Why Japanese is So Difficult

Want to know why everyone says Japanese is one of the most difficult languages to learn?

Well, for a start, you can blame the Chinese. It's the Chinese that make Japanese difficult. See, a long time ago, some Japanese samurai were sitting around drinking sake when one of them said "How do you spell 'Chrysanthemum?'"

Well, none of the other samurai had a clue, because they had no written language (the spelling bee had not yet come to Japan).

So instead of laboriously having to invent a written language from scratch, they just grabbed a Chinese hostage from a recent raid and told him to write "Chrysanthemum" in the sand outside the hut. They were so pleased with the result that they told him to write the entire Chinese alphabet down so they could copy it.

The Chinese guy was understandably unhappy with this, so instead of writing down an alphabet, he just took the spelling for "Chrysanthemum" and changed it around a little bit around 50,000 times, thus creating the Japanese written language as we know it today while covering the entire land surface of Iwate Prefecture with little pictogram squiggles.

It took the Japanese about 900 years to remember all these little pictograms, which they called "Kanji," but now we foreigners are expected to learn them all -- well, at least 2,000 of them -- in order to be able to read a typical manga book.

THAT is what Japanese is so difficult to learn. The spoken language is a cinch; the written language is a mess.

As you saw in a previous post, the Japanese DO have their own script, but for the most part, they like to rely on these pictograms to convey most stuff that needs to be written.

The problem is that unlike the Chinese, the Japanese have sometimes in excess of ten different ways to read a kanji, and some kanji can mean several completely different things at once, depending on what comes before or after them.

Take for example, the "hon" in "Nihon," which is the Japanese word for Japan. It looks like this: 本. It means, depending on the context, book; counter for long cylindrical things; main; origin; present; real, or true.

But wait, there's more: not content with having several different pronunciations, readings and meanings for each kanji, they decided to make them all look pretty similar to each other.

Take, for example, the kanji that look like this: 王

Here they are, in no particular order: 千牛壬玉主生宝狂枉住注柱注往. And they have not yet begun to fight; that's just the tip of the iceberg. I didn't go any further in my search for kanji that look like 王, but if I had, I would probably come up with at least 30 more that are confusingly similar-looking. And remember, each one can have several different readings, pronunciations, and meanings. So let's say that each has two different pronunciations and two different meanings. That's now five bits of information you need to know about one kanji. Multiply that by forty similar-looking kanji and you get 200 separate bits of information you need to know. And like I said, you need a minimum of 2,000 to get on with in daily life. In reality, when you count people's names as well, you probably need more like 6,000 kanji if you really want to master written Japanese.

Even the Chinese think Japanese is difficult.

So how do you spell "Chrysanthemum?"

Try "菊"