Spirit Of Atlantis, your post was most interesting. My experience is almost the opposite to yours.Originally Posted by Spirit Of Atlantis
Being from a country whose language is very closely tied with Latin (indeed, with a bit of attention we can read many latin sentences even without any lessons), I found the japanese grammar extremely comfortable and quite understandeable - it's a very obvious one to us, as UltimaBaka seems to agree.
Not to mention there are some similarities, like the 'ja ne' (we have the 'ja ne'*, which is used in exactly the same way).
*: plus some characters this board cannot display.
German and Dutch, on the other hand, are *a pain* to learn. VERY confusing languages, especially because they use such simplistic grammer. I sometimes wonder what do you do to figure out you're talking about different things.
I guess germanics have things more complicated here...
The one thing I find complicated in Nihongo is the kanji (Kakatana and Hiragana are quite easy). There are too many of them and the 'onyomi' and 'kunyomi' readings make them hard to learn in their fullness
Of course, learning how each one evolved and their physical meaning (like seeing a woman performing the tea ceremony in the 女 onna/me/jo/nyo kanji, or seeing a rice field and a man working it in the 男 otoko/dan/nan) greatly helps to understand them and increase the reading skills, but learning *all* of them takes quite some time and effort. I daresay having a Nihonjin as a teacher is a requirement here.
Regards,
Keoland
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