This interview was interesting for me too because it shows that many Japanese people also think "textbook Japanese" doesn't quite sound natural. I can also pinpoint pages of textbooks where people learn these "textbook" expressions. Of course, there's nothing wrong with speaking "textbook" Japanese. We can still understand you. You don't have to speak "naturally" to communicate with us. But if you are interesting learning "real-life" Japanese, I will send you Japanese lessons where I teach you the kind of Japanese that real-life Japanese people speak. Click here and subscribe bit.ly/3nwvg8H
That's what I'm also gonna say! Aside from kanji.. There's a lot of same words but different meaning.. and also there is a lot of different words/grammar pattern but with same meaning like ~はずがない and ~わけがない.. that's why as a foreigner learning nihongo its really difficult..
@Odysseus 2.0 the pandemic is real, Japan just handled it better, because unlike the US one, the Japanese population is made of intelligent people, not morons, Trump supporters, and conspiracy flat Earthers like you! Therefore, I politely ask you, to keep your bullshit to yourself!
I think that there's a very valuable reason for learning "textbook" Japanese first, and it's that the basic です・ます as sentence endings is "safe." All Japanese learners run into problems with levels of politeness at first, so it's important to take cues from the person you're interacting with. That being said, no one will have a bad impression of you if you start speaking with です・ます, and they'll probably correct you if you're using too-polite language when the native speaker expected more conversational language.
lol I remember I said that to my cousin as a joke (native spanish speaker here) Tbh, it's weird because I'm curious about what people consider is difficult about spanish. And I searched one day on youtube people talking about it and they never said anything I expected to hear (conjugation, the fact that you *have to* use a lot of grammar stuff like articles and a few things like that) Most people talked about ser/estar (in english: to be) I believe. And also about how difficult it is to understand people from different countries and how fast it is. In case someone's curious.
@TheBrabon1 No because it rooted from latin. That's why a lot of Victorian british folks can speaks french, they root from the same language, latin. In other words any european language that take roots from ancient latin are probably going to have the same occurring motifs like e.g. nominative and accusative or reversing the verb and the subject to ask question etc. That is why it's no surprise that to compliment someone is cute in chinese which is "hao ke ai" ended up becoming Japanese "kawaii". Hell even china didn't had its own name for their own country if Japan didn't named it for them, before that it was named Qin after the dynasty. It's all about the roots man.
This was great hahaha. In reality when they say "ganbatte" even though it's often translated as "good luck" the actual meaning is "do your best". It's translated as good luck because it's used so often in the way that English people say "good luck on your test" instead of "do your best on the test". In this way, saying ganbatte isn't "good luck" as in "this is gonna be hard, good luck" more so "study hard!"
@@VengeanceSinX Because it technically it is. 🙂.. To learn another language you, especially Japanese. The best thing to do is do your best, Wether learning the alphabet, vocabulary, Kanji, Writing etc..
Yogesh Ghadge It’s probably from his own experience trying to learn another language(s). Or maybe he just finds language interesting and likes to think about it. By no means am I trying to undermine the importance of what he said (if anything, I feel the opposite), but it’s not really a groundbreaking insight. In fact, it’s something that can be all too easily overlooked or underappreciated. He seems like a thoughtful person for sure
@@littlefishbigmountain It's very much about having an awareness of the interplay between language and consciousness. That language is the basis for which we ground our concepts in. And that concepts are as fluid and as living as language. At least that's my take on it, for what it's worth 😋
Same, but there's the odd bit here and there that I find oddly easy to remember. For example the Kanji for house 家 I think looks like a man running to the right, which in my head sticks as running home, thus 家 = house. Also cat 猫 looks like a cat's face with whiskers to me for some reason, and company 会社 looks like a man walking away from a stand on which he'd had his work clothes and off to work or the office. The same goes for the Kanji for table, kitchen, bath, bedroom, chair, dog and a few other simple ones. Also 鳥 for some reason easily sticks in my mind as meaning bird, but I'm not sure why. Now a very simple one which maybe proves I have a dirty mind. ほ = ho, because it reminds me of a "ho" standing by a street light at the side of the road.
4:19 I was once asking my teacher if I could go to the bathroom, in keigo. However, I used the wrong form, so I ended up asking HER to go to the bathroom for me
Haha that's hilarious xD I learned English as 2nd language, teacher told us to pay attention to how we construct the sentence so we don't end up telling the doc "your stomach hurts me" lol
In my opinion, the two hardest parts of Japanese are idioms and dialects. In Japanese, "pearls before swine" is "an oval to a cat," like, what?! Kansai dialect is quite confusing. I listen to a rap group that occasionally uses Kansai dialect and they'll say something like "tsutawarahen" instead of "tsutawaranai" and most of the time, you can't look it up. I still can't find a proper Kansai dictionary.
A koban is an Edo-era coin, the "oval" meaning comes from the shape of the coin. So it's not "an oval to a cat", but "(throwing) coins before cats", which has the exact same implication as "(throwing) pearls before swine" - wasting something valuable on someone who can't appreciate its value. The full Japanese phrase is "buta ni shinju, neko ni koban", literally "pearls before swine, coins before cats".
@@Trainfan1055Janathan I have no idea where you got that "oval" translation from, though. I just threw "neko ni koban" into Google, and every single hit on the first page explains it as meaning "a (gold) coin/money to a cat". I've never seen this get lost in translation ever.
@@Trainfan1055Janathan Oh. No, I meant the actual Google. Do a google search for "neko ni koban" and you'll get tons of websites explaining the idiom to English speakers. I checked Google Translate, and yeah, that translates it to "oval to cat". Google Translate is bad and should in general not be trusted.
I think reading, if you learnt the langage by readind kanjis, will be easier, but if you learnt japanese by speaking, it would be easier too because the Japanese langage is well structured, and you even notice it in the intonation of each sentence. So it depends on how you learnt it. Personally, I have the 3 at the same time, I'm pretty good at speaking or hearing, reading in Japanese and it should be OK with writing, because I tried to learn the three of them at the same time.
@@stayskeptic3923 depending from where you are, to me Japanese is easy to understand and speak, It has the same phonetics as Spanish in 6 months I could talk to a Japanese person and create a bit complex sentences
No matter how you look at it, it's completely dependent on your native language, if a language has a similar grammar and writing system to your native language, it is naturally going to be easier to learn than a language which uses a completely different writing system. Its also dependent on the person trying to learn the language, some people can learn languages that are fundamentally different to their own in a very short time compared to those who may take a very long time to learn a language that is very similar to their native language. What im saying is that its a cluster fuck and i respect anybody who puts in the time and dedication to learn a second/third (and so on) language.
People tend to think their language is harder because one word has many meanings, but it's actually easier because it's easier for brain to write on something that it already knows.
@@TheXerforce No worries, I don't want to argue - You're completely right! Beautifully written and explained (: All of them depend on origins. Same letters like in european languages make it way easier to learn other ones, if you're a native. When languages are related, like romance languages, germanic languages, it's even more easier to learn a language from the same "tree". I started to learn chinese and japanese as a german native - and it's very interesting which aspects are turning out to be incredibly difficult, but also to be easy. Kanji are very hard, yes - the grammar on the other hand seems to be utterly simple, as Yuta said. For a chinese or korean native it's probably another thing, and the characters are a more or less easy thing. Okay, I don't know the relations of asian languages tbh. But damn - languages are so incredibly interesting!
The part at 4:15 about formal vs informal is super relatable. Even after 4 years speaking Japanese I still use casual speech in situations where formal is probably better, but I don't do it to be disrespectful, that's just how I talk to everyone. Family, friends, strangers, elders, peers, etc. it's all the same. Even in English I talk to everyone the same way. The only exceptions are during events like presentations at school or something.
I thought most people learning Japanese always use formal when they should be using casual. I'm probably one of those weirdos who sounds like an old person since I end up using both inconsistently.
lait, laie, laid, and les (in some accents) All pronounced the same. Respectively "milk", "wild sow", "ugly" (masculine singular), "the" (plural) mais, mets, met, and mes (in some accents) Respectively : "but", "meal" (or the 1st/2nd person singular conjugation of "to put"), 3rd person singular of "to put", "my" (plural) And of course... au, aux, eau, eaux, haut, hauts, ô, oh Respectively : "to the" (masculine singular, if the next word doesn't start with a vowel), "to the" (plural), "water", "waters", "high" (masculine singular), "high" (masculine plural), "o" (the interjection), "oh" French.
@@Flugs0 thr name doesn't come from there. "Pa' ella" is a short/faster way to say "for her" and I think it's used in some areas but not in all spanish speaking countries.
@@Mercure250 I actually began noticing that while studying French, it's super fun but really confusing I have it as a school subject, but I don't really study it as much as Japanese. I think French grammar is harder than Japanese grammar, even as a native Spanish speaker myself.
I was tired and almost giving up of my studies today, but for some reason, after this video I'll get the out of my bed and come back to my annotations. Thank you! I will definitely learn it.
The encouraging message at the end from them telling us to keep at it, good luck and to not give up, is much appreciated! :) Currently learning Japanese
@St0rm Ranger yeah, i'm also studying japanese and when I have to translate the sentence in my native language to japanese or figuring out what's the meaning of the sentence is very hard because of the order that japanese arrange their words is so different from the rest of the world.
I had Spanish at school and it made me want to pull my hair out. French was already bad enough but the Spanish conjugation of verbs is on a whole different level. Also, two states of "to be", what bullshit is that?
For me the most difficult part of the japanese language is reading. Even when you know the meaning of a Kanji, then you don't know the right speaking of it in a special sentence. An easy example: 山 is this now Yama or -san? And there are so many readings of the same Kanji. But I like learning this beautiful language. Thank you for this video.
There are so many exceptions, it's a nightmare. Generally the rule of thumb is in compound words the on-yomi reading is used (for your example, the 山 in 火山 is "zan" (as I type this I realize rendaku is another nightmare people have to deal with). Words on their own typically use the kun-yomi reading. Until you end up with an example that uses a body part like 右手 vs 左右 (migi-te, vs sayuu).
Difficulty of learning a language is highly subjective and it depends on the learner's native language, his/her previously learned second languages ... For instance, as a Moroccan, I started learning French on top of my native tongue (which is Moroccan Arabic) in school at the age of 3. In Morocco, you can see French wherever you go on street signs, shop names ... French is also used profusely in the Media. So when I started learning English in the 7th grade (about 11 years old) I had already mastered French to a certain extent and since they use the same Roman script on top of having a lot of cognates (e.g. 'animal' exists in both languages with different but close enough pronunciations), I picked up English easily. For a Japanese person, I am sure learning English would be much harder since they would have to start from scratch, unlike in my situation where I had a solid background in French that allowed me to recognize words in an English text from the very first encounter.
Related to what you are saying, one problem of learning Japanese is that there are no other languages like it, i.e. it has no relatives, so the beginning is really rough, as you are unlikely to have an advantageous starting point (like, say, if you already speak German and begin to learn Norwegian); additionally, if one has no understanding of grammar and syntax (not Japanese but in general), they are in for a wild ride. The grammar and the syntax is alien, the vocabulary is alien, reading and writing is amazingly convoluted, there is a staggering amount of homophones, mainly Sino-Japanese words that have nothing to do with each other etymologically, pitch accent is impossible to get right, unless you study it specifically and basically spend time listening to Japanese native speakers very attentively, etc etc. It is this insularity, I suppose, which would conversely make it hard for a native speaker of Japanese to learn foreign languages.
@@TovChapaev I totally agree. Japanese has many aspects that may make it more difficult than other languages for any user. Considering your point about similarity to other languages, I read in an article that since Japan adopted Chinese symbols for a lot of its Kanji, there was this restaurant where Chinese and Japanese cooks were able to communicate slightly using writing only of kanji/Chinese characters. So maybe, a Chinese person learning Japanese or a Japanese person learning Chinese may have a slight advantage.
Yeah definitely same situation as m Moroccan too and picked up English so easily around the same age in about 2 months only, but some how I feel like French is way harder than English, and many of my friends that are fluent in both share the same feeling, the grammar is just nuts, but then again Arabic grammar is just on a whole other level, m lookin at u اعراب While for my experience with Japanese the hardest part was without doubt the writing system and kanji as a whole (totally foreign to us Moroccans), the easiest would be pronunciation, so easy and so clear to pick up.
Also the simplistic phonetics of japanese makes them very untrained in learning to pronounce other languages, japanese people inexperienced in pronunciation can get to the point of being really had to understand.
For me, personally, the speed the Japanese speak the language is the biggest hurdle. Little to no pauses are made. My comprehension soars when I listen to podcasts where the speaker use slower speeds (or when listening to foreigners). A 2011 paper entitled "A cross-language perspective on speech information rate" places Japanese as the fastest language among the 7 they compared with 7.84 syllabuses per second while English comes 5th with a score of 6.19. On the other hand, English has a higher information rate at 1.08 compared to 0.74 for Japanese (Vietnamese was used as the base of 1).
So if I understand correctly, Japanese has more blah blah blah and less information and english has less blah blah blah and a high information within the same sentence/speech. It that right?
I have a similar issue. In this video, I was able to understand at least 80-90% of all the words spoken, but ONLY because I was looking at the English subtitles while watching. If I had of just listened without any additional help, my comprehension rate would probably be sub-50%. For quite some time this has been my biggest hurdle with Japanese, actually comprehending what people are saying when speaking at a native speed.
I feel like these answers were things they thought would be difficult for a foreign learner of Japanese, (I doubt any of them kind kana difficult or mix up words with completely different pitch accents). I wonder what they _personally_ find difficult
They would find kanji difficult. Yuta has a different video on how well Japanese people know kanji and the results are not that well. There are so many different words that have kanji and not all of them are used in everyday life so it can be easy to forget them.
Kizziecat3000 I agree. That’s why I didn’t include kanji Something else kinda cool too is that some words use different kanji depending on the specific meaning being emphasized of a particular word
"By feeling proud of your own language." English is filled with so many inconsistencies, rules and exceptions to rules that I can't exactly say I'm proud of it.
I can say I have an appreciation for it, but proud is a helluva stretch. I think I'm most appreciative when I can understand meanings or origins of foreign words by analyzing the English first. It's a testament to how much of a singular people we actually are.
Spanish native here and I must say I love English. It's kind of easy to learn compared to spanish but that doesn't mean it's bad. You can speak english to anyone in any part of the world nowadays: you can be more or less fluent, make some grammatical mistakes but you'll be able to have a coherent conversation and that's pretty cool imo
Bro I speak 3 fluent languages: Spanish, English and French while currently learning Japanese too, and I can honestly say the hardest language to write correctly personally has been french😂😂I started in an anglophone and francophone school and ever since primary I struggled with French though I found English very easy to pick up when i started learning it since my very first language was spanish
I think their assessment of why people think their language is hardest is spot on. I was an English tutor in college and OH MAN English can be so difficult! lolol
Also i cant help but think some of the things the Japanese people said that make their language difficult are super universal, like words with the same pronunciation having different meaning (their/there).
imo it's especially written English that's so illogical in many ways. There are so many silent letters, like the k in 'knock' or 'knife', or whole groups of letters like in "wednesday". I mean... why not just write "wensday" if that is how you're gonna pronounce it :p I know a lot of it has to do with how English speech has evolved over centuries, but when I look at it and think about it, a lot of it makes little sense (my native language is Dutch... which also has it's illogical quirks, but not nearly as much as English). And don't get me started on Worcestershire :p
To me, the hardest thing besides kanji and grammar is learning the "social consciousness" or what linguists call different "registers" (like Keigo) because you have to learn what words you are supposed to or allowed to use in different situations depending on who you are talking with and many cases who you are talking about.
To me, as a Dutch native speaker, the hardest part I find is the lack of separation between words. Dutch has very pronounced separations between words so even words you don't know can be isolated to grasp their meaning through context. In spoken Japanese, if I don't know what word is being said I just loose track of the whole thing. In writing I find that similar sounding symbols don't look similar at all. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to reduce the amount of symbols I need to know and there are way more shapes involved as well. So currently it feels like I need to know every symbol for every sound. Of course western languages aren't always consistent with what symbols are used, but even with the exceptions added it feels like I'd need to know less.
I have only recently discovered your channel but I must say, it is fantastic! As a person who truly loves Japanese culture trying to learn Japanese as a second language, your channel has really encouraged me to push myself even more! Many thanks and please keep up the great work!
At one point in your life it doesn´t matter to be " perfect" any more. Yuta himself has great English-skills and anyone will understand him perfectly even though his pronounciation will never hide the fact thae learned English at a quite late point in his life. You can be fluent and be not perfect at the same time.
Even more, Japanese, as well as tonal languages (Chinese, etc.), can differentiate them with how they sound (tone/pitch accent). In my native language or English (ex. bat as an animal and baseball bat) the meaning of these words can be guessed only by the context. So Japanese can be even easier than other languages in this particular example, lol.
@@Yuumiiiiiiiii Yeah easier to understand if you are able to listen for pitch accent which most people can't do. Easier to speak accurately if you actually remember the pitch accent of thousands of words. I'd prefer it not having pitch accent since it just adds another layer for learning new words
@@Yuumiiiiiiiii umm what? You ever tried learning japanese beyond basics? Just see the mess of mutliple words Many words even have similar pitch and sorry to say 99% of the learners dont pick up upon the differences
The guys from Osaka seem very sympathetic... kudos :). With German as mother tongue if I was asked if it was difficult difficult, I'd probably also answer yes. For me English is on the easier end of languages, but that's mainly because of the similarities between German and English. Japanese is it's own beast for us westerners. The pronunciation is mostly easy, but the writing system can be challenging. Grammar seems elegant but is also pretty different from that I am used to.
Just this morning a friend of mine from Kobe was telling me (on Skype) that a colleague's mother had tested positive (陽性) for Corona, and I thought she said that she'd turned into a fairy (妖精)... A little embarrassing! Actually, though I don't think native speakers are always the best at saying what's difficult about their own language. My impression is that many English learners struggle with prepositional phrases, for example, whereas native speakers don't think even think about them. I'd like to hear what Japanese people find difficult about learning English.
I'm not Japanese but I think English is at least a difficult to pronounce language. It has a large phonemic inventory, allows for a lot of consonant clustering, and has an unpredictable stress pattern.
The only problem with English is the silent letters... I hate that so much ..lol And random adopted words from other language yet changed the pronunciation totally.
"I think it is the natives who exactly knows the most difficult parts of their language." To my experience that's not quite true, once it all sounds natural for native speakers it's more plausible they won't realize which parts of their own language doesn't fit well in another language. And actually most problems they often say like homophones or writing systems are not actually a big deal for Japanese learners compared to other things such as auxiliary verbs that doesn't translate to english like '込む', some peculiar particle usage like を and に once verb transitivity differs from english. Also Western gramatical concepts like pronouns and prepositions don't make any sense in Japanese, leading to 'English structured Japanese Sentences' (英本語) Although the point about Pitch Accent (which they called 'Intonation') makes total sense, specially involving words people don't often listen to. Using ですよ and other アニメっぽい hook-terms sounds pretty foreigner also.
I think grammar-wise Japanese is quite easy. There are not many verb tenses and I found it quite easy to express even more complicated thoughts in Japanese (particularly if you consider the flowery syntax of certain Romance languages). The most difficult part of Japanese is 100% the writing system, kanji in particular and also katakana. Plus, also all the different intonations and also the whole formal versus informal talk.
Yea, I agree. When I started learning Japanese I had a lot of friends tell me “the grammar is so difficult!!” Because of keigo, I think. But because there are almost no irregulars or rule breaks it’s actually a lot easier than English, in my opinion.
Since Japanese was my third language the things I can say about it is that I actually don't think the spoken language is that hard, but the written language is a royal pain. One thing that is nice about it is that the amount of irregular grammar is pretty small. German for an English speaker is easy to learn the grammar and writing, but noun gender and verb irregularities are a massive headache. Japanese is a pretty regular language where even the exceptions tend to make a lot of sense.
@@TotemoGaijin but there are more subtle differences in the way men and women speak (for example, women usually don't say 僕 or 君, and men usually don't end their sentences with わ), although this is very different from masculine/feminine/neuter nouns
So true about Osaka versus Tokyo. Even as an infrequent visitor to the country I prefer the more relax atmosphere of Osaka. It would be a nice topic to compare and contrast the regional differences.
I think the hardest part is the actual speaking. Improvising on the fly. I remember one time I said something different when I meant と思いますか? And I could see the visible confusion. It can be rough but force yourself through it. Also, with the person that said the intonation thing I've seen that a lot. A lot of people that study it sound so stiff and robotic when talking it's weird. Maybe I do as well and just don't notice it.
Many people say that you need a dedicated study for picking up the pitch-accent, but I think it completely depends on the listening skills. They don't pronounce it that way because they cannot hear it that way. I also think that it is also dependent on your first language. If your first language contains those sounds already then it's not a problem and you can achieve a proper accent by just mimicking.
When I visited Japan, the hardest part was rejecting their attempts at auto-completing my sentences while trying to think of the next word myself. Hahaha.
Yuta, you should check out the Chage and Aska song Mr. Asia. It’s incredible. Every kanji in the song is equally applicable to being back in the country where you’re cool, or Fishing. I’ve always wished for the opportunity to ask them if this was deliberate.
I find it very interesting that when you asked what they think is difficult about Japanese their answers were completely different from what the mistakes Japanese learners make lol!
You can really see the difference in Osakan culture with that guy. He’s more confident, cheerful and energetic than the other interviewees. The one chewing gum was very handsome tho!
Maybe if you see it enough it doesn't occur to you as hard? Like there aren't really any mechanics or rules to learn about them besides how they look like and maybe strokes. When I think of a hard language (like English imo) I think of mechanics as compared to as easier language (like Chinese imo) where the mechanics are very simple you just need to remember the characters and learn slang.
@@danshakuimo To me it's difficult, because my brain expects to see symbols that hint pronounciation of word, meanwhile kanjis don't do that. Unless you memorise them very well and keep rehearsing them frequently it's not going to be smooth.
So true. So many homonyms in Japanese. Also the Chinese vs Japanese reading of words (kunyomi vs onyomi ) can drive you nuts. Don’t get me started with the counters 🤯. Still, worth learning.
It's interesting how Japanese say that their language is difficult. Many people in my country, Macedonia, have said that Macedonian is a pretty easy language, but when you look at it from a foreigner's perspective it's not that easy. My uncle is Belgian and he has barely learn few words in Macedonia and he finds Macedonian to be a difficult language. Anyway, interesting video.カンバて!
For me the most difficult part of Japanese is reading, and that's all because of Kunyomi/Onyomi. Very often I encounter new words with 2 or more Kanji and even though I know them and their different readings, I get the pronunciation wrong, because one of them has a Kunyomi-reading and the other one doesn't. That's, what gives Japanese its unique difficulty in my opinion, because in Chinese there're only a few characters with more than one pronunciation and if you know each Character of a sentence, you know how to read it out loud almost every time, even if some words are new (Of course Chinese has other difficult parts compared to Japanese). I find it much easier (still pretty hard) to learn how to speak Japanese. The biggest problem there is probably the different levels of politeness. And by that I don't mean how to learn the grammar, but to understand when to use each level.
I'm Indonesian and i think it's an easy language to learn tho, the only thing that makes Indonesian a little bit tricky is the prefix-suffix rule (formal language) or the variation varies exponentially depending on the region (non formal, but i guess it happens to all languages) Anyway great video as always Yuta, keep it up!
@@londonerlearnsjapanese3337 trad Chinese is.... Welp. Definitely helpful to learn but I would like to say one thing as someone who is learning Chinese in Taipei. Even native people are bad at handwriting and forgets lots of characters already..My teacher forgot how to write 咳嗽 when she had to fill out symptoms on the form at a clinic.. And the use of mobile phones and computers have made even native people able to read but not able to write from memory any more.
I guess japanese is quite dificult in terms of writing but for me at least, my mother language spanish is more difficult. There's just so many variations. One word in Spain can mean something completely different in Mexico, or Chile or Argentina. Also, for a non native speaker it must be really confusing to know when a noun is feminine or masculine. For example, A book is translated into "Un Libro" which is masculine. We don't say "Una Libro"
I’m learning both and I find Japanese much more difficult for me. In Spanish yeah I might get the gender wrong but that’s only for speaking, it doesn’t make listening harder. Japanese is just so different from English. Of course, it would be different if you asked a Japanese person, which languagew is harder, English or Spanish, I’d like to hear about that
But genders in spanish is easy as fuck. Yes there‘re exceptions but nontheless its easy. Try to do this with german. Yes there‘re rules. But its for the best just to learn the german genders Der, Die, Das by heart. Nevertheless they change which depends on the case of Sentence one encounter. For instance you Say Ich gehe in DIE Schule. In DER Schule lernt man.
"for a non native speaker it must be really confusing to know when a noun is feminine or masculine" Grammatical gender has really been my bane in learning foreign languages. I've not really studied Spanish (except a little bit on Duolingo) but German and Swedish have the same issue. German is in fact even worse since it has 3 grammatical genders.
I know Japanese is difficult to learn, and from the interview even Japanese people know it's difficult. But learning English as a kid until high school as my 2nd language, I can say that even English is freaking hard. Yes, it doesn't have Kanji but English grammar is such a mess. Like how many irregular verbs are there? You can't 100% predict how letters sound in new words. You have to learn intonations too. And lots of other things that you can't get wrong or else suffer the social media's wrath on commenting why you misplaced an apostrophe. Japanese has a more flexible sentence construction. Trully, once you studied grammar, only thing left is kanji.
As a native English speaker, who learned other languages, I realized how ridiculously difficult English is and would probably not do well in class if I had to learn it in a classroom setting. At least Japanese grammar makes sense lol.
It's weird because I found English incredibly easy and never had any trouble with it. Maybe is because my mother language is German and both languages share similarities in grammar and such Spelling in English truly is random but the more exposed you are to the language the easier it becomes predicting what can go together and what is not possible
I felt like I always had a decent grasp on English grammar, until I had a teacher who actually taught me, and he taught me that I was wrong. I really enjoyed that class, too because I was actually learning English properly with its little stupid nuances. I’m considering getting an English major to teach because of him. At the end of the day, English is stupid, and I love it.
That is the same reaction which my friend gave we he realised the same. He quit learning Japanese because of that but then he started again after sometime after me counselling him.
2:20 They all gave kind of a correct answer, but as a polyglot myself, i can tell the major thing that makes people think their native languages are hard is bcz they don't know other languages
I've been spending a few hours a day (oral and written) learning Japanese. I comment on Instagram and get some likes and the odd reply which is rarely in Japanese. It's usually a thank you in English. One girl is pretty good and compliments me on my studies. It keeps me motivated to continue my studies. I know my Japanese isn't always perfect, but still put in the effort. It can only improve with more practice!
Japanese is difficult? Huh. How hard is it to just say "I'm in the living room"? 今は居間にいます = ima wa ima ni imasu oh. (Btw, for the sample sentence above, each "ima" has its own vocal inflection)
Interview topic suggestion: When Japanese folks see anime/manga characters who are Japanese but have non-black hair (like blonde), do they assume the character dyes their hair? Or that this is an alternate universe where Japanese people also have blond/brown/etc hair? Or something else?
The difference between textbook Japanese and the spoken version is pretty jarring. When I first noticed the difference, it was extremely demoralizing. It is nice though that anime use textbook Japanese so I have an easy time understanding. Knowing the short forms of the verbs and te form, I can piece together what someone is talking about with nouns and verbs, but completely miss everything else. I would definitely say Japanese is an easy language but I think people tend to focus on the difficulty of the written characters too much. The US federal government has categories for how long it takes for federal employees to learn different languages and Japanese is in the *edit-hardest* category
That's a bit misleading, that chart is for English native speakers. However to learn Japanese from Chinese or even Korean, is much easier than learning Arabic and the such.
@@stt.9433 "No it's in the hardest category along with Chinese(Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic. recommends 2200 class hours." You're confusing "difficult" and "time consuming". As in, washing your car with a single toothbrush is not difficult. It is time consuming... but even a monkey could do it. Probably. Yes, memorizing kanji can take a lot of time, but when you consider grammar, it's pretty straightforward, with only a tiny amount of irregularity here and there. For comparison, in English, there are about 200 irregular verbs that are commonly used by an average speaker. You could count the number of commonly used irregular verbs in Japanese on one hand.
@Hope C I suggest you contact the US departement of State administrators so that they redact their page to your needs. Pulled straight from www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ which I invite you to read thoroughly, here is an excerpt " Category IV Languages: 88 weeks (2200 class hours) “Super-hard languages” - Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. Arabic Chinese - Cantonese Chinese - Mandarin Japanese Korean " My comment was a simple, completly objective refutation to his statment : "The US federal government has categories for how long it takes for federal employees to learn different languages and Japanese is in the easiest category . " I'm actually amused that you somehow misconstrued my comment into a debate about semantics. OP even redacted his statement recognizing his mistake. I'm not going to argue semantics with you but I would be hardpressed to find anyone who qualifies washing a car with a measly toothbursh as easy as going through a car wash.
"proper" English: "Farewell and I sincerely do hope to be delighted once again by your presence in future before the last wind will have whispered across the fields and our opportunity for gathering tête à tête is no more." Actual English: "K bye." (real life versions of languages often aren't that scary once you got the gist.)
I developed anxiety when learning Japanese, it was a course sponsored by my ex company and I was pressured to do well, we had to study full time from 8am to 5pm, and every morning before class, I would be sweating and heart beat very fast. Luckily, our Japanese teachers were very nice, as long as we did our best, every one passed the 3 months course. There after I still continue to improve my Japanese language, i learn to sing many many Japanese songs which I like. Thanks 😊
The guy at 2:30, when he said "if you're not in that country, you might not know some words" and he tells also slang, I have to say _ni_ . I mean, I'm not an English speaker but from 2015 I started watching videos regularly in English on youtube and I learned a lot of words and phrases. In the era we live, we don't need to go to a country to learn a language, youtube and other sites help you to hear the language everyday. I can also understand his point. Japanese and its alphabet is different from English, German, French and Italian that have the Latin alphabet. Japanese culture also is different from the Western one, so living in one country, i.e. America, can help you to learn words, slang and costumes that other countries don't have. Personally, living in a country to understand a culture or language is a thing that YOU want to experience and it depends also from your native language.
But you don't even have to learn kanji to learn the language, because of Furigana in textbooks. If learning Japanese fluently is 75% kanji and 25% vocabulary and grammar, I'd rather spend 100% of my time on vocabulary and grammar.
Kanji aside, I actually think Japanese is much easier than something like the romance languages, especially because it doesn't have male and female words. I also think the sentence structure is fairly simple, and pronunciation all being based on " a i u e o" is nice too. I think the only thing that can give people a hard time are things like "tsu" and the Japanese "r" that's sort of halfway between an "l" and an "r"
Spanish isn’t even close to as difficult as Japanese is. Male and female words are pretty simple dude. If it’s “o” at the end it’s male, “a” at the end for female. Go switch between spanish and French on google translate for a bit, it will be pretty easy to see what’s harder. Also, Japanese is SOV. Fuck that
This interview was interesting for me too because it shows that many Japanese people also think "textbook Japanese" doesn't quite sound natural.
I can also pinpoint pages of textbooks where people learn these "textbook" expressions.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with speaking "textbook" Japanese. We can still understand you. You don't have to speak "naturally" to communicate with us.
But if you are interesting learning "real-life" Japanese, I will send you Japanese lessons where I teach you the kind of Japanese that real-life Japanese people speak. Click here and subscribe bit.ly/3nwvg8H
How much do you take in hourly pay to be my tutor Yuta?
Yuta please reply to @Correction Guys question.
That's what I'm also gonna say! Aside from kanji.. There's a lot of same words but different meaning.. and also there is a lot of different words/grammar pattern but with same meaning like ~はずがない and ~わけがない..
that's why as a foreigner learning nihongo its really difficult..
@Odysseus 2.0 the pandemic is real, Japan just handled it better, because unlike the US one, the Japanese population is made of intelligent people, not morons, Trump supporters, and conspiracy flat Earthers like you!
Therefore, I politely ask you, to
keep your bullshit to yourself!
I think that there's a very valuable reason for learning "textbook" Japanese first, and it's that the basic です・ます as sentence endings is "safe." All Japanese learners run into problems with levels of politeness at first, so it's important to take cues from the person you're interacting with. That being said, no one will have a bad impression of you if you start speaking with です・ます, and they'll probably correct you if you're using too-polite language when the native speaker expected more conversational language.
i'll just quote one of my native Japanese teachers "If I wasn't Japanese, I wouldn't know Japanese"
lol I remember I said that to my cousin as a joke (native spanish speaker here)
Tbh, it's weird because I'm curious about what people consider is difficult about spanish. And I searched one day on youtube people talking about it and they never said anything I expected to hear (conjugation, the fact that you *have to* use a lot of grammar stuff like articles and a few things like that)
Most people talked about ser/estar (in english: to be) I believe. And also about how difficult it is to understand people from different countries and how fast it is. In case someone's curious.
If I wasn't American (or other English-primary country person), I would give up on my English class
@TheBrabon1 One time a friend posted on social media talking about how her Japanese teacher accidentally started speaking Spanish
@@mistbornlazarus2611 for me it's getting used to which past tense to use. And of course, subjuntivo
@TheBrabon1 No because it rooted from latin. That's why a lot of Victorian british folks can speaks french, they root from the same language, latin. In other words any european language that take roots from ancient latin are probably going to have the same occurring motifs like e.g. nominative and accusative or reversing the verb and the subject to ask question etc.
That is why it's no surprise that to compliment someone is cute in chinese which is "hao ke ai" ended up becoming Japanese "kawaii". Hell even china didn't had its own name for their own country if Japan didn't named it for them, before that it was named Qin after the dynasty.
It's all about the roots man.
"do you know any tips to learn Japanese?"
"good luck lol"
This was great hahaha. In reality when they say "ganbatte" even though it's often translated as "good luck" the actual meaning is "do your best". It's translated as good luck because it's used so often in the way that English people say "good luck on your test" instead of "do your best on the test". In this way, saying ganbatte isn't "good luck" as in "this is gonna be hard, good luck" more so "study hard!"
@@MattSalsa Exactly, to sum up your description, instead of "good luck", "ganbatte" means "show perseverance". :)
Yeah like you're on your own...
not really the exact translation hahaha "ganbatte" also means do your best and you can do it and etc.
@@VengeanceSinX Because it technically it is. 🙂.. To learn another language you, especially Japanese. The best thing to do is do your best, Wether learning the alphabet, vocabulary, Kanji, Writing etc..
Your interviews show such a pleasant side of the people you talk with .
I was thinking the same thing. :D
👍
Japanese people are just really friendly
If you give a friendly vibe they'll definitely mirror that same vibe back
The guy at 2:17 gave a very insightful response, rather than just trying to say that Japanese is easier or harder than a particular language.
I loved his response. Very insightful and spot on!
He was really special
He might be an engineer.
Yogesh Ghadge
It’s probably from his own experience trying to learn another language(s). Or maybe he just finds language interesting and likes to think about it. By no means am I trying to undermine the importance of what he said (if anything, I feel the opposite), but it’s not really a groundbreaking insight. In fact, it’s something that can be all too easily overlooked or underappreciated. He seems like a thoughtful person for sure
@@littlefishbigmountain It's very much about having an awareness of the interplay between language and consciousness. That language is the basis for which we ground our concepts in. And that concepts are as fluid and as living as language. At least that's my take on it, for what it's worth 😋
I'm getting better and better at predicting when in the video Yuta is going to plug in his Japanese lessons :) Great video as always.
It's always at the end.
@@yogeshghadge5748 it used to be always at the end, but now he sometimes does it in the middle
@@Angelo-wg2kb yeah..lol
@@Angelo-wg2kb キシュネ
yeah i developed that skill too xD
“In Japanese one word can mean a few different things depending on pitch”
Let me teach you a language called Chinese
Japanese is based on Chinese, so your point is moot.
@@md_vandenberg ? Only the Kanji is Chinese, the spoken language is totally different.
Vietnamese.
Yeah Vietnam is a nightmare to learn
@@md_vandenberg Japanese isn't based on Chinese. Just Kanji and loan words.
Pre-COVID life looks like a parallel universe
DUDE SAME THOUGHT HERE!!!
This must be the choice of the Steins;Gate !
I'm not crying :'v
I agree.
Pre-government subjugation before the forced lockdowns seems lovely.
u guys do know u can just watch a video w/o relating it to the pandemic right
I'm learning Japanese right now. I love it, but at the same time, it's making me cry.
I can understand the feeling.
Same
Me too😭🙏
Same, but there's the odd bit here and there that I find oddly easy to remember. For example the Kanji for house 家 I think looks like a man running to the right, which in my head sticks as running home, thus 家 = house. Also cat 猫 looks like a cat's face with whiskers to me for some reason, and company 会社 looks like a man walking away from a stand on which he'd had his work clothes and off to work or the office. The same goes for the Kanji for table, kitchen, bath, bedroom, chair, dog and a few other simple ones. Also 鳥 for some reason easily sticks in my mind as meaning bird, but I'm not sure why.
Now a very simple one which maybe proves I have a dirty mind.
ほ = ho, because it reminds me of a "ho" standing by a street light at the side of the road.
@@GiveMeBackMyUsernameRUclips Kanji are easy for me, it's understanding sentences which kills me.
4:19 I was once asking my teacher if I could go to the bathroom, in keigo. However, I used the wrong form, so I ended up asking HER to go to the bathroom for me
Haha that's hilarious xD I learned English as 2nd language, teacher told us to pay attention to how we construct the sentence so we don't end up telling the doc "your stomach hurts me" lol
@@AriaHarmony "your stomach hurts me" sounds like a perfect insult. Can I borrow it ?
@@NIDELLANEUM go right ahead xD
In my opinion, the two hardest parts of Japanese are idioms and dialects.
In Japanese, "pearls before swine" is "an oval to a cat," like, what?!
Kansai dialect is quite confusing. I listen to a rap group that occasionally uses Kansai dialect and they'll say something like "tsutawarahen" instead of "tsutawaranai" and most of the time, you can't look it up. I still can't find a proper Kansai dictionary.
A koban is an Edo-era coin, the "oval" meaning comes from the shape of the coin. So it's not "an oval to a cat", but "(throwing) coins before cats", which has the exact same implication as "(throwing) pearls before swine" - wasting something valuable on someone who can't appreciate its value.
The full Japanese phrase is "buta ni shinju, neko ni koban", literally "pearls before swine, coins before cats".
@@Pikachu132 That makes more sense. A lot of times, the history gets lost in translations.
@@Trainfan1055Janathan I have no idea where you got that "oval" translation from, though. I just threw "neko ni koban" into Google, and every single hit on the first page explains it as meaning "a (gold) coin/money to a cat". I've never seen this get lost in translation ever.
@@Pikachu132 I guess they updated it then. The "oval" translation comes from an attempt to translate the idiom with Google Translate years ago.
@@Trainfan1055Janathan Oh. No, I meant the actual Google. Do a google search for "neko ni koban" and you'll get tons of websites explaining the idiom to English speakers. I checked Google Translate, and yeah, that translates it to "oval to cat". Google Translate is bad and should in general not be trusted.
Japanese people: it's difficult to learn japanese
Me: this video can't stop me
Same 😂
If we enjoy the process and have patience then the journey for understanding japanese will be pleasant.
Yes, but my brain can. Can stop me.
I'll prove them wrong haha
That’s a good mindset that everyone should have
As someone learning Japanese I feel comfortable speaking it because it rarely changes, but reading/writing it is the most difficult part.
I am opposite to you, for me reading is much easier because I spend most of time learning online and there is no one to tpractice my speaking with
I think reading, if you learnt the langage by readind kanjis, will be easier, but if you learnt japanese by speaking, it would be easier too because the Japanese langage is well structured, and you even notice it in the intonation of each sentence. So it depends on how you learnt it.
Personally, I have the 3 at the same time, I'm pretty good at speaking or hearing, reading in Japanese and it should be OK with writing, because I tried to learn the three of them at the same time.
Exactly how I feel.
@@stayskeptic3923 depending from where you are, to me Japanese is easy to understand and speak, It has the same phonetics as Spanish in 6 months I could talk to a Japanese person and create a bit complex sentences
@@kamikazeneko9070 I’m the EXACT SAME
For the short answer: *Yes, it's difficult.*
No matter how you look at it, it's completely dependent on your native language, if a language has a similar grammar and writing system to your native language, it is naturally going to be easier to learn than a language which uses a completely different writing system. Its also dependent on the person trying to learn the language, some people can learn languages that are fundamentally different to their own in a very short time compared to those who may take a very long time to learn a language that is very similar to their native language.
What im saying is that its a cluster fuck and i respect anybody who puts in the time and dedication to learn a second/third (and so on) language.
Muzukashi, apparently.
People tend to think their language is harder because one word has many meanings, but it's actually easier because it's easier for brain to write on something that it already knows.
@@TheXerforce No worries, I don't want to argue - You're completely right! Beautifully written and explained (:
All of them depend on origins. Same letters like in european languages make it way easier to learn other ones, if you're a native. When languages are related, like romance languages, germanic languages, it's even more easier to learn a language from the same "tree".
I started to learn chinese and japanese as a german native - and it's very interesting which aspects are turning out to be incredibly difficult, but also to be easy. Kanji are very hard, yes - the grammar on the other hand seems to be utterly simple, as Yuta said. For a chinese or korean native it's probably another thing, and the characters are a more or less easy thing.
Okay, I don't know the relations of asian languages tbh. But damn - languages are so incredibly interesting!
This answer is unrelated to the question asked in the title of the video.
The part at 4:15 about formal vs informal is super relatable. Even after 4 years speaking Japanese I still use casual speech in situations where formal is probably better, but I don't do it to be disrespectful, that's just how I talk to everyone. Family, friends, strangers, elders, peers, etc. it's all the same. Even in English I talk to everyone the same way. The only exceptions are during events like presentations at school or something.
I thought most people learning Japanese always use formal when they should be using casual. I'm probably one of those weirdos who sounds like an old person since I end up using both inconsistently.
一所懸命頑張ります！！このビデオはありがとうございます。
"one word can have a lot of meanings"
Spanish: hold my paella...
In English this also happens
@@profesor_who is that where it comes from?
lait, laie, laid, and les (in some accents)
All pronounced the same. Respectively "milk", "wild sow", "ugly" (masculine singular), "the" (plural)
mais, mets, met, and mes (in some accents)
Respectively : "but", "meal" (or the 1st/2nd person singular conjugation of "to put"), 3rd person singular of "to put", "my" (plural)
And of course...
au, aux, eau, eaux, haut, hauts, ô, oh
Respectively : "to the" (masculine singular, if the next word doesn't start with a vowel), "to the" (plural), "water", "waters", "high" (masculine singular), "high" (masculine plural), "o" (the interjection), "oh"
French.
@@Flugs0 thr name doesn't come from there. "Pa' ella" is a short/faster way to say "for her" and I think it's used in some areas but not in all spanish speaking countries.
@@Mercure250 I actually began noticing that while studying French, it's super fun but really confusing
I have it as a school subject, but I don't really study it as much as Japanese.
I think French grammar is harder than Japanese grammar, even as a native Spanish speaker myself.
I was tired and almost giving up of my studies today, but for some reason, after this video I'll get the out of my bed and come back to my annotations. Thank you!
I will definitely learn it.
How many months have u been studying?
The encouraging message at the end from them telling us to keep at it, good luck and to not give up, is much appreciated! :)
Currently learning Japanese
I'm learning Japanese back and well, the conjugation of verbs is a headache. At least not worse than Portuguese or Spanish.
@St0rm Ranger yeah, i'm also studying japanese and when I have to translate the sentence in my native language to japanese or figuring out what's the meaning of the sentence is very hard because of the order that japanese arrange their words is so different from the rest of the world.
yeah I feel the pain, the subjective tenses killed me lol
I had Spanish at school and it made me want to pull my hair out. French was already bad enough but the Spanish conjugation of verbs is on a whole different level. Also, two states of "to be", what bullshit is that?
@@HAJIMEDJ I know, I know, my Portuguese language is similar. English has a easier structure in comparison.
check out german conjugation xD sometimes its even hard for german people xD
For me the most difficult part of the japanese language is reading. Even when you know the meaning of a Kanji, then you don't know the right speaking of it in a special sentence. An easy example: 山 is this now Yama or -san? And there are so many readings of the same Kanji. But I like learning this beautiful language. Thank you for this video.
There are so many exceptions, it's a nightmare. Generally the rule of thumb is in compound words the on-yomi reading is used (for your example, the 山 in 火山 is "zan" (as I type this I realize rendaku is another nightmare people have to deal with). Words on their own typically use the kun-yomi reading. Until you end up with an example that uses a body part like 右手 vs 左右 (migi-te, vs sayuu).
Trust me: listening is confusing too. Japanese people tend to speak fast (a bit like Spanish people or me on caffeine).
Difficulty of learning a language is highly subjective and it depends on the learner's native language, his/her previously learned second languages ... For instance, as a Moroccan, I started learning French on top of my native tongue (which is Moroccan Arabic) in school at the age of 3. In Morocco, you can see French wherever you go on street signs, shop names ... French is also used profusely in the Media. So when I started learning English in the 7th grade (about 11 years old) I had already mastered French to a certain extent and since they use the same Roman script on top of having a lot of cognates (e.g. 'animal' exists in both languages with different but close enough pronunciations), I picked up English easily. For a Japanese person, I am sure learning English would be much harder since they would have to start from scratch, unlike in my situation where I had a solid background in French that allowed me to recognize words in an English text from the very first encounter.
Related to what you are saying, one problem of learning Japanese is that there are no other languages like it, i.e. it has no relatives, so the beginning is really rough, as you are unlikely to have an advantageous starting point (like, say, if you already speak German and begin to learn Norwegian); additionally, if one has no understanding of grammar and syntax (not Japanese but in general), they are in for a wild ride. The grammar and the syntax is alien, the vocabulary is alien, reading and writing is amazingly convoluted, there is a staggering amount of homophones, mainly Sino-Japanese words that have nothing to do with each other etymologically, pitch accent is impossible to get right, unless you study it specifically and basically spend time listening to Japanese native speakers very attentively, etc etc. It is this insularity, I suppose, which would conversely make it hard for a native speaker of Japanese to learn foreign languages.
@@TovChapaev I totally agree. Japanese has many aspects that may make it more difficult than other languages for any user. Considering your point about similarity to other languages, I read in an article that since Japan adopted Chinese symbols for a lot of its Kanji, there was this restaurant where Chinese and Japanese cooks were able to communicate slightly using writing only of kanji/Chinese characters. So maybe, a Chinese person learning Japanese or a Japanese person learning Chinese may have a slight advantage.
Yeah definitely same situation as m Moroccan too and picked up English so easily around the same age in about 2 months only, but some how I feel like French is way harder than English, and many of my friends that are fluent in both share the same feeling, the grammar is just nuts, but then again Arabic grammar is just on a whole other level, m lookin at u اعراب
While for my experience with Japanese the hardest part was without doubt the writing system and kanji as a whole (totally foreign to us Moroccans), the easiest would be pronunciation, so easy and so clear to pick up.
Also the simplistic phonetics of japanese makes them very untrained in learning to pronounce other languages, japanese people inexperienced in pronunciation can get to the point of being really had to understand.
Same as u except that I'm Algerian. English is very easy when you fluently speak French.
For me, personally, the speed the Japanese speak the language is the biggest hurdle. Little to no pauses are made. My comprehension soars when I listen to podcasts where the speaker use slower speeds (or when listening to foreigners).
A 2011 paper entitled "A cross-language perspective on speech information rate" places Japanese as the fastest language among the 7 they compared with 7.84 syllabuses per second while English comes 5th with a score of 6.19. On the other hand, English has a higher information rate at 1.08 compared to 0.74 for Japanese (Vietnamese was used as the base of 1).
So if I understand correctly, Japanese has more blah blah blah and less information and english has less blah blah blah and a high information within the same sentence/speech. It that right?
I have a similar issue. In this video, I was able to understand at least 80-90% of all the words spoken, but ONLY because I was looking at the English subtitles while watching. If I had of just listened without any additional help, my comprehension rate would probably be sub-50%. For quite some time this has been my biggest hurdle with Japanese, actually comprehending what people are saying when speaking at a native speed.
To me, Japanese is very slow. I watched this video at 2x speed and understood everything they said.
Now that I think about it, I'm Japanese.
I read that article as well. Very interesting.
@@絶望ガール-v3s wwww
For me, learning Japanese for just 5 minutes is better than a whole lesson of math class
Lmaoooo same
nah i think studying japanese is fun
@Terion ll I know. It's just that math is something I don't find that useful when I don't even want to learn it
@@SparkyisJack Be decent at math --> major in STEM during university --> get STEM career making good money --> visit Japan whenever you want.
@@d0m2288 calm your horses. I'm too young to understand.
I feel like these answers were things they thought would be difficult for a foreign learner of Japanese, (I doubt any of them kind kana difficult or mix up words with completely different pitch accents). I wonder what they _personally_ find difficult
I find it difficult.
They would find kanji difficult. Yuta has a different video on how well Japanese people know kanji and the results are not that well. There are so many different words that have kanji and not all of them are used in everyday life so it can be easy to forget them.
Kizziecat3000
I agree. That’s why I didn’t include kanji
Something else kinda cool too is that some words use different kanji depending on the specific meaning being emphasized of a particular word
Yogesh Ghadge
Are you a native Japanese speaker?
@@littlefishbigmountain no
All of these people seem so nice! I hope they're doing great!
"By feeling proud of your own language."
English is filled with so many inconsistencies, rules and exceptions to rules that I can't exactly say I'm proud of it.
I can say I have an appreciation for it, but proud is a helluva stretch. I think I'm most appreciative when I can understand meanings or origins of foreign words by analyzing the English first. It's a testament to how much of a singular people we actually are.
Spanish native here and I must say I love English. It's kind of easy to learn compared to spanish but that doesn't mean it's bad. You can speak english to anyone in any part of the world nowadays: you can be more or less fluent, make some grammatical mistakes but you'll be able to have a coherent conversation and that's pretty cool imo
*Laughs in Dutch*
Bro I speak 3 fluent languages: Spanish, English and French while currently learning Japanese too, and I can honestly say the hardest language to write correctly personally has been french😂😂I started in an anglophone and francophone school and ever since primary I struggled with French though I found English very easy to pick up when i started learning it since my very first language was spanish
Plus, even native speakers make incredibly basic mistakes. It's not much to be proud of..
Yeah I totally agree the culture is unique, people are polite kind and generous.
I think their assessment of why people think their language is hardest is spot on. I was an English tutor in college and OH MAN English can be so difficult! lolol
Also i cant help but think some of the things the Japanese people said that make their language difficult are super universal, like words with the same pronunciation having different meaning (their/there).
imo it's especially written English that's so illogical in many ways. There are so many silent letters, like the k in 'knock' or 'knife', or whole groups of letters like in "wednesday". I mean... why not just write "wensday" if that is how you're gonna pronounce it :p I know a lot of it has to do with how English speech has evolved over centuries, but when I look at it and think about it, a lot of it makes little sense (my native language is Dutch... which also has it's illogical quirks, but not nearly as much as English). And don't get me started on Worcestershire :p
0:40 that guy's smile is so sweet
To me, the hardest thing besides kanji and grammar is learning the "social consciousness" or what linguists call different "registers" (like Keigo) because you have to learn what words you are supposed to or allowed to use in different situations depending on who you are talking with and many cases who you are talking about.
Never give up !! Good luck ! (from 🇯🇵)
3:33 Immediately thought of Dogen-sensei
I constantly watch your videos and gotta enjoy it tbh
I'd love for a video where you ask people what languages they think of as hard/easy
Honestly i like your thumbnails, yapanese gurls are so prettyy
my goal of learning Japanese is modest, I just want to learn to be able to understand RUclips videos in Japanese with or without subtitles .
same
Wow this was pretty helpful thanks man! 👍👌
Awesome idea with the interviews!
Hi from Buffalo,NY
To me, as a Dutch native speaker, the hardest part I find is the lack of separation between words. Dutch has very pronounced separations between words so even words you don't know can be isolated to grasp their meaning through context. In spoken Japanese, if I don't know what word is being said I just loose track of the whole thing.
In writing I find that similar sounding symbols don't look similar at all. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to reduce the amount of symbols I need to know and there are way more shapes involved as well. So currently it feels like I need to know every symbol for every sound. Of course western languages aren't always consistent with what symbols are used, but even with the exceptions added it feels like I'd need to know less.
I have only recently discovered your channel but I must say, it is fantastic! As a person who truly loves Japanese culture trying to learn Japanese as a second language, your channel has really encouraged me to push myself even more! Many thanks and please keep up the great work!
At one point in your life it doesn´t matter to be " perfect" any more. Yuta himself has great English-skills and anyone will understand him perfectly even though his pronounciation will never hide the fact thae learned English at a quite late point in his life. You can be fluent and be not perfect at the same time.
Hi pal, this is one of your best videos, really great
"One word can have many meanings"
EVERY LANGUAGE DOES THAT.
Thats understandable but jp have way too many
Even more, Japanese, as well as tonal languages (Chinese, etc.), can differentiate them with how they sound (tone/pitch accent). In my native language or English (ex. bat as an animal and baseball bat) the meaning of these words can be guessed only by the context. So Japanese can be even easier than other languages in this particular example, lol.
@@Yuumiiiiiiiii Yeah easier to understand if you are able to listen for pitch accent which most people can't do. Easier to speak accurately if you actually remember the pitch accent of thousands of words. I'd prefer it not having pitch accent since it just adds another layer for learning new words
@@Yuumiiiiiiiii umm what? You ever tried learning japanese beyond basics?
Just see the mess of mutliple words
Many words even have similar pitch and sorry to say 99% of the learners dont pick up upon the differences
@@Miksu__ you dont need to worry about the pitch accent, thats somethibg you develop naturally rather than memorising them
The guys from Osaka seem very sympathetic... kudos :). With German as mother tongue if I was asked if it was difficult difficult, I'd probably also answer yes. For me English is on the easier end of languages, but that's mainly because of the similarities between German and English. Japanese is it's own beast for us westerners. The pronunciation is mostly easy, but the writing system can be challenging. Grammar seems elegant but is also pretty different from that I am used to.
4:22 "osu!"
wait, the rhythm game?
You're back!!! Thanks for doing these things for us!!
Thanks so much!
Just this morning a friend of mine from Kobe was telling me (on Skype) that a colleague's mother had tested positive (陽性) for Corona, and I thought she said that she'd turned into a fairy (妖精)... A little embarrassing!
Actually, though I don't think native speakers are always the best at saying what's difficult about their own language. My impression is that many English learners struggle with prepositional phrases, for example, whereas native speakers don't think even think about them. I'd like to hear what Japanese people find difficult about learning English.
I'm not Japanese but I think English is at least a difficult to pronounce language. It has a large phonemic inventory, allows for a lot of consonant clustering, and has an unpredictable stress pattern.
The only problem with English is the silent letters... I hate that so much ..lol
And random adopted words from other language yet changed the pronunciation totally.
Really nice young people ! Thank you. It really helps us Japanese learners !
"I think it is the natives who exactly knows the most difficult parts of their language." To my experience that's not quite true, once it all sounds natural for native speakers it's more plausible they won't realize which parts of their own language doesn't fit well in another language. And actually most problems they often say like homophones or writing systems are not actually a big deal for Japanese learners compared to other things such as auxiliary verbs that doesn't translate to english like '込む', some peculiar particle usage like を and に once verb transitivity differs from english. Also Western gramatical concepts like pronouns and prepositions don't make any sense in Japanese, leading to 'English structured Japanese Sentences' (英本語)
Although the point about Pitch Accent (which they called 'Intonation') makes total sense, specially involving words people don't often listen to. Using ですよ and other アニメっぽい hook-terms sounds pretty foreigner also.
this was a good video yuta, cant wait to come to japan and study my Japanese
I think grammar-wise Japanese is quite easy. There are not many verb tenses and I found it quite easy to express even more complicated thoughts in Japanese (particularly if you consider the flowery syntax of certain Romance languages). The most difficult part of Japanese is 100% the writing system, kanji in particular and also katakana. Plus, also all the different intonations and also the whole formal versus informal talk.
Yea, I agree. When I started learning Japanese I had a lot of friends tell me “the grammar is so difficult!!” Because of keigo, I think. But because there are almost no irregulars or rule breaks it’s actually a lot easier than English, in my opinion.
Thank you Yuta. I appreciated this video.
Since Japanese was my third language the things I can say about it is that I actually don't think the spoken language is that hard, but the written language is a royal pain.
One thing that is nice about it is that the amount of irregular grammar is pretty small. German for an English speaker is easy to learn the grammar and writing, but noun gender and verb irregularities are a massive headache. Japanese is a pretty regular language where even the exceptions tend to make a lot of sense.
This is why I love Japanese, lol. No male/female words. That alone makes it feel way simpler.
@@TotemoGaijin but there are more subtle differences in the way men and women speak (for example, women usually don't say 僕 or 君, and men usually don't end their sentences with わ), although this is very different from masculine/feminine/neuter nouns
I'm from Germany and German must be really disencouraging for foreigners. No matter how hard they try, there will always be some minor mistakes.
So true about Osaka versus Tokyo. Even as an infrequent visitor to the country I prefer the more relax atmosphere of Osaka. It would be a nice topic to compare and contrast the regional differences.
I think the hardest part is the actual speaking. Improvising on the fly. I remember one time I said something different when I meant と思いますか? And I could see the visible confusion. It can be rough but force yourself through it. Also, with the person that said the intonation thing I've seen that a lot. A lot of people that study it sound so stiff and robotic when talking it's weird. Maybe I do as well and just don't notice it.
When Japanese say “intonation”, what they really mean by that is pitch-accent.
Many people say that you need a dedicated study for picking up the pitch-accent, but I think it completely depends on the listening skills. They don't pronounce it that way because they cannot hear it that way. I also think that it is also dependent on your first language. If your first language contains those sounds already then it's not a problem and you can achieve a proper accent by just mimicking.
St0rm Ranger That’s what I was looking for weeks. Please recommend more websites
When I visited Japan, the hardest part was rejecting their attempts at auto-completing my sentences while trying to think of the next word myself. Hahaha.
Yuta, you should check out the Chage and Aska song Mr. Asia. It’s incredible. Every kanji in the song is equally applicable to being back in the country where you’re cool, or Fishing. I’ve always wished for the opportunity to ask them if this was deliberate.
It doesn't matter if it's easy or hard to learn any languages, the main matter is how much your passion to learn the language is.
Fantastic video, Yuta.
Yuta -- I noticed that you decided to translate "やばい" as "That's crazy!". Interesting choice.
yuta's 100 word pdf hs really helped me! thanks yuta
I find it very interesting that when you asked what they think is difficult about Japanese their answers were completely different from what the mistakes Japanese learners make lol!
I love the way that they gave thoughtful answers, it really helps!
You can really see the difference in Osakan culture with that guy. He’s more confident, cheerful and energetic than the other interviewees. The one chewing gum was very handsome tho!
That's why i prefer osaka
@@elmalanmalan2175 me too
Thanks, im motivated again ❤️
I'm surprised nobody said that reading Kanji is hard. I always think it's the hardest part of learning japanese
Maybe if you see it enough it doesn't occur to you as hard? Like there aren't really any mechanics or rules to learn about them besides how they look like and maybe strokes. When I think of a hard language (like English imo) I think of mechanics as compared to as easier language (like Chinese imo) where the mechanics are very simple you just need to remember the characters and learn slang.
@@danshakuimo To me it's difficult, because my brain expects to see symbols that hint pronounciation of word, meanwhile kanjis don't do that. Unless you memorise them very well and keep rehearsing them frequently it's not going to be smooth.
@@MJ-uk6lu You don't know many Kanji, do you? Because there are tons of Kanji that have a pronounciation hint in it:)
@@m.m.2341 It's always tough to read anything other than roman letter tbh.
@@MJ-uk6lu just keep practicing 😊
So true. So many homonyms in Japanese. Also the Chinese vs Japanese reading of words (kunyomi vs onyomi ) can drive you nuts. Don’t get me started with the counters 🤯. Still, worth learning.
It's interesting how Japanese say that their language is difficult. Many people in my country, Macedonia, have said that Macedonian is a pretty easy language, but when you look at it from a foreigner's perspective it's not that easy. My uncle is Belgian and he has barely learn few words in Macedonia and he finds Macedonian to be a difficult language. Anyway, interesting video.カンバて!
頑張って* xd
As a person interested in learning some Bulgarian, how is Macedonian is an easy language to you? Just curious
For me the most difficult part of Japanese is reading, and that's all because of Kunyomi/Onyomi. Very often I encounter new words with 2 or more Kanji and even though I know them and their different readings, I get the pronunciation wrong, because one of them has a Kunyomi-reading and the other one doesn't. That's, what gives Japanese its unique difficulty in my opinion, because in Chinese there're only a few characters with more than one pronunciation and if you know each Character of a sentence, you know how to read it out loud almost every time, even if some words are new (Of course Chinese has other difficult parts compared to Japanese).
I find it much easier (still pretty hard) to learn how to speak Japanese. The biggest problem there is probably the different levels of politeness. And by that I don't mean how to learn the grammar, but to understand when to use each level.
Omg bye the first guy is so cute 😭
I'm Indonesian and i think it's an easy language to learn tho, the only thing that makes Indonesian a little bit tricky is the prefix-suffix rule (formal language) or the variation varies exponentially depending on the region (non formal, but i guess it happens to all languages)
Anyway great video as always Yuta, keep it up!
Look at me, it's -10 degrees and I'am here harvesting Asiatic clams!...
...that's why you should...
...NEVER GIVE UP!!
Akiramenaide!
GANBATE DAYO!
Asiatic clams are delicious even in hot and humid climates ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
@Dovyeon Neither it's in Rankine. just kidding.
I love this video! thank you Yuta :)
As a foreigner who's learning Japanese, my weak points are definitely keigo, particles(sometimes), and Kanji.
Yep! Same here, I'm avoiding informal speak for a little bit. Saying "desu" all the time lol
I read kanji as Chinese way. Because it is hard to remember.😂
@@夏天天-k5b Same lol! some advantage of learning Chinese before Japanese. If only I first learned traditional characters first!
@@londonerlearnsjapanese3337 trad Chinese is.... Welp. Definitely helpful to learn but I would like to say one thing as someone who is learning Chinese in Taipei.
Even native people are bad at handwriting and forgets lots of characters already..My teacher forgot how to write 咳嗽 when she had to fill out symptoms on the form at a clinic..
And the use of mobile phones and computers have made even native people able to read but not able to write from memory any more.
It is definitely tricky and difficult but the Kanji really gets to me where I can try to get an understanding on Hirigana or Katakana
I guess japanese is quite dificult in terms of writing but for me at least, my mother language spanish is more difficult.
There's just so many variations. One word in Spain can mean something completely different in Mexico, or Chile or Argentina.
Also, for a non native speaker it must be really confusing to know when a noun is feminine or masculine.
For example, A book is translated into "Un Libro" which is masculine. We don't say "Una Libro"
I’m learning both and I find Japanese much more difficult for me. In Spanish yeah I might get the gender wrong but that’s only for speaking, it doesn’t make listening harder. Japanese is just so different from English. Of course, it would be different if you asked a Japanese person, which languagew is harder, English or Spanish, I’d like to hear about that
But genders in spanish is easy as fuck. Yes there‘re exceptions but nontheless its easy. Try to do this with german. Yes there‘re rules. But its for the best just to learn the german genders Der, Die, Das by heart. Nevertheless they change which depends on the case of Sentence one encounter. For instance you Say Ich gehe in DIE Schule. In DER Schule lernt man.
"for a non native speaker it must be really confusing to know when a noun is feminine or masculine"
Grammatical gender has really been my bane in learning foreign languages. I've not really studied Spanish (except a little bit on Duolingo) but German and Swedish have the same issue. German is in fact even worse since it has 3 grammatical genders.
People in this video are so cheerful
I know Japanese is difficult to learn, and from the interview even Japanese people know it's difficult. But learning English as a kid until high school as my 2nd language, I can say that even English is freaking hard. Yes, it doesn't have Kanji but English grammar is such a mess. Like how many irregular verbs are there? You can't 100% predict how letters sound in new words. You have to learn intonations too. And lots of other things that you can't get wrong or else suffer the social media's wrath on commenting why you misplaced an apostrophe.
Japanese has a more flexible sentence construction. Trully, once you studied grammar, only thing left is kanji.
As a native English speaker, who learned other languages, I realized how ridiculously difficult English is and would probably not do well in class if I had to learn it in a classroom setting. At least Japanese grammar makes sense lol.
It's weird because I found English incredibly easy and never had any trouble with it. Maybe is because my mother language is German and both languages share similarities in grammar and such
Spelling in English truly is random but the more exposed you are to the language the easier it becomes predicting what can go together and what is not possible
I felt like I always had a decent grasp on English grammar, until I had a teacher who actually taught me, and he taught me that I was wrong. I really enjoyed that class, too because I was actually learning English properly with its little stupid nuances. I’m considering getting an English major to teach because of him.
At the end of the day, English is stupid, and I love it.
こうやって日本人の日本語聞いてると結構日本語の使い方とか文法間違いだらけなんだな。
特に4:53の
☓「日本楽しみにしてください」
○「日本を楽しみにしていてください」とか「日本の文化を楽しんでください」
伝えたいことはなんとなく分かるけど、この男性の方が一番違和感ある話し方で最初この人日本人？ってなっちゃった
Hiragana and katakana : hahaha its ez to me
*Kanji exist
Me : なに!!
That is the same reaction which my friend gave we he realised the same. He quit learning Japanese because of that but then he started again after sometime after me counselling him.
Furigana: ALLOW US TO INTRODUCE OURSELVES. You still have to mug up the meanings though!
@@varunmanjunath9123 lol..
*laughs in Chinese as first language*
Katakana is difficult because you really need to pronounce english words with japanese sounds. Hiragana is the best for me
2:20 They all gave kind of a correct answer, but as a polyglot myself, i can tell the major thing that makes people think their native languages are hard is bcz they don't know other languages
この日本語は難しい英語は簡単って言ってる人は英語は使えるのかな？
英語をちゃんと使えないくせに日本語は難しいって言ってるとしたらすごく馬鹿っぽい。
一般生活で使えるレベルになるまでの難易度は英語のほうがずっと高いと思う。
日本語は文の単語の順番をめちゃくちゃに入れ替えても大体通じる。
英語は文法通りに言わないと意味が通じない。
聞き取りや発音も英語のほうが難しい。
ただ一般生活に必要ない部分まで極めるとしたら漢字や敬語がある日本語のほうが難しいと思う。
でもそこまで極める日本人はほとんどいない。
I've been spending a few hours a day (oral and written) learning Japanese. I comment on Instagram and get some likes and the odd reply which is rarely in Japanese. It's usually a thank you in English. One girl is pretty good and compliments me on my studies. It keeps me motivated to continue my studies. I know my Japanese isn't always perfect, but still put in the effort. It can only improve with more practice!
In Japanese, there are 49 words that are pronounced as “こうしょう (koushou)”.
交床
交渉
交睫
交鈔
厚相
厚賞
公傷
公娼
公相
公称
公証
咬傷
口承
口誦
哄笑
好尚
工匠
工商
工廠
巧匠
巧笑
康正
康尚
後章
後証
校章
洪鐘
甲匠
紅晶
綱掌
翺翔
考証
行省
行粧
行障
行賞
鉱床
講頌
講誦
降将
高声
高姓
高尚
高承
高昌
高商
高唱
高蹤
黄鐘
Alriiiiiiiiiight haha 😂
which is why context is very important..and the word かける has 20+ meanings.
I've been to Japan twice and found the people lovely and friendly. 😍
Japanese is difficult? Huh. How hard is it to just say "I'm in the living room"?
今は居間にいます = ima wa ima ni imasu
oh.
(Btw, for the sample sentence above, each "ima" has its own vocal inflection)
what are the inflections ?
i tried to saying that sentence in google translate voice and i made it in one time. It's easy 😂
庭には鶏が二羽います。
niwa niwa niwatori ga niwa imasu.
There are two chickens in the garden.
すももも桃も桃のうち
sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi
Both plums and peaches are part of a peach
Good video! It gives me a bit of hope.
Interview topic suggestion: When Japanese folks see anime/manga characters who are Japanese but have non-black hair (like blonde), do they assume the character dyes their hair? Or that this is an alternate universe where Japanese people also have blond/brown/etc hair? Or something else?
many people would probably imagine either of the two
Yuta already did a video about this, search "Do Anime Characters Look White to Japanese People? (Interview)"
People have pink green blue hair in anime lol
hair and eye color show personality in animated form making all character have same hair and eye color would make it hard to make them look different
優しくに「最後まで頑張って嬉しい」って言うんだけど、日本語の勉強は全く終わらなくて、ある日本人は外国人の日本語聞こうとしないです。めっちゃ困る
The difference between textbook Japanese and the spoken version is pretty jarring. When I first noticed the difference, it was extremely demoralizing. It is nice though that anime use textbook Japanese so I have an easy time understanding. Knowing the short forms of the verbs and te form, I can piece together what someone is talking about with nouns and verbs, but completely miss everything else. I would definitely say Japanese is an easy language but I think people tend to focus on the difficulty of the written characters too much. The US federal government has categories for how long it takes for federal employees to learn different languages and Japanese is in the *edit-hardest* category
*facepalm* No it's in the hardest category along with Chinese(Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic. recommends 2200 class hours.
That's a bit misleading, that chart is for English native speakers. However to learn Japanese from Chinese or even Korean, is much easier than learning Arabic and the such.
@@stt.9433 "No it's in the hardest category along with Chinese(Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic. recommends 2200 class hours."
You're confusing "difficult" and "time consuming". As in, washing your car with a single toothbrush is not difficult. It is time consuming... but even a monkey could do it. Probably.
Yes, memorizing kanji can take a lot of time, but when you consider grammar, it's pretty straightforward, with only a tiny amount of irregularity here and there.
For comparison, in English, there are about 200 irregular verbs that are commonly used by an average speaker.
You could count the number of commonly used irregular verbs in Japanese on one hand.
@Hope C I suggest you contact the US departement of State administrators so that they redact their page to your needs.
Pulled straight from www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ which I invite you to read thoroughly, here is an excerpt
"
Category IV Languages: 88 weeks (2200 class hours)
“Super-hard languages” - Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. Arabic Chinese - Cantonese Chinese - Mandarin
Japanese Korean
"
My comment was a simple, completly objective refutation to his statment : "The US federal government has categories for how long it takes for federal employees to learn different languages and Japanese is in the easiest category . "
I'm actually amused that you somehow misconstrued my comment into a debate about semantics.
OP even redacted his statement recognizing his mistake.
I'm not going to argue semantics with you but I would be hardpressed to find anyone who qualifies washing a car with a measly toothbursh as easy as going through a car wash.
どもうありがとございます for the video Yuta-san. I do not feel so ばか now... =)
"proper" English: "Farewell and I sincerely do hope to be delighted once again by your presence in future before the last wind will have whispered across the fields and our opportunity for gathering tête à tête is no more."
Actual English: "K bye."
(real life versions of languages often aren't that scary once you got the gist.)
Lol, same as in my language (Indonesian), you won't encounter literally anyone speaking in the proper way xD
Where I can sign up for real-life English lesson? XD
So cool these guys have taken the time out of there day to answer our questions!
My dream is to live in japan one day and if I come back to my hometown I can speak japanese fluently.... would be awesome
good luck :D
I developed anxiety when learning Japanese, it was a course sponsored by my ex company and I was pressured to do well, we had to study full time from 8am to 5pm, and every morning before class, I would be sweating and heart beat very fast. Luckily, our Japanese teachers were very nice, as long as we did our best, every one passed the 3 months course. There after I still continue to improve my Japanese language, i learn to sing many many Japanese songs which I like. Thanks 😊
Yeah I learned Japanese is a very context heavy language. Context is everything. But what if there is a Spider on a Bridge though?
What if a bear bares bear arms lol. Context
He particles help with that and also the structure of the sentence
@@spindle7397 You make a good point.
@@wigglenips8825 lol
@@stayskeptic3923 Right. As for the words, one of the girls in the interview said kumo is Spider and Bridge.
The guy at 2:30, when he said "if you're not in that country, you might not know some words" and he tells also slang, I have to say _ni_ . I mean, I'm not an English speaker but from 2015 I started watching videos regularly in English on youtube and I learned a lot of words and phrases. In the era we live, we don't need to go to a country to learn a language, youtube and other sites help you to hear the language everyday. I can also understand his point. Japanese and its alphabet is different from English, German, French and Italian that have the Latin alphabet. Japanese culture also is different from the Western one, so living in one country, i.e. America, can help you to learn words, slang and costumes that other countries don't have. Personally, living in a country to understand a culture or language is a thing that YOU want to experience and it depends also from your native language.
Japanese is hard mostly because of kanji
But you don't even have to learn kanji to learn the language, because of Furigana in textbooks. If learning Japanese fluently is 75% kanji and 25% vocabulary and grammar, I'd rather spend 100% of my time on vocabulary and grammar.
But Kanji is also the way to overcome all those darn homophones. Paradox!
Also for reading you have to know kanji
@@InsaneH and to know some stores what they are selling written in kanji
I used to think kanji is difficult. You get used to it.
people are so nice!!))
Kanji aside, I actually think Japanese is much easier than something like the romance languages, especially because it doesn't have male and female words. I also think the sentence structure is fairly simple, and pronunciation all being based on " a i u e o" is nice too. I think the only thing that can give people a hard time are things like "tsu" and the Japanese "r" that's sort of halfway between an "l" and an "r"
Spanish isn’t even close to as difficult as Japanese is. Male and female words are pretty simple dude. If it’s “o” at the end it’s male, “a” at the end for female. Go switch between spanish and French on google translate for a bit, it will be pretty easy to see what’s harder. Also, Japanese is SOV. Fuck that
2:10, you are right bro. Very wise of you.