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Hello everyone!

In this article, we would like to share with you the characteristics of the Japanese language as seen from a foreign learner's point of view.

It is sometimes said that “Japanese is one of the most difficult languages in the world,” but what kind of impression do foreigners have of the Japanese language?

It is surprisingly difficult to notice what characteristics Japanese has compared to other foreign languages when we use it unconsciously in our daily lives.

In this issue, we will introduce some of the unique characteristics of the Japanese language, focusing in particular on areas that foreigners find strange or difficult to learn, including the impressions we have actually heard from foreign learners of Japanese.

0. Is Japanese actually difficult?
It is often said that “Japanese is one of the most difficult languages in the world,” but is this really true?

There are various ways of counting, but according to one theory, there are approximately 7,000 languages in the world.

Among them, Japanese has about 125 million speakers, ranking it around 10th in the world in terms of number of speakers (though almost all of them are Japanese).

So how difficult can Japanese be said to be?

In an American study, languages were categorized according to how long it takes an English speaker to learn to speak or read a certain language (i.e., how difficult it is to learn).

Of these, Japanese was classified as the only language requiring the longest period of time, Category 5* (2200 hours or more).

Although there are various interpretations of language level and proficiency, and the difficulty of learning a language varies greatly depending on the learner's native language, so it is difficult to say that Japanese is the most difficult language in the world, these results do place it in the difficult category (at least for English speakers).

So, what characteristics of the Japanese language make it difficult for foreigners? Let's take a look at some specifics.

1. Unusually large number of character types
The Japanese language is characterized by the many types of letters used.

For example, English is represented by only 26 letters (a-z), but Japanese has less than 50 hiragana characters, plus the same number of katakana characters, as well as the same number of muddled and semi-muddled sounds.

In addition, there are more than 1,000 kanji learned in elementary school alone.

When you consider that the alphabet is also used, you can see how many characters there are in the Japanese language. This alone is quite a hurdle for foreigners learning Japanese.

As shown below, there are many situations where the large number of characters actually hinders foreigners from improving their Japanese.

At the zero-beginner level, they have a hard time remembering hiragana and katakana.

When Kanji characters are introduced, it becomes difficult to read the problem sentences and example sentences.

・When the amount of Kanji characters increases, it takes much longer to read through the reading passages.

・ Students give up writing Kanji and start writing everything in hiragana in essays and tests.

2. frequent omission of the subject
Japanese language is characterized by the omission of the subject

In Japanese (especially in conversation), omission of the subject (action subject) occurs frequently.

Look at the following conversation.

A “Did you hear that C-kun is going to change schools?”

B “I heard, I heard. I was surprised. I heard he is going to Tokyo because of his parent's transfer.

A “I heard he's going this weekend already. D-kun told me yesterday.

This conversation is not so strange to Japanese people, but if you look closely, you will notice that the subjects of most verbs are omitted: “(B) heard,” “(B) was surprised,” “(C) is going,” “(A) heard,” etc. This is quite difficult for foreigners.

This is quite a difficulty for foreigners.

This is because subject omission does not occur very often in foreign languages such as English, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

In fact, when you read a sentence with your learners, you often misread the “who performed the action” part.

What do you think?

We have taken a deep look into the Japanese language barriers felt by foreigners.

We will dig deeper next week, so please stay tuned!


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