When you think of the Japanese language, what images come to mind? Squiggles and swirls? Chinese characters of infinite, inscrutable brush-strokes and pictures of a silk-robed Sensei, calm and clean, scolding YOU as you botch yet another ideogram?
Well, little could be further from the truth! Today you have access to modern, bilingual teachers of both Western and Oriental extraction, fluent and learned in Japanese-English or English-Japanese, to guide you encouragingly in your efforts to learn Japanese. In truth, anyone with sufficient motivation can learn Japanese, because Japanese is simply another human language, learned by humans and taught for humans to learn.
Is Japanese Harder to Learn Than Other Languages?
Coming from an English base, however, does impose some -what shall we call them?- conditions on learning Japanese, conditions that don't exist if you're a native-Korean speaker or Finnish speaker seeking to learn Japanese.
These conditions flow from and stem from English grammar, which you've come to accept in a very matter of fact way, but it is precisely this grammar, this English language syntax, which differs when you learn Japanese. For example Japanese, in a manner similar to Korean, puts the verb toward the end of the sentence, the end of the thought, as in: "I rice eat-want"
An infix in the verb shows the wanting, and the word order and use of a subject-suffix and an object-suffix (on the I and rice) show what they are, and the verb comes at the end, almost.
This has been the single most difficult part of trying to learn Japanese that I've encountered over several decades of experience with English-native learners, getting the knack of saying what's going on, who's doing it, to whom, and how, and THEN the completing-verb into place is dropped. It seems somewhat Yoda-like, but with practice it becomes second nature, and surely you can learn Japanese.
Languages Classes or Software Programs
Even more encouraging today is the knowledge that many other intelligent, well-meaning people, in their professional capacities as scholars, teachers, linguists, trainers and translators, have devoted thousands of hours to creating study programs for people who want to learn Japanese today. One of the best of these that I've found is the Rosetta Stone © lessons on CD/DVD for people who want to learn Japanese.
With lessons in easily-digestible bites; with consistency punctuated by variety; with clear pronunciation and a logical learning sequence, Rosetta Stone carries students along an easily-followable pathway to fluency in modern Japanese, both spoken and written. (Full Disclosure: I have received NOTHING from Rosetta Stone, and hold NO stock in the company. I simply tried several others, and found Rosetta Stone most suited to my style of learning. Period.)
So get going and take the first steps toward enabling yourself to learn Japanese! Find a sensei or buy a CD and start learning one of today's most intriguing languages and meet some of the finest people east OR west!
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