Jitka wrote:
Kef: You've studied Spanish and Japanese, so what would you say is the difference in difficulty? Is Japanese ridiculously hard like I've heard?
It's definitely difficult. I actually haven't studied terribly much Japanese other than kanji... my approach is somewhat unconventional. I don't think my approach was right for me, though... but since I'm almost done with my kanji study, it's too late to change that.
That doesn't mean I'm close to mastering all there is to know about kanji (not by a longshot!), but it does mean I'll be able to write and recognize 2042 kanji.
There is also the matter that Spanish shares many, many more words in common with English than Japanese does, and many of the English words you'll see will also have Japanese equivalents you should learn. So, compared to Spanish, vocabulary's going to be a pretty big obstacle. Japanese also has a
very different grammar, but whether it's difficult I can't really say. I have a broad understanding of the basic points of Japanese grammar, but I know few specifics.
For instance, Japanese has no grammatical gender, but it does have these things called counter words... if you want to be able to say numbers of things you'll need to know the counter word for that particular object. For instance, instead of "two dogs", you must say "dog two-small-animal". Counters distinguish between size, shape, and various other arbitrary factors. It sounds monstrously complex, but I think you mostly get used to it before too long. It's also not unlike a distinction we already make in English (and Spanish), when we say "two
sheets (or
pieces) of paper" (not "two papers"), and so on. Sometimes distinctions can be made depending on the counter, just as we distinguish between "two loaves of bread" and "two slices of bread". The difference between Japanese and English here is that
all nouns use these counter words for numbers.
You can read more about it here (but I think it makes it look scarier than it really is):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_wordAnother concept you'll find familiar yet different is politeness. Spanish distinguishes between tú and usted; Japanese conveys politeness in myriad ways. The verb conjugation indicates politeness towards the listener whether or not the verb itself has to do with the listener. There are also different pronouns you can use, not just for the second person but for the first person as well.
¡Ay! ¡Acabo de darme cuenta de que hablamos de esto en el hilo equivocado! ¿No debemos hablar
aquí?
("Ack! I just realized we're discussing this in the wrong thread! Shouldn't we talk
here?")
Jitka wrote:
Also, are you still in college or what? Just curious.
Desafortunadamente, apenas he ido a la universidad. Soy un 'drop-out', pero algún día pienso arreglarlo.
extremejon09 wrote:
Knowing this guy, he most likely just punched some crap into google translator and assumed it's readable
Es lo que pienso yo. Para empezar, usó la palabra 'ito' (糸) para referirse a un hilo de foro. Me parece sospechoso.
- Kef
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