Learning Japanese: Thoughts about English
Any time I'm working on learning another language, it is impossible for me to avoid making comparisons. And not just because much of learning a new language is about mapping things about that new language back to the one you already know.
Japanese might seem like it should be a hard language for a Westerner to learn. But, I think that is wrong for 2 big reasons. Firstly, simplicity and also the fact that it is so different is a huge advantage. It just seems like it should be difficult because unlike languages like French or Spanish, there aren't really any native Japanese words you just incidentally know (aside from maybe Sushi and Sake, and you're saying them wrong anyway).
On the complexity front... English is F---ED right up. Take the following words: "bought", "flew", "grew", "own" and "borrowed". What do they have in common... well "own" might make it less obvious, but they are all past tense. "Bought" and "flew" sound completely different, even though their present tenses sound very similar; "buy" and "fly". And "flew" and "grew" sound similar in the past tense even though their present tense sound nothing alike; "fly" and "grow". "Grow" and "borrow" even have the exact same 3 final letters but follow different rules when conjugated for the past tense.
People aren't joking when they say English is the hardest language to become fluent in. Their really isn't much in the way of hard and fast rules in English. Virtually every "rule" has SEVERAL examples where it isn't followed. And the so called exception exist in common words and sentences.
Of course, the history of English is to blame for this. Many words are taken from other languages or a variety of older English dialects. Becoming truly fluent in English is borderline impossible if it isn't your native tongue.
Japan is an island nation which was in isolation from much of the world throughout history and doesn't have the same foreign influence on its language. It is also a more straight forward language to begin with. Top that off with the fact that unless you want to speak very formally, you can even drop a whole ton of words from a sentence and it will still be talking in Japanese that not only the locals will understand, but may even be how they speak themselves. By contrast, even if a few words would suffice with the right context, French speaking Canadian's would look at you funny if you didn't structure your sentences properly or omitted words.
Next up is why it being so different is actually a blessing in disguise. I live in Canada. We have two official languages; English and French. When they tried to teach me French in school it was PAINFUL. Part of it was a terrible system with terrible teachers. But more than that, it was because French looked like English a lot of the time, but had different rules. It felt like trying to sort out 2 competing notions in my head. And worse, trying to remember words when often the same word exists in both languages but has drastically different meanings in both.
With Japanese, the is almost none of that. And reading the words in Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji mean that even if there is an English word which is similar, I don't associate it with the Japanese one at all, unless I'm intentionally making some word association to help me remember a word.
Japanese might seem like it should be a hard language for a Westerner to learn. But, I think that is wrong for 2 big reasons. Firstly, simplicity and also the fact that it is so different is a huge advantage. It just seems like it should be difficult because unlike languages like French or Spanish, there aren't really any native Japanese words you just incidentally know (aside from maybe Sushi and Sake, and you're saying them wrong anyway).
On the complexity front... English is F---ED right up. Take the following words: "bought", "flew", "grew", "own" and "borrowed". What do they have in common... well "own" might make it less obvious, but they are all past tense. "Bought" and "flew" sound completely different, even though their present tenses sound very similar; "buy" and "fly". And "flew" and "grew" sound similar in the past tense even though their present tense sound nothing alike; "fly" and "grow". "Grow" and "borrow" even have the exact same 3 final letters but follow different rules when conjugated for the past tense.
People aren't joking when they say English is the hardest language to become fluent in. Their really isn't much in the way of hard and fast rules in English. Virtually every "rule" has SEVERAL examples where it isn't followed. And the so called exception exist in common words and sentences.
Of course, the history of English is to blame for this. Many words are taken from other languages or a variety of older English dialects. Becoming truly fluent in English is borderline impossible if it isn't your native tongue.
Japan is an island nation which was in isolation from much of the world throughout history and doesn't have the same foreign influence on its language. It is also a more straight forward language to begin with. Top that off with the fact that unless you want to speak very formally, you can even drop a whole ton of words from a sentence and it will still be talking in Japanese that not only the locals will understand, but may even be how they speak themselves. By contrast, even if a few words would suffice with the right context, French speaking Canadian's would look at you funny if you didn't structure your sentences properly or omitted words.
Next up is why it being so different is actually a blessing in disguise. I live in Canada. We have two official languages; English and French. When they tried to teach me French in school it was PAINFUL. Part of it was a terrible system with terrible teachers. But more than that, it was because French looked like English a lot of the time, but had different rules. It felt like trying to sort out 2 competing notions in my head. And worse, trying to remember words when often the same word exists in both languages but has drastically different meanings in both.
With Japanese, the is almost none of that. And reading the words in Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji mean that even if there is an English word which is similar, I don't associate it with the Japanese one at all, unless I'm intentionally making some word association to help me remember a word.
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