How difficult is learning Japanese
Now, I'm sure my opinion will change yet again as I progress down this road. But a common theme when it comes to Westerners learning Japanese is to question the difficulty.
When I first started I had drank the Kool-Aid of the software I was using and would have said "oh it is easy, sure you need to learn some funky new writing systems, but look at all of these well established rules!".
A few months later and I would have said "the rules are lies! Japanese is insane".
And now, roughly a year after that, I would change my tone entirely and say "it depends on how far down the path you intend to go".
If you just plan to go to Tokyo on a vacation... grab a phrase book. Or stick to places where English is spoken. Apparently, in Tokyo and major tourist areas you can get along OK with just English. Zero personal experience. Don't take my word for it. Research where you are going first. But, probably, you'll be OK.
If you plan to learn anywhere from just a little to a lot, but nowhere near fluency (say... N4 level)... you're screwed. Well, not screwed, as it is definitely possible. But, now, I would say learning Japanese is among the hardest languages you'll encounter as a Westerner to learn.
Getting up to N4 should enable you to follow basic conversations (you may still need to ask people to talk slowly) and read basic signs. But, it also means learning the bulk of the grammar, a ton of vocab, learning the exceptions to the rules, most of the levels of formality, learning Hiragana, Katakana and some Kanji. And then, once you're brain is about explode, calling it a day.
Learning Hiragana and Katakana is seriously no problem. As a person who only ever learned one alphabet, learning 2 syllabaries, each with more than just 26 characters seemed a bit daunting. But, honestly, an hour a day here or there for 2 weeks and I had them both at a point where I could slowly read through anything in those scripts. People spend more time whining about them than it actually takes to learn them.
The grammar is actually fairly consistent. There is just a lot to take in. And most of the rule breaking falls into two categories; informal speech and dropping elements. And the rule breaking for informal speech is often structured well enough to just consider it more grammar rather than rule breaking. But, it is the volume of it to learn which makes a decent level of comprehension of every day Japanese difficult to follow.
Vocabulary is also more important in Japanese than in English for a simple reason; homonyms. The dirty secret of the syllable based language is the extreme wealth of homonyms. Combine that with the ability to drop most grammar elements from a sentence and it becomes very difficult to get your bearings. Without a deep vocabulary it can become quite easy to get lost even if you started out knowing what someone was talking about.
Formality affects conjugation of verbs. Without being comfortable with at least honorific and informal Japanese you won't be able to properly follow most conversations. And without knowing the honorific form employees use with customers, even shopping could get confusing.
And of course, if you're going to be drifting around all over the place, you'll need to learn some Kanji as well. Maybe not the full 常用漢字, but at least the grade school level Kanji.
All of this means the barrier to entry to that point is very steep. Especially compared to some other languages. For French I don't need to learn any new writing systems (aside from some accents). There isn't really a "formal" French. There are certainly things I can say which sound more or less formal as in any language, but it isn't a complete modification of every verb as it is in Japanese. Homonyms aren't really any more rampant than in English. The grammar rules are less flexible. And there are fewer of them.
So, if I wanted to learn French to the point where I could survive general conversations, I think it would be a lot easier.
But, what about going beyond that?
That is where things get suddenly and drastically different. You see, what a language like Japanese has that English and French don't... is a language based MUCH more upon compound words, or at least their closest approximation.
Let's take an English word like "quad-copter". Quad, most of know, means "4" and "copter" we'd likely guess correctly as being the same one used in "helicopter". We could probably deduce, even if we had never heard this word before that it has something to do with the number 4 and helicopters. Enough context and we might even guess exactly what it means. But, compounds like this aren't super common in English or French or in most languages I'm aware of. Most words, even related ones, derive little to no mean from the letters or groups of letters which construct them. And, where such correlations exist, they are hard to decipher aside from the most common because we borrowed from so many different languages.
Written Japanese on the other hand started out as Chinese. Which isn't quite pictographs, but close enough for the sake of this. As a result, most Japanese words have their meaning rooted in either a single Kanji or a combination thereof. Even most words typically written purely in Hiragana have a historical Kanji associated with them. And these Kanji dictate the reading, and more often than not, contribute to the meaning of the word.
Let's take 飛行機 which is "air plane". It consists of the Kanji for "fly", "to go" and "machine". Like our quad-copter example, a Japanese person could probably figure out the general meaning of this word based on nothing else if they read it. And, it is possible that they could figure it out in spoken language as well. That on it's own isn't impressive. What is impressive however is how many Japanese words are built from compound Kanji and compound words.
It doesn't end there though. You had to learn virtually all of the grammar rules just to get this far. And all of the most common ways the rules are broken. There are no more writing systems to learn. Even slang follows well established rules for the most part.
In English or French, at this point I'd have little to no help on picking up future vocab. I'd still just be scratching the surface of exceptions, slang and lesser known grammatical constructs and I'd probably be years away from being passable at fluency.
While it might take longer to get to that level with Japanese. It is only because you need to pick up more things along the way to get there, not because picking up the same things takes any longer. Furthermore, the things you pick up, have more long term value than they do in English.
So, as I said when I started this post... the difficulty in learning Japanese is more destination dependent than anything. I know a lot of people learn a language only as far as something like Duo-Lingo would take you and call it a day. For those people, I think Japanese will be painfully hard. Travellers can, as they can in most languages and places, get off with hand gestures and a phrase book where their native tongue won't suffice. For those in it for the long haul though, I think after the first big mountains are climbed will find Japanese relatively easier from that point on.
When I first started I had drank the Kool-Aid of the software I was using and would have said "oh it is easy, sure you need to learn some funky new writing systems, but look at all of these well established rules!".
A few months later and I would have said "the rules are lies! Japanese is insane".
And now, roughly a year after that, I would change my tone entirely and say "it depends on how far down the path you intend to go".
If you just plan to go to Tokyo on a vacation... grab a phrase book. Or stick to places where English is spoken. Apparently, in Tokyo and major tourist areas you can get along OK with just English. Zero personal experience. Don't take my word for it. Research where you are going first. But, probably, you'll be OK.
If you plan to learn anywhere from just a little to a lot, but nowhere near fluency (say... N4 level)... you're screwed. Well, not screwed, as it is definitely possible. But, now, I would say learning Japanese is among the hardest languages you'll encounter as a Westerner to learn.
Getting up to N4 should enable you to follow basic conversations (you may still need to ask people to talk slowly) and read basic signs. But, it also means learning the bulk of the grammar, a ton of vocab, learning the exceptions to the rules, most of the levels of formality, learning Hiragana, Katakana and some Kanji. And then, once you're brain is about explode, calling it a day.
Learning Hiragana and Katakana is seriously no problem. As a person who only ever learned one alphabet, learning 2 syllabaries, each with more than just 26 characters seemed a bit daunting. But, honestly, an hour a day here or there for 2 weeks and I had them both at a point where I could slowly read through anything in those scripts. People spend more time whining about them than it actually takes to learn them.
The grammar is actually fairly consistent. There is just a lot to take in. And most of the rule breaking falls into two categories; informal speech and dropping elements. And the rule breaking for informal speech is often structured well enough to just consider it more grammar rather than rule breaking. But, it is the volume of it to learn which makes a decent level of comprehension of every day Japanese difficult to follow.
Vocabulary is also more important in Japanese than in English for a simple reason; homonyms. The dirty secret of the syllable based language is the extreme wealth of homonyms. Combine that with the ability to drop most grammar elements from a sentence and it becomes very difficult to get your bearings. Without a deep vocabulary it can become quite easy to get lost even if you started out knowing what someone was talking about.
Formality affects conjugation of verbs. Without being comfortable with at least honorific and informal Japanese you won't be able to properly follow most conversations. And without knowing the honorific form employees use with customers, even shopping could get confusing.
And of course, if you're going to be drifting around all over the place, you'll need to learn some Kanji as well. Maybe not the full 常用漢字, but at least the grade school level Kanji.
All of this means the barrier to entry to that point is very steep. Especially compared to some other languages. For French I don't need to learn any new writing systems (aside from some accents). There isn't really a "formal" French. There are certainly things I can say which sound more or less formal as in any language, but it isn't a complete modification of every verb as it is in Japanese. Homonyms aren't really any more rampant than in English. The grammar rules are less flexible. And there are fewer of them.
So, if I wanted to learn French to the point where I could survive general conversations, I think it would be a lot easier.
But, what about going beyond that?
That is where things get suddenly and drastically different. You see, what a language like Japanese has that English and French don't... is a language based MUCH more upon compound words, or at least their closest approximation.
Let's take an English word like "quad-copter". Quad, most of know, means "4" and "copter" we'd likely guess correctly as being the same one used in "helicopter". We could probably deduce, even if we had never heard this word before that it has something to do with the number 4 and helicopters. Enough context and we might even guess exactly what it means. But, compounds like this aren't super common in English or French or in most languages I'm aware of. Most words, even related ones, derive little to no mean from the letters or groups of letters which construct them. And, where such correlations exist, they are hard to decipher aside from the most common because we borrowed from so many different languages.
Written Japanese on the other hand started out as Chinese. Which isn't quite pictographs, but close enough for the sake of this. As a result, most Japanese words have their meaning rooted in either a single Kanji or a combination thereof. Even most words typically written purely in Hiragana have a historical Kanji associated with them. And these Kanji dictate the reading, and more often than not, contribute to the meaning of the word.
Let's take 飛行機 which is "air plane". It consists of the Kanji for "fly", "to go" and "machine". Like our quad-copter example, a Japanese person could probably figure out the general meaning of this word based on nothing else if they read it. And, it is possible that they could figure it out in spoken language as well. That on it's own isn't impressive. What is impressive however is how many Japanese words are built from compound Kanji and compound words.
It doesn't end there though. You had to learn virtually all of the grammar rules just to get this far. And all of the most common ways the rules are broken. There are no more writing systems to learn. Even slang follows well established rules for the most part.
In English or French, at this point I'd have little to no help on picking up future vocab. I'd still just be scratching the surface of exceptions, slang and lesser known grammatical constructs and I'd probably be years away from being passable at fluency.
While it might take longer to get to that level with Japanese. It is only because you need to pick up more things along the way to get there, not because picking up the same things takes any longer. Furthermore, the things you pick up, have more long term value than they do in English.
So, as I said when I started this post... the difficulty in learning Japanese is more destination dependent than anything. I know a lot of people learn a language only as far as something like Duo-Lingo would take you and call it a day. For those people, I think Japanese will be painfully hard. Travellers can, as they can in most languages and places, get off with hand gestures and a phrase book where their native tongue won't suffice. For those in it for the long haul though, I think after the first big mountains are climbed will find Japanese relatively easier from that point on.
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