I really hate English. I keep studying it just because I need it for work, but the more I study it the more I hate it with more awareness.
I love the UK and brits, their accent is cool, and maybe they can't cook anything edible even to save their life but I like them.
Ok, perhaps after the brexit's pathetic drama I like them less, but I never hated them.
But I hate English language. It's dumb and frustrating, it has tons of random exceptions, a lot of words and constructs remove context instead of adding it, and what makes me mad is there's no correspondence between how you write a word and how you pronounce it. Maybe I can hear a word that I know how to write and how to use, but if spoken I can't recognize it. It's mental.
Spanish is cool. I love Spanish. I can't understand why people in the world don't use it.
It has more rules, but they are consistent and easy, and it has very few exceptions. You learn one time, and you are good forever.
Plus, what I really love, any letter in the alphabet has its own sound. When I read a word that I've never met, I'm sure to be able to pronounce it correctly, maybe due to the consistent rules implementation I can extract the root for the general meaning, and if it's a verb I can understand the conjugation if it's referring to a male/female, single or plural, present or future. Just by one word.
Considering that the only purpose of a language is to communicate, and that is easy to pick up, any single word adds to the context making the conversation unambiguous, this is a perfect efficient rational language. And it sounds cool too when spoken.
I love Spanish, so now I've started studying Japanese.
Yeah, I don't see the correlation either.
It has 3 alphabets, with two of them accounting for about 80 letters each and still not being able to reproduce all the sounds a 26 letters alphabet does, and kanji: a 50.000+ letters monster alphabet that happens when you mix up a dictionary and an alphabet.
Hiragana and katakana are just duplicates, conceived to piss me off, and composed of a matrix of vowels and consonants. Of course, they are just random scribbles, it would have been easier to make all the combinations that use the "a" have a common element, but no, the few that look similar are scattered around all the table with completely different sounds.
Ok, memorize the position in the matrix and then deduce the sound. Ahhahhhh. No. Some consonants when mixed with a specific vowel produce the sound of another consonant. Because sadism.
They are so graphically complex that if you have a less than perfect writing and don't execute the strokes in perfect order, you can end up with a completely different character.
Kanji is even worse, because a single glyph conveys a whole concept/word, and being them more than the stars in the sky, and composed of a finite number of stroke combinations that you can put in a small square, it's easy to write the wrong word or mix two up.
For example "person" and "enter" are the same with a slightly different inclination.
The first thing that comes to mind is just learning the easier alphabet to start, but no, they use all of them, and at the same time. In every single phrase, they mix up hiragana and katakana, even if they are just duplicates, and kanji even if they can reproduce the exact pronunciation with just one of the other alphabets.
There are methods to memorize them, kanji in particular. For example "eight" is two lines, to remember it you must think of a spider's legs
The kanji for "six" is a 5 points star composed of 4 lines, to remember it you must think of the shower because they shower at six
The kanji for "5" instead is a random quantity of lines, because it is pronounced "go" I must think of a kid who goes to the park and sits on a bench
The method to help me memorize the kanjis requires that, on top of the name shape and multiple sounds, I memorize a random story that doesn't help in any way. Multiplied by 50.000.
Do you see that line with six extremities? Exactly, it's a hand with six fingers.
That one that looks like an animal with four legs? A fish of course.
That one that looks like a window with little lines inside? It's rain. And the same without the small rain drops? Does it mean just window? Or sunny weather perhaps? Something completely different.
On top of that every single kanji, that's just a glyph with no clue of the meaning or pronunciation, has two ways to pronounce it, a Chinese transliteration one and a Japanese one.
A naive person can say at this point "You are studying Japanese, just learn the Japanese pronunciation". No! They use both! And aren't interchangeable, they must be selected based on the surrounding letters, that's doable when you read it, but when they pronounce it you have no clue. Does he want to ask for directions or to kill me and all my descendants? It's something that can be relevant at some point.
Ok, at least you are learning Chinese too, two are better than one. No. The Chinese kanji has nothing to do with modern written and spoken Chinese. You just learn the Japanese dialect of Chinese that you can use only in Japan.
It's like you go to Germany and you must learn a dialect of ancient Greek too just to order a beer.
Because they have no way to implicitly imply the subject in a phrase, they use a specific particle with a specific sound, but when put inside a word the same particle has a different sound, so if you don't already know and are sure about all the words being used, you can't clearly say who is the subject!
It's so basic stuff! And it's something that they teach in the first lesson!
You went all in on your alphabets, but then decided to cheapen out on a fundamental letter?
And the subject isn't even mandatory! A whole phrase extracted from the whole conversation can have no meaning!
Another thing that they teach is that the verbs don't give a clue about who it's referring to, the same phrase can mean I am, you are, he is, she is, they are... To the point that officially a phrase without the previous one to add context, doesn't has the most basic lexical structure to be understandable even by a native speaker.
You have all verbs that to be understood need a subject, but you don't have a solid way to specify one.
Do you want to ask a question? There's a particle for that too like a question mark, but you can use it in the exact same position for other not question constructs, so you have the doubt if he's asking if it's a cat or he's surprised that there's a cat.
It's the only language that to learn it, it requires you to already be fluent in it.
I'm less than a month in and it feels like being violated by something each time even bigger. Every time that I think of having grasped it, I make another step and bang my face into another wall.
The teachers online have the same simple advice: Do you want to learn Japanese? Just go live there.
I've found a language even more ambiguous and irritating than english. I'm even reevaluating english.
Has anyone already learned it and can give me some advice? A hug?
I love the UK and brits, their accent is cool, and maybe they can't cook anything edible even to save their life but I like them.
Ok, perhaps after the brexit's pathetic drama I like them less, but I never hated them.
But I hate English language. It's dumb and frustrating, it has tons of random exceptions, a lot of words and constructs remove context instead of adding it, and what makes me mad is there's no correspondence between how you write a word and how you pronounce it. Maybe I can hear a word that I know how to write and how to use, but if spoken I can't recognize it. It's mental.
Spanish is cool. I love Spanish. I can't understand why people in the world don't use it.
It has more rules, but they are consistent and easy, and it has very few exceptions. You learn one time, and you are good forever.
Plus, what I really love, any letter in the alphabet has its own sound. When I read a word that I've never met, I'm sure to be able to pronounce it correctly, maybe due to the consistent rules implementation I can extract the root for the general meaning, and if it's a verb I can understand the conjugation if it's referring to a male/female, single or plural, present or future. Just by one word.
Considering that the only purpose of a language is to communicate, and that is easy to pick up, any single word adds to the context making the conversation unambiguous, this is a perfect efficient rational language. And it sounds cool too when spoken.
I love Spanish, so now I've started studying Japanese.
Yeah, I don't see the correlation either.
It has 3 alphabets, with two of them accounting for about 80 letters each and still not being able to reproduce all the sounds a 26 letters alphabet does, and kanji: a 50.000+ letters monster alphabet that happens when you mix up a dictionary and an alphabet.
Hiragana and katakana are just duplicates, conceived to piss me off, and composed of a matrix of vowels and consonants. Of course, they are just random scribbles, it would have been easier to make all the combinations that use the "a" have a common element, but no, the few that look similar are scattered around all the table with completely different sounds.
Ok, memorize the position in the matrix and then deduce the sound. Ahhahhhh. No. Some consonants when mixed with a specific vowel produce the sound of another consonant. Because sadism.
They are so graphically complex that if you have a less than perfect writing and don't execute the strokes in perfect order, you can end up with a completely different character.
Kanji is even worse, because a single glyph conveys a whole concept/word, and being them more than the stars in the sky, and composed of a finite number of stroke combinations that you can put in a small square, it's easy to write the wrong word or mix two up.
For example "person" and "enter" are the same with a slightly different inclination.
The first thing that comes to mind is just learning the easier alphabet to start, but no, they use all of them, and at the same time. In every single phrase, they mix up hiragana and katakana, even if they are just duplicates, and kanji even if they can reproduce the exact pronunciation with just one of the other alphabets.
There are methods to memorize them, kanji in particular. For example "eight" is two lines, to remember it you must think of a spider's legs
The kanji for "six" is a 5 points star composed of 4 lines, to remember it you must think of the shower because they shower at six
The kanji for "5" instead is a random quantity of lines, because it is pronounced "go" I must think of a kid who goes to the park and sits on a bench
The method to help me memorize the kanjis requires that, on top of the name shape and multiple sounds, I memorize a random story that doesn't help in any way. Multiplied by 50.000.
Do you see that line with six extremities? Exactly, it's a hand with six fingers.
That one that looks like an animal with four legs? A fish of course.
That one that looks like a window with little lines inside? It's rain. And the same without the small rain drops? Does it mean just window? Or sunny weather perhaps? Something completely different.
On top of that every single kanji, that's just a glyph with no clue of the meaning or pronunciation, has two ways to pronounce it, a Chinese transliteration one and a Japanese one.
A naive person can say at this point "You are studying Japanese, just learn the Japanese pronunciation". No! They use both! And aren't interchangeable, they must be selected based on the surrounding letters, that's doable when you read it, but when they pronounce it you have no clue. Does he want to ask for directions or to kill me and all my descendants? It's something that can be relevant at some point.
Ok, at least you are learning Chinese too, two are better than one. No. The Chinese kanji has nothing to do with modern written and spoken Chinese. You just learn the Japanese dialect of Chinese that you can use only in Japan.
It's like you go to Germany and you must learn a dialect of ancient Greek too just to order a beer.
Because they have no way to implicitly imply the subject in a phrase, they use a specific particle with a specific sound, but when put inside a word the same particle has a different sound, so if you don't already know and are sure about all the words being used, you can't clearly say who is the subject!
It's so basic stuff! And it's something that they teach in the first lesson!
You went all in on your alphabets, but then decided to cheapen out on a fundamental letter?
And the subject isn't even mandatory! A whole phrase extracted from the whole conversation can have no meaning!
Another thing that they teach is that the verbs don't give a clue about who it's referring to, the same phrase can mean I am, you are, he is, she is, they are... To the point that officially a phrase without the previous one to add context, doesn't has the most basic lexical structure to be understandable even by a native speaker.
You have all verbs that to be understood need a subject, but you don't have a solid way to specify one.
Do you want to ask a question? There's a particle for that too like a question mark, but you can use it in the exact same position for other not question constructs, so you have the doubt if he's asking if it's a cat or he's surprised that there's a cat.
It's the only language that to learn it, it requires you to already be fluent in it.
I'm less than a month in and it feels like being violated by something each time even bigger. Every time that I think of having grasped it, I make another step and bang my face into another wall.
The teachers online have the same simple advice: Do you want to learn Japanese? Just go live there.
I've found a language even more ambiguous and irritating than english. I'm even reevaluating english.
Has anyone already learned it and can give me some advice? A hug?
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I studied Japanese for a year in my first year of college, and I chose Japanese because my father speaks a bit of it and I already learned the hiragana and katakana things when I was young. I understand your frustrations.
