Understanding What You're Up Against

It is only fair to inform you what you have gotten yourself into attempting to learn Japanese as a native English speaker. In no way will it be easy, and in every way it will melt your mind. I've compiled a list of  three reasons why Japanese is, speaking bluntly, so freakin' difficult. 

1) English and Japanese are not related. They aren't even distant cousins. Lacking common language roots, you will not find comfortingly similar words, sentence structure, grammar, sounds, or anything between the two languages. Learning Japanese is not like learning Spanish or any other Latin-based language. There is absolutely no framework in your brain to build upon. In learning Japanese, you are starting from scratch. Just think of how different western culture is from Japanese culture. The major difference is definitely reflected in their languages as well. Get ready for many hours of skull splitting headaches as you try to wrap your mind around this Japanese.

2) The alphabet. The English alphabet is cute, isn't it? Twenty-six beautiful simple letters all wonderfully packaged into a cake-and-ice-cream song that all the frolicking happy children can master before they even start school. To juxtapose the ease of our alphabet with the mind-numbing scope of the Japanese alphabet (and it isn't even really an alphabet) is comical. The Japanese "alphabet" consists of 46 characters, called Hiragana. To call them letters is inaccurate, since each character represents it's own unique sound. It does not stop there though. There is another set of 46 characters, called Katakana, used for foreign words assimilated in the Japanese language (we will cover these later). Learn all 92 of these characters however, and all you have is the reading comprehension of a 1st grader, because to actually read Japanese, you need to master Kanji. Oh yes, Kanji: the monster that will haunt your every step as you tackle Japanese. Kanji, specifically Japanese Kanji, is the collection of characters that the Japanese borrowed from China a very long time ago, simplified (slightly), and twisted for their own devices. In order be able to read and understand just the newspapers Japan, you will need to have mastery of 2,136 unique characters. Not only that, each character has a different reading depending on the Kanji and Hiragana it is paired with. Learning Kanji is so difficult and involved that in order to attain this basic level of fluency, Japanese children study it from Kindergarten all the way through high school. What is truly dumbfounding is that Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world at about 99%.

3) The difference between written and spoken Japanese. All languages in one form or another has differences in their speaking and writing. The Japanese language laughs at these differences. The difference in kanji, words, and grammar used in writing is mind-boggling. It is truly frustrating too in that if you on study Japanese through reading (a good method for language learning in most cases), your language proficiency will be as lop-sided as a 3-wheeled-car. Spoken and written Japanese, while sharing basic similarities, operate so differently that they could almost be considered two unique languages.

I’ll admit, there are still more reasons why Japanese is such a major undertaking for a foreigner (or even a Japanese person), but this list will do for now.

One cannot possibly hope for victory if they do not know their enemy. Hopefully you now have a more comprehensive idea as to what exactly you are trying to accomplish in learning Japanese.