after learning Japanese, you're amazed at the sheer sloppy casualness of other languages. The fact that we can use the exact same kind of construction for "I live in Japan", "I have a friend in Japan", and "I met my wife in Japan" is just baffling from the point of view of a Japanese speaker.
Jeff
Nice blog, by the way.
Hi Paqui & Jeff, and thanks for the comments!
Paqui: I took Spanish in high school-- my experience was that it's an easy language for an English speaker to learn *badly.* A lot of the vocabulary is intelligible/easily memorized based on Latinate roots that we share. On the other hand, getting the phonology and certain aspects of the syntax correct is really tricky, but a lot of people don't seem to care about that.
japanese is hard but not the hardest!!! it can be hard sometimes but when you get the hangof it it gets you fluently!
Hi all,
Bridget you are probably right about Spanish being easy to learn "badly" than Janese.
It is also true that because Japanese culture is so different to ours (European or American)getting a "good" level of japanese can be quite hard.
Japanese Is definatly one of the hardest or maybe the hardest, allthought i learned a few harder languages in africa which their structures are not from this planet...
japanese uses alot more kanjis(characters) than chinese and koreans and the structure of the kanji accualy meas something. (e.g. a man with a jar of hot water and symbol of leaves means tea) But unlikely most languages japanese has lots of different structures of speaking. you cant say 'hello' in the style of morning for kids to an old man nin the evening. if you take someone into 1 year intensive finnish/german/arabic. he will come out fluently. but if you take someone and put him into intensive japanese studies he wont.
kathisio (ethiopia)
I studied Japanese and I think it is not the hatdest, as other people has said, japanese do not conjugate verbs like we do and verbs are genderless. there are harder languages like Russian.
I believe it is possible to develop good language skills as long as there is a drive for it. I, for example, had no choice but to take Spanish from a very young age at school (and I don't even have any descendancy from a Spanish-speaking country!). So from 4th grade till 6th grade, I was forced to take Spanish. It wasn't until I was in 7th grade that I could actually choose to take French...but what was the point? I had already been in Spanish classes for three years, so I figured it was a waste and just stuck with Spanish up until 10th grade. I still remember some things from all of those years, but I could have excelled with straight A's had I had an interest in the language.
Currently, I am taking Japanese in college and am enjoying every moment of it. I do find it difficult at times, but that makes it more enjoyable to learn. I find that memorizing vocabulary is not at all difficult...perhaps because I have such a strong interest in the language. I learn new kanji in our lessons without a problem as well. I just wanted to point out the someone above posted that Japanese uses more kanji than Korean and Chinese...I don't know much about Korean, but I know for a fact that Japanese does not use nearly as many characters as Chinese. The characters that Japanese has in their writing system are also simplified, thus making it easier than written Chinese, in my opinion.
Excuse me Kathisio, but have you ever studied Finnish,or met someone who speaks Finnish?
'Cause I'm a Finn and can definetly say, that if a person goes through an intensive year of training in Finnish language, there is no chance in hell that he'll learn it fluently in a year.
Finnish is completely different language(Finno-Ugric), compared to indoeuropean languages, which are about every other language in the world,and is most likely the most illogical language in the world.
I have studied English since third grade, and I find it easier to write than my own native language(i'm now in high school). While writing English, I'm less likely to make grammar mistakes than while writing Finnish.
There are at least 20 different forms for each word, it's nearly impossible to tell which words are conjoined, and we have numerous words for same situations, which just make the meaning slightly different. But if you wanna write fluent finnish, you gotta know them.
For conclusion, I can honestly say, that I have never met an immigrant in Finland , who spoke fluent Finnish unless they came here as infants. The Finno-Ugric languages have a different vocal sound.
So that's why I consider Finnish as one of the hardest languages in the world. You got harder one? Please name it.
Oh yeah... I forgot.
Check this website out, I think it could illuminate your minds a bit.
http://www.finlandforum.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=12120&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
FINNISH, HARDEST LANGUAGE!!!!! BOOO!!!
UHAUHAUHAUHUA HAUHASUH JKDFASDFASFFSD
FSDKFDUF FI FDOF FDGDFKPGFUIO UIOFEU
FDIFUD 84 EFIDFDOV FSUEFNF
I think Latin is by far the hardest language to learn, and I am already fluent in English, Spanish,Italian, an Mandarin. (I work as a sociological translator)
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