Is Japanese hard? Why Japanese is easier than you think?
Why Japanese is Easier than You Think
Here are but a few of the many ways Japanese is comparatively easy, especially for native speakers of English:
There are heaps of English loan words in Japanese.
If you grew up speaking English, congratulations! You won the Linguistic Lottery! From day one in Japanese, you will have a massive pre-existing vocabulary to draw on thanks to the thousands and thousands of English words borrowed into the Japanese language to date. These “foreign loanwords”, or gairaigo (外来語), offer native speakers of English a massive head start, allowing you to understand and communicate a great deal of information even with shaky Japanese grammar and zero Kanji knowledge. Here is a small taste of the Japanese arsenal English speakers already have at their disposal:
“mic” → maiku (マイク)
“table” → teeburu (テーブル)
“Internet” → intaanetto (インターネット)
“romantic” → romanchikku (ロマンチック)
“driveshaft” → doraibushafuto (ドライブシャフト)
Or for even more, check out the video Benny and some other learners made themselves, singing entirely in gairaigo (外来語):
You will of course need to learn the “Japanified” pronunciation of English loan words, but the phonetic patterns are highly predictable and consistent. All you need to do is learn Katakana (something you can do over the weekend), and then familiarize yourself with how English sounds are transferred into Japanese. A few key patterns to help you get started:
English loanwords adopt the consonant-vowel, consonant-vowel pattern found in Japanese. So you can be sure that any English consonant clusters, such as the ‘dr’ in “drive” will get extra vowels added in the middle. In this case, ‘d’ becomes do.
In Japanese, no words end in a consonant (with the exceptions of n), so if an English loanword has a consonant sound at the end (e.g. “mic”), you can be sure that the Japanese equivalent will have a vowel tacked on: maiku.
Once you have the phonetic patterns down, a powerful language hack is at your disposal: When in doubt about how to say a given word in Japanese, just say the English word you know using Japanese syllables. More times than not, you will be understood. Even if a given English loanword is not actually used in Japanese, chances are good that people will have “learned” (i.e. memorized but not really acquired) the English word in high school or university. Since most Japanese learners of English add little Katakana reading guides above English words to approximate their pronunciation, they will better recognize English words when wrapped in Japanese pronunciation. Or even more so when written out on paper. This habit may be bad for their English, but is at least good for your ability to communicate.
Lastly, I should point out that there are occasional differences in meaning between English loanwords and their Japanese derivations. But radical semantic changes are few, and even when there are significant gaps, the comedic effect is usually enough to make the words stick on their own. Perfect example: I loved telling all my friends back home that I lived in a “mansion” while in Japan. It was the truth! What they didn’t know is that the loanword manshon (マンション, “mansion”) actually refers to an apartment, not a palatial residence.
There are no pesky noun genders in Japanese.
Unlike most Romance languages, Japanese does not have “masculine”, “feminine” or “neuter” nouns. Buddha be praised! In Japan, you can just order your dark beer instead of trying to remember whether the noun “beer” is feminine or masculine as you would have to in Spanish:
“Let’s see… I really want a dark beer. Cerveza is feminine I think… Or is it masculine? It seems masculine. Just think of all the dudes with beer bellies. But it ends with an ‘a’ so I think it should be a feminine noun. Okay, assuming it is indeed feminine, I need to use the feminine form of the adjective for “dark”… Hmm… I think it’s oscura…”
Meanwhile, the waiter has come and gone and you are left to wait in thirsty frustration. Halfway around the world, the Japanese learner is already on his second round of gender-free kuro biiru (黒ビール).
Japanese verbs don’t have to “agree” with the subject.
In Japanese, there is no need to conjugate verbs to match their respective subjects. Anyone who’s learned Spanish or French should really appreciate this advantage. Take the verb “to eat” for example. En español, you have to learn 6 different verb forms for just the present tense (one for each pronoun group), plus all the myriad tense variations. In Japanese, you only need to learn one single verb form for each tense. No matter who does the eating, the verb taberu (食べる, “eat”) stays exactly the same!
“I eat.” → Yo como. → Taberu.
“You eat.” → Tú comes. → Taberu.
“He / She eats.” → Él/Ella come. → Taberu.
“We eat” → Nosotros comemos. → Taberu.
“You (pl., fam.) eat” → Vosotros coméis. → Taberu.
“You (pl.) / They eat.” → Uds./Ellos comen. → Taberu.
You do have to learn different verb tenses in Japanese, and there are different levels of formality to consider, but hey, at least matching pronouns and verbs is one less thing to worry about when you’re starting out. Don’t look a gifted linguistic horse in the mouth!
You can leave out subjects & objects if they are clear from the context.
Japanese is what linguists call a “pro-drop” language, meaning that pronouns and objects are often left unsaid if the “who” and “what” are obvious to the listener and speaker. For example, if someone asks you if you already ate dinner, you can simply say tabeta (食べた, “ate”), the past-tense of taberu (食べる). Both parties already know the subject (“I”) and the object (“dinner”), so all you need is the verb. Less really is more!
Each Japanese syllable can be pronounced only one way.
Japanese is a syllabic language, made up of 45 basic syllables. While the number 45 may sound more intimidating than the 26 letters found in English, keep in mind that each Japanese syllable can be pronounced only one way. This is in stark contrast to English, which despite having fewer letters actually contains far more sounds. Depending on the word (and where in the word it lies), most English letters can be pronounced myriad different ways. Take the letter ‘e’ for example:
It can be pronounced as a “short e” (ĕ or /ɛ/) like in empty.
It can be pronounced as a “long e” (ē or /i/) like in key.
It can be pronounced as a “long a” (ā or /ei/) like in resumé.
It can be pronounced as a “schwa” (/ɘ/) like in taken.
It can be silent (especially at the end of words) like in axe.
Complex stuff!
Pick any Japanese Kana on the other hand, and no matter where it’s used, it will be pronounced one—and only one—way. The Japanese ‘e’ sound for example (written え in Hiragana) is always pronounced as a “short e” (ĕ or /ɛ/). It doesn’t change if the syllable comes at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Japanese harbors few new sounds for English speakers.
The vast majority of Japanese sounds have direct (or at least very similar) equivalents in English. This is great news for the Japanese learner, but tough times for Japanese learners of English. Consider yourself lucky! You’ve already mastered English’s notorious ‘l’ and ‘r’ distinctions, for example, and will never have to endure the embarrassment of saying “erection” when you meant “election”!
There are only two Japanese sounds you will likely struggle with in the beginning:
The Japanese ‘r’ sounds: ra (ら), ri (り), ru (る), re (れ), and ro (ろ). It sounds somewhere between an ‘r’ and ‘d’, pronounced with a quick flip of the tongue somewhat like the rolled ‘r’ in Spanish. You can find a similar sound in American English buried in the middle of the word “water”. When sandwiched between vowels, we Yanks turn the poor little ‘t’ into what’s called a “flap”, which is precisely what the Japanese ‘r’ sound is, too.
The Japanese ‘tsu’ sound (つ). We actually have a similar sound in English (the ‘ts’ in words like “rats”), but the difference is that we never pronounce such a sound at the beginning of syllables in English as they do in Japanese.
But worry not! Your ears and mouth will eventually get the hang of these sounds with enough listening and speaking practice. Just do your best to imitate native speakers, and make sure to record yourself to better gauge your pronunciation and monitor your progress over time. You may even want to use software like Audacity to see how the waveform of your speech compares to that of native speakers. As Peter Drucker said, “What get’s measured gets managed.”
Japanese “recycles” lots of Kana.
As any good citizen knows, we should do our best to reduce, reuse, and recycle. To fulfill its civic duty, Japanese greatly reduces the number of potential Kana you need to learn by recycling a small set of basic symbols to represent a much larger number of sounds. The key to this linguistic efficiency is the use of little double slash marks called dakuten (濁点, “voiced marks”). As the name implies, these diacritic marks transform each of the “voiceless” sounds in Japanese into their “voiced” counterparts. Here are a few examples (note that the only difference between the Kana on the left and right is the dakuten in the upper-right corner):
ka = か → ga = が
sa = さ → za = ざ
ta = た → da = だ
Just think: without these little marks, you would have to learn dozens of additional Kana symbols. Thank you dakuten!
Japanese is not a “tonal” language.
Unlike Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc., Japanese is not a tonal language. Hooray! The Japanese language does sometimes differentiate meaning using a high-low distinction (what linguists call “pitch accent”), but the good news is that you do not need to learn a specific tone for each and every syllable like you do in languages like Chinese.
And in the fairly infrequent cases when pitch is used to distinguish meaning, the context will almost always do the heavy lifting for you. For example: Even though the word hashi can mean “chopsticks” (箸), “bridge” (橋), or “edge” (端) depending on the pitch accent (high-low, low-high, and flat in this case), you will know that somebody wants you to pass the “chopsticks” when at a restaurant, not a “bridge” or the “edge” of the table.
Kanji can be learned extremely quickly if you use an adult-friendly method.
A lot of digital ink has spilled in the blogosphere bemoaning how difficult it is to learn Kanji. Yes, the task will certainly take you time and effort, but the journey will be far shorter if you use smart, adult-friendly “imaginative memory” techniques laid out in books like James Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji (RTK). Armed with the right attitude, methods, and materials, a motivated adult learner can master the meaning and writing of all standard use Kanji in a matter of months, not years or even decades as is usually the case with traditional rote approaches. Learning all the Kanji readings will take longer, but knowing just the basic meaning of all standard use Kanji (常用漢字) is a huge head start as Heisig argues in the introduction to RTK:
Here are but a few of the many ways Japanese is comparatively easy, especially for native speakers of English:
There are heaps of English loan words in Japanese.
If you grew up speaking English, congratulations! You won the Linguistic Lottery! From day one in Japanese, you will have a massive pre-existing vocabulary to draw on thanks to the thousands and thousands of English words borrowed into the Japanese language to date. These “foreign loanwords”, or gairaigo (外来語), offer native speakers of English a massive head start, allowing you to understand and communicate a great deal of information even with shaky Japanese grammar and zero Kanji knowledge. Here is a small taste of the Japanese arsenal English speakers already have at their disposal:
“mic” → maiku (マイク)
“table” → teeburu (テーブル)
“Internet” → intaanetto (インターネット)
“romantic” → romanchikku (ロマンチック)
“driveshaft” → doraibushafuto (ドライブシャフト)
Or for even more, check out the video Benny and some other learners made themselves, singing entirely in gairaigo (外来語):
You will of course need to learn the “Japanified” pronunciation of English loan words, but the phonetic patterns are highly predictable and consistent. All you need to do is learn Katakana (something you can do over the weekend), and then familiarize yourself with how English sounds are transferred into Japanese. A few key patterns to help you get started:
English loanwords adopt the consonant-vowel, consonant-vowel pattern found in Japanese. So you can be sure that any English consonant clusters, such as the ‘dr’ in “drive” will get extra vowels added in the middle. In this case, ‘d’ becomes do.
In Japanese, no words end in a consonant (with the exceptions of n), so if an English loanword has a consonant sound at the end (e.g. “mic”), you can be sure that the Japanese equivalent will have a vowel tacked on: maiku.
Once you have the phonetic patterns down, a powerful language hack is at your disposal: When in doubt about how to say a given word in Japanese, just say the English word you know using Japanese syllables. More times than not, you will be understood. Even if a given English loanword is not actually used in Japanese, chances are good that people will have “learned” (i.e. memorized but not really acquired) the English word in high school or university. Since most Japanese learners of English add little Katakana reading guides above English words to approximate their pronunciation, they will better recognize English words when wrapped in Japanese pronunciation. Or even more so when written out on paper. This habit may be bad for their English, but is at least good for your ability to communicate.
Lastly, I should point out that there are occasional differences in meaning between English loanwords and their Japanese derivations. But radical semantic changes are few, and even when there are significant gaps, the comedic effect is usually enough to make the words stick on their own. Perfect example: I loved telling all my friends back home that I lived in a “mansion” while in Japan. It was the truth! What they didn’t know is that the loanword manshon (マンション, “mansion”) actually refers to an apartment, not a palatial residence.
There are no pesky noun genders in Japanese.
Unlike most Romance languages, Japanese does not have “masculine”, “feminine” or “neuter” nouns. Buddha be praised! In Japan, you can just order your dark beer instead of trying to remember whether the noun “beer” is feminine or masculine as you would have to in Spanish:
“Let’s see… I really want a dark beer. Cerveza is feminine I think… Or is it masculine? It seems masculine. Just think of all the dudes with beer bellies. But it ends with an ‘a’ so I think it should be a feminine noun. Okay, assuming it is indeed feminine, I need to use the feminine form of the adjective for “dark”… Hmm… I think it’s oscura…”
Meanwhile, the waiter has come and gone and you are left to wait in thirsty frustration. Halfway around the world, the Japanese learner is already on his second round of gender-free kuro biiru (黒ビール).
Japanese verbs don’t have to “agree” with the subject.
In Japanese, there is no need to conjugate verbs to match their respective subjects. Anyone who’s learned Spanish or French should really appreciate this advantage. Take the verb “to eat” for example. En español, you have to learn 6 different verb forms for just the present tense (one for each pronoun group), plus all the myriad tense variations. In Japanese, you only need to learn one single verb form for each tense. No matter who does the eating, the verb taberu (食べる, “eat”) stays exactly the same!
“I eat.” → Yo como. → Taberu.
“You eat.” → Tú comes. → Taberu.
“He / She eats.” → Él/Ella come. → Taberu.
“We eat” → Nosotros comemos. → Taberu.
“You (pl., fam.) eat” → Vosotros coméis. → Taberu.
“You (pl.) / They eat.” → Uds./Ellos comen. → Taberu.
You do have to learn different verb tenses in Japanese, and there are different levels of formality to consider, but hey, at least matching pronouns and verbs is one less thing to worry about when you’re starting out. Don’t look a gifted linguistic horse in the mouth!
You can leave out subjects & objects if they are clear from the context.
Japanese is what linguists call a “pro-drop” language, meaning that pronouns and objects are often left unsaid if the “who” and “what” are obvious to the listener and speaker. For example, if someone asks you if you already ate dinner, you can simply say tabeta (食べた, “ate”), the past-tense of taberu (食べる). Both parties already know the subject (“I”) and the object (“dinner”), so all you need is the verb. Less really is more!
Each Japanese syllable can be pronounced only one way.
Japanese is a syllabic language, made up of 45 basic syllables. While the number 45 may sound more intimidating than the 26 letters found in English, keep in mind that each Japanese syllable can be pronounced only one way. This is in stark contrast to English, which despite having fewer letters actually contains far more sounds. Depending on the word (and where in the word it lies), most English letters can be pronounced myriad different ways. Take the letter ‘e’ for example:
It can be pronounced as a “short e” (ĕ or /ɛ/) like in empty.
It can be pronounced as a “long e” (ē or /i/) like in key.
It can be pronounced as a “long a” (ā or /ei/) like in resumé.
It can be pronounced as a “schwa” (/ɘ/) like in taken.
It can be silent (especially at the end of words) like in axe.
Complex stuff!
Pick any Japanese Kana on the other hand, and no matter where it’s used, it will be pronounced one—and only one—way. The Japanese ‘e’ sound for example (written え in Hiragana) is always pronounced as a “short e” (ĕ or /ɛ/). It doesn’t change if the syllable comes at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Japanese harbors few new sounds for English speakers.
The vast majority of Japanese sounds have direct (or at least very similar) equivalents in English. This is great news for the Japanese learner, but tough times for Japanese learners of English. Consider yourself lucky! You’ve already mastered English’s notorious ‘l’ and ‘r’ distinctions, for example, and will never have to endure the embarrassment of saying “erection” when you meant “election”!
There are only two Japanese sounds you will likely struggle with in the beginning:
The Japanese ‘r’ sounds: ra (ら), ri (り), ru (る), re (れ), and ro (ろ). It sounds somewhere between an ‘r’ and ‘d’, pronounced with a quick flip of the tongue somewhat like the rolled ‘r’ in Spanish. You can find a similar sound in American English buried in the middle of the word “water”. When sandwiched between vowels, we Yanks turn the poor little ‘t’ into what’s called a “flap”, which is precisely what the Japanese ‘r’ sound is, too.
The Japanese ‘tsu’ sound (つ). We actually have a similar sound in English (the ‘ts’ in words like “rats”), but the difference is that we never pronounce such a sound at the beginning of syllables in English as they do in Japanese.
But worry not! Your ears and mouth will eventually get the hang of these sounds with enough listening and speaking practice. Just do your best to imitate native speakers, and make sure to record yourself to better gauge your pronunciation and monitor your progress over time. You may even want to use software like Audacity to see how the waveform of your speech compares to that of native speakers. As Peter Drucker said, “What get’s measured gets managed.”
Japanese “recycles” lots of Kana.
As any good citizen knows, we should do our best to reduce, reuse, and recycle. To fulfill its civic duty, Japanese greatly reduces the number of potential Kana you need to learn by recycling a small set of basic symbols to represent a much larger number of sounds. The key to this linguistic efficiency is the use of little double slash marks called dakuten (濁点, “voiced marks”). As the name implies, these diacritic marks transform each of the “voiceless” sounds in Japanese into their “voiced” counterparts. Here are a few examples (note that the only difference between the Kana on the left and right is the dakuten in the upper-right corner):
ka = か → ga = が
sa = さ → za = ざ
ta = た → da = だ
Just think: without these little marks, you would have to learn dozens of additional Kana symbols. Thank you dakuten!
Japanese is not a “tonal” language.
Unlike Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc., Japanese is not a tonal language. Hooray! The Japanese language does sometimes differentiate meaning using a high-low distinction (what linguists call “pitch accent”), but the good news is that you do not need to learn a specific tone for each and every syllable like you do in languages like Chinese.
And in the fairly infrequent cases when pitch is used to distinguish meaning, the context will almost always do the heavy lifting for you. For example: Even though the word hashi can mean “chopsticks” (箸), “bridge” (橋), or “edge” (端) depending on the pitch accent (high-low, low-high, and flat in this case), you will know that somebody wants you to pass the “chopsticks” when at a restaurant, not a “bridge” or the “edge” of the table.
Kanji can be learned extremely quickly if you use an adult-friendly method.
A lot of digital ink has spilled in the blogosphere bemoaning how difficult it is to learn Kanji. Yes, the task will certainly take you time and effort, but the journey will be far shorter if you use smart, adult-friendly “imaginative memory” techniques laid out in books like James Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji (RTK). Armed with the right attitude, methods, and materials, a motivated adult learner can master the meaning and writing of all standard use Kanji in a matter of months, not years or even decades as is usually the case with traditional rote approaches. Learning all the Kanji readings will take longer, but knowing just the basic meaning of all standard use Kanji (常用漢字) is a huge head start as Heisig argues in the introduction to RTK:
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