Is it difficult to learn Japanese? || Concise Courses

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Is it difficult to learn Japanese?

In this article we will look at the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult about learning Japanese.

What is easy about learning Japanese as a beginner?

The good and easy: Japanese has simple pronunciation and is not a tonal language like Chinese or Thai, (by a tonal language we mean a 'language that uses tone to distinguish words'). Japanese vowels are equally simple since they are composed of pure vowels, ('sounds'). The majority of Japanese vowels are pure vowels in that they contain a single note.
The good and easy: The grammar has strict rules that make it easier to understand and learn Japanese than other languages. (For an excellent website that outlines Japanese grammar please visit this link Another tab will open in your browser). There are few exceptions to Japanese grammatic rules, so once you have learned them and understood them, you will be flying!.

The good and easy: Limitations on sentence structure are minimal. Sentences in Japanese are constructed in a very different way compared to English. Japanese sentences follow a subject, object, verb pattern, whereas in English we would place the verb before the object. Restrictions on sentence structure are not severe in Japanese.
The difficult: When a westerner visits Japan one of the immediate impressions they will have of the country is how alien the language looks when written! Japanese language is considered difficult by many due to this. There are roughly 3,200 kanji characters, as well as hiragana characters, katakana characters and Roman letters.

The difficult: Although we mentioned that Japanese has 'simple' pronunciation, we were not being total honest. Sorry. In fact, one feature of the Japanese language that makes it difficult for students to grasp quickly is the presence of many words which are pronounced the same but have different meanings. For example; hana can be "nose" or "flower", ame for "rain" or "candy". Knowing kanji helps in this aspect of learning as each of these words can be easily recognized by kanji.

The difficult: Japanese cultural has profound impact on the language. We at Concise Courses are very aware of this and this is why we came up with the idea to mix Japanese culture and language in one happy mix. Japanese is a fascinating language, since it is spoken differently depending on whether the speaker is a man or a woman, boy or girl, old or young.
What is difficult about learning Japanese as a beginner continued?
To give you an example of this: imagine an old lady in London talking like a tough street-wise geezer! Ok, probably a little exaggerated, but nonetheless, sex and age influence the way the Japanese language is spoken. This can be tricky to understand at first but fortunately we will cover this during our beginners course.

There are there main categories of politeness in spoken Japanese: the plain form (kudaketa), the simple polite form (teinei) and the advanced polite form (keigo). Please ask our teachers to give you examples of how these vary!

The difficult: Japanese body language can be a little tricky to grasp. The custom of bowing (45 degrees in general) is normal for everyone, regardless of age, sex, status etc, but generally, the more junior the individual, the deeper the bow. Space between two speakers is vital and eye contact is not kept as rigid as it might be in Europe and the West.

Lets summarize! In conclusion, although Japanese on one hand has strict rules that make it easier to understand and learn Japanese than other languages, it does however also have an extensive grammatical system to express politeness and formality.
Lets summarize! (continued) Learning Katakana and Hiragana is a given - that is completely possible - Kanji, well, that might take a little more work, but it is possible!

Very likely you have thought that if someone can levitate then they will be able to speak Japanese. Well, we at Concise Courses are able to confidently tell you that that is a myth. Our Japanese for beginners course is fun and will stimulate your learning ability. With a guest speaker each week we will entertain and teach you Japanese before you know it!

For any questions on our Japanese languages courses, please contact us.