What's difficult in Japanese ?

[playaa]

Compared to, English, French, Spanish.. I find that it's vocabulary is a little harder.. Aswell as the writing! Calligraphy courses almost to write in japanese...

[rquethe]

Here are my feelings about kanji. Sooner or later you have to learn them. That's a given. Most Japanese classes after teaching the kana and learning a few simple phrases usually move on to different simple forms of grammar and vocabulary from there. Meanwhile you get used to the feel of using the kana. Eventually. The more you write and read, the more like your native language it becomes in ease. At this point, my feeling is that kanji should be started immediately, and should never stop until all of them have been learnt. Introduce vocabulary that use the kanji and never neglect to show kanji for vocabulary even if your expectation isn't to teach your class the higher level ones. Constant exposure to seeing it, and being forced to use the kanji you learn as you progress MAKES it easier! I would absolutely hate to be fluent in the spoken language and then be told after getting there that I have to simply just work thru 2000 kanji and not do anything else. How lame is that? It'd be liking teaching an old dog new tricks. People are going to think, but I'm fluent, and the kana are just fine for me to write in. But if they had to use the kanji to begin with, then there isn't a problem!

Well, this is how I feel about it and I personally think kanji are the simplest part of the language except some exceptions for special pronounciations. And if I ever teach a Japanese class, the basic approach above will be what I follow(most likely).

[MtoM]

Well I think that the passive voice is difficult, I can't determine which use of the passive is used when I hear it. is it normal passive,(suffer) passive or the honorfic passive!

[Buddha Smoker]

One of the hardest parts I think, is just finding the right place to use a word. I've been in Japan a long time and I'm not perfect but when you try to increase your vocabulary or perfect your speaking sometimes it is hard just to find the perfect time to use it or bring it up in conversation. Does that even make sense (sounds confusing..lol).

For example, the word hemorrhoids.... I don't have them (glad about that..lol) but you just try to increase vocabulary (just like in English) and it's hard to find a way to use it unless you go to the doctor. (Which reminds me of one time that I did and I kept using that word and he kept asking "Why do you have them?" and I said "No, I'm just curious and praticing". He was a cool doctor too but he moved from my area).

Anyway, that is what I find the most difficult (besides Kanji but that is a different story).

Bonus Question for two points: Who knows the answer? What is the word for hemorrhoids in Japanese? I'm curious who knows. If you don't know then guess and if you do know PM me the answer. Then I will post who got it in a couple days.

[KickAss_Danieru]

my hardest part os remembering everything.. sure for me its nowhere neer hard to pronounce words when my friends tell me some... but remembering them and how to use them is the only hard thing for me. same with writing.. i can read, but i have trouble remembering each symbol when it comes to writing it.. sux :/.. but other than that its all good :P

[Buddha Smoker]

my hardest part os remembering everything..

I think alot of us are with you..

Also, I received only one response on the quiz and it was right. I hate to spoil the fun until I get some good answers.

[mdchachi]

I knew the word for hemorrhoid at one time but it's one I forgot due to disuse. But I already looked it up again.

There's a lot of Japanese words that they really don't use in speech and if you try to use them it sounds odd. But it's the same in English.

[Buddha Smoker]

I knew the word for hemorrhoid at one time but it's one I forgot due to disuse. But I already looked it up again.

There's a lot of Japanese words that they really don't use in speech and if you try to use them it sounds odd. But it's the same in English.

Yes, that is very true....I guess I could put the answer up now.

[Lina Inverse]

These highly complex kanji are a major pain in the a$$
To make matters worse, there are even thousands of them!
Besides that, there's nothing overly complicated I'd say.

[Kintaro]

Despite the thread being 2 weeks old, I voted Other doing the whole poll bonanza , so I will specify:

Conversational skill. An actual living use of Japanese and the lack of penpals willing to help you in exchange for practice in a language of their choice, or should I say, the abundance of these people and the lack of their seriousness.

EDIT: Willing to swap Japanese for English , or better yet, if your english is good, Japanese for French, thus we'd have a common bridge to make the special meanings understood. PM for more info.

[Inuyasha-the-kid]

I have a problem in Japanese what are these guys saying and what is okashii
HaiHai Pou & Sou ka

[dadako]

pronounciation is easy, japanese people always mistake me for japanese on the phone

I have problems remebering to say moraimasu instead of arimasu at the moment for "have" not "there is".

[Elizabeth]

pronounciation is easy, japanese people always mistake me for japanese on the phone

I have problems remebering to say moraimasu instead of arimasu at the moment for "have" not "there is".

Morau is either a main or modal verb used for received, take, accept and getting someone to do something. Aru, never morau, refers to 'have' as well as 'be,' or 'is' depending on the context.

[lunar_reim]

i'm learning japanese because i'm highly intrested in the culture and hopefully live there one day. i'm currently self-teaching until i can get into college because my high school doesn't offer japanese as a second language. where im having problems with learning is definetely memorizing the different particles. i had the same problem with learning korean and it's still something i struggle with everyday. another is the verb endings or the -tte endings or something like that. i don't understand those at all. im slowly memorizing kanji but it is a really slow process and i get confused with other kanji that look incredibly similar to one another.
but i'm not letting it stop me from learning because i really do want to visit and hopefully, im really hoping, to live in japan one day so i want to learn the lanugage. the only language i have to compare it to, is my korean. but yes, i struggle with particles the most, the verb endings and the kanji.

[The_Temonius]

Hey... im from mexico... im doing my best.. cause i want to learn japanese..

[kdynamic]

I think the hardest thing is counters!!!! My friend atsuko and i saw a plane in the sky the other day, and I said, "Do you use dai to count planes, like you do to count cars and machines?" At first she said yes. Then a second later she said, "Wait, actually you use 'ki' as in hikouKI." Argh! It never ends! I related this story to another friend Naomi-chan, and she said "I'm Japanese, but I don't get counters! I just use 'ko' for everything! Movies? Ko. Airplanes? Ko. It's just easier that way."

Not to mention that you have several ways to pronouce each number (ikkai, hitotsu, ichi-en are all from 1) and there's no logic to which one you're supposed to use.

Of course, Kanji is hard. But after I got past a certain point learning kanji (after I could read 600 or 700) i realized that they make the language EASIER not harder, because if you understand new vocab via kanji you already know from other words, theya re easier to remember, and also, if you understand the structure and logic of kanji, a lot of things about japanese that seem arbitrary start to make sense.

that's my ni-en.

[God]

I personally like using the japanese ime that comes with being on a computer and using that to type, it helped refresh my memory on katakana,hiragana, and a bit of kanji. it helps designate what should be kanji and if you don't know that kanji you can look it up, i find the japanese ime system helps increase my productivity.

but most of all i would like to say not know which material is the real material you should be looking at to study japanese. i had a japanese book in japanese year one in highschool and i still wonder if doomo arigatoo is correct. i've seen people say doumo, domo, or even domou it's very hard to find what is the real deal out there, hopefully as more people become self aware in the japanese language, these problems will fade away and be a thing of the past. It is a very well thought out, fun, and beautiful language of any other language I have seen next to american slang. ya know wa i'mm tawkin bout g.

[Camui]

I don't think I'd be able to remember all the symbols..like kanji...they seem pretty difficult to remember...but I wouldn't know...

[Shin Asura]

Most difficult thing for me in learning Japanese are Kanji, everything else is simple. I've already learned all the Katakana and Hiragana.

If all signs in Japan had Furigana then I would be one happy person, but that's not the case.

[SajberJohan]

Iｴm really bad with the "ni" particle and all the verb and adjective conjugations, other than that Iｴm fine

[TwistedMac]

everything except the kana >_<
but yes, admitedly I suck.
not just at japanese, I'm just generally bad at stuff

[ベ-ネ]

I've been learning japanese f&uuml;r 3 months. i think the forms for politeness are the most difficult.

[nhk9]

I used to get stuck on -morau - kureru - sashiageru those kind of stuff, but then later on I found out that they don't use much of the other ones except for -morau and -kureru, so I was able to use those without much troubles later on.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the large number of homophones in the language. Maybe it's because my mother tongue is Chinese, and there is not too many homophones in that language, I found the huge number of similar sounding words in Japanese to be quite frustrating...

[Ma Cherie]

the particles, to me they're the most difficult. I wonder if most people have a hard time distingushing the 'wa' from the 'ga'. Particles are my main problem. I don't like studying them, but I know I have to.

[miu]

I voted for the particles, too. Also the way of thinking in the language is a bit different form what I've used to... Right now I don't even want to think about the problem of being polite enough ^^; I read from a book about the Japanese wrapping culture that one Japanese professory found it mind-wrenching to listen to some foreigner's Japanese because he didn't know what the "true meaning" of their utterances were *_*