Heh, I know Polish can be a pain, especially if we are talking about grammar (and I’m saying that as being Polish myself 
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I wanted to learn it to be able to read manga/novels but now I just enjoy learning it for the language itself, same as you do.
I swear I’m not following you, but I do find it funny that you’re so early on in this older post.
I saw your name and when I recognized it I was like !!! Hey, that’s my new friend 
I like that your reasons have evolved over time and that you seem pretty accepting of that, In life, you’ve got to be able to roll with the punches, and apparently pinches from the WaniKani’s claws from ignoring your reviews too long…
Don’t worry, I’m just everywhere.
I think as you learn more about the language (and the country itself), your perceptions naturally change. Not in a bad way (for me it just made me love Japan/Japanese even more!), but it does start to effect your motivation for learning the language. It’s difficult for me to remember what my love for Japan and Japanese was like when I first started learning (partially because it has been so long), since now it’s difficult for me to imagine there was a time when I didn’t want to spend every minute studying Japanese. Learning a language is a long term, life affecting decision after all. If anything, I’m proud of the fact that I’m a different person now then I was 2 years ago.
You’re a different person after you’ve gone through a backlog of 250+ reviews because you were lazy 
Hi Mauriciokanno, and everyone else, I began wanting to learn Japanese because my daughter was going to Japan and would be learning the language. I fancy myself as a bit of a linguist, studied French and Russian about a million years ago and have dabbled in Spanish and Italian and German, so I thought, well let’s add another language to the list. Then last summer after a slightly liquid lunch I challenged a friend who is studying Hebrew: who can be first to a GCSE, which is our English 16-year-old school exam. Madness, arrogance on my part and possibly the worst ever reason to learn a foreign language! But I’m so glad that I did. If it had not been for the fun and competitive challenge, I would have given up months ago (been learning since September 2017). I would have been put off by the sheer memory work involved. By “ko” being any of child, lake, door, individual, tiger, sea cucumber, need I go on. English has plenty of inconsistent moments, and that thought keeps me going. But my daughter pointed me toward WaniKani and I have to say that it is helping me in a strange way: quite apart from the learning thing, which isn’t really congruent with what I need for the exam but is fabulous for my general language interest, I am finding that I love kanji because of the instantness of the reading. I feel as if kanji allow you not so much to read as to see. Admittedly, maybe I’d feel differently if I were writing each of the kanji. In fact maybe I’ll start doing that, good plan. But at the moment I feel as if the kanji meaning hits you instantly, and I’m typing for about ten minutes to express the meaning in English. And as for the memory work, yes it hurts my brain and it takes me quite a few attempts, but I am really hoping that it will keep Alzheimer’s at bay!
Yep, can confirm that.
It’s not just the case for Polish though, most Slavic languages have 6-7 cases, 3 genders, as well as verb conjugation for 6+ persons. That results in a ton of inflections one has to learn for each word.
We tend to have fewer tenses though, and words are spelled phonetically for the most part (looking at you, English, and your dysfunctional writing system)
(joking, love you, English language <3)
I had the opportunity to go to Japan for 5 weeks several years ago and took some classes before I went. I only knew a tiny bit of Japanese when I went but even that was useful. It did make me wish that I could have carried on real conversations with some of the interesting people I met there. When I got home, I continued studying because I knew I wanted to continue going there and I felt if I stopped studying I would just lose everything I’d learned. I’m also in my 60’s and wanted to prove to myself that at my age I could still become bilingual (the jury is still out on that one). So slowly, steadily getting there and loving the journey also.
Actually, I never was much in Japanese culture and I never watched Anime or stuff like that. However, last summer, I had the opportunity to do a semester abroad in Japan on Shikoku. I couldn’t speak a word in Japanese, but my teacher was able to speak in English with me. I am studying computer science and I worked in a project involving programming and mathematical structures, so Japanese wasn’t really needed anyway, since the work was done in English and math formulas. After my work, I got the offer to return to Japan in 2019 to do my Ph.D. there. I really liked the countryside, the people and the food and I believe it is a special opportunity that will make a great story in my life, so I decided to take the offer and learn some Japanese until then.
Besides, I always wanted to learn a third language, German is my native language and in Germany it is common to learn English. But I never could get myself to learn another language because I didn’t really had a reason to do. Now with Japanese, I have a practical reason which gives me the needed motivation.
Wait… Isn’t kanji supposed to be Chinese letters? Oo’
Chinese is easier only in point of grammar. All easiness starts and ends here, haha. Tried to learn it but fail (even living in Chinese-speaking country).
But on my opinion Chinese is easy if this 2 things fair for you:
It’s mostly a meme from /r/badlinguistics
https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/7em24h/the_hardest_language_to_learn_is_polish/
All slavic languages have a lot of cases and 3+ genders (source: I’m a Ukrainian/Russian bilingual that learned Polish while studying in there) but once you know how one works learning others becomes much easier.
On-topic: Complexity of the language depends on your native language, I imagine Japanese being pretty easy for Chinese (kanji is just traditional hanzi) or Korean (grammar is similar) peeps.
Oh, and I’ve started learning Japanese mostly because of your typical anime/manga reasons, but have since started appreciating other aspects of the culture much more. I’m also trying to get into a masters program in there because I want to continue studying AI and some universities like Tokyo Tech have faculties dedicated to it which is great 
I am mostly learning Japanese because I have found learning foreign languages really give you insights into other cultures and ways of thinking. After learning greek and hebrew enough to read ancient texts, I wanted to learn Japanese because its so different from English, and yet its concepts make me think about my own language in a different way.
Also, its not a tonal based language. Which my brain recoils in horror from.
I’m learning Japanese because I’d like to go to Japan someday. I’m also learning it so that I can understand my favorite tea mug that I got a thrift shop while searching for a candlestick holder. My obsession with tea probably has something to do with it, too.
I’d say it’s not the most difficult language in the world. You have to memorize a lot of things, but I find that memorizing characters is easier than trying to learn a language with an alphabet you already understand. (French, for example.)
I’d say that any language from the past that we haven’t deciphered yet would be one of the ones that are the most difficult to learn. (Almost impossible to learn, in fact.)
Why would that be the case?
There are almost no obstacles to jumping right into a language that shares an alphabet with English, whereas I’ve been studying Japanese for 4 years and things intended for high schoolers still have loads of characters I can’t guess at pronouncing.
I find that I tend to try to connect pronunciation back to my first language and that really shouldn’t be connected most of the time, especially with Gaelic. (“Tha e fuar” is said more like “hai foord”, for instance.) It also makes it more difficult when a word is spelled the same as one I know in English, but is pronounced differently, or with a different tone, because I auto-switch to the English pronunciation and tone.
Yeah… but you can’t even try to guess at what a Japanese word is before you learn the characters.
Also, that was a big leap from French (which shares loads of words with similar roots / similar pronunciations to English) and Gaelic (which I don’t know enough about to comment).
Even if someone messes up their French pronunciation of something, they can probably guess the meaning of loads of words without even trying, just due to the relationship between the languages.
. Good point. The leap is definitely there and rather prominent. Gaelic and French are miles away, despite basically sharing alphabets. If French grammar was an aggravated cat, Gaelic would be a hungry tiger. (From what I’ve seen, at least.)
. The thing you mentioned about word guessing applies quite well to German. I don’t think the French thing would fly in class, though.
. I was probably trying to find a logic-based and non-emotional reason as to why I find learning Japanese easier. I frequently get myself into binds this way, actually. (That, and phrasing. I have 0 tone control.)
. It’s most likely just because I like the language a lot better and therefore feel better when I progress and are generally more optimistic about it. That makes it seem easier to learn, when in reality it’s not less complex or with easier concepts, it’s just less draining. Needing to learn the characters also gives a valuable retreat for when I need a break from the other aspects of language. (I greatly enjoy learning stroke order, as I can draw, a usually recreational activity, while also learning things that aren’t about drawing.)
According to this, the amount of words from French and German are comparable within English. They tend to be of different registers of course.
I think you drilled down on what the “ease” you’re feeling comes from. I took 4 years of French in high school and never enjoyed it. I also could barely do anything meaningful at the end of that time.
In contrast, I am much farther in Japanese.
But it’s all about my motivation and my interest in Japanese. I want to learn Japanese, so it’s easy to find time to study. I didn’t want to learn French, so I found reasons not to.
Definitely because I like anime and such. And also the country itself. I also like to listen to Japanese music, would be cool to actually understand what they are singing!
I have a question. Everybody speaks of Japanese homophones. But what about different kanjis with identical readings and meanings (according to the dictionaries I have so far discovered)?
There must be differences, whether of register or semantic nuance, or whatever.
Take, for example,
暑い
熱い
The readings are identical, the meanings, as far as my very ignorant self has been able to find, are identical.
Obviously, the difference is appreciated only as one READS a text…which is in itself absolutely fascinating.
My question is: is there a way to study and learn these “allographs”?[quote=“PietZorz, post:129, topic:21386, full:true”]
Definitely because I like anime and such. And also the country itself. I also like to listen to Japanese music, would be cool to actually understand what they are singing!
[/quote]
暑い is for hot atmospheric temperature
熱い is for hot temperatures of physical objects
On weblio for instance, the 大辞林 dictionary, they have separate entries. What dictionary were you referring to?