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Is learning how to speak japanese easy or hard?

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Originally posted by: maziwanka
i kinda understand what you're saying but i dont know what omoimasu is (what's the infinitive)..

speaking japanese is ...

(taihen muzukashii - very difficult)

i haven't come across the "no ha" and "to omoimasu" grammatical structures yet
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"no" is just added to the end of a verb to make it the subject of the sentence, if I remember correctly. But I'm not sure.

"...to omoimasu" is "I think that...", in this case "it is my opinion that...."
 
Originally posted by: Proletariat
I never found Heiroglyphics all that interesting.

It is a very difficult language to learn. And some of it just does not make any logical sense.
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heiroglyphics? 😕

ah, you must be thinking of yugioh. ok. 😀

i was watching some stuff about the world's expo in aichi this week, when they showed the egypt exhibit i was expecting some japanese kids to be playing yugioh outside. lol. 🙁
atleast the pokemon part of the expo was alright. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: DaWhim
silly question, unless you are good with foreign languages, all foregin languages are hard to learn.
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This is not true at all, some languages are just harder to learn than others.

For example: If you knew English, French, or Italian and took a course in Latin or Sanksrit it would be much easier than taking a course in Swahili or Japanese. Just as if you knew Chinese, Japanse would be easier to learn than French or English.
 
Originally posted by: dc
Originally posted by: Proletariat
I never found Heiroglyphics all that interesting.

It is a very difficult language to learn. And some of it just does not make any logical sense.
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heiroglyphics? 😕

ah, you must be thinking of yugioh. ok. 😀

i was watching some stuff about the world's expo in aichi this week, when they showed the egypt exhibit i was expecting some japanese kids to be playing yugioh outside. lol. 🙁
atleast the pokemon part of the expo was alright. 🙂
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"Kanji was adopted from Chinese characters in the fourth century AD with Kanji literally means ?Chinese Characters.? While Kanji and today?s Chinese writing system have many similarities, it must be emphasized that the reading and usage are now quite different. This means that using a Chinese translation for a name would not be the same as a Japanese translation.

Chinese characters originated as a pictographic or ideographic way to represent words. That is, like Egyptian hieroglyphics Chinese characters started as pictures to represent words and concepts. Over the years these were abstracted and simplified, but their origins as pictures remains. "


 
Speaking is no problem. Then again I was born and raised there for 8 years.

Reading and writing is something else.
 
Well

Speaking isn't that hard. Certainly not harder than English.

Writing isn't that hard either. Learning all Hiragana and Katakana are easy. Yes, there's lots of Kanji characters but you can learn those slower. Do like 5 a week and you will learn them all in no-time. Of the total number of Kanji, there aren't that many in use.

Since you are learning it to watch anime though...I guess they use a lot of slangs and stuff, so it would be harder to understand it. Honestly, when studying Japanese--if your aim to learn it is to understand anime, there isn't really a point. Most people I've met studying it for anime do very poorly because it takes a lot of commitment, and the reward of just understanding anime isn't enough.
 
Originally posted by: DougK62
Originally posted by: Sluggo
:music: I'm speaking Japanese, I think I'm speaking Japanese, I really think so :music:

Bah, who the hell sung this way back in the 80's? Now its going to be in my head all day.
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LOL - it's not "speaking".
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Well what is it? I'm going off 20 year old memories here.
 
:music: ""turning japanese" is how it goes. "no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women..." now it is stuck in my head. Then again, there is always some eighties song stuck in my head. Oh yeah, its by The Vapors.
 
its a hard language. I lived there for 5 years and went to a school wehre it was mandatory for you to take japanease and i still forget it all..except the basics.

Their alphabet is rather hard, spanish is deff easier to learn.
 
Originally posted by: RadioHead84
its a hard language. I lived there for 5 years and went to a school wehre it was mandatory for you to take japanease and i still forget it all..except the basics.

Their alphabet is rather hard, spanish is deff easier to learn.
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I concur...
I'm full blooded Japanese, born here in the states and I'm married to a Japanese wife... I've been learning Japanese my whole life and I've got a long way to go...
I screw up my Japanese all the time.
My wife will write down all the funny words I make up and tell them to her mom in Japan. They get a good laugh out of it...
I'd say I can understand 99% of the Japanese TV shows we watch, dramas, comedies, etc. but I have a hard time with the news and reading and writing it... 🙁
It's a descriptive and beutiful language for sure though... 🙂

3 years to get the basics down if you study hard, 5 years and you should be able to converse fairly well... Go for it!
 
the only way to truely learn is by taking a class on it. self-taught requires a rediculous amount of discipline that most people don't have. at a local community college should be a good deal, and fairly cheap too. also, the classes sizes would be smaller, and professors will help you out individually as oppose to a huge lecture hall.
 
Originally posted by: Mo0o
You wont be able to watch an anime w/ot having to read the subtitles unless you take japanese for 3-4 years while learning the necessary colloquialisms
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Agreed. I found traditional Nihongo pretty easy. But most anime is in slang. I never had a class for that.
 
Two out of three people I know who took Japanese said it wasn't worth the effort. Even so, I want to learn it. It seems like an interesting language.
 
Originally posted by: Proletariat
This is not true at all, some languages are just harder to learn than others.

For example: Just as if you knew Chinese, Japanse would be easier to learn than French or English.
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completely agree, Japanese was easy for me.

 
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