21/07/2018
So I just engaged in a discussion on “What is the most difficult language for a native English speaker to learn?”
The Institute of Linguists, the CIA and the US State Department are all in agreement with me that it is Japanese.
And over the years I have heard this challenged, often by Japanese speakers, who I’ve argued are always guilty of cherrypicking by emphasising the easy parts (such as pronunciation, a lack of tones like many other Asian languages etc.) but guilty of ignoring written and grammatical Japanese.
So, here for the layperson was my observation for the discussion...
l began studying Japanese full-time at university in 1992, did an intensive exchange programme for a year in a Japanese university with a homestay, then a year as a language intern in a Japanese company, graduated back home, then returned to Japan for another 13 years getting a masters degree in Advanced Japanese, working daily in only Japanese, and I still find it difficult.
In fact, the Japanese themselves find it hard, and I often find myself correcting or helping them with words. This is why the Japanese nod and agree constantly with one another as they speak.
Each Kanji character (from Chinese) and each combination of characters has so many readings and there are no rules as to which ones you choose.
It’s a guessing game, and with only 46 sounds there are many spoken words that although written differently and pronounced the same have totally different meanings.
Something which is a rich field for comedy and sees Japanese television screens covered in writing to get the message across.
The Japanese also speak their grammar, like vocalising speech marks, the topic, questions marks and exclamation marks.
There are also perhaps five main levels of Japanese used according to hierarchy with different nouns and grammar.
There are five words for ‘I’; watakushi, watashi, boku, ore and even ‘chin’ (used only by the emperor) all dependent upon rank and social status.
This is why the Japanese study eachother’s business cards so long before speaking. They need to decide upon their relative ranking before they can even begin with “I…”.
And those levels of honorific and polite ‘keigo’ pretty much sound like a different language.
And to cap it all, the Japanese often drop the use of pronouns altogether or on occasion refer to themselves and others using their own names.
However, the major difficulty with learning Japanese was described to me by Professor Heisig at Nanzan University, Nagoya. That is the huge number of readings for each Kanji character.
Whilst Chinese usually has one way of saying a charater, Japanese has many.
上 has 26 ways of saying it; ue, jyo, sho, noboru… etc. and can mean on, above, over, top and even ‘to go toward Tokyo’ etc. And that’s a simple one you learn in the early days.
Heisig described the sheer amount of memory required for learning each word and each Kanji as follows.
He drew a flower on the board and said that as you learn English as a child you connnect the sound ‘flower’ with the picture. The sound of the word becomes indistinguishable with the image.
You then learn to read and the written word makes you recall the image, and the image becomes the written word.
It’s now impossible to separate them.
If you decided to learn Italian, then you learn that flower is ‘fiore’ in Italian. As a beginner you will see a flower, think of the word ‘flower’ then translate it into ‘fiore’ via the English.
As your Italian improves and you begin to think in Italian, this two step process becomes one. If you are speaking Italian, and see a flower, you can bypass English and think and say “fiore’.
In Japanese you must build connections between the flower you see, and how it is spoken as ‘hana’ and then in combination with other characters often as ‘ka’ (e.g. ‘kokka’ meaning ‘national flower’)
You also have to learn that ‘hana’ is written はな in Hiragana, as ハナ in Katakana (if somebody is shouting the word ‘flower’ or speaking scientifically of the flower as a species) whilst they are using ‘kunyomi’ (Japanese) readings...
...but that the reading of ‘hana’ changes to ‘ka’ in ‘onyomi’ (from Chinese) which is used for combinations of Kanji characters...
..and that ‘ka’ is then written in Hiragana as か and in Katakana as カ (which also looks like the Kanji for ‘strong’).
And we haven’t even looked at the Kanji (Chinese characters) for ‘flower’ yet!
They are 花 or the more traditional Chinese character of 華 (...which also means ‘Mandarin’ China).
Both these characters are pronounced as ‘hana’ or ‘ka’...
..but it should be noted that ‘hana’ written 鼻 means ‘nose’.
And there are many Kanji characters with the reading of ‘ka’ (化 change 火 fire 蚊 mosquito 加 additional 家 family etc., etc.)
Remember ‘kokka’ 国花 (national flower)?
Well, whenever I said it, I always got people thinking I meant ‘kokka’ 国歌 (national anthem) and this is where you have to then speak out the Hiragana pronunciation to correct the Kanji they have in their minds.
It’s like a slot machine with images revolving and dropping into place, where when an image of a bell drops in you have to nudge it into a dollar symbol.
And you might yet find that they hadn’t imagined ‘national anthem’ at all, but another ‘kokka’ 国家 meaning ‘the nation, the state’.
Hence the use of ‘aizuchi’, whereby the Japanese nod and say ‘hai’ to eachother whilst talking, meaning they are pecking at one another showing agreement with the Kanji they are visualising in their minds.
I soon discovered in Japan, that if I listened without interrupting, people began to think I didn’t understand and started to look flummoxed repeating everything.
So, that’s the basics in describing just how many connections you are trying to learn for the word ‘flower’ to the point that you don’t need to go via English or another version in Japanese anymore.
You’ll need the 46 Hiragana, 46 Katakana and about 2,200 Kanji to read a basic newspaper, which takes the Japanese until they are about 18.
For a university degree you’ll need closer to double that, but once you reach 6,000 Kanji you’re probably safe enough not to learn the additional 40,000 recognised from Chinese.
But at least the Chinese only generally have one way of saying them, be it with a tone.
Chinese enjoys roughly the same word order as English.
Korean has the verb at the end, like Japanese, but a much simplified alphabetic system.
In written Japanese, all three alphabets are used in the same sentence as each word alters its role, nuance, style or changes simply by the writer’s choice, mood or level of education.
So the sentence, イギリスのこっかはばらです meaning ‘England’s national flower is the rose” is written completely in Katakana for the word イギリス (pronounced ‘igirisu’ meaning England) because it’s a word that began abroad (from the Portuguese) and came into Japanese as a foreign loan word, and therefore has its own alphabet.
The rest of the characters are the more curly Hiragana used generally in Japanese by youngsters who don’t know many Chinese characters yet, or for grammatical structures.
If you know a few then you might write, イギリスの国花はばらです where you’ve written ‘kokka’ meaning ‘national flower’ using the Kanji for country and flower.
If you speak the above sentence and say, “Igirisu no kokka wa bara desu”, you will in my experience ten out of ten times get a confused look because the listener has heard ‘kokka’ and imagined 国歌 (national anthem) and not 国花 (national flower).
You must then help them by saying “No, ‘ko’ as in country and ‘ka’ as in ‘hana’ (flower) not ‘uta’ (song)”
You both then begin nodding profusely.
If your level of education is a little higher, or you wish to put on certain airs and graces in your writing, you might upgrade イギリス (England) to the Kanji for England from the Chinese 英国 (Excellent/Hero + Country).
If you really want to set the tongues wagging and lose half the audience by showing off that you know the Kanji for ‘rose’, then you might swop the Hiragana for ‘bara’ ばら to the Chinese characters for ‘bara’ which are 薔薇
So イギリスのこっかはばらです can end up written as 英国の国花は薔薇です
Japanese was the fourth foreign language I learnt, and it’s still harder than all the rest combined.
And then there’s the Kanji that have more of a feeling than a meaning. But, don’t get me started…
