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11-29-2010, 08:34 AM
1) Is Japanese a hard language to learn from someone who live in Europe?
Spoken Japanese is relatively simple. Honestly quite easy. Written Japanese is so hard because of the two thousand kanji you gotta learn to read the local paper. The Hiragana and Katakana characters are dead simple and luckily phonetic, unlike French or English. 2) What is the average time to learn Japanese to have the "level" to speak "easily" in nearly all situations (like on the forum or in conversation) It took me about a year, living in Japan, using it for about 1 or 2 hours a day. But that's to be able to hold a conversation in most topics. 3) What about the pronounciation of this language? So easy, like I said it's phonetic also with it's writing so you can even learn words by listening and then looking up. 4) About the difficulty, how do you compare the French and the Japanese language? French has SO many exceptions and it also has rules which cant be learned (male female, conjugation exceptions etc). Japanese is minimalistic in comparison, the most difficult thing is to learn how to say more with less words haha. PS. I also speak French English and Japanese 
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11-29-2010, 08:41 AM
The fact that it gets harder to learn foreign languages the older you get is no secret. You two can make up guesses as to why my acquaintance didn't learn any Japanese in 10+ years, but the fact of the matter is, he didn't, so simply living in Japan may not be enough. That's all I am saying.
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11-29-2010, 10:00 AM
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11-29-2010, 11:43 AM
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11-29-2010, 12:58 PM
So the real hard point is Kanji and the writing part of the language...
But about speaking, well I agree this is not hard... Well, I don't really live in France but in Belgium, but I may move first to France soon so... In my country, some schools do courses in the afternoon (average time in course: 4 hours) of English, Spanish and ... Is this kind of courses in Japanese will be enough if I take like 2-3 hours/day, 4-5 day/week? And If I understood, the "Kanji" is the Chinese/Japanese "alphabet-like" and Katakana and Hiragana are used especially for syllabes? Thank you for your answers! And yeah I'm only 17 and I'm not going to work directly because I would like to make superiors courses (bachelor + master) I suppose that the europeans diplomsa are valid in Japan?
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11-29-2010, 02:43 PM
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Good luck.
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11-29-2010, 03:14 PM
Unfortunately most of the material I've read on the subject of a 'cut-off' age, so to speak, for an L2 is pretty dated so I've never heard much about the neuroscience business.
However, I tend to agree with Realism on this subject. I think I've made my views pretty clear in other threads as well. But I'll just say that immersion is everything. I disagree with the concept that it can be done effectively at home though. I think that using your eyes is a very important aspect of observing a language and its culture. I think every language has its culture, but Japanese language and culture are pretty much the same thing. I think Japanese, being so differently culturally, turns a lot of people away after a while. I'm not talking about green tea and kimonos-- I'm talking about the kind of language used. It gets overwhelming by about year 2 of college level courses. By year three, most people just give up. In other words, if you are really interested in it you will make the time and put in the effort. If you are kind of on the fence and just want to learn the language as a hobby, you might want to just "wake up and smell the coffee". It's not going to happen in a 4 year college level course. It's not going to happen with your "I'm too busy to study" books. You have to almost make it a lifestyle before you can learn a solid amount of everyday speech.
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11-29-2010, 07:51 PM
Ok I looked in my country of what about learning Japanese in "college" schools (or superior schools)...
The courses are made like that: - 6 years, 60h/year (2h/week) > From the 1st year, learning the Hiragana and the Katakana first > We must know for the 2 first years 500 words and 150 kanji... > For the 4th year, the teacher will go to speak nearly entirely in Japanese... > The courses will be in Japanese, learning complexity of grammar and vocabulary... > Basic grammar should be learned, 700 words, 200 kanji > At the 6th year, vocabulary learning and kanji learning > 2 000 kanji, 10 000 words All these courses did both oral and writing... Here is a PDF Files who resume the 4 firsts year (in french, sorry) http://www.heb.be/hebasbl/programme/Japonais.pdf I also heard comments about "Assimil", who is a different kind of learning a language (at home)... We have Audio CD and books... As I heard, we start with some "Katakana and Hiragana" and a lot of "Romanji" (Japanese in latin alphabet, right?) to help us to understand and to speak this language... The final courses are the writing of Kanji... And I heard it works well too... Here is the website (available in English): Assimil – éditeur de méthodes de langues étrangères I'm going to go to contact the school and some students of it, I'll tell you my news... Thanks again to take time to help peoples like me...
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11-29-2010, 08:33 PM
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here we had a case were we took in some Somalian refugees or smth and those kids learnt our language on a respectable level within months. and yet here specially in capital we have tons of russians living here for 40+ years and don't know any word in latvian just because we were once part of CCCR they don't feel that they have left beloved russia. personally i hate every single one of them who live here and don't bother to learn the language. and so i feel for everyone who actually lives in another country for years and doesn't bother to learn it's language. P.S night Bird...here we finish all 2 000 kanji in 3 years at University programme. still...just to know them isn't everything. the problem is reading them. i believe there are plenty of people with experience of 30+ years who can't read every combination of kanji.
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11-29-2010, 11:37 PM
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My Japanese professors taught in only Japanese from the very first day of year 1. We knew about 1000 kanji by the end of fourth year.
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