Im a native Spanish speaker and “fluent” in English, and i say “fluent” because i can’t speak it at all, i learned english simply by playing videogames, reading and overall because i had to in order to properly use the internet.
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I decided to learn a “true” foreign language “non-indoeuropean” as a hobby and i also have been curious about non-phonetic writing systems namely chinese characters, but after being completely intimidated by Mandarin i decided to try and learn Japanese.
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I have so far learned about the phonetic alphabets called katakana and hiragana (aren’t those redundant) and i just love the simplicity of them when compared to English in particular.
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But before investing more time, i just wish to see if someone has had an experience learning Japanese and how hard can it be, i mean it may outright be impossible without direct training?
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My goal, more than being fluent, is able to at least understand the writing system and read it somewhat, not really planning on having a conversation but being able to read it would be my main goal.
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Also it may be kind of ignorant on my part but it seems that unlike english, Japanese writing and spoken language seems to be in tune?
6 comments
Depends on your mother language, but if it’s a Western one, then of course, Japanese will be harder to learn than English.
Hiragana and katakana are redundant in the same way that having both uppercase and lowercase letters is redundant. You don’t technically need both but it makes things easier to read and express certain things.
I think difficulty is all relative. It depends on where you start and how well your mind takes to it.
Desde el punto de vista de otra nativa española…
En principio, japonés es más fácil a la hora de pronunciar… Se pronuncia tal y como se escribe, no como el inglés, y no tienes acentos “raros”, como el mandarín.
Si entramos en gramática se va complicando conforme se avanza, empezando por ser un idioma SOV en lugar de un idioma SVO como el nuestro y el inglés.
Por otro lado, al ser un idioma tan alejado del nuestro, te libras de muchos falsos amigos, aunque, para aprender, la mayoría de libros que vas a encontrar y te pueden servir están en inglés.
Espero que esto te sirva.
To answer your last question:
Almost. In Spanish, as far as I know, if you are given a word you don’t know in writing, you can 100% determine how it is pronounced as long as you know the rules. In Japanese, if you are given a word in Hiragana, Katakana or Romanji, that is not the case, since you can not determine the pitch accent of a word from how it is written in most cases.
Pitch accent can change the meaning of a word (e.g. あめ/*ame* can mean rain or candy depending on where you put the accent), but in most cases it’s not that important unless you want to be able to speak at a very high proficiency level. Since your goal is only to be able to read Japanese, it’s basically irrelevant to you.
But other than pitch accent, the spelling of a word in kana gives you all the information needed to pronounce a word.
Mandarin is significantly easier than Japanese for native speakers of Western European languages. The hardest part is tonality, but you *know* that and can start practicing immediately.
Japanese is easier if your native language is Korean – or possibly some of the other languages with modifier-first grammar, like Turkish.
> Japanese writing and spoken language seems to be in tune?
Japanese written and storytelling registers are quite different from casual speech, which is also different from business or ceremonial styles. All languages do this to some extent, but Japanese does it a *lot* more than English does.
[Here’s a 20 minute video getting into specific examples](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyKq-onzS44)
I do think that Japanese is a good language if you’re curious about how non-phonetic writing actually works. But I’d also caution you that as you become more proficient you actually stop noticing those cool features and reading simply becomes normal.
If you want to learn a language that’s used online, not Indo-European, and not Mandarin because it’s too hard, then Turkish, Arabic, and Indonesian are your next options and I would guess that Indonesian is easiest.