How I learned English? (1) -When the Japanese learn English, what do we find difficult?-
Posted by: kirin on 
Sep 5th, 2011 | 
Filed under: Learn Japanese, Rambling
I know there are still a lot of topics that I can write about, because I have a list of posts that TKE readers requested. ^ ^ So today’s topic is how I learned English (1). It’s about what it’s like for the Japanese to learn English, rather than how I learned it. (It continues to a next post in which I am sharing how I learned English. )
It’s been years since I started to use English at work, but I still have to conclude that it is very difficult for the Japanese in general to be capable of communicating in English freely. As you already know, we don’t use alphabet when we write in Japanese. Romaji (romanized Japanese words) is used only for convenience, but don’t misunderstand it’s not a proper way. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji are the letters we use and and none of them look like alphabet.
But learning alphabet is not a big deal compared with learning Kanji. ^ ^; We’ve already learned it when we learned Romaji at an elementary school. I think what puzzles us most is how English sounds. Well English grammar is also completely different from Japanese one. So there’s no doubt we get confused with English grammar. But our education system somehow stresses reading, writing, grammar and memorizing words and idioms more than listening and speaking. Thus many students are left without being able to understand what’s spoken in English properly, while at the same time they remember some very difficult English words that are not normally used in a daily conversation. ^ ^;;
Speaking of my own experience…
It goes back to my 13 years old when I was a first grade at a jr. highschool. That’s the time English education started. I never learned English before then. Our English education, although I don’t know how it is today, was so useless!! The first sentence we learned was “This is a pen.” So what? It’s as you see. (lol) It’d be a lot more useful if it started as “How are you?”.
*English grammar vs Japanese grammar*
It was shocking to know how English grammar was completely different from Japanese one. Over here with Japanese, a sentence goes like this: subjective + (adjective) object + verb.
For example, I ate one of the apples in the morning that I found on the dining table. In Japanese it goes like this way, I in the morning that I found on the dining table one of the apples ate. (私は朝、食卓の上にあったリンゴを１つ食べた。）This sounds like this: Watashi wa asa syokutaku no ue ni atta ringo wo hitotsu tabeta. *This Japanese sounds unclear if there was only one apple on the table or a couple of apples were there but only one is picked up.
You see you’ll never know where the sentence is directed. It could be finished with negative form as “tabenakatta” (I didn’t eat) after all you hear the whole sentence! Or it could be “kodomo ni ageta” (gave it a child). You will also see that there’s no distinction between singular and plural (there are some times, depending on the noun though) because apple(s) is just “ringo” whether it’s singular or plural. So I have to say I have difficulties with this singular/plural notion when I use English.
I think English – Japanese translation is hard because the translator has to remember the verb at early stage when it’s spoken in English but remember it to use at the very last part of Japanese translation. lol
Another thing that made me suffer for months was the difference of “Be”-type of verb and all the other type of verbs. Somehow I had really hard time to understand the difference of these two! My English grade was so bad and I could not catch up with the class because of confusion between these sentences when I was 13.
For example: “I am not a teacher.” (We are taught it’s BE-type of verb.) while “I do not teach math.” (We are taught it’s general verb.) I didn’t get why we don’t say “I do not a teacher.” or “I am not teach math.”
I went so clueless without getting the concept of “Be”-type of verb and all the other general verbs that I went so depressed and I hated English then. I’m poor at math but I had no other time that English suffered me so much. I think it was only because of our way of teaching that didn’t match my type. Once I started to listen to radio English program, my English grade surged and before I knew, English has become my most favorite subject along with Japanese. ^ ^;
Because I want to avoid the same mistake, I don’t think too much of theory when I’m learning Spanish now.
*English pronunciation and intonation*
English pronunciation is a big headache to us Japanese. I wonder how easy it was if our first foreign language was Spanish, Italian or Portuguese. Now I am learning Spanish by myself and the happiest thing was that I can clearly hear what’s spoken when I watch Spanish drama! This means a lot to me, even if I don’t understand what that means. I can simply write down in Katakana as my ears have just cought. Then I can simply convert them into Spanish words.
For example: “No te vayas! Espera!” My ears can catch it as “ノーテバヤス！ エスペラ！” even if I didn’t know what this means in Spanish. I think Japanese and Spanish pronunciation is very similar. But as for English, I had really hard time for dictation. English has a strong intonation, compared with Japanese, especially standard Japanese spoken in Tokyo. (Kansai-ben, Japanese dialect spoken in Osaka and nearby areas has much more intonation. So I think they get used to English smoother than Tokyoites) This confused me a lot. Sometimes some English words sound connected or differently when they are spoken.
I truly enjoy learning Spanish now. 
(Gracias por ayuda de amigas, puedo entender espanol mas!)
In terms of grammar, although its conjugating verbs is confusing, English knowledge is definitely a plus. I can simply relate some sentences with English.
For example: Estoy escribiendo una carta para ti. (I’m writing a letter for you.) I know it’s not always that I can relate Spanish with English like this, word by word, but thanks to my English knowledge, I find it much easier to learn Spanish. At the same time, when it comes to listening and speaking, I can relate those experience with Japanese knowledge as mentioned above. I can speak Spanish just like I speak Japanese except for RR or strong R sound, which we find difficult.
Oh speaking of R sound, in Japanese we don’t distinguish R and L sounds. Thus, even if you pronounce a word as Lamen (instead of Ramen) Japanese people will understand. R and L are pronounced mixed…I don’t know if you understand what I mean. ^ ^; So I am not exceptional who suffer from these when I speak or listen English. I often forget some words like these: loyal and royal, for example. My ears cannot catch if it’s R or L very well. Liver could sould like River, Rice could sound like Lice…(a bowl of lice…lol no way!)
This post is getting too long with some basic difference between English and Japanese, and so how the Japanese have to suffer from learning English. Next post will be about how I learned English.
I wonder how English-speakers learning Japanese would feel when they learn Japanese. Any comments? 
p.s
I’m visiting Singapore and while I’m there, I won’t have time to moderate your comments or read your emails. So please don’t worry if your comment do not appear on TKE or your emails are not replied for days. ^ ^; (I know there are many readers from Singapore but this time I can see only a few friends there and I’ve already fixed my schedule with Apple and only a few more friends. I wanted to avoid a busy trip like last time. Yet it’s getting busy already…-_-;;)
Ittekimasu!（行ってきます！）I’m off!
~~\(^ ^)/~~
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September 5th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Oh, thanks for sharing such an interesting post!!
The first english sentence you learn at school was "This is a pen."?! Oh my…I know a song "Ensoku – This is a pen"..it's super funny to read this was the first sentence you've learned. They have probably learned that sentence in school, too…haha.
Mh I am currently trying to learn Japanese, the grammar is surprisingly easy…maybe because I'm used to super hard German grammer? Haha~
English grammar was okay for me, too…I'm still making mistakes but I guess people understand me without problems.
I love Spanish ♥ I started to learn it in school 2 years ago…I forgot almost everything but I am going to learn it again at university, yay! ♥
September 5th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
wow, it's late here, but I can't wait to read this in the morning…learning Japanese as an English speaker is so challenging. This si SO interesting!!!
I speak little Japanese not! The grammar is so confusing…and as for particles…aaagh!
September 5th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I remember when I wanted to take foreign language in school. I was really interested in learning both French and Japanese when I was in 3rd grade; didn't get to take any courses until high school because I was also taking orchestra in school. By the time I was in my 3rd year of French, 1st year Japanese…I would see the sentence on paper in English, translate them into French and then write them in Japanese, even though the rules of both languages aren't the same. Weird way to do it, but it worked for me.
However, curiousity got the best of my Japanese teachers because I neither spoke English (only to my sister since she doesn't speak any Filipino — Tagalog or Ilocano at all), French, or Japanese at home, but did very well in all my language classes.
September 5th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
I am a Swedish person learning Japanese, and as Swedish sentence building is similar to English, that was what I noticed first as very confusing when I started to learn Japanese.
But by listening to Japanese a lot, sentences became easier and easier to understand. I have the advantage that I learned English the same way growing up. About 60% of what is on Swedish TV is in English with Swedish subtitles, and so I have without thinking about it been learning English almost completely by listening (the only thing I learned from reading books was how to spell).
Because of that, the listening method came naturally to me when I was going to start learning Japanese, and it has worked well.
For me and probably most of us in the west, the hardest part in learning Japanese is the kanji. Just the amount of them makes it feel impossible at first, when you don't know where to start or how to go about learning them in the best way.
Because I'm not English, but Swedish, the pronunciation is the easiest part of Japanese for me. All the sounds you use in Japanese exist in Swedish. So it's like speaking my native language, but making the sounds in a different order. To me English is harder to pronounce than Japanese.
But once again, the most important part is to listen a lot, because if you have a clear picture in your head of how it should sound, you will do well when you try to say it.
September 5th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
have fun! and welcome to singapore!
September 5th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Kirin, I'm glad you posted this topic!
I'm trying to learn Korean as of the moment and the grammar structure is also S-O-V which is very similar to Japanese. It's totally the opposite of the S-V-O English grammar structure which I am very used to. Shifting to S-V-O system in a snap is very, very challenging and most of the time my brain cells get displaced or worse they turn into jell-o! Once I get the Korean language all sorted out I'll attempt to learn Japanese. I really love j-dramas and I'm enjoying Ikemen Desu ne jdrama as of the moment.
Since Spanish and Japanese are not in the same language group, it is understandable that most Japanese people have difficulty articulating rolling r's and l's. However with constant practice (and watching addicting Spanish/Venezuelan soap operas sans subtitles) that handicap can easily be overcome.
Oh, I think your command of the English language is awesome. I really thought English was your first language.
September 5th, 2011 at 4:04 pm
That's the nature of languages: every language has what makes it special from any other language in grammar,vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
As for the point of verb to "be", such differences between "I am a teacher" and "I do not teach Math" is because of the type of tenses in English. "am" in general means "the state of being something" in English such as "I am American" (Somebody who is from America). However, "does", "do", "did", "done" are the forms of the verb "do" and these four forms are those of present (singular "does"/plural "do"), past and perfect aspects of tense in English respectively as mentioned previously.
Also, I began reading a lot about Hiragana and learning Hiragana symbols, and I read a lot about the confusion in pronouncing liquid sounds (as named in English phonetics) in English: "l" and "r". They're are very close to each other in their way and place of pronouncing, and that's why they are somehow confusing, but easy by practising a lot.
In general, learning any language can become easy – however difficult it is – when one has a great will to do so and by practising a lot.
I just say such a long comment because your topic is very very related to my job in university (I have also been learning English for 17 years along with my first language Arabic).^_^
September 5th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Those days I'm re-reading a lot of grammar, and practising with listenings becouse the friday I have a test to take an official English title and happens that I use to heard the american accent from series and movies but for the exam I will have to listen British accent and it's too different one of each other!!!
September 5th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Hmm, learning Japanese for English speakers may be a little easier than the reverse in terms of pronunciation, since all the sounds that exist in Japanese are a subset of those that exist in English whereas English has sounds that don't exist in Japanese. One thing that's hard is that most books for foreigners learning Japanese ignore the concept of stressing syllables completely. It's said that Japanese words have equal stress on all syllables, but this isn't true, especially when words have different kanji but based on kana they all look the same. (example: 牡蠣, 垣, 柿) As a result, for the longest time I pronounced お茶漬け with the stress on 漬, when it's really on 茶. I had to hear a native Japanese speaker say it before I realized my mistake. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accen…
Other than that, kanji can be hard. There are methods other than just rote memorization for learning them, such as the method in "Remembering the Kanji," which breaks the kanji down into the radicals they are made of and assigns an English word to each kanji, but when you use this method pronunciation doesn't come until after you learn how to write all the joyo kanji. I think that the method could be improved but I don't know how one would go about doing it. As a student of Japanese in a foreign country, it's hard to be in contact with Japanese like you would be as a native speaker, so you don't get to see the kanji in context to know "oh, so ともだち is written as 友達!" with the advantage of a child who knows what tomodachi (friend) means before they know how to write it in kanji.
I hope everything I wrote makes sense!
September 6th, 2011 at 12:17 am
I´m Brazilian, and as you can see, I speak a little of English. I am trying to learn Japanese. And I can tell you, it´s much more difficult to me learn Japanese than English. I don´t know Kanji, but I know Katakana e Hiragana! Japanese is really hard!
I love your blog, please, post more about Japan!!
September 6th, 2011 at 1:56 am
i love this post.
i can very understand your difficulty learning english. even now i have to ask people “how do you say this”.
though i am glad to see you have gone very far from the story you have told.
i have to say, spanish verbs are more complex in some ways than japanese because you have to keep in mind who you are talking to. but this makes it easy for us spanish speakers because then there is no need to say words like “tu, yo, ellos, nosotros, etc..” at beginning of sentences. its already understood in the verb. unless you want to sound more polite or want to emphazise certain info.
i hope learning spanish will be a joy to you. i know sometimes when i lear a japanese word than is same as spanish, it makes it funny. have fun and enjoy your trip^^o.
September 6th, 2011 at 3:59 am
What a great post! I just started learning Japanese a couple of weeks ago, and I'm constantly wondering how the language really works, since I had so many headaches with German (verb conjugation, articles and noun genders! Ahh!) so I wonder what will trouble me in Japanese! This gives some great insight =)
I wish I could share more, as an English speaker, what's hard for me in Japanese, but it's just too early right now. But I can say that it's really hard to remember which words mean what, like random nouns and such. They don't have any similarity to English, so it's sometimes a struggle to attach the meaning to such a foreign word!
September 6th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
That is interesting to read! I think there is a similar problem with conjugations and plurals for Chinese learners because there is also none of that in Chinese ^^; Just today I taught my youngest class plurals for the first time @__@ Some still confuse "a soldier" or "a soldiers" and "two soldier" or "two soldiers"
I feel that immersion can teach language better than memorizing patterns and spellings… It can also help with pronunciation!! Oftentimes the long and short vowel sounds is English make students say funny things, like "I ate a snake" instead of "I ate a snack"!!
September 7th, 2011 at 12:45 am
Yes, Japanese creates many questions for English speakers as well. For example, if Mr. and Mrs Sato are in the house how do you know if you are asking for Mr. or Mrs. when you say "Sato-san wa doko desu ka? How do you know how many children I have when I say Kodomo ga imasu. And how can you tell if the word starts with su or tsu.? Why can't a Nihonjin say "squirrel"? And is it three trees, or tree threes? LOL Yes we have similar problems. I really enjoyed this blog. Great work!
September 7th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
I took one Japanese class. The hardest parts for me were sentence structure and the characters (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji). There are some sounds that we don't have in english that are hard to vocalize.
September 8th, 2011 at 12:26 am
Oh, having portuguese as my native language, was very easy to learn english – grammar and the sounds. But japanese? OMG its getting so confusing!! Even tho i listen to japanese songs and watch doramas and animes, the writting skills are difficult do get and the grammar doesnt make sense! I look forward for the day when ill be reading, writting and speaking in japanese. And good job with ur spanish! =) When you learn it all, it will be way much easier to learn portuguese!! =)
September 8th, 2011 at 4:35 am
Yup, I find the use of particle is difficult and all the actions in Nihongo are done at the end so you need to listen carefully. But still its fun to learn Japanese.
September 8th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
"I wonder how English-speakers learning Japanese would feel when they learn Japanese"
I'm not a native English-speaker, but, as a beginner, I do feel similar to Japanese like you did to English. It's a very confusing experience.
Being raised bilingually in German and Portuguese I've never faced problems like yours when learning English. Whether a verb is a BE-type or not, was simply obvious to me. You described a similar situation when you are comparing English and Spanish syntax. With German these grammatical bonds are way stronger, making it easy on one hand (grammar) and more difficult on the other ("false friends").
Japanese, by contrast, refuses to fit into any grammatical concept I've ever learned, making it difficult to me to learn. I would love being able to watch some Japanese "dorama" and learning Japanese on the fly
(like you are doing with Spanish telenovelas; “No te vayas! Espera!” – I'm 99% sure this comes from one of them XD) But the huge amounts of homophones and many aspects of the standard Japanese of Tokyo makes this right now impossible for me.
Since I grew up with stress-timed languages my brain is always looking for the stressed syllables, highlighting one word from another in a stream of speech. Standard Japanese lacks these oral landmarks, making it sound to me like an endless stream of syllables. Watch the news on TVE Internacional then you'll get a feeling how Japanese sounds right now to me.
Kanji on the other hand are not so much of an obstacle like I feared I they would be. It's just like English
You have to memorize for every word its pronunciation. Writing sentences over and over again does not only give me a "feel" for the grammar but also helps to memorize the Kanji and their stroke/radical order. It's a long way nonetheless.
I'm looking forward to part two.
September 10th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Wow, cool. It sounds that you have good command of several languages. I think kanji can be the most difficult part for foreigners to learn, unless they are familiar with Chinese language. ^ ^;;
All the best for your Japanese study!!
September 10th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
Thank you for your comment Tina.
Ah, particles! I see. To me prepositions are difficult. ^ ^;; I don't even know if the adjective or verb is paired with "in" or "with" or "on" or "at"…you know. I'm trying to remember but I don't know if I can use them properly. haha!
September 10th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Wow, read things in English, translate them into French and write them in Japanese…?! Sugoi! (*w*)
September 11th, 2011 at 12:08 am
"About 60% of what is on Swedish TV is in English with Swedish subtitles"…I think this is what we need in Japan.
Japanese people have suffered from learning English for ages. We pay a lot for English conversation classes and make effort to attend them after work or weekends because our English education from school is so useless.
Reading your comment, I think it was a right thing that I watch Spanish-speaking dramas to learn Spanish.
Thank you for your comment, Pauline.
September 11th, 2011 at 12:09 am
Thank you Shimin. It was such a fruitful trip there!!
I stayed 4.5days there.
September 11th, 2011 at 12:15 am
I heard Korean and Japanese are similar. In fact, our language and culture are so much influenced by Korea and China. We have several common words between Korean.
Oh I'm flattered to hear that, but I'm sure you'll see it's not because I know I will be making some mistakes with prepositions or articles such as between "a" and "the" or using either of them when none of them should be needed. lol
All the best for your Korean and Japanese! ^ ^
September 11th, 2011 at 12:19 am
I guess Arabic should be also very different from English. Am I right? I hear that you write from right to left in Arabic. Is it true? Arabic or Hebrew are so mysterious languages to me. I wonder what they are like and I am also interested in middle east culture or food because it's very exotic to me. I really have no idea what it's like.
September 11th, 2011 at 12:23 am
Oh yes I know what you mean! I was so shocked to find myself not understanding at all when I watched BBC news when I came back from the U.S. I thought I understood CNN well but it was like what happened to my ears or brain?? I never forget this shock. -_-
September 11th, 2011 at 8:09 am
Everybody has problems with them, I guess
But there is a helpful tool on the internet : Netspeak
Wouldn't be surprised if even native speakers would used it from time to time…
September 11th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Thanks for sharing. Oh, even native speakers…OK, thanks. ^ ^;;
September 11th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Yes, Arabic and English are different.
Well, Arabic and Hebrew share similar sounds in pronunciation of many letters, but Hebrew has different alphabet letters from Arabic. However, Persian and Arabic are more closer to each other in the use of alphabet and pronunciation.
By the way, I want to tell you that learning Japanese is: "Very interesting!" ^_^
While learning Hiragana a month ago, I was very very excited by it. Hope I can proceed in Katakana later on.
September 13th, 2011 at 5:53 am
ola 麒麟, como esta?
it was soooooooooo much fun reading this article…..
just through my studies of learning Japanese i always wondered how a Japanese person viewed learning English.
As for what i find difficult in learning 漢字, when i started i would memorize a character by the stroke count…
for example i would memorize this 湾, by the amount of strokes to write it, which is 12 strokes…
but when i bought a book called Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, it taught me to break characters up into components…
So 湾 became汁, 赤,弓…
from then on Learning Japanese hasn't been hard cause it's very easy to spot the nouns,verbs,adjectives…..
well take care麒麟,
and thanks again for writing this post, if there is anything that you want in NYC, as long as it's not more that $100.00 i'll get it for you for free, because i know it must have taken alot of time to write this post…
thanks again…..
September 13th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Nice article!
My Spanish memories are far away and most of them are forgotten, but I’ve never noticed the similarities with Japanese. It’s interesting.
I’m French and I’m learning Japanese in English (by myself, for now).
At first, I was confused about plural in japanese, but somehow I liked it, it sure makes things easier :p I also found strange to have to remember the whole sentence and wait for the end of it to know if it’s a question, and then turn the sentence into a question in my mind. The tone may help, but I guess some questions could be told with an affirmative tone?
Well, I’m still at the very beginning ^^
September 13th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
You seem to have studied Japanese well. ^ ^
As you say, each word has high/low pitch or accent but speaking of intonation of the whole sentence, don't you think Japanese sounds so flat compared with English?
September 13th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Thank you for your comment. ^ ^
Kanji should be very difficult. But believe me we Japanese all learned it one by one as well. ^ ^
I heard there are many Brazilian with Japanese root such as their grandparents are Japanese.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Haha, I'm glad I finally got the difference between be-type of verb and all the other type of verbs then. lol At that time, this issue was a big headache to me and I was like…"What if I never ever get the difference of these verbs?". What a small world I was living in…-_-;; hahaha
Oh I enjoy learning Spanish a lot. I will never care too much about grammar but try to enjoy the language more. ^ ^
Gracias~~
September 13th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
"They don't have any similarity to English" Indeed!!
That's why when I learn Spanish I smile! I can relate some words with English. Glad I learned English before! I feel so.
But when we learned English, we even encounter true English words which are different from Japanglish words such as "camping car". Camping car is a Japanglish word that means motor home, motor caravan, or camper. There are some Japanglish words that we think they are English, and this is really tricky to me!
I hope you enjoy learning Japanese. ^ ^
September 13th, 2011 at 1:22 pm
lol at "I ate a snake" vs "I ate a snack"!!
I wonder what it'd be like for the Japanese to learn Chinese. In the future I'd like to learn Mandarin to make full use of my kanji knowledge. :p
September 13th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Interesting comment, as always, Steve!
Squirrel!! I don't think I can pronounce it properly either. lol
There are many more unclear things and hidden emotions in Japanese. For example, you could imply with certain way of speech without telling directly what you want. In that sense I like English better. Of course I have difficulties with it, as a foreign language, but English is clearer and more honest or straightforward without so much of hidden messages like our language.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
I think it may be easier for Japanese to learn Chinese rather than English. I met some Japanese students here studying Chinese and they were pretty good considering how short a time they had been studying! Writing for sure should be easier to understand
I want to learn Japanese, too! Languages are so fun ^u^v Japanese and French are my top priorities, but I have forgotten most of my French already and haven't got the time to learn Japanese right now…
September 13th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
I thought the flat intonation of Japanese was one of the most difficult things for English speakers. For example, many English speakers would say "watAshi" for "I" with strong accent on A. But it's actually flat with no accent as "watashi" stressing each (wa-ta-shi) equally.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
I hear Portuguese, Spanish or Italian are all similar each other. ^ ^;;
I hope I can speak Spanish better and communicate with more people.
The good thing about learning Japanese is that there are many anime or manga you can enjoy in Japanese. ^ ^
All the best!
September 13th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Glad that you find it's fun to learn Japanese.
September 13th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Haha, you're right. "No te vayas! Espera!" was from telenovelas. ^ ^;;
I wish I were raised in a bilingual family so I should not suffer from such a trivial torment between be-type of verb and others. -_-;;
I'm taking some time to write for the part two, since I've been quite busy since I came back to Tokyo from Singapore. ^ ^;;
September 13th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Ohhh…what a big surprise you are offering…haha! Don't worry. It's also a good practice for me to write a post to TKE blog. I could do it much easier in Japanese, my mother language, but I challenge it in English, which is also for my sake. ^ ^ If I ever go to NYC, please help me find out the way haha! I've never been there in my life!
Speaking of NYC, I hope you were not affected by the hurricane while ago. ^_^
September 13th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
I think Japanese is like that. I mean, you'll never know if it's ending with negative form or question. You don't even know the verb until the very end of the sentence. This is stressful when I translate Japanese into English. I cannot speak out verb in English until I listen to Japanese till the end. lol
All the best for your Japanese study!!
September 13th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Ohh…that makes me feel more interested in learning Chinese. ^ ^
Thank you for your information.
September 13th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I'm a Japanese learning English. ^^ This column is so interesting! Of course, there are lots of difference between English and Japanese. I think English grammar is simpler than that of Japanese.
September 14th, 2011 at 12:49 am
はじめまして、瑩子です。Stumbled upon this post (new reader to the blog). Very interesting perspective
My first language is Cantonese; 2nd is English. But I've used English long enough that I feel like I'm more fluent in it than Cantonese now ^^; Learned French in elementary/high school and Japanese in university.
As a person of Chinese origin, 漢字 was no problem. The S-O-V structure was different from English but I didn't have much problem with it, perhaps because Chinese grammar structure is sort of opposite English grammar structure as well (some may say Chinese is grammar-less).
One thing about Japanese that was hard and is still hard is particles. They are similar to English prepositions in some ways but very different at the same time!
Another thing is the different levels of "politeness". When I'm chatting with some internet friends in Japanese sometimes I still wonder whether I should be more casual or more formal (e.g. だ vs です). Oh, and I remember when I went to Japan, sometimes I had no idea what the waiters/cashiers were saying because of the super "polite" verbs they were using!
In comparison to learning French (English doesn't count as a foreign language to me anymore
), Japanese verb conjugation is much more straightforward, with less exceptions, even though there are, as I mentioned, different politeness levels of verbs for different situations. French pronunication is similar to Japanese in that certain characters will always have the same sound ("a" is always pronounced "a", unlike in English where it sounds different in "cat" and "ate").
Anyway (quite a long comment for a newcomer ^^;), I think learning languages is a wonderful thing. It just broadens your world by that much. You can't learn a language without learning its culture too!
September 14th, 2011 at 3:43 am
okay, if you're ever in NYC and need help i will do what i can to help……..
And as for the hurricane it was nowhere as bad as they made it sound, i've been in thunder storms that packed more punch…..
それじゃ
September 14th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
LEARN SPANISH. It will be easy for you, Japanese people. Pronunciation is easy, it's like Japanese: pronounce how you write without changing letters pronunciation depending on the word. Alphabet only has one added letter (ñ) with a total of 27 letters, accentuation always follows a pair of simple rules, and grammar is not much hard, but a bit more complex than English.
Example: "Hola, yo quiero aprender español" -> "Hello, I want to learn Spanish"
For phonetic addicts it's pronounced like this: / 'o.la 'ʝo 'kie.ɾo a.pɾeN.'deR es.pa.'ɲoL /
Enjoy
September 14th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Sorry for double post, but i forgot: Spanish basic sentence construction is 100% flexible. The most basic word order is like in english: Subject – Verb – Complements. Of course you can say "Subject – Complements – Verb", everyone will understand, but you will sound like in 15th century. And if you say "verb – Subject – complements", it could be confusing, since many questions start with the verb.
It's not like german where sentence parts possition and declination affects the meaning of the sentence itself.
Some examples: "Yo como manzanas" -> "I eat apples" (elements in order "subj – verb – complements", the normal mode)
But also: "Yo manzanas como" -> "I apples eat" (this is totally 15th century and sounds like poetry.)
And : "Como yo manzanas" -> "Eat I apples" (doesn't is looks like a question?)
Cheers.
September 14th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
I'm from Spain. I will be glad to help you anything you need with your spanish.
I'm trying to learn Japanese at least for writting and reading purposes, but i'm pretty confused about kanji, romanji and all that stuff. Would you like to do a "language lessons exchange"
If you are interested send me an email.
Btw, nice and funny post. Take care.
September 15th, 2011 at 11:26 am
Oh I'm glad you enjoy learning Japanese. I hope you still like it after you enter the level where you have to memorize each kanji. ^ ^;;; I think that's one of the hardest parts for Japanese learners. But once you understand the language, you can watch Detective Conan in Japanese. ^ ^
September 15th, 2011 at 11:28 am
ありがとう
September 15th, 2011 at 11:34 am
Thank you for your comment.
It's very rare that I receive comments from Japanese people. haha! I didn't even know if I had Japanese readers.
September 15th, 2011 at 11:45 am
Thank you for your comment. It was very interesting and fun to read it.
I wish I could speak so many languages like you do! How useful it would be when you can speak Cantonese, English, French and Japanese!! Wow~~!
Super politeness is often found when you receive service in Japan. In other words, such way of saying is required when you serve your customer in Japanese. Normally such super polite way is too much for general conversation. When you are talked with super politeness at a restaurant or a shop, you don't have to answer them with super politeness. Just normal politeness (desu, masu) is enough.
To me such ways is too serious and rigid, and I do prefer English in many cases. It's very strange but I feel much relaxed when I write in English than in Japanese, especially when it comes to business matter.
Long comment doesn't matter, but sometimes this system tells you they cannot accept a long one so you may want to split it into two or three. Well, it was good you were not told so. It's kind of random. haha! ^ ^;;
September 15th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Yes, Spanish pronunciation is very easy for us Japanese, except for RR. ^ ^;
I can express that sentence in full Katakana and if any Japanese people read it, they sound as if they knew Spanish.
"Hola, yo quiero aprender español" （オラ、ヨ キエロ アプレンデール エスパニョール）
I enjoy learning Spanish.
I hope I can travel to Spain next year. ^ ^
September 15th, 2011 at 11:50 am
I only knew "Yo como manzanas" way, and so I'd be shocked if I read other two ways. ^ ^;;
September 15th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Thank you for your offer. ^ ^
I'd love to, but I've already found about 4 or 5 Spanish speaking friends who I exchange emails in Japanese and Spanish. So I'm afraid I don't know if I can catch up with your speed and I can be a good language exchange partner to you.
But if you are still interested, you can always email me through the contact form. http://tokyokawaiietc.com/contact
Gracias!
September 16th, 2011 at 4:35 am
My Japanese teacher posted this on her facebook. I think it is very interesting to see the perspective of a Japanese learning English.
. It was a 6 week class so we had to hurry through verbs and conjugations etc (and we just started adjectives). I do have to agree with you that when I was learning Japanese, the most confusing thing for me was the sentence structure, the adj in front, insert particle here and there, noun, then verb LAST. It really confused me! I'm still in the process of learning Japanese, so hopefully it will get less confusing for me. Honestly, I think that the Chinese and English grammar are almost the same (or close enough), so knowing Chinese will only help with things such as Kanji, but definitely not the sentence structure.
I was born speaking Mandarin and learned English since first grade, then I moved to the US, where I am forced to speak in English. I still remember the days when I hated English. In High School, I took up French, then during the summer, I took my first Japanese class
September 16th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Yeah, "rr" sound is pretty hard for you, Japanese people. I got a Chinese friend and I could never make him to pronounce it correctly. ^_^
That's correct: pronounce what you read/hear and you can't do it bad.
I hope you enjoy your trip to Spain.
September 16th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
That's the most correct form, but in case you are confused you know that everyone will understand you even if you use any other sentence order.
September 16th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Thanks.
I really need some advice to learn japanese and also have some basic questions that makes me crazy :'(
Would you mind answering me them? this is, would you mind if i send you a email with a pair of questions? I don't want to annoy you with stupid things, so i will understand if you cannot do it.
Whatever, thanks in advance
September 17th, 2011 at 11:17 am
OK ^ ^;; Thanks!
September 17th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Thank you. I've never been there before and it's a great motivation for my learning Spanish now. ^ ^
September 17th, 2011 at 11:21 am
If you don't mind my taking some time to answer your questions, please drop me a line. I don't know if I can help with nice way of teaching (sometimes when it comes to a mother language, I cannot explain things well, you know what I mean?) but I'll do my best. ^ ^
September 17th, 2011 at 11:27 am
Oh, I'm so much surprised and honored to hear that your Japanese teacher was reading this post as well as my humble opinion and shared it with his students. ^ ^;;;
I can truly understand your confusion because it's exactly reverse way of my learning English. But I think you will naturally learn it if you listen or watch Japanese speaking materials such as DVD or music, rather than force yourself to memorize the structure and grammar logically. That's another humble opinion of mine. ^ ^;;;;
Best wishes!!
September 20th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
hmm I'm learning Japanese and at first particles were the hardest thing for me, but after I finally understood them (took a while… learned it better the next semester of Japanese I took xD) everything got sooo much easier. lol I'm Tibetan but was practically raised in america so I'm fluent in English but can only speak Tibetan not write it. Learning Japanese has shown me a lot of similarities between it and Tibetan, which amazed me a lot. haha I started rambling but the reason I'm commenting is wondering which words are common between Japan and Korean as I read you said that in one of your other replies. I'm still just learning Japanese but after learning Japaneses and learning Tibetan better, I will be able to study Korean because it is also a culture that interests me! =] lol
September 21st, 2011 at 7:07 am
For example…
高速道路 (kousoku douro) = highway
温度 (ondo) =temperature
気温 (kion) =temperature
You can make sure by copy and paste these Japanese into Google translate and then translate them into Korean and press the speaker mark to listen to how they are pronounced. Or vice versa. ^ ^
September 21st, 2011 at 7:39 am
thank youuu lol =]
October 12th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Wow, your english is really good. And luckily for that (and me coming upon your blog), I found out many good tips, and advises for my trip to Tokyo ! Hopefully I'll get a chance to go to all the places you've recommended, given that my poor japanese language speaking will not confuse the people there when I ask for directions. =X
Thank You very much !!
October 12th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Thank you for your comment, Kristy! I'm glad TKE blog was informative to you in some way. Oh, there are way so many restaurants and stores to shop in Tokyo that the ones I recommended in this blog are just the tip of the iceberg. But I'm sure you'll enjoy Tokyo.
We (Japanese) will be very delighted if you speak some Japanese, even if it's not fluent. You will find us very friendly and helpful if you speak in some Japanese. ^ ^
Have a nice trip!
October 12th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
I am Dutch, I don't know if you can understand that but I hear always that people find it very difficult to learn ;D.
Anyway, I learn English at school and I can understand it, but I often have problems with the verbs and the grammar. At school I'm also learning a lot other languages, but unfortunately not Japanese. So I decided to do that on my own. I am learning it with the website http://www.japanese-online.com, and yes, that is an English website but there aren't any Dutch websites which helps you with learning Japanese. But because that website is English, it isn't very easy. It's also hard for me because in Japanese there isn't an alphabet and it's just so different from Dutch. Well, I keep trying! I also saw that you already have made another two posts about this topic, so now I'm gonna read them ^^.
By the way, I have never post a comment here before, but I want to say that I really like your site! I am very interested in the Japanese culture and on your website I find very much information ^_^.
October 13th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Thank you for your comment. ^_^
When I went to Amsterdam, I thought the Dutch are generally very good at English. So I think your English level is rather high even if you say so. But I can suppose it'd be very difficult for your to learn Japanese, as you say, we don't use alphabet.
The most difficult thing would be kanji. Hiragana and katakana are still easy but kanji might distract you from learning Japanese. However, we also learned it one by one since 5 or 6 years old. So it's just a long path but you can make it if you are patient enough to do one by one. ^ ^;;
Best wishes for your Japanese study!
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