Japanese: The Hardest Language in the World

[Anonymous No.]

People often debate what is the hardest language in the world to learn. Assuming your native language is English or one of the other Indo-European languages like Spanish, German, Russian, or Farsi, then an Asian language like Chinese, Japanese, or Korean is an obvious choice. In other words, the language you start off with affects which languages are easier to learn next.

If you are a native Spanish speaker, you’ll have little difficulty learning the other Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, etc.). If German or English is your first language, then the other Germanic languages (Danish, Dutch, etc.) go easily, and the Slavic and Scandinavian languages aren’t too much of a stretch.

If Japanese is your native language, then it is easy, and Korean isn’t too bad. But otherwise there’s good argument for saying that Japanese is the hardest language in the world, with Chinese being a close second.

Japanese is hardest becaus, first and foremost, the writing system is catastrophically confusing and convoluted. My classical Japanese history professor said that the worst thing ever to happen to Japan in its entire history was the introduction of Chinese characters. The Japanese took them, gave each several readings (pronunciations) and sometimes as many as two dozen, then created two syllabaries (like alphabets, but larger), and over the next 1,000 years came up with all sorts of bizarre, inconsistent rules about when to use characters versus the two syllabaries, and how to combine them to write the language. After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese decided that their writing system wasn’t complicated enough, and so added the Roman alphabet for writing certain words, and for the convenience of foreigners.

[Anonymous No.]

Now Chinese does use more characters than Japanese does, about five to six thousand compared to the two to three thousand in daily use in Japan. So learning to read Chinese does require learning a lot more characters. However, since each character is pronounced in only one (or sometimes two) ways, what has to be learned for each character is much simpler.

There are no rules about when and how to combine characters in Chinese with anything else, since that doesn't happen. Japanese, by contrast, has complex rules about when and where the hiragana shows up with characters. These rules are sufficiently troublesome to challenge many native speakers. Then there are personal and place names, which are given readings almost at random, often completely unrelated to the standard pronunciation for the character.

None of this is an issue in Korean, which has what is arguably the most brilliant, efficient, and effective writing system ever developed in the world. Learning to read and write Korean does take effort, but only about as much as learning the Arabic script when learning Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu, or learning Devanagari for Hindi.

Grammar in Japanese is a bit messy, with verbs doing all manner of bizarre things, adjectives behaving exactly like verbs at times, and all of this having to be changed depending on who is saying what to whom under what circumstances (what is called “respect language” in Japanese).

[Yutanpo !1DeKKAi00Y No.]

sanskrit was here. japanese is for faggots

[Anonymous No.]

Seems like someone's butt is devastated because he didn't have the balls to pull through.

[Anonymous No.]

what do you expect from a race of people who can live a stones throw away from china but it took them 2000 years to not farm mud for the fat grubs they come to consume their own leavings much like the hominid apes they were descended from?

[Anonymous No.]

Korean has “respect language” too, and it’s even more convoluted than Japanese, but the grammar is otherwise comparable. Chinese grammar is remarkably simple and efficient. Nothing changes ever (no conjugating verbs, declining nouns or adjectives, no gender or number for nouns, no nothing).

Finally, pronunciation. Chinese is definitely the most challenging of the three because of the tones. Japanese and Korean are not tonal languages, so pronunciation is relatively straight-forward.

Most Americans and Europeans who learn Japanese (or Korean) struggle to purify and clean up their vowels and consonants but manage well enough.

Chinese, by contrast, is very difficult to learn to pronounce, though the Chinese themselves are quite forgiving and helpful about tones, so the process can be pleasant and even fun.

So there’s my take on a question that I hear a lot. It is obviously debatable. And I am not trying to convince anyone that Arabic or Tamil, or Finnish or Hungarian, are easy languages to learn, especially if your native language is English. But I think that, unless your native language is Korean, Japanese poses so many challenges that it is arguably the hardest language in the world to learn for non-native speakers.

[Anonymous No.]

>syllabaries (like alphabets, but larger)

No, not really.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820642
from ))?

[Anonymous No.]

http://claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-language-to-learn/
http://hubpages.com/hub/Most_Difficult_Languages_-_Polish
Slavic languages are the worst, really.

[Anonymous No.]

>After the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese decided that their writing system wasn’t complicated enough, and so added the Roman alphabet for writing certain words, and for the convenience of foreigners.

This means that it's easier to pronounce if you speak a roman language natively right?

[Anonymous No.]

english grammar is way harder than japanese

[Anonymous No.]

Saying Chinese is the easiest language because of a simple grammar is being really naïve.
A quick search on the internet for hardest language will always have Chinese right on top. Finnish is also another very difficult language with 20 cases instead of just 6 or 7 and no similar language anywhere.

Chinese might not have a complex grammar but its tones that completely change the meaning of words make it really hard. The writing system is another big problem since you can’t just read words without knowing the symbol before. You can’t tell how to pronounce a word from looking at the symbol.
Not to mention Chinese has nothing to do with anything we (westerns) are used to.

Polish is a category 2 language for English speakers, Chinese is a category 3 language requiring double the amount of time to learn compared to Polish.

Stop making claims based on nothing.

[Anonymous No.]

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-languages-to-learn-non-indo-europe
an-languages/

Jap is pretty easy compared to some of the shit on this list

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820685
Objectively it is. But when you're coming from another roman language as native it's easier to get into because of the similarities, though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820667
PEOPLE, you can’t just say that YOUR native language (or second language or that language you learnt or learning and found to be difficult) is the hardest for people (specifically people whose first language happens to be ENGLISH) to learn as it depends on what their first language was originally. For example, it may be easier for a German person to learn English than it is for a Japanese person only because German and English are somewhat similar.

And the person who wrote this stupid blog cannot possibly determine the difficulty of learning other languages. Its stupid to say that learning Chinese or Japanese is ‘fairly hard’. This person hasn’t even specified why Japanese or Chinese is ‘fairly hard’ and instead sates that a Chinese teacher says that his own language is easier than Polish. Isn’t that obvious if you are learning another language besides your own? Does this person even know that you have to remember at least 2000 (even more if you are learning Chinese) characters to be able to read Japanese proficiently and that each character can have more than one pronunciation? Does this person even know that Japanese has a highly complex grammatical system dedicated to politeness and respect and that although Chinese may not have many tenses, they certainly make up for that in the number of aspects and counters they have.

SO don’t try and justify why YOUR language is the hardest to learn or why it is harder or easier to learn than other languages. The report above says otherwise and in the end it really depends on the individual person.I bet the person who wrote this was some nationalistic Polish guy (or woman).

Now if you have enough sense, you’ll realize this and stop this stupidity. Polish is just as hard (or as easy) as Finnish or Hungarian and any languages similar to those mentioned will be juast as hard. Every language has its difficulties.

[Anonymous No.]

>Learn Latin
>All other languages are child's play except Asian faggorty

Fucking Asians.

[Anonymous No.]

>Japanese is hardest becaus, first and foremost, the writing system is catastrophically confusing and convoluted.
>bizarre, inconsistent rules
I think we have them beat.
>Japanese, by contrast, has complex rules about when and where the hiragana shows up with characters.
Examples? Okurigana is not difficult if that's what you're getting at.
>Then there are personal and place names, which are given readings almost at random, often completely unrelated to the standard pronunciation for the character.
How often do you really see readings that aren't common knowledge without furigana?
>Korean...has what is arguably the most brilliant, efficient, and effective writing system ever developed in the world.
In many ways, true.
>verbs doing all manner of bizarre things, adjectives behaving exactly like verbs at times
In other words, you've never learned the grammar of a language outside your cultural sphere and can't fathom why it's not just English in a slightly different order. You just cited Korean as better. The grammar is almost exactly the same.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820714
I heard Korean is the closest language to Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

I'd say it's pretty objective and relative. It depends what your mother language is. For example, English is much easier for Spanish speaking people compared to Japanese and so on.

Here's some data. Asterisk = hardest one to learn in their group

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820710
Learn mandarin

[Anonymous No.]

>I'd say it's pretty objective and relative.
I mean subjective.

[Anonymous No.]

I bet learning japanese would be easier if you invested the time bitching about how hard it is into actually learning instead.

[Anonymous No.]

It's not even that hard really.

[Anonymous No.]

The availability of good resources and especially of entertaining native material is a much stronger indication of how difficult a language is unless you're getting military language courses or something similar.

[Anonymous No.]

You know, Japanese NOWADAYS is much much easier to learn than say, 10 years ago when we didn't have so much learning materials on the internet and manga or other shit to grind our skills with. So I'd this is quite an advantage with languages like English or Japanese to have materials like this readily available

[Anonymous No.]

Japanese seem easy for some people because they're doing stuff around it 24/7. be it reading eroges or watching anime, i don't think many languages have this

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820740
This guy knows.

End of thread

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820765
Has a thread ever ended after a guy said "end of thread" or /thread or somesuch?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820685
>>6820685
>>6820685
>>6820685
>>6820685
>>6820685

[Anonymous No.]

Just give it about 30 more years, all the youth of japan will have completely forgotten how to write and will only be able to katakana at best.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820787
as if anyone will forget hiragana

[Anonymous No.]

Personally English is the most bullshit excuse of a language to learn.

Grew up speaking jap, picked up Korean and then English. I swear you people can't even pronounce anything correctly.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820786

>>6820709
>>6820709
>>6820709

[Anonymous No.]

Grammatically, Japanese is much more complicated than Chinese, but is easy once you grasp the rules and patterns.
In terms of writing, Chinese is a much bigger bitch than Japanese because of the sheer amount of wrote-learning required.

[Anonymous No.]

But can other languages do moe properly?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820819
English can't even do cute well.

[Anonymous No.]

I'm so glad I picked up Japanese instead of some other language few years ago. Can almost read pretty much anything nowadays. Cheers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820819
Only Japanese can do moe properly, Korea comes closest but they're just mimicking.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820847
How is Korean moe, or even tsundere for that matter?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820853
It's...it's not like I wanted Dodko anyware.

[Anonymous No.]

What does Ixrec think of the Japanese language?

>The Japanese language is awesome. It just is. It also has one of the highest learning curves for (popular) modern languages, probably only rivaled by Chinese and English. It's especially hard for Westerners who don't know any Eastern languages already, since the way of thinking that Japanese relies on is just so alien to them.

>Ignoring the culture (which you probably already have your own opinion on), here are a few of my favorite things about Japanese as a language: It looks and sounds beautiful, it's extremely intuitive (once you're fluent), its lexicon has several precise but abstract words English lacks, there are countless ways of expressing one's mood or personality or relationship to others without rephrasing anything, and virtually anything can be left implied so you never have to mince words.

>The corresponding downsides are an insane learning curve (half the pros I just listed are confusing as hell to most Westerners), a ton of homophones, and an incredibly high reliance on context.

>First, I always read VNs/eroge in the original Japanese. I have never once read one in English--except the ones I translated myself--and probably never will (some people hate me for saying this, but Japanese is an objectively superior language for storytelling).

[Anonymous No.]

Korean moe.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820887
>Japanese is an objectively superior language for storytelling
I agree.

[Anonymous No.]

I spent 4 years studying Latin, didn't learn a damn thing. Even though English and the Romance languages have roots in it, the thing is a beast. Declensions, masculine/feminine/neuter, tenses, possessives, etc all get so fucking complex and confusing until a simple base word like "canus" for dog gets all sorts of crap tacked on it and you end up staring at something like Canissibusibaturantosisiiaedumquoque.

Add to that it is a dead language...

Also: Sextus est puer molestus.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820901
What makes it superior?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820904
The same way how German is superior to English in story-telling.

[Anonymous No.]

well any language is superior to english when it comes to storytelling

only a butthurt yankee or brit would say otherwise

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820914
More like a superior language for comedy. Have you played Nehrim? The voice acting is hilarious.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820920
There's no such thing as humor to the German language!

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820887
>Uses eroge as an objective measure for storytelling

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820989
>implying certain eroges are not using the same literary tricks that are used in most books

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820903
>>Sextus est puer molestus.

Nostalgiagasmed right there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821014
Most books are shit. Even the best eroge is shit. Thanks for proving my point.

By the way, nice job showing your true colors by using that "implying" bullshit.
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820903
And wait until you see Ancient Greek. I have studied both and, compared to it, Latin is a joke.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821055
didnt shit get real with cornelia getting married by the end of the second book or something?

I never paid attention in high school latin

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821057
>Most books are shit.
So are most movies, music, art, and so forth. That doesn't make the whole genre bad.
>Even the best eroge is shit. Thanks for proving my point.
Thanks indeed for contradicting yourself with the fact that you've never played one (namely in Japanese)~~

[Yｏur ｆavorite Aｎonymous thaｔ liｖes iｎ Ｂangkok No.]

>>6821057
>implying implications are not 4chon culture
don't like it? go to forums.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821057
>Most books are shit.
So are most movies, music, art, and so forth. That doesn't make the whole genre bad.
>Even the best eroge is shit. Thanks for proving my point.
Thanks indeed for contradicting yourself with the fact that you've never played one (namely in Japanese).

>By the way, nice job showing your true colors by using that "implying" bullshit.
Says the guy who used an image macro with no text apart from the quoted one to support his argument.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821075
he didn't even quote you, he greentexted, which is on the same level as implying if not even worse

[Anonymous No.]

>>6820635
All of you have been trolled.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821070

Shit does not get more real than Davus' epic JUST AS PLANNED escape moment.

[Anonymous No.]

Either way, everyone, English is not a hard language to learn and you're stupid if you think so.

It is a difficult language to MASTER, given that many grammatical rules make no sense and there are tens of thousands of (admittedly pointless) words to memorize if you want to hold a conversation with anyone sufficiently educated, but it is not difficult to LEARN, especially if you speak French or German.

I really do have no idea where that ENGLISH IS REALLY HARD HURRR bullshit came from.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821098
Yeah, okay.
>>6821085
That was the original purpose of greentexting, you moron. Points out the specific part of the post you wish to address.
>>6821075
Nice assumptions there. By the way, you're wrong.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821102

What is your native tongue?

[Anonymous No.]

I'm a native speaker of both English and Japanese, but I don't find one language necessarily better than the other in terms of story telling. Sure, anime, manga, VN, game story, etc... are more interesting to me in Japanese because it's the original. (also, English and manga-esque drawing together never felt right to me) However, I find that nearly every live action movie worth a crap as a story is in English. Japanese movies are generally terrible with a few exceptions, and I hate the theater style over exaggerated acting/phrases.

I can't comment on difficulty of acquisition, though. I just went to school normally/learned from parents.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821103
>That was the original purpose of greentexting, you moron. Points out the specific part of the post you wish to address.
yeah and that original purpose is retarded and belongs to /v/ and /b/ where people act like idiots

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821075
>Calling a medium a genre
Reported for misinformation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821113
Are you done making a fool of yourself? What is wrong with using a function as it's intended? Or even finding creative new uses for a function?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821131
He isn't making a fool of himself. You are. I don't think anyone would defend >implying except people who are from /v/, or belong there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821101

But what about drunk Uncle Titus and his pink slippers?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821147
Exactly. But ">implying" bullshit is not the same thing as greentexting. One is a meme, the other is a function.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821131
the problem here is that you think that b-esque greentexting means the same as quoting.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821147
Not >implying
use of the >green feature for quoting, or paraphrasing, or correcting what someone says.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821168
But.. that's considered shitposting and isn't even the proper way to use the quote function. How new are you, seriously?

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821185

What. I've never seen anyone quote another post with anything but ">", and I've been here for four years. It used in e-mails first, not 4chan, you fucking idiot. The "implying" bullshit is what's considered shitposting.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821185
I'm not new, and you have a loose definition of shitposting. Hell, you come across as a mindless sheep who attacks xyz just because it's cool to do so, without even realizing why the hell you're doing it.

I repeat. > is traditionally for quoting, and was probably derived from E-mail. Paraphrasing and rewording are two similar uses, and perfectly understandable to anyone with a brain. So why are you so angry about it?

[Anonymous No.]

>implying this thread isn't a troll
>implying I read your copypasta, fag

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821155

He dies.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821212
When people quote they quote the goddamn line in its exact original form without altering it and then write below it, anything else is pretty much considered /v/b/a/-esque shitposting. That's the proper way of quoting on 4chan.

Here, join your friends on /v/
>>>/v/84129313
>>>/v/84132293

>>6821218
>I'm not new, and you have a loose definition of shitposting.
You certainly are one if you're not aware of abusing the quote function like this.

http://archive.easymodo.net/cgi-board.pl/jp/thread/6808308

[Anonymous No.]

Well, there is a reason I start studying Japanese this year at Uni and not just cracking open a lonely planet phrase guide.

It is fucken hard, but even retards in Japan manage to cope.

[Anonymous No.]

Isn't this and the responses in this thread just preaching to the choir? Pretty hard to get an invigorating conversation going on when you're talking to a bunch of weeaboo NEETs.

[Anonymous No.]

I would have appreciated if the language was a little easier to learn overall, but it's also pretty cool to know that you're learning one of the hardest languages in the world. I don't go around advertising it or anything, but the subject sometimes comes up, and it always makes them go "are you a wizard". Of course, I'm more of an apprentice right now, but I don't tell them that.

[Yｏur ｆavｏrite Aｎonymous thaｔ liｖes iｎ Ｂangkok No.]

>>6821385
>When people quote they quote the goddamn line in its exact original form without altering it and then write below it

YOUR FORUM FREQUENCY IS SHOWING

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821439
you are my master

[Anonymous No.]

I read the katakana in anime EDs. It says stuff like producer and ending. It makes me feel really Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

wow do you fucking weeaboos really think using an archaic writing system in this age is excusable? it's like if we were still using cuneiform in the west.

>>6820903
oh man that picture. fucking carriages stuck in ditches for half a year.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821545
>I have never studied anything in my life, and loathe those who do

[Anonymous No.]

>>>/lang/1295258213/1-40

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821545

I don't know about cuneiform, but English is a lot better suited to the orignal Anglo-Saxon runes than it is to the latin alphabet.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821566
nerd think hes clever LOL

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821557
>this ground is too soft. I wish more of my bones were broken.

>>6821569
runes is still an alphabet, not hieroglyphs

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821595
No you're an alphabet, loser.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821595
Yeah, I'm sure those studying Japanese seriously are not enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.]

Horrible troll thread. Every post in this thread except few are troll posts.

[Anonymous No.]

The writing system is kind of hard, but otherwise, Japanese is not that hard, just very different from English. It's a lot more consistent than English, and other than the different politeness levels, the grammar is fairly simple.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821622
Of the languages I've studied, I enjoy Japanese the most. Here's a nice little list for you in order of ease for me to learn:

Engilsh (Native)
Japanese
German
Spanish
French (fuck french)

Notice how the Asiatic one tops the list? It's all relative assfaggotry.
Should add though that I thoroughly enjoy German, partially due to the fact that it has so many similarities to English.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821680
Oh all those languages will sure help you in life, NOT! Get laid.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821680
I was being sarcastic.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821698
we share your pain bro

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821698
This post is probably not meant to be taken seriously, but it still makes me think, what the hell is with this attitude among normalfags? "You're trying to dedicate yourself to developing yourself intellectually and broaden your cultural understanding? lol, you're such a loser, you should participate in modernized mating rituals with the first group of sluts you meet and hope one of them will allow you to stick your penis into one of their holes instead, that's what all cool people do".

seriously what the hell

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821698
Oh, I do. In five different languages, in just about every corner of the world. It helps to know what she's saying when you travel as much as I do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821699

>>6821698 wasn't.

[Anonymous No.]

>>6821385
>DO IT BECAUSE I SAY SO
That's your logic and I'm not listening.