Hello, recently found out about our language similiarities and as i looked into it and typed some phrases into google translate i found japanese logical, and quite straightforward. I might try to learn a bit more if possible. Are there any good lessons on youtube/or wherever for complete beginners? ( I want to avoid clickbait videos and straight up find useful lessons).
by sisqo_99
4 comments
Tae kim and Curedolly
Also have a look at r/learnjapanese
For the record, Japanese is one of the least straightforward languages out there, don’t let yourself be fooled by Google Translate
(or by random theorycrafting about how it’s related to Hungarian~)
As for videos, I found ‘Japanese Ammo with Misa’ really useful at beginner level
you might have heard about Duolingo. Do not depend your whole studies on that app. It’s good with vocabulary but doesn’t explain anything (but I learned hiragana recognition that way)
also I’m also in the process of learning but taking a break because I need money for workbooks lmao
I also heard listening to japanese people talking also helps improve your japanese and such
also bojler eladó
I’m not familiar with any Hungarian-language materials for learning Japanese. I am also uncertain how much material is available for learning Japanese from Hungarian. [Googling just now](https://www.google.com/search?q=magyarul%20jap%C3%A1nt%20tanulj) finds a decent number of promising hits – granted, many are specifically about studying in Japan, but a few of them are about studying Japanese regardless of location.
I suspect that learning Japanese from Hungarian might be easier in some respects — the idea of postpositions is alien to English, so English-language materials will probably spend a lot of time focusing on that, which might be a waste of time for someone already used to this structure.
Some various ideas about Japanese vs. Hungarian:
* One key difference in the structures of the two languages is verb placement. In Japanese, the “main” verb *always* comes at the end (outside of unusual exceptional structures, often called “inversion”, a bit like unusual English constructions like “a good player, that man.”). Hungarian (and Turkish too for that matter) are a bit more flexible in this regard.
* There’s also less need for relative pronouns, like *aki* or *amelyik*, etc., since relative clauses can directly modify nouns. Consider the following examples, where the relative clause is in bold, and the relative pronoun is in italics (apologies if my Hungarian isn’t terribly natural, still very much a learner):
* EN: The man ***who*** **bought the paper** left the store.
* HU: A férfi ***aki*** **megvette az újságat** kiment a boltból.
* JA: **新聞を買った**男性は店を出た。 (***Shinbun o katta*** *dansei wa mise o deta.*) There is no relative pronoun in the Japanese. The relative clause *shinbun o katta* (literally “newspaper” + object particle + “bought”) modifies the noun *dansei* (“man; male person”) directly.
* Pronouns in general are not used very much. Japanese is a so-called [“pro-drop” language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-drop_language). Once you’ve established the conversational context about who is doing what, you omit anything that is otherwise clear from context. A whole grammatical sentence could be just verbs, like “*katte kita*” (literally “shopping” + “came”), which someone might announce on their return from the grocery store. The context of “who” is clear — it’s the speaker who has done the action — so the subject is deliberately omitted.
* Verb inflections happen differently.
* There is no grammatical person in Japanese. Hungarian verbs, much like in other European languages, inflect for person: “I go” = “Én megyek”, “he goes” = “ő megy”, etc. In Japanese, *iku* can be used for “to go” regardless of whether it’s “I”, “you”, “they”, etc. that is doing the action.
* Instead, Japanese verbs inflect depending on 1) who you are talking to, and 2) who you are talking about. The first dimension (your audience) is the more prominent factor.
The basic idea is, “how close / socially intimate am I with my audience?” The more intimate or “inside” the audience, the more basic the word forms. Conversely, the more socially distant or “outside” the audience, the more polite and extended the word forms.
To say “I go”, you could say *iku* when talking to friends, or *ikimasu* when talking to colleagues.
To say “you / he / she / it / they go[es]”, you could say *iku* when talking to friends, *ikimasu* when talking to colleagues about yourself or them, *ikaremasu* when talking to more distant people about someone not yourself, and *irasshaimasu* when talking to more distant people about someone who is also distant (say, like talking to a client about the client).
In English, this is often described as “politeness” or “honorifics”; I’ve found it more useful to think about in terms of “inside” and “outside”, or “socially intimate / distant”. In Japanese, it is sometimes described as the *uchi – soto* social dimension, literally “inside – outside”.
* There’s also a lack of grammatical number, which means (almost) no explicit plural forms. In English and Hungarian, we have grammatical number, so “dog / kutya” = one dog, “dogs / kutyák” = multiple dogs. In Japanese, any noun or pronoun might be singular or plural, depending on context. *Inu o mita* (literally “dog” + object particle + “saw”) could mean you saw *a* dog, or you saw *multiple* dogs, depending.
* There is a special suffix *-tachi*, usually attaching to names, occasionally other nouns. This is less like the English plural, and closer to the Hungarian collective plural suffix [*-ék*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-%C3%A9k), meaning “this noun, *and others in that group*”.
Anyway, hope that helps! Sok sikert a tanulásodhoz!