Learn Japanese
Learn Japanese
How long does it take to learn Japanese?
I want to learn to read and write, in Japanese. I want to learn to talk and think, in Japanese. How many years will it take me to learn Japanese to the point where I can go to my Library and read a book out of the Japanese section?
I've got a degree in Japanese which took me 7 years of extramural study. I was working full-time, and the BA degree included some other subjects besides Japanese, so it wasn't like a full-time internal degree; that would have only taken three years. But I found studying Japanese very hard work compared with a European language. I've never been to Japan. My lecturer says that one year in the country is like five years full-time study. I've known several high school students who have spent a year in Japan on a student exchange, and they all come home speaking Japanese almost fluently. Japanese is said to be one of the four most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn; the others are Chinese, Korean and Arabic. It took me about a month each to learn katakana and hiragana, the two Japanese alphabets, with about 49 symbols each. Japanese pronunciation is quite easy. There are fewer sounds than in English. Japanese has a lot of homophones; different words which are pronounced the same, which is confusing. But the hardest part is the kanji; the characters borrowed from Chinese. Schoolkids there learn a minimum of 1850, and to read a newspaper you need about 3000. That's just the beginning; most words consist of more than one kanji. The word for national park consists of 4. My Japanese kanji dictionary contains 55 000 compound kanji like this. A few you can work out; the one for China is the characters for middle and kingdom. The one for Japan is sun and origin, as in land of the rising sun, but most are less obvious. I learned Japanese just out of curiosity, because it's such an alien language, and I've found it very satisfying getting an insight into such an exotic culture; the food, mores, handicrafts and all the rest. You'll find it an interesting hobby. I suggest you try to spend a year over there, either working or on a student exchange. Good luck.
Learn Japanese Numbers 1 to 20
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