Should I learn Japanese?

15 comments

1. If you’re interested, do it.

2. Learning a language is a lifetime commitment. If you have to ask whether you should learn it or not, then you shouldn’t. That is my honest opinion. In the case of Japanese, the lifetime commitment is even more so, as it is one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn. You must have a strong reason to learn it, whether it is passion for the language, culture or anything else, but you need something that keeps you going.

   You can always find that something after you start studying it, for sure, but that doesn’t happen easily.

3. I’ve spent years learning both and imo Japanese is much much harder than Spanish. Good luck OP.

4. I’m not gonna gatekeep and say that you need iron resolve and a super strong reason to do it, but you have to keep in mind that learning a language takes years in most cases. If you don’t have something persistent to motivate yourself to continue learning (some examples: liking anime, manga, Japanese music, food, literature, kanji, martial arts or the like), you’ll probably struggle to continue learning. Also, consider if you can handle the time and effort investment and whether it’ll affect your other commitments like school or work.

   That being said, it never hurts to give it a shot 🙂

5. **Just learn for fun.** If you think it sounds interesting, then go for it. Contrary to what another poster here said: Learning a language is not a lifetime commitment, it is a hobby like everything else, you are allowed to do it at your own pace and purely for fun, to take breaks, forgot and reset as often as you like.

   Personally, I started Japanese because a friend of mine – who took advanced classes at this point – showed some very beautiful kanji and said that it is an interesting language worth exploring. I went to a language-oriented grammar school, my friends could speak klingon and J.R.R.Tolkien elfish and were into learning anything from Russian, Spanish to Walesian and I myself also have some repertoir, my learning progress has slowed down over the years, my grammar is still clunky, but without a doubt: **Japanese is beautiful and worthwile.**

   Learning anything new is good for the brain ^__^

6. I am only trying to learn so I can watch super sentai without the subtitles.

7. yes/no/maybe

   **yes:** if you have political asylum in Japan, if you are in a Japanese prison, if you are running for political office in Japan, if you are a Japanese baby

   **maybe:** if you live in Japan, if you are bored, if you are interested in Japanese culture, if you want to enjoy specific media in Japanese (e.g. novels, movies, etc), if you are genetically Japanese (or part Japanese) and have some personal reason from that, if you want to study abroad in Japan

   **no:** if you don’t have any time in your schedule, if you don’t like Japanese media, if you want to do something easy, if you don’t like memorizing massive amounts of vocabulary

8. It’s definitely okay to do just for fun, but I do think it’s worth mentioning you may get more out of it if you can also make it a (small) habit that’s easy and enjoyable to continue

9. Only you can know (of course) .

   It is widely regarded as the hardest significant world language to learn. The US Department of State ranks it in the four hardest (Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Korean). Of those I only have experience of Arabic which is quite complicated, but I found it easier to start talking to people and understanding them than I did with Japanese. In the end I suspect Japanese is harder.

   It is also very much the hardest language to read ever. Worse than Akkadian (which was terrible).

   Having said all that: (1) challenges can be fun; (2) “hardest” is ranked assuming that you get the same level of teaching. Japanese actually has lots of useful material online as well as dictionaries and grammars. When I was learning Egyptian Colloquial Arabic there was not even a standard written form and virtually no serious material for learning it beyond the very easiest. Nothing like hundreds of hours of anime subtitled. So it may not be as hard as all that because of the millions of possible sources of help.

   I started learning because I enjoyed it and it made my head feel better from PTSD. I am now living and working in Japan and learning it for more essential reasons. So that was in my view a good outcome.

   Some thoughts on learning:

   * Don’t be discouraged at first that you aren’t a master of it quickly. If you enjoy the **process** then that’s great.
   * If you can afford it you could try visiting Japan and/or studying for a week or two or more here. If you like the country, that will help motivate and also give you somewhere to use it.
   * I strongly recommend online native language tutors if you can afford them and often recommend italki where I have found some people to talk to cheaply.
   * I strongly discrecommend (and this is very controversial) having anything to do with non-native speakers teaching you. Fine to ask questions about grammar and pointers to resources, but you want to avoid ever hearing a non-native speaker model Japanese speech for you. They won’t get it quite right and if you have a good ear, you will learn it wrongly.
   * I’d also disrecommend Genki (also widely popular) because it starts you off using a Latin based script called ローマ字 which tends to screw people’s minds up to start with. No need for it. You can learn hiragana just by using it and start off by looking up every letter. You can get fluent at reading it very very fast if you use it. Another controversial take.

   But the main point is: finding ways to enjoy it and/or motivation. That keeps language learners going. If you find you really like (say) rakugo then you had better learn all those kanji puns :-).

10. If you are taking spanish classes, focus on spanish first. It’s exceedingly rare that someone can learn 2 languages simultaneously to any useful degree.

    BUT, once you stop having to learn Spanish, if you still want to pursue Japanese, then go for it!

11. if it interests you even a little bit, do it do it do it!!! i won’t lie, it’s quite a bit of work up front depending on how far you want to go; lots of folks memorize hiragana and katakana first thing in order to be able to read before moving forward and it will definitely open up your learning resources if you can read them, but there is still a lot available to you if you can’t. whatever you decide to do, even learning how to say hi and introduce yourself and nothing else is so so rewarding and worth it. best of luck to you and enjoy japanese!!

12. [warning; projection of my own issues with japanese learning lol]

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    japanese is extremely difficult, far so than spanish.

    where do you live? if you answered USA, spanish will get you 1000x further. you said you have no interest in going to japan yet, you’re not sure if you should learn it, and all you want out of it is “something interesting to learn”. There are much easier languages for [im assuming native since you said you’re learning spanish in school] english speakers that will be much more useful with far less time investment and have more resources. Only go into japanese if you really have a passion for the language AND culture, not just one. if you plan to learn japanese and you never visit and never talk to anyone and never use it or read anything in it then yeah it’ll be a bad time, and you’ll have been better off focusing on spanish [again depending on where you live but assuming anywhere in the western hemisphere, it’s useful]

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    all that to say do what you want, obviously, you’re your own person, take it or leave it. if you just want to learn just because then hell yeah dude you do you. I’m just saying practically there are many reasons for and against.

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    in my experience learning japanese for going on 2 years now, there are no native speakers anywhere near me, the only way to consume media is go way out of my way, it’s significantly harder than almost any other language, there are far more useful languages near me to use, and the time commitment is nigh impossible if you work full time and support a family. I’m not saying i regret it or i’m quitting, but i might have made different decisions if i had been informed thus. but that’s just me projecting my slow paced learning on to you. you sound like a young kid in school who has a passion for learning, so it could be super easy for you!

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    the upsides to learning is it’s pretty unique in the western hemisphere, it’s a neat party trick, learning any language is very fulfilling, if you’re social you could meet a whole entire group of millions of people who would never have a bridge language with you, you could play japanese games as soon as they come out and not have to wait for translations [anyone remember professor layton days? lol], you could read manga in the source material and watch anime and understand it. all sorts of cool stuff. and if you travel to japan [highly recommend!] then you’re basically set and will have a much easier time there!

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    so tl;dr, do what you want, just be careful about what you actually want out of it. if you want a learning experience consider a language useful to your geolocation. if you are interested in japanese culture or the language then go for it. worst case scenario you could say you tried, and that’s already cool.

13. If you have an interest in it, then that should be enough to put your foot in the door haha. Can’t see how testing out your interest in Japanese would be detrimental in any way. Worst case scenario, you just don’t stick with it and move on. Good luck!

14. Japanese is real hard to learn for the people whose native language is not Chinese.

15. nah