I find pronouncing Kanji difficult. I just don't understand why Japanese have different pronounciation for the same Kanji? Sometime there are up to 3 or 4 different pronouciation for the same kanji....
the grammatical structure (subject + object + verb)
the particules (wa, ga, wo, ni...)
memorizing the vocabulary (too different from other languages)
the untranslatable cultural words (irasshaimase, ojama shimasu...)
the verbs forms (-rareru, -te, -ttara...)
the politeness levels (keigo...)
the writing (especially the kanji)
understanding katakana words
the pronuciation
other (non listed, please specify)
I find pronouncing Kanji difficult. I just don't understand why Japanese have different pronounciation for the same Kanji? Sometime there are up to 3 or 4 different pronouciation for the same kanji....
Kanji definitely. It is so annoying as well as difficult to learn a bunch of Chinese characters that I can just write using hiragana, one of the best writing systems! Katakana seems useless to me as well, although it isn't as hard to learn.
It has got to be the listening due to the vast number of homonyms... you really have to catch the meaning of the words from context. And since ppl tend to speak very fast (esp among elder men), once you can't the meaning of the keyword, the entire sentence becomes a loss.
Like Maciamo I'm finding Japanese in general difficult - except pronunciation (in romaji). I'm taking baby steps at the moment and focusing more on speaking the language than writing & reading it, only thing is there are so many small words (and particles) in sentances it's hard to hear them seperate from an actual word (ie, in some song it goes something like "koi ni ichii awa" I can't remember it exactly, but it was about three/four small words, that in the song sounded exactly like "konnichiwa".
Aren't there two for most kanji, as in the On-reading and the Kun-reading?Originally Posted by godppgo
I'm not sure what you mean by three or four, don't you mean that there can be multiple kanji for the same romanized word? I dunno.
I learned reading, but Kanji is still difficult without furigana. I can do it, but it requires the 'hunt and find' method in my IME on the computer... followed by copy and paste lookup on an online dictionary. ^^;
However, I think my study in reading has made it harder for me to understand spoken Japanese. :\ I can understand some of it, but not enough that's its "fluent". When I watch anime, it's better if it's subtitled, but I still pick up pieces of what's said without subtitles.
Anyway, for, aside from spoken language, I find trying to remember the grammatical structure of sentences kind of hard. It shouldn't be, I guess, but it is.
Secondary is trying to learn the kanji so that I can read those without furigana beside/above it. ^^;
Kanji, Katakana, and grammer. I'm a n00b at speaking/writing.
Don't worry, we are the same.
Did you guys know there are some aho native Japanese who still can't spell katakana "n" and "so" or "tsu" and ""shi" correctly?
「ン」(n)
「ソ」(so)
「ツ」(tsu)
「シ」(shi)
You don't mess them up when you type on keyboard, but what about when handwriting?
P.S. For the people who don't know what aho means:
aho=baka=stupid
Hello,everyone.It's really good to communicate with all of you from different countries.
Just as Silverbackman said, it is difficult to learn the usage of Chinese and Japanese characters for the foreigners who do not use them in their daily life.
But it is difficult to forget also if you have remembered.
im a native chinese, so kanji isnt a problem for me, but as those of you said that kanji in japanese has multi pronunciations is difficult, i agree with you totoally on it. in chinese kanji has one pronunciation, sometimes 2 but it is rare. but japanese writing definately needs kanji to convey meaning. a essay with all hiragana is very difficult to read.
「は」と「が」の使い方は本当に難しいと思います。教 えてくれる方がいれば、� りがたいです。
Hi, I haven't posted here for ages.My Japanese learning stopped after I finished my class
but I was happy to learn I passed my Level 1!
So, now I have started to teach myself some kanji (until our class starts again in September). In class we only learned the numbers 1 to 10 for our low level, and we didn't even learn all the readings for them, only as numbers. ><
I think that learning kanji will be the hardest part of learning Japanese. ><
The grammar is only difficult as any language is difficult... I mean, they all have the rules that have to be learnt, I don't think Japanese will be more difficult than German or Latvian or French... necessarily. I know there are a lot of difficulties to come but I don't see them to be insurmountable!
I feel ridiculously pleased with myself for having memorised 10 simple kanji!
I have remembered stroke order, and the on and kun readings/pronunciations. The simple ones were really quick to learn - I learned them under the table in an hour, at a boring meeting.
The idea of learning 2000 boggles my brainbut I have to not think about that and just try to take small steps one after the other.
I voted: the writing and the vocabulary.
Why?
Writing: the sheer amount of cryptic characters to learn to draw and remember is unbelievable for someone of my origin: >1000 Kanjis, ~100 kanas. Here, we have 26 characters and that's itOkay... maybe 30~40 if I include accents (I speak French too.
Vocabulary: I'm having much difficulty remembering the new words I encounter, probably because they are far off my own language. And also, I've tried (today) JEDict, a dictionary software, and searched a couple of words, and OMG there are so many japanese words for some simple words, and vice versa, so many words can only lead to one in some other cases.
That's about it. Currently I'm only trying to learn spoken Japanese, because otherwise, my head would explode!
I'm learning kanji quite quickly
For me it’s just the method of learning.
I can speak and write fluently Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and English. And I learned on my own a lot of these languages,
But my method doesn’t work with Japanese. In Japanese you need both to SEE the words and HEAR them, in order to learn them. So I guess kanji/vocabulary is the most difficult thing for me. Not because the vocabulary is difficult or the kanji too complicated (it is...) , but because you need to learn them twice (visual and sound), and I’m not used to it.
There are words you know how to say, but not write; and words you understand when you see them written, but are unable to pronounce.
Particles are easy to understand, and to get right on exercises, but in real sentences they are hell!
And making katakana words of some english-spanish-german words is driving me crazy. How do you katanise (sp?) KUFSTEIN (where i'm living at the moment) ? (read: KOOF-STAIN). Ku-fu-se-ta-i-n ?????
But doesn't English have exactly the same problem? You are probably just finiding it harder/more problematic at the moment because you are less familiar with the language.
A quick google-search gave クーフシュタイン. Sometimes you can take a good guess, but you really have to look them up to be sure.
Welcome to the forum!Don't be afraid to ask any questions, everybody here is really nice.
I have to say, I find it easier to learn some speaking/listening and grammar first, and then 'catch up' with the kanji - and it all falls into place. For example, I learned the kanji for kuruma/sha, and I remember thinking 'Aha! The sha is from the word jitensha, too!' and that makes it quite easy to remember the readings.
That's why I'm sad that I don't have a class at the moment. I feel like I'm just learning a lot of kanji by rote, without furthering my 'actual' (useful) knowledge of the language.
Yes, I guess you are right and English also has this problem, but it痴 not so extreme. I definitely think it will be easier as I get more familiar with the language. There are already a few words I have been able to intuitively guess how to pronounce. (though, I still think of 妬chi-nichi-naka・every time I see the kanji for 妬chi-nichi-chuu・ . Being able to see some progress, no matter how small, motivates me. And the fact that japanese is completely different to the other languages I know, is one of the reasons I find it so interesting / fascinating !But doesn't English have exactly the same problem? You are probably just finiding it harder/more problematic at the moment because you are less familiar with the language.
A quick google-search gave クーフシュタイン. Sometimes you can take a good guess, but you really have to look them up to be sure.
Welcome to the forum!
Thanks for your help, I will surely post questions in this forum. I致e only been studying japanese for two months with a couple of books ( I plan to take courses, but they are not available at the moment) and I know there will be plenty of questions not covered by them that I can ask here.
Definitely Kanji but I have slight problems with sentence structure sometimes.
I find all the verb forms the hardest... Actually it's the way they explain all the verb forms that's difficult... They use big words like "tentative" or "attributive"... It's like trying to remember all the klingon verb suffix types in order... Just dosn't happen. lol
The writing is not hard to me especially that I am learning Chinese.
Does Chinese have more kanji than Japanese? Do they have same kanjis?
Me too wanna learn Chinese in the future, will I have to learn more kanji for it?
uh... let's say you want to read a newspaper... for japanese around 1500-2000 are enough... for chinese i think you need 4000+ characters... as the language doesn't have anything except the hanzi... and there's the problem (at least my biggest problem) with the pronounciation...
@vote:
I voted "others" as I don't have a problem with any of these (anymore) but that wasn't possible to answer
你說中文也？
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Jim Breen's online dictionary and kanji lookup
I'm not sure, but I think you're asking if I speak chinese? I just started less than 2 months ago because I need extra classes to finish my bachelor in Japanese... that's why I'll be taking a year of chinese classes... I think korean would have been easier...
我学习日文和中文。
我是奥地利人。
我喝咖啡。
他是我的哥哥。
that's about it...
i don't even know if I'm studying simplified or normal hanzi ^^;
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