Like, don’t all languages just get easier to learn as you progress and understand more? I gave up on Japanese after 1 year of studying, which i now regret, but I didn’t feel any difficulty ramp necessarily. And why would Mandarin get easier? I Just don’t get it haha.
As I’m learning french it’s just getting easier and easier, I would assume the same for all no?
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I have never heard of anyone saying this.
Japanese is been getting easier and easier for me. I remember when I needed to use spaced repetition to retain new words and now I really don’t any more because it turns out that after significant exposure to Japanese, Japanese words become easier to remember.
As someone upper intermediate I don’t think it gets harder. I think your take that languages get easier to study the further in you are is correct
Once consuming native content isn’t an absolute punishment I find it gets easier and easier
I have only ever heard this in the context of the JLPT, where every new level covers progressively more kanji and vocabulary than the previous one. By any other measure, learning Japanese becomes easier over time.
Never heard this, it gets easier like they all do
Depending on the learner and the information you start with, learning Japanese can seem to get harder and harder unto a certain point as you start to realize different layers of possible obstacles you did not realize before: multiple readings and meanings for Kanji, complexity of long sentences, the difference between beginner textbook and real Japanese. Compared to Mandarin at least, where we can say that you always will move at a rather steady pace and textbook language actually isn’t that far removed from the “real” language, Japanese might be a different beast.
If you start learning Japanese knowing all this – well, no surprises there.
In regards to “how hard it is to learn”? I’d say: Japanese is a hard language to learn but one where it is easy to find motivation and materials. In my opinion, at least if you are motivated, Japanese ain’t that hard. It will just take some time.
Probably because Mandarin has huge barriers to entry that Japanese doesn’t have. The very very difficult pronunciation, hearing and tones, but once you’ve gotten good at those things, the difficulty tapers off, the grammar is simple, logical, and not extremely different from English. Japanese seems more inviting at first. The pronunciation is relatively simple, containing few sounds that aren’t in English, sounds are few, the intonation isn’t that crazy, but as you go on, things like politeness levels, situational awareness, cultural knowledge necessary, huge vocabulary, large number of homophones etc, that weren’t so apparent from the start begin to wear ulyou down.
When I started Japanese I felt very confident in my ability, but as I gained a better understanding of what I didn’t know, I progressively felt more illiterate. But in terms of harder to learn, you decrease in difficulty until you can basically engage with whatever material or people you want and learn something new every so often? I can’t imagine it being much harder unless you actively started trying to hit higher levels of the kanken or read historical docs or something where your options to learn might be more limited?
but do people normally consider that required to learn a language? I sure as hell haven’t been studying old english nor do i know every word in the english language
I’ve often heard this too. I think perhaps the reason is mostly down to pronunciation and grammar.
Friends that have learnt mandarin say that the pronunciation (including tones) that you have to master to even say a basic sentence or word is very difficult, but once you’ve got over that the grammar never really gets that complicated. I’ve never tried to learn so I’ll have to trust them on that.
Japanese pronunciation seems much easier for native English speakers, so you can make some quick initial progress. Then, as someone else pointed out you start finding all these layers to the grammar and other aspects of the language that you maybe didn’t even know were a thing before you started, e.g. different levels of formality, male v female language, textbook v real Japanese.
I’m definitely at a point where it just seems to get more complicated the more I learn. I look forward to the point where I can consume more native content and enjoy using the language.
Who are these people lol. I found Mandarin grammar at least to start off very simple. The basic word order is very intuitive for a native English speaker. It’s once you start getting into expressing different tenses and more complex ideas that the grammar deviates a lot from English and things get real difficult real fast. In contrast, with Japanese, I feel like the SOV structure and use of particles are big hurdles placed right at the beginning of the learning process.
Probably cause the pronunciation of Hanzi in vocabulary is almost entirely consistent
Also what impact does your knowledge on other languages have on your progress might be different. I already learned chinese and I don’t strugle with knowing the meanings of Kanjis, but sometimes I still feel they just put Kanji whenever they think the word has the same meaning even though the words are different 😂 So people face different challenges when learning a new language
I’ve passed the N1 and part of my workday happens in Mandarin
Of course they both eventually get easier and easier. IMO It’s more that the early intermediate stage of Japanese is harder than the beginning stage, while mandarin’s difficulty goes downhill pretty quickly once you get the tones and characters under your belt.
I’m on mobile so I don’t really want to ramble, but I feel like this because.
* Chinese characters virtually all have only one reading, and the phonetic components are more reliable than Japanese. I can much more consistently guess how a word is read in CN than JP.
* Dunno about China but people in Taiwan are much more direct than they are in Japan… plus, China is huge and taiwan has like 16 aboriginal tribes or something. Communication in Mandarin just feels much smoother/comfier, and I think it’s because both TW and CN people are used to interacting with people who don’t look/sound like them.
* Everbody knows Mandarin pronunciation is a pain in the ass but nobody tells you about pitch accent. It ended up being pretty simple to slowly learn via Anki (color coded vocabulary via Migaku) but when I discovered after 4 years of Japanese study that I was pronouncing everything wrong , that was kind of a kick in the nuts
* Japanese people omit a lot of parenthetical information, which means you have to connect dots a loot while reading/listening. They also seem to dislike dialogue tags (John said / she paused / etc), so sometimes you read a line and have no idea who in the hell said it
* It’s probably because I’ve lived in Taiwan for five years…. But even though my japanese is objectively better, I feel less confident performing in Japanese. There’s so many things I am capable of communicating, but I’m not sure which of those ways, if any, a Japanese person would express the particular idea…… dunno, eight years and the N1 later and Japanese still just feels kinda slippery
At the same time, I’m just now casually reading my first few novels in Mandarin after 5 years, while I read my first novels after about 3 years in Japanese. That’s even more of a head scratcher when you realize I went into Mandarin already knowing all the characters but didn’t have that advantage with Japanese.
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It’s a bit different for French because it has so much more common in English. Most of our shared vocabulary is the technical stuff… so once you cut your teeth on the grammar/conjugations/pronunciation and all that stuff, you’re kinda home free. Tons of expressions and idioms are shared, the sentence structure is very similar. You just get a lot more transfer, and that brings you to the “hey this is actually more enjoyable than difficult” feeling much more quickly than you get with a language like JP or CN
I’ve actually not really heard this. I always hear that Japanese has a high learning curve but is easier once you get past it. And I agree with that.
Japanese only gets harder at the lower levels.
When I was taking Japanese classes at Gifu university it most certainly felt like it was getting harder but that’s because I didn’t know much in retrospect.
If you’re actually learning a bunch of vocab, can recognize kanji like natives can and use it a lot in your daily life (immerse after knowing basic grammar and a decent amount of vocab) it shouldn’t be so difficult over time
But I think the majority of people who may be saying that are still in actuality beginners, despite being self proclaimed intermediate or advanced learners
I have only ever heard this with regards to pronunciation.
That is because people pay attention to Mandarin tones/pronunciation from day one and do not pay attention to Japanese pronunciation at all, so when you begin Japanese you hear a bunch of people say “oh this language is so easy it only has 50 sounds” and when you start actually listening to Japanese you realize that that is a lie (I know Japanese phonetics is simpler relative to other languages, but it’s more complex than, say, JFZ George would have you believe). As for any other part of the language, I imagine it would be the same kind of deal… things are more complicated than initially explained to you.
In general, both languages (really any language) will be easier and easier the more you expose yourself to it. I don’t think Japanese really gets harder over time in any unique way.