Learning Japanese
has left Darren Armstrong speechless.
As a novice student studying Japanese, I have some advice for anybody
interested in participating in this admirable intellectual and cultural
exchange; mo ii yo (forget it).
You may notice that Japanese visitors who speak English don't always
hit the mark and I'm sympathetic because no matter how clumsy their
English may sound, my Japanese is very much worse.
Like a raked pebble garden there is a Zen-styled simplicity to
my total lack of comprehension of this language. It has me wondering
if I could be the first undiagnosed case of Japanese dyslexia.
After months of backbreaking study, my Japanese vocabulary now
embraces a fraction more terminology than the menu board at Sushi
Train. But don't blame me, I mean try reading this column upside
down in the mirror sideways and you'll get a taste for the Japanese
language. Dissonant consonants, complex conjunctions, disintegrating
particles, nonexistent plurals, tortured tense - you need a samurai
sword to cut through this linguistic guff.
To compound matters, there are three alphabets for the Japanese
learner. The first two, hiragana and katakana, are manageable with
92 phonetic symbols in total. But then there's kanji - or Klingon
for all I know about this ancient, alien alphabetic entity. The
50,000 or so unique kanji characters can be quite daunting to novice
speakers.
Not that I'm the only one with communication problems. Due to
the popularity of simply written manga comics, the average Japanese
student who finishes primary school nowadays doesn't know enough
kanji to read a paper. This is actually a rallying thought. It means
that, factoring in student exchange rates, I'll be able to read
the Japanese funny pages when I'm hachi ju (80).
But grumbles aside, my Japanese gets me by and in Japanese at
least I've decided to become a man of few words. I've managed to
whittle, OK chainsaw, my communicative Japanese messages down to
their soulful essence. Like a haiku I'm best when I combine poetic
two- or three-word combinations to convey my emotions (albeit from
my bonsai-size nine-word vocabulary). Biiru o nomimasu ka (I want
to drink a beer) is a good example.
Personally, I don't put too much stock in learning Japanese by
textbooks and tapes. They make it sound too easy, sometimes with
exaggerated promises to learn to speak Japanese in two weeks while
driving your car.
A Japanese friend I regularly torture with my efforts pointed
out to me that one of the books I was studying was linguistically
correct but so excessively polite as to be useless in the context
of everyday society. My well rehearsed phrases were the English
equivalent of conversational oddities such as "Good day sir,
I dare-say I need to be escorted to the nearest gentlemen's restroom."
Now at least I know when I try these phrases out on the natives
they look at me strangely because what I say is strange, it's not
how I say it. What a relief.
Readers are invited to apply wit to anything
that makes the blood boil. Send 600 words to heckler@smh.com.au
with day and evening phone numbers. Submissions may be edited and
published on the internet.
Comments to date: 20. This is page 1 of 2.
Chris USA
Posted at 10:43am on Friday, September 12th, 2008
Oops, made my own mistake. Forgot about the 'ka', making the sentence, "Do you drink beer?"
Chris USA
Posted at 10:41am on Friday, September 12th, 2008
I've actually self taught myself for a year. When I finally did go to college for a Japanese course, I tested out of 101, 102, and 201 all from what I studied on my own.
It's not the Kanji that mess me up, it's the particles and exceptions. Other than that, I'm learning faster than I learned English, now THAT is a tough language.
One more little nitpick... "Biiru o nomimasu ka" means "(I) drink beer." you need to use the -tai for, or say 'hoshii' to express desire.
deizaru tokyo
Posted at 4:40am on Saturday, July 19th, 2008
Having lived in Japan for many years and worked in four Japanese companies i am a fluent speaker, reader and writer of Japanese in all of it's levels. I also speak two other languages fluently. I would like to emphatically sympathize with the author. No matter who you are, Japanese takes years of dedication compared to, for example, romantic languages that a native English speaker can potentially master in under a year. Those of you who write of your ability to read hiragana (takes about two days) or understanding words in movies and all your great progress have yet to step foot in Japan where all your efforts will seem for not the minute you here a conversation between two young boys in Shinjuku, a couple old men, or maybe just the stewardess who after hearing your awkward Japanese will just respond to you in English (get used to that until your Japanese is good enough to make them embarrassed to try English with you). Most of the westerners who live in Japan never really speak good japanese and nobody who doesn't live in Japan speaks good Japanese (save children born to Japanese emigrants). So, if your goal is fluency, after seeing dozens of people gung-ho to to learn Japanese for the first year give up, I've begun to offer the same advise. Forget it.
Yuki Location unknown
Posted at 4:32pm on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
First off don't bother moking my name, I already know what it means to the normal Japanese inhabitant of the world. Secondly, if you think Japanese is hard you should try to learn English from a Japanese perspective.
M Gifu
Posted at 8:11am on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
You can pretty much get by with the right 1500 characters. While some dictionaries might list 50,000 characters, being able to write 2000 characters is native level. Recognition is usually much easier, especially once one is familiar with how the system works, which will make reading easier. As said above, they are essential for memorizing morphemes that come with them from Chinese ("on" readings.)
Don't let characters discourage you! Characters are hard for native speakers as well.
Using example sentences to understand verbs and particles and how they relate is helpful.
Try replacing words in the sentence and running it by a native speaker if you can.
Oh yeah, there are lists of characters on the internet by the grade that students learn them in school (education kanji.) I recommend sticking to just 100 or so until you have those memorized really well and I would also recommend focusing more on grammar and using the language to communicate.
Best of luck!
Dave Location unknown
Posted at 7:28pm on Friday, December 1st, 2006
I dont live in Japan and I dont take Japanese lessons, I learn from just absorbing things and to be honest its not that hard. I have been doing a few online japanese lessons with all the free resources the web has to offer and my knowledge is getting better at an amazing rate. My advice to the author is that you should learn in a manner than you find best. Obviously what ever you are doing is NOT working for you. For me listening intently to a movie in Japanese or picking up a book written in Japanese and deciphering it helps, plus its a more 'common' version of the language. In short, try not relating Japanese to English as most traditional lessons do, consider yourself a new born baby learning to speak for the first time, absorb things as a child does when it learns its first words. Learn to read as you did when you were younger by going through a basic book written in Japanese. ganbatte yo!
Anonymous Location unknown
Posted at 7:27pm on Friday, December 1st, 2006
I speak a language which isn't related to either Japanese or English, so maybe I can try to give an objective view to this. If you had no prior knowledge of either language, I believe English would actually be harder language to learn because of complex and very irregular grammar (although many native English don't realise that) while Japanese grammar is relatively simple. Also pronouncing English isn't the easiest task. In Japanese there usually is only one 'phonetic form' for every character or syllable, but in English there can be many: Eg 'a' in car, cat, baby... The reason I speak fairly fluent English, but not Japanese, is not about the difficulty of language, but because English have became the 'universal language' and you see and hear it everyday and everywhere and in many countries it's number one choice in school as a first foreign language for most students. Of course learning to read and write is a different story because of the japanese alphabet(s).
Anonymous Location unknown
Posted at 7:27pm on Friday, December 1st, 2006
Biiru o nomimasu ka (I want to drink a beer) is a good example. Do you (want to) drink beer? Keep it at :)
Cassie Location unknown
Posted at 7:27pm on Friday, December 1st, 2006
Doesn't matter mister, I'm still going to learn the Japanese language. I already can understand hiragana, almost all of katakana, and atleast 60 words in kanji. Only in a few months from some library books, not taking the class. But I will take the class next year, and I don't think it's too hard, it takes up some of your memory space, but that doesn't bother me.
Anderei Location unknown
Posted at 7:27pm on Friday, December 1st, 2006
I take this article with a grain of salt. Otherwise I'd really have to be disappointed by the honorable author's point of view... Kanji are essential for memorizing morphemes - if there were no kanji, I would have definitely given up already after encountering the 21st morphem that can be pronounced "shin". And, as long as I don't have to write the ancient character for "turtle" or the like... *shudders* @Rakuen: Actually, it's "biiru GA nomitai."! Usage of "o" is disgusting in that context ;) @Fred: Even Chinese don't use 50,000 characters... not even close.
