I am very lucky to have Japanese lessons in my school, but I like both subjects equally, however I am working at A/B grade French level and at C level Japanese. I understand that Japanese is a very rare option and I would love to pursue it however I keep falling behind and I find it very hard to learn
4 comments
better to ask on r/gcse really, i do neither gcse but am learning japanese by myself albeit with very little progress!
what i will say is passion is worth more than ability but u still need to have some ability to flourish ur passion, if u have more passion for japanese, then i would recommend that, but french gcse has more resources and is easier for english speakers to understand! good luck in ur gcses, i’m in yr 10! *fighting*
I looked up gcse Japanese out of interest, it seemed like something simpler than jlpt n4. Which is rather achievable for a schoolkid in my opinion
Assuming that you’re a monolingual English speaker, French will obviously be significantly easier to pick up thanks to its relative similarity with English in terms of vocabulary mainly, but also to some extent grammatically and culturally, especially when compared to Japanese which has a completely different writing system, grammar and vocabulary (even straight loanwords from English can be tough because of katakana).
It’s really up to you, there’s no bad answer here. But if you feel like you may not be able to dedicate a lot of time to your studies, you’ll certainly get farther in French with less dedication and fewer headaches.
Honestly as a former GCSE pupil, I recommend that you just do the subject that is easier because your admission to university/college depends on it.
You can always study Japanese later without it affecting your future.