"To show just how complex this can get, let’s take a simple English phrase – “I love you” – and dissect the many ways in which it can be said in Japanese. Spoiler alert: it’s not such a simple phrase in Japanese. One of our course contributors, Sho, estimated and found that there can actually be as many as 248,026 ways to say “I love you” in Japanese!"<p>These kind statistics are a kind of lie in themselves. You can say something like "omae wo aishiteimasu", but that's no more a normal way to say "I love you" than "I'm bonkers for that shithead". That has nothing to do with the grammar, it's lexical. "omae wo aishiteimasu" has a different meaning from "anata ga suki da yo".
I've been told by a friend of mine that speaks Japanese that the most difficult aspect is that how you speak changes due the social setting. It's not just the syntax, you must learn how to speak in each different situation.<p>Here is Richard Feynman talking about the same problem:<p>While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour. One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?" I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned. "No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden? you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite." "Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use. Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens..." I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see." "No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?" Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant.
I learned hiragana and katakana using the "Kanji Study" app by Chase Colburn. On the google app store.<p>I don't know the guy, but the app is simply amazing. Repetion, through fun methods, I learned hiragana as I rode the Tokyo metro and katakana too. (It also helped that everywhere was both Kanas)<p>Since we're all talking about how we all picked up some Japanese, I thought I'd throw it out there. I normally never donate to apps, but this is one app that is amazingly well polished, has a beautiful UI and the UX makes me guility that I don't sit down and do it daily.<p>Hell, thanks to it, I can transliterate japanese songs into kana and with the Kanji learning moudles I had fun translating last names into english and saying them. Nothing helped me more in making friends at random mixers or networking events then seeing someones Japanese name, properly addressing them and embarrassing myself by talking horrible Japanese.<p>But, Reading it, it's amazing. The manga too, I can read all the manga now if it has nice usage of furigana. Hentai manga, does not, though.<p><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwisted.kanjistudy&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mindtwiste...</a><p>Really, I don't know the guy, the app is great and, without it my time in Japan would've been greatly not as quality. I made friends, thanks to this app, that I know I will know forever.
I shameless self-plug: As a successful Japanese learner (and since then, a Japanese teacher and recently a software engineer in a Japanese company), I was interviewed recently about learning Japanese: <a href="https://www.koipun.com/blog/learning-japanese-by-listening-and-reading" rel="nofollow">https://www.koipun.com/blog/learning-japanese-by-listening-a...</a><p>Why should you possibly be interested: because not only did I learn Japanese and taught it, I also did a fair part of reading about the research on language acquisition and neurolinguistics as a part of my master's studies, so I know what I'm talking about.
I started learning Japanese around 8 years ago, and I've never been a fan of saying it's "the most difficult language to learn." It's like learning anything else, if you enjoy learning it and are motivated enough, you'll get better. Also I'm surprised when people assume the grammar is difficult - to me, the "flexible grammatical structures" as mentioned in the article are a good thing because it gives you more leeway to make "mistakes."<p>If you're learning Japanese in school, or even if you're learning it on your own, I recommend the Genki I and Genki II books, and the corresponding workbooks. If you really enjoy it and want to come to Japan to use your newly acquired language skills, I'm confident that after getting through those 2 books you'll have enough Japanese to get by and you can have fun wandering around, reading signs, chatting with strangers, etc. Don't be discouraged by people saying that Japanese is so difficult to learn.<p>Edit: also, I hope this comment didn't come off as too negative. I think it's great that Duolingo is doing this, and if it gets more people to enjoy learning Japanese then that's fantastic.
One thing that I notice is missing from most (all?) online language courses is wider context. Not cultural context, but basic grammatical context. Most of them on focus on learning words or sentences.<p>This is fine for similar languages. When you learn French you can learn that 'the' equals 'le' and 'la' and apply some extra rules to smooth over the differences.<p>It totally falls down on languages that have less in common. Almost all Japanese natives who speak English struggle with 'the' and 'a'. (this isn't a criticism, just a fact of life). I wonder if part of the problem is that most people learn languages on the sentence level. Read the following sentences:<p>The man went to the store.<p>A man went to the store.<p>Which one is correct? Well, there's certainly nothing grammatically wrong with either, but depending on the situation one or the other could be very misleading, confusing and unnatural. Most people, at least in Japan, learn from textbooks showing examples like this. It tells you absolutely nothing about 'the' and 'a'! So they end up reading huge explanations in their native language and come away thinking 'Wow, foreign languages are hard'.
I took Japanese in college, and the worst thing wasn't the writing system, vocabulary or grammar. They were hard mind you, but far from impossible, nothing flash cards couldn't fix.<p>What was (and is) very hard for me is how (in general) the bulk of Japanese communication happens in what is unsaid. Even trying to work through patio11's Stockfighter course, I found it very hard to 'read between the lines' in what he was saying to find out what I was supposed to do. I also have zero low-level programming experience, so that probably didn't help.<p>I hope Duolingo mentions this and has training for "what do they <i>really</i> mean", as trusting what they say at face value seems like a good way to cause an incident. This may also be useful in understanding American Southerners or cop dramas, where direct communication is strictly verboten.
One thing about learning languages that works for me. Don't look at them as a bunch of rules to memorise. The article is talking about thousands of ways of saying "I love you" to indicate how complicated Japanese is. In reality, this complexity is somewhat artificial because you are considering way too many rules and variations, the vast majority of these combinations are almost never actually used. To use an crude analogy HN might be comfortable with, a Japanese language compiler could optimise away most of the language.<p>I'm glad the course seems designed around this consideration. It's goal-oriented: talk about everyday human things, clothes, weather, food, family. It's never been helpful for me to memorise vocabulary lists without a context to say them in. Instead, putting myself into situations where certain things must be said or understood greatly improved my competence.<p>After a while, your language instinct kicks in and you start to generate your own internal rules for the language, which will approximate or match the rules that native speakers have internalised.<p>I suppose this is can all summarised as, well duh, of course immersion works, but I wanted to say it anyway.
I've been learning japanese (and living in japan) for the past few months, and tried out duolingos new course when they released it yesterday. I've used quite a few different apps and books, and I must say I was pretty unimpressed. Their lessons give very little info on what you're learning, and with things like kanji it only teaches you the sound and not the meaning. I will experiment with it a bit more, but I've already done the first 6 or 7 lessons (chapters?) and am not impressed.<p>If you want to see an incredibly well built japanese learning tool, look at Human Japanese <a href="http://www.humanjapanese.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.humanjapanese.com/</a> - i am in no way affiliated, just a happy student
The guys at Language Log have a (series of) very interesting posts about how to learn Japanese and Chinese. The comments are a gold-mine as well<p><a href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10554" rel="nofollow">http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10554</a>
I'm not criticizing Duolingo, but I'm wondering if language apps are like gym memberships -- people sign up enthusiastically but after the first month, 90% don't or can't continue.<p>Learning a new language as an adult is an incredibly difficult undertaking; much more so than persevering with the gym. The dropout rate must be huge.
Where is the Japanese course on Duolingo ? I can't find it in their language list : <a href="https://en.duolingo.com/register" rel="nofollow">https://en.duolingo.com/register</a> ?
From a pragmatic point of view Chinese would be much more useful, but there are a tons of good resources for that already, so dunno. Congratulations anyway. I've used Duolingo to refresh my German some time back.
I don't know of a more useful app than Duolingo till date and This is just another feather in the cap.<p>The only thing i don't understand about it is how it makes money? Yes, i read somewhere that they use it to translate news sites and documents but I've been playing it for almost 300 days now (uninterrupted streak) and still my French proficiency is nowhere near to make a worthwhile translation like any professional. This one really boggles my mind because it looks like they have a huge team and invest a lot of time and resources and so must have a lot of expenses.
I started a project to be able to conjugate as many languages as I could and I'd love to accept Japanese if anybody is up for the challenge: <a href="https://github.com/llipio/conjugator" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/llipio/conjugator</a><p>So far, I've managed to understand enough korean, spanish, and french grammar to review merge requests. Its interesting reading stories of how HN community picked up Japanese, some of the suggestions are pretty helpful.
I studied basic Japanese at school. I've been waiting for this to refresh my skills. I didn't think the speaking and listening part of learning the language was that hard.<p>Hiragana and Katakana are pretty simple and straight-forward. As for Kanji, I haven't studied the Kanji to deeply, but to me it comes down to pattern recognition and memorization.<p>My wife is Thai, and I've been trying to learn the language on and off for a few years now. For me it's the complete opposite of Japanese difficulty-wise. The reading and writing part is straight forward once you learn the alphabet and the special rules. The part I have trouble with most is the speaking part since there are multiple pitches and using them correctly is important. For instance "khao khao" is white rice, "now" can mean either means either cold or disgusting. Luckily, if you don't speak or hear the pitch correctly, most of the time you can get by using context.
As the they say in the article, Japanese is classified among the most difficult languages for English speakers by Foreign Service Institute and this is widely cited as a fact. But interestingly, no research data on this was ever published. (The institute presented the facts as based on their internal research, but no methods, results or anything was ever published. Nowadays the original page has disappeared from the internet.)<p>Bill VanPatten, a linguist that specialises on second/foreign language acquisition lamented this on his podcast, Tea With BVP. According to him, there isn't any published research that shows that one language as a whole would be more difficult as another one for speakers of some other language. (He is not speaking about writing systems but about spoken language there – Japanese has obviously very complicated writing system.)
I've been learning some simple Korean, and the biggest stumbling block is romanization. 한글 is so simple to learn that there is no reason to romanize it. To make matters worse, Korean vowels are very specific, and quite different from English vowels. My instinct is to find Korean children's books, and learn to read like a Korean. Either way, romanization is <i>harmful</i>.<p>Japanese does not have the same problem <i>per se</i>. Romanization of Japanese is quite effective. All you need to understand are a="ah", e="eh", u="ooh", o="oh" and i="eeh". That being said, it is still <i>very</i> important to learn kana; else, what would you <i>read</i>?
Huh, I've just started learning Japanese after spending several weeks there and looking forward to visiting many more times, and I would never characterize it as especially difficult. There are some challenges, but nothing mind-blowing.<p>The kana and kanji may seem intimidating, but identifying fragments and context through repetition has been more rewarding and entertaining than frustrating.<p>I understand there are many subtleties, but after having hung around some native speakers for a while and hearing the patterns and starting to pick up on pronunciation, rhythmic patterns and key words, conversation topics start to become intelligible and communication possible.
When I was learning to read and write Japanese, I used the iOS app "Learn Japanese with Tako" by Grogshot games. They use gamification to make it fun. Very cute, check it out! (I'm not affiliated with them)<p>To improve your vocabulary while on the go (hands free) I heartily recommand the "Nemo" apps by Nemo Apps (e.g. "Nemo japanese"). They're available for both iOS and Android and for many languages. You can usually train the first 200 words for free.
I am still waiting for Mandarin, IIRC it was announced a few years go but still not available last time I checked. If they release Japanese now there might some glimmer of hope.
I made a Windows application for drilling oneself in kanji meanings and readings.<p><a href="http://www.kylheku.com/tankan/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kylheku.com/tankan/</a><p>It is browser-based. It runs a tiny webserver, controlled by an icon in the system notification area.<p>If you go through the license workflow, you get full use of the program for a limited period. Put in "hackernews" into the promo code field and I might provide a generous extension.
I enjoyed the series produced by public television called "Irasshai". The lessons are available on the Georgia Public Broadcasting site and texts can be purchased from Amazon. For those who have fond memories of "French In Action", this will give you a similar vibe even though it isn't quite the same thing.<p><a href="http://www.gpb.org/irasshai" rel="nofollow">http://www.gpb.org/irasshai</a>
Shameless plug: I made a small webapp to memorize Japanese vocabulary through spaced repetition and a Tinder-like interface: <a href="https://core.cards/" rel="nofollow">https://core.cards/</a><p>I made it for myself, but someone else might find it useful. It is the alternative of carrying a huge stack of cards as I used to do. Requires Github login though to syncronize through devices.
I highly recommend trying a Duolingo language, especially if there is a country you want to visit. If you set your daily goal for 10 points (maybe 5 - 10 minutes) and build a 10 day streak there is a pretty good chance you will be hooked on it. (Dutch level 16, French level 7).