Learning japanese???

Question

is it difficult to learn japanese only being fluent in american english? (i know that there isn't much difference between american and any other english, but ya never know)

Answer 1

Im sure its not hard i once was taught it at school only the alphabet or something hope this site might help

www.japanese-online.com/

Answer 2

its relatively easy, but with practice its actually pretty fun.

Answer 3

Japanese is considered a very difficult language for English speakers to learn. It has three writing systems, an almost backwards sentence formation, clear differences of formality with many words, and a style of thinking that isn't used in English.

Writing systems:

You must learn all three to be considered fluent. Hiragana and katakana are the two basic ones and are very easy to learn but kanji takes years to learn and you can't rush it any faster than that. You need to know about 2000 kanji characters for Japanese. Hiragana is for grammar, words not written ever in kanji, and how to write when you don't know the kanji. Katakana is for foreign words such as names, foods, shopping labels, et cetera. Kanji are imported Chinese characters.

Sentence pattern:

Japanese is subject-object-verb. I know that doesn't mean much to you right now but know that English is subject-verb-object. Also realize that Japanese frequently drops the subject of a sentence while English requires it no matter what.

I went to school in Japanese would look like I school to went, with I being entirely optional (and usually left out).

Formality:

In English you speak--generally--the same way to all adults, all peers, all children, all friends, and all strangers. There are a lot of "levels" to formality to and the general rule of thumb is the longer your sentence is the more polite it becomes. Even for introducing yourself there are different formality levels to it whether you're saying nice to meet you or "my name is".

Thinking style:

Japanese express things differently than English, it's as simple as that.

In English we have a special word for when you feel hunger: hungry.

In Japanese they have various (yes, more than one!) ways of saying that but they all come down to this: saying your stomach is empty. Japanese can be a notoriously vague language at times and most people won't just come out and say what it meant. It takes a long time to get a grasp of that as well and it usually just comes down to memorizing how it's normally said.

And while there's more than that I think those would be considered the main points to what makes Japanese a difficult language.