Should I Try To Learn Japanese?

15 comments

1. I mean, do you want to? If yes, that’s reason enough for you.

   We should honestly do away with the idea that a skill is worth learning only if it benefits you in your job/career or if you can make money from it (now or in the future.)

2. Learning how to read Manga and learning Japanese are only tangentially related imo. Reading Manga might take a year. Learning the Japanese language will take the rest of your life. IBut in any case it is worthwhile to learn new things.

3. I started this year to “understand games in their native language” and so far I don’t regret the decision. Having the possibility of a vast amount of additional media that you can either understand in the first place or understand better (because translations are pretty much always inferior in anything) is enough motivation for me, I don’t need a monetary motivator for it.
   Just don’t expect to be fluent by half-assing things for a few months because that’s sometimes the impression you get from internet heroes and it will be a productive activity in your daily live.

   If all you care about is having some career benefit, I’d rather use that time for programming-related knowledge. By the time you get fluent enough in Japanese to have real use of it in a career, you could probably learn 5 programming languages to heart with beautiful big projects on github to prove it and dive into advanced territories of whatever specialization you are interested in (ML, security, multiplatform, you name it). Any company will be more impressed by that than seeing that you can speak Japanese to some extend.

4. I think if there’s a spark inside you that’s compelling you to learn it, you should at least give it a try!

   That said, be prepared to put in quite a lot of work to make progress. Japanese is one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn, and to even begin reading native content will take a while.

   But having said that, if you’re someone who loves languages, you may find yourself addicted to learning it, and despite having to push through the difficult parts, it’s deeply rewarding to make progress.

   I recently watched [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkS5APqAFHA) on why most people fail when learning Japanese, and it was extremely interesting. This gist is that a lot of people succeed at learning English as a foreign language out of necessity (to interact with the internet, a certain level of English is arguably needed). But Japanese is different, because unless you live in Japan or have some other specific reason you have to learn it, there’s technically no need for you to learn it.

   You have to create that need by saying to yourself, “If I want to read my favourite manga in Japanese, I have to learn the language. There are no two ways about it, it’s a necessity.”

   If you don’t either have to learn a language (because you live in the country and need to communicate) or you love it (because you find it extremely interesting and want to interact with native content), it will be difficult to keep your motivation going. So you need to embed that need in your mindset and, hopefully, you will also love the process of learning it, because it is truly a fascinating language.

   If you do want to learn Japanese, you absolutely can do it. It’s all about mindset. The only thing that will stop you is if you decide to give up. It’s as simple as that!

   So I’d go for it, and set yourself high goals like, “I want to be able to comfortably read my favourite manga in Japanese.” If you end up hating it, then you can give up, but at least you tried!

   There are a bunch of posts and a starter’s guide on this sub’s wiki about where to begin with resources, but let me know if you’d like any pointers in that regard (I’m still very new to this myself, but have started getting an impression of which are good resources for learning).

5. Japanese is a huge undertaking for an English speaker. The differences in grammar, sentence structure, and the inherent difficulty with kanji makes it very, very difficult. It’s also extremely rewarding, Japanese culture is everywhere and understanding the nuances and quirks is a lot of fun. I would say give it a try, and only continue if you see yourself getting genuine enjoyment from the process of learning a language and the little serotonin nuggets from your successes. If you don’t, it will turn into a frustrating slog that (as you mentioned) has no other purpose in your life. I think everyone should learn a foreign language and would benefit from the journey, but I also, there are easier ones than Japanese that you may enjoy more.

   Try everything once. You never know what you’ll wanna try twice.

6. Learning a random language for your resume is a very silly idea in my opinion.

   Instead think of it as you would about learning to play the guitar. It’s basically useless. It’s likely not something that will land you a job or get you a partner. But it can still be worthwhile. And “I want to play this one song” or “I want to learn an instrument” are perfectly sufficient reasons to learn it.

7. Give it a try! Doesn’t hurt to try to learn the basics and see if this is a hobby you want to get in to.

   Any motivation is a good enough reason to atleast try to learn. I started learning japanese because i wanted to be able to read those wacky letters on my project car. No other reason than that really.
   But with time and progression of your learning, you build up new goals and motivations to keep you going.

8. Give Japanese a go, but be aware that Gintama is a pretty high goal. Compared to other manga it has whole walls of texts and is chalk full of Japanese puns and pop culture references.

   Meaning, it might take you several months or even well over a year to be able to read it comfortably.

9. FIRST TLDR but just from the title YES! just do it because you feel like it! why not right!?

10. >For my fellow software engineers/CS students, is there any benefit to knowing this language?

    I graduated CS this spring, and I’m also on this train purely for weeb reasons.

    The answer is no. If your hobbies aren’t a sufficient justification for you, don’t do it.

11. >Unfortunately, the translation by VIZ doesn’t seem to be very good, the volumes got discontinued after vol 23 and the volumes that are available are incredibly hard to find.

    The biggest reason I got into learning Japanese. English translations can get lost in translation when translating from Japanese. And sometimes people behind the scenes will change the context of scenes in subtitles or dubbing.

12. Honesty bro, not worth it and it doesn’t open up opportunities in most cases. Imagine all that time you spent on computer science in 4 years and instead you spent it on Japanese. You still would not be able to understand Gintama 90% and will be looking up words in the dictionary reading one page a minute. Take this from someone who spent a year of serious studying + years of “lazy study’ only to get nowhere.

    Career-wise, it’s pretty much useless in tech. I have maybe made a single comment on a Japanese translation once.

13. >As of right now, I have simply been entertaining the idea of knowing Japanese. It would be a pretty cool skill to have right? However, I am not entirely sure if its something that will benefit me a lot for the amount of work it takes to learn a new language.
    >
    >My only motivator to actually try and learn it though is because I have recently started collecting manga in English and that I wanted to collect and read the manga for my absolute favorite anime series, Gintama. Unfortunately, the translation by VIZ doesn’t seem to be very good, the volumes got discontinued after vol 23 and the volumes that are available are incredibly hard to find. As I was searching through eBay, I found a few listings of the whole 77 volume set in Japanese. So then I thought “wouldn’t it just be awesome if I could understand Japanese? Then I’d finally be able to collect this series.”
    >
    >The only thing that’s keeping me away from trying to learn though is that I legit have no other compelling reason to learn the language. I doubt it will help me with my work (I am currently a Computer science student studying to be a software engineer) and I am not really looking to live in Japan or anything. Aside from maybe visiting once or twice for vacationing or something, I am not sure if this skill would be worth having just for the sake of collecting a few more series in Japanese instead of English or to watch anime without subtitles or sth.
    >
    >To anyone who started in a similar position as me, has knowing Japanese opened up any new doors at all for you? For my fellow software engineers/CS students, is there any benefit to knowing this language?
    >
    >Edit:
    >
    >Thank you to everyone who responded to my post! After reading all your comments, I think I will go ahead and try to start learning. I kinda just felt it was weird to learn a language just for the sake of reading manga but I guess I was really overthinking it lmao.

    I’d recommend against it. Japanese is a very difficult language to learn for a westerner, and requires a significant investment of time and effort. As much time as it takes there are bound to be periods of boredom, frustration, and lack of interest. You need a pretty strong reason to learn it to persevere through all that.

14. Are you married? Candidly, dating in Japan and finding someone to get hitched with is a door that will open regardless of your career path.

15. The strongest motivator for learning J has to be the actual language. Hobbies just won’t cut it in terms of sustained motivation.