I always find the claim that one language is particularly difficult to learn over any other a little eyebrow raising. English has a simple alphabet, but the spoken language is a total mess. Though, through, thought, plough, thorough, cough, bough anyone? Our vocabulary is just as broad and difficult to learn, and the many ways in which each vowel sound can be pronounced is a complete pain in the butt.
But we are all children as we learn the basics and fortunately don’t remember much of the 15 odd years we spend talking, listening and reading in order to accumulate a decent vocabulary…
I imagine a native Mandarin speaker might suggest that Japanese is much easier to learn than English. Knowing the English alphabet doesn’t mean you will be able to phonetically read or understand what you’re reading… Perspective and self awareness are good things imo.
I did not understand this sentence at all … I had to google it and American English is very different from Australian English as this makes no sense here.
After having read the entire thread, I feel like commenting, too. でも I feel to lazy to go back and quote specific sentences , so bear with me, please (Also not toosure if this post has any value in this thread at all. feels a little rambly, maybe?)
I started learning Japanese only in September last year, having never been to Japan, too, so my situation is very different from @SystemD, but hopefully we can find some similarities, as well.
In the classroom I started out by learning lots of grammar, conversational skills and vocabulary (on a chapter by chapter basis). The book uses furigana, and I was memorizingthe words mainly through memrise (kana wordlists only). i was using the app I used to learn how to write kana, to write kanji as well, but that was very slow going. There was no focus on actively learning the kanji in class, though, so one day in December I found WaniKani. Right away I encountered kanji I already recognized, but with different readings, which feels really strange. But not long after that I blotted out all the furigana in my textbook and viola, right away those ‘new’ readings pop up everywhere.
On the point of not being able to read a text, because you don’t know how to pronounce a kanji right away? As long as you don’t have to read a Japanese text out loud, you don’t necessarily need to know the pronunciation if you know the meaning of the kanji. The same kanji are used in very different context to confer roughly the same meaning.
For example, you might have learned the word 予め. You know how to pronounce it, and what it means. Let’s say you also know 定める. Next you come across a word you’ve never heard of: 予定. Without knowing the pronunciation you can (kind of) infer the meaning of the word, and move on. You can explain the message of the text in your own words.
Japanese people themselves do this too (also with radicals in kanji). I was talking in class about Highland Cattle. We were trying to figure out whether ハイランド牛 was pronounced Gyuu or Ushi, and came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter (unless you are in agriculture). For the average reader it is also not important which fish is being talked about when they encounter kanji like: 鮎 or 鮑. It is enough to knowthat it is a fish 魚.
In other words, the meaning being conveyed in Japanese texts seems often to be more important than the pronunciation.
Well, buffalo as a verb is not used in Australia, there are very few Aussies who have heard of the city of Buffalo and we also don’t have the animal in our country … so it makes it much more difficult for us.
It’s not used in contemporary American English either. I imagine many people hear about it from this sentence. Though it’s true that the other two things are known to Americans.
I doubt if any English speaker would really understand this as a sentence without some instruction. I’ve tried to puzzle it out (and I can’t help but think that grammatically it requires a “that”, not to mention the fact that there aren’t actually any buffalo in Buffalo, certainly not enough to buffalo other Buffalo buffalo (but I digress)), but even so it makes less sense to me than
裏庭には二羽庭には二羽鶏がいる。(うらにわにはにわにわにはにわとりがいる。)
Highly opinionated people are people who identify themselves with their own opinions. When their opinion is attacked, they’d feel like their entire being is being attacked. Unable to separate themselves with their ideas or opinions. This is true for most people, but you’ll never have a healthy debate with this attitude. I don’t see @plantron attacking this person. And I hope you don’t feel attacked as I’m opposing your opinion.