Japanese is best learned by getting used to the language, rather than trying to master grammar. I don’t know any Japanese grammatical rules. I’ve just grown more and more comfortable in the language over time. --- FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingosteve podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN
I discovered this recently out of sheer frustration. After months of not making progress and forgetting things I had learned, I set every electronic device I own to Japanese. Now I have no choice but to practice and reinforce, and I've learned more in 2 weeks than I did in a few months. Getting used to the language makes it so much easier to learn and so much less intimidating.
I understand this perspective, and would recommend using the problem-solving approach. Scenario-based learning is key here, as well as the gumption to allow yourself to be misunderstood. Subjects and plurality and gender take a backseat in this language, and the verb is king. Collocations are your best friend. There are no true synonyms. Everything you know about referring to phenomena in the world and general concepts goes out the window. Passive voice is loved and used often with their contingent transitive verbs-intransitive verbs, which can't be used as root verbs in passive sentences, are often used when you might not expect it. Particles will throw you for a loop, and some are used only for contrast. Postpositions replace what most are used to: prepositions. Kanji reinforce understanding, and foreign loan word pronunciation is inconsistent. There's a lot to digest when it comes to Japanese.
As a Japanese, I always get amazed by those who are learning our language despite the fact that it’s not used outside Japan. So, their motivation comes mostly from their pure interest in the language or our culture, which I’m proud of. Edit: Thank you for your comments! I’ve read all of them.
Almost all the content I watch is Japanese... I think I need to learn it. But yeah japanese is much simpler than my native language, French. English was simpler to learn , almost 30% of the vocab is just straight up french. But yeah one day at a time. I'm a big fan of the trails series. And yeah the translations are often butched and their released is so distant from the original release.. i want to play them as they release x.x.
From Spain, I have always wanted to learn your language because it sounds beautiful. Also, many people love Japanese content and they want to learn it because pretty much all their free time is consumed watching things in Japanese.
Bruh I got stuck with a boring ass language. Idk what other countries think of English but I think it’s boring af. I wanted to learn Japanese because it sounds cool. (Note) of course I think the language is boring because of it being my native tongue. Part of the was meant to be a joke. It’s hard to convey that over text. I don’t hate my language. I personally don’t want to be stuck with one which drives me to learn more and have fun with it. Sorry if I offended. Not the intention.
The easiest thing about learning Japanese is that there is so much high quality media to consume and immerse in. Books, manga, films, music etc. Whatever you're into, you can likely spend your whole day in Japanese for years and never run out of interesting content to immerse in. Given how important input is in acquiring language, this is a massive advantage for Japanese learners over learners of languages with less developed entertainment industries surrpunding them.
I've lived in Japan for 30 years. It honestly took me a few months to be functional, 10 years to be fully fluent and 15 to become literate. Japanese is extremely difficult 非常に難しい
@@giannilyanicks1718 Japanese in anime maybe spoken differently, but the Japanese in movies provides various examples of spoken Japanese including the standard Tokyo dialect. Also, one can find plenty of material online in terms of TH-cam videos in which Japanese discuss a variety of topics besides language learning. The OP is correct in saying there is so much available online that one could literally immerse themselves in Japanese 24/7.
@@giannilyanicks1718 How is your Japanese? Perhaps you could post a video so we could see if you are proficient enough to discern whether or not Japanese spoken in movies, dramas etc. is "spoken differently". I mean, sure, voice overs in animation are exaggerated and over the top, but there are plenty of family dramas, talk shows etc. in which Japanese speak standard Japanese.
@@giannilyanicks1718 stop using my name in your posts and stop slandering Japanese people and I will stop responding to your piffle. Clearly, you are not fluent in Japanese, so you are not one to inform learners of Japanese what is and what isn't natural Japanese. You have a history of saying awful things about Japanese people and you know it. I'm sure the TH-cam moderators can search the history you've tried to scrub by using your various aliases, so please go ahead and report anything you like to TH-cam moderators. I'm sure they will be interested in your history of abuse and slander as I'm certain they can access your deleted accounts' content through their technology. I'm confident mine contains no abusive nor slanderous content.
@@maegalroammis6020 Giannil Yanicks and Maegal Roammis are the same person using different accounts to spam any Japanese content with hate and slander.
I agree that Japanese is very flexible and forgiving: after year and a half of Japanese classes I can say much more complicated sentences than after a year of German classes, but German vocabulary of course is much easier to acquire and memorize (I’m Ukrainian)
I’m fluent in Japanese and live in Japan now and I definitely agree that it’s not as scary as it seems! Especially grammar-wise there’s plenty of European languages that seem much trickier to me. It takes getting used to at first though
It’s hard to say how many years it took me because it wasn’t always consistent. I didn’t rush though. I’d say language comes down more so to hours you’ve just in than months or whatever spent on it. And I love kanji! I feel like I’m able to get the meaning faster because I can understand what it means from a quick glance before reading it out loud in my head. It also makes understanding and remembering new vocab faster once you’re used to it (you can guess the meaning for a lot of kanji words you’ve never seen before) I’ve dabbled in Mandarin and Korean and I have a much faster time picking up Mandarin vocab because I can associate the words with the characters instead of just a sound
@@Blade2323B アラビア語興味あります〜！アラビア語全くわかりませんが、キーボードにも入れてます。特に発音が難しい印象です。 Hi! I’m kinda interested in Arabic! I don’t know about it at all but I even have an Arabic keyboard on my phone haha I think its pronunciation is especially difficult.
@@v3getar1ancarr0t5 It’s kinda hard to tell but I think the variation and flexibility Japanese language has make speaking difficult even for Japanese native speakers. Oh and also Keigo(honorific and humble forms) is a big obstacle for native speakers too.
There's this saying: Roses are red Violets are blue There's always an asian kid Better than you I think there's some truth to that. You have to be a pretty smart kid to learn all those kanji! I'm guessing there are Japanese people with dyslexia as well, right? That HAS to suck, I'd imagine.
@@Fun-rf9vs I technically started maybe 2-3 years ago, but one of those years was wasted on Duolingo (although it did teach me Hiragana and Katakana really slowly so the kana systems are almost second nature to me now), the other year I didn't do much Japanese, and around the start of the third year, I found the immersion approach from Matt vs Japan (check out refold.la) so I've been using that for maybe 6-7 months and comprehend about half of Japanese speech
I think its because of the era. He didn't find katakana common in the 70s. Nowadays u can slip katakana if u don't know the kanji for it,日本人 most likely will understand
@@nopale6565 Yeah I didn't consider when he actually started learning, and yeah I noticed that the kanji not on the Jouyou kanji list are written with katakana (ウサギ、タコ、etc) as well as common words (バカ instead of 馬鹿)
I'm a Chinese, and I'm learning Japanese. I think Chinese is more similar with English in structure than Japanese, even though they seem totally different from each other, while Chinese and Japanese kanji look the same. Japanese tend to put the most important part into the end of a sentence, usually predicates, as well as add many structures into a simple sentance which seem kind of meaningless and made the sentences super long compared to their original forms, just to express their emotion, to adjust to a certain environment. Maybe it's more important for a Japanese to read the atmosphere, it's kind of difficult for me but, actually I like it, which allows me to express my emotion in a precise way. "爱" and ''愛", both "love" in Simplified Chinese and Japanese, the difference is that we don't have "心", "heart", in it. Simplified Chinese is more efficient, not just in kanji. We have simplified kanji and shorter verbs, but we speak even longer sentences with overwhelming amount of information than Japanese and Traditional Chinese, which is used in taiwan. In fact, people in taiwan often have trouble understanding mainland movies without subtitles just because we speak too fast and too complex. It does efficient, but we just only stand on our OWN position, no attention to OTHERS side, which made simplified Chinese relatively harder to understand and less emotion, heartless, in other word. Of course, I didn't realize it before knowing Japanese, I think it's the charm of linguistics.
I'm studying Japanese at university right now and in first semester we learn (mainly): 1) Desu/~masu 2) Adjectives & want 3) Iru/aru 4) ~Te-form and variations 5) Non polite and variations And that's not even counting the small stuff like numbers/counters/telling time + all the exceptions (telling the day of the month sucks) ; using genkoyoushi ; writing e-mails ; learning bodyparts & expressions for feeling sick ; ~Teiru ; ~Tari ~tari ; Verbs of giving/receiving ; nominalization ; etc... But to get to the point, changing registers (Polite/Non polite) mid-way in conversations is definitely as you say "a clanger" for Japanese people. At least for people you don't know very well. So you might think "fine, I'll just use ~masu all the time". Problem is that in a lot of structures you HAVE to use non polite. From there on out, everything can become a lot more confusing. You'll be saying half you sentence in non-polite and then end with the polite register. Oh and don't get me started on particles... They can get really confusing later down the line. Maybe it will click faster for some people though. Anyways, to everyone that read this: have a great day or great sleep!
Using LingQ for 2 years. Reading news, blogs, novels, all in Japanese. Also, watching a lot of TH-cam channels and listening to podcasts. Up to 12K words now.
@@ugur76 No. I lived in Japan (Tokyo) before but never studied and didn't know how to hold a basic conversation. All friends spoke English and my job was at a Japanese company doing English sales...
My opinion: learning a language is not difficult if you love doing it. You may suffer a lot while learning, but if you are able to "live" the language, it will be spontaneous! That's how I learned English and currently I'm focusing on German. Next goals: Russian and Japanese. I wish everyone a wonderful language journey!
I'm brazilian 16 years old boy. I became semi-fluent in japanese, studying 6 hours all day in 1 year. Now I can understand 80% a hard anime, and I tricked a japanese native girl, speeking for 1 hour, she thought who I'm a japanese. Edit. Using anki, and starting with brazilians youtube chanels, after english blogs, and now I learn japanese in japanese.
@@ZipfelmannKD I liked to play games, buy my PC was very old, so I like so much anime and japanese culture, since I was kid, because this I started learn japanese. I find a very good youtube channel in portuguese who teaches japanese. Fortunately them teaches like Steve said, I learned how to learn a language with them, so I saw all the videos. I always have a good understanding leavel in english because games and school, so I start to learn english, watch poliglots videos like Steve, linguistics videos, at the same time studying Japanese to this day. My hobbies is study (japanese, english, korean, russian, mathematics, phisics, chemistry, bilogy, philosophy, japanese culture, programing, chees, linguistics), I also like watch animes, play chees, do karate, play basket. Sorry for my writing errors, I almost never write in English.
No começo, como vc acompanhava conteúdos em japonês conhecendo poucos kanjis por exemplo? Digo isso, pois pra mim está sendo um pouco assim porque eu só sei o hiragana, katakana e alguns kanjis, então ainda é um pouco difícil para acompanhar conteúdos com áudio por exemplo. Gostaria de saber como vc saiu dessa fase para conseguir assistir conteúdos como animes, pelo menos com legenda em japonês?
I use to think it was so silly that I had to learn hiragana and katakana until someone pointed out that we also use two writing systems in English. We don't think about capital letters as a seperate script, but to a foreign speaker, learning the capital Latin script is akin to learning a completely new set of letters.
I have been learning Japanese for a year ,my only problem now is sometimes I don't know the subject because Japanese sometimes omit it ,but I'm getting better,I just need to continue listening and reading ,Thanks steve
I've been living in Japan for almost 30 years now, so I can handle myself when it comes to Japanese. Your explanations about Japanese are spot on. I would recommend to anyone who really wants to learn the language to spend at least some time in Japan. I would also STRONGLY recommend to learn Kanji. Most foreigners I've met haven't really mastered Kanji and it just shows during conversations. Trying to memorize Kanji words (as opposed to Hiragana/Katakana words) is much more difficult if you don't understanding the Kanji. For example, lets take the word 高熱 (Kōnetsu). 高 (Kō) means high, 熱 (netsu) means fever. Combined it becomes "high fever". So if you already know the Kanji 高 (Kō) and 熱(netsu), memorizing 高熱 is simple.
Yeah but say it like this, この火の気温が高いと火炎は熱いですよ (This fire's temperature is high, and the flames are hot!) and now 高い(is now takai) and 熱い(is now atsui) change the way they're read and sometimes what they mean... So what you just taught there only applies to specific context, which is why lots of people stop learning Kanji because it highly relies on reading and conversational experience. Which most people don't have access to unless they're living in Japan.
i learnt japanese in japan in my 20s and am now in mexico learning spanish in my 40s and i find spanish so much more difficult. infinitely more difficult. everything you say about the flexibility of the grammar is probably not something a beginner wants to hear necessarily but is totally true and lies at the heart of learning it.
If you already speak a language that has an SOV structure (languages like Marathi, Turkish, Mongolian etc.) then learning Japanese (minus Kanji) will be structurally comparable to an English speaker learning a romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Potuguese) and take less time as the grammar will be easier to comprehend. It will take longer to learn Japanese if you speak English because the grammar is SVO (subject verb object) in English and we only have an alphabet, not three separate ways of written communication. That said there are plenty of foreign loan words in Japanese, you just have to get used to pronunciation. All languages have their quirks and tricks and the real determinant in your ability to learn a language is your ability to grit through the frustrating bits and actively engage with the language in a meaningful way. That means practicing pronunciation and doing both study and immersion. It also depends on what you want to accomplish in learning the language; if you want some easy phrases to navigate is not the same as getting an N2-N1 certification to work in Japan. Patience, persistence, immersion, and passion. All the best
Hi Steve, thank you for a good video. I am from Ukraine, studied in Canada and living in Japan now. 初めて聞いたロシア語、ウクライナ語、と日本語を話すことできます。驚きました。すぐにチャネルフォローしました。 Когда я узнал что вы начали учить языки в возрасте, вы меня вдохновили! Если честно, японский язык мне деться тяжело, сейчас на N2 level но после того как узнал о Вас и на скольких языках Вы говорите понял, что у меня все впереди. Дякую!
3:41 -- Serbian has two writing systems in common use (latin and cyrillic). Their usage isn't interspersed in every sentence as kana and kanji are in Japanese, but they are both very commonly used.
The thing is, the only reason that people messing up the gender in French "clangs" more to you, is because you're better at French. Things like the formality levels in Japanese absolutely do matter, they just don't sound as bad to you because (1) you're not a native speaker and (2) native Japanese speakers tend to be extremely forgiving and polite and tend to have extremely low expectations when it comes to the Japanese ability of foreigners. If you were not a foreigner people would react very differently when you use the wrong politeness levels. When you use the wrong pitch accent and unnatural expressions and so on that also clangs for Japanese people, they just wouldn't say that.
I have been learning Japanese for 7 months now and by talking to more advanced learners, a few things came up: Japanese vocabulary is endless, they got like 100 different words to say 'I'. Kanji seems very hard at first but it s just a matter of grinding it. Using the wrong politeness levels, pitch accents as a foreigner is not a big deal (Japanese people are very humble and forgiving), but if you want to sound native or work in japan, it can be. It may be because I am only 7 months in but for me japanese grammar is hard and it does matter. There are things like transitive/intransitive verbs and you need to conjugate adjectives.
@@alexheise110 Hi. For time and negative "tenses". Weirdly enough, not all adjetives in Japanese get to be conjugated, only those that end with an i (there are exceptions). 赤い (akai, red present), 赤くない (not red, present), 赤かった (red, past tense), 赤くなかった (not red, past).
Hebrew also has 2 writing systems, one is called "Dfus" and is used in print, official writing and how children learn to read, and the other one is called "Ktav" and used in everyday handwriting and in modern use to give an 'informal' sense to the text.
I really have a thing with Japan, a fascination. I really want to learn the language but I really feel bad when I see people saying how fast they memorized the hiragana and katakana. I really have a hard time memorizing them. I already started and stopped a few times this year. Thanks for the nice video. Really enlightening.
In spoken Japanese and in casual writing like a text message, I've come to find that the native speakers tend to say things in the most concise way possible that's understandable. They don't usually talk in obscure idioms or long complex sentences which makes things just a bit easier to pick up on and start contributing to conversations as a beginner.
Thanks, Steve! I think you have said before also that the difficulty of a language also depends heavily on how much interesting content we can find. I think I remember you saying you struggled with Korean because of this reason, despite it being similar to Japanese grammatically.
I’ve been learning Japanese on Duolingo for a while, and I can understand somewhat, but I’m gonna invest in some practice writing books because without the audio I’m completely lost. My memory works much better with auditory stimulus than visual, so I need to work on that. It didn’t take that much getting used to just because I’ve watched thousands of hours of anime, so I already knew a lot of key phrases/terms that helped me feel like it wasn’t completely impossible. Doing it everyday consistently has helped me a LOT. It feels like one of those skills where if you don’t keep doing it everyday, your skills diminish very quickly.
1. Stop using Duolingo 2. Try the immersion approach through refold.la. It gives a lot of good information about the approach and I can attest to it working so far as my I can decently understand maybe half of Japanese speech through listening after about 6 months of a decent amount of daily immersion 3. Try using anki for memorising new words 4. Also use Anki to try Remembering The Kanji, a method orders kanji in an order that makes it easier to learn using the parts that make them up and making stories for them (try using hochanh.github.io/rtk/rtk1-v6/index.html) 5. If you feel unmotivated, try finding something that you look forward to as an incentive for learning the language 6. If you feel you haven't learned anything, try finding some anime or something that you watched a while back and see how much more you comprehend. 頑張れ！
There is also kyujita /木内た words traditional Japanese words which I found it on TH-cam just finding some random videos and they’re longer to spell also a lot more difficult than Kanji
All the grammar I learned was through speaking. I didn’t know what any particle meant at all because I regrettably went all-in with the Pimsleur approach and zero reading. The particles and grammar just made sense when I spoke. I didn’t know any rules even existed, until I began studying reading, which was actually tremendously easier to learn since I already had a spoken knowledge. Now, I’m rewinding and focusing fully on my input before I do more speaking.
Nice explanation, however I would have definitely mentioned the counters: the numbers in Japanese change depending on what you are counting（depending among other criteria on the shape of what you are counting, so round objects are ko, flat objects are mai, oblong objects are hon / pon, etc). Three eggs for example is sanko tamago (三個卵）, but three days is mikkakan（三日間）, three generic things are mittsu, etc. There are hundreds of counters, although you should at least know the most common 40 or so. The other difficulty is the double negatives, which definitely takes some adjusting to, especially during a real conversation. The fact that several Asian languages count on a base four instead of base three is also challenging, especially when dealing with large numbers (so one million has to be said "one hundred ten thousands")...
Yes What you say is what I see as a true beginner and looking at learning Japanese. I am trying to learn it on my own which is probably even harder to do. I am trying to learn basic words an phrases to start out with and the Alphabet pronunciations. I use TH-cam allot to hear how everything sounds. Then i use google translate to say the Japanese and see if the English truly indicates I said the correct words. I know it is a tough language, but willing to give it a try.
Great video. Japanese is a difficult language and varies wildly from western languages. The wide variety of sounds and meanings for each kanji delay basic reading and writing for non-Chinese speakers. Grammar is both unstructured & structured at the same time; lots of "made phrases" need to be memorized. Verb conjugation is easy (but you also have to conjugate adjectives and adverbs). I never met a westerner who could read native texts and newspapers with fluency. I think Spanish is much easier for the beginner but it becomes very difficult indeed.
As a Japanese learner, seeing someone so proficient be so flippant regarding は and が made me smile. It gave me immense frustration not being able to understand. But now I see your point of view with the whole 'getting used to it' 慣れてきた.
seemed like there was a phone music or some repetitive music in the background- distracting, don't use the music- you don't need it, your information is fantastic!
I studied Japanese a bit in the 1980s. I didn't get very far, but I still know the grammar and some basic words. Verbs at the end, particles-- the grammar is nice. The kanji (Chinese characters for word roots) is the biggest problem. I am studying Chinese online now (I chose it over Japanese kanji) using many of Steve's ideas. Maybe I'll start Japanese next year.
Thanks Steve, interesting discussion. I have a long history with Japanese, but let's say I've been studying it seriously (and consistently) for 3 years now. I still find it a very difficult language. I'd guess that I'm at a B1 level. I think one of the biggest problems for me is that I don't live in Japan, so I'm not immersed in the language. In the last 3 years, I've only been able to spend a total of 4 weeks in Japan. I love the language and generally my motivation is high, I try to read and listen every day. And the fact that it's difficult makes progress that much more satisfying. I think the basic grammar is easy enough, like you said. But now that I'm at an intermediate level, I'm trying to interact with more native content. It amazes me sometimes, reading a news site for example, that I can in theory know every word in a sentence, but I can read the sentence 5 times and not understand what message is trying to be conveyed. I've been using Wanikani for the last year and a half and I can read around 2000 kanji now, so my next goal is to move from kanji learning to kanji immersion (more reading). But the way complex sentences are built in Japanese is just so different than English (my native language), I'd say objectively Japanese is a difficult language to learn for English natives. One last thought, I started learning French a few months ago. I know progress in the early stages of language learning is always more noticeable, but wow, what a reminder it was for me the difference between learning a Romance language and an Oriental one! In any case it's definitely true that the more similar the language is to your own, the quicker you'll be able to pick it up. Thanks as always for your advice and giving us all motivation, Steve! Sorry for the long post but it's a relevant video for me and stirred some thoughts :)
the linguistic distance between japanese and english is maximum. For english speakers, japanese is the most difficult language. Japanese is much harder than chinese. There are 3 writing systems in japanese. Chinese has a similar grammar as english while japanese has completely different one.
As always an excellent, informative, and motivating presentation. Concerning the three forms of Japanese script - a samll note of interest. The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written horizontally from left to right. Additionally Arabic the letters, as you may or may not know are modified according to their position in a word or sentence, thus giving isolated, initial, medial and finial
I find Japanese very logical for the most part, but it's just so much to remember - which might be the same for most languages, but I find myself struggling to remember the grammar points, especially when speaking. Writing and reading isn't too bad.
Have anyone tried learning Vietnamese? I'm glad that the government decided to switch to a Latin-based alphabet instead of keeping the old writing system of Chinese-based characters.
Honestly looking at the Vietnamese alphabet confuses more than if I were to look at Chinese characters. Although I think that that’s because I coming from an English speaking perspective. To me, a lot of it does not like how it’s written (or at least, not how I think it should sound like)
I wish the writing system of Chinese would change from Chinese characters to a phonetic system. In fact, two such system already exist: 漢語拼音 and 注音符號. Everyone who learns Chinese learns one of these systems, but all writing and printing is done in Chinese characters. It would be super easy to stop using characters and use one of the phonetic systems as the standard writing system. Anyway, my point is that I like phonetic writing systems, and I understand how that switch has made Vietnamese much easier than it was in the past when people used Chinese characters to write Vietnamese.
@@30803080308030803081The second one is definetely Bopomofo. Would you have homophone issues though? With Japanese, disambiguation between phonetically identical words in writing would be a nightmare. But there's like only about 70 possible syllables for them. I have an impression there's more flexibility in Chinese syllables, is it correct?
Very interesting points. As a Romance language speaker (Portuguese) I found the gramatic structure of spoken Japanese kind of simple, when compared to our Western languages, specially romance languages. When I was studying it, building simple, day-by-day phases was not a real pain. The real problem to me is - and will always be - the writing system. It is really too confusing and it takes a lot of work to recognize the symbols, specially Kanji
To be honest this video was really useful for me because anyway in the future I want to start learning this beautiful language of beautiful country where was created really many amazing technologies and cars and in my opinion these advice will help to me start owning this language really good.
It's not difficult, but mastering the three writing systems is a major time suck, especially of course kanji. You end up spending so much time learning kanji that you would be spending learning vocabulary and grammar in another language (especially one that uses the familiar Latin alphabet). All that time spent learning kanji increases the time it also takes to learn the grammar and vocabulary. And if you think you can avoid learning kanji, I don't recommend it. Japanese has so many homophones that sometimes kanji is the only life preserver you have to grab onto to make sense of things. Plus if you don't know kanji you won't be able to read the Japanese subtitles in videos, which is an invaluable shadowing tool. And you also won't be able to read textbooks. You have to write those kanji everyday in your notebook and do the flashcard grinding. I actually think Japanese grammar is not that hard, though. Even Sonkeigo has a logic to it that you can understand. And Japanese verbs and such are more regular than English, so drilling those patterns is a breeze. Whereas Japanese people have to memorize all those irregular English verbs. And then there's the pronunciation too. So I think actually English is harder for Japanese people than Japanese is for English people. Because the pronounciation is so difficult. Whereas you can learn the kanji if you have enough time and discipline. It's not as hard as forming your mouth into shapes it's never made before. But that's just my opinion. English is more difficult but Japanese takes more time basically.
Hi Mr. Kaufmann! It is always a pleasure listening to you. For me Japanese is a very beautiful melodic language, there are some advantages of Japanese when learning it like there is no gender , no conjugation of verb, it is more a contextual language. I was learning it for 2 years , I know well hiragana and katakana and I learnt like 100 kanjis but I stopped it as it is for me a big struggle with Kanjis and it is as well very time consuming.I love the language but I realised I have to study for 10 years minimum to have some kind of fluency 😅 ありがとう ございます
I feel so lucky and thankful growing up speaking a european language (German) that uses time, different levels of politeness, gender, cases and tons of conjugations. English and French, which I started learning in my teens, seemed just easier versions of what I already knew, and picking it up was super relaxed. Even Russian and Portuguese weren't too bad, as I was familiar with the system. When i moved on to other languages I found them difficult, but on levels and subjects that are so much more welcoming for someone who just wants to have fun as I did. As hard as the japanese writing system is, and as confusing the levels of politeness and the particles are sometimes, "forgiving" is exactly the word I'd use to describe it. And the same goes for Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese.
I’ve put a lot more effort into learning Japanese than Spanish, and I’m probably a fourth as good with Japanese as Spanish, because of all of the shared words we inherited from Spanish’s related language, Spanish. Often times though, reading Kanji makes things easier, since you might not know the word, you can guess meanings often enough, given context. Especially if you read Japanese comic books.
I learned Japanese my first run around 2003 when I was very young. Back then it was so difficult, I had to buy books, CDs, online was only some free basic HTML sites and such. Right now, its incredible, all the free resources available. You can learn nonstop, all the time, as if you lived in Japan already, if you're really motivated. There has never been a better time to not only learn, but also enjoy a language (can enjoy songs, media, all that very easily)
I like this video. What really helped me learn Japanese was watching shows and picking up on key words or following Japanese people on social media to see how they speak. To add to this, I don't like most textbooks or Japanese schools bc they dont teach you how Japanese people really speak in real life. You sound like a robot.
I have a frustrating experience. Not knowing where to begin or hitting a plateau can feel demoralizing and make it hard to hit the books and study like you know you should…Having friends from other cultures makes me more creative. In fresh ways about space and how people create their own world and environment. It is best way to connect between creative thinking and cross-cultural relationships.
I am still learning Japanese, however being a native French speaker (and also native level English speaker), I feel Japanese's level of difficulty is often exaggerated. Ok the writing system is quite the hurdle. But spoken Japanese is very simple. The particle system is intuitive in the way that it works. You have present and past tense as well as negation that is indicated by a suffix on the verb or adjective. Then learning vocabulary is unavoidable in any language. Although I love French (It helps with Japanese sound pronunciation), it's a freaking monster when it come to the grammar, syntax and even spelling. So yeah... loved the video added nuance to the topic. I do agree in the end it is only a question of motivation and investment no mater what you're trying to learn.
I’ve been studying Japanese for about 14 months. I think it’s difficult but fun and fulfilling. I think it’s not something to shy away from if you want to learn it. Starting up can be a lot of work, besides the three writing systems, multiple counting systems, but probably after about four months, I hit my stride…I’m in no way fluent. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I take the attitude that I’m a student of Japanese, and will probably be learning for the remainder of my days.
Learning Japanese is too hard, we all know that. Honestly I don't have any intention to learn it, simply it's not my conviction. It's a fantastic language but personally I don't feel any interest in it. I only watched this video because it's really interesting and wanted to see what Steve had to say about it. It was kinda overwhelming but I enjoyed it. When learning any language, is crucial to look up important words and phrases to start working on your new language learning journey and enjoying it at the same time as well. Focusing on the grammar excessively can be very tough, stressful and boring when trying to memorize grammatical patterns in no time, you know it takes a really long time to get used to any language at any aspect and then your brain will thank you.
I would recomend the book Genki to learn Japanese. It has a pretty rapid system of going forward and is initially meant for university students, but it teaches really good so I can really understand the Japanese language.
You can do RRTK and basic grammar together, as long you don't anki a single sentence from Tae Kim or IMABI and don't try to memorize it-that's what I'm doing.
@@spyro3635 You have to choose yourself. In my opinion, both do what I need right now, which is a bit of grammar to help understand more Japanese. Tae Kim is straightforward, whereas IMABI goes in-depth in his explanations. So you have to choose which one fits your preferences. You have to choose. Try both and see which one you like.
The FSI numbers are a good starting point to give you an idea of how much time it will take you, regardless of whether you spend that time in a classroom or spend it with self-study and immersion input. There is no way around spending a lot of time with the language if you want to learn it. The only influence you have is how enjoyable you make that time.
I'm an American who lives in Yokosuka, which is very close to the American military base, so I actually see a decent amount of katakana on the signs and stuff, maybe used to translate certain proper nouns 😊Living so close to other Americans and where most services are translated into English kills the motivation to learn Japanese lol. My goal is to learn Japanese enough so that I can have a basic conversation with a native speaker and take private lessons from a tutor who is a native speaker. If I can learn hiragana and katakana, then I'll be happy. I can recognize some kanji used for the names of cities in Japan, but I couldn't write them for the life of me! The good thing about Japanese is that the grammar is not terribly difficult. There aren't any cases or genders, or even singular or plural. There are just the "joshi" or particles that you have to learn, as well as a completely different set of vocabulary compared to, say, English. I'm excited to learn more Japanese, although I'm a bit afraid of becoming discouraged if I don't progress as quickly as I'd like to.
In Japanese I can express myself the same way I do in Spanish. Spanish is my mother tongue but Japanese simplified way of speaking sometimes is more difficult for me to adapt. In Spanish we use more flourishes.
Funny how I'm watching anime & starting to pick up repeated phrases or sentences despite sometimes forgetting their meanings 😂, like I know some basic words & one or two phrases already in written in English, that's about it. Wish I have more time to fully commit learning Japanese.
Modern day Japanese has many loan words or things just said in english for the sake of it. I talked to a international student who is from Japan and he didn't even know what the word for Lion was. According to him and the other two students, they had never heard it and just say "Lion" so it'd be written as " ライオン". So I think you'll use katakana often enough now.
I've been studying Japanese for 4 years, took Japanese 101 and 102 in college, got an A in both, and I still can't hold a conversation for longer then 2 minutes. I think it's one of the hardest languages to learn on earth. This guy I think had an easier time because he is obviously a linguist. He already knew Chinese going into learn Japanese, and my guess is he knew other foreign languages before that too. So he's not just the average person trying to learn Japanese. For them, it's going to be extremely difficult
The thing is how much jaoanese did you learn each day for example? I think if you learn a language its important to repeat all the time. Also its important to actually speak it! So try to find someone you can exchange with more often and you will see you conversations will get a lot longer
For an Indian who knows Sanskrit and South indian languages like Tamil and Kannada, the structure of Japanese is very familiar.... My bugbears are katakana, and the numerous small particles and junk interjections!
Japanese is best learned by getting used to the language, rather than trying to master grammar. I don’t know any Japanese grammatical rules. I’ve just grown more and more comfortable in the language over time.
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I discovered this recently out of sheer frustration. After months of not making progress and forgetting things I had learned, I set every electronic device I own to Japanese. Now I have no choice but to practice and reinforce, and I've learned more in 2 weeks than I did in a few months. Getting used to the language makes it so much easier to learn and so much less intimidating.
I understand this perspective, and would recommend using the problem-solving approach. Scenario-based learning is key here, as well as the gumption to allow yourself to be misunderstood. Subjects and plurality and gender take a backseat in this language, and the verb is king. Collocations are your best friend. There are no true synonyms. Everything you know about referring to phenomena in the world and general concepts goes out the window. Passive voice is loved and used often with their contingent transitive verbs-intransitive verbs, which can't be used as root verbs in passive sentences, are often used when you might not expect it. Particles will throw you for a loop, and some are used only for contrast. Postpositions replace what most are used to: prepositions. Kanji reinforce understanding, and foreign loan word pronunciation is inconsistent. There's a lot to digest when it comes to Japanese.
omg you look younger abd younger!!!
I certainly believe you don't.
@Steve *I thought you were paid by the Canadian government to learn Japanese to help a diplomat?*
As a Japanese, I always get amazed by those who are learning our language despite the fact that it’s not used outside Japan. So, their motivation comes mostly from their pure interest in the language or our culture, which I’m proud of.
Edit: Thank you for your comments! I’ve read all of them.
there are a lot of weebs out there
Almost all the content I watch is Japanese... I think I need to learn it. But yeah japanese is much simpler than my native language, French. English was simpler to learn , almost 30% of the vocab is just straight up french. But yeah one day at a time. I'm a big fan of the trails series. And yeah the translations are often butched and their released is so distant from the original release.. i want to play them as they release x.x.
From Spain, I have always wanted to learn your language because it sounds beautiful. Also, many people love Japanese content and they want to learn it because pretty much all their free time is consumed watching things in Japanese.
Bruh I got stuck with a boring ass language. Idk what other countries think of English but I think it’s boring af. I wanted to learn Japanese because it sounds cool.
(Note) of course I think the language is boring because of it being my native tongue. Part of the was meant to be a joke. It’s hard to convey that over text. I don’t hate my language. I personally don’t want to be stuck with one which drives me to learn more and have fun with it. Sorry if I offended. Not the intention.
or anime
Steve is like a minecraft enchantment table. The more books this man has around him the higher his power levels.
And his name is literally STEVE
He needs 3 more block currently.
Omg 🤣🤣
Steve is an authentic linguistic legend.
Also the music in the background is giving off minecraft vibes.
Thank you all for learning Japanese and the culture. Love from Japan.
I'm learning English now hope I can be fluent as I am in English.
your language is a torture.
few would be like him in japân
英語の勉強を頑張ってください！
I’m Japanese and I’m leaning English now
But your English is easy to understand for me so I watched this video hahaha
I’m sorry but are we gonna ignore those glasses? Wow. Incredible.
Only people with glasses will notice
No... those glasses cannot be ignored...
@@austin8762 , so all people without glasses cannot see properly?
Yeah I was thinking the same thing.
@@michaels3003 Yes, because they do not have glasses. QED.
The easiest thing about learning Japanese is that there is so much high quality media to consume and immerse in. Books, manga, films, music etc. Whatever you're into, you can likely spend your whole day in Japanese for years and never run out of interesting content to immerse in. Given how important input is in acquiring language, this is a massive advantage for Japanese learners over learners of languages with less developed entertainment industries surrpunding them.
I've lived in Japan for 30 years. It honestly took me a few months to be functional, 10 years to be fully fluent and 15 to become literate. Japanese is extremely difficult 非常に難しい
@@giannilyanicks1718 Japanese in anime maybe spoken differently, but the Japanese in movies provides various examples of spoken Japanese including the standard Tokyo dialect. Also, one can find plenty of material online in terms of TH-cam videos in which Japanese discuss a variety of topics besides language learning. The OP is correct in saying there is so much available online that one could literally immerse themselves in Japanese 24/7.
@@giannilyanicks1718 How is your Japanese? Perhaps you could post a video so we could see if you are proficient enough to discern whether or not Japanese spoken in movies, dramas etc. is "spoken differently". I mean, sure, voice overs in animation are exaggerated and over the top, but there are plenty of family dramas, talk shows etc. in which Japanese speak standard Japanese.
@@giannilyanicks1718 stop using my name in your posts and stop slandering Japanese people and I will stop responding to your piffle. Clearly, you are not fluent in Japanese, so you are not one to inform learners of Japanese what is and what isn't natural Japanese. You have a history of saying awful things about Japanese people and you know it. I'm sure the TH-cam moderators can search the history you've tried to scrub by using your various aliases, so please go ahead and report anything you like to TH-cam moderators. I'm sure they will be interested in your history of abuse and slander as I'm certain they can access your deleted accounts' content through their technology. I'm confident mine contains no abusive nor slanderous content.
@@maegalroammis6020 Giannil Yanicks and Maegal Roammis are the same person using different accounts to spam any Japanese content with hate and slander.
日本人です。
コメント欄見て、日本語学びたい人がこんなに多いんだと知ってなんかちょっと感動してる
あたしではあるアメリカ人ですよ。かっこいい言語にかける、日本語天才的な言語だって賢いつくね。
Is it hard? Yes
Is it worth it? Yes
Hell yeah it is
no it shouldn't
I agree that Japanese is very flexible and forgiving: after year and a half of Japanese classes I can say much more complicated sentences than after a year of German classes, but German vocabulary of course is much easier to acquire and memorize (I’m Ukrainian)
Love to Ukraine from Pakistan . ❤🌹
I’m fluent in Japanese and live in Japan now and I definitely agree that it’s not as scary as it seems! Especially grammar-wise there’s plenty of European languages that seem much trickier to me. It takes getting used to at first though
how long have you been learning Japanese?
True, and if you take away kanji the language becomes soooo much easier.
You are living what i aspire to do, i will become fleunt some day! How long did it take you?
It’s hard to say how many years it took me because it wasn’t always consistent.
I didn’t rush though. I’d say language comes down more so to hours you’ve just in than months or whatever spent on it.
And I love kanji! I feel like I’m able to get the meaning faster because I can understand what it means from a quick glance before reading it out loud in my head. It also makes understanding and remembering new vocab faster once you’re used to it (you can guess the meaning for a lot of kanji words you’ve never seen before)
I’ve dabbled in Mandarin and Korean and I have a much faster time picking up Mandarin vocab because I can associate the words with the characters instead of just a sound
not as scary esp if you know Chinese & Korean
Learning Japanese it was shocking how easy and hard is at the same time.
i agree, the language by itself isn't that hard, but the process of learning it is really tough with a lot of highs and lows
It's not hard, there's just a great deal of it.
I agree too!
@@pasqualelandolfo3732 it's a journey right
im confused
I’m Japanese but if I was not born as Japanese, I would never feel like learning Japanese cause damn it’s even hard for native Japanese speakers lmao
ねえ、日本語を教えて下さい!! 代わりに英語とアラビア語を教えてあげます~
Out of curiosity, which part of the language is hard?
@@Blade2323B アラビア語興味あります〜！アラビア語全くわかりませんが、キーボードにも入れてます。特に発音が難しい印象です。
Hi! I’m kinda interested in Arabic! I don’t know about it at all but I even have an Arabic keyboard on my phone haha I think its pronunciation is especially difficult.
@@v3getar1ancarr0t5 It’s kinda hard to tell but I think the variation and flexibility Japanese language has make speaking difficult even for Japanese native speakers. Oh and also Keigo(honorific and humble forms) is a big obstacle for native speakers too.
There's this saying:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
There's always an asian kid
Better than you
I think there's some truth to that. You have to be a pretty smart kid to learn all those kanji! I'm guessing there are Japanese people with dyslexia as well, right? That HAS to suck, I'd imagine.
I got to get some of those Steve Kaufmann magnetic reading glasses to raise my language learning skills
Same here ahahaha
The glasses of someone who has given up on sex.
+10 Language Acquisition
magnetic reading glasses raise IQ as well
I thought he was showing off a magic trick: "look! I can break my eye glasses, then undo that like it never happened."
"Katakana isn't too common"
Me: *laughs in game menus being 50% Katakana English*
How long have you been learning Japanese?
@@Fun-rf9vs I technically started maybe 2-3 years ago, but one of those years was wasted on Duolingo (although it did teach me Hiragana and Katakana really slowly so the kana systems are almost second nature to me now), the other year I didn't do much Japanese, and around the start of the third year, I found the immersion approach from Matt vs Japan (check out refold.la) so I've been using that for maybe 6-7 months and comprehend about half of Japanese speech
I think its because of the era. He didn't find katakana common in the 70s. Nowadays u can slip katakana if u don't know the kanji for it,日本人 most likely will understand
@@nopale6565 Yeah I didn't consider when he actually started learning, and yeah I noticed that the kanji not on the Jouyou kanji list are written with katakana (ウサギ、タコ、etc) as well as common words (バカ instead of 馬鹿)
Twitter and games are literally like all katakana, the rest is kanji. There's like only a few hiragana for particles
2:18 Wow ... your glasses are like an invention of the next century!!!
I had to do a double take and rewind to confirm that he just did that
I tried one on but my head was too big and didn’t fit lol
I'm a Chinese, and I'm learning Japanese. I think Chinese is more similar with English in structure than Japanese, even though they seem totally different from each other, while Chinese and Japanese kanji look the same. Japanese tend to put the most important part into the end of a sentence, usually predicates, as well as add many structures into a simple sentance which seem kind of meaningless and made the sentences super long compared to their original forms, just to express their emotion, to adjust to a certain environment. Maybe it's more important for a Japanese to read the atmosphere, it's kind of difficult for me but, actually I like it, which allows me to express my emotion in a precise way.
"爱" and ''愛", both "love" in Simplified Chinese and Japanese, the difference is that we don't have "心", "heart", in it. Simplified Chinese is more efficient, not just in kanji. We have simplified kanji and shorter verbs, but we speak even longer sentences with overwhelming amount of information than Japanese and Traditional Chinese, which is used in taiwan. In fact, people in taiwan often have trouble understanding mainland movies without subtitles just because we speak too fast and too complex. It does efficient, but we just only stand on our OWN position, no attention to OTHERS side, which made simplified Chinese relatively harder to understand and less emotion, heartless, in other word. Of course, I didn't realize it before knowing Japanese, I think it's the charm of linguistics.
what a torture.
I'm studying Japanese at university right now and in first semester we learn (mainly):
1) Desu/~masu
2) Adjectives & want
3) Iru/aru
4) ~Te-form and variations
5) Non polite and variations
And that's not even counting the small stuff like numbers/counters/telling time + all the exceptions (telling the day of the month sucks) ; using genkoyoushi ; writing e-mails ; learning bodyparts & expressions for feeling sick ; ~Teiru ; ~Tari ~tari ; Verbs of giving/receiving ; nominalization ; etc...
But to get to the point, changing registers (Polite/Non polite) mid-way in conversations is definitely as you say "a clanger" for Japanese people. At least for people you don't know very well. So you might think "fine, I'll just use ~masu all the time". Problem is that in a lot of structures you HAVE to use non polite. From there on out, everything can become a lot more confusing. You'll be saying half you sentence in non-polite and then end with the polite register.
Oh and don't get me started on particles... They can get really confusing later down the line. Maybe it will click faster for some people though.
Anyways, to everyone that read this: have a great day or great sleep!
I'm Japanese and I'm very happy that you are learning Japanese.
I really respect you.
@@green6782 Thank you for the kind words. :) I hope I can visit Japan soon!
@@green6782 of course you only respect the foreign people who speak it fluently.
Using LingQ for 2 years. Reading news, blogs, novels, all in Japanese. Also, watching a lot of TH-cam channels and listening to podcasts. Up to 12K words now.
super did you study before?
tsuyoi
@ニール 本とか諸説とか記事とか読んでいる。SNSあまり好きじゃない。
Personally, I enjoy the fact that I can build my own custom library within LingQ. The new updates will improve the experience. Looking forward to 5.0!
@@ugur76 No. I lived in Japan (Tokyo) before but never studied and didn't know how to hold a basic conversation. All friends spoke English and my job was at a Japanese company doing English sales...
My opinion: learning a language is not difficult if you love doing it. You may suffer a lot while learning, but if you are able to "live" the language, it will be spontaneous! That's how I learned English and currently I'm focusing on German. Next goals: Russian and Japanese. I wish everyone a wonderful language journey!
Your english is good :)
How is you german going so far? Wie weit bist du mit dem deutsch lernen? :)
The formality issue did bother but like you said "getting caught up in the mood of the discussion" naturally helps me
Just by some crazy chance, might you be a Londoner that is learning Japanese?
@@Liliquan loooooooooooooool!!!
I'm brazilian 16 years old boy. I became semi-fluent in japanese, studying 6 hours all day in 1 year. Now I can understand 80% a hard anime, and I tricked a japanese native girl, speeking for 1 hour, she thought who I'm a japanese.
Edit. Using anki, and starting with brazilians youtube chanels, after english blogs, and now I learn japanese in japanese.
brabo
that's impressive, especially at that age while most kids just wanna play videogames all day :D
@@ZipfelmannKD I liked to play games, buy my PC was very old, so I like so much anime and japanese culture, since I was kid, because this I started learn japanese. I find a very good youtube channel in portuguese who teaches japanese. Fortunately them teaches like Steve said, I learned how to learn a language with them, so I saw all the videos. I always have a good understanding leavel in english because games and school, so I start to learn english, watch poliglots videos like Steve, linguistics videos, at the same time studying Japanese to this day.
My hobbies is study (japanese, english, korean, russian, mathematics, phisics, chemistry, bilogy, philosophy, japanese culture, programing, chees, linguistics), I also like watch animes, play chees, do karate, play basket.
Sorry for my writing errors, I almost never write in English.
@Zach Schullian Good man, learn languages with culture we like is very in fun.
No começo, como vc acompanhava conteúdos em japonês conhecendo poucos kanjis por exemplo? Digo isso, pois pra mim está sendo um pouco assim porque eu só sei o hiragana, katakana e alguns kanjis, então ainda é um pouco difícil para acompanhar conteúdos com áudio por exemplo. Gostaria de saber como vc saiu dessa fase para conseguir assistir conteúdos como animes, pelo menos com legenda em japonês?
I use to think it was so silly that I had to learn hiragana and katakana until someone pointed out that we also use two writing systems in English. We don't think about capital letters as a seperate script, but to a foreign speaker, learning the capital Latin script is akin to learning a completely new set of letters.
Even more similar how there are quite a few similar Katakana and Hiragana
I have been learning Japanese for a year ,my only problem now is sometimes I don't know the subject because Japanese sometimes omit it ,but I'm getting better,I just need to continue listening and reading ,Thanks steve
I love the Japanese language. It’s very hard but it’s a very beautiful language!!!
I've been living in Japan for almost 30 years now, so I can handle myself when it comes to Japanese. Your explanations about Japanese are spot on.
I would recommend to anyone who really wants to learn the language to spend at least some time in Japan.
I would also STRONGLY recommend to learn Kanji. Most foreigners I've met haven't really mastered Kanji and it just shows during conversations. Trying to memorize Kanji words (as opposed to Hiragana/Katakana words) is much more difficult if you don't understanding the Kanji. For example, lets take the word 高熱 (Kōnetsu). 高 (Kō) means high, 熱 (netsu) means fever. Combined it becomes "high fever". So if you already know the Kanji 高 (Kō) and 熱(netsu), memorizing 高熱 is simple.
thanks
I've lived in Japan since 1988. It took me 10 years to be fully fluent and 15 to become literate. Japanese is incredibly hard.
i hear all the time about foreigners who dont wanna learn kanji but i never met one myself 🤔
the foreigners number in japan is going to diminish if billion of people could saw and understand your comment .
Yeah but say it like this, この火の気温が高いと火炎は熱いですよ (This fire's temperature is high, and the flames are hot!) and now 高い(is now takai) and 熱い(is now atsui) change the way they're read and sometimes what they mean... So what you just taught there only applies to specific context, which is why lots of people stop learning Kanji because it highly relies on reading and conversational experience. Which most people don't have access to unless they're living in Japan.
i learnt japanese in japan in my 20s and am now in mexico learning spanish in my 40s and i find spanish so much more difficult. infinitely more difficult. everything you say about the flexibility of the grammar is probably not something a beginner wants to hear necessarily but is totally true and lies at the heart of learning it.
It might appear this way, because you already know Japanese. The age difference when you learn each language matters too.
Currently living, working and studying Japanese in Japan. This is really helpful information for a struggling student!
If you already speak a language that has an SOV structure (languages like Marathi, Turkish, Mongolian etc.) then learning Japanese (minus Kanji) will be structurally comparable to an English speaker learning a romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Potuguese) and take less time as the grammar will be easier to comprehend. It will take longer to learn Japanese if you speak English because the grammar is SVO (subject verb object) in English and we only have an alphabet, not three separate ways of written communication. That said there are plenty of foreign loan words in Japanese, you just have to get used to pronunciation.
All languages have their quirks and tricks and the real determinant in your ability to learn a language is your ability to grit through the frustrating bits and actively engage with the language in a meaningful way. That means practicing pronunciation and doing both study and immersion.
It also depends on what you want to accomplish in learning the language; if you want some easy phrases to navigate is not the same as getting an N2-N1 certification to work in Japan.
Patience, persistence, immersion, and passion.
All the best
The difficulty of a language should not be of concern, if you are deeply interested / invested in said language.
Hi Steve, thank you for a good video. I am from Ukraine, studied in Canada and living in Japan now.
初めて聞いたロシア語、ウクライナ語、と日本語を話すことできます。驚きました。すぐにチャネルフォローしました。
Когда я узнал что вы начали учить языки в возрасте, вы меня вдохновили! Если честно, японский язык мне деться тяжело, сейчас на N2 level но после того как узнал о Вас и на скольких языках Вы говорите понял, что у меня все впереди. Дякую!
3:41 -- Serbian has two writing systems in common use (latin and cyrillic). Their usage isn't interspersed in every sentence as kana and kanji are in Japanese, but they are both very commonly used.
The thing is, the only reason that people messing up the gender in French "clangs" more to you, is because you're better at French. Things like the formality levels in Japanese absolutely do matter, they just don't sound as bad to you because (1) you're not a native speaker and (2) native Japanese speakers tend to be extremely forgiving and polite and tend to have extremely low expectations when it comes to the Japanese ability of foreigners. If you were not a foreigner people would react very differently when you use the wrong politeness levels. When you use the wrong pitch accent and unnatural expressions and so on that also clangs for Japanese people, they just wouldn't say that.
As everyone should do to someone trying to learn their language.
As everyone should do to someone trying to learn their language.
I have been learning Japanese for 7 months now and by talking to more advanced learners, a few things came up:
Japanese vocabulary is endless, they got like 100 different words to say 'I'.
Kanji seems very hard at first but it s just a matter of grinding it.
Using the wrong politeness levels, pitch accents as a foreigner is not a big deal (Japanese people are very humble and forgiving), but if you want to sound native or work in japan, it can be.
It may be because I am only 7 months in but for me japanese grammar is hard and it does matter. There are things like transitive/intransitive verbs and you need to conjugate adjectives.
Yeah, you can pick it up among 私、俺、僕、わし、sometimes自分😆
Thanks for the valuable information!
If there is no gender in Japanese, then what do you conjugate adjectives for?
@@alexheise110 Hi. For time and negative "tenses". Weirdly enough, not all adjetives in Japanese get to be conjugated, only those that end with an i (there are exceptions). 赤い (akai, red present), 赤くない (not red, present), 赤かった (red, past tense), 赤くなかった (not red, past).
as worse as hebrew , arab, greek or chinese.
2:17 That’s when you know someone’s figured out life
Loved the video. Thank you for your advice!
Thanks for the info Steve! I'm about to start learning Japanese so this was really helpful
Hebrew also has 2 writing systems, one is called "Dfus" and is used in print, official writing and how children learn to read, and the other one is called "Ktav" and used in everyday handwriting and in modern use to give an 'informal' sense to the text.
awesome. im always mesmerized by the book shelf. someday ill have that many books 😁
I really have a thing with Japan, a fascination. I really want to learn the language but I really feel bad when I see people saying how fast they memorized the hiragana and katakana. I really have a hard time memorizing them. I already started and stopped a few times this year. Thanks for the nice video. Really enlightening.
You might be slow but you won't forget
@@jordanconner3808 thank you. I made me some Flashcards and it seems to help me. I am a very visual person.
In spoken Japanese and in casual writing like a text message, I've come to find that the native speakers tend to say things in the most concise way possible that's understandable. They don't usually talk in obscure idioms or long complex sentences which makes things just a bit easier to pick up on and start contributing to conversations as a beginner.
Thanks, Steve! I think you have said before also that the difficulty of a language also depends heavily on how much interesting content we can find. I think I remember you saying you struggled with Korean because of this reason, despite it being similar to Japanese grammatically.
The particles were one of the major things that tripped me up when I was learning Japanese years ago
hello I live in japon...je trouve votre video juste et très interessante ....aligato very beaucoup...
I’ve been learning Japanese on Duolingo for a while, and I can understand somewhat, but I’m gonna invest in some practice writing books because without the audio I’m completely lost. My memory works much better with auditory stimulus than visual, so I need to work on that. It didn’t take that much getting used to just because I’ve watched thousands of hours of anime, so I already knew a lot of key phrases/terms that helped me feel like it wasn’t completely impossible. Doing it everyday consistently has helped me a LOT. It feels like one of those skills where if you don’t keep doing it everyday, your skills diminish very quickly.
1. Stop using Duolingo
2. Try the immersion approach through refold.la. It gives a lot of good information about the approach and I can attest to it working so far as my I can decently understand maybe half of Japanese speech through listening after about 6 months of a decent amount of daily immersion
3. Try using anki for memorising new words
4. Also use Anki to try Remembering The Kanji, a method orders kanji in an order that makes it easier to learn using the parts that make them up and making stories for them (try using hochanh.github.io/rtk/rtk1-v6/index.html)
5. If you feel unmotivated, try finding something that you look forward to as an incentive for learning the language
6. If you feel you haven't learned anything, try finding some anime or something that you watched a while back and see how much more you comprehend.
頑張れ！
が is to describe something (mostly) and は denotes the subject you're talking about.
There is also kyujita /木内た words traditional Japanese words which I found it on TH-cam just finding some random videos and they’re longer to spell also a lot more difficult than Kanji
Am I the only one who thinks those glasses are cool lol
As soon as he clipped them on, I was like,”That Is Sick”🤣
those glasses are cool
it's amazing
You're not alone bruv haha
Word
Thank you for shedding light on learning one of the hardest languages of this planet.
I love your videos Mr Kaufman you are a huge inspiration
All the grammar I learned was through speaking. I didn’t know what any particle meant at all because I regrettably went all-in with the Pimsleur approach and zero reading. The particles and grammar just made sense when I spoke. I didn’t know any rules even existed, until I began studying reading, which was actually tremendously easier to learn since I already had a spoken knowledge.
Now, I’m rewinding and focusing fully on my input before I do more speaking.
Nice explanation, however I would have definitely mentioned the counters: the numbers in Japanese change depending on what you are counting（depending among other criteria on the shape of what you are counting, so round objects are ko, flat objects are mai, oblong objects are hon / pon, etc). Three eggs for example is sanko tamago (三個卵）, but three days is mikkakan（三日間）, three generic things are mittsu, etc. There are hundreds of counters, although you should at least know the most common 40 or so. The other difficulty is the double negatives, which definitely takes some adjusting to, especially during a real conversation. The fact that several Asian languages count on a base four instead of base three is also challenging, especially when dealing with large numbers (so one million has to be said "one hundred ten thousands")...
Yes What you say is what I see as a true beginner and looking at learning Japanese. I am trying to learn it on my own which is probably even harder to do. I am trying to learn basic words an phrases to start out with and the Alphabet pronunciations. I use TH-cam allot to hear how everything sounds. Then i use google translate to say the Japanese and see if the English truly indicates I said the correct words.
I know it is a tough language, but willing to give it a try.
Writing memorization hits me hard. While reading, listening and understanding is quite bearable since i love the pop music and manga.
Outstanding thumbnail!!
Great video. Japanese is a difficult language and varies wildly from western languages. The wide variety of sounds and meanings for each kanji delay basic reading and writing for non-Chinese speakers. Grammar is both unstructured & structured at the same time; lots of "made phrases" need to be memorized. Verb conjugation is easy (but you also have to conjugate adjectives and adverbs). I never met a westerner who could read native texts and newspapers with fluency.
I think Spanish is much easier for the beginner but it becomes very difficult indeed.
As a Japanese learner, seeing someone so proficient be so flippant regarding は and が made me smile. It gave me immense frustration not being able to understand. But now I see your point of view with the whole 'getting used to it' 慣れてきた.
seemed like there was a phone music or some repetitive music in the background- distracting, don't use the music- you don't need it, your information is fantastic!
I studied Japanese a bit in the 1980s. I didn't get very far, but I still know the grammar and some basic words. Verbs at the end, particles-- the grammar is nice. The kanji (Chinese characters for word roots) is the biggest problem. I am studying Chinese online now (I chose it over Japanese kanji) using many of Steve's ideas. Maybe I'll start Japanese next year.
Thanks Steve, interesting discussion. I have a long history with Japanese, but let's say I've been studying it seriously (and consistently) for 3 years now. I still find it a very difficult language. I'd guess that I'm at a B1 level. I think one of the biggest problems for me is that I don't live in Japan, so I'm not immersed in the language. In the last 3 years, I've only been able to spend a total of 4 weeks in Japan. I love the language and generally my motivation is high, I try to read and listen every day. And the fact that it's difficult makes progress that much more satisfying.
I think the basic grammar is easy enough, like you said. But now that I'm at an intermediate level, I'm trying to interact with more native content. It amazes me sometimes, reading a news site for example, that I can in theory know every word in a sentence, but I can read the sentence 5 times and not understand what message is trying to be conveyed. I've been using Wanikani for the last year and a half and I can read around 2000 kanji now, so my next goal is to move from kanji learning to kanji immersion (more reading). But the way complex sentences are built in Japanese is just so different than English (my native language), I'd say objectively Japanese is a difficult language to learn for English natives.
One last thought, I started learning French a few months ago. I know progress in the early stages of language learning is always more noticeable, but wow, what a reminder it was for me the difference between learning a Romance language and an Oriental one! In any case it's definitely true that the more similar the language is to your own, the quicker you'll be able to pick it up. Thanks as always for your advice and giving us all motivation, Steve! Sorry for the long post but it's a relevant video for me and stirred some thoughts :)
the linguistic distance between japanese and english is maximum. For english speakers, japanese is the most difficult language. Japanese is much harder than chinese. There are 3 writing systems in japanese. Chinese has a similar grammar as english while japanese has completely different one.
Not even close, but I admit it's out there.
As always an excellent, informative, and motivating presentation. Concerning the three forms of Japanese script - a samll note of interest. The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order and are written horizontally from left to right. Additionally Arabic the letters, as you may or may not know are modified according to their position in a word or sentence, thus giving isolated, initial, medial and finial
I find Japanese very logical for the most part, but it's just so much to remember - which might be the same for most languages, but I find myself struggling to remember the grammar points, especially when speaking. Writing and reading isn't too bad.
Have anyone tried learning Vietnamese? I'm glad that the government decided to switch to a Latin-based alphabet instead of keeping the old writing system of Chinese-based characters.
Honestly looking at the Vietnamese alphabet confuses more than if I were to look at Chinese characters. Although I think that that’s because I coming from an English speaking perspective. To me, a lot of it does not like how it’s written (or at least, not how I think it should sound like)
I wish the writing system of Chinese would change from Chinese characters to a phonetic system. In fact, two such system already exist: 漢語拼音 and 注音符號. Everyone who learns Chinese learns one of these systems, but all writing and printing is done in Chinese characters. It would be super easy to stop using characters and use one of the phonetic systems as the standard writing system.
Anyway, my point is that I like phonetic writing systems, and I understand how that switch has made Vietnamese much easier than it was in the past when people used Chinese characters to write Vietnamese.
@@30803080308030803081 Can I get those in pinyin so that it’s easier to look up? Haha
@@30803080308030803081The second one is definetely Bopomofo. Would you have homophone issues though? With Japanese, disambiguation between phonetically identical words in writing would be a nightmare. But there's like only about 70 possible syllables for them. I have an impression there's more flexibility in Chinese syllables, is it correct?
@@thorbergson When you hear people speak, there are no characters, there is only sound. Language is oral first, written second.
Very interesting points.
As a Romance language speaker (Portuguese) I found the gramatic structure of spoken Japanese kind of simple, when compared to our Western languages, specially romance languages.
When I was studying it, building simple, day-by-day phases was not a real pain.
The real problem to me is - and will always be - the writing system. It is really too confusing and it takes a lot of work to recognize the symbols, specially Kanji
The way you snapped those glasses together was so cool! haha
To be honest this video was really useful for me because anyway in the future I want to start learning this beautiful language of beautiful country where was created really many amazing technologies and cars and in my opinion these advice will help to me start owning this language really good.
Yes.
A most fascinating intro to Japanese of which I knew nothing. Thank you, Steve.
It's not difficult, but mastering the three writing systems is a major time suck, especially of course kanji. You end up spending so much time learning kanji that you would be spending learning vocabulary and grammar in another language (especially one that uses the familiar Latin alphabet). All that time spent learning kanji increases the time it also takes to learn the grammar and vocabulary.
And if you think you can avoid learning kanji, I don't recommend it. Japanese has so many homophones that sometimes kanji is the only life preserver you have to grab onto to make sense of things. Plus if you don't know kanji you won't be able to read the Japanese subtitles in videos, which is an invaluable shadowing tool. And you also won't be able to read textbooks. You have to write those kanji everyday in your notebook and do the flashcard grinding.
I actually think Japanese grammar is not that hard, though. Even Sonkeigo has a logic to it that you can understand. And Japanese verbs and such are more regular than English, so drilling those patterns is a breeze. Whereas Japanese people have to memorize all those irregular English verbs. And then there's the pronunciation too.
So I think actually English is harder for Japanese people than Japanese is for English people. Because the pronounciation is so difficult. Whereas you can learn the kanji if you have enough time and discipline. It's not as hard as forming your mouth into shapes it's never made before. But that's just my opinion.
English is more difficult but Japanese takes more time basically.
Hi Mr. Kaufmann! It is always a pleasure listening to you. For me Japanese is a very beautiful melodic language, there are some advantages of Japanese when learning it like there is no gender , no conjugation of verb, it is more a contextual language. I was learning it for 2 years , I know well hiragana and katakana and I learnt like 100 kanjis but I stopped it as it is for me a big struggle with Kanjis and it is as well very time consuming.I love the language but I realised I have to study for 10 years minimum to have some kind of fluency 😅 ありがとう ございます
counting things in japanese is incredibly hard and i think it needs its own video. loved this one btw!
Moss deficyt is Aomori Andy Kyushiuy Kagoshima kotoba, Tokyo is very easy ,
For me Japanese is so entertaining and beautiful that i have no problem with the 3 writing systems
Nachoさんは、本当に大丈夫ですか？ｗｗいいですよ、教えてくれ。日本語が難しい、わかっている
漢字、ひらがな、カタカナ
I feel so lucky and thankful growing up speaking a european language (German) that uses time, different levels of politeness, gender, cases and tons of conjugations. English and French, which I started learning in my teens, seemed just easier versions of what I already knew, and picking it up was super relaxed. Even Russian and Portuguese weren't too bad, as I was familiar with the system. When i moved on to other languages I found them difficult, but on levels and subjects that are so much more welcoming for someone who just wants to have fun as I did. As hard as the japanese writing system is, and as confusing the levels of politeness and the particles are sometimes, "forgiving" is exactly the word I'd use to describe it. And the same goes for Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese.
I’m a Japanese English learner and as for me, English is more difficult...
Thank you for learning Japanese!
I’m proud of you.
I’ve put a lot more effort into learning Japanese than Spanish, and I’m probably a fourth as good with Japanese as Spanish, because of all of the shared words we inherited from Spanish’s related language, Spanish.
Often times though, reading Kanji makes things easier, since you might not know the word, you can guess meanings often enough, given context. Especially if you read Japanese comic books.
I learned Japanese my first run around 2003 when I was very young. Back then it was so difficult, I had to buy books, CDs, online was only some free basic HTML sites and such. Right now, its incredible, all the free resources available. You can learn nonstop, all the time, as if you lived in Japan already, if you're really motivated. There has never been a better time to not only learn, but also enjoy a language (can enjoy songs, media, all that very easily)
Teach us your ways スチブー先生!
Love the video as someone whose been doing self study on this language for about 2 years
I like this video. What really helped me learn Japanese was watching shows and picking up on key words or following Japanese people on social media to see how they speak. To add to this, I don't like most textbooks or Japanese schools bc they dont teach you how Japanese people really speak in real life. You sound like a robot.
I have a frustrating experience. Not knowing where to begin or hitting a plateau can feel demoralizing and make it hard to hit the books and study like you know you should…Having friends from other cultures makes me more creative. In fresh ways about space and how people create their own world and environment. It is best way to connect between creative thinking and cross-cultural relationships.
I am still learning Japanese, however being a native French speaker (and also native level English speaker), I feel Japanese's level of difficulty is often exaggerated. Ok the writing system is quite the hurdle. But spoken Japanese is very simple. The particle system is intuitive in the way that it works. You have present and past tense as well as negation that is indicated by a suffix on the verb or adjective. Then learning vocabulary is unavoidable in any language. Although I love French (It helps with Japanese sound pronunciation), it's a freaking monster when it come to the grammar, syntax and even spelling. So yeah... loved the video added nuance to the topic. I do agree in the end it is only a question of motivation and investment no mater what you're trying to learn.
In terms of grammar, rules and spelling japanese is a lot easier than english to be honest.
I’ve been studying Japanese for about 14 months. I think it’s difficult but fun and fulfilling. I think it’s not something to shy away from if you want to learn it. Starting up can be a lot of work, besides the three writing systems, multiple counting systems, but probably after about four months, I hit my stride…I’m in no way fluent. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I take the attitude that I’m a student of Japanese, and will probably be learning for the remainder of my days.
Learning Japanese is too hard, we all know that. Honestly I don't have any intention to learn it, simply it's not my conviction. It's a fantastic language but personally I don't feel any interest in it. I only watched this video because it's really interesting and wanted to see what Steve had to say about it. It was kinda overwhelming but I enjoyed it. When learning any language, is crucial to look up important words and phrases to start working on your new language learning journey and enjoying it at the same time as well. Focusing on the grammar excessively can be very tough, stressful and boring when trying to memorize grammatical patterns in no time, you know it takes a really long time to get used to any language at any aspect and then your brain will thank you.
Swahili is my mother tongue, Japanese, maori and other Polynesian languages are very easy to learn in roman alphabets
I would recomend the book Genki to learn Japanese. It has a pretty rapid system of going forward and is initially meant for university students, but it teaches really good so I can really understand the Japanese language.
他の方の動画で知って、拝見させていただきました✨
Let's go:
Anki + Migaku's addons;
RRTK;
Basic vocab/grammar;
Immersion;
Sentence mining;
Immersion;
Shadowing;
Output.
Where do I learn more? Antimoon; AJATT; MIA; Migaku; Refold
RRTK 3rd attempt maybe I won't forget about it this time. Migaku is used since sentence mining right?
@@spyro3635 yes.
You can do RRTK and basic grammar together, as long you don't anki a single sentence from Tae Kim or IMABI and don't try to memorize it-that's what I'm doing.
@@SrNeoxNGT1kk which one do you prefer?
@@spyro3635 You have to choose yourself. In my opinion, both do what I need right now, which is a bit of grammar to help understand more Japanese. Tae Kim is straightforward, whereas IMABI goes in-depth in his explanations. So you have to choose which one fits your preferences. You have to choose. Try both and see which one you like.
The FSI numbers are a good starting point to give you an idea of how much time it will take you, regardless of whether you spend that time in a classroom or spend it with self-study and immersion input. There is no way around spending a lot of time with the language if you want to learn it. The only influence you have is how enjoyable you make that time.
I got a weird feeling when you pulled out that book about Sake and I looked over my shoulder at my bookshelf and the exact same book was there.
I'm an American who lives in Yokosuka, which is very close to the American military base, so I actually see a decent amount of katakana on the signs and stuff, maybe used to translate certain proper nouns 😊Living so close to other Americans and where most services are translated into English kills the motivation to learn Japanese lol.
My goal is to learn Japanese enough so that I can have a basic conversation with a native speaker and take private lessons from a tutor who is a native speaker. If I can learn hiragana and katakana, then I'll be happy. I can recognize some kanji used for the names of cities in Japan, but I couldn't write them for the life of me!
The good thing about Japanese is that the grammar is not terribly difficult. There aren't any cases or genders, or even singular or plural. There are just the "joshi" or particles that you have to learn, as well as a completely different set of vocabulary compared to, say, English.
I'm excited to learn more Japanese, although I'm a bit afraid of becoming discouraged if I don't progress as quickly as I'd like to.
@4:52 Wow my exact thoughts about Katakana as a Japanese learner. Glad I'm not alone in that!!
In Japanese I can express myself the same way I do in Spanish. Spanish is my mother tongue but Japanese simplified way of speaking sometimes is more difficult for me to adapt. In Spanish we use more flourishes.
Funny how I'm watching anime & starting to pick up repeated phrases or sentences despite sometimes forgetting their meanings 😂, like I know some basic words & one or two phrases already in written in English, that's about it. Wish I have more time to fully commit learning Japanese.
Modern day Japanese has many loan words or things just said in english for the sake of it. I talked to a international student who is from Japan and he didn't even know what the word for Lion was. According to him and the other two students, they had never heard it and just say "Lion" so it'd be written as " ライオン". So I think you'll use katakana often enough now.
Steve is amazing. I want to be a polyglot myself one day, wish me luck guys :)
Prepare to live abroad
I've been studying Japanese for 4 years, took Japanese 101 and 102 in college, got an A in both, and I still can't hold a conversation for longer then 2 minutes. I think it's one of the hardest languages to learn on earth. This guy I think had an easier time because he is obviously a linguist. He already knew Chinese going into learn Japanese, and my guess is he knew other foreign languages before that too. So he's not just the average person trying to learn Japanese. For them, it's going to be extremely difficult
The thing is how much jaoanese did you learn each day for example? I think if you learn a language its important to repeat all the time. Also its important to actually speak it! So try to find someone you can exchange with more often and you will see you conversations will get a lot longer
I love all the "Lost in Translation" references, haha
There's a movie which called "Lost In Translation" which setting also in Japan.
So i wonder Japan has a power to getting people to be a lost😆
Yes Japanese can take long time to learn esp if your English level is medicre Helps if you know Dutch
For an Indian who knows Sanskrit and South indian languages like Tamil and Kannada, the structure of Japanese is very familiar.... My bugbears are katakana, and the numerous small particles and junk interjections!