How hard is it to learn Japanese?

Google is your friend.

And since you're so pressed for time, try Japanese Online

This is how hard it is. (Give the images some loading time, and click them if it's too blury)



Also; Google Translate. Good for fucking things up. If you want things translated, diy is the best way.

I have a question about Japanese. I always wondered how the Japanese separate their words and sentences without periods, questions marks, spaces, and the like.
I've been studying the language a bit and I've mostly only done vocabulary. I think the best I could do is probably tell a taxi to get me to an airport or ask someone where the bathroom or a bank is.

Ahh... one fo my favourite topcs.. SOmeone said



My ass the pronunciation syncs. =D Ever heard of japanese speaking english? And not any person of publicity, but e.g girl who is cashier at mc donalds.

Same goes naturally the other way too. No offense, but english and japanese pronouncition have very little to do with each other. :P

Then at the questions..

I've been learning for abour 3½ years, I can survive most everyday situations in japanese, but official or scientific business is beyond me at the moment. I can read most young people manga comfortably, but games and books are impossible without kanji-drawing dictionary.

And yes, speaking is much easier then writing/reading. Due their kanji system.

I have learnt english, swedish, german and japanese. Out of these four, japanese takes most time to learn. (Due the kanji) Grammar is not that hard actually.

Class or self-study, net or books, the most important factor is stubborness. Never give up.

I find learning languages very simple and I'm very interested into how the Japanese communicate after all its JUST! vocals and writing some of the easiest things your mind can adapt too.. If people didn't over complicate things.

:shock: Your joking right?... Japanese easy?... :shock:

Let me give you a little demonstration of just the WRITING portion of Japanese...

Lets start with the first Kanji you will ever know out of the 2,000 required to read newspapers. (Note more kanji will be needed to read older literature)

一 meaning One. Easy so far. Lets continue.

Next memorize Chinese Readings for using the word in compound sentences and sometimes alone (on-yomi) ICHI or ITSU... Wait why is there 2 readings and when do you use each one of them?... Good question... Moving on...

Next memorize the Japanese Readings (Kun-yomi) for using the word in single usage. hito(tsu), hito. Again 2 different ways and the necessary need to memorize when to use it.

Don't forget to memorize certain compound words due to the fact that the first 200 kanji are used irregularly in a lot of compounds. Including the first just stated.

NOTE: You have to do this for 2,000 Kanji and most have at least 3 readings! And a lot of the Kanji have the same readings!

Next memorize really tiny differences in writing the Kanji and memorize stroke order so you won't write it differently then other people. (I'am only started studying readings so I can't recall one off the top of my head)

I could give other examples of the difficulty but I just got home from work and don't want to look in my books. Too lazy :? Anyway If you want to study Japanese, more power to you, but I recommend you don't think of it as 'just another simple language'.

i dont know if its really that hard, i mean im picking it up okay and i can understand bout 50%+ of anime i watch without the subtitles...
but i still have problems with memorizin alot of kanji despite the fact that im chinese because i never took learnning my motherlanguage that seriously anyway.
in terms of difficulty yea its hard but if youre a japanese person learning english, english is soo much harder to learn compared to japanese.
anyway best way i reckon to learn is just watch tons of anime and try pick out anythin you can understand, anime helps with colloquial phrases that you might not pick up from a textbook. also its like the listening part, its all good reading from a textbook, but japanese people speak so fast its crazy. like i never see how people in anime are like twice as easy as the people off talkshows are to understand.

あのさ。。。コヂングがちょっと違う、いくつかの漢字が見えないですが。

ＨＭＴＬは本当にめんどくさいな。

そして、ぼくは日本語が一人で習います。ちょっと難しいけどすっごくたのしいだ！

何じゃこれは？!　漢字が多すぎてるので読めねェーじゃねェか。。。
俺には無理だぜ、出来る分けないはずじゃないか
むかつくんだよ
ugh just random babbling to myself

そな。。。時々漢字はちょっとめんどくさいですけどガンバってぞ！

ああ！私ほとんど忘れてしまった　（If someone could tell me how to say "about that" please do so.）

漢字よむのために、このアッドンをダウンロード。

http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

Firefoxユーザーのみ

I cant say tl;dr since I did read it all, but I just can't be screwed going back to quote everything.

Japanese uses full stops and commas, just like Chinese and perhaps Korean and probably even more so now with the invasion of Western culture over there.

I'm not too sure about this, but from what I've picked up, modern Japanese uses kanji mainly for verbs and nouns, everything else can usually be left as kana. No quoting me on this though.

And cause I'm just too lazy, I'm going to leave it at this:

DO NOT TRY TO LEARN JAPANESE FROM ANIME AND MANGA!

They *may* be good to use as aids, but I recommend learning in a class. Sure, I may have picked up some vocabulary from anime, but that in NO way means it can replace serious study. Immersion would probably be the best way to learn, as many people before have said, so surround yourself in Japanese things, or for some of you it would be possible to cover every item you have in little Post-It notes with their Japanese names on them. I would do that, but then I would probably delude myself into thinking I was in some kind of a conspiracy or something.

Gah, I went on a rant again...oh well, as long as you got the part in bold above, I don't care if you didn't read the rest of this post.

It hard to write -_-; My Nihongo Book was missing T^T wahhh

I speak wapanese vely rell. Iron Cookaroo! Chef Benderooo!