Hello and welcome to my blog!
It's quite sudden, but have you ever learned or studied Japanese?
I'm sure many of you have, you're reading this because you have some kind of interest in the difficulties of the Japanese language!
AND IT'S TRUE THAT JAPANESE IS A VERY HARD LANGUAGE (even for a native speaker)
So in this article, I'm going to list the top 7 things I think that makes our language so hard as a native Japanese speaker!
However, this is just an opinion of one Japanese teenage girl that never spoke proper Japanese, so keep in mind that it might not always be hard in this way!
You might find it easy as I do, and that is great!
I hope you enjoy!
NO.1 KANJI
So here are 23 kanji's that I was able to list up in a minute, and don't be surprised they are all read "SHI" (I have horrible handwriting so don't try to study the kanji with this)
And there's way more that have the same way of reading.
Also, in a Kanji, there are basically two ways of reading it, 音読み（on-yomi）and 訓読み（kun-yomi）, so most of the kanji have more than two ways of reading it.
To give you a brief idea of 音読み and 訓読み
訓読み is the more Japanese way of reading the kanji, and by just the 訓読み we can define most of the kanjis. So, for example, the first kanji in the list above 四 is read "よん(yon)" in 訓読み which means four in Japanese. Just saying よん, we often understand it's four.
音読み is a more Chinese way of reading (although it's like the extremely old ancient Chinese way) and we won't able to understand the meaning or get the right kanji just by saying it in 音読み. We use 音読み in words called 熟語(jyukugo) which are words that made by two or more kanji (and it's annoying because there's also 熟語 with kanji read in 訓読み). So for, 四, the 音読み is "し(shi)".
It's already confusing, right?
And how do we remember and understand all of this stuff?
Simple answer, we study for 12 years, from elementary school to high school, and even in universities.
I'm not sure with a certain number, but Japanese children learn more than 2,000 kanji's and we don't actually learn it in class but on homework.
When I was in six grade, my kanji homework was filling this page with a single kanji, and then do it for 10 to 20 kanji per week.
(http://www.showa-note.co.jp/japonica/kanji_renshu/)
And in fact, we actually remember a lot more kanji which we don't learn in school so just don't think about the number of it, but try your best in remembering as much as you can, it makes your Japanese way better than someone who doesn't know kanji.
NO 2 敬語 (honorific words)
This is one thing that I hated, and I feel like I never used them properly, there are so many rules and I was stressed out studying this.
BUT it's a really important part of our language, it's unavoidable.
So in Japan, we have some strict age system, and there are many manners we have to follow in front of elder people or a higher ranking person, as a teacher, to show respect to them. (Korea has a similar kind of thing and they are way stricter. )
However, in Japan, people are getting less strict which makes it really confusing for some of the foreigners, and that's quite a long story so I'll write an article for that someday.
So 敬語 (keigo) is a big part of this system, and we use it to be polite or formal.
I believe many of you know that by saying ます(masu) or です(desu) at the end of a sentence it makes it more polite, and yes it does!
So when we say ありがとうございます(arigatou-gozaimasu) instead of ありがとう(arigatou) it's more formal and polite.
We call this ですます調（desumasu-chou）or 丁寧語（teneigo）and it's the easiest form of 敬語.
However this is not it, we have like a thousand more rules and even more formal forms when we use to write something official.
We even have special words we only use for the royal family in Japan.
NO 3 タメ口 aka informal words
What a surprise, we have polite formal words, we also have informal words, which are especially used by the young generations, and the hardest thing about タメ口 is that new words are created every day, and in a couple of months there outdated! It's an eternal mystery how I'm able to catch up with the trend.
So if you can you're already an advanced Japanese reader, do you understand these words?
YES THESE ARE ALL ACTUAL JAPANESE WORDS WE USE IN JAPAN
But be careful, these are extremely informal words that are grammatically nonsense and you'll never want to use it when you're asking someone for something in Japan.
So some of these words don't have any meaning at all, for example, ンゴ. It probably comes from internet slang, and I think it's originally used when you're making fun of yourself or someone who made a mistake, but now we just use it really randomly at the end of a phrase like, カラオケ行ってきたンゴ which means "I went to karaoke".
We basically use these words to really close friends or on the internet (Japanese tend to be more active, friendly and sarcastic on the internet), and unless your parents are an internet-professional, they'll be like "can you please speak Japanese" if you use these words. Also, you'll never find these words in a paper dictionary.
There's one thing that I have to correct, that these words are just a part of タメ口(tameguchi) and the general meaning of タメ口 is a form where we don't use formal words. So ありがとう, ごめん, 〜ね、〜よ are all タメ口 and we often use this to families, friends that are the same age, and younger people. And usually, when someone allows you to use タメ口 you can use it to people who you're supposed to use 敬語 like the seniors when you're a junior.
NO 4 Internet Slangs
So as I've explained about ンゴ, we have so many internet slangs in Japanese.
Since everyone has a smartphone now, we love to create new words and use them.
For example, "ggrks" is one of the famous ones, it literally means "just go google it, you idiot" and it's a shortened word of "gu-gu-re-ka-su". When we write Japanese in alphabets, there's always a vowel on the end of each sound so we delete the vowels and just leave the consonants.
These words are pretty similar to the タメ口words, and many of them were originally internet slangs, but there are more complicated and there are so many words, even I sometimes have to go on google and search for the meaning.
Also, emojis are a big part of the Japanese Internet slangs.
Have you ever seen this (T_T)?
It an emoji of someone crying, and we have a whole bunch of this stuff, and I know Apple products now have great emojis, but we still use these because there are more variations and originality in these.
Look at this, it's a piece of art, lol.
It's actually a part of a famous internet sled (You'll find it by searching 日本語でおｋ スレッド) and this human-like thing is ウルトラマン（Ultra-man）which is a famous Japanese hero.
NO 5 Dialects
So as you all know, Japan is a small country, but still one of the biggest island countries, and we have a lot of dialects.
Basic Japanese is called 標準語(hyoujyun-go) which will be directly translated to "standard language", which I hate to admit because I use a different dialect from Osaka (We have this OSAKA pride that we're better than Tokyo). 標準語 is used around Tokyo and every Japanese will understand you if you can speak 標準語
In Osaka, we speak 大阪弁 (Osaka-ben) which is part of 関西弁(Kansai-ben) the dialect mainly used in the Kansai area. The biggest characteristic of 関西弁 is probably the fast way we speak, we talk fast and energetically. Also, we replace most of the "じゃ" and "だ” sound in 標準語 to "や", so instead of saying ”じゃない？” we say "やない？” and instead of saying ”だから" we often say "やから”.
We also have different words and phrases, one thing that the people from Osaka get really confused with is "なおしといて" which means "can you put this away" in 関西弁 but "can you fix this" in other dialects.
It also might be quite confusing because we shorten words a "Kansai way", for example when we say "but I don't know" in 標準語, it's "知らないけど" but in Kansai, we say "知らんけど". So we shorten the original word "知らない" to "知らん" and that's part of the dialect. Many Japanese shorten the words, which is going to be the 6th thing, but we just shorten words in a different way so it's hard for people to get it right.
NO 6 Shortened words
Like I said in NO 5, we shorten words a lot, especially when we use タメ口
For example, let's look at ありがとうございます。We can sayありがとう、ありがと、あざす、ありがとさん, etc.
By not saying ございます it becomes タメ口, so all of the words I listed up are タメ口, however, あざすis a friendly but formal way of saying it. We use it to someone in a higher rank but still close to you, so if someone's going to pay for dinner for you, you can use this word to show respect. However, it's not technically a formal form to say thank you, so it will be against the manner if you use it to your professor unless you're really close to him/her.
And it's hard because there's no pattern in the ways we shorten these words. When we say ありがとうございます, it sounds like あざす, so people started to use that. We simply take the ございますaway and say ありがとう
Some of these work on other words and sometimes they don't, so you just have to get used to it, or remember it.
NO 7 Words meaning "me/I"
Japanese has many words that describe our selves.
私 僕 俺 ワイ 自分 うち わし わて あたい 我
These are all words that mean me/I. In formal situations, we use 私(wataskushi or watashi), women tend to use 私(watashi or atashi), men tend to use 僕(boku) or 俺(ore), many children call themselves by their name, so when 花子 wants to say "That's mine" she can say それ花子の.
Also, not just our names, we call our selves with the role we do, for example, a teacher can call themselves 先生, a mother can call themselves ママ、お母さん, etc. When I used to refuse going back home, my mom would say "ママもう帰るよ！" which means "I'm going home!" but if it's directly translated it'll be "Mom's going home!"
Well, actually it's quite nice to have a variety of words because we can tell someone's personality from how they call themselves. People who call them by their names tend to be childish and sometimes a bit self-centered, boys say 僕 tend to be bit more cleaver and polite than boys that say 俺. It's just hard to know all the words and to remember what the word can define.
So that was my top 7 things that make Japanese hard to understand.
Did you ever feel the same thing? Or is there anything else that has made you suffer? Let me know about it in the comments! I might be able to write about it!
There are many hard things, but there are easy things too. It's really funny because in Japanese it makes sense just by saying the words, like when it's so hot outside we can just say 暑い which means "HOT". In English, we usually say "It's hot" but in Japanese, we can just cut off that "it's" part.
Some people say that high school students can actually have a conversation using three words, やばい まじ それな。
Of course, this is part of タメ口 so this can't happen in a formal situation, but still, it might not be as hard as you think!
So thank you for reading my blog, if you have any requests please let me know, I'll try my best to write something about it!
Also, I've been uploading some lyric translation if there's a Japanese song you want to be translated let me know the song and singer!
それではまた！
tuna
It's quite sudden, but have you ever learned or studied Japanese?
I'm sure many of you have, you're reading this because you have some kind of interest in the difficulties of the Japanese language!
AND IT'S TRUE THAT JAPANESE IS A VERY HARD LANGUAGE (even for a native speaker)
So in this article, I'm going to list the top 7 things I think that makes our language so hard as a native Japanese speaker!
However, this is just an opinion of one Japanese teenage girl that never spoke proper Japanese, so keep in mind that it might not always be hard in this way!
You might find it easy as I do, and that is great!
I hope you enjoy!
NO.1 KANJI
And there's way more that have the same way of reading.
Also, in a Kanji, there are basically two ways of reading it, 音読み（on-yomi）and 訓読み（kun-yomi）, so most of the kanji have more than two ways of reading it.
To give you a brief idea of 音読み and 訓読み
訓読み is the more Japanese way of reading the kanji, and by just the 訓読み we can define most of the kanjis. So, for example, the first kanji in the list above 四 is read "よん(yon)" in 訓読み which means four in Japanese. Just saying よん, we often understand it's four.
音読み is a more Chinese way of reading (although it's like the extremely old ancient Chinese way) and we won't able to understand the meaning or get the right kanji just by saying it in 音読み. We use 音読み in words called 熟語(jyukugo) which are words that made by two or more kanji (and it's annoying because there's also 熟語 with kanji read in 訓読み). So for, 四, the 音読み is "し(shi)".
It's already confusing, right?
And how do we remember and understand all of this stuff?
Simple answer, we study for 12 years, from elementary school to high school, and even in universities.
I'm not sure with a certain number, but Japanese children learn more than 2,000 kanji's and we don't actually learn it in class but on homework.
When I was in six grade, my kanji homework was filling this page with a single kanji, and then do it for 10 to 20 kanji per week.
(http://www.showa-note.co.jp/japonica/kanji_renshu/)
And in fact, we actually remember a lot more kanji which we don't learn in school so just don't think about the number of it, but try your best in remembering as much as you can, it makes your Japanese way better than someone who doesn't know kanji.
NO 2 敬語 (honorific words)
This is one thing that I hated, and I feel like I never used them properly, there are so many rules and I was stressed out studying this.
BUT it's a really important part of our language, it's unavoidable.
So in Japan, we have some strict age system, and there are many manners we have to follow in front of elder people or a higher ranking person, as a teacher, to show respect to them. (Korea has a similar kind of thing and they are way stricter. )
However, in Japan, people are getting less strict which makes it really confusing for some of the foreigners, and that's quite a long story so I'll write an article for that someday.
So 敬語 (keigo) is a big part of this system, and we use it to be polite or formal.
I believe many of you know that by saying ます(masu) or です(desu) at the end of a sentence it makes it more polite, and yes it does!
So when we say ありがとうございます(arigatou-gozaimasu) instead of ありがとう(arigatou) it's more formal and polite.
We call this ですます調（desumasu-chou）or 丁寧語（teneigo）and it's the easiest form of 敬語.
However this is not it, we have like a thousand more rules and even more formal forms when we use to write something official.
We even have special words we only use for the royal family in Japan.
NO 3 タメ口 aka informal words
What a surprise, we have polite formal words, we also have informal words, which are especially used by the young generations, and the hardest thing about タメ口 is that new words are created every day, and in a couple of months there outdated! It's an eternal mystery how I'm able to catch up with the trend.
So if you can you're already an advanced Japanese reader, do you understand these words?
絶起 タピる ワロタ あげみざわ やばみ エモい
インスタ映え しくよろ まじ卍 不可避 ンゴ それな
YES THESE ARE ALL ACTUAL JAPANESE WORDS WE USE IN JAPAN
But be careful, these are extremely informal words that are grammatically nonsense and you'll never want to use it when you're asking someone for something in Japan.
So some of these words don't have any meaning at all, for example, ンゴ. It probably comes from internet slang, and I think it's originally used when you're making fun of yourself or someone who made a mistake, but now we just use it really randomly at the end of a phrase like, カラオケ行ってきたンゴ which means "I went to karaoke".
We basically use these words to really close friends or on the internet (Japanese tend to be more active, friendly and sarcastic on the internet), and unless your parents are an internet-professional, they'll be like "can you please speak Japanese" if you use these words. Also, you'll never find these words in a paper dictionary.
There's one thing that I have to correct, that these words are just a part of タメ口(tameguchi) and the general meaning of タメ口 is a form where we don't use formal words. So ありがとう, ごめん, 〜ね、〜よ are all タメ口 and we often use this to families, friends that are the same age, and younger people. And usually, when someone allows you to use タメ口 you can use it to people who you're supposed to use 敬語 like the seniors when you're a junior.
NO 4 Internet Slangs
So as I've explained about ンゴ, we have so many internet slangs in Japanese.
Since everyone has a smartphone now, we love to create new words and use them.
For example, "ggrks" is one of the famous ones, it literally means "just go google it, you idiot" and it's a shortened word of "gu-gu-re-ka-su". When we write Japanese in alphabets, there's always a vowel on the end of each sound so we delete the vowels and just leave the consonants.
These words are pretty similar to the タメ口words, and many of them were originally internet slangs, but there are more complicated and there are so many words, even I sometimes have to go on google and search for the meaning.
Also, emojis are a big part of the Japanese Internet slangs.
Have you ever seen this (T_T)?
It an emoji of someone crying, and we have a whole bunch of this stuff, and I know Apple products now have great emojis, but we still use these because there are more variations and originality in these.
- / || :ヽ
┌|（⌒ヽ :|| ..:⌒: |┐ ／￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
|::|::ヽ.__:）:||（___ノ ::|::| │
|:|: .. :|| .. |:| │
:|: .. || ..|| ＜ ジュワ！
:＼ ［_￣］ /::| │
:: |＼|_|_|_|_／:::| ＼＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
＿＿| | / / :|＿＿＿
Look at this, it's a piece of art, lol.
It's actually a part of a famous internet sled (You'll find it by searching 日本語でおｋ スレッド) and this human-like thing is ウルトラマン（Ultra-man）which is a famous Japanese hero.
NO 5 Dialects
So as you all know, Japan is a small country, but still one of the biggest island countries, and we have a lot of dialects.
Basic Japanese is called 標準語(hyoujyun-go) which will be directly translated to "standard language", which I hate to admit because I use a different dialect from Osaka (We have this OSAKA pride that we're better than Tokyo). 標準語 is used around Tokyo and every Japanese will understand you if you can speak 標準語
In Osaka, we speak 大阪弁 (Osaka-ben) which is part of 関西弁(Kansai-ben) the dialect mainly used in the Kansai area. The biggest characteristic of 関西弁 is probably the fast way we speak, we talk fast and energetically. Also, we replace most of the "じゃ" and "だ” sound in 標準語 to "や", so instead of saying ”じゃない？” we say "やない？” and instead of saying ”だから" we often say "やから”.
We also have different words and phrases, one thing that the people from Osaka get really confused with is "なおしといて" which means "can you put this away" in 関西弁 but "can you fix this" in other dialects.
It also might be quite confusing because we shorten words a "Kansai way", for example when we say "but I don't know" in 標準語, it's "知らないけど" but in Kansai, we say "知らんけど". So we shorten the original word "知らない" to "知らん" and that's part of the dialect. Many Japanese shorten the words, which is going to be the 6th thing, but we just shorten words in a different way so it's hard for people to get it right.
NO 6 Shortened words
Like I said in NO 5, we shorten words a lot, especially when we use タメ口
For example, let's look at ありがとうございます。We can sayありがとう、ありがと、あざす、ありがとさん, etc.
By not saying ございます it becomes タメ口, so all of the words I listed up are タメ口, however, あざすis a friendly but formal way of saying it. We use it to someone in a higher rank but still close to you, so if someone's going to pay for dinner for you, you can use this word to show respect. However, it's not technically a formal form to say thank you, so it will be against the manner if you use it to your professor unless you're really close to him/her.
And it's hard because there's no pattern in the ways we shorten these words. When we say ありがとうございます, it sounds like あざす, so people started to use that. We simply take the ございますaway and say ありがとう
Some of these work on other words and sometimes they don't, so you just have to get used to it, or remember it.
NO 7 Words meaning "me/I"
Japanese has many words that describe our selves.
私 僕 俺 ワイ 自分 うち わし わて あたい 我
These are all words that mean me/I. In formal situations, we use 私(wataskushi or watashi), women tend to use 私(watashi or atashi), men tend to use 僕(boku) or 俺(ore), many children call themselves by their name, so when 花子 wants to say "That's mine" she can say それ花子の.
Also, not just our names, we call our selves with the role we do, for example, a teacher can call themselves 先生, a mother can call themselves ママ、お母さん, etc. When I used to refuse going back home, my mom would say "ママもう帰るよ！" which means "I'm going home!" but if it's directly translated it'll be "Mom's going home!"
Well, actually it's quite nice to have a variety of words because we can tell someone's personality from how they call themselves. People who call them by their names tend to be childish and sometimes a bit self-centered, boys say 僕 tend to be bit more cleaver and polite than boys that say 俺. It's just hard to know all the words and to remember what the word can define.
So that was my top 7 things that make Japanese hard to understand.
Did you ever feel the same thing? Or is there anything else that has made you suffer? Let me know about it in the comments! I might be able to write about it!
There are many hard things, but there are easy things too. It's really funny because in Japanese it makes sense just by saying the words, like when it's so hot outside we can just say 暑い which means "HOT". In English, we usually say "It's hot" but in Japanese, we can just cut off that "it's" part.
Some people say that high school students can actually have a conversation using three words, やばい まじ それな。
Of course, this is part of タメ口 so this can't happen in a formal situation, but still, it might not be as hard as you think!
So thank you for reading my blog, if you have any requests please let me know, I'll try my best to write something about it!
Also, I've been uploading some lyric translation if there's a Japanese song you want to be translated let me know the song and singer!
それではまた！
tuna
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