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Anonymous
/trv/, has anyone here learned japanese, or in the process of learning it? i've heard that it's one of the hardest languages to learn, and am curious about its difficulty. i'm thinking that a lack of cognates would make it pretty fucking tough.
>> Anonymous
I'm in Japanese grade 11 right now (since grade 9). If the teacher wasn't such a bitch I would take JPN 12 next year

And yes, it is difficult to learn compared to other languages. German, for example has many cognates that help you recognize or remember words. And the grammar and sentence structure is similar to that of English.

When I first started learning, all I was doing was memorizing sounds. I had no idea what I was reciting for a while.

yeah, there's a lot I could say. Do you have any specific questions?
>> Anonymous
It's no more difficult than any other language. Don't learn it unless you're going to be living there, it's impossible to master unless you're immersed (much like any other language) and there's really no real use for it anymore, maybe in the 60s and 70s but not now. Also you will get so much shit from Japanese people if you don't speak it 100% correct.


Learn Chinese.
>> Anonymous
>>66697
Considering Japan is still no.2 for largest economy I'd say it does have a use, and learning any foreign language if you live in the US/Canada is not that useful because everyone speaks English. Spanish might be useful although unless you deal with older Latino people all the young people know English.

I'm in my 4th year of Japanese @ high school level, currently taking AP Japanese. If you have a legitimate interest in learning Japanese then you can do it, but it will take a lot of effort and time. Personally I'm learning it because I want to go back to Japan and be able to get around a bit better.
>> Anonymous
The only thing difficult about Japanese is learning the 5000+ Chinese characters used in everyday life. The grammar is relatively simple.
>> Anonymous
>>66697
There was an entire generation of Japanese language students in the 70s and 80s who were in it for the money because Japan was supposed to conquer us all and they were to be our overlords. The same exact thing is happening to Chinese.

Learn whatever the fuck you want. By the time you get any good at it your pet language study project will go out of style and no longer be trendy.
>> Anonymous
>>66697

Tones in Chinese are hard sometimes, one slip and you say something completely different
>> Anonymous
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>> Anonymous
>>66750

Those people were stupid. Japan couldn't become the dominant world power because they lack the population (which is shrinking rapidly by the way). China actually does have the capability to become our overlords.

And Japanese is STILL popular to study to this day, and has not gone out of style, because of all the weeaboos.
>> Anonymous
Chinese is much harder than Japanese. Katakana is a huge advantage.

My suggestion is not to learn Japanese. It is overrated and not useful because a shitload of people already know it. Learn Spanish or Russian instead, or Chinese if you're going to go to all the trouble of learning an Eastern language. In the long run Chinese is far more useful and valuable, also more pure. Japanese has been corrupted a lot, I feel
>> Anonymous
>>66747
Soon (already?) Japan will be #3. Germany isn't too far behind, either and in many ways I would say Germany is actually considerably better than Japan
>> Anonymous
>>66778
>In the long run Chinese is far more useful and valuable, also more pure. Japanese has been corrupted a lot, I feel
What the fucking shit ass fuck
Read Cambridge's Encyclopedia of Language
Or forward this post to a linguist and have him tell you what's wrong with that statement.
>> Anonymous
>>66778
>Katakana is a huge advantage.
Bullshit. Using Katakana (and the Japanese sounds) for foreign words really fucks up their ability to pronounce actual English words. Japanese has been "corrupted" to a point where they high-jacked a lot of English words and use them in conversation to mean other things. You get what is known as "Janglish". Japanese is only useful in Japan but...

I'd say Chinese is more useful, if you're going to fucking China. I assume you mean Mandrain because the other Chinese dialects are not very useful (except Cantonese if you want to deal in Hong Kong, although they speak Mandarin too now and a high population of Hong Kong are just mainlanders so that's debatable.).

There are a few reaons to learn a language: For fun, or because you need to. The former is more likely to be the reason most people learn anything, they just like it, and more power to you. It's always good to learn new things. The latter, having to learn a language because you have to, depends on whether you'll ever need to come into contact with that country and the people who speak it. I don't think many westerners will ever live in either China or Japan for an extended period, or need to deal with them in business. If a company were to deal with a foriegn market, they'd likely get native speakers so they would be trusting to their new clients.
>> Anonymous
>>66833
> Mandrain
fucking shit ass fucking typos. I lol'd though.
>> Anonymous
You won't learn Chinese if you're not motivated, and you won't learn Japanese if you're not motivated.
Just learn what you want to.
>> Anonymous
I'm fluent in Japanese and it isn't a difficult language AT ALL. The only thing that is hard about it is the kanji characters. There is very simple sentence structure, no future tense at all, few particles, no verb conjugation...
A language like French is MUCH harder. I've been studying it on and off for many years and am nowhere close to fluent in it.
>> Anonymous
>>67069
Not OP but I am taking Japanese now in high school and pretty much agree with what you said. However, there is verb conjugation, but not nearly as confusing I would presume as English. Furthermore, you say that it's not hard at all but this is of course coming from someone fluent... For me Japanese is pretty hard because though you could make the argument its grammatical structure is pretty easy, it doesn't share much in common with English and therefore more difficult for English speakers to pick up.
learning any new language is a bitch since it requires straight up memorization and practice to acquire any worthwhile proficiency.

btw, if ur still lurking here mind if I hijack this thread for a sec and ask you a question about a Japanese sentence? sorry it's romaji: shashin wo kopi-(katakana) shitai douyattara ii desu ka. Ok, I understand the actual sentence (I want to make a copy of the picture, how should one do this?), but the problem is my friend wrote this to me without any context other then posting it on my facebook... I need some ideas as to what she's referring to (I already asked her to clarify but maybe I can figure it out before then).
>> Anonymous
>>67087
Hmm, about inferring context from that...did you two have a conversation about pictures or something like that? Anything you can think of? If not, it's her problem...she didn't clarify enough. you could write back something like,
"sumimasen ga, nan no shashin desu ka? sochira no message wa chotto aimai desu kara, wakarimasen"
>> Anonymous
>>67196
Oh sorry, I forgot you already asked her for clarification...in that case, she'll probably send you back something that will help you out.
>> Anonymous
i thought amarian english was hardest with all the silent letters and other such nonsense
>> Anonymous
>>67196
thanks for the help. what threw me off was the "want to make a copy" since that should just be a matter of right clicking. I responded with "dore shashin desu ka. sumimasen, wakaranai." I think that works right? Maybe she's talking about my facebook profile picture... btw, sorry for hijacking OP.
>> Anonymous
My first suggestion to anyone considering ANY language is to think carefully about every possible useful language you could learn.

I started out wanting to do Mandarin or Japanese but ended up on a close tie between Portuguese/Arabic/Russian or Spanish. I ended up choosing Portuguese, only because it is nicer and easier than the others and Brazil is just awesome. Turkish also attracted my attention. Indonesian is easy but you probably wouldn't want to go there.
>> Anonymous
I think most of you only have experience in Japanese when you say it is easy. I also doubt any of you are even close to fluency. That being said, I studied Japanese first and came to the same conclusion you guys did. It's relatively easy when compared to other languages. However, after studying Chinese it's really easy to see that Japanese is in fact difficult. There's still tons of different verb forms, confusing word order, syntax, loan words...etc. Studying Chinese for a year will get you a lot farther than studying Japanese for a year. Chinese grammar is so easy and much closer in syntax to English. With Chinese each character you learn will equal vocabulary and grammar. They are not separate things.

Learn Mandarin.
>> Anonymous
I take Japanese classes in college. I'm currently in my second semester, 102, and we're being taught with the Genki books.

It can get difficult if you don't study, but it's pretty doable. However I doubt you'd be able to carry a comfortable conversation with anyone in Japland until you've taken at least a couple of years worth of these courses.
>> Anonymous
>>67201

I'm only student myself so I can only give you my impression. To me, how you responded seems somewhat awkward. You switch from plain to polite and back to plain form again. If I were to rewrite your sentence, it would be "dochira no shashin desu ka. sumimasen, wakaranaindesu." However, I think you got your meaning across, so it shouldn't matter since it was a friend. It's just a matter of consistency.

Again I'm only a student, so I don't know how pertinent my advice is or even how accurate it is. Feedback or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated on my end.
>> Anonymous
i'll say this... japanese is an easy language to test in the field. people generally know what you're saying as pronounciation is piss easy. I found it easier than french to pick up along the way... maybe it's cos frenchies are cunts but that was a fucking nightmare... you don't know french and they insist they don't know english,... you start picking it up and the same cunts switch so they can "practice" english and you can stop torturing them with your pronounciation. I found the immigrants to be more open and encouraging in my progress. As for japanese.... once you get over that hurdle it's pretty straightforward... and don't worry about kanji too much. Anything that's critical information is in hirigana/katakana.. .and the same 1000 or so that are worth knowing to get to basic retard level repeat alot....
>> Anonymous
as for polite speak e.t.c.... what fucking situation are you gonna be in to need to draw on that? unless you're here for business most people you have to deal with expect to be talked down to somewhat. I guess it's useful if you're going to deal with the old people.... i dunno... hasn't been a problem so far... there's only really one way to say any given thing so yeah... straight forward
>> Anonymous
weird though.. i switch to polite when i pull a retard move... i dunno... not sure if others do it but it seems... appropriate... maybe i'm doing it wrong.... is that what they tell you to do academically?
>> Anonymous
I'm on my third year of college Japanese. It's not impossible to learn it, but it's not easy. Kanji really are quite difficult to remember, and after a while, a lot of the vocab all starts to sound the same, and you forget words a lot. The grammar is not that difficult, though there are a lot of different patterns.

The hardest things about Japanese are the kanji and the complicated subtleties between similar words. If you want to learn it, like any language, you should be prepared to sacrifice a lot of time and accept a pretty high level of difficulty.
>> Anonymous
>>67940
You can use ???, ?? etc. when you meet someone for the first time. You don't need the ultra polite shit like ??? and ???. Unless you use it to amuse your Japanese acquaintances.
>> Anonymous
>>67820
You're using the Genki books in college? Jesus christ, I used those in high school.

Anyway OP, it's really the kanji that will get you. It's a lot to learn.