You're not gonna
believe me, especially after this article, but Japanese is actually not as hard
to learn as everybody thinks it is. This makes it the ideal field of study for
people who want to appear smart with minimal effort at the expense of never finding
a related job. That said, there may be a few
things about the language that are a teensy
bit way more complicated than necessary.
Counting
Alright, so you've
started learning a new language. Good job. One of the first things you'll want
to do is learn how to count stuff. Fair enough, just memorize the words for the
numbers and you're set, right? Whoa now, slow down there, sport! In Japanese,
if you want to say how many of something there are - let's say the number of
girls you've been turned down by, for example - you can't just say
"307" or someone might reply in the condescending voice of your 2nd
grade teacher and ask, "307 what,
Ryan?" Of course, it should be obvious that you're talking about 307
girls, but you need to actually go out of your way to indicate that. It turns
out that there are suffixes you need to add to the number according to what it
is you're counting. For example, for people, add "nin", for flat
objects, add "mai", and for glasses of drink (or octopi, for some
reason), add "hai". Not only are there literally bazillions (I
counted) of different counters to memorize, they sometimes change a bit when
you add them or are entirely different for certain numbers. Basically, if you
need to quantify something in Japanese, you're better off grunting and
communicating with eyebrow gestures.
Being
Polite (or not)
Ok, so maybe now
you've gotten some more Japanese under your tightly fitting belt and you're
thinking "Gee willikers, Japanese verb conjugation is actually way easier
than it is in stuff like Spanish." Well you'd be right. In Japanese, you
don't have to change the verb based on who the subject is and you can just use
the same forms from present tense for future tense. It's stupidly simple. But
don't worry, all you fans of mind-numbing memorization, Japanese still has
plenty of conjugations for you to flood your mind with, they're just hidden
where you'd never think to look: in polite conversations. I can tell you from
experience that most Japanese people are annoyingly polite (or more clever and
roundabout in their impoliteness). The language reflects that cultural focus on
politeness by having whole new forms of verbs depending on whether you're
talking to your boss, your sister, or your yakuza cohorts. Sometimes it's as
easy as learning another verb ending, but many times you'll use an entirely
different word that means the same thing, but which is more (or less) polite.
So as an example, if you want to tell your boss to go rot in the depths of the
underworld, you should be sure to use "irassharu" for "go"
instead of "iku". You wouldn't want to be rude, after all.
Reading
and Writing
I'm pretty sure the
Japanese writing system is the entire reason that everyone thinks the language
is impossible to learn. They see some scribbles, think "I can't understand
that", and then give up and return to their coloring books. On the bright
side, you don't have to worry about getting hooked on phonics to memorize all
the rules and exceptions of pronunciation like you would if you were learning
English as a second language. Japanese has hardly any sounds and they're all
pronounced the same way every time. You can even write out words phonetically
using Hiragana and Katakana. You can write
them that way, but you wouldn't unless you're a kindergartner or an idiot.
Instead you'll be using those two alphabets of 46 characters each in
combination with the imported Chinese characters called kanji of which there
are 6,000ish in modern use. But don't worry, even though learning each kanji is
harder than memorizing the random configuration of a pile of dropped chopsticks
while blindfolded, you really only need to know closer to 2,000 to get by in
everyday situations.
But apart from those
three things, Japanese is a piece of cake. Really. You'll be watching your
Dragon Balls and playing imported video games by noon tomorrow.
